A good work day is one where a colleague asks if you have a d20 in your office (I did!) because you seem like the kind of person who would (I am!).

My office neighbor is starting a “department and friends” campaign, I asked if there was an age limit, and that’s how kiddo is joining her first D&D game later this month.

Digital labor issues abound in the context of generative AI, but fan labor issues make me particularly angry.

Adding “Star Trek: Lower Decks” to my running list of “things I sample on YouTube that I wish I had time to really commit to instead.” (Other entries include the Keyforge unique deck game and solo campaigns of the Starforged TTRPG).

I’ve blogged a fair amount over the past year or so about how ethics intersect with fiction. I’ve blogged about whether one should try to live by one’s values in TTRPGs and about my discomfort with the Star Wars franchise (which I otherwise love!) when I put it in tension with my aspirations toward non-violence. I think these are valuable questions (otherwise I wouldn’t publicly write on them), but whenever I write that sort of thing, I also worry that I’m overthinking things, that there’s a way to enjoy fiction without having to think through all of its ethical and moral ramifications.

Love seeing this kind of narrative- and character-focused mechanic,

I may run a one-shot for my siblings over the holidays and need to decide on system. I like the simplicity of Lasers and Feelings but also the improvisational collaboration of Ironsworn: Starforged. Wondering if I could hack them together…

Good joke here—and one I may share with the students in my games and learning class next semester.

I am enjoying Dimension 20 now that I’m finally trying it out, but it’s also reminding me how much Dungeons and Dragons straight up expects you to solve problems with violence, and that’s been bothering me a lot more than it used to.

I’ve posted a lot about TTRPGs and values recently, and I’ve heard good things about this game, so this is welcome news.

Pete and Sarah were mainstays of my Mormon experience growing up. Their oldest—a famously rowdy boy with several rowdy younger brothers—was present on the Sunday when I was introduced in children’s classes as a newcomer to the congregation. When I outgrew children’s classes and made my way to youth Sunday School, Pete was our teacher for a while—the kind of teacher who tried to suppress a giggle (and usually unsuccessfully) whenever the word “ass” (especially “dumb ass”) appeared in the KJV.

Twice this month already I’ve written about whether and how to try to play according to one’s values in games. Both posts have been inspired by Lotus Dimension, a TTRPG that explicitly encourages finding nonviolent solutions to in-game problems. In my first post, I expressed interest in the game because it “allow[s] and encourage[s] other paths to vidtory.” In my second, though, I wondered whether that were good enough: “Is ethical behavior in a game because the system of the game rewards that behavior truly ethical?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about buying a copy of Lotus Dimension, an indie TTRPG that encourages players to find non-violent solutions to problems. I haven’t made my way through the whole rulebook yet—I’ve been busy, and frankly, it’s a bit dense. It’s a bit crunchier than I would have expected from an indie TTRPG focused on an interesting premise, and I’m frankly not sure if it will live up to my initial excitement.

I was already enjoying the actual play podcast Worlds Beyond Number, but once the phrase “pro bono rules lawyer” was uttered, I knew I was totally in.

After several years of having it vaguely on my wish list (ever since Cory Doctorow’s post about it on Boing Boing), I finally picked up a copy of Lotus Dimension, a tabletop roleplaying game with an intentional emphasis on resolving problems through non-violence. I’ve been reading a lot on non-violence lately, and even though I still have a lot to learn, I’ve been asking recently whether a commitment to non-violence in real life would be incompatible with enjoying games where violence is one of the key ways to achieve victory.

I don’t know (or care) much about D&D worldbuilding, and I’m not going to let Hasbro off the hook for their OGL nonsense, but this was a fun movie, and I’m glad I finally got to watch it.

This is a fun glimpse at the humble beginnings of one of my favorite TTRPGs. I’m trying to get a new solo Starforged campaign off the ground right now, and it seems like this is an appropriate time to do so.

This afternoon, a DM let me use a firbolg’s “Speak with Beast and Leaf” ability to turn some stolen green onions into a thief detector. Not sure it’s supposed to work that way, but it was still D&D at its best.

I recently finished a relisten of my favorite Star Wars actual play podcast, and now I want to start a Star Wars FATE game.

Very interesting! I know some critics will describe this as a morally panicked response, but I disagree. I think it’s smart to ask how AI will affect human creators and for companies/communities like Paizo to take principled stances.

One of kiddo’s library books right now is part comic and part choose your own adventure, all wrapped up in a solo TTRPG adventure. It’s a bit too old for her, but we’re both loving it.

Lots of respect for Paizo for doing this. I think my TTRPG future is more in rules-light, story-first indie titles, but if I want something more classic, I wouldn’t mind privileging Pathfinder.

My reputation as an uncle is increasingly becoming associated with tabletop RPGs, and I’m not upset about that at all.

I think it would be dumb to name my next TTRPG character “John Mastodon,” but I’m not sure that will stop me.

It occurred to me this morning that one could build Tales from the Loop RPG characters based on Homestar Runner’s Teen Girl Squad, and now I really want to try it.

One of the highlights of this week’s family gathering was teaching my cousin’s kids to play the all-ages TTRPG Magical Kitties Save the Day. I didn’t make a firm commitment, but I did suggest we might be able to revisit our game sometime over Zoom.

This morning, I am remembering the officially Wendy’s-branded tabletop roleplaying game ‘Feast of Legends,’ which is preposterous but also seems like it could work if you really wanted it to.

Over the past few days, I’ve been relistening to the One Shot podcast’s October 2018 Kids on Bikes episodes (which starts here). There’s so much to love about this six-episode series. I remembered enjoying the characters and the players, but it wasn’t until this morning that I remembered the perfect moment where one player describes the biblical Jacob as “history’s best angel fighter” and summons him to help a science teacher fight off a terrifying seraphim (which I promise makes sense in context).

I find myself enjoying this books as quick reads in between—or concurrent with—longer, more demanding reads. It’s interesting to see Moren build up more of his fictional universe and do more work to connect characters and events. I enjoyed the actions and setting of this book—it would make good inspiration for an RPG setting, which I mean as a compliment. It felt like the cliffhanger in this book was a bit of a gimmick, and I’m not sure I followed all of the plot (or that it was developed in the way I would have hoped), but it was still an enjoyable read.

Looks like a fun local gaming pub.

This summer has been a good one for getting back into tabletop roleplaying. I played a lot of the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars RPG in middle and high school and have been spending most of my life since then wishing that I were still that involved with RPGs. I’ve compensated some by listening to actual play podcast: Total Party Kill rotates through several great D&D campaigns, the original Fantasy Flight Star Wars run of Campaign is so good that I’m listening to it a second time, and Penny Arcade’s Tales from the Loop campaign blew my mind when I listened to it a few months ago.

Like the previous entry in this series, I wouldn’t say that this is a classic of science fiction, but it was a fun read. The worldbuilding continues to be interesting, the characters have potential, the plot was fun, and I enjoyed reading it. It did make me want to play some space opera/space military RPGs, but I also felt conflicted about that. As I think about Community of Christ’ focus on becoming a peace church, I wonder how much I should enjoy reading books that make violence and warfare interesting (or consuming other media that does the same).

Kiddo and I are getting back into the “Magical Kitties Save the Day” TTRPG, and she keeps asking me when we can play next. Feels like a win!

The title of this post is a bit misleading. My wife and I aren’t really big on “Parent’s Day” celebrations: Years of Latter-day Saint “all women are mothers” (read: motherhood is the most important part of womanhood) Sunday services grated on us during our years of infertility, and even now that we are parents (and aren’t practicing Latter-day Saints—though my current denomination certainly isn’t immune from a cringeworthy celebration of parents either), it’s just not a thing we do.

J’ai découvert un podcast sur le jeu de rôle en mileu Star Wars (que j’aime beaucoup) qui est en français canadien (dont j’essaie d’améliorer ma compréhension). Ça tombe bien !

I’m interested in this argument about Star Wars feeling like a TTRPG campaign setting. Throughout much of middle and high school, I played the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars TTRPG, and that made even the prequel movies beloved because they became a setting to explore rather than movies to be unsatisfied with.