"Eppy-Deppy-Diah!" a thing I say at the end of every episode.

@epidiah.bsky.social

1647 Followers 1480 Following

Author & tabletop role-playing game designer, perhaps known for Dread, Swords Without Master, Vast & Starlit, or Wolfspell. Suddenly, also a Clojure developer! (he/him) https://unwrittenearths.com https://dig1000holes.com 💀🪏

The back cover to Tomy's Fashion Plates, a very similar toy to the Mighty Men & Monsters Maker in the previous post, but this one creates fashions and fashion models. There are still leg plates, torso plates, and head plates, but they are of an incompatible shape and size for the MM & MM. You assemble your model in the outfit you want, put some paper over the plates, and then rub a pencil on the paper to create your illustration. There are, again, textures on the back of the plates.
The back cover to Tomy's Mighty Men & Monsters Maker, which illustrates how to assemble the toy's various leg, chest, and head plates to make a monster or mighty man and then put a piece of paper over the plates and rub on it with a crayon or pencil to make the illustration. Already an ingenious creative device, but that's not all! Because the backs of the plates have different textures like scales and fur, so you can flip them over and rub textures into your illustration!
Light green text on a dark green background that reads: Ever it was that the descendants of mighty families held up in their stone halls, weaving their intrigues and sowing the battlefields with our bones. Such was the nature of order, the world carved into fiefdoms by the swords of knights, watered by the blood of the conscripted and the sweat of toiling serfs. And such it would remain until the night of the new gods and their glittering starwind—its shimmering warmth passing through wall and flesh, kissing the blessed among us regardless of heritage, awaking strange sorceries in our blood. And now it all changes. What does a woman made of rock have to fear from a sword? What lord can make a knight who summons storms kneel before him? What law binds a peasant who can fly to other fields? A new day has come and with it a new war for the Gamma Thrones.
Howard Pyle's illustration of Friar Tuck carrying Robin across a pond piggy-back style, because the good friar lost some game. It's all very brightly colored and our merry men certainly look quite merry about it. The middle ages used to be cheery and shit, before A24 got their grubby little hands on it.
Five tarot-sized art cards and a box full of 59 more. One is a fantasy map. Another is a black-and-white illustration of a rapier in a thunderstorm. Another is a lavender goddess holding some adventurers up to a portal in her chest. Anther is a giant songbird peeking out of a little cottage. The last is a nice, relaxing fantasy hot spring.
Gold text on a dark blue background that reads: But it is how a phase does something, and not what it can do, that makes it important.
Gold text on a dark blue background that reads: "Roll the dice to seize the attention of your fellow players and to bend the tale to your will." There's a logo for ellipusus.com in the corner.
The Mollenhauer Elody recorded on a blank white background with a audio cable plugged into it near the labium. This particular recorder is painted like a dark blue night sky, with a moon and a bunch of stars on it. It's got some angles you wouldn't expect on a recorder, and an extra tone hole at the foot, but it is, otherwise, a recorder, like the ones you got in grade school. It is beautiful and it will make me whole.
The Blue Sky profile for one Dr. Rowan Hayes, who claims to be an author BUT he's also giving away free weekly AI tips and daily prompts, so my guess is that this asshole hasn't written anything of substance. Probably not even a doctor. Anyway, he followed me because I said "AI" in a post and that's enough evidence for him. He's following 23.6K people and has about a tenth of that in followers. You know the type. Parasite. Anyway, earned a swift block and now I'll never think of him again.
Four art cards, (left) two from the Glorious Dreams of Eight Cursed Swords Folio by Jack Cole and Sam Beck (right) two from the Fugitives of the Shattered Menagerie set by indui (left) and Saša Đurđević (right). The first card is set in a ancient city. A large bird carrying a sword stands before a statue of a tiger with a sword in its mouth. The second card is a corpse on a pile of skulls. The corpse is clutching a sword stuck in its chest. The sword is crackling with vibrant golden energy. The third card is a giant dragon peering at you over a craggy shore. It's tail loops around a small cottage on the shore. The fourth card has a weird horse with a human face. Astride this horse is a rider wearing a sun mask. In the sky, there appears to be a full solar eclipse AND a comet. A inset at the top of the card shows closer details on the comet.
The box to the Kellogg's cereal C-3P0's, featuring the titular droid offering you a bowl of figure-eights made from honey-nut Cheerio's.
The scene from Logan's Run where the two Sandmen (guys wearing black tracksuits with a thick silver horizontal stripe across their chest) are shooting their sparkle guns at a runner (panicked guy in an orange-red tracksuit). The Sandmen look a bit maniacal. Cause they're future cops and all cops are bastards.
