Trick's Tales

This is a session write up and review of the work-in-progress GM-full game Seven Part Pact by Jay Dragon . Jay describes it thusly, " The seven greatest wizards in the world convene upon the isles of Isha, their powers aligned in the service of an ancient Pact. Each governs their Domain, wielding power beyond comprehension, seeking to balance the responsibilities of their power with their selfish heart's desire. Will these wizards cooperate to hold Isha together, or will their petty thoughtlessness bring about the destruction of their homes? " But I would describe it as a roleplaying game about wizards, worldbuilding, power, masculinity, and loneliness. It's a game for GMs. All GMs. 3-7 GMs, in fact. This is the Seven Part Pact, an extremely complicated game about extremely complicated men. Collage by me. Wizard (2025)

First things first, here is the pitch for the bundle in case anyone hasn't seen it yet. 🎲 HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid is Live! 🎲 Earlier this year, the HELLO//GOODBYE team, with multiple volunteers based in Vienna, designed and printed 100 zines and raised over $3,700 for legal aid in Virginia - more than double their original goal. Now, HELLO//GOODBYE is going digital, and it’s open to players all around the world!   From now until November 5th, you can pick up the HELLO//GOODBYE Charity Bundle for Legal Aid on itch.io. Inside you’ll find 203 games by 114 creators, making the bundle a treasure trove of tabletop RPGs, video games, and experimental gems.    Some are ENNIE award-winners, like Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast by Possum Creek Games, others are games by favorites like snow, who has two games in the bundle ( Songbirds and Lilancholy ), and many are fresh works waiting for you to discover them!   The bundle is on itch.io for only $12. Every...

I've been back in the US for a few months now. I had my goodbye party in Austria on July 4th, and left the next day to come back to the US after four years in Austria. It's been a hard thing to articulate to non-Americans what the political atmosphere is like here at the moment. It's been a hard thing to articulate it to myself. This is perhaps an attempt to do both, and to find a path through somehow to a better future.

Announcement! Game! A roleplaying game on my roleplaying game blog? No way. But I'm excited to share that it's my first published game (that's not an anthology of other people's games)! Very exciting stuff.  

I printed an indie TTRPG zine! And raised $3,600 for legal aid with it. Here are some takeaways about running such a project, with an emphasis on fundraising and project management. Photo by Virginia Taylor.

I finally finished the 4th book of the Neapolitan Novels series by Elena Ferrante (otherwise known as the My Brilliant Friend series). To transform my impressions and emotions about that series into cold hard words on a page almost feels obscene, but she so accurately captures those fleeting vividnesses into the written form that I feel I should endeavor to do the same. Unfortunately she's significantly better at that whole thing than me, so just bear with me lol.

This is Part 2 of the Play Something Else (If You Want) series. Check out Part 1 here .

A collage I made inspired by this essay. What my mother and the trees taught me was this - there are 3 places to touch the divine. The cathedral, the theater, and the forest. The cathedral sparkles. There's exquisite suffering in Catholicism. And I really admire it, how aesthetically rich that suffering is, the way they dramatize it, the way they bring excruciating death to life. I love the gold, the scale, the awe, the detail, the light, the dazzling array of beauties reaching beyond one's tiny human form. To experience it, one had to shut themself off, contort themself; simmer in doubt, shame, guilt, fear; wonder and awe at the blood and sacrifice, the wine and incense, the dread secrets. The cathedral's music, soaring high, high, arced by the gay music director, then silenced by a new bishop. At least that was my experience of it. If you don't grow up in a cathedral, you cannot possibly imagine (I imagine) the shame dug into your breasts and the fuzzy disappearance o...

Some of my blog is directed at people like me who exist in the indie dev or OSR scenes, but I want to address Dungeons & Dragons for a bit. This is Part 1 of the Play Something Else (If You Want) series.

Collages by me. L: Gods and Masters (2025). R: Untitled A4 (2024).

I'm about low barriers to entry, where it takes less than 30 minutes to learn the rules. I'm about story gaming x OSR. I'm about emotions, performance, telling a story, the players as characters and audience. I'm about deconstruction, finding the limits of the hobby and pushing on them. I'm about experimentation, breaking the norms of my own manifesto. I'm about deeply-considered worldbuilding. I'm about embracing that feeling of strangeness that you encounter when you travel, when your assumptions about how things are are turned upside down. I'm about undertold stories of underrepresented people, writing in the nooks and crannies between the genre/culture heavyweights. I'm about anthropology, history, political science, linguistics, comparative psychology, decolonial studies, and maybe a dash of heterodox economics. I'm about breaking the rules of physics, vernacular architecture, tropical fruit, magical realism, pulling on one thread and seeing...

This is a GM-less, rules-lite, comedic storytelling game for 3-5 people that's heavily inspired by Fiasco. Has been used to run stories of undersea scams, horror in the alpine woods (featuring a llama farmer), and a call me by your name knockoff with identical twins ("call me by my brother's name"). Will post the Word Lists and Twist Table (necessary for play) later.

“No hay tierra para los ancianos”, dijo la voz que resonó desde la boca oscura de la puerta grande. El viejo se encogió de hombros y se alejó de la puerta, escuchando como se cerraba detrás de él. No esperaba nada de esta comunidad. Ser viejo en esta época era un pecado – el robo del aire y agua de los niños que no tenían culpa por el estado del mundo. En el pasado, él gritaba y maldecía las pisadas de los que lo rechazaban. “Yo no hice nada!” él pisaba y gritaba. El suelo debajo temblaba mientras la ira corría por sus piernas y pies. Las puertas nunca se afectaban por la furia del hombre, y con el tiempo y el viaje, él se convirtió en un viejo y comprendió sus defectos. Su existencia en las épocas anteriores era bastante. Sus años finales en este estado fueron apropiados. Los escombros en el suelo en esta área eran llanos por los pies de miles de viajeros que pasaban por ellos. El polvo se asentó alrededor de sus dedos de pie, y las espirales y las arrugas estaban negras de la mugre. ...

 In the old days, when they told you not to run, you sure as hell didn't. If you ran, your fate would be far worse. They would hoist you up like a feather-light thing, beat you til the word "mama" couldn't cross your swollen lips. I hate violence. Harm inflicted and for what? Not a new opinion, I know. In the old days, we were violent back. We harmed their weaker, more innocent associates. Like dog eat cat eat bird. Or big fish eat smaller fish eat smallest fish. Or like lifting Johnny up by his collar, the crippled one, and slamming him onto the road until he crunched, or at least his feet did. They got us back for that one, but we couldn't resist. They gave us the anger so we had to give it back. I hated that part of my life. And the people too. Red nosed cowards, all of them. Boys that the present forgets existed. I ain't complaining. To be honest, I wouldn't mind forgetting it all myself. Now is a dream, an unreality that's nearly, but isn't. O...