Sokath, his eyes uncovered

he is talking about theatre. he is talking about theatre when he was younger. he says, "of course, it was AIDS then." in the pause, you ask him. clumsy and quiet and 16 and "straight," you ask him. what was it like.

to this day no other post gets sent to me so often by friends who have encountered it as a repost on some other site. the idea that more than one hundred thousand people have read these words, and know this story now, and maybe feel as i did, is tremendously humbling and unbearably beautiful to me. even by accident, even just passing on a story that is not my own, i often think that it is the best thing i have ever done.

Other performers have literally said since, “Freddy basically changed live performance forever and left us NOTHING.” (affectionate)

I am convinced he was blessed by the gods. He was a fucking herald for said gods or something. Hell, there’s that vid of the Green Day fans waiting for the concert to begin and fucking singing in perfect fucking harmony to Bohemian Rhapsody! Freddy isn’t even alive and he still fucking commands a crowd!

Full performance:

Mussolini banned it because he though it was due to foreign influence, specifically Spanish usted, and one of his many bad ideas was a campaign to purge the Italian language of anything too foreign. Sometimes it stuck: chaffeur and coiffeur were successfully replaced by autista and parrucchiere. Sometimes it failed, like the attempt to replace cocktail with codadigallo "tail-of-rooster".

Regarding the double use of voi and lei, there is a very interesting scene in the historical novel The Betrothed (written in the 19th century, and set in the 17th). A righteous but hot-tempered friar is visiting an arrogant aristocrat who is bothering a peasant girl to tell him to knock it off. At first, they both address each other as a respectful lei: a commoner speaking to a nobleman, and a layman speaking to a churchman. But when the aristocrat is too much of an asshole, the friar loses his temper and calls him voi -- still formal, but not deferential anymore. The aristocrat, being a dick, drops to tu. I wonder how this works in an English translation.

For adults, the appeal is Sir Patrick Stewart doing a kid’s educational bit in full Shakespearean dress and style; there’s a delightful cognitive dissonance between the very serious presentation and the very simple content.

For very small children, it’s educational: this is the letter “B”; here’s how it’s shaped; here’s some words you know that start with it. Oh, and here’s a word you may not be familiar with that starts with it, so you can recognize that it’s the sound that matters, and not whatever other connection you made between the other two words.

For older kids: you’ve probably heard that “to be or not to be?” speech, or at least part of it, so you can enjoy some of the parody the adults are watching. Also, here’s how to describe how a letter is made - how to teach young siblings who don’t read yet, how to explain both the shape and the sound.

For kids with dyslexia: here’s how you differentiate a “B” from a P or D or E. You may have to go slowly and look carefully at the exact shapes that make up the whole, but there are differences and you can learn to recognize them. 

For teens or young college students: In addition to whichever parts of those are relevant to you, here’s what Shakespearean acting sounds like. Here’s how to enunciate clearly and slowly, so your audience can understand terms they may not recognize and still follow the gist of what you’re saying. If you’re reading Shakespeare in school, try sounding it out like this and see if that helps it make sense.

Yeah a bunch. Each one of these could basically be its own post, but here are the condensed versions.

Social Media

You need social media. No one will ever hear of your game without a strong social media presence. And as much as it sucks, your best bet is probably tumblr. It’s the only populated social media site that allows your posts to be widely circulated without you having to pay, and also long form enough to actually include information. I dedicate one day a week entirely to social media and that’s just about the only reason we make any money at all.

Also, when using tumblr, the first five tags you put on a post are the most important, those are the tags that make it show up on people’s dashboards. The first twenty tags are the ones that make it show up in search results. Don’t put the name of your game in the first five tags generally, because if no one has heard of it yet, no one is following those tags.

Don’t Paywall Your Game

You deserve to be paid for your work if you indeed did any work at all (we’ll get to that), but that just isn’t the world we live in. Unless you have an advertising budget to essentially trick people into buying a game that might end up being crap, you need something to prove that your game is worth spending money on. Without an advertising budget, that proof has to be your game. Setting your game to pay-what-you-want, or providing “community copies,” lets people try your game before they buy. Plenty of people will buy up-front when given the option, and others who can’t afford it at that moment will download it for free then come back and pay later. Some people will never pay, but what that means for you is that they either never experience your game, or they pirate it. People experiencing your game, showing it to their friends, and talking about it is one of the most valuable pieces of advertisement you can ever have. It will ultimately lead to more people who are willing and able to pay learning about your game.

