jason grinblat

@jfg.land

7523 Followers 671 Following

creative head at freehold games co-creator — Caves of Qud, Sproggiwood generated histories, hidden monasteries, sentient plants🌹🌹 he/him

Center label III from the Caves of Qud Vinyl: Waning Salt Sut Tracklist: Binaural Concept Golgotha Deeper Eaters of Chrome, and How (Sultan's Song) Lazarus Barathrum's Study
Digital clay sculpture for the Caves of Qud vinyl release. Left side of the triptych that depicts the flora and fauna of Qud across its landscapes. There is an excerpt from a poem on the margin: Hark! The World wakes, a quasar wind splits the Desert and lights the silent spilling Marsh. The Singing Bell rings from under nowhere, and sound is invented. It breaks through in soft clay, unsure at first— the bleating of a goat, the nervous flute of the apple farmer, Caught in fastening whistles to his starry orchard, Blown free of the lonely canyon and up the forever gate. The ear is a gate! The swift chorus thins to a hollow and recreates the world anew, in holographic image, where the alchemy of self, and the catalysts of dim faces in candle-lit rooms, transmutes it, alters its albedo. Then-
Digital clay sculpture for the Caves of Qud vinyl release. Intricately depicted ruined arch of Grit Gate. Credits underneath.
Saint Vulture's centerpiece gatefold art for the Caves of Qud vinyl release. Digital clay sculpture of Qud's flora and fauna across its landscapes, anchored by the Spindle in the middle.
Caves of Qud screenshot. popup message: "You rifle through the trash, and find some trash."
LEGO giraffe with a pot on its head
goofy youtube thumbnail for a popsci physics video. 0D: glowing point 2D: flat projection of a bald man 3D: also a flat projection of a bald man because it's on a computer monitor 4D: Many images of the man transposed in a vertical line 5D: Transposed man shadows around a man orb 7D: Escher-like maze and question mark
Photo of the complete Babylonian Talmud for sale at a bookstore: $650
Ghost (1990) movie poster. Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in a heated moment of passion
Dwarf Fortress long-snouted finned dino-like creature
Rob's avatar: 3-eyed lil guy
ASCII-painted map of a mushroom village
Skinner experiment birds pecking buttons for food, with a speech bubble superimposed on
Star Trek: TNG title card generator: "Short Romulan"
Ds9 title card generator: "I'm here you fuckass bitch"
Online form: "Do you need a firefighter endorsement?"
I need to apologize. The university where I am provost used AI to replace our graduation ceremony and — to our surprise! — our cherished students were upset by the alteration. We had asked ChatGPT to devise a more efficient diploma delivery routine than the legacy procedure of walking across stage one by one at the call of the graduate’s name. The AI assistant divided our auditorium floor into a number of polyomino square sectors (it called them ‘squectors’), where students clustered according to a number of factors including height, GPA, and others, intangible. Ramps were introduced, suspended above stage and fitted to rotational hinges, so the rolled diplomas could wheel down to each squector at a controlled and geometrically appropriate rate. The AI application misparsed the auditorium floor plan and several of the squectors were drawn too small, forcing students into packed and humid clusters. At times, the rate of the diploma spool became fiercely rapid — torrential, if I’m honest — and the emblems of achievement were blown like discarded newspaper across the chamber hall, plastered finally to the floor by dirt smeared from attendees’ shoeheels in the midst of the trampling chaos. It is the job of our institution to prepare students for the world and its changing times. While our hearts were in the right place, our missteps caused delay and unease. On behalf of the administration and our enduring institution: we will do better.
Email from Victor Vaughn at victor@park-capitalbizfunding.site "We can fund today you know.."
r/ManyBaggers subreddit post titled "Is there such thing as to many?" Some bags are included in the attached image.
Twinned set armor from Elden Ring
Post by George Learmonth (@leiwaan.bsky.social): Caves of Qud is like getting read the Illiad by a dog
South Florida Eckerd from renowned Facebook group #flashbacksouthflorida
Caves of Qud Legendary Land - Cave At the beginning of your upkeep, put a Stratum counter on Caves of Qud. T: Add {1}. T: Put 3 Stratum counters on Caves of Qud. You lose 3 life. T, Sacrifice Caves of Qud: Choose one — Create X Treasure tokens, where X is the number of Stratum counters on Caves of Qud. Then, target opponent reveals cards from the top of their library until they reveal an artifact or creature card with casting cost equal to X. Put that card onto the battlefield under their control and put the rest of the revealed cards on the bottom of their library in a random order. _or_ Reveal cards from the top of your library until you reveal an artifact or creature card with casting cost equal to X, where X is the number of Stratum counters on Caves of Qud. Put that card onto the battlefield under your control and put the rest of the revealed cards on the bottom of your library in a random order. Then, target opponent creates X Treasure tokens.
Screenshot of the Genius page for NIN's I Don't Not Want This "[Pre-Chorus] I do not want this I do not want this I do not want this I do not want this"
