@seraphimseraphina
she/her • Writer, Game Designer, Consultant, Dev Editor • Co-moderator of the Dice Exploder Discord server • trans queer woman of color • that friend who probably has a game recommendation for you • blog at https://seraphim-seraphina.itch.io/my-blog/devlog
This week on Dice Exploder I've got @olddog.games on talking Blades '68, Dungeon World, and "draw maps leave blanks". How much should you define about your game in advance - as a player, as a GM, as a designer? Tim's smart!
i keep getting into (enjoyable and fun) arguments about the nature of games that can run the risk of getting lost in the sauce with overly broad definitions, so i invented a lil logic tool
www.patreon.com/posts/152130...
so a lot of people have talked abt how important Praise The Hawkmoth King by @anagogue.bsky.social is and how relevant it is for the current political climate and blah blah blah
but theyre missing the point: its also FUN AS HELL
notes-from-the-labyrinth.ink/winning-prai...
I'm going to regret posting this, but: obviously system matters. But so does a game's fiction. And you can use that fiction to elegantly solve problems in play that no mechanic ever could.
saw a video about omelas-response game design (which is its own thing, separate but adjacent to the fictional conversation) and i think it missed the point that the original story "the ones who walk away from omelas" is already a tabletop role-playing game.
Yep, I am definitely at least slightly surprised! But also this page does slap
What’s a fact about yourself you think would surprise me?
@adambell.games Just received my copy of Uneasy Lies the Head, Royal Edition!! This game is absolutely gorgeous and was a delight to unbox- excited to take some glamour shot later tonight, and more excited to table it with the pretty materials for the first time!
It's done. The Bloggies Tournament, and the first half of The Bloggies, are officially complete. It was a tight race, but the winners are...
🧵👇 (Thread attached)
www.explorersdesign.com/bloggies-bre...
We're in the final round of The Bloggies gladiatorial arena. You can find the results (with pie charts!) and round 4 voting form in the link below.
There was a significant uptick of votes this round. Neat.
the final draft of seven-part pact is done and is in its final stage of playtesting! if you want to come help playtest, read this post: www.patreon.com/posts/151018...
Dice Exploder is back! This is the year of "just do the dang show in its normal format," and I'm kicking off talking Dream Askew / Dream Apart / Belonging Outside Belonging setting elements with @jaztice.bsky.social.
I went ahead and submitted! Excited to see what scenarios come forth this year.
Oh this theme aligns with an idea I’ve been workshopping. This is very tempting.
somehow, in the span of two frantic days, i wrote the sorcerer (the final draft of the last of the seven wizards for seven-part pact)
www.patreon.com/posts/sorcer...
Valentine's Day is right around the corner...
Consider helping me playtest my new game — Violent Delights: A chess-based RPG about Romeo & Juliet.
The first 10 people to play and complete a feedback form will receive a complimentary PDF of Violent Delights when the game is complete.
as a fan of those games- i think it's not that different from channeling this impulse into poetry. i think games and poetry have a lot in common, particularly lyric games. writing an autobiographical lyric game is like writing a poem about your life that you want other people to crawl inside of
In this way, I feel a lot of the most conventional games, trying their hardest to be products, abandon the spirit of play that draws me to these works in favor of professionalism. I want my games to be playing with me, not working for me! I want the audiences for games to see that joy too. Play!
And a big part of this is the line that is drawn between games as products sold on shelves, like you say, and games as they exist outside of that context- make-believe, house, tag, truth or dare. Those are games that exist outside of these boundaries, but they get dismissed as play, not “real games”
So when someone decides to buy a game outside this expectation, they feel cheated! Even if they accept that games can be art, culture has made them a promise about what that art will look like that the game did not uphold, it has no Win Condition, it has ambiguous rules that require interpretation
People rely on their past experiences playing games and assume future experiences will be the same. This is true of all mediums, but I think there’s a stronger awareness of diversity in visual mediums. Meanwhile, games must always be reasonably challenging, approachable, winnable things.
With games in particular I sometimes feel there’s a vicious dominance that expectations carry. Maybe this is myopic, but my instinct is that the platonic ideal of “game as product” lives much more intensely in people’s heads as a standard that they can rely on than with other mediums.
ph lee kindly shared this story with me earlier last year and i've been thinking about it constantly ever since. i grew up on tumblr (for better or for worse) and this story perfectly captures the feeling of this alternate mode of social self-imprisonment
Thank you so much!
I know we're all Bloggie brained right now, but I wanted to share another piece I wrote last year that I'm very proud of. This piece was originally hosted by Rascal News, but with their approval I've made a copy available on my itch blog! Please enjoy
🤼♀️🚚❤️
seraphim-seraphina.itch.io/my-blog/devl...
The first one I recorded is live! Here’s @jdragsky.bsky.social’s Expressionist Games Manifesto, narrated by your truly!
podcast.bloggies.org/@WeReadTheBl...
The awesome @bommyknocker.bsky.social, @elmc.at, Grace of Choir of Fire @seraphimseraphina.bsky.social and many community members have organized a group recording effort of every Bloggies post as podcast episodes inspired by Blogs on Tape!https://podcast.bloggies.org/
thank you also to @linkskywalker.bsky.social whose Blogs on Tape inspired this project!
Shout out to @bommyknocker.bsky.social for organizing, @elmc.at's technical expertise, and Grace from choir-of-fire.bearblog.dev for doing a huge number of recordings!