An Eastman and Laird original drawing of Casey Jones, their sporting-goods-themed vigilante [derogatory] [complimentary]. He's either leaping or crouching down (there's no background, so it's hard to tell what this pose is.) He's wearing a goalie mask, carrying a taped-up baseball bat in each hand, and there's a golf bag slung over his back filled with clubs, a hockey stick, and maybe a cane?
Two six-sided dice on a wooden plate. One is speckled gray with silvery pips and it is showing a four. The other is a speckled forest green with gold pips and it is showing a one.
A translucent red die with white pips resting on a wooden plate. The result of the roll is five. If you take a moment and look a little closer, you begin to realize the result of the roll can only be five. Each side has five pips. It's not a die at all, but a deceptively fancy cube!
Pale yellow text on a reddish-brown background that reads: Preparation Rites Gather pens, paper, one to three companions, and two six-sided dice that you can distinguish from each other to a campfire crackling in an ancient and haunted wood, or around a candle on a soiled tavern table, or near the defiant embers of a torch sealed in the catacombs buried beneath an unwary metropolis. Wherever there is light enough to read this scroll by.
A screen shot of the above post, followed by a post from @mobydickatsea.bsky.social which reads "This is what I mean."
Gather writing implements, scraps of paper, three or four of your cohort, and two six-sided dice that you can easily tell apart to a table. A mahogany table adorned with thick, greasy candles and five human skulls. Failing that, a stout oaken table near a glowing hearth, replete with ale-filled steins and a succulent roast. Or, if you prefer, a tabletop chipped whole from a single obsidian stone, placed on the back of a coiled serpent of silver in a room high in a lonely tower shrouded in a prismatic fog.
The following written on a dusky blue to brick red gradient: The Styles In your mind's eye, picture the cover of your tale, the title scrawled upon it along with a striking list of the particular sorts of adventure awaiting the reader. "The Haunted Crown," a tale of war, tragedy, and regretful magicks! "On the Ridge of Forever," a tale of wonder, mystery and high adventure! "The Scrolls in Amber," a tale of seduction and intrigue! Found within this striking list are your styles. Each of them an agreement between the players to work towards a certain type of story and a single rule to aid them in their endeavor.
The following is written on a pleasant light green to sky blue gradient: The Respite Phase A secluded glen. A familiar ale hall. High atop an arid peak. A caravanserai at dusk. In the throes of a week-long wedding celebration. Begrieved at the foot of a fresh tomb. And most of all, sharing song and story at the campfire. Rogues lead lives of little comfort with the thunder ever pealing in the distance. The Respite Phase is for those fleeting moments when the rogues can let their guard down. Turn to the Respite Phase when you want to give the rogues room to breathe. Never use a Respite Phase when there are no threads yet on the table.
A comic depicting maybe the most horrific moment of fiction from my childhood, and I grew up in the 70s and 80s. It's from the Tripod comic strip based on the John Christopher novels. In a quaint English village with a giant alien tripod towering over it, a young boy is wondering about his friend Jack who has his capping day today. "I wonder what Jack's thinking. Next year is my time. As soon as he is capped, he will be a man and no longer my friend." The final panel shows the young boy talking to his, now capped friend, Jack. Jack's head is shaved and some gold circuitry is embedded in his scalp. The young boy says, "I've been thinking about what your said about the time before the Tripods." And Jack responses, with a dull, content look on his face, "That was all nonsense."
A line illustration of the guy from the AD&D Monster Manual who is suffering from rot grub. He's wearing chainmail and a steel cap. And sporting a blonde mustache a bit like two fingers spreading out from his nostrils. You don't see the grub here, just the horrified look on his face.
An example contact sheet of dozens of art cards by dozens of artists, each one a glorious portal into a world of wonder and adventure. Too many to enumerate here.
The following is written on a purple gradient that perhaps invokes an angry sky: Drizzling Rogue Players, should you face a Storm that is unworthy of your rogue’s attention, roll the dice and dispatch it immediately. Send a clear signal to the Overplayer that such opponents are beneath you. But do not cleave through a worthy threat so swiftly. Anything you deal with in a single roll the Overplayer will cast aside. So show your interest in a Storm by letting it rain for several rolls. Overplayer, should a Rogue Player destroy your Storm out of hand, steel your heart and come at them from a new angle. They wipe clean a field of foot soldiers, only to see them rise again under eldritch command. The assassin so quickly cut down was mere distraction from the real foe now making off with the rogues’ hard-earned spoils. If you need inspiration, draw the Thunder to you so that it may Storm.
