#autobiographical games

[8cfc00]

genuinely impressive how much (public) discord servers manage to replicate the feeling of sitting at a lunch table and fruitlessly trying to join in on a conversation everyone else is having while everything you say is irrelevant or ignored. can you tell i have autistic™️ social difficulties

[ttrpgbookclub]

This month, we read "LOGAN: An Autobiographical Tabletop Game", an extremely vulnerable and moving lyric game by Logan Timmins (@breathing-stories).

You can find "LOGAN" on Logan's itch[dot]io linked here.

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played LOGAN : An Autobiographical Tabletop Game

By Logan Timmins

Play through real events from the author’s life, make key decisions, and create your own version of Logan.

[yellowocaballero]

After Byleth experiences a prophecy of rich children maiming each other, she realizes that she’ll have to step up her teaching game if she wants her students to graduate high school. It’ll ruin their social lives, sleep schedules, and potentially sanities, but that’s a risk she’s willing to take. Byleth will do anything to keep her students alive - even come to life herself.

Or: Byleth starts a child cult, Dimitri is the world’s luckiest simp, and a springtime of youth blossoms in the trenches.

Do people still like Fire Emblem? I have no idea if this is of interest to the general population. However, unlike my last fic, I wrote it to be pretty accessible to people who were normal and don't like dating sim slash tactics games. It's complete and will update on Wednesdays. It is also very much about a topic I care a lot about, so check it out if you're interested. Big BIG thank you to @usaigi, for whom this was written. I hope it pays you back for the game.

[sandboxer]

pleaseee talk about asexual slut edgeworth

I think that Edgeworth who largely has difficulty getting along with others would really enjoy the freedom of expression/weirdness/selfhood that is inherently packaged with kink (and sex in general, but especially kink). but at the same time he isn’t depicted to be very sexually motivated (unlike even Phoenix). he has no history of relationships that we know of and rejects pretty much anyone who flirts with him. but I don’t think any of this is incompatible with loving sex, even if it’s for reasons other than Sexual Desire. it can be a space to play and heal and be the weird serious haunted doll you were born to be. I think slutting it up could be fun and fulfilling for him even if he isn’t necessarily driven by capital-h Horniness

[short666bread]

Outside the Maxi

[tropylium]

there's at least half a dozen videogames I've played way more, but for some reason the one that most often turns up in my dreams is SimCity (SNES version 1992). here's a brilliant thriving city, of shining white marble, archways and fountains. here's a perfectly average city but with secret undocumented features unlocked for the first time in history. here's a fucked up disjoint city that somehow still functions. here's a vaguely noneuclidean city with no object permanence

people? is there such a thing? who knows. the buildings just grow

[venusinmyrrh]

1, 16

How many books did you read this year?

76, according to my Storygraph, which... seems like a lot now that I look at the numbers. First of the year was Sin Eater by Megan Campisi (which was also my first DNF), and if I can finish Midnight is the Darkest Hour by Ashley Winstead in the next seven days then that will be my last of the year. If not, it'll be Sasha Geffen's Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary, which is an honor I'd really rather not give it.

16. What is the most over-hyped book you read this year?

Answered Prayers by Truman Capote. A nasty little book that paints a portrait of a nasty little man. At under 200 pages it still somehow manages to drag on too long. Your time would be better spent going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole about all the drama this book kicked off-- or better yet, reading Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Laurence Leamer (and then skipping the lackluster FX miniseries and learning to make a good gin cocktail instead).

end of year book ask game!

[sisterdaniela]

okay so silly but me and my friends were looking for chill games that we can play together remotely now that we live in different countries.. and one of them said "hey what about keep talking and nobody explodes???" and i was like "omggg i never played it but i know it, it looks so fun!!" and i genuinely could not remember where i knew that from tbh! and just now, youtube recommended me a video called "dan and phil play keep talking and nobody explodes". weird

[prokopetz]

i remember you writing a list of something in some fucking context (i remember nothing), and on that list there was a lesbian ttrpg that really stuck out to me that i didn't save. It was a real edgy one about being lesbian violent and mean (i think), which isn't really much to go off. Where i'm going to is, would you be interested in just listing every lesbain indie ttrpg you know of? Its fine if you dont wanna, of course.