Old tweet by @unhaunting: "im so ruthlessly commited to Dialectics that i am constantly at war with the person i was two days ago, who is a clown and a coward"
Broccoli in a colander, stalk looks like a snout
Some broccoli in a colander. It looks like it has a snout.
Excerpt from the Wile E. Coyote Wikipedia page: "9. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures."
A bunch of plastic flamingos in a front yard
Cover of NIN album The Fragile
Altered Nintendo satisfaction survey about Caves of Qud: "Thank you for playing Caves of Qud. Why does it look like that?" [someone has answered "I don't know]
Sam Altman's tweet about complying with the DoW. Highlighted portion: "Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles,"
Ordering a burrito on an online takeout form with the bewildering option "do not make" selected
Description of a limestone wall from Caves of Qud "Invertebrate life was sucked of its tissue and bled still over millions of years. The dusky rock is a necropolis."
View into the inner branches of a overly abundant lemon tree
A lemon tree with a huge yield of ripe lemons
Seatback on a Southwest flight. The text "Literature only" is printed on the tray table.
A youtube thumbnail baby meme with a portrait of a baby on a black background and the text "The Baby in the Mirror Who Looks Just Like Me" and below it "Interview #424"
A tweet by Gabrielle Drolet "unfortunately the soft animal of my body loves carcinogens"
A Montessori wooden switch board
VASA MENTIONED in the Dark Souls font
A backloggd style 5x5 grid of "best games from the first millenium" From right to left and then down: Backgammon, Go, Senet, Chinese playing card game, Nine Men’s Morris Tabula, Royal Game of Ur, Harpastum, Fidchell, Alquerque Pankration, Mehen, Pachisi, Marbles, Liubo Seega, Roman dice game, Polo, Hounds and Jackals, Knucklebones Episkyros , x, Snakes and Ladders, Hnefatafl, Ashtapada
Excerpt from A Guide to the Carnival at the End of the World Tarot: "When you feel certain of the question --& certain that you truly want an answer, for often we confuse wanting clarity with wanting relief..."
Opening of The Empire of the Necromancers by Clark Ashton Smith "Mmatmuor and Sodosma were necromancers who came from the dark isle of Naat, to practise their baleful arts in Tinarath, beyond the shrunken seas. But they did not prosper in Tinarath: for death was deemed a holy thing by the people of that gray country; and the nothingness of the tomb was not lightly to be desecrated; and the raising up of the dead by necromancy was held in abomination. So, after a short interval, Mmatmuor and Sodosma were driven forth by the anger of the inhabitants, and were compelled to flee toward Cincor, a desert of the south, which was peopled only by the bones and mummies of a race that the pestilence had slain in former time."
First edition Ballantine Books Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith. Next to an amethyst orb.
A particularly odd Muscle Man figurine, shaped like a stone arch or something
Several Muscle Men figurines scattered over a surface
Checkbox: I agree to Extreme Pizza
The Magic card "Searfarer's Quay" All your blue legends gain bands with other legends.
Muncy melts into the ground in a 3d animated baseball stream.
Cold email from marketer: "Good morning Jason, are you or Brian Bucklew the right person to speak with about influencer partnerships? We recently signed on as the exclusive influencer partner for the South Beach Wine and Food Festival, activating creators across 35 of their events."
A slide from Tarn Adam's talk at Northwestern's Progression Mechanics, giving a systemic diagram to the sentence "A flock of sparrows landed and ate most of the pill bugs, but one managed to survive to lay some eggs."
Jason in a colorful shirt in front of The Wedding Feast at Cana in the Louvre
Excerpt from Anna Tsing's "The Mushroom at the End of the World" "What we have is mushrooms, that is, fruiting bodies of underground fungi. The fungi require the traffic of the commons to flourish; no mushrooms emerge without forest disturbance. The privately owned mushroom is an offshoot from a communally living underground body, a body forged through the possibilities of latent commons, human and not human. That it is possible to cordon off the mushroom as an asset without taking its underground commons into account is both the ordinary way with privatization and a quite extraordinary outrage, when you stop to think about it. The contrast between private mushrooms and fungi-forming forest traffic might be an emblem for commoditization more generally: the continual, never-finished cutting off of entanglement."
Segment from Roguelike Celebration 2025's schedule: Saturday, Oct 25, 14:30 social time Saturday, Oct 25, 15:00 A Mythopoetic Interface Reading of Caves of Qud by Ray
A segment of Roguelike Celebration 2025's schedule Friday, 13:30 - Play as Procedural Generation: Oath as a Roguelike Strategy Game by Cole Wehrle Friday, 14:00 Teaching Long Term Consequences in Games by Jeff Lait
A brick mantle with a Hugo Award, classical head-vase, some ceramic fish, poster, and DICE finalist plaque.
Jason Grinblat holds the 2025 Hugo Award for Best Game or Interactive Work, awarded to Caves of Qud
Jason Grinblat's Worldcon badge with program participant and Hugo award finalist ribbons
Extra info about Chrome Pyramids from the Caves of Qud wiki. -made out of metal -Emp sensitive -power load sensitive -weights 25000 lbs -has a mental shield