@ludopolitics@dice.camp
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ludopolitics

@ludopolitics@dice.camp

Asst Teaching Prof, CMU. Indie game designer, teacher, scholar, parent. ENG/中文.

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LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

It's been a minute; let's do this again:

If you are a Tabletop RPG nerd and have less than, say, 500 followers (or think you have less than 500 that are actually active):

  1. Write a post to introduce yourself and your particular nerdery, if you haven't already got one pinned.

  2. Reply in the comments with a link to or copy of that post.

  3. Share, check back to find people you want to follow, all that.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@LeviKornelsen

Hi folks, this is me:

https://dice.camp/@ludopolitics/112278380605545658

Summary: I've been making weird indie RPGs for a long time, and I now teach game design at Carnegie Mellon.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Last few years, I've been feeling that @megueyb + @lumpley's Apocalypse World and Avery's most recent half-dozen games (since Quiet Year) -- plus everything released since -- have left me thinking a lot about "responding to a prompt" as the micro-foundation of TRPG play.

I don't know if I can fully articulate it, or put it into a clouds-and-arrows diagram. And, in the end, it's not particularly complicated or insightful. But I think it helps reframe TRPGs (and all play?) in useful ways.

annaleen, to random
@annaleen@wandering.shop avatar

Where do psyops come from? Find out in my forthcoming book STORIES ARE WEAPONS, now available for pre-order! Want a signed and/or personalized copy? Order one from the glorious Green Apple Books today! https://www.greenapplebooks.com/signed-annalee-newitz

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@annaleen No, but their stuff looks super interesting. Thanks for the rec! Actually, Wolfe's books look really useful for something I'm working on right now.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@annaleen For sure! We read Simpson's "Science of Coercion" in my Comm PhD program as our introduction to the history of our discipline.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@annaleen So exciting! It'll be REALLY useful to have a recent, updated take on this thread -- the "hidden" history of weaponized Comm & Media Studies, basically -- and your thoughts on how it's continued in recent decades!

LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

When you fully accept that gamers are largely fundamentally competent at having a good time roleplaying, you realize that most design objectives OTHER THAN "save people work" and "get them excited" can be managed with a box of parts and a discussion of how to assemble them.

But those two, hoo boy.

ludopolitics,
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@LeviKornelsen I don't know, friend. I grew up playing Palladium games and we had the hardest time figuring out how to make them consistently fun.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@LeviKornelsen Fair, but I also think the practice of roleplaying can be opaque to outsiders -- maybe less so now that there's video examples. My students, for example, tend to have difficult figuring out how to play "serious" or emotional TRPG content, rather than playing for yucks.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

I feel like the hardest part about making a game about minor nature gods is figuring out the setting. If you set it in the real world, then you bring all that baggage along. If you set it in a fantasy world, then you have to convey both the fictional setting and the spirit world of that fictional setting to the players. Maybe I can just have the players invent the world themselves?

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

My next personal game-design project looks like it'll be re-theming, redesigning, and repairing a 1962 Gottlieb pinball machine. It's gonna be a lot of work to produce 1 single copy, likely the only version of the game that will ever exist. But it'll be magical.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

I made the mistake of introducing my kiddos to "Mortal Kombat: The Album" by The Immortals (essentially the Lords of Acid), a cult classic of 1990s acid/electro/house.

Honestly, if I had been born a decade earlier, this would have been the perfect genre for me: hot beats, mediocre rap, & buzzing retro synths (cf. Kelly Chen and Leon Lai's cantopop dance tracks).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc_DIqCMPwI

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Something must be wrong with me. I find myself surprisingly excited that White Wolf's inheritors (Onyx Path) are publishing a weird fantasy dungeon dive game based on an updated Storyteller system.

Is this just decades of Exalted baggage rearing its head, or am I right in suspecting that The World Below sounds a lot more fun than any version of D&D?

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Oh no. This is a 1960s Japanese electric banjo available on eBay. Be still my heart.

ludopolitics,
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

@Tim_Eagon They vary a lot, especially because you have a lot of options for altering the sound. This one sounds something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_bB3J8kLH8

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

I just found out about the Adventure Time RPG. What a tragedy.

It would have been so much fun with a rules-lite system + random tables/seeds for adventures.

ludopolitics, to random
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Before Twitter dies for good, I really need to archive @epidiah's thread about why the Bullwinkle Party Game is the best system for running Dark Souls. https://twitter.com/epidiah/status/1487081775117615112

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

I continue to be surprised by how good ChatGPT is at generating drafts of an almost-playable PBTA game, just from a description of the basic premise.

Like, if you tell it to "Write a description of a PBTA tabletop roleplaying game about XXX," it does an okay job. And then you can ask it to "Write a set of core moves for that game" or "Write a playbook for that game."

What it generates is far from perfect (just a sketch), but as a tool for brainstorming different approaches, it's fascinating.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Are there White Wolf retroclones yet? There have to be, right?

I made one several years back about playing mythological giants in a Wolfie style, but I haven't kept up to see if there are others now.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

I like the look of this cute "trindie" game from the UK about people in space doing little missions, set in the actual solar system.

It feels like the kind of indie game my students would write, something solid and fun but relatively "safe."

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/murkdice/void-above

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

You don't need a digital Campaign Manager tool if you never have time to play something that's not a one-shot.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

I finally got a Comixology Unlimited account, so I can finally afford to read as much comics as I want.

Currently working my way through all 50+ volumes of "Drops of God," which is a manga about people who are Giant Wine Nerds the way we are Giant Game Nerds.

It's making me realize that maybe all semi-educational "learn about a new hobby" manga are really just creators replacing their own comics nerdery with other hobbies.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Just upped my pledge for
@WarBirds's new game LUMBERJILLS, which is SO CLOSE to being funded. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unrulydesigns/lumberjills-a-war-birds-game

At the higher backer level, you get to suggest an NPC, so I'm poking around to learn about people like the Chinese merchant marine sailors who served in the UK, and then were forcibly deported for racist reasons afterwards, despite many of them marrying British women. https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2022-08-17/How-the-UK-deported-thousands-of-Chinese-men-who-served-in-WWII-1cyfURb1gac/index.html

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Here's a draft cover layout for my game idea inspired by "Robotech: Invid Invasion," featuring everyone's favorite gender-nonconforming musician & revolutionary: Lancer!

I will definitely hire an artist to create a cover image that doesn't infringe on anyone's IP, if it gets that far. This is me just trying stuff out to inspire myself.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Dreamed about a Muppet film version of Hamlet called "Mupplet," where the only human is Hamlet. I assume Miss Piggy played Queen Gertrude but I have no idea who would play Ophelia. Janice from the Electric Mayhem?

ludopolitics, to random
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That thing in games where game designers are both minor celebrities and also often among the least important people in determining what actually happens during play.

ludopolitics, to random
@ludopolitics@dice.camp avatar

Oh no. I think I just started a new game draft that's a heavy For The Queen hack with a lot swearing?

RAPTOR NEST (working title)

You are a real piece-of-shit who, for some reason, owns a fucking raptor — a semi-autonomous spaceplane gunship. And not because you’re a soul-contracted client soldier, bankrolled by an evil-ass gigacorp or star empire, either. No, you’re the doomed owner of a fucking FREE raptor, beholden to no one but yourself, you poor hopeless fool.

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