You're probably thinking of this thread here, though you're quite correct that "mean violent lesbians" isn't sufficient to pick out a specific entry – several of the titles plugged in that thread would easily qualify!

As for "listing every lesbian indie ttrpg [i] know of", that's a trickier demarcation problem than you might imagine. What is a lesbian tabletop RPG? Is it one where the player characters are obligatorily lesbians? (If so, we end up excluding games which are explicitly about the lesbian experience, but feature some other type of character.) Is it one written, at least in part, by lesbians? (If so, we bump into the problem that not all indie tabletop RPGs are autobiographical, the maunderings of certain self-appointed critics notwithstanding.) Is it one where the game itself is a lesbian? (Not an impossible brief, but now we're catering exclusively to folks who are into meta bullshit.)

Ultimately I'm going to pass the problem down the line and just ask folks in the notes to name the first game that comes to mind when they think of the phrase "lesbian indie ttrpg". Let's see what sort of consensus evolves.

[shock]

A loosely-autobiographical fiction, An Index of Personalities is a 43-page graphic novel about a fractured boy who dies without knowing the experience of love but, miraculously, wakes up from the dead in the driver's seat of a 1989 Ford Crown Victoria. Through connecting with the people he meets in his drive across America, he learns how to glue the damaged pieces of his mind together for the first time.

This book is the largest collage project I've ever made and took me ten months to finish. I glued, stitched, laminated, cut, burned, painted, colored, built, created, and destroyed hundreds of sources dating from the 1950's to today. All of this material was gifted to me by others, found in secondhand stores and garbage bins, childhood books I've kept for nearly two decades, outlandishly outdated science textbooks, and personal mementos. Scanning this collage unfortunately means you won't get to play with the stuffed letters, hidden niches, and other interactive elements, but I like to think it stands up without them! From Neopets, to Dostoyevsky, to Playboy, to the illustrated Big Game Animals of North America this book is bound to, it has a lot going on. I try to read whatever I take from, and I've learned so much that I never would have found any other way. I'm so excited to finally be able to put this out into the world! If you'd like to read the whole thing, I figured out how to make a Gumroad so you can get the files for free at this link. <3

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

the key to understanding 'gray' is the dissonance between how the author knows that socialism is the doorway to utopia/happiness and how the narrator is on the precipice of this realization for most of/the entire book, up until (and, depending on how you interpret the text, including) the final page.

'gray' is a story of two star-crossed lovers who were *largely being torn apart by the oppressive capitalist society of american culture and the cure to this was them being freed from their worldly 'responsibilities' by death.

i'm always struck by how open-ended the ending is on whether or not the narrator merely hallucinates re-uniting with Her or actually does die in that tour bus bunk and walk off into the 'sunrise' (the specification of 'sunrise' (the dawning of a new day, a new beginning) vs. the traditional 'walking off into the sunset' (symbolizing closure, an ending) is even more striking and supportive of this reading) of the afterlife with Her.

*asterisk here because i am well aware that there is a lot more to the evil machinations of capitalist society than just the baseline of the economy and careers. lol. it permeates/corrupts all facets of life under it.

one of the things that is encouraged under capitalism, for example, is misogyny/the patriarchy. which is another thing largely at fault for the failures of the main relationship in 'gray' and i am not trying to undermine that fact.

[bunny-heels]

this game is autobiographical

[thewertsearch]

TG: oh so this is the trollplanet TG: pretty cool not really what i pictured AA: what did you picture […] TG: a bunch of trolls flying around in little grub pods constantly screaming at each other through bullhorns shaped like buckets AA: thats very silly and a little perverse […] AA: but actually that sounds like what it might have been like on some parts of the planet sooo

Aradia lived out in the boonies, so she's not much of an authority on cosmopolitan life in Alternia. Sollux is the city boy, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was what his area was like.

TG: so what am i supposed to do now that im dead […] TG: where are the fucking hauntoffs at is what im asking AA: i dont know about hauntoffs AA: but there is plenty of time to satisfy various curiosities you might have about existence and whatnot

I guess even this neighbourhood has a Janet.

