Now that I'm making an actual concerted effort to *read* these things maybe I should talk about them https://twitter.com/Jewthulhu/status/1307476979424268288
1. "The Boughs - A Campaign Setting [for Dungeon World]"
by @SandyPugGames

Yes thank you I love infinite forests

I'm still on the fence about how I feel about DW, but there's nothing limiting The Boughs to that system, and it's a nice setting that leaves A Lot Of Questions 1/4
It's one of those instances where it's got Elves/Dwarves/Halflings that are But This Time It's Different, and I *like* the differences. I like that these races are more alien.

And I get it's for DW, but it's also one of those times they could be called something else 2/4
Not like that's not something I could change myself with almost no effort, mind

There's not a lot of concrete dangers of The Endless Woods presented explicitly, so one's gotta work to fill in the gaps, but the emotional buildup of what *might* be there is nice 3/4
Honestly the whole tone and presentation of the writing is pretty great. It's got an intentionally-personal voice, and I'm here for it.

My only other complaint is that me and SPG apparently have very different ideas of how big a Truly Gigantic Spider actually is 4/4
2. "DO NOT LET US DIE IN THE DARK NIGHT OF THIS COLD WINTER"
by @negative_cone of HexKit and "Forest Hymn and Picnic" fame (not to downplay all the other cool things)

A town-maintaining minigame where nature hates you
1/5
It's a fascinating exercise in presenting PCs with a scenario that carries no risk to them at all but still presents strong motivations to do well, even outside the book's guidance to give clear mechanical and/or narrative rewards at the end for doing well. 2/5
It's tonally solid, a heavy experience aimed mostly at lower-powered parties, and while it carries *some* small assumptions re: mechanics, it's very much system-agnostic and runs comfortably parallel to whatever you're slotting it into. 3/5
It *feels* a little too fickle and lacking much agency upon reading through it, but I haven't given it a try yet, so I don't wanna voice "what I would do" mechanically without running it as-is. 4/5
The book *does* contain reasoning for why it's done the way it is, and how the d66 random events table is built, guidelines on adjusting said table, and a statement that most listed hacks were playtested and discarded, and I'm real glad that info is in there. 5/5
4. "Astrology From Hell"
by @oh_theogony, known perhaps most right now for "Visigoths vs Mall Goths"

An anti-climactic ritual about claiming a personality with no regard for The Stars
1/3
This feels very in the category of Not Really My Thing, which is a broad category that includes most of the small experimental games I read

This isn't a criticism, just context for my viewpoint
2/3
I like what it feels like it's trying to do, I like how it's not made to fit the expectation of "satisfying" endings to games (or game-like rituals), and I like how much of Lucian Kahns stuff that I've read so far has explicitly-Jewish context to it's content or shape
3/3
5. "If I Were a Lich, Man"
ibid

An argument among The Undead about two pressing issues, at most one of which can be considered resolved by the end
1/4
This again, but way more Jewish, especially in that the gameplay is an unresolved argument but really it's hella Jewish top-to-bottom

also yes I'm aware "it's" is an error we all must deal with our failings
2/4 https://twitter.com/Jewthulhu/status/1307790696506564608?s=20
On that topic, love how the explicit protagonists, extremely and explicitly Jew-coded, are extremely imperfect and all have some major blind spot or significant flaw and there's no option to *not*

Real happy about that for reasons I'm not sure I can articulate
3/4
Gotta say this also seems a lot more My Thing than works of this sort tend to be, and I don't know when I'll know the correct people to play this with, but I genuinely want to give it a try when I get the chance
4/4
6. "YOU ARE QUARANTINED WITH ADAM DRIVER AND HE IS INSISTING ON READING YOU HIS NEW SCRIPT"
perpetrated by @SandyPugGames

a solo RPG about Adam Driver reading you his terrible script

I mean this with all affection and humor when I say:

Thanks. I hate it.
1/1
7. "Journey Away - A non-challenge-based fantasy RPG"
by @PurpleAetherLLC

usually this is where I put a little description but real that title pretty much covers it
1/10
I think the throughline with Not Really My Thing games is a combination of heavy reliance on the players to do the worldbuilding and scene descriptions/plot advancement (whatever that means in whatever game it is this time); honestly even Fellowship is rough for me
2/10
Again not condemnation, just context for my other commentary, if relevant at all.

I actually really like all the mechanical pieces of this one. It feels a bit FATE-like, in that everything is governed by essentially FATE-style aspects.
3/10
Like, that's 100% of character creation, beyond name and aesthetics, and declaring aspects of the scene that influence a roll is all the direct mechanical conflict.

