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by Neil Smith

neilnjae.bsky.social
Just had our first belated session of the Blades 68 Playtest. We've got a muckraking journalist and a groovy cabbie embroiled in the Profumo affair. #BitD #FitD #rpg #ttrpg @evilhat.bsky.social
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Reposted by Neil Smith

riseupcomus.bsky.social
RPGs are a form of art that is welcoming to people of every skill level. "But my map is bad!" "But my dungeon is kinda boring." WRONG. We're not talking about putting out albums, we're talking about singing around a campfire with a friend who has a guitar. Fun is the focus, not production quality.
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Reposted by Neil Smith

savagespiel.bsky.social
My write-up of Concrete Cow 25. savagespiel.blogspot.com/2025/03/conc...
Concrete Cow 25
I arrived in Wolverton at more or less the time I intended, paid my entry, and headed straight for the bring and buy, followed by Leisure Ga...
savagespiel.blogspot.com
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Reposted by Neil Smith

lomadiah.bsky.social
📣 LOOKING FOR CREATORS! 📣

I’m working with a UK charity that offers safe spaces & support to victims of domestic abuse.

We’re running a fundraiser in Women’s History Month (March), and would to have more creators involved - if that’s you, gimme a shout here or in my DMs!

(Plz signal boost 🙏💚)
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Reposted by Neil Smith

naomikritzer.bsky.social
The "first they came..." poem gets quoted and quoted and quoted and quoted and you know what, we do in fact know who they're coming for first, right now, and that is trans people, and the answer needs to be "absolutely the fuck not, you motherfuckers," full stop.
35 1.4K 3.6K

Reposted by Neil Smith

duncanrobertson.bsky.social
If anyone from the USA or elsewhere wants to see how British humour is used to great effect, firstly, ignore the video.

And then read the (thousands of) comments.

Some great work here. Well done all.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgvE...
New Tesla Model Y: What have they done?
YouTube video by carwow
www.youtube.com
22 96 260

Reposted by Neil Smith

makeascenemn.bsky.social
The Transformative Role-playing Game Design textbook is now available for free download! Featuring authors from Uppsala University, Dragons' Nest, Avalon Larp Studio, Chaos League, and more!
https://buff.ly/3CiHFdR
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Reposted by Neil Smith

handiworkgames.bsky.social
a|state second edition is the story of how you fight back. How you organise to drive back the forces of the all-powerful Trusts, the organised criminals, the peddlers of religion, and find a better way for your corner of The City. Dickens meets Ballard in a flooded back alley. #astaterpg
Art from a|state second edition by Paul Bourne. A trio of metal buildings reminiscent of the Thames sea forts loom out of a golden mist from the waters of a huge canal. Art from a|state second edition by Paul Bourne. We look through a horizontal forest of gantries, popes and gables cutting through the golden evening smog. Tiny figures are crossing a footbridge between vast buildings. Art from a|state second edition by Paul Bourne. We see into the guts of The City, pipes and gantry and wires cladding huge buildings reaching upward out of sight. A back alley in The City, a gloomy, ill lit slum of cobbled together technologies and architectures from varied eras.
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Reposted by Neil Smith

handiworkgames.bsky.social
Want to help create the new editions of Cold City and Hot War?

You can now sign up to playtest, and be notified of the campaign launch here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/jon...

#coldcity #hotwar
A giant sphere made of spiked metal straps hovers in the ruins of what could be Berlin. Overlaid are the Cold City and Hot War logos. Cold City is described by its tag line as "a game of hidden agendas, trust and monster hunting". Hot War is described as "a game of friends, enemies, secrets & consequences in the aftermath."
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Reposted by Neil Smith

levikornelsen.bsky.social
🧵 : This is a thread of sites and people who cover indie tabletop games, with links and bluesky handles to follow!

Share it, add to it, use it, follow everyone on it, turn it into an article on your site!
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by Neil Smith

neilnjae.bsky.social
I like how people have so very different approaches to solving these problems. I considered brute-force, but thought that the space of possibilities would be too large to make that feasible.

by Neil Smith

neilnjae.bsky.social
Another attempt solving #AdventOfCode 2024 day 24 in #Haskell . This verison solves it prgramatically, growing the structure I expect to see and comparing it to what I've actually got.

