Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 3d

Yeah absolutely, Lil is like 5 Clues in one

Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 3d

Or maybe we should just put more demons that love creamed corn into our games.

Until next time, happy #hauntalong!

A burning CRT television set sits on a lawn at night.

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Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 3d

Playing a tabletop game is making an agreement. I think the scariest thing a game can do is make players feel like they have no choice but to break that agreement. I want a game that disorients and betrays its players - that promises one thing and delivers something much worse.

A man stands in a circle of trees with no leaves, with a small round pool on the ground. He is illuminated by a spotlight and faces away, towards long red curtains that extend from the top of the image to the ground.

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Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 3d

I think horror TTRPGs have a problem that can be solved with a little wisdom from Twin Peaks. I've played games that told scary stories. But I don't know if a TTRPG has ever really pierced through the fiction to scare me (Ten Candles came closest, and I still need to try Something is Wrong Here).

A stoplight, lit red, hanging from a wire against a pitch-dark background.

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Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 3d

FWWM (and Twin Peaks: The Return, released in 2017) argue that Twin Peaks was never about the town, but rather cycles of violence, the corroded soul of modern America, and the ravenous society that consumed Laura Palmer. (Even if you don't watch the rest of The Return, watch Part 8.)

A black-and-white image of a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion.

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Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 3d

At the heart of it all is Laura, a girl the town claims to treasure even as she's hollowed out by her circumstances. Sheryl Lee, the actress who plays Laura, is electric. The experience is backed up by Angelo Badalamenti's haunting score.

A blonde woman, Laura Palmer, stands in a fairly affluent suburban living room, filling the right half the frame. She holds a cigarette and wears all black. In the background, her friend Donna, a woman in a coat with shoulder-length dark hair, moves toward her, gesturing.

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Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 3d

FWWM is unsettling and incisive, yet silly in the way dreams are silly. Laura tries to gaslight her boyfriend into thinking he murdered his best friend, and it's barely a plot point. Her mother, drugged and in denial, hallucinates a white horse materializing in her bedroom. A ceiling fan is scary.

The view of a stairwell, looking up to the ceiling from below. In the center of the image is a ceiling fan, and a man stands on the landing, turning the fan on.

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Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 3d

It opens on an FBI investigation introduced by a dancing woman in a bright red wig. David Bowie shows up. There's a nightmare-blunt-rotation meeting above a convenience store. An old woman at an intersection gives Laura a photo of a door she enters in her dreams. Demons exist and crave creamed corn.

A woman in a bright red dress and a bright red wig with a blue rose pinned to her lapel stands in a shadow next to a yellow airplane.

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Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 3d

The plot is not too hard to summarize: popular high schooler Laura Palmer realizes that the man who has been molesting her since she was 12 is her father. When he sees that she figured it out, he kills her. But this movie resists summary.

A hand reaches up, illuminated by a bright light. There is something red - nail polish, or blood - on the middle finger, and a large green ring on the ring finger. There is a red mark on the wrist, like rope burn. The shadow it casts has a conspicuous spot of light where the ring sits on the hand.

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Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 3d

Where Twin Peaks was punctuated with humor and melodrama, Fire Walk with Me is brutal, rotten. Where audiences expected a sequel, they got a nightmarish examination of an abused girl's last week alive. (content warning)

A young blonde woman gasps in fear and shock as an older male figure leans over her, one hand pinching her cheek and the other holding a gold half-heart on a chain around the woman's neck.

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Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 3d

If you're not familiar, Twin Peaks popularized the "quirky detective in a small town where everyone has a secret" trope. Its influence can be found everywhere from Silent Hill to Stranger Things. It starts with a question: who killed Laura Palmer? The answer is both simple and wildly complex.

A landscape of mountains and trees, with a road extending around a curve up ahead. The road is lined with electrical poles. A sign is off to the right of the road, painted with two mountains and the text "Welcome to Twin Peaks." At the bottom of the image is the text "Twin Peaks, Washington. One year later."

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Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 3d

Hi friends! For my first ever #hauntalong, I want to shine a (flickering) light on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (FWWM). Released in 1992, a year after the titular TV show's cancellation, David Lynch took a beloved setting known for its charming characters and said: "it's worse than that."

The cover of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, featuring a burning half of a heart-shaped "best friends" necklace with a photograph of Laura Palmer, a young blonde woman, smiling. In the background, red curtains line the walls of a room with a zig-zag black and white floor. Toward the bottom is the text, "In a town like Twin Peaks, no one is innocent."

