David J Prokopetz

@prokopetz.bsky.social

9053 Followers 338 Following

Main site at https://prokopetz.net

A page from the NPCs section of Eat God's first sample playset, "The Clockwork City". The page contains stat blocks for "The Champ and Atlas", "The Clockwork Performers", and "The Corrupt Watchman". Relevant additions from the playset's previous draft are as follows: * The Champ and Atlas: "Both are inveterate bullies, and are likely to mark the God-eaters as easy targets." * The Clockwork Performers: "hey usually prefer to distract and rob wealthy nobles, but they are not above targets of opportunity." * The Corrupt Watchman: "[...] usually found shaking down other NPCs for bribes; they will target the God-eaters if no other prospects are present."
Screenshot from "Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana" of a status screen depicting the character Delsus about to equip the armour "Bread Pants". The Bread Pants have the description "Part of Blaire's Operation: Baked Weapon", and the listed special ability "Fight&eat". The displayed comparison with Delsus' currently equipped armour "Gogo Suit" indicate relative stat differences of -19 Life, -35 Mana, -35 Attack, -8 Magic, +14 Defence, +24 Fire Resistance, +8 Ice Resistance, and +8 Lightning Resistance.
A pair of partially completed full-page d66 tables, the one on the left labelled "Random Location Events (roll twice and combine), and the one on the right labelled "Random NPC Connections (roll once per pair)". The contents of the individual rows are reproduced in the post body, below.
An illustration of a Puni, a recurring type of monster from the "Atelier" series. It's a translucent blue gumdrop-shaped slime creature with rosy pink cheeks, black dots for eyes, and a wide open-mouthed smile.
A screenshot of the character Vegeta from the cartoon series "Dragon Ball Z", depicting the widely memed-on moment where he dramatically exclaims "it's over nine thousand!"
Popularly memed-upon image of a grey-haired man looking directly at the viewer and giving a tight, pained-looking smile.
Screenshot of three Tumblr replies, reading: @errantpedant (1 hour ago): Wolfram von Eschenbach-esque digressions about other unfaithful partners you have had and/or your own prowess. @lancelought (3 hours ago): Every sex scene must include a lengthy and complete recounting of all people involved with complete names, epithets, descriptions of heraldry, and what quests they are known for @knightofkittens (3 hours ago): Gawain and the Green Knight MMF threesome: every sex act the woman performs on you, you must perform on the other man.
Character promo art of Rose Belmont from "Castlevania: Dracula's Curse". She's a muscular woman with long, scraggly blonde hair pulled back into a messy braid; she's depicted in a defensive crouch, wielding a whip-like weapon consisting of a long chain ending in a cross-shaped blade. Some sort of veiny reddish growth covers the hand holding the weapon up to the elbow, presumably related to the game's titular curse. She's surrounded by an abstract collage of various hostile monsters, drawn in blood-red monochrome that shades to pale blue as one moves down the image.
Excerpt of a sidebar from the tabletop roleplaying game "Eat God", reading: For clarity, “Traits” means the things formally called capital-T Traits that you chose in the first step of character creation, as well as the equivalent qualities of NPCs, locations, etc. Your Features, Creed, Rebellious Arts, name and pronouns are not Traits and cannot be tagged for dice. In the case of [text cuts off]
Screenshot of a Tumblr post from user @prokopetz, truncated after the first paragraph because even Bluesky's character limit on image ALT text is too damn short, reading as follows: One of my personal game design white whales is an OSR game that takes the modern roguelike "core advancement schema is constrained to single runs, plus some sort of auxiliary metaprogression based on rewards for completing runs" and cross-breeds it with the "dungeons are mythic underworlds/fragments of other worlds/living creatures parasitising our reality" conceit that some contemporary OSR games go for to produce a game where the core rules furnish robust character creation procedures but simply have no concept of advancement, incremental or otherwise, and then each individual adventure module has its own context-specific advancement schema which is only effective inside that particular dungeon, and goes away outside of it.
A sepia-toned illustration of the "rogue modron" playable species from the Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition campaign setting "Planescape". It's a large, cube-shaped mechanical creature with long, spindly, clockwork arms and legs (two of each) and a pair of tiny, nonfunctional clockwork wings sprouting from its back. An enormous semi-organic face entirely occupies the front face of the cube. It's wielding a wavy-bladed one-handed sword and holding a buckler shield as it peers quizzically at the viewer. (Illustration credit to Tony DiTerlizzi, 1996.)