It's elegant and simple and *extremely* narrative-centric.
4/10
I have two specific hangups:

The first is tone, which I mostly like? But I think it leans a little too into "non-challenge-based" and the setting description goes out of its way to preemptively declaw any apparent threats.
5/10
I get wanting to lean away from challenge, and that this is aimed at a younger audience (I'm pretty sure), but it seems unnecessary to avoid conflict and danger in general so much.
6/10
My other issue is that it really feels like it's *this close* to being GMless but because of being aimed at youths it holds on to a near-vestigial GM role for whatever direction the child players need, and it's necessary, I imagine, but feels weird to me personally.
7/10
I also think a big part of the Not Really My Thingliness of this one is that, having tried some games with the children available to me, I do not think I could trust them with this system. That's not a system problem, that's (again) a my life problem. But it's still a thing.
8/10
I don't want this to sound super negative; I just have a lot less to say about what I like about it. I think it'd be fun to run this GM-less with adults and cycle through who handles the Complications dice pool.

Defs a recommend if you wanna try reading it.
9/10
Yes, I am fully cognizant I am not, for the most part, the target audience here, for a lot of more me-specific reasons but mainly age, best I can tell.
10/10
That's the most tweets I've spent on one product so far, but given Boughs is a setting book and Cold Winter being more a minigame, it's the longest *system* so far included
8. “Archives of the Sky”
by @aaronareed

A sci-fi storytelling game about subluminal space travel and intractable moral quandaries
1/10
I love this. It might actually stress me out to play, but I’d love trying anyway.

It’s also a fascinating contrast to read right after Journey Away, so this is a bit gonna be a “compare and contrast” thread
2/10
The GM roll (a very approximate term here) is roughly as vestigial as in JA, with less (almost no) power during scenes but greater responsibility between them
3/10
But it also assumes the GM *also* has a PC in smaller groups, and suggest GM-less play by collective responsibility for GM duties.
4/10
The GM is a small enough role that, in a game for 3-6, it’s odd it recommends a non-PC-playing GM in any group of 4 or more, honestly, but it’s a mild nitpick and I haven’t tried playing yet so you know maybe the author knows better than me
5/10
There are no dice, which is not to say there are no mechanics. Usual GM-style scene setting is a rotating job, with rotating and/or distributed NPC, set elaboration, and emotional connection roles, and a clear system for setting up the session centerpiece: moral quandaries
6/10
I love the “advancement” mechanic is 100% about changing one’s values or becoming more entrenched in them, and the only PC “death” is when you have to change but you’ve only got calcified beliefs, which is wild and cool imo
7/10
Guessing at what makes this more My Thing than JA:
- A tone that appeals to me more (bittersweet non-military deep-future spacefaring sci-fi)
- Feeling like I’m more the target age range
- Strong guidelines on The Hard Stuff (for me): goals of freeform scenes
8/10
One thing it defs has in common with JA is that I *also* don’t trust the children I live with to play this, but at least the book lends authority to me trying to reign them in a bit and focus them, so it might be a bit easier
9/10
Anyway that’s a super strong recommend for me, which honestly surprises me given what sorts of games I usually feel drawn toward. I am *itching* for a chance to give Archives of the Sky a try.
10/10
9. "Sigils in the Dark"
by @kurtpotts

A solo journaling game that produces a partially-random grimoire of custom spells
1/6
First off, presentation:

This game is designed to look like it's been printed in a composition notebook. I've never seen The Craft, but I feel like this game belongs in The Craft. It's *extremely* Modern High School (for a possibly loose value of "modern").
2/6
Anyway it's about having an all-consuming goal and making increasingly powerful spells with increasingly terrible costs until you decide you've achieved it or you decide The Costs Are Too Terrible and quit, leaving your spellbook behind.
3/6
Adding elements to a spell makes the chances of it having a Terrible Cost higher, but rolling for new pieces to add to spells can give all future spells a higher cap on how Terrible their Costs will be. It's a fascinatingly tight system that "punishes" seeking more power
4/6
Some of the Costs near the top of the Terrible range have some specific Capital Nouns that I *imagine* are up to interpretation by the player, but might tie into the author's full game "Lighthearted" which I do not yet own?
I dunno. *shrug*
5/6
It's all of 11 pages, including blank spell pages, covers, and pretty sizeable text, so there's not a lot more to go in to. It's small. It's interesting. I've given it to the Artsy Middle Child and anticipate her enjoying it a lot. Gonna make me a grimoire, too.
6/6
Have listened to the first six minutes of an actual play of Lighthearted and yes, they are Capital Nouns from that, which this minigame specifically states compatibility with.

So that's that question answered
7/6 https://twitter.com/Jewthulhu/status/1309330213449248769?s=20
10. "Almost"
by @jdragsky

A one-page, one-move, one-stata PBTA about maybe kissing your friend

Your one stat is "how many times this convo did you think about kissing your friend"

If I get more specific I will probably end up reproducing the whole game in this tweet
1/2
It's cute, and the idea of attempting to play this For Reals makes my skin crawl. The Duality Of Man.

Anyway if you wanna kiss your friend this game might be for you.
2/2
Appreciate that the two games I've most strongly mentioned not wanting to play have both gotten dev responses of "oh yeah playing this is a terrible idea"

This is some game-writing energy I can really get behind
11. "Banquo at the Feast"
by @corpserevivers

A storytelling murder "mystery" about exacting vengeance to appease a ghost
1/4
I haven't played anything mafia-like since high school, but from what I *do* recall this is like taking the bit of the game where the cops guess whose fault it was, but the dead person participates, everyone else is the cops, and the meat of the game is inventing narrative
2/4
Gonna put this in the Not Really My Thing category because it looks cool as hell but imagining me, specifically, playing this makes my pulse skyrocket, because while I'm a decent actor and love improv games, I am real bad at this kind of improv
3/4
I love how all the relationships and the entire circumstances of the murder are invented in the process partially via ghost-controlled New Choice style storytelling
4/4
If I succeed at actually reading all of these, some people are gonna show up a whole lot of times
12. “Games: Unruly Rending Piping Nonsense”
by @LeviathanFiles (I promise I am not @‘ing you to argue with you)

Subtitled “game design anti-advice”, I think this document could be described favorably as a verbal assault on the reader
1/4
Honestly a lot of it really speaks to me and describes my difficulties with both the failings of D&D-alikes and also my own general inability to engage in loose improv

But even the most essay-like, low-vitriol sections are also an assault on the eyes
2/4
This is not criticism all of this is clearly intentional and it creates an Extremely Clear Mood
3/4
anyway in the spirit of this game/document/essay I don’t even know: fuck D&D both for the nature of it as a business and for how it poisons brains (including mine) with bad game expectations, play better games
4/4
Addendum: I screwed up this title in two ways, which I blame on the failings of iOS for allowing quick, reliable reference to other apps. And also on me.

It’s “Games: Unruly Rending, Piping Sense” https://twitter.com/jewthulhu/status/1309360627652071424?s=21
Still reading, but also, good news!

Only 666 items left to sort in my downloads folder so this interesting exercise can slowly morph into an unending nightmare
12. “Spell: The RPG”
by @WhimsyMachine

A d6 dice pool fantasy game with adorable art and Scrabble-powered magic
1/19
The first thought I had about the system is “wow 12 stats is a lot” and “12 points for 12 stats seem a little weird” but all the “stats” are essentially attitudes and approaches, and you don’t need more than three or four per character
2/19
It’s a dice pool system with either a 4 or 6 target for rolls (unless they’re contested), a binary success system, and very rarely is more than one success needed, with requiring two being considered very rare and three pretty extreme
3/19
Most actions, with noted exceptions, won’t have more than 6 dice anyway, so needing more than one 6 would be an issue, since even with 6 dice that’s a ~2/3 probability of success
4/19
Anyway that’s not really the meat of it, which is the Spells, which one casts by using a stat dice pool, summing the dice instead of counting successes, and pulling that many tiles from a Scrabble letter bag
5/19
If you can make a relevant word/phrase from the letters and spell it correctly, bam! You done did magic. There are... Hints? In how some of the later text is written that length or specificity would be relevant? But it’s explicitly not. I’m *mildly* confused.
6/19
If you can’t do that, you can hold <stat> tiles over and try it all again next turn. If you can *almost* do that you can cause some terrible side effect to act as if you pulled it off fine.