The following is written in a pale yellow on a burnt orange gradient that looks a bit like a sunrise: The Undreamt Realities Somewhere across the great gulfs of time and dimension there is a world within which your adventures are just now occurring. What is spoken at your gaming table finds bone and flesh in this strange universe. But what is unspoken remains yet unrealized, even on this distant shore. Describe to your fellow players a skull encrusted in jewels that shimmer only in moonlight and it exists. Tell them no more and the origin and purpose of the skull remains unwritten, perhaps awaiting another player’s voice. Since only that which is spoken is real, all may narrate without fear of treading on another player’s unspoken plan, and the voids you leave in your narration can be filled by any player—or left empty for a tale told another day. There is power in this. Foreshadow, drop hints, deliver half the story and let the other players surprise you with an unexpected reality.
SPOILERS: The scene from the end of The Quiet Earth, a single figure stands before a calm ocean, silhouetted by the rising sunlight reflected in the water, but the sky shows a massive ringed planet rising instead of the sun, and the clouds look alien, like angelic mushroom clouds, blooming across the horizon. Everything is eerie and peaceful. Lots of light blues and warm yellows.
A hand pump attached to a basketball.
Ray Liotta as Gallian from In the Name of the King: a Dungeon Siege Tale, who is apparently a magus that wears a leather jacket with a popped collar and a dark green button-down shirt. Seen here on a small stone throne, resting with his eyes closed and hands on his knees. He looks a little exasperated, to be honest.
A little, black and white picture of Jorge Luis Borges, followed by this quote: “The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary … More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books. —Prologue to The Garden of Forking Paths, 10 November 1941” ― Jorge Luis Borges
"Who do I pay to tell me how many hit points Elric has?" written in the style of the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe logo. Lots of bright, shiny blue block letters projected outward with streaks of reddish-orange behind them. All on a purple background.
A chart demonstrating why you might choose BEMoji over similar frameworks. Features of the chart include a row labeled "Colleague confusion" in which BEMoji gets the "Maximum" score and a genuine argument that it is faster to type because hunting down an emoji saves you keystrokes over writing a name out entirely.
Ed Harris as King William in pseudo-medieval armor, looking perhaps a little skeptical. To his left stands Tom Savini in black armor, holding his hand out, open, before Ed, as if to say, "Come on! Look at this!" Behind them is a school bus from the 70s, painted in sunset colors with the words "Fight or Yield" written on it in blackletter.
Four eidolon cards. The first two are under the title "Glorious Dreams of Eight Cursed Swords" The first of which is by Jack Cole and depicts a massive bird carrying an ornate sword under the stone statue of a tiger with a different ornate sword in its mouth. The second is by Sam Beck and depicts a long dead corpse on a pile of skulls, reaching up and grasping a sword crackling with energy that is lodged in the corpse's chest. The next two pieces are under the title "Fugitives of the Shattered Menagerie." The first of these is by indui and shows a dragon towering over two mountains and obscuring the sun, its tail wrapped around a lone cottage looking very vulnerable on a hill in the foreground. The last piece is by Saša Đurđević and is a wild scene, showing a horse with a human head ridden by a "human" with a sun mask or perhaps even a sun-head. Stars, a total solar eclipse, and a comet are visible in the sky and section at the top of the piece looks like a part of a sketchbook drawing close-up details of this comet.
A look at the table of contents of the book. Specifically the section on Resources on the Internet which includes, but is not limited to: Stalking the Wild Resource Friends Network News and Mailing Lists Archie Gopher WAIS The World-Wide-Web
The cover of the 1992 book The Whole Internet: User's Guide & Catalog. It features a wood cut image of a Renaissance man studying a globe.
Screenshot of a The Onion Q & A that reads: Q: What is Sinners about? A: America's inability to discuss its complex racial history without bringing the Irish into things.
A picture of a sign that reads "Caution: wolf sculpture may be hot." In the background, there's a metal sculpture of a wolf, mid-lunge.
A screenshot of beancount.io that reads "Accounting, reimagined for AI-era. Write your finances like code--with AI-powered insights, automation, and full transparency. Beancount.io brings scriptable, auditable accounting to the age of LLMs."
A screen shot of the list of links, only the first half of which have been clicked on (plus a couple FAQ links).
A terminal that starts with a image of a skull and shovel made from dots and then has the following text: λ ~/ ed P *a Writing my new game idea here because Will said not to write directly into a word processor. . *,p Writing my new game idea here because Will said not to write directly into a word processor. *w new_game.md 93 *q λ ~/
A comic panel with ROM the Spaceknight saying, "You err in a number of instances, human. First, it is not clear that your blow would have slain me. It certainly would have slain you. Second, I did not come here to kill you. Indeed, my mission on Earth is to save you and all of your confused kind."