High-resolution promotional art of Zura, the protagonist of "Shade Protocol". She's a humanoid robot with glowing orange eyes and ankle-length white hair, wearing high-tech plate armour stylised to resemble a French maid uniform, and wielding a shield and spear.
Engraving of Franz Josef Gall (1758–1828), the founder of phrenology.
A screenshot of the Bridgekeeper from "Monty Python's Quest For the Holy Grail"; he's a ragged old man with an expression of utter perplexity on his face.
@susidestroyerofworlds: "i thought this was obvious but i just checked the policy of our sister project and we tag any amount of balls as explicit but they can just be fully balls out and have it tagged as safe or suggestive at max?? this should not be that hard to figure out" @charlizetheronsbush-official: "if it’s just the balls i think that’s probably SFW"
A Tumblr post displaying a cropped screenshot of the character Plankton from the cartoon "SpongeBob SquarePants", facing the camera with an incongruously photo-realistic grimace on his face. Below the image, a conversation between three Tumblr users follows (all typographic irregularities are present in the original text): @brotherwife: "me after smoking half a bowl and drinking one bourbon on a weeknight" @marcitlali: "me after taking Yak tranquilizers in a berlin warehouse" @smallrat36wagon: "you need to change your life styles or you might pass away ."
Partial screenshot of the Wikipedia article for the video game "The Ninja Warriors" (1987), reading: Development and release The game's arcade cabinet is unique due to its three contiguous screens (one screen in the usual place for an arcade game, and two more screens in the cabinet below, reflected by mirrors on either side of the middle screen) which created the effect of a single 4:1 screen akin to the Polyvision format used in Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927), depicting ninjas.
Screenshot of a pair of Tumblr replies from users @gnostotron and @evtrained. The first, timestamped 5 minutes ago by @gnostotron, reads "Wernicke-Kantgetoff syndrome". The second, timestamped 27 minutes ago by @evtrained, reads "Rejection-sensitive dickphoria".
A pair of screenshots from the 1992 animated short film "Halloween is Grinch Night". The first screenshot depicts a Who holding a pair of reading glasses in their hand, looking up at something off-screen; their spoken dialogue is captioned "You know, sir, I like you much better with my glasses off." The second screenshot depicts the Grinch riding atop a horse-drawn wagon, pointing accusatorily down at something off-screen, presumably the Who from the previous shot; the Grinch's dialogue is captioned "You put your glasses back on and face the facts!"
A screenshot from the ending of the English localisation of the 1987 arcade version of the video game "The Ninja Warriors". Scrolling white text over a background depicting the collapsed ruins of a large mansion reads: BUT THE PEACE DID NOT CAME. BECAUSE NINJA WARRIORS, THEY ARE THE IMMORTAL MURDER MACHINES. . . . .
A screenshot of an excerpt from the Wikipedia article for the term "castaway", reading: On December 19, 2011, two fishermen from the Republic of Kiribati landed in the Marshall Islands where they were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard. The men were adrift for 33 days and fed on tuna. The two men, aged 53 and 26, were also involved in a rare incident upon landing when the 26-year-old found that his uncle, who had disappeared at sea more than 25 years ago and was long believed dead, had landed in the Marshall Islands as well and married there, where he also had children. [16]
A still frame from the Patterson-Gimlin bigfoot film; a blurry, distant ape-like figure seems to peer at the camera as it walks across a forest clearing.
A screenshot of Rasputin from the 1997 animated feature film "Anastasia". He's looking at something just off-camera with a broad, leering grin, one finger pressed to his lip.
35. Hearty Humours (9 of diamonds) Your internal alchemy is highly reactive. This Form is evident only when in use; possible signs include bloodshot eyes, bulging veins, or the smell of something burning. Always: You can muster violent bursts of physical vigour at need. A successful test which tags this Form increases its Result by 1 for each Calamity Point it incurs. With Effort: Fly into a frenzy and set your impact bonus (p. 125) on a physically aggressive test to +3, ignoring all penalties. If the test succeeds, this Form is then disabled and cannot be tagged or otherwise employed for the rest of the scene.
