@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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ludopolitics, to random
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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
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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
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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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Oh no. This is a 1960s Japanese electric banjo available on eBay. Be still my heart.

ludopolitics, to random
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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.

ludopolitics, to random
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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
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Finally heard back from the guy who made an indie RPG for his MA thesis in architecture.

It stalled out on Kickstarter because HE DOESN'T USE SOCIAL MEDIA and had no way of promoting it.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yourtroubledcity/your-troubled-city

ludopolitics, to random
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This guy created a super-indie tabletop RPG for his MA thesis in architecture, which looks really cool. Too bad it's not gotten any traction on Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yourtroubledcity/your-troubled-city

ludopolitics, to random
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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
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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
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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.

ludopolitics, to random
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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
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Hi TRPG braintrust!

What are some interesting CC-BY or otherwise open TRPG games that my students could potentially adapt into video games?

ludopolitics, to random
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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
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I tried out a new assignment this semester, for my "Intro to Game Design" course:

I assigned my students to design 3 levels inspired by the mechanics of Hitman GO / Lara Croft GO, but with the theme switched to Netflix's new Carmen Sandiego TV series.

The levels are really good, y'all.

ludopolitics, to random
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I got to participate in an early playtest of a student's TRPG this week, which they're trying to finish as part of an independent study.

It feels like an early-mid 2000s indie game in many respects: you play members of a relatively new cult and follow your characters' journey as the cult grows and comes into tension with both the local community and itself.

It has hints of @PaulCzege's MLwM, Steve Hickey's Soth, and @jmstar's The Roach (good company!), but is also clearly its own thing. Neat.

ludopolitics, to random
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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
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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
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Seriously thinking about a Palladium retroclone, because I am the person in the "sicko" gif.

It could be called the Aluminum System, but you'd have to pronounce it in the British way, with the invisible extra i.

ludopolitics, to random
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Oh no. I might actually be able to make Metatopia this year.

Oh no.

ludopolitics, to random
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Wondering if I've reached the point in adulthood / the indiepocalypse where I have increasingly less motivation to design stand-alone games, because I can just hack something together to support whatever I want to play?

There's just so much stuff out there. And one of my favorite styles of design & play (freeform larp or tabletop scenarios) doesn't demand commercialization or formal publication for stuff to get played.

ludopolitics, to random
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Okay, so this might be happening.

ludopolitics, to random
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I just learned that Pittsburgh is the headquarters of extreme pogo sticking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS6kL6G4GZ4

ludopolitics, to random
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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.

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