BC Foley
@coarsehairpete.bsky.social
He/Him, 33. Unsleeping MFA grad looking at ttrpg game design. Doing stuff here rather than finishing a manuscript about pirates.
If we're trying to imagine those as meaningfully different terms, my brain would go to a rule being a set directive for people playing to bind, direct, or arbitrate play experience, while mechanics are the emergent patterns of player behavior or experience resulting from systems of connected rules.
December 15, 2025 at 2:16 AM
If we're trying to imagine those as meaningfully different terms, my brain would go to a rule being a set directive for people playing to bind, direct, or arbitrate play experience, while mechanics are the emergent patterns of player behavior or experience resulting from systems of connected rules.
So while pastoralism might end up a 'cheat' from hunter-gatherer existance into larger and more complex populations similar to the agricultural revolution, it seems like it would have less natural on-ramps to strict territories, industrialization, and resource possession for systemic violence.
December 10, 2025 at 5:19 AM
So while pastoralism might end up a 'cheat' from hunter-gatherer existance into larger and more complex populations similar to the agricultural revolution, it seems like it would have less natural on-ramps to strict territories, industrialization, and resource possession for systemic violence.
While conflicts likely would emerge between large herds for livestock raiding and grazing lands, the mobile existance would likely make large or sustained conflicts less common, and we'd likely see less strict hierarchies (autocracies, slavery) without that geographic concentration and permanence.
December 10, 2025 at 5:19 AM
While conflicts likely would emerge between large herds for livestock raiding and grazing lands, the mobile existance would likely make large or sustained conflicts less common, and we'd likely see less strict hierarchies (autocracies, slavery) without that geographic concentration and permanence.
It's very conceivable we wouldn't even have sedentary society as such, with ranching being the closest we get to an agricultural evolution. Power blocs and populations would be (likely nomadic) pastoralists following herds of domesticated animals, like in the real world sahel or central asia.
December 10, 2025 at 5:19 AM
It's very conceivable we wouldn't even have sedentary society as such, with ranching being the closest we get to an agricultural evolution. Power blocs and populations would be (likely nomadic) pastoralists following herds of domesticated animals, like in the real world sahel or central asia.
Totally fair! I can enjoy a good lore bible in the mix myself, I just think it needs to be brought out in the context of how tables can sink their teeth into it/use it, and a risk of setting-heavy games is you risk giving players and even gms no meaning interface on your cool world.
December 5, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Totally fair! I can enjoy a good lore bible in the mix myself, I just think it needs to be brought out in the context of how tables can sink their teeth into it/use it, and a risk of setting-heavy games is you risk giving players and even gms no meaning interface on your cool world.
I'm not kidding when I say it's 100 pages in before it starts addressing how you actually play anything in the game.
December 5, 2025 at 10:40 PM
I'm not kidding when I say it's 100 pages in before it starts addressing how you actually play anything in the game.
Sorry, trying to stay vague so as to not to drag a product I'm sure people were passionate about. I'm sure it wasn't intentional padding, just very enthused for its setting, had the budget and art to show off all they wanted... And no editor forcing them to pare down to what's useful to the game.
December 5, 2025 at 10:40 PM
Sorry, trying to stay vague so as to not to drag a product I'm sure people were passionate about. I'm sure it wasn't intentional padding, just very enthused for its setting, had the budget and art to show off all they wanted... And no editor forcing them to pare down to what's useful to the game.
I think at least one recent mid to large sized indie release fits it to a T. 300 pages, basically all relevant rules or material land in the middle 100, and the outer 200 are all lavish art and granular setting detail, and neither part feels especially efficient or economic.
December 5, 2025 at 10:21 PM
I think at least one recent mid to large sized indie release fits it to a T. 300 pages, basically all relevant rules or material land in the middle 100, and the outer 200 are all lavish art and granular setting detail, and neither part feels especially efficient or economic.
Notably the bar is much lower for interest in a new systems (or new derivatives with interesting angles - PBTA/FiTD) than addendums or a game in a legacy system. I find myself very resistant to try say, a game of a licensed media property, especially if it's just running with d20 or Year:Zero.
December 3, 2025 at 11:51 PM
Notably the bar is much lower for interest in a new systems (or new derivatives with interesting angles - PBTA/FiTD) than addendums or a game in a legacy system. I find myself very resistant to try say, a game of a licensed media property, especially if it's just running with d20 or Year:Zero.
Generally I'm gotten on the conceptual level - does a game take an interesting narrative frame, does its mechanics pursue an interesting dynamic, does its setting feel evocative and novel - and ideally all of those interact.
This is just what makes a system stand out from the crowd, mind.
This is just what makes a system stand out from the crowd, mind.
December 3, 2025 at 11:51 PM
Generally I'm gotten on the conceptual level - does a game take an interesting narrative frame, does its mechanics pursue an interesting dynamic, does its setting feel evocative and novel - and ideally all of those interact.
This is just what makes a system stand out from the crowd, mind.
This is just what makes a system stand out from the crowd, mind.
I stand corrected. The zoom on the photo cut off the ends that re-encapsulated that in play a bit better (though that's not on the poster), but you can definitely disagree with the mechanic or game philosophy.