25. Extra Organs (3 of diamonds) You have an organ for every occasion. You may be stuffed with useful glands, or you may spontaneously evolve new ones in response to dangerous environments. * Always: You may treat locations which have Threat ratings due to environmental hazards – extreme heat, poison gas, hard vacuum, etc. – as though they have a Threat of zero. * With Effort: Perform an effortful physical action indefinitely, ignoring exertion and fatigue. Explain what improbably specialised organ allows you to do this.
Screenshot of a YouTube video title reading "A party based dungeon crawler roguelike where we get to shoot dragons".
A reference sheet for the basic controls for "MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat" (Activision, 1995). It lists keyboard inputs for over sixty separate actions; notable entries include a half a dozen distinct targeting modes, dedicated hotkeys for "jettison ammunition" and "override thermal shutdown", and independent directional controls for the mech's legs, the mech's torso, the mech's jump jets, and the pilot's eyes.
A page from Rachel Pollack's 1993–1995 tenure as the lead writer of DC's "Doom Patrol", depicting a confrontation between the superhero Coagula and the supervillain Codpiece. Coagula, disguised in a smiling cartoon frog mask, uses her matter-manipulation powers to dissolve Codpiece's giant mechanical penis.
A page from the tabletop roleplaying game "Troika!", setting forth the statistics and rules for a playable archetype called "Vengeful Child". The accompanying illustration depicts a messy sketch in yellow and red of a maniacally grinning youth brandishing a blood-drenched sword longer than they are tall.
A screenshot of the Tumblr crosspost of this post; above it is a banner reading "Check out these communities", followed by a promotion for a Tumblr community whose cover image is an MS Paint drawing of a really jacked Garfield.
Screenshot of Donald Sutherland's character from the film "Invasion of the Body-Snatchers" (1978) pointing directly at the viewer and screaming loudly.
A thumbnail image of page one of the PDF character sheet linked below, containing name, appearance, portrait, etc. fields, as well as basic character creatures like Facet ratings, Stress Limit, inventory contents, and acquired Advancements.
A series of Tumblr replies from @ruinousnostalgia, reading: (30 minutes ago) I don’t have a brain, but my entire consciousness and identity is imbued in one of my bones specifically. For security reasons I obviously can’t tell you which one. (28 minutes ago) Oh I can replace my limbs with pretty much anything. Wood, plaster, etc. But due to regressive and bigoted skeleton law, I would lose my undead citizenship if I did so. (27 minutes ago) Yeah I need chocolate milk or I die.
Scan of George Salter's cover art for the 1957 first edition of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged".
Digger (2003–2011) by Ursula Vernon Tales of small furry things taking on gods – and often winning – abound in Vernon's early works, and Digger is true to form. While it explores a strand of fantasy less rooted in violent spectacle than Eat God's usual fare, its world of talking statues, vampiric gourds and oracular slugs has much to offer, and many of its cast – including the titular protagonist – make a good models for the Folk.
An excerpted page from the forthcoming revision 0.7 of "Eat God", reading as follows: Tone and Expectations While Eat God does not expect extensive preparation or a dedicated “session zero”, some pre-game discussion of your game's tone is recommended. The game's media inspirations range widely, so expectations among players may differ, and discovering that these expectations disagree mid-session can create unexpected stumbling blocks. By design, Eat God is written with three possible tones in mind: Silly, Straight-faced, and Serious, as discussed below. Your game need not adhere strictly to any one option, shifting at need from scenario to scenario, or even from scene to scene; however, when and whether such tonal breaks are appropriate should be part of your pre-game discussion. Tone: Silly * The most lighthearted of the three tones, Silly hews most closely to the game's Looney Tunes foundations, drawn in bright colours and broad stereotypes. * Play consists of episodic scenes in which the players' main goal is to antagonise any NPCs they encounter. * Lasting consequences are few; even human NPCs will eventually bounce back from practically any indignity, and no-one ever dies unless it would be funny. * The effects of spending Obstinacy and activating Rebellious Arts are described as cartoon shenanigans or fourth wall breaks. * God-eater names may include blatant pop culture references or obnoxious puns. * Players are encouraged to do silly voices when speaking in character.