... man, I miss The Good Place. I’ve been rewatching clips from the show this week, and it's actually got a lot in common with Homestuck. They're both character-driven stories with enormous scope, centered around a bizarre institution which governs all of reality.

AA: there are all sorts of friends to meet AA: ones you already know and ones you dont

Is Aradia referring to members of her own team, or are there ghosts from entirely different sessions floating around the Bubbles?

Feferi was prophesized to unite only two races, something she's achieved through the Horrorterrors. This implies we won't be seeing any other alien species, but we could see other human Players. Technically, it also means we could see other trolls, but that's pretty unlikely. As far as we're aware, Alternia only spawned a single session.

Anyway - the more I think about these Dream Bubbles, the more I'm starting to realize how much strategic potential they have. Affinity for the Furthest Ring is a genuine boon, and being a Derse Dreamer is more advantageous than I thought.

AA: time is like a game […] AA: and games are fun but sometimes you dont realize how much fun you were having until theyre all over AA: and sometimes you look back and realize for some stupid reason you werent having any fun at all!

What an interesting sentiment that I’m sure is not at all autobiographical.

Aradia spent the entire session as a robot with zero agency, and never got to use her powers for her sake, instead of the timeline's. It makes perfect sense that she didn't have fun with her Aspect.

Tavros! My man, Tavros!

Alright, this is actually fantastic. Tavros died before he could reveal Vriska's batshit plan to the team, but Aradia has handed him a second chance. All he has to d-

AT: lOOKS LIKE i FOUND ANOTHER POINT IN TIME TO BOTHER YOU, AT: wHEN, i GUESS, AT: yOU ARE MORE EMOTIONALLY SUSCEPTIBLE, […] TG: are those sick fires youre packing there TG: you best not be bringin that fire into my bubble less you plan on dropping that shit

-he's just here to rap, isn't he.

[manonamora-if]

honestly u have too many games... i dont know where to start... can u like... do a 5-word blurb for each of them?

Ah well... I can certainly try! 😅

Note: I'm including the experimental stuff too, because lol.

Try hard (or don't) for love? (Slice-of-life, choice, short-ish, multiple endings, completed)

Amnesiac peep becomes a noble (Court Intrigue, choice, long, WIP)

Privileged writer can't write (Slice-of-life, input/choice, mid, WIP -currently in re-writes)

Monotonous space-life actually a conspiracy (Sci-Fi, choice, short-ish, multiple endings, completed)

Friends(?) investigate an occult mystery (Lovecraftian horror, choice, mid, multiple endings, WIP)

Kid finds out grandma's special (spoopy, choice, short, multiple endings, completed)

Meme car chase with a twist (unreality, QTE choice, short, multiple endings, completed)

Space trucker on special delivery (Sci-fi, choice, short, multiple endings, WIP)

How devoted are you? (???, micro, completed - FRENCH ONLY)

Antique computer with a weird installed program (Sci-fi, choice/puzzle, mid, two endings, completed)

Cliché detective investigates "murder" (Mystery, choice, WIP)

Single choice to define a life (Sci-fi-ish, input, short, multiple endings, completed)

Hhmmm unresolved trauma? (Autobiographical, choice, short, completed)

The Best Proposals are kookies (Slice-of-life, input, short-ish, multiple endings, completed)

On course for Collisions (???, choice, micro, completed)

The signs were all there (Slice-of-life, choice, micro, completed)

Internal fight against pride and prejudices (Slice-of-life, choice-ish, micro, completed)

When the yummy hurts your tummy (??? surreal?, choice-ish, micro, completed-ish)

Kill or be killed (Survival, choice, short, completed-ish)

Surreal dreams be weird (Surreal, keyboard, short, completed)

Nightmare deviation and horrid road-maze (Slice-of-life, choice, micro, completed, FRENCH ONLY)

Couple tries some kinky stuff (juuuust a hint of NSFW) (Slice-of-life, choice, short, completed)

Depressed person eats a real meal (Slice-of-life, input, short, completed)

Surreal dream bites depressed horn-ish-dog (Surreal, choice, mid, multiple endings, completed)

Dramatic Lesbian writes love letters (Epistolary, choice, mid, multiple endings, completed)

Repair robot fixes broken things (???, input, micro, completed-ish)

