Merelymatt - Merely Matt

People who listen to altogether too many podcasts: what are the arbitrary rules you make up for yourself? DO you make up rules about what you're "allowed" to listen to and when, or is that just me?

Rules like:

Podcasts are divided into Current (ones I'm caught up with), Catching up (ones where I'm working through the back catalogue), and Replay (ones I've heard all of but am listening to again because of love)

Current shows are for home, Catching up and Replay are for out and about

BUT if I have 10 or more unlistened Current episodes then I have to get that number under 10 before switching to Catching up or Replay, even if out and about

Only one Replay and one Catching up show can be active at any given time, I have to finish a whole season before making a different one active

It sounds like I'm forcing myself to eat my veggies here but honestly making up rules like this is the only way to not get overwhelmed and lost – if I didn't do this I'd constantly be starting shows and forgetting about them and then fretting that I'm 2 episodes into 15 different things

Halloween Oneshot Bundle

Kumada1 got a bunch of RPG designers (including me) together to create a bundle of Halloween oneshot games for this spooky season! Get 64 games for 20 bucks! Some highlights from this bundle include:

Cryptid TV- honey heist hack where you play cryptids out to sabotage the dark designs of Reality TV

Merger- a solo metaphor for trying to survive predatory corporations

The Deadbutante- 5e module where players held a vampire with anxiety strike a fair bargain with the locals

The Lovecraft Boat- Lasers & Fellings hack where you play as monsters impersonating the staff of a luxury cruise ship

Check it out for your Halloween spooky season games!

Angela Barrett’s illustration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Folio Society, limited edition)

Episode 1 of Metropolis, The Audio Drama! Now live!

Things aren’t great in Arnhem. Nobody seems that interested in putting back together what the war has blasted apart, and now the city has started smelling like literal horse manure. All anyone has to look forward to are dispatches from Metropolis - that mysterious, shining, robot-powered city in the Arctic where everyone seems to have it all figured out.

But do they? The Arnhem Fact-Gazette newspaper has a man on the ground there - Stanley Bronfels - but he’s just a sportswriter, and he’s definitely not being encouraged to dig for muck when there are diamonds to swallow and magic robots to describe.

But Stan’s best friend is Nan Kanally - the ace reporter for the paper back in Arnhem - and she has a way of getting you to do things you might not ordinarily do. That’s why Stan likes her so much. But does he know what she’s about to get him into?

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Gosh, it is so astonishing to get this live. There is a tremendous amount of luck to creating any creative work - especially one that takes as many people with as many diverse talents as a full-cast audio drama. I was born under a lucky star, clearly. ============================== Buncha ways to listen - these are just a few, but basically any podcast listening method that isn't taping a solenoid to a seashell will work (and I'm working on the seashell).

APPLE MUSIC:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/metropolis/id1769990046

SPOTIFY:

https://open.spotify.com/show/6u00FenKWwaUEndkTvtrm2

WEBSITE:

https://luxradium.org

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Subscribe if you like it! And thank you for any and all feedback. I really do love this community.

Tabletop trick or treat! 🎃👻🍬🍭

Last one was a Treat so it's time for a Trick! Caro Asercion stole my heart with i'm sorry did you say street magic, and as a result every time they release something new I'm eyeballing it. Their work is varied but at the same time I feel like there's a thread of personality running through their entire ludography.

I think what sells me on a lot of their work is that they know how to package it so that you get a quick taste of what's inside the game just by reading the blurb or looking at the art on the cover.

Exquisite Biome uses an art style reminiscent of naturalist paintings to communicate the world you're building through its creatures.

The Long Shift uses its colors and iconography to communicate the mood; late nights at a truck stop (in space).

And Dwindle makes use of a mainframe icon to represent the feeling of a cyberpunk world while doubling as the grid by which you determine your stats.

All in all, I think Caro makes really smart, evocative design choices, and I often think of their work when I envision what I would like to do with mine.