cavetalesz

[cavetalesz]

A message to fascists

The Jew is my brother The Muslim is my sister Touch them over my dead corpse We do not go quietly We will not go at all

[cavetalesz]

I grit my teeth and read the entire executive order regarding trans people, and I just want to take the opportunity to remind folks not to forget intersex people. One of the rescinded documents is “Supporting Intersex Students: A Resource for Students, Families, and Educators," and there is a huge emphasis on legally enshrining "only two sexes."

Yes, this affects trans people, but with the way intersex voices often get ignored in trans spaces, I just want to remind folks not to shut us out. Don't forget us. Don't keep talking over us. Don't act like we aren't on the front lines. Don't act like this is just about you. Please.

[cavetalesz]

Fourward

I made a tiny new TTRPG for the 36-word RPG jam!

[cavetalesz]

OP you can't just not tell me about an underwater chess set!

My brain randomly had a thought about dice that only work when wet, so of course that idea has been dominating my mind ever since. Like, I've figured out how die would work better when wet—using the wetness to make the die adhere to the rolling surface instead of bouncing all over the place—but not yet how to make dice that only work when wet. I'm thinking maybe dice made of an absorbent material that will shrivel up when dry, therefor making the dice only usable when wet.

It's like the underwater chess set all over again, except I actually got that one figured out.

[cavetalesz]

This seems pretty difficult if you rolled two sixes

I know the @200-word-rpgs challenge has already been over for a while now, but I just came up with a new TTRPG that happens to fit in 200 words!

Mistrial

A game for 3 players One of you is the Suspect, one is the Officer, and the other is the Judge. The Suspect is accused of:

1d6

Eating

Stealing

Defrauding

Soliciting

Plundering

Shooting

1d6

a hamburger

the Eiffel Tower

an octopus

a fairy

a treasury

a billionaire

In advance of the trial

The Officer may make up any evidence they report to have found at the Suspect's home, and write it down on a piece of paper.

The Suspect may, in secret, roll a dice, flip a coin, or choose whether they are guilty of the crime.

The Judge may browse social media.

The trial.

The Officer argues the Suspect is Guilty, and can refer to the evidence, the Suspect argues they are Innocent.

When the Judge is bored, they may end the trial and pronounce the Suspect Guilty or Innocent. If the Suspect is found Guilty, they go to jail for life. If they are pronounced Innocent, they walk free.

There are no consequences for the Officer.

[cavetalesz]

I know the @200-word-rpgs challenge has already been over for a while now, but I just came up with a new TTRPG that happens to fit in 200 words!

Mistrial

A game for 3 players One of you is the Suspect, one is the Officer, and the other is the Judge. The Suspect is accused of:

1d6

Eating

Stealing

Defrauding

Soliciting

Plundering

Shooting

1d6

a hamburger

the Eiffel Tower

an octopus

a fairy

a treasury

a billionaire

In advance of the trial

The Officer may make up any evidence they report to have found at the Suspect's home, and write it down on a piece of paper.

The Suspect may, in secret, roll a dice, flip a coin, or choose whether they are guilty of the crime.

The Judge may browse social media.

The trial

The Officer argues the Suspect is Guilty, and can refer to the evidence, the Suspect argues they are Innocent.

When the Judge is bored, they may end the trial and pronounce the Suspect Guilty or Innocent. If the Suspect is found Guilty, they go to jail for life. If they are pronounced Innocent, they walk free.

There are no consequences for the Officer.

[cavetalesz]

These are now free! Get yourself some high-quality printable one-page RPGs while supplies last (forever)!

Collection of 200-word rpgs!

For anyone who's enjoyed my submissions to the @200-word-rpgs challenge this year, I've put together a bundle of artfully decorated one-pagers for an easy print-and-play experience! If you've liked any of my stuff, this is a great way to support me and my work

[cavetalesz]

Collection of 200-word rpgs!

For anyone who's enjoyed my submissions to the @200-word-rpgs challenge this year, I've put together a bundle of artfully decorated one-pagers for an easy print-and-play experience! If you've liked any of my stuff, this is a great way to support me and my work

[cavetalesz]

200 Word RPGs 2024

Each November, some people try to write a novel. Others would prefer to do as little writing as possible. For those who wish to challenge their ability to not write, we offer this alternative: producing a complete, playable roleplaying game in two hundred words or fewer.

This is the submission thread for the 2024 event, running from November 1st, 2024 through November 30th, 2024. Submission guidelines can be found in this blog's pinned post, here.

[cavetalesz]

An incomplete taxonomy of esoteric texts:

This text is discussing esoteric subject matter

This text is being deliberately obscure because its author knows they don't have a coherent thesis and they're blowing smoke

This text is written in earnest, but its author has very poor communication skills

This text's translator has misunderstood something that was meant completely literally as a complex metaphor

This text is actually perfectly straightforward in its native language, but every available translation fucking sucks

[cavetalesz]

Cybermosh

In the future, conflicts are resolved through dance instead of violence.

Dance-off!

Standard deck of playing cards. Choose Style which matches the intended outcome of the conflict. GM determines Goals per Ability (Easy: Roll 1d6 - 1 per Ability, Normal: 2d4, Hard: 2d6). Deal 16 cards to players. Draw +2 if your Punk's Style matches. Choose who starts (Eldest). Clockwise, each player tries to play one card in the chosen suit or discards a card, then draws back to full. If total value exceeds Eldest's Ability, each card is +1 to the Goal. End of round: Eldest shifts left. Players may show 1 card per dance-off.

Distribute 11, 9, 7, 5 over your Punk's Abilities:

Voice (Hearts)

Elegance (Diamonds)

Rhythm (Clubs)

Strength (Spades)

Your Punk has a dance Style and a Cybernetic implant.