Start Small but Not Too Small

Do not make a one-page game for your first game. Do not be like us and make a 700-page game for your first game. Try to aim for something between 20 and 200 pages, especially if you’re one person or a small team.

Play and Read a lot of RPGs or Your Game Will Suck

Would you watch a movie by a director who had only ever watched one movie? Would you read a book by an author who had only ever read one book? Hell no, those would suck.

Read many rpg rulebooks, from many different genres and decades, play as many of them as you can (by the rules) to understand how the rules work and why they’re there. This will give you the creative tools you need to make something that isn’t just a weaker version of the last RPG you played. No, listening to "actual plays" does not count.

Most actual plays stray significantly from presenting a regular gameplay experience in favor of an experience that is entertaining for an audience. If you want to learn martial arts, you should be watching martial arts tournaments, not WWE.

If you want an actual play podcast that has my “actually mostly presents a real gameplay experience” approval, try Tiny Table.

If you say you don’t have time to read rulebooks, then you don’t have time to design a good game. Studying is part of the process of creating. If you don't, you won't even know about gleeblor.

This will let you know whether your "innovation" is more like "Cars don't need to run on gasoline!" or "Cars don't need crumple zones and airbags!"

The Rules Matter, So Design with Intent

The rules matter the rules fucking matter holy shit what you actually write down on the page matters I can’t believe this is actually the seemingly most needed piece of advice on this list. The. rules. matter.

Design your game to be played in the way you designed it. The rules affect the tone and genre of your game, they affect the type of people PCs can be and the kind of stories that will result from gameplay. Bonuses encourage PC behaviors, penalties discourage PC behaviors.

Do not fall for the trap of “oh well people will just play it their own way based on vibes anyway so it doesn’t matter what I write the rules to be.” Write that you wrote this game to be played by the rules and that significant changes to the rules mean that players are no-longer playing the game you made. Write like you deserve for your art to be acknowledged by its audience. If you don’t, then there is no point in anyone playing the game you made, because if the person who wrote it doesn’t even care what the rules say, why should anyone? The people whose “playing” of TTRPGs consists of never opening the rulebook and improving based on “vibes” will still do that no matter what, but the people who would have actually tried to engage with your game will find that it sucks if you don’t even care what the rules are yourself.

Playtest

You need to playtest your game if you want it to work as intended. You need multiple sets of eyes on it. If you don’t have the opportunity personally to do so, just release your game anyway with the acknowledgement that it’s unfinished. Call it an alpha or a beta version, and ask for people that do play it to give feedback, then update and fix the game based on that feedback.

Ignore Feedback

Most people do not have any game design credibility, perhaps least of all TTRPG players. You do not, in fact, have to listen to everything people say about your game. Once you ask for feedback, people will come to you with the most deranged, asinine, bad-faith “feedback” you can imagine, and then get really mad at you when you don’t fall to your knees and kiss their feet about it. You do not need to take this feedback at face value, instead you need to learn to read between the lines and find out which parts of the rules text are being misinterpreted by players, and which incorrect assumptions players are making about your game. Then, you update and improve the game by clearing those up. Only like 30% of “feedback” you receive will actually be a directly helpful suggestion in its own right at face value.

You can’t please everyone, and shouldn’t, so appeal to the people who actually like your game for being what it is, not the people who don’t.

Read Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Yeah this one sounds self-serving but hear me out. Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is as much a treatise on TTRPG game design as it is a game itself. When it presents mechanics and rules, it tells you what they are, why they are, how they are, and what you’re intended to do with them. This makes it an excellent example to read for anyone wanting to get serious about game design and learn how TTRPGs tick under the hood, and an excellent example of a TTRPG that expects players to play it the way it was written to be played, and why that is a good thing. Also you can download it for free.

Social Media

Social Media, as much as it sometimes can be difficult, is indeed one of the best ways to get a game out there. I think going in depth onit is also enough of something for its own hour panel, but not including it would really be an oversight on my part for those who want to sell what they make, or have others see it.