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Reposted by Ben // Foresight Studio

Lone Archivist @lonearchivist.bsky.social · 6d

Hey! I'm Lone Archivist. A games and graphic designer.

Looking for help on your next project? My commissions are open for all of the following services and more!

Logo Design
Brand/Visual Identity Design
Manuscript/Editorial Layout
Sci-Fi Cartography
Crowdfunding Graphics
Interface/Terminal Design

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Reposted by Ben // Foresight Studio

Mike Murderens | Clear Keep @clearkeep.bsky.social · 11d

Weeeeeee're baaaack.

#hauntalong has a group of ttrpg wrting/arting/playing friends chatting about their favorite horror movies.

This year, we've got a full month of recos, and we'll truly push Bluesky's threading feature well beyond the black rainbow.

Come haunt along with us.

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Reposted by Ben // Foresight Studio

Haunted Table @hauntedtable.bsky.social · 12d

New project announcement! TRIANGLE U, with lead designer Noel Warford!

Check out a short teaser of the setting and some information in our public post below, then join in playtesting our first mission by signing up for the Patreon!

Class starts Monday.

www.patreon.com/posts/triang...

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Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 16d

I think it's inherently better because it's about witches

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Reposted by Ben // Foresight Studio

Nick @deepdark.games · 17d

Almost finished the layout of A Perfect Rock!

Here are some sneak peeks and my thoughts on the design:

A page spread from A Perfect Rock showing a variety of illustrated rocks, in the style of an old scientific book.

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Reposted by Ben // Foresight Studio

angel💀 @sabattons.com · 23d

it chafes me when platforms put forth these moderation guidelines that use the jargon of safety, inclusivity, and community before detailing all the kinds of art that ought be banned, shunned, persecuted. why is it that "community" always looks like absence, never curated abundance.

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Reposted by Ben // Foresight Studio

𝙒𝙚𝙨 𝙁𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙠𝙨 is Dead. @carrion-comfort.com · 23d

I don't know. Pretty fucking cool, innit?

The cover of The Between Core Rulebook featuring a paisley blue background and a sapphire set in an occult broach with a feminine eye leering at you from it.

Screenshot of the credits to the core rulebook showcasing Jason, the primary writer, and contributing writers including Wes.

Screenshot of the Library Hargrave House room. Showcasing a description, scene setting prompts and an unlockable move.

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Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 23d

for the record I'm neither autistic nor christian

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Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · 23d

Had a dream that I made and sold enamel pins that said "I'm autistic about Jesus Christ" and they were wildly popular, is this something

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Reposted by Ben // Foresight Studio

🇵🇸 Dean Tāne 🇵🇸 @dean-tane.bsky.social · Sep 6

Twin Peaks (1990) dir. David Lynch

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Reposted by Ben // Foresight Studio

momatoes @momatoes.com · 23d

I have ALWAYS wanted to do this kind of layout.

It is midnight, I need to sleep, but I feel excited to keep working on this.

A spread of a chapter opening. On the left page is a collage-type mix of black and white photography, marbled colors, and a painted bird. On the right page are text divided into neat columns and adorned by a giant paragraph at the top.

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Reposted by Ben // Foresight Studio

Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Podcast @gonebabygone.bsky.social · 25d

People want everything to be a binary between dooming and “we’re so back” but I’ll just say this is both a really troubling attack on press freedom and an open admission that your regime is fragile enough to feel threatened by Jimmy fucking Kimmel

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Reposted by Ben // Foresight Studio

Ben // Foresight Studio @foresightstudio.bsky.social · Sep 12

The handouts I designed for the new edition of The Between released to backers last weekend, so I want to highlight a few things I think are cool about them. The goal was to inject every Playbook and Threat with its own personality while keeping them consistent enough to be usable.

$A mockup of the first page of three handouts from TTRPG The Between, fanned out on a light grey surface. On the left, on top of the stack, is the playbook for The Mother, featuring clean lines, a serif all-caps font (Bodoni), and an anatomical diagram of a neonate, its umbilical cord stretching to the left edge of the page. In the middle of the stack (and slightly obscured) is the threat The Whateley Camera, which has elaborate white text overlaid atop a dark purple cloud. On the top right corner is a collaged image of light refraction patterns and a weathered daguerreotype of a woman in a dress. At the bottom right is the threat The Coven, on slightly yellow-tinted paper. The bottom right corner of the sheet bears a piece of art taken from John Bingley Garland's Blood Book, created in the 1850s. The blurry shadow of some leaves stretches from the left side of the frame across the top left edge of the stack of papers.$

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