Full writeup on my blog: work.njae.me.uk/2025/01/10/a... and code on Codeberg: codeberg.org/NeilNjae/adv...
Advent of Code 2024 day 24 revisited
Another attempt at the puzzle, this time actually writing code that solves it!
work.njae.me.uk
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Reposted by Neil Smith

handiworkgames.bsky.social
Just packing up some of these, and took some photos.
The Three Coins is a role-playing game from within the setting of a|state, The City. It is a banned, imaginative game about escaping The City, played in alleys and wynds using a handful of coins. The book The Three Coins catalogues this pursuit.
Four Coins from a|state with a verdigris finish sitting on some distressed wood near some bits of machinery. The book The Three Coins sitting on a rough wood surface. A copy of a|state second edition
4 3 35

Reposted by Neil Smith

malcolmcraig.bsky.social
1) This is a thread about non-annihilatory apocalypses and how they fit into my research on RPGs, the Cold War, and nuclear fear in the 1970s/80.

Of course, we start with The Price of Freedom (Greg Costikyan, West End Games, 1986). Those of us of 'a certain age' will vividly recall the controversy!
Advert for the 1986 RPG The Price of Freedom. The image shows a crew of fist-pumping American patriots bursting through a US flag superimposed with the hammer and sickle and a picture of Lenin. Freedom is being most vigorously defended!
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Reposted by Neil Smith

floaker.bsky.social
Fellow tabletop gamers, what are your goals for 2025? Here are mine!

- Get to EIG every month
- Complete fulfillment of Lo! Thy Dread Empire
- Mum Chums for #ZineQuest
- Kick-ass freelance project I'm hype for
- Try be more organised and positive person
- Talk more about what I'm working on
vaklam.bsky.social
Brian_Cooksey.gif @vaklam.bsky.social · Dec 31
Fellow #TTRPG gamers, what are your goals for 2025? Here are mine!

-Run at least one short campaign for multiple people.
-Play with some new people.
-Reach out to a few specific people that I'd really like to play with.
-Record new episodes of @iepodcast.bsky.social with @gamefiend.bsky.social
danielhkwan.itch.io
Daniel Kwan @danielhkwan.itch.io · Dec 31
Fellow tabletop gamers, what are your goals for 2025? Here are mine!

- Finish and crowdfund the Wandering Blades #ttrpg
- Paint a 2,000 point Custodes army
- Get a regular home OSR group going
- Booth at a con
- Produce new and interesting episodes of @aznsrepresent.bsky.social
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by Neil Smith

neilnjae.bsky.social
Freemarket is great. I played a few sessions on it online a while ago. If love to give it another go.
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by Neil Smith

neilnjae.bsky.social
Another post on optimising #Haskell solutions to #AdventOfCode puzzles. These show how a couple of simple and obvious changes lead to things going faster by almost two orders of magnitude.
work.njae.me.uk/2025/01/03/o...

#Optimisation #Optimization
Optimising Haskell: quick wins
Two quick examples of optimising.
work.njae.me.uk
1

by Neil Smith

neilnjae.bsky.social
Very nice! It's not a huge difference in speed between our boxes.

You went all-out for speed, with mutability and bit-twiddling. I'm afraid that's too much detail for my little brain to handle. I'll accept my slow solution, and raise a glass in admiration to yours.
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by Neil Smith

neilnjae.bsky.social
I've just written about how I optimised a #Haskell program solving an #AdventOfCode puzzle. It's about how I used the profiler to find the parts that needed attention, and reduced the runtime ×15 with a couple of small changes.

work.njae.me.uk/2025/01/02/o...

#optimisation
#optimization
Optimising Haskell: joy of profiling
Using the profiler to find what to optimise.
work.njae.me.uk
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Reposted by Neil Smith

friede.bsky.social
If you’re familiar with playing TTRPGs in front of an in-person audience (as player or audience) BEFORE 2009, I’d love to hear
about your memories.