Paywalling and Cost of Games

The insight on not paywalling is something I already included too, but I just want to double down on what you said here. Indie TTRPGs don't really have the luxury of being high cost most of the time, and certainly don't have the luxury of being required payment to have. At least digitally. IF indie TTRPGs are going to expand, they need to be accessible in cost and trust folks to pay if they can when they can.

Starting small and the size of games

While the smallest section, I am also happy you included actual figures on size. It's hard to tell people "make something small" because I often see the response to that being a one page ttrpg. Which themselves are effectively Game Design Challenges. They are NOT easy, and require lots of work to still communicate ideas well (which even then, rely on assumptions). Many new ttrpg designers (myself included, unfortunately) want to make our Big Thing, and that isn't usually feasible. While I am all for Make It If You Must, you should still TRY to make something smaller if you can.

Designing with Intent/Play and Read TTRPGs (and not just copying or spiting media)

A lot of my panel is going to be "Do what I say, not what I did" and this one is... very true. Painfully true, really. To add though, I want to point out that rules matter, and that means every rule added should be in service of a main design goal or mantra. From the small addendums to the massive backbones of the system like what dice should be used.

For Shattered Neon, the big gripe I'm going to be discussing and my cardinal mistake was this. I'd say about 70% of Shattered Neon is built for the purpose of making a tactical cyberpunk-fantasy TTRPG. The other 30% has been there... well, largely because of my initial goal of "Make Shadowrun, but actually playable and fun to learn". That could be a goal, but in reality it is simply a comparison. It also showcases how, while I like the genre and had a lot of movies and shows at my back, I didn't read enough TTRPGs early on in the genre to really make educated choices. Something more obtainable that would make a good end result would be something like "Make a horror ttrpg that explains the trans experience in governmental work" (my next project) or "Make a party game about a solarpunk library after the bombs fell" or whatever. The big point however is none of those are tied to one system or inspirational media. They have legs to stand on and whole genres to pull from. They also have clear and executable "fantasies" to create. But that is a whole other addendum.

Playtesting and Feedback

Feedback is important, playtesting is important. That much is obvious and I already included it (as well as the many ways to playtest things and get playtesters) but I hadn't thought of making the point you made. Feedback isn't always useful, and it isn't always something that should be listened to. Don't just kowtow to playtesters and fans. Look into what you can use for your art first and foremost.

I think there’s actually plenty of older TTRPGs that would benefit from a “remake” that provides very similar gameplay but with the benefit of several more decades of experimentation and knowledge of TTRPG game design (and a fucking editor).

What I’m saying is that it isn’t folly to want to make a better version of Shadowrun - Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy started as an attempt to make a better version of Call of Cthulhu and Gumshoe - what I’m saying is that if you try to make a better version of Shadowrun (or try to make anything at all), but you’ve only played Shadowrun, all you will be able to make is a worse Shadowrun.

Her and Grandpa were in a relationship with their best friends

The four of them have been in a relationship since they were teenagers

They flipped a bottle cap to see which girl the boys would marry

Their children could have either man as their biological father but their biological mother is the mum that raised them

And the update

I’ve been collecting the best Jorts tweets and waiting until the moment he showed up on my dash to post them. So here you are, the curated best of the past, oh, day or so:

Meanwhile, OP has continued tracking trash can mishaps on twitter:

And a quality photo of this sweet potato:

Link to the lovely video

There once was a ship that put to sea The name of the ship was the Jorts and Jean The ship she rolled and her closet doors closed Oh no, where’s Jorts? Oh no!

Soon may the smarter cat come To save poor Jorts so orange and dumb One day when the butterin’s done We’ll take our leave and go

When Pam came on, she had a plan To teach our Jorts about garbage cans Pam meant well but her plans fell flat When HR said, “don’t butter the cat”

Soon may the smarter cat come To save poor Jorts so orange and dumb One day when the butterin’s done We’ll take our leave and go

Now Jean the smart cat comes She saves poor Jorts so orange and dumb Now that the butterin’s done We’ll take our leave and go

We’ll take our leave and go

We’ll take our leave and go

Additional quality memes:

A recipe for Buttered Jorts:

Recent Jorts activities:

And some very wise words from the cat himself: