Jonathan Tweet
@jonathantweet.bsky.social
1.5K followers 1.2K following 980 posts
Grandmother Fish (Macmillan 2016), the first book to teach #evolution to preschoolers, plus science games for kids (www.grandmotherfish.com). Over the Edge, #TTRPG of surreal urban danger (atlas-games.com/overtheedge). D&D 3E, Ars Magica, Everway, etc.
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Grandmother Fish is the first book to teach evolution to preschoolers. Kids love learning that they are part of the great family of life on Earth, and they love wiggling like Grandmother Fish and hooting like Grandmother Ape. Now in Chinese, Japanese, and Italian.

www.powells.com/book/grandmo...
The more someone pays for something, the more they tend to value it, so maybe they have your interests at heart
The past was wild. You might imagine my surprise when I looked up "deodand," the refined, beautiful, black-skinned monster of Dying Earth, and got forfeited property instead. And the king had to pinky-swear to use the proceeds of the deodand's sale for pious ends.

www.etymonline.com/search?q=deo...
Search 'deodand' on etymonline
Search results for 'deodand' on etymonline
www.etymonline.com
This one I totally accept this, not only "deodand" the Dying Earth monster but "deodand" the property forfeited to the king for killing someone.
On the front of the stand is my character's name, for the benefit of the other players. On the back of the stand are the other characters' names, for my benefit.
Are you looking for game conventions? I don't have any others to recommend. Maybe Origins? There are a couple good sci-fi conventions in Minneapolis and Seattle.
It really was a darling of the industry back in the day. HōL is also now available on eBay.

www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_...
someone snapped it up, so that’s good
Reposted by Jonathan Tweet
Today is the birthday one of the most talented creators in TTRPGs, Jennell Jaquays, who passed away last year. Jennell was one of our company's earliest artists, and played an prominent role in Chaosium's success over many years, as an illustrator and writer.
What a time that was! This game is one of the bleakest, and I'm happy about that.
On the short list of other people's RPGs that I've actually played since I went pro myself. Technically, we played a free-form game in this setting. I also played at Gen Con with the designer. Pretty memorable. Good factions, evil factions, traitors to their factions, big weapons, demons, etc. 2/2
Who else loves 90s-era dark RPGs? This one is bleak, with PCs sometimes damning others' souls to hell in return for a little magic mojo. Post-apocalyptic cyberpunk demon-hunting in an enclosed city. On the short list of... 1/2

Lots more great old stuff now available.
www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_...
Interesting list. I'll be at Kraken in April. Gamehole Con is one that I've been meaning to return to after 10 years. Maybe next year. I have good friends in Wisconsin, and Gamehole is something else (despite the unfortunate name).
In the yearly game-design class that I taught, I would show that page on a slide as part of the topic "autistic traits and game design". I pored over that chart plenty of times and thought it was pretty neat.
At one point I would slavishly write out my character's to-hit number for each weapon by AC. Four weapons and 9 AC values meant 36 to-hit numbers, four rows of 9 to-hit numbers each. It's amazing how much arithmetic and accounting we put up with.
In Chainmail, any hit killed the target, and that's probably why heavier weapons had better odds of hitting. Those were also the odds of killing. These were skirmish rules, where a player's "hit points" were the number of figures you had on the field, and "damage" meant reducing that number.
Some gamers might say that 3E was "ASL D&D"
The big effect seems to be that the OD&D system means that most attacks are misses, at least until higher levels. OD&D also had no bonuses to hit for high Strength, so people missed a lot. Shouldn't players hit with most of their rolls? Otherwise the game's too slow.
One thing that OD&D established and that we took for granted with 3E is that mundane armor improves your Armor Class but mundane weapons don't improve your chance to hit. That's different from the earlier man-to-man rules in Chainmail, in which heavier weapons improved your chance to hit. #DnD
Reposted by Jonathan Tweet
Thanks! Everyone should be very interested in "FOO"! It's pretty cool. Should be available in April, I think.

(Thanks for the acronym.)
Yes, it traps heat 100x better and lasts 1/3 as long, so that’s where I get my 30x figure