January 22, 2020

2020.01.22
One of the best additions I've made to my tumblr feed is David J Prokopetz - his main webpage links to his tumblr as well as a pillowfort page that looks like it hasn't been updated in a while, but I'm tempted to use binge it.

His main shtick is game recommendations - people ask him for game suggestions (mostly tabletop/rpg, but some video games as well) and he comes back with well-curated examples from his encyclopedic knowledge- he also has advice for aspiring game makers but what I think I love most is when he spins out concepts of RPGs that should be made, or otherwise plays with variant ideas or bizarre implications of existing tropes. Cruising through his past few days of backlog I didn't find as many of the "oh wow" examples but this might give you the flavor:
Concept: a competitive tabletop RPG campaign where one side plays the owners and staff of an unscrupulous restaurant that's known for identifying anonymous reviewers and secretly giving them unasked-for enhanced service, and the other side plays the owners and staff of a prestigious travel guide publisher who are determined to give the restaurant an honest review. It's played completely straight as a high pressure spy-in-enemy-territory scenario, with explicit mechanics for cracking under the mental strain.
Or see this riff on inverting the roles of high elves and goblins in a D&D-inspired fantasy setting...

(I really do love tumblr despite it being past its golden age. Like twitter for me, I use it as a read-only medium, and you really have to curate your main list (which is the trick to twitter btw - follow tons of of people for politeness reasons but then just have one list you actually read, which will be kept in chronological order for you)

Wish my old school handcrafted blog (coming up on 20 years!!) fit neatly into some "stream" like those. Crossposting everything to facebook is as close as I get, and posts that I think are decent conversation starters are getting less attention.)
RIP Terry Jones
I would say overall I've heard fewer 2020 "Vision" puns than I was expecting.