Brian Ashford
@brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
1.4K followers 660 following 5K posts
Role-player, husband, parent. Woke PoS. He/him. Staff at Ancient Robot Games in Edinburgh. ominosity.wordpress.com Why you are rolling the dice is far more important than which dice you are rolling.
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by Brian Ashford
broadwaybabyto.bsky.social
ICE agents blocked ambulance from transferring an injured protester to the hospital, even going as far as to threaten to arrest and shoot the driver.

This crosses so many lines.

EMS and first responders need to be free to help whoever needs it.

Delays cost lives.
Documents Allege a Federal Agent at Portland ICE Threatened to Shoot an Ambulance Driver
Feds delayed medics who had come to pick up an injured protester. Then, according to confidential incident reports, the agents became aggressive.
www.wweek.com
Reposted by Brian Ashford
petersbeaumont1.bsky.social
If you've never been to Gaza, you won't appreciate what the yellow line means. Basically Israel now holds most of Gaza's small but important agricultural land. Continued Israeli occupation, which I judge the likely outcome, makes Gaza even more unliveable and more dependent on outside goods.
en.afp.com
Gaza Strip: Israeli army has withdrawn to the 'yellow line'

AFP Infographic with map of the Gaza Strip showing the 'yellow line' where the Israeli army has withdrawn its forces as of October 10, according to US envoy Steve Witkoff
Reposted by Brian Ashford
bleary.off-the-records.com
If anyone needs me I will be in the museum, lying down next to the bog bodies.
Did people really memorize phone numbers before cell phones, or is that just a movie thing?
2? Questions
I was watching some old shows from the 90s and noticed people would just dial numbers from memory - like they'd call their friends or family without looking anything up.
Made me wonder if that was actually normal back then? Did people genuinely have all their important numbers memorized, or did most folks keep a little address book or written list nearby?
Reposted by Brian Ashford
junlper.beer
watching the UKs green party elect an actual unafraid leftist into leadership and see party membership double in under a month is once again endless proof that if you stand up for leftist causes and treat the electorate like adults, you’ll win people over easily
Reposted by Brian Ashford
chaoskat.bsky.social
Salvation Army seen feeding ICE today. For anyone who doesn't already know about their bigotry, here is more, No need to give them your money this Christmas, or ever.
unraveledpress.com
It’s dinner time for the police. Appears to be pizza from a Salvation Army van.

Broadview’s “free speech” curfew starts soon, at 6pm.
Reposted by Brian Ashford
Reposted by Brian Ashford
perplexingruins.bsky.social
Bestiary done! Why lay out and illustrate some elses game? Cause I wanted a printed copy, and its OOP. I wanted to practice. I wanted to put my art in it :)
interior spread of bestiary The Vanilla Game, with zombie art alt cover for The Vanilla Game
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
It's actually pretty common among retro clone, but equally common is groups flipping it so that poor stats give XP bonuses.
Reposted by Brian Ashford
comanfullard.bsky.social
So very #UnknownArmies
tylerhuckabee.bsky.social
In 2004, Parisian police were conducting a training exercise in the french catacombs and found, after moving past a desk and a tape playing audio of snarling dogs, a fully functional movie theater and bar. When they returned 3 days later, the equipment was gone, with a note: “Do not try to find us.”
Members of the force's sports squad, responsible
- among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.
After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.
Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.
Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs". There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.
"The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
I’ll be honest I donut think I’ve downloaded a new one in ages. I’ve literally read dozens over the last ten years, but I think I’ve been settled on my favourites for a while now.
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
In general I don’t like that the book if full of “optional rules”. Things like the combat systems or ascending or descending AC. I’d prefer if the writer just presented their preferred version, rather than giving us options.
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
My Issues are mostly with the PCs. None of them are major, but they add up.

Stat bonuses in WhiteBox are dull.
I don’t like the rule for fighters vs 1HD opponents.
D6 Thief skills sucks.
I hate the multiclass elf where you chose what class you want to be today.
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
I have a few issues with S&W Whitebox and FMAG so I use Iron Falcon for oD&D shenanigans. It's a really tidy re-write and all the weirder bits are tucked away in an appendix where they can be ignored or not.
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
As for "how important is it for a game to "support traditional adventures"?" It's very important for me. Grabbing all of those people and places detailed before we start play allows me to focus my creative energies on what happens instead of having to improvise everything as we play.
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
The details vary depending on whether I'm running a one-shot or a campaign session. In a one-shot I'll include an opening and a potential climax or two.
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
I do, but not in a format that I could pass to another GM and expect them to understand what I'm on about.

Basically I have a list of places to go and things which are happening there. Maps, stats and loot where required.
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
Die comes to mind.

2000ad's Brink weaves together cosmic horror and SF brilliantly.

The recent Lower Decks comic Warp Your Own Way which is a choose your own adventure and time loop where the reader gets to interact with the protagonist.
Reposted by Brian Ashford
markharris.bsky.social
Mamdani talking lucidly and passionately about trans rights and history in a video that should frankly shame every politician who has hemmed and hawed and triangulated and said, "Well, but sports..." It's not that hard to tell the truth and stand for what's right. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEvV...
Until It's Done: Sylvia Rivera
YouTube video by Zohran Mamdani for NYC
www.youtube.com
Reposted by Brian Ashford
samsorensen.bsky.social
on Tuesday, October 14th, as a part of Mothership Month 25, I'm going to launch another real-time play-by-post wargame, open to the public, called OVER/UNDER. the server will open to players on Monday the 13th, but in the meantime you can read about it here: samsorensen.blot.im/mothership-m...
Mothership Month 2025 Wargame: OVER/UNDER - Sam Sorensen
Starting on October 14th, as a part of Mothership Month 2025—the annual group-crowdfunding campaign and general season of celebration for
samsorensen.blot.im
Reposted by Brian Ashford
grahamwalmsley.bsky.social
One slight difficulty I have is that, even when we try to remember "forgotten" games and cultures, we often talk mainly about the United States.

I'm personally keen to remember the Collective Endeavour (Scotland and UK) as well as The Forge. And there'll be other movements in other countries too.
rascal.news
Reshare: Even as TSR and D&D’s early periods receive the gold-standard treatment, there’s much more to the hobby than one game and one company. But are those histories actually important? What is at stake if we forget them?

www.rascal.news/we-cant-let-...
We can’t let the market decide what we remember and forget
Emily Friedman and Evan Torner on why gaming histories matter.
www.rascal.news
Reposted by Brian Ashford
Reposted by Brian Ashford
dieworkwear.bsky.social
he also said that 80% of antifa's members are landlords and if you lower the cost of housing, you basically starve the network of its financing