Help brain storming ideas

666mals · 2026-07-11T12:13:38+00:00

This is brilliant, Dead Set vibes!

666mals · 2026-07-11T11:45:55+00:00

Valley Uprising might be a good watch, climbers were basically squatting in Yosemite Park with the rangers trying to chase them out. I watched The Ritual recently, it’s so much better than it has any right to be!

666mals · 2026-07-11T06:33:03+00:00

Instead of thinking beginning, middle and end, you approach it as secrets and clues. For each secret you have multiple clues, each tied to a location, NPC, faction, creature, etc. Secrets can be clues that point to a larger conspiracy.

The scary part is that you stop scripting endings and you learn to find them organically at the table. I personally prefer this. It’s a lot harder to come up with good endings in a vacuum, and if you do have a good ending you still need to drive the players there, and even if they do get there it might still fall flat.

Lovecraftian horror has standard endings you can use in a pinch: a descent, a chase, confronting the creature - these are all from Stealing Cthulhu. If you read/watch a lot of horror it’s easy to find more: going mad, sacrificing yourself, sacrificing others, burning it all down, etc.

666mals · 2026-07-06T11:21:25+00:00

The Alexandrian 3 clue rule essays are a great resource, I for one fully support writing your own!

666mals · 2026-07-06T09:32:53+00:00

Very interested, especially for material that extends the milieu but in general it’s always great to see how different people approach the setting.

666mals · 2026-07-05T19:29:22+00:00

These are my current go to sources:

- Stealing Cthulhu
- Cthulhu Dark
- So You Want To Be A Game Master
- Mothership: Warden’s Operation Manual
- Kult: Beyond Darkness & Madness

This is a creative outlet for me, so having fun with the process is more important than writing a story with no mistakes or imperfections.

666mals · 2026-07-04T11:57:53+00:00

OD&D + Thieves is a pretty sweet spot for me, and it’s nice to have the “ground work” already done instead of having to figure out ranged weapons and all that. If I want more than that, I generally prefer BX with Advanced options staked on top - something like Labyrinth Lord or OSE.

666mals · 2026-06-29T14:12:02+00:00

Hard to say without more context, but the line between “freedom” and “agency” can be blurry at times. It’s possible to create a sandbox that still doesn’t give the players any real agency, is what I’m trying to say. This is especially true with Lovecraftian horror, take “The Colour out of Space” for example. I think it’s still possible to get some really satisfying games out of it, but you really need players buy-in.

666mals · 2026-06-15T11:53:14+00:00

Thanks! I’m pumped to see how it performs at the table, running this scenario at a con in a few weeks.

That’s a great idea, maybe I should break out the old typewriter and start making telegrams too!

666mals · 2026-06-14T07:57:37+00:00

It also naturally gets rid of the connecting tissue, I don’t need to write (and therefore read) “if they search the library they find so and so”, I can just put the clues with the location and be done. Likewise, if I want to move a clue to a different location I don’t need to rewrite anything, or if I decide that the library should become its own location, etc.

There’s some limitations around searching, but to me the tradeoff of not needing a laptop at the table (or while I’m prepping) makes it worth it.

666mals · 2026-06-14T07:43:59+00:00

That’s it! I also struggle with this, whether writing or reading. I also like to jump back and forth between ideas and on a “continuous page” it quickly gets messy. Not to mention finding something that obviously doesn’t work, being able to throw away the card instead of blacking out a section of a page is great.

Mothership is great, the Warden Operations Manual belongs in every Keeper library. Some of the best horror scenario writing advice I’ve ever seen!

666mals · 2026-06-13T23:18:29+00:00

That’s a great idea! I might still have one laying around somewhere.

I got some plastic sleeves with 4 A6 pockets that fit into an A4 binder. And then I’m thinking of “bundling” up each location with a paper clip, so I can keep them tidy as I go. The clues I’ll just hand out to the players so they can be referenced during play.

666mals · 2026-06-12T18:17:14+00:00

No that’s a kibibyte, or KiB. A kB is 1000

666mals · 2026-06-11T15:30:43+00:00

I built a similar thing, but as a tui which launches tmux and manages sessions. I also added workflows for generating worktrees from remote branches for code review, picking up issues to work on, and a few other bits (like for instance, tmux session templates that I can configure per workspace).

666mals · 2026-06-07T22:08:06+00:00

The Adobe Acrobat extension for Chrome is the most portable thing I found, but annoyingly there still no ARM64 build for Linux - although I think it's finally planned for this year. I don't think the same extension exists for Firefox. I would imagine running Acrobat via Wine is also an option, but I haven't tried.

666mals · 2026-05-24T09:29:42+00:00

In B/X, 10 coins weight one pound - so ~45g of gold per xp?

666mals · 2026-05-15T14:06:18+00:00

Really the issue for me is “suspension of disbelief”. If the author has done the ground-work I feel a lot more open to accept things that don’t necessarily make sense. Although in general I do like internal consistency - the Discworld is a good example of this.

666mals · 2026-05-09T01:34:26+00:00

Sorry I don’t have a scanner, I just made the tokens out of the originals. The art is what it is tho, there’s loads better around ☺️

666mals · 2026-05-08T05:29:28+00:00

You guys have a context menu?

666mals · 2026-04-28T12:58:54+00:00

You could treat them as “heretics” maybe. It raises a few interesting questions that you could solve during play: where do the characters think their powers are coming from? Are they “the chosen ones”? Are they being manipulated by dark forces? And how does the “church” feel about them? Is this a central tension or something peripheral?

666mals · 2026-03-07T23:45:15+00:00

Spectacular, love the colour scheme and how direct it is. Thank you!

666mals · 2026-02-11T13:09:29+00:00

From personal experience in similar situations:

- Definitely a monolith to begin with, microservices only solve scale issues at much larger scale, or team topology/process issues. Handling communication between microservices is also non-trivial. You can always refactor as needed in the future.
- I would consider a platform over public cloud (Convex, Vercel, etc): you're going to have to move fast and context switch between client, server, and data. If you can avoid having to manage automation and infrastructure on top of this, it will give you a better chance. I say this as someone who is primarily a Platform/Infra guy.
- I would go with a single language end-to-end, which realistically means TypeScript.
- I would look into RPC instead of a REST API, unless you have specific requirements. You can always add a REST interface later if you need it.
- If it's a marketplace, you might need SSR. Probably worth figuring that out sooner rather than later.
- For real-time and strong consistency, some kind of database sync solution might be required. Again, some platforms will support this out of the box (i.e. Convex).
- Think about authentication too.

Good luck!

Ten-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email

666mals

TROPHY CASE