You can comment or email Ecfriedman at auburn dot edu

This is for Polygon (& probably book), so please let me know how’d you’d like to be cited.
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Reposted by Neil Smith

pennylescroche.transtapir.games
5 TTRPGs I want to try in 2025:

🦗Cloud Empress
🧪 Substratum Protocol
🐉 Dragonbane
🍲 Stewpot
🌆 Metro: Otherscape
moplaysgames.bsky.social
Mo: Wildflower Edition 🪻🌸🪷🌺🌷 @moplaysgames.bsky.social · Jan 3
5 TTRPGs I want to try in 2025:

⚡ Tezca Sentai
🌃 Urban Shadows 2E (because it's FINALLY available)
🗝️ Home
💌 Exquisite Crime
📱Alice is Missing: Silent Falls Expansion
mikerunderwood.bsky.social
Michael R. Underwood (Mike) @mikerunderwood.bsky.social · Jan 3
5 TTRPGs I want to try in 2025:

🔺 Triangle Agency
🏰 Castles in the Air
🏘️ Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast
🚗 The Last Caravan
🌇 Urban Shadows 2E

(There are dozens more where this came from)
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Reposted by Neil Smith

shannonappelcline.bsky.social
What was the year like in roleplaying? What classics returned? What did Wizards of the Coast do this time? It's all in my yearly report on the roleplaying industry.

www.designers-and-dragons.com/2025/01/01/2...
2024: The Year in Roleplaying – Designers & Dragons
www.designers-and-dragons.com
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by Neil Smith

neilnjae.bsky.social
My review of #AdventOfCode 2024 now up on my blog. An overview of the #Haskell features I used (very few), the packages I used (not many) and the overall performance of my solutions (generally pretty good, with a few not so good).

work.njae.me.uk/2025/01/01/a...
Advent of Code 2024 review
A look back over the 2024 event.
work.njae.me.uk
2

Reposted by Neil Smith

shraddhaag.dev
I just finished publishing all 25 blogs explaining my solution for solving each day of #AdventOfCode!

Huge shoutout to @mattboyle.bsky.social for giving me this opportunity to publish them on ByteSizeGo, what a fun and active community to be a part of 😁

Posting all links in the thread below 👇
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Reposted by Neil Smith

alexries.com
Birrin flying boats: It was a long road to the final painting, the aircraft lifting off in front of one of the great Southern floating cities.

#scifiart
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by Neil Smith

neilnjae.bsky.social
And that puts me as another member of the "500 star" club with #AdventOfCode work.njae.me.uk/tag/advent-o...

I found the first year's challenges a few days after they went live, and I've done the rest each year as they appeared. It's been fun so far. Long may it continue!
List of the previous ten Advent of Code events, showing 50 stars gained on each.
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by Neil Smith

neilnjae.bsky.social
My solution to #AdventOfCode day 25 in #Haskell : work.njae.me.uk/2024/12/29/a... , code at codeberg.org/NeilNjae/adv...

A quick and gentle finish to the challenges.
Advent of Code 2024 day 25
A gentle end to the challenge.
work.njae.me.uk
1 3

by Neil Smith

neilnjae.bsky.social
My solution to #AdventOfCode day 24 in #Haskell : work.njae.me.uk/2024/12/29/a... , code at codeberg.org/NeilNjae/adv...

Laborious and fiddly reverse engineering. Not fun at all.
Advent of Code 2024 day 24
Horrible, finicky, detailed reverse engineering. Not my cup of tea.
work.njae.me.uk
1

by Neil Smith

neilnjae.bsky.social
Don't forget to sign up for the Forged in the Dark season of games on the Raspy Raven server. We're closing the sign-up on 31 December.

Sign up: bit.ly/4fqM8s9

More blurb on the games: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Join The Raspy Raven discord, link in sign-up form.
Forged in the Dark season logo.
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Reposted by Neil Smith

biohazardjeff.bsky.social
It’s only the PoD set, but it’s pretty great to finally hold actual books after all the years of work. Free Poseidon!
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