An extreme closeup of Klaus Wulfenbach's nose, the product of the comic's latest page apparently having mistakenly been uploaded in its full 600ppi print-ready resolution rather than a typical web-ready resolution.
An excerpt from the forthcoming revision 0.7 of the tabletop roleplaying game "Eat God", containing a boxed sidebar reading as follows: Familiarity with other games may lead you to expect an encouragement to ignore or depart from the rules as you see fit. You will not find it here; while Eat God is not complex, it has enough moving parts that injudicious changes or omissions can easily make more work for the GM rather than less. As such, you are encouraged to try it out as written; if, having done so, you see fit to tinker anyway, this text has no power to restrain you, so you need not seek its permission.
A preview of pages 180 and 181 of Eat God's forthcoming revision 0.7. The left-facing page displays a full-page illustration, depicting the game's iconic God-eaters seated arround a table loaded with eccentric dishes, such as tentacle skewers, eyeball stew, and fish-head pie. The group's leader stands at the head of the table, serving a giant drumstick of some unknown beast; the meat emits soft, golden-hued light. The image is surmounted by a chapter heading reading "Appendix B: Additional Tables". The right-facing page displays the chapter's introductory material. The full text is available via the link preceding these screenshots.
Photo of an all-black shorthair housecat with pale yellow eyes loafing on a black and white chequered bedspread.
Screenshot of an itch.io recommendation page for games similar to "Normality". The first two recommendations are "Thirsty Sword Lesbians" and "Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast".
A screenshot of a microgame from "WarioWare: Move It!", depicting the player character standing underwater amid several strands of seaweed. The action prompt reads "Wave around!"
Excerpt of page 129 from revision 0.7.0 of "Eat God": [begin heading] Group NPCs [end heading] Some NPCs will be flagged as “group” NPCs. This indicates that the given statistics represent a group of characters who – while they may be given individual names and motivations as needed – are more or less identical for rules purposes and typically act in concert. A group NPC is treated as a single large NPC whose listed qualities already include the advantage of numbers. If the God-eaters can arrange a situation where a group NPC is unable to bring those numbers to bear, its effective Threat rating is reduced by one point, or by two points if the God-eaters manage to catch a member of the group alone. The God-eaters' own actions are similarly hindered: efforts to inflict Stress upon a group NPC suffer −1 impact if the action affects only a small part of the group, or −2 impact when harassing a single group member. Stress inflicted in this way is marked against the group as a whole, not against individual group members, even when only a single member is targeted. This reduction is a normal impact penalty, and can be mitigated in all the usual ways, such as by spending Obstinacy on a test or tagging a mitigating Form. For example, effortful use of [begin keyword] Hundred-handed [end keyword] might allow a God-eater to wrestle a group NPC without penalty. Cooperative tests (p. 79) may also offset such penalties, as might any action which would logically be effective at dealing with a large group, such as giving a speech to a mob. [begin sidebar] Group NPCs do not represent a specific number of individuals, and it is not necessary to pick off every member of a group NPC in order to cause it to Stress Out – group morale can be a fragile thing. At the player's option, Stressing Out a group NPC by targeting one of its members might be described as the group beating a tactical retreat, fleeing in disarray, or simply suffering a breakdown of coordination. [end sidebar]
Excerpt of an illustration from "Costume Fairy Adventures", depicting several of the game's iconic player characters enthusiastically launching a pie-catapult at an off-frame target.
A screenshot of a Steam trading card depicting a character staring at something off-panel with a bug-eyed, tooth-gritted expression. The caption reads "Surprised by a Gawk".
The first page of the writeup for "Fungus" from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Monstrous Manual. It begins: "Fungi are simple plants that lack chlorophyll, true stems, roots, and leaves. Fungi are incapable of photosynthesis and live as parasites or saprophytes." It continues in this vein for roughly a dozen paragraphs, outlining the various types of fungus, discussing their habitats, ecology, and reproductive cycles, and briefly touching on their culinary and medicinal applications before finally moving on to discuss fungal monsters which player characters can actually fight.
A screenshot of a Tumblr reply by user @manorinthewoods, reading: I will make a video game and give the teenagers knives The cat will receive reality-bending deific abilities and the rat will receive powerful mythological roles
A screenshot of a Youtube recommendation, depicting (on the left) a brown-haired white man with a large beard and glasses frowning at something off-camera, and (on the right) a purple-haired chibi anime character wearing a dismayed expression. Bright yellow text superimposed over the lower portion of the still reads "oh no...". The video's title is "Michi Reacts to Arthur Getting Diagnosed with Tuberculosis". The video is eight minutes in length.
