Duamn Figueroa Rassol 🇦🇷 [Commissions Open]

Okay, I have another one, but this one is a bit more abstract:

Roleplaying Games are their own creative medium, like novels, movies or comics.

The TTRPGs we consider classic, are the ones which have been able to inhabit, for good or for ill, the medium in its own terms.

Okay, I have another one, but this one is a bit more abstract:

Roleplaying Games are their own creative medium, like novels, movies or comics.

The TTRPGs we consider classic, are the ones which have been able to inhabit, for good or for ill, the medium in its own terms.

I wrote a whole 'nother thread about deconstructing this etiquette, you can check it out here: bsky.app/profile/duam...

Move that over 50 years, & we got a lot of cultural assumptions developed from an era where gaming looked very different to how it looks now.

GM authority remained fairly unchallenged in games until the late 90s.

Non-violent games are still in the minority.+

While option B depended on the sole criteria of the GM (who, let's remember, was percieved as a figure of authority), who's your other friend Josh, running a campaign while stressed out for finals next week.

A weird option C was developed on that grey space: don't mess with you friend's character,+

So going back to options A & B, A was all well & good when dealing with the fiction the (at the time, adversarial) GM was presenting. But what happens when applying those tools meant attacking your real friend Greg's character & potentially cutting him off play. +

A demographic that historically had a poor toolset for emotional communication, navigating a new creative medium, without aknowledgement of how creative mediums leave its participants in a very vulnerable space.

This is where we get the cliché "Killer DM", "That's what my character would do", etc.+

A. Use the tools they were provided, & resolve actions violently.

B. Navigate a nebolous area, either demanding the GM to come up with new rules, potentially overstepping the GM authority, or talking it out.

Now, let's place ourselves at that era: nerdom was heavily dominated by white young men.+

Coming from wargames, early TTRPGs had a mechanical emphasis on modeling violence, which meant that a character's toolset usually revolved around inflicting violence.

Alternatively, early TTRPGs left other types of actions completely up to the GM to model.

This left groups with 2 options:+

other vectors (that is, your friend's characters).

This comes from how TTRPGs worked early on, with the division of power between players & GM steeply asymetrical. Back in the day, it was assumed that you as a player could only modify the fiction through your character's actions. +

Yes, yes, a 1000 times yes. This is something I've been mulling over for years, so long-ass thread incoming:

The Foil of Player Etiquette:

As players percieve the GM as the owner of a story, they see their characters as the only vectors of agency in it; It's considered taboo to mess with the +

ppl who still commission their favourite artists even in this era where everyone is broke and genAI is being pushed on us at every opportunity—you are appreciated more than words can express!!!

Who wants more haunted shredded cheese?

Oh yeah, and I learnt this from the older guys at our local club who were really into the Forge, which fortunately came at a time when I was frustratingly trying to hammer any idea into a D&D 3.5 shaped hole. So, huge improvement 😅

Hit it in the nail with the necessity of friction there.

Don't get me started on conformity.

The cultural avoidance of confrontation in nerd spaces is particularly jarring in creative mediums like TTRPGs, where ultimately the whole idea is to "feel something".

This avoidance has stunted the development of techniques to facilitate confrontation.

TTRPG systems, at their core, are frameworks of creative restraints, posing imaginary exercises you wouldn't undertake otherwise.

House-ruling games out the gate avoids the confrontation of expectations & robs you the opportunity of switching frameworks, making you default into a "standard game".

Coming soon: Nibiru: Revisited Step once again into a colossal space station, home to millions, where stories of drama and struggle are written on a daily basis.

man. nibiru
www.kickstarter.com/projects/xan...

My nuanced take of TTRPGs is that this space is absolutely poisoned with the performativity US liberals so we from the global south are never gonna get the recognition and support we deserve if we don't divest from D&D and the cultural devices bound to it. That real solidarity across borders...

TTRPG systems, at their core, are frameworks of creative restraints, posing imaginary exercises you wouldn't undertake otherwise.

House-ruling games out the gate avoids the confrontation of expectations & robs you the opportunity of switching frameworks, making you default into a "standard game".

I'm the type of goon you stun-locked, but can't kill because you keep missing the damage attacks.

One week to go! Can we hit our first stretch goal?

I can quickly tell when a game is trying to dazzle me with layout and art. this game is *dazzling* but it's also bein 100 percent certified real

One thing every American has in common is the need to get told they're good people by those they kill and exploit. Have you considered bombing you is the only way they could afford foodstamps for their cousin's dog's sister?

Monte Cook's Ivory Tower and Ryan Dancey's OGL were the 1-2 punch combos that decimated the ttrpg landscape harder than the Satanic Panic

I will never tire re-posting this shit.

It clicked because you used the palantir as an example: in the background of my current campaign, the cliché evil empire is currently leading a surprise, grand-scale invasion *because* they have palantir-like magic items.

The items are instrumental to this, which gives them meaning in the game.

I think that for TTRPGs, a medium that in my opinion demands a more active participation on its execution, the way to make magic items more magical is to make sure the items have an *impact* on the game world.

A photo of my campaign notebook with dice, letter handouts, the Torchbearer 2E books and some pencils.

The revised version of the Chimera Skull Rattle has begun!

#Torchbearer #TTRPG #dungeonCrawling

Black and white illustration by Duamn Figueroa Rassol, showing a woman holding a torch wading through tumultuous waters.

Black and white illustration by Duamn Figueroa Rassol, showing a group of mysteriously dressed figures gathered around a circle of small stones on the desert floor, one of them seated and drawing within the circle using a curved stick.

Full color illustration by Duamn Figueroa Rassol of a kind of illustrated logo showing a neon bat head looming over a bouquet of human faces, seaweed, zebras, and more.

Black and white illustration by Duamn Figueroa Rassol showing a woman holding a skull & valuables in her arms, looking up toward sunlight.

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@duamn.bsky.social will have new illustrations in this year's issues. Go here to see more cool art and gaze upon mighty crowdfund exclusives before it's too late! 👉 www.backerkit.com/c/projects/b...