If you make a spell, it succeeds. That’s how one-off spells work.
7/19
There’s talk later about opposed rolls, and discussion far later about weird spells and how their quality affects opposed spell rolls, but there don’t seem to be *any* rules in the book about how impromptu spells work with opposed roll, so...?
8/19
Experience!
Every player gets the same amount of experience. Every player gets that experience at the *start* of a session. It’s not from what you did, it’s not milestones, it’s just start-of-session.
And you spend it when it becomes relevant to have done so.
9/19
Presumably you can save it from session to session, because some things cost A Lot, but otherwise you spend it (mostly) on improving stats, improving spells, or, here’s the fun part, making a spell you just cast a permanent, improvable spell
10/19
Really trying not to make this a whole-ass system breakdown but the core book is almost purely system, with time spent discussing how the setting can be whatever you want; the second book deals with campaign ideas
11/19
I don’t have $15 to throw at another book right now but I can already tell you I want it because I would love to run this to know how it plays but am super uncreative
12/19
Almost every magic item ties into the spelling spell system, and the multi-use can all make serious significant differences to a player long-term

Also there are multiple sections dedicated to creatures and I can’t tell you how much I love them
12/19
There are friend creatures, with stats and buyable traits
There are summoned friends with more ephemeral stats
There are early-FF-style summons that have to be spelled afresh each time and have specific, static abilities
There are mounts
You can combine these
13/19
There are multi-stage creatures

You can defeat a multi-stage boss, befriend its now-weakened form, have it level alongside you, buy a trait to let you ride it, and then also be able to summon it at multiple levels of power to do multiple specific things
14/19
This tweet reserved for:

Yes Please
15/19
The summoning-spells as-is are meant to act as guidelines for making new ones, with power based on name length and letter rarity, and the book says “you’ll have to spend some time on the math first”
But they don’t really detail how or why the math
16/19
I’m exactly the kind of person who’s gonna fall down a probabilities rabbit hole and map out existing summon power to figure out The Math, but notes on the how and why of designing would be extremely welcome
Most of the time in most book, tbh, but especially here
17/19
Really, my only two problems here are things I’ve already mentioned:

- How do new spells work in contested circumstances (there’s an example of play right after spell creation and it doesn’t describe a new spell)

- What *is* the summons math?

18/19
Otherwise, this is rad, would recommend a read-through

It looked, at least to me, like a daunting and complicated mess, reading the 12 stat descriptions as the first part of the system presented, but it got consistently better as I went
19/19
That was 64 pages and it took me forever to get enough focus for it so I gotta do one or two small ones again before I can even pretend to look at, say, Spire
TBH I'm *real* excited to finally read Spire and Lancer and Blades in the Dark but I'm making those real low priorities because if this thread does nothing else it can at least highlight games I, and probably others, have not ever heard of
13. "Sig: Manual of the Primes"
by @Genesisoflegend

Adventures in a Moebius city at the core of the multiverse
1/25+
This one's gonna be more live-tweet because it's 200+ pages, I don't want to forget half of it before writing it down, and also the order things are presented it will be some of what I comment on
2/25+
Also I'm gonna be comparing it to this a bit for Reasons just FYI
3/25+ https://twitter.com/Jewthulhu/status/1309026562294063105?s=20
One of the first things we learn about the city is that it's Moebius-shaped, and if you cut out the map and made one you could get all the pieces to match up (aside from the constraints of your physical materials)
4/25+
But the way it's presented and matches up implies that if you leave "west" out of one part of the city and keep going until you get back to it, the handedness of everything is reversed. The neighborhood you walk through is at once the one you left but also its mirror-image
5/25+
You'll head out left-handed and the next time people see you you're right-handed and your scar has switched cheeks

I've spent more time so far thinking about the implications of this than the actual mechanics sorry not sorry can't stop won't stop
6/25+
Anyway. Sig. The City of Arbitrary Handedness (I'm never letting this go it's fascinating to me) is "tethered" to three of the 15 pure planes, five each of three types: elemental (you know this one), ideological (Justice, Freedom, etc), and conceptual (Dreams, Life, et al)
7/25+
Which ones it's tethered at a given time affect the look of the city, what sorts of denizens are moving in, the politics and faith of the city, the power of city factions, etc.

There are also "Shard Realms" which are weird lesser planes in those categories
8/25+
And then there are, you know, worlds. Things you expect to find in a multiverse setting. They're called "Primes" and are inhabited by "Primals" which are not like superpeople they're just the people what live in and come from those worlds. There are hidden doors to them.
9/25+
It's cool. Its fun. It's a whole-ass multiverse, with the setting focused just on a single big city with nothing but city on its own piece of reality, and I *don't* hate it and am not bored by it.