Girl-bossing your way out of the maze (Mythological, input, short-ish, completed)

Not really a game, just if you're curious about programs

I SWEAR I AM WRITING (autobiographical, keyboard, short, completed)

Bad maze on purpose (bad game, input, short-ish?, completed)

Bad "VN" I'm fixing soon (mystery?, keyboard, short, WIP)

And that's all there is :P

[schmergo]

My bizarre real-person headcanon: Josh Groban and Ben Platt are mortal nemeses. Here's the timeline behind this theory, beginning with the known and branching off into the possible future. 2017: Josh Groban makes his Broadway debut in Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet to much critical acclaim. At the Tony Awards, Ben Platt, starring in Dear Evan Hansen, wins Best Actor and Dear Evan Hansen beats Natasha/Pierre for Best Musical. 2023: Josh Groban makes a triumphant return to Broadway, headlining a revival of Sweeney Todd. Surely this will be his year? Nope. Ben Platt's limited run production of Parade transfers to Broadway, making his own triumphant return to Broadway after a hiatus of the same length. Neither wins the Tony Award this year (J. Harrison Ghee does), but Parade wins Best Revival of a Musical over Sweeney Todd. Later in 2023: Josh Groban goes full method and immerses himself in the murderous, vengeful instincts of Sweeney Todd. Revenge against Ben Platt will be his! But he can't be too obvious about it. He's playing the long game. 2028: Surprise! There's a revival of Phantom of the Opera announced! Both Ben Platt and Josh Groban are considered as potential Phantoms. Unknown to anyone, Josh Groban has been perfecting his own Phantom-like skills of appearing and disappearing into thin air, throwing his voice, and murder. Oh yeah, and he plays the pipe organ. He gets the role! But wait, what's this? Hugh Jackman was eaten by a crocodile mere weeks before he was supposed to headline the new Broadway production of The Greatest Showman? Ben Platt heroically steps in to save the day and takes the title role! He wins the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, but not Best New Musical (the critics say, "We love Ben Platt but this show is clearly just a vehicle for Hugh Jackman [RIP].") The Phantom revival wins Best Musical, but something terrible happens at the Tony Awards! There's a technical glitch when the Phantom performance is due to start and they move it to the end of the awards ceremony. But right as everyone's marveling at the artistry of the production at the delayed performance, something Totally Unpredicted happens. The chandelier crashes... INTO BEN PLATT!!! 2030: Ben Platt survives the chandelier attack but he loses his entire memory and has to relearn everything, including how to sing! He can no longer recall the moment that the chandelier crashed into him-- nor the moment that Josh Groban looked at him from the stage and mouthed 'Long live the king!' In a startling and bold act, Ben Platt returns to Broadway in a one man autobiographical show about living with amnesia and relearning to perform. He wins the Best Actor Tony Award! Josh Groban is away doing Phantom in Europe. 2040: There's a high profile immersive revival of Les Miserables on Broadway! The producers consider both Ben Platt and Josh Groban for Jean Valjean. But Josh Groban gives off such an in intense murderous energy when they find him in the same room as Ben Platt that they get a brilliant idea and offer him the role of Javert and Platt as Valjean. The production is a hit. The tension between Platt and Groban is off the charts. When it's time for the Tony Awards, both are nominated for Best Actor in a Musical (ala Colm Wilkinson and Terrence Mann in the original Broadway production). On the day of the Tony Awards, an astonishing thing happens: Platt and Groban TIE for the Best Actor in a Musical Award! The crowd goes wild! Everyone is cheering! The theatre... the cheers... it triggers something long-buried in Ben Platt's mind. Suddenly, he remembers the night the chandelier fell on him at the 2028 Tony Awards.... Josh Groban was looking right at him as it happened.... Ben Platt snaps and begins to clobber Josh Groban onstage. In his fit of rage, he doesn't see Josh Groban pull out a gun. Is this finally the end of this age old rivalry? BUT WAIT, WHAT'S THIS? IT'S J. HARRISON GHEE (SNUBBED STAR OF THE REIMAGINED REVIVAL OF LA CAGE AUX FOLLES) WITH A STEEL CHAIR!!!! At least, this is what I imagine.