December 2, 2025 at 8:21 PM
I stand corrected. The zoom on the photo cut off the ends that re-encapsulated that in play a bit better (though that's not on the poster), but you can definitely disagree with the mechanic or game philosophy.
I don't think they did. This is someone copy pasting the characters used in Mothership examples to try to demonstrate what they don't like about the system. I can't find the source for this anywhere, and it's doesn't appear to be any of the main mothership booklets (which this seems too tall for).
December 2, 2025 at 7:47 PM
I don't think they did. This is someone copy pasting the characters used in Mothership examples to try to demonstrate what they don't like about the system. I can't find the source for this anywhere, and it's doesn't appear to be any of the main mothership booklets (which this seems too tall for).
Goes to the moral absolutism of early D&D design, which assumes good and evil as tangible and expressed forces getting into cosmic wheel stuff. Modern DMs often pull that back from mortals and make it detect outsiders (demon/celestial/fae/undead/etc.) but yeah, it's weird to modern sensibilities.
December 2, 2025 at 7:17 AM
Goes to the moral absolutism of early D&D design, which assumes good and evil as tangible and expressed forces getting into cosmic wheel stuff. Modern DMs often pull that back from mortals and make it detect outsiders (demon/celestial/fae/undead/etc.) but yeah, it's weird to modern sensibilities.
Having only read through the first, I feel like a troupe style system would work amazing with black company - rank and file mercs as minor characters shared at the table whose control rotate by scenes, and important figues like mages or officers are centerpiece characters, either communal or unique.
December 2, 2025 at 7:03 AM
Having only read through the first, I feel like a troupe style system would work amazing with black company - rank and file mercs as minor characters shared at the table whose control rotate by scenes, and important figues like mages or officers are centerpiece characters, either communal or unique.
Sure, being specific in the way these games triumph and struggle can be useful, excluding those fundamental structures they actually share. But instances of them being 'all the same' often comes with a dismissal of all of them as inherently bad out of hand. Which just seems thought terminating.
November 25, 2025 at 4:17 PM
Sure, being specific in the way these games triumph and struggle can be useful, excluding those fundamental structures they actually share. But instances of them being 'all the same' often comes with a dismissal of all of them as inherently bad out of hand. Which just seems thought terminating.
I get that grasping variety requires familiarity (the metalhead principle, for lack of an actual socialogical term), but claiming brindletween=tsl=pthk=bluebeard's bride, when those vary in basic assumptions of narrative authority, agency, structures, and fundamental purpose seems truly wild.
November 25, 2025 at 4:50 AM
I get that grasping variety requires familiarity (the metalhead principle, for lack of an actual socialogical term), but claiming brindletween=tsl=pthk=bluebeard's bride, when those vary in basic assumptions of narrative authority, agency, structures, and fundamental purpose seems truly wild.
Whether those are purely a purely knock on outcomes of hypercapitalist cultures of efficiency, passive consumption, and marketing brain or what, post literate literalism feels both something we've always had to some extent but also very much a rising problem for many mediums in our particular now.
November 22, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Whether those are purely a purely knock on outcomes of hypercapitalist cultures of efficiency, passive consumption, and marketing brain or what, post literate literalism feels both something we've always had to some extent but also very much a rising problem for many mediums in our particular now.
Definitely feels part of a growing thing, yeah. Same forces that have movies and TV explain themselves or publishers to seek stories with minimum of nuance. Call it literacy loss, technological overload leading us to examine nothing beneath the surface, failure to exercise critical thinking.
November 22, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Definitely feels part of a growing thing, yeah. Same forces that have movies and TV explain themselves or publishers to seek stories with minimum of nuance. Call it literacy loss, technological overload leading us to examine nothing beneath the surface, failure to exercise critical thinking.
Are there other games in that genre of adverserial GMPCs worth looking into either for play or just understanding the trend? You mention Girl Frame, and it seems like the Between's Mastermind system fits that, but I'm curious what else can be found in that lineage.
November 18, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Are there other games in that genre of adverserial GMPCs worth looking into either for play or just understanding the trend? You mention Girl Frame, and it seems like the Between's Mastermind system fits that, but I'm curious what else can be found in that lineage.
I mean this is the core logic of the brindlewood/between system, yeah?
November 17, 2025 at 7:18 PM
I mean this is the core logic of the brindlewood/between system, yeah?
Not that those are wrong or off, but definitely represents some of the more reactive, critical, or maverick entries of the genre - as big as westerns were as a cultural force, the genre's standouts are its reactions or subversions (which given the genre's work in mythmaking, makes perfect sense).
November 16, 2025 at 1:32 AM
Not that those are wrong or off, but definitely represents some of the more reactive, critical, or maverick entries of the genre - as big as westerns were as a cultural force, the genre's standouts are its reactions or subversions (which given the genre's work in mythmaking, makes perfect sense).
Ooh! What's interesting is how only stagecoach plays the genre straight (as it exists in its mythologizing, monumental form). Fistful is the foundation of the spaghetti western splinter, butch is a William Goldman comedy with the trappings and a few themes of the western, and dead man is dead man.
November 16, 2025 at 1:32 AM
Ooh! What's interesting is how only stagecoach plays the genre straight (as it exists in its mythologizing, monumental form). Fistful is the foundation of the spaghetti western splinter, butch is a William Goldman comedy with the trappings and a few themes of the western, and dead man is dead man.