The Invincible meme where two costumed super powered people watch a couple of jets fly by. The elder superhuman says, "Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power." The jets have been labeled "AI Bros" and the superhumans have been labeled "TTRPGs & LARPs"
Your humble narrator attempting a half pipe despite not having touched a skateboard in 35 years. And then proceeding to wipeout, taking his patient mentor with him.
The subject heading to an email from Stripe.com that reads, "AI's most influential investors join the Sessions lineup." So, Stripe's months away from being a full-on scam.
The cases for Robin of Sherwood DVDs strewn out on an orange couch.
The poster for the 1984 movie The Dungeonmaster, which is unrelated to D&D, but the poster has deadly board game vibes. It's a painting of the head of Richard Moll as the villain, all in blue and flanked by storm clouds. He's holding a red game board with a white grid on it. On this board are various challenges, scenes, and characters from the movie, presented as white and blue game pieces. The tag line for the movie is "He is the overlord of strange beasts and stolen souls..." which is, admittedly, fucking good.
The cover to Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast, which features the band's mascot, Eddie, a desiccated corpses with a full head of white hair and vacuous eye sockets, playing puppeteer to a classic red devil with a pitchfork who is dance over the burning landscape.
A rough, sketchy drawing of a dragon clinging to the side of a cliff, almost booping noses with a donkey climbing up.
Nikolas Grace as the Sheriff of Nottingham from the Robin of Sherwood series. He's all dressed up in a red robe with gold trimmings, slouching in a throne with a goblet in his hand, brimming with contempt for those who serve him.
A screen shot of a YouTube thumbnail for 10 Hours of TV Static White Noise and the thumbnail is just a random assortment of black and white pixels. Just static. The sweet, sweet void of pure chaos.
A quote from Shannon McMaster, author of Forest Outlaws: "Swords Without Master opened my eyes to a fresh new role play experience. It was like hearing the call to adventure for the first time again." To the right of the quote is a stylized black-and-white glyph of a swords surrounded by eldritch energies.
Preview image of Tarot-sized Eidolon card illustrated by Goran Gligović. A boar-headed creature bearing a bronze axe crouches at the feet of a thin, tall, green-skinned figure cloaked in a brown robe with blue, red and gold details. They hold a thin sword in one hand with the other resting on the boar-creature's back. In the background, a dull yellow sun is framed between the sword and the person's head, with dark red sky and clouds; a tower rises from dark red hills while the figures are standing on a ochre plain of color.
A young boy with a floppy head of dark wavy hair and a handsome young man wearing a vest and a pirate's blouse, standing in front of a clock face with roman numerals on it. This is Meeno Peluce as Jeffery Jones and the late Jon-Erik Hexum as Phineas Bogg from the classic 80s show "Voyagers!"
The sheet music for "Theology/Civilization" from the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack.
A title card for a presentation on computer programming from the 80s. The title is "Structure & Interpretation of Computer Programs" The instructors' names are Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman. And the gaphic is a classic wizard with a long, white beard, purple robe and floppy conical hat, all bedazzled with silver stars and crescent moons. The wizard is gazing into a crystal ball that ze is elevating between zirself and the viewer on stands of sparkling energy pouring from zir fingers. The crystal ball has a squiggle ying-yang style line with "Eval" written on the left and "Apply" written on the right.
A quote from "The Phoenix on the Sword" by Robert E. Howard. The quote says, "Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth..." The quote is bookended by two strange beasts. The one on the left appears to be a lion or dog with a stylized sun for its head and the one on the right is its sibling with a stylized crescent moon head.
Half a page of the Prince Valiant comic showing our hero carving a face in some goose skin, the webbed feet of the fowl becoming the ears of this mask. Val puts this horrible thing on his face and creates the illusion that he's a demon swinging in to storm a castle guarded by an ogre.
A panel from an old Prince Valiant comic showing Val in disguise, wearing a beret with a feather in it and a frilly scarf, striped shoulder pads. A bad-ass dandy.
The cover to the first Grim Jack comic, showing our "hero" with a saber and some sort of futuristic gun. He's wearing a cape and a scarf and a beret with a feather sticking out of it. His scarred face has a scowl and a cigarette in his mouth. It's framed by his long, luxurious black hair with a single streak of gray/white. Oh, and he's got big old gloves studded around the wrists with, maybe, big brass buttons? A bad-ass dandy.
A notification telling me to turn on notifications.