@revolutionarygames.co
We are a worker-owned collective that makes tabletop roleplaying games, settings, and experiences that explore the fantasy of building a better world and the realities of social change. https://revolutionarygames.co/
A short story by @giuli.revolutionarygames.co set in the Fifth World, originally released just to Patreon backers but now available for free to everyone. www.patreon.com/posts/151961...
“Of course the Beatles are real. They always have been, and they always will be.”
Photo is a set of dice you can bid on for the next two hours — and help fight some real world monsters when you do. bsky.app/profile/jest...
“The Devil made me do it. All 6 pips of him.” www.patreon.com/posts/151960...
Earlier this week, @astralfrontier.org started a great thread on the Fifth World Discord on health, medicine, disability, and how we take care of the people who need it most in a rewilded future. discord.gg/wYtyGf5Q5s
One of our projects is all about what that could look like. thefifthworld.com
We’re starting a newsletter called the Barricade. Starting two weeks from today and every other Tuesday thereafter, you’ll get a round-up of our recent work with an exclusive offer, deal, or gift. Sign up on our website! revolutionarygames.co
Sitting down in my Princess Mononoke t-shirt to write an article about Princess Mononoke so I can post it on my social media account with my Princess Mononoke avatar, I wonder if I maybe shouldn’t have made this cartoon my whole-ass personality.
@giuli.revolutionarygames.co on why Princess Mononoke is on The Scarlet Banner's Appendix N: "Much of fantasy literature seems to originate in a desire to restore the enchantment with the natural world that we lost when our ancestors slew Humbaba..." www.patreon.com/posts/why-pr...
Starting this week, @giuli.revolutionarygames.co's biweekly flash fiction will no longer be a Patreon exclusive. Anyone can click the link below to read "The Lady of the Harvest" for free! www.patreon.com/posts/lady-o...
Every roll ever made in any tabletop roleplaying game has been on a random table, but there's two kinds: one that you roll to have more stuff to add to the fiction, and one that you roll to collapse the endless possibilites down into one path forward. www.patreon.com/posts/reveal...
THE TRIPTYCH IS COMPLETE!
This is the last of three posts (linked in the article and threaded to this post) that lay out the big game design ideas that Ruins & Revolutions is built upon. If you wanted to, you could start playing right now. Everything else from here is just to make this easier.
We've talked about "generating tables" — random tables we roll on to fill the world with greater variety and diversity. Today we close the loop with "resolving tables" — the random tables that collapse all the various ways things could go into one path forward. www.patreon.com/posts/reveal...
This is where our politics intersect with our games. We aim to create games that provide a form of anarchist calisthenics — games that prepare you in your mind to be a fearless person when the moment comes that people need you to stand up and be a hero for real. youtu.be/zavx4Obq1OI?...
For an example of the sort of thing it might add to your game, we present the case of the Pompey under the command of Captain Risteárd Mac Gearailt. bsky.app/profile/jaso...
Each ship comes with its own captain, randomized specialty crew, randomized upgrades, and a selection of sea shanties that the crew can sing.
If you play Pirate Borg on Foundry, we have a module for you that can fill your seas with Spanish merchantmen, British Royal Navy frigates, French filibusters, Dutch fluyts, pirate sloops, and all kinds of other ships to prey upon or get into a broadside with. foundryvtt.com/packages/rev...
I love random tables in TTRPGs, but there is definitely an art to writing a good one. You’re painting the world with probability, and that means that there’s a bunch of ways to go wrong. 🧵[1/16]
“Because when we see that personhood we find that the unknown is not as terrifying as we thought.” www.patreon.com/posts/150286...
"It had taken him years of careful study, but the wizard had finally figured out how to solve the fundamental problem of society."
This week's patron exclusive is a new piece of short fiction by @giuli.revolutionarygames.co www.patreon.com/posts/unity-...
For a holiday that playfully acknowledges the wisdom of woodland critters, here's some thoughts on Root and what it can teach us about tyranny and how to fight it. www.patreon.com/posts/root-a...
“For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” www.patreon.com/posts/149086...
@giuli.revolutionarygames.co on the atomic priesthood of the Fifth World and how hunter-gatherers deal with nuclear waste centuries after the collapse of our unsustainable civilization. www.patreon.com/posts/149101...
Hexcrawl is pointcrawl
Dungeon crawl is pointcrawl
Negotiation is pointcrawl
Leveling is pointcrawl
Personal growth is pointcrawl
Social change is pointcrawl
EVERYTHING IS POINTCRAWL
www.patreon.com/posts/148519...
“It wasn’t enough that he had to pretend the dragon was worthy of this sacrifice. He and everyone else also had to act as though their humanity was a kind of impurity.”
This week’s Patreon exclusive is a short piece about resistance by @giuli.revolutionarygames.co www.patreon.com/posts/148565...
“Discovering a new, profound understanding of anything is hard. What I’m saying here is that the profound understanding you’re looking for will be a map.” www.patreon.com/posts/148519...
Every Monday we post a free article on our Patreon that anyone can read. If it makes you want to join the Patreon that's great, but you don't have to be a patron to read this post or any of our other public Monday posts.
1. We can think of any TTRPG map as a pointcrawl.
2. Pointcrawls can be nested within the nodes of larger pointcrawls fractally, to any depth.
3. It’s the way that a map captures a particular challenge, dynamic, relationship, or trajectory that makes it memorable.
www.patreon.com/posts/pacing...
A map with five nodes: Strongly disagree, disagree, agree, strongly agree, and abstaining. Strongly disagree connects only to disagree. Strongly agree connects only to agree. Disagree, agree, and abstaining all connect to one another.
One of the examples of social maps that we discuss in the article is this map that we've used in several games to make consensus-building a major, playable part of our campaigns. www.patreon.com/posts/148519...
"Maps are tools for pacing, pacing is about change, and all stories are about change.
"Ergo, maps are a fundamental tool for storytelling — however you draw them, even if you only ever 'draw' them in your own subconscious understanding of how things work."
www.patreon.com/posts/148519...