This is impressive so far by my standards.
10/25+
Every one of the 15 planes also has a corresponding faction and religion in Sig (that is, the city), and the 15 planes are the only places you're guaranteed access to outside city limits, though *when* is up in the air.
11/25+
'Sgotta glossary, right there at the end of the setting chapter. Most of it that isn't pretty self-evident or clearly defined beforehand doesn't seem too important to know, but I'm glad it's there. A pronunciation guide would be cool, but I personally didn't need one here
12/25+
Sig: Manual of the Primes ("Sig") and Archives of the Sky ("Archives") have a lot of commonalities, both in stated goals and systems

Sig *does* have dice and an explicit GM, and no "trove" for sparking scene ideas, as a quick contrast
13/25+
But they both:
- define characters largely by player-defined stated values (from Sig: subjective, controversial, and declarative)
- have variable control of who sets scenes
- center each scene on a specific question
- explicitly center on bringing values into conflict
14/25+
(cont)
- allow for players temporarily controlling NPCs for a scene
- encourage/demand getting the inner thoughts of PCs out in the open, not merely their actions
- make clear that values exist to be challenged, and this should be a constant goal
15/25+
Sig's conflicts can happen many-to-a-scene, scene setting, inciting event defining, and scene-question asking are separate roles competed for by a dice roll, and all conflicts are incidental to a larger, not-mechanically-defined story
16/25+
So instead of *being* the action like in Archives, conflicts in Sig are meant to advance and complicate an action that is not necessarily a conflict of values (though it would be appropriate if it were)
17/25+
Values in conflict can also, and often will, be setting values, not PC values

Each plane has one, each prime has three, and the City has three, one for each currently-connected plane
18/25+
Having a value in conflict gets bennies ("Influence") at the end of the scene, and this can be spent for in-conflict advantage, expository scenes (that also heal), and other things, and having enough at end-of-session does Stuff that can advance a character like leveling
19/25+
"Harm", which everyone can have 5 of and still act, affects chances of winning conflicts and chances of getting to define scenes, and is gained by winning conflicts or buying points to win conflicts at 3x the potency of influence
20/25+
Like Archives, conflicts can be influenced by having the support of more of your party (among other things in Sig), but unlike Archives they're all ultimately decided by roll-offs.
21/25+
They're very different games in enough ways, to be sure, but I'm real partial to how Archives gives a clear session arc structure as well as explicit mechanics for ending scenes; the latter can be ported verbatim, but the former is a bit murkier
22/25+
There's more to everything I'm talking about but I'm not here to build an SRD I'm here to give enough detail to form feelings about the game

Bonus I left out, tho: you *also* get bennies whenever someone *else's* beliefs have all been in conflict, which is Rad
23/25+
Each character has values and situational bonus tags and two (2) stats

One stat is "how good are you at doing things in-scene"
The other is "how good are you at getting to define what the scene is"

They are "Spark" and "Smoke"

This rules
24/25+
This is my Lasers and Feelings hack, "DMPC"

Your two stats are DM and PC

(it's not a *perfect* metaphor but it's real close; the Sig DM stat also governs doing in-scene actions as an NPC)
25/25+
Hitting the prepared thread ceiling, not even read a whole 30% of the book yet and still have things to say
26/?
There's an end-of-session scene for each character who has 15 or more Influence, and it's a big reflection thing and you can change or solidify a Value, and if you change one, one of the tethered planes to the city changes, and you "level" which is and is not very Archivesy
27/?
The section does not make clear, though, what it means to solidify a Value, or what, if anything, happens when you do so, which is less Archivesy. I'm hoping this gets cleared up later in the book.
28/?
Anyway I'm only part-way into Character Creation so I'll keep going and come back with the rest of my thoughts or another ~25 tweets worth whichever depending on how much more I'll have to say before I hit another thread cap
29/To Be Continued
Oh! A fun thing is players, before a session begins, declare some faction or another to have succeeded at something, and one to have failed, and a few other things, so you get a changing landscape every time you sit down even without tethers switching
30/there's a lot lay off
Correction: Players use Smoke when controlling *minor* NPCs. They’ll use their own Spark when playing major NPCs the same as if they were playing themselves.
31/it’s over when it’s over
https://twitter.com/jewthulhu/status/1314443515309375490?s=21 https://twitter.com/jewthulhu/status/1314443515309375490
Double-correction that apparently players never portray Major NPCs and this is GM guidance because GMs have the same two stats but they vary differently.

Gonna stop chiming in at least until I *finish* a section so I stop this chain of being wrong.
32/
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