Friend and companion of night who rejoices in the baying of dogs and spilt blood. Wanders in the midst of shades among the tombs. Longs for blood and brings terror to mortals. #Gorgo #Mormo, #thousandfacedmoon. UK-based writer, critic, and photographer. Primarily interested in #horror and rules-light #ttrpg
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2026-08-17T11:12:20Z Event JSON
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Last Notes npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Oh my god! They soft-retired Ronald Mcdonald because of that weird period when people kept reporting sightings of sinister clowns! https://cdn.masto.host/dicecamp/media_attachments/files/117/174/783/021/651/325/original/07b8531b90078f3b.jpg npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…8p63 Exactly... and it's easy to run a game set in generic fantasy land because everyone has Lord of the Rings in their heads. You can depart from it obviously, but only one step at a time. Too much too fast and the GM will get disoriented and the players will struggle even more. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh I can't run stuff like Troika because I need to have a sense of what a world is like in order to bring it to the table. If your world is a load if random tables featuring ants in tophats and people in love with exclamation marks then it's a complete non-starter for me. Silent Titans opens with time travel and huge magical robots and only gets weirder from there and you know what? I ain't running that shit. Regardless of how well-written it is. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh While I agree with the spirit of this post I think the answer is fairly obvious https://valerialoves.com/why-didnt-silent-titans-change-the-world/ I look at Silent Titans and I see a) a book that is absolutely *disgusting* - I can't imagine having to stare at those colours and maps for hours on end and b) a setting that has a number of quite substantial conceptual hurdles that a GM would have to assist their group on getting over. I always feel that Gonzo settings work best for GMs with gamist instincts as play is grounded in mechanics npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh This made me laugh. A good critique of r/rpg and why the mainstream of the hobby seems to be forever full of terrible, thoughtless opinions https://newwonkmedia.com/2026/07/20/the-nerd-shift-if-it-exists/ npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…zqv6 Yeah... Anything that isn't violence and mayhem is a story game sadly npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Apparently, the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author Kij Johnson has written a game inspired by the Wind in the Willows. Aside from being a great author, Johnson is also one of the great editorial figures of RPG history as she was a managing editor at TSR and a creative director for both Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms. I had no idea this game existed and it sounds fucking amazing. https://riverbankrpg.com/ npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…q5yn Ah yes... I vaguely remember it being quite CoC-ish in the sense that it's treated like a bad thing that ends in the character becoming unplayable rather than it being something you could lean into. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…q5yn Hmm. That's a point, are there mutation/chaos rules in whfrp? npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Another push to get people off #substack is prompting IT professionals to write posts about how easy it is to set up your own site. I beg you to stop. You are not helping. People are reading your posts and thinking 'that seems really complicated... I can' t do that'. Every single post about self-hosting is literally that Simpsons gag about fixing the foundations to your own house "And if you don't have ceramic stuck-o-lath then aluminium stuck-o-lath will work just as well!" npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh The recent discourse has been amusing... slap fight between Ben Milton and Goodman Games which is the most 'let them fight' moment I've seen in RPGs for a while. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…msez Yeah, that more people should be reading your blog! npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Some photographer I follow went to Auschwitz and took a picture of the famous gate. I think there's something quite admirable about the way that Germany tried to deal with that legacy. In Britain, Auschwitz would either have a national trust gift shop selling jam or it would have been redeveloped as a posh housing estate called 'The Smoke House' or 'The Tannery' or something. In Britain, we drop our history overboard lest it incriminates anyone important. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…msez I don't think I'd have fun in his games either but if you are going to run a game with a big complex combat system then refusing to impose structure on the game or know the rules or be willing to make rulings result in *that* npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh This made me laugh... Matt Colville - Master GM To be fair, I don't think anyone's GMing could stand up to this level of scrutiny but even setting aside the fact that this was an actual play thing done for an audience, I think this is legitimately terrible GMing. There's no structure, no sense of urgency, and almost no description. One of those cases where minis and bases and battlemaps are there to compensate for a lack of basic craft. https://youtu.be/3aUfCPiy1HA?si=E8ErYwX2b4q1gZZM #ttrpg npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…msez I'm not taking it as spontaneous algorithmic insight into my neural wiring just yet. There was a week where it showed me nothing but female vets masturbating horses and women oiling up latex catsuits. This being said... I do have thoughts on the matter. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Instagram this morning trying to convince me that I'm autistic. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh My cat is off out again... When we moved, we discovered the the farm over the way has a colony of semi-feral farm cats they feed in order to deal with mice and rats. These cats used to come into our garden... nowadays not so much. Last couple of times my cat was out all day, I went over to the farm and shouted. She emerged from a barn. Current theory? Having forced an entire colony of ferals into abeyance, my domestic pussycat is extending her territory into their barn. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…msez @nprofile…6ae6 I am just deeply burned-out and encounters with the broader hobby do not help as it layers in alienation too. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh When it comes to TTRPG stuff, I have reached the point where I feel like some ancient fish clinging to life in a tidal pool. Every week, more of the water from the pool evaporates and the tide retreats further down the beach. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh I took the French crown jewels but I needed them to train my AI so it's really not fair to say that I stole them. 😣 npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Thoughts on landscape, culture and inspiration: Strahd on the Moors #ttrpg #OSR https://wp.me/paE9qi-1Lv npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…msez Even Peep Show recognised the idea of the moor as a psychic crucible where things get dissolved. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…h94j I see that... but the flow is people play, and the GM goes 'that sounds like a Meddle Move' - I played BB and liked it enough to get curious about PbtA but I'm aware that there's a trade-off... you can do 'GM does rules' in BB because there are so few moves. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh I have a question for #pbta people - Am I right in thinking there is discourse and tension over the question of whether it is best to a) play out a scene and have the MC determine when stuff is triggered or b) select a move directly from the character sheet? Does it vary from game to game and table to table? I thought it was B, then I realised that Brindlewood Bay uses A, but I have heard people dislike that. No judgement, I have zero skin in the game... Just curious as to the shape. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh I've never been a huge fan of Mork Borg but the aggressive ubiquity of Mork Borg product is starting to grate. For my current project, I basically went off and looked at hundreds of horror things on itch and fully half of them were Mork Borg titles. There's a *lot* of OSR content getting churned out but Borg stuff is reaching the point where it's basically shovelware. "The Temple of the Egregious Abortion Pigs" and what is it? A five-room dungeon with fucked garish colours and weird fonts. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh This is the type of #OSR post that I appreciate... Leonard Cohen's tips on being a GM: https://kattkirsch.bearblog.dev/leonard-cohens-advice-for-osr-referees/ npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 It wasn't that they were advertising them, it was more that I had a day of vets wanking off horses or horse-women washing their horses cocks. Insta does that: Vomits one thing at you for a day - Tuxedo cats, toddlers being cute, trans women painting space marines while dressed in expensive lingerie. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Now getting draw steel advertised at me on Instagram. Worse than that day when it kept showing me horse cocks. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Going to print up 500 of these bad boys and start sticking them on roundabouts. Respect the flag! #patriotism #ttrpg https://cdn.masto.host/dicecamp/media_attachments/files/115/332/699/737/511/315/original/bc33bf4b07ab2926.jpg npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh It's funny how mopeds never really took off in the UK. If you haven't got a horizontal burn on your leg from a moped exhaust pipe, were you ever actually a teenager? npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Too many settings, not enough games. Here’s a method for using what’s already on your shelf. Small characters. Misread worlds. The Hollow Valley Method. #ttrpg #osr #fkr https://tasker.land/2025/09/09/the-hollow-valley-method/ npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh What is also interesting is that when the whole 'de-colonisation' thing was popularised in the '10s, the response (and not just in TTRPGs) was to go "Oh... so what if instead of a bunch of straight white men we had POC and queer people killing people and taking their stuff'" which is less about confronting colonisation and more about making the engine of empire more inclusive. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh The problem I keep running into is that a) I don't actually like fantasy, b) Of all the types of fantasy that exist, I like sub-Gygaxian Western-style fantasy the least, c) I somehow keep forgetting this. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 I am glad, thank you 😃 npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh I have been looking at Darkened Hill & Dale, a set of seven system-neutral #ttrpg #horror adventures set in small town and rural England. While some of the adventures are noticeably better than others, they are all pretty good and serve as a reminder that you can set adventures in your local area. https://tasker.land/2025/08/26/review-darkened-hill-dale/ npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Interesting... I occasionally stick my nose around the corner of the OSR sub-reddit and now they're happily chatting about Daggerheart and Draw Steel. So, first the NSR gets re-absorbed by the OSR, and now the OSR is being telescoped back into mainstream D&D. Overproduction leads to scarcity of attention, this leads to desire for 'safe' and 'familiar' things to consume, this leads to aesthetic conservatism. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 The people who produce shovelware talk about networking and which social media platform rewards engagement with sales spikes. There's also a lot of bragging about how successful they are. I followed one link to the content Big Bad Con put up on Youtube and that is nothing but stuff about monetising your engagement with the hobby. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 Oh yes... There are at least four or five of them. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh There's a (sound) lad who used to be on twitter talking about UK politics in the most black-pilled terms imaginable. He used to boil his brain by listening to the Times and the New Statesmen podcasts. Hour after hour of blokes called Toby or Olly cracking wise with Helen Lewis. Feel I am doing the same by listening to #ttrpg business podcasts. People talking excitedly about marketing and they're just filling DTRPG with completely worthless rpg shovelware with big smiles on their faces. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…gwm4 The Cold Equations - If anyone picks up a hitch-hiker then they have to get murdered and dumped by the side of the road or else the vehicle runs out of fuel and everyone dies. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…mtwn Nothing but Wagnerians throwing their weight around. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 Yeah... Second Edition OSR stuff is all premium-priced bloatware. I think ttrpg spaces nowadays are just locked into this premium priced overproduction death loop. Like early 90s comic books. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Remember when the #osr used to be all about cool punk rock zines with black and white illustrations? https://cdn.masto.host/dicecamp/media_attachments/files/115/037/491/047/595/550/original/8889109833b5d050.jpg npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh I was listening to some random #ttrpg podcast this morning and they interviewed some dude about Ravenloft and the guy goes 'Oh... the great thing about Ravenloft is that you can punish players if they misbehave' and then talks about how his players sassed an NPC so he had Strahd turn up in person in order to have 3 night-hags issue a punishment beating. How are people still using grudge-monsters in this, the year of our lord 2025? And this bloke was in his mid-to-late 40s at least. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…gwm4 Right... And it turns out that launch hype is a really poor metric for whether a game gets played. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh It is fascinating how 'success' gets constructed in #ttrpg spaces. Like, Candela Obscura was treated as a big huge deal and it sank *like a stone* on release. Daggerheart, again, generated a lot of noise but I'm not seeing that much discussion of it as a played thing. Ditto Draw Steel... Angry defences of its price point from sharp-elbowed 5e PDF vendors? Sure, but signs that it is being played? Far more muted. Conversely, Mythic Bastionland has generated hundreds of in-play posts and map pics npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 It's such a silly trope and yet every single CRPG indulges it to the point where their worlds feel less realistic. Deus Ex really shocked me as like... can I not just have an expense account I can use to buy ammo? @nprofile…gwm4 npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…gwm4 In fairness, Deus Ex had similar credibility-straining problems in that you were supposedly head of security for a multinational corporation but you were picking through rubbish bins in search of stuff you could trade in order to buy ammo that would let you do your job. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…gwm4 Very true... that whole mechanic where you're constantly taking machine-guns to recycling points in order to pay for your own upgrades is so incredibly dumb. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…gwm4 I finished Cyberpunk and thought it was two thirds of a brilliant game... the investigations were great, and the big combat set-pieces were great, but everything else felt very flat and unfinished. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…gwm4 I've not played Elden Ring but Cyberpunk was such a weird and patchy game... it felt very much like people trying to re-learn how to do Skyrim after some sort of cataclysm. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh AI is such a fascinating technology but it really feels like it has been pushed way too hard, way too soon. Like, they claim it can be used for creative and research work but it is useless for research as it just bloviates when it doesn't know and it is useless for creative work as it has this weird tic whereby it automatically reverts to the aesthetic mean, which is the style and cadence of a corporate memo. This is stuff that would have been noticed and solved with longer gestation. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…gwm4 Also a lot of money piling into AI and cuts being made on the assumption that AI can handle work that it really cannot do. It's fascinating, I just don't play AAA games anymore. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…gwm4 Yes... true... but it's interesting that it all seems to have gone to pieces over the last 5 years. I wonder what changed... did the investors suddenly get that much greedier? npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…gwm4 I get the impression that the videogame industry is just completely on its arse... they keep laying people off and the games keep getting worse. Given that that whole sector has been incredibly profitable since the 1990s, I'm not sure what happened but it feels like someone somewhere has fucked up at a really basic level. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…mtwn Belching black smoke from your car the entire way 😂 npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Speaking of terrible #osr -related takes, I've now concluded my overview of the Best Adventure - Short Form #Ennies2025 shortlist with some thoughts on who ought to win and what this year's shortlist tells us about the state of the broader #ttrpg hobby. https://tasker.land/2025/07/31/ennie-award-for-best-adventure-short-form-round-up-and-reflections/ npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh My final #Ennies2025 piece on Sweet Revenge for Perils & Princesses #ttrpg A thoughtfully designed and endlessly helpful mini-sandbox campaign for a game that seems tailor-made for people trying to get their kids into gaming. Not my aesthetic but made with real care emotional intelligence. https://tasker.land/2025/07/24/review-sweet-revenge-for-perils-princesses/ npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 I am still not clear on what has gone wrong but something has definitely gone wrong. The shortlist shouldn't be 5 OSR adventures including one that was released in 2021 npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh My #Ennies2025 journey continues with a look at The Mall - Remastered for Liminal Horror. An OSR-style dungeon crawl transplanted to a moribund shopping centre, The Mall works well as long as you have internalised the rhythms of #OSR play - no assistance is offered to the uncertain or the uninitiated. It is also an adventure that was released in 2021 and so should not have been shortlisted in 2025. #ttrpg https://tasker.land/2025/07/22/review-the-mall-remastered-for-liminal-horror/ npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 That is the rationale given in the novels but it is never unpacked or really addressed. I come from the kind of multi-marriage blended family you normally only get on porn sites and the idea of wanting to go and squabble with and assert dominance over my adult step-siblings is completely bizarre to me. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh I did try to re-read Amber recently and I couldn't get past a) all of the smoking and steak-eating while wearing livery coloured polonecks, and b) the unaddressed weirdness of being able to travel to and take over an infinite number of worlds but feeling compelled to return home in order to squabble with your adult step-siblings. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…mtwn It looks like it was filmed surrepticiously using a crotch-level camera. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh One of the things that irks me about silicon valley is the way that their platforms *insisted* upon being able to track us, monitor us, record us, and being able to rummage through every aspect of our online lives. They hold levels of information about us that would have made the East German secret police weep with joy and for what? I log onto Instagram and the level of insight appears to be "You're a 40+ bloke living in England? I bet you love boobies, Jeremy Clarkson, and baldness cures!" npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Today, my #Ennies2025 journey begins with Tides of Rot for the #osr western game Frontier Scum. An intricately designed product with some lovely type-setting and some great art that proves that if you polish a turd for long enough it'll wind up on a #ttrpg awards shortlist: https://tasker.land/2025/07/10/review-tides-of-rot-for-frontier-scum/ npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 I came across that phenomenon recently too. I can understand putting contentious stuff behind a paywall because if you want to drag someone, you should at least pay for the privilege but requiring a subscription to see some random blog-post? Nah. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 I've seen that film once and it definitely has more memorable moments than PA2: Hitler in a frilly maid uniform having to select which pineapple is going to be rammed up his arse? NYC changing their town slogan to "I ❤️ hookers"? The endless obsession with fried chicken? npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh We have decided to watch the Paranormal Activity films (for our sins) and after watching the second one, we are still at a loss as to whether or not we had seen it before... I mean... It is a weak retread of the first one and a *really* badly directed film and you can see why the producers actually hired proper directors for the third one but I'm amused that we either both skipped it or have wiped it from our memories. If we skipped it, why did we both see PA3 in the cinema? #horror npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Looking at the #Ennies2025 shortlists and I think #ttrpg prices are out of control. I know that D&D is on its uppers but the whole thing is reminding me of that bit in Goodfellas where they're squeezing as much money out of a club as possible before lighting a match. Going "Fuck it... It's $40 for a scenario and $125 for a generic fantasy city" is not an indication that you are serious and optimistic about the hobby's long-term viability. That's 'pluck these pigeons and run' pricing. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 Yup. I build the corner of the world I want to play in by creating the personalities that fill it and shape the social reality. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Since returning to the #ttrpg hobby and regular gaming, I made a conscious effort to relearn and re-examine my creative processes. While I consider my OSR period something of a wash, it was a useful perspective from which to ask: Why am I doing that then? I started with the OSR's place and then faction-first approaches but neither really worked for me. Then I circled around to letting the group pursue the stories that interested them, now I am experimenting with an NPC-first approach. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 Yeah... I thought that too. Like Friends and Big Bang Theory are the most widely-watched Netflix properties because people have them on in the background to help them all asleep or feel less lonely? Bit like the BBC radio drama The Archers, which has been running for years and is nothing but rural people having mundane conversations. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh There's a bloke on YouTube and his whole schtick is basically describing the contents of RPG books at great length. They're not reviews, they're not summaries... they're more like those Cliffe Note descriptions of books for lazy students or those weird descriptions of trendy books for C-suite imbeciles who want to make it look as though they actually read. 10s of thousands of views. Absolutely baffling. Who are these people who want Masks of Nyarlathotep described to them for 3 hours? npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh I was looking at the reactions to a centre-left Muslim beating a moneyed sex-pest in the NYC mayoral primary thing and wealthy people are losing their minds. There's one lad who says that he lives between Paris and New York but he won't be doing anymore New York shopping trips because he refuses to shop in Soviet-style state-owned shops. Are you... like... okay? npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…mtwn I used to know a guy who had two red-headed twin daughters. He'd get them to stand silently in hotel corridors holding hands in order to freak out other guests. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 I recognise that they would 100% say this about me too. It's like other people's relationships can often seem really weird when viewed from the outside because you're only seeing some of the dynamics. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh I think I might blog the ennies adventure shortlist this year... I did it last year and while it introduced me to one really good adventure, it was also interesting as it showcased what was going on in other parts of the hobby. There was a lot of 'Bitch... you live like this?' with regards to cultures of play and what various publishers considered to be good adventures. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…mtwn I assume it is a self-portrait. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…dpn3 Some good names on that. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh All of the big-ticket Silicon Valley projects from the last few years have been about putting additional floors on buildings because there's so much trash in the streets that it's blocking out the light. NFTs, AI, the VR stuff that Meta have been doing: It's all 'we have destroyed the internet, so we're going to build another one on top of the one we have now' but they are the people who put all the trash in the street to start with! They will just do it again. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…d0dx Interesting... Are you a shutter priority guy? npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 It would be amazing if @nprofile…88hc had a brother called Billy npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 It's fun to think about 🙂 npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh On Sanity Mechanics and Pretending to be Normal #ttrpg #callofcthulhu #coc https://tasker.land/2025/06/10/on-pretending-to-be-normal/ npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh They call Kent the 'Garden of England'. That pretty much scans as I only ever go there for barbecues and to dump a load of shit in the borders. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…dpn3 That's horrible, I hope they have caught it early enough and that treatment isn't too rough on you. Warm thoughts to you and yours. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…mtwn I look at those anime and I understand why hikikomori exist. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…dpn3 Bro looks high AF https://cdn.masto.host/dicecamp/media_attachments/files/114/528/042/326/922/497/original/37b488f4c5c0d945.jpg npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…mtwn Yeah... Spot on. He's just enough of a bad boy to be palatable (even aspirational) to a certain kind of repressed middle-aged American. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Girl... What are you doing? Sandy Petersen, creator of Call of Cthulhu and GoH at a con run by anti-woke right-wing game designer Venger Satanis. Predicted attendance of 50-75 people. https://cdn.masto.host/dicecamp/media_attachments/files/114/517/079/473/470/526/original/8ace2b6e4641eb33.jpg npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Here's a #ttrpg question - How do people feel about printed illustrative images at the table? Like if there's a mural or a particular type of object, or a notable geographic feature. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh A visit to Exeter IKEA looms... A shop laid out by Jennell Jaquays, hence all of the loops. Last time I visited I really regretted not having my camera as they had a pile of those shark toys that trans people are obsessed with and there was a sign informing you not to climb into the Blahaj Pit. There were three people sitting in the Blahaj pit. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh I've been thinking a bit about different Cultures of Play in #ttrpg stuff and how my native Culture of Play (one rooted in the trends of the golden age of French RPGs) has effectively disappeared. How are Cultures of Play created? How are they maintained? How do they decline and die? https://tasker.land/2025/04/22/origins-on-lost-cultures-of-play/ npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 Oh I hope so... That sick drop. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh The poop is dad 😭 npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Apparently today is the 123rd anniversary of William Butler Yeats kicking Aleister Crowley down a set of stairs, the climax of their protracted slap-fight over control of the Golden Dawn. Solemn and dignified respects to all who celebrate. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 @nprofile…88hc But in the night they sound like demons! npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh Please spare a thought for poor old @nprofile…88hc who is camping this weekend. He has been startled by a giant cow and some mud got on his cravatte. npub1e7f05ued7tkchx47ehdyh9q4gquzeav2j8zcew5cmpk3mxyxpwgq2m2cs4 Moreau Vazh @nprofile…u7s3 It's not that the world is doomed it's just the relentlessly unchanging tone.