Style | Purpose

Acro | Intimidate

Ballet | Impress

Breaking | Discourage

Contemporary | Calm

Improv | Understand

Modern | Charm

Cybernetics:

Voice-modulator: Voice +1

Cyber-limbs: Strength +1

Internal metronome: Rhythm +1

Hologram projector: Once per round, play 2 cards

Built-in boombox: Once per dance-off, each player pass 1 card left

Exoskeleton: Once per dance-off, discard entire hand and redraw

Feel free to archive off-site!

This one is incredibly dense and assumes a familiarity with card games. Based on an old idea I had that I couldn't make work as a one-pager but revisited for this jam! I do really like how it turned out, but I did need to leave some things implied, like how you lose the dance-off if you can't complete the goals before running out of cards in the deck. I might do a full one-pager of this some time to flesh it out and make it easier to understand.

200 Word RPGs 2024

Each November, some people try to write a novel. Others would prefer to do as little writing as possible. For those who wish to challenge their ability to not write, we offer this alternative: producing a complete, playable roleplaying game in two hundred words or fewer.

This is the submission thread for the 2024 event, running from November 1st, 2024 through November 30th, 2024. Submission guidelines can be found in this blog's pinned post, here.

[cavetalesz]

i don't care if monday's bleak

tuesday matches wednesday's freak

thursday mispronouncing steak

it's friday, i'm in love

[cavetalesz]

I think it's crazy how Trans misogyny is not exclusive to trans women, this is not a post downplaying how we are the biggest victims of this by a vast overwhelming majority, it's a post talking about how people of color are often masculanized and their features are often seen as less feminine and how that REALLY affects everybody. I'm speaking as a white trans woman, repeating what my black Trans boyfriend has told me about his experience. Back in the day when he still identified as a woman he, has been targeted and harassed by people who hate Trans women; calling him a "dumb ugly tranny", refusing to recognize him as a woman, which obviously at the time really fucking sucked. He is AFAB and my point here is this. Trans women like me, white trans women will never have to deal with having my racial features hypermasculanized, but a black Trans girl? She is the biggest victim in all of this, and it is heart breaking and something I never see talked about on this website. The level of oppression, "gender denial" Trans black women face is scary and it is something always overlooked and dismissed. Trans black women are virtually invisible in our society, art and face the worst oppression. Black lives are beautiful. And worth caring for and protecting, and talking about like any other life. I obviously can never understand or face the same kind of oppression, but you know what I can do. I can say that I love you and care about you and I want you to live and go out there and be yourself. Without you we would not be where we are today, and our queer rights in large part are brought to us by the black women who fought for us. I can support black people and listen to black people and try to understand the biases I picked up over the years of being raised in white supremacist society. Please if you are black it is so important that you exist and it is so important that you create. Put yourself out there, make things, make yourself visible, even if people pretend you don't exist. Please make it all about you.

[cavetalesz]

The seven deadly sins: wrath, envy, greed, lust, gluttony, pride, and publishing a pixel-art retro game with no option to set the full-screen scaling factor to an integer multiple of the canvas size.

[cavetalesz]

I keep hate-reading plague literature from the medieval era, but as depressed as it makes me there is always one historical tidbit that makes me feel a little bittersweet and I like to revisit it. That’s the story of the village of Eyam.

[cavetalesz]

Block people who make bad faith posts about trans women's struggles by saying trans men do not struggle.

Block people who post on trans men's vents by suggesting they don't suffer as profoundly as their sisters.

Block people who try to make you turn against the women and others who make up our family.

Do not allow yourself to become bitter and jealous, protect yourself and you will be protecting our community.

[cavetalesz]

It was 2019 when Google+ still was a thing and I had just published my first RPG PDF on DTRPG a year earlier.

Unsure of myself I used PWYW. I made a postmortem about my sales showing how much it was not worth it to do it that way. And none other then Kevin Crawford showed up in the comments to share his wisdom with everyone. I copied it and put it into my "RPG Work" folder and had forgotten about it shamefully. Just found it again today and figure it is still worth sharing.

The numbers are likely off these days, but coming from Kevin Crawford this is advise anyone wanting to make a living from TTRPGs should consider. I know I aim to do exactly as he suggest for my first bigger release.

Kevin Crawford: "PWYW is not generally a good idea for most publishers, from what I’ve seen. It has very limited profitability and it seriously decreases downloads because people just don’t want to get involved in the tacit social obligation to judge the product and pay for it if they like it.

In your shoes I would suggest aiming for 32 page products, even if they’re in digest format. At 32+ pages, you can justifiably do a print version, where even at cheap 9.99 print prices you’re going to be getting good profits. A 32 page standard-color small-format product at $9.99 will net you a bit north of $4 for each sale.

Make a few freebie PDF/pay POD products to fatten up your mailing list and cycle it with each new product, mailing your old buyers and pointing to the new release. You could also optionally add a couple pages of bonus content to the POD to give a further prompt to buyers. Eventually, you can start offering for-pay PDFs, but when you do so, I’d recommend a floor price of $4.99. Below that level, buyers tend to unconsciously associate it with shovelware titles or stuff even the author doesn’t think is worth anything.

Getting POD down right does take some practice, and it is a bit more complicated than just doing PDF, but it’s too much of a profit source to neglect on any 32+ page product. I tend to sell about 3:1 PDF:POD ratio, but on a standard 9.99 PDF/19.99 POD softcover supplement I make about 50% more selling paper than I would selling PDF. And as a side note, always make sure to release PDF and POD at the same time; if you stagger the releases, you get the initial wave coming to look at the PDF, but they decide to hold off until the POD is available… and then they never come back. Most publishers have exactly one shot at the front page and can’t afford to waste it."