@severalseals
Cat haver. Game designer. Co-host of System Shop Podcast. I apparently don't have many photos in the right aspect ratio for a banner, so have some flowers. No access to DMs until certain policies become less ridiculous.
Featuring, among others:
- Tournament Arc by @spitemoth.bsky.social and @plumtreechloe.bsky.social
- @keith-baker.com's Phoenix: Dawn Command
- more raving about the emergent Elf psychology of @uncannydice.bsky.social's inhuman game jam.
Plus, I discuss seven games I played, two games I ran, and one I designed (!) at this year's Contingency!
open.spotify.com/episode/5JzX...
Iiiit's time for two slightly belated episode announcements!
First up, Violet and returning guest Roz talk about making hunger mechanics feel meaty, in Worlds (plural) of Darkness and more:
open.spotify.com/episode/2YNY...
Just in time for a big sale on drivethrurpg! I'm gonna buy and immediately misplace the contents of my wishlist 👌
I am back from Contigency 2026, and full of love for Friends and Games.
Mostly, I'm full of shitposts about the impossibly complicated Elf Game we made for @uncannydice.bsky.social's inhuman game jam. Which included a design phase where we just. Went outside and sketched trees to study their vibes.
Well well well! 💖
Imi and I are currently listening to the audiobook! We have been enjoying mimicking Ana's voice to praise and/or chastise one another for ordinary household tasks.
If you know me, you'll probably have heard me rant about Tchaikovsky's flagship bugworld series. They're all here! All ten of them! And also some mammalworld if that's your thing I guess.
It's the final sprint! Let's gooo 🏃♀️
@ilgingell.bsky.social joins me and Violet to talk about bringing monster training to the tabletop, discussing existing games in the space and how JourneyMon tackles the design puzzles of the genre!
We even dig up a monster catching TTRPG that predates Pokémon...
open.spotify.com/episode/2VLl...
Differing seasons and month names etc can be flavourful, but giving your story "months" and "years" of a different length to the real world equivalents is always a massive headache and never worth the confusion imo!
Also the most stackable component is the camels from Camel Up, but that might be cheating because that's what you're meant to do with them.
A fun listen! I'm delighted to hear you guys reach for "magical girl" as an example genre, because I have been (affectionately) bullied for always using it as my go-to genre in discussions 😜
(W)hat is (t)hat? 🎩
Oh hey that's me! You may be wondering about the photo. You see, I was mimicking a mimic.
JourneyMon is live on kickstarter now! Imi has been working hard on it for many actual years, and even your humble Freya has been working... soft(??) on it, too!
One small advantage of the curse of changing clocks is that the playtest & discussion ran for five hours and ended well after midnight, so I'm glad for the extra hour's sleep.
Got some delicious feedback from the first playtest of my current project: "this is 170% of a game and now you need to focus it in" and "this dice system wouldn't work in any other context but it's perfectly on-theme here".
Banner for the JourneyMon: Monster Trainer roleplaying game, showing a girl playing a guide with her flaming axolotl monster, and a copy of the JourneyMon hardcover book. The image reveals the launch date for the Kickstarter campaign: 28th October.
I'm excited to announce the Kickstarter campaign for JourneyMon: Monster Trainer Roleplaying will go live on October 28th, in just 3 weeks from today. The big day is nearly upon us! Are you ready for your next #ttrpg journey?
Follow the campaign here: kickstarter.journeymonrpg.com
Trapped in a vault deep beneath the earth, RIP
Okay, @ilgingell.bsky.social and I watched River this evening and we agree it's also really good! I love how the problems caused by the timeloop differ from the standard tropes because of the setup. And the fact that arguably the main problem is the nightmare of endless customer service.
Ah, correction: it gets (not quite) two minutes in the roundup of everything - youtu.be/q6tzeDqGrcA?...
By the way, I've recently been watching a youtube series comparing and contrasting timeloop movies, and although they somehow haven't mentioned BtITM or River yet afaik, they've certainly surfaced some interesting international offerings, eg youtu.be/M1KZMV9S8PY?...
@redstrawbaby.bsky.social Falin may be a healer, but she gotta get that bread
Not a very descriptive or searchable title, but I found it again! m.imdb.com/title/tt2769...
We watched it at our "show everyone your favourite things from this year" new year's party a couple of years and it was definitely the highlight. Apparently it has a sort-of sequel now too?
A multipack of monster munch gently gripped in the foreground of the irn bru aisle.
I will be running JourneyMon at #tabletopscotland this weekend!
If you spot me in my JourneyMon shirt, say hi and I will give you a bag of (locally-sourced) monster munch.
If you bring friends and ask nicely, I may even run a session for you, time permitting!
We've raced on past 275 now so its about time to crack open the first booster pack and release a new playbook...
You can vote on which one on a poll on our Discord server. Follow the link to join in!
community.journeymonrpg.com
Violet noted that we somehow didn't mention Map Men across the entire two parter, so, as an honourable mention that's not really anything to do with ttrpgs: youtube.com/playlist?lis...
The conclusive counterpart to last month's SySho is now up! redcircle.com/shows/6991e0...