A teaser of the updated layout for the Form stat blocks in "Eat God"; pictured are entries "11 Aquatic Aspect" through "16 Curative Corpus". The new layout includes generous whitespace between different parts of each stat block, and a graphical border with inset icons indicating each part.
A screenshot of the word "pre-defined" marked with a squiggly red underline to indicate an unrecognised word, with the spellchecker popout open beside it; one of the suggested corrections is "pee-defined".
A page excerpted from "Eat God", reading: "Random Inventory II: Modern Mundane. These tables are suitable for scenarios situated in office parks, shopping malls, or the wasteland of contemporary suburbia as depicted in North American popular media." This is followed by a pair of long d66 lookup tables filled with items one might expect to find in such a setting.
A close-up of the face of a Cabbage Patch Kids doll.
An excerpt from playtest draft 0.7.0 of "Eat God", titled "Your Creed". It includes an 18-entry table of random Creeds, followed by detailed writeups for the Creeds "Cartographic Theophagy" and "Charismatic Theophagy".
A screenshot of a Windows Explorer window displaying MP3 files variously dated throughout 2002 through 2005. Notable titles include "Simon And Garfunkle - Sound of Silence, The (1966)" (Garfunkel is misspelled in the original filename), "Sinister Ducks - March of the Sinister Ducks", "Sir Mixalot - I Like Big Butts", "Sisters of Mercy - Temple of Love", and "Snap - Rhythm is a Dancer".
Limit Breaks & Missing Information For all their potency, Limit Breaks can be stymied by their wielder's ignorance; theirs is the power to create meaning, not to discern meaning which already exists. For example, a God- eater could not use a Limit Break to transport themself into the presence of “the person who ate my sandwich” unless they already know who that is; indeed, if the God-eater is mistaken about the sandwich-thief's identity, Limit Break effects which target or depend on that identity will replicate their mistake. This is not to say that Limit Breaks cannot enable a God-eater to gain information. Faced with a closed door, a God-eater could use a Limit Break to turn the walls to glass, or bring the door to life and ask it what it conceals. They could even teleport “whatever is behind this door” into their presence, as this effect does not depend on knowing anything about the target other than its location – though if there is in fact nothing there, this may have interesting consequences. (begin sidebar) Metaphysics notwithstanding, the main reason this guideline exists is to avoid overburdening players with the need to invent large swathes of new information every time they narrate the outcomes of their Limit Breaks; you may set it aside at your own peril. (end sidebar)
Cropped image of a promotional poster for "Neon Genesis Evangelion", depicting Asuka, Shinji, and Rei, from left to right.
33. Fluttering Flight: You're capable of short-range flight. This ability could stem from a number of features; for example, you might have stubby wings, or make gliding leaps, or you might inflate your body and float like a balloon. * Always: You can fly in your particular fashion, with a top speed equal to your running speed. You may travel or ascend a Near distance in this way before you need to land, though you may descend safely from any height. * With Effort: Travel or ascend a Far distance before landing. Alternatively, flutter just out of reach; for as long as you sustain this effort, you can take six (p. 66) on tests to evade or escape from non-flight-capable characters.
Animated GIF depicting the monkey's paw from the October 1992 episode of The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror III" (itself a parody of the W W Jacobs short story "The Monkey's Paw"); the animation depicts a severed monkey's paw curling one finger while radiating a sinister magical aura, implying that it's just granted a wish.
A screenshot of three crowdfunding campaigns. The earliest, "Costume Fairy Adventures", shows 122% funding reached on December 10, 2013. The second, "Cerebos: The Crystal City", shows 1416% funded on April 10, 2021. The last, "Eat God", shows 228% funding with 11 days of a 31-day campaign yet to go.
An excerpt from the "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition" Dungeon Master's Guide, reading: "Sword +1, flame tongue, +2 vs. regenerating creatures, +3 vs. cold-using, inflammable, or avian creatures, +4 vs. undead: This sheds light when its possessor speaks a command [...]" (the sentence is cut off by the end of the text column)