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This is always my first recommendation when someone asks "so that solo ttrpg journaling thing, how does it work?" 

Also I wound up writing a fanfic based on it. (Should make reasonable sense even for people who don't know The Untamed/MDZS.) I love this game.

What do you mean, "nerfed?" That was an enhancement; did you miss the section on reversing the values in certain historical settings? They apply to all characters native to those eras, regardless of the time-period of the actual game.  

(Glad you like it!)

Thanks!
We are not better off than we were 15 years ago. We are better off now, have more rights, than we did when the book was written. I don't think we're going to wind up back there or worse: The whole shape of society has changed too much for that. 

It's hard to share that context with people under 30. 

Thank you for this. (If you don't have a PDF of Faggots and Their Friends, it's available in various spots online. The surviving author - I forget which - gave his blessing for it to be shared. He was delighted that people still enjoyed it.) 

I've run into the same thing in sims, and in a lot of other games where I am told they are focusing on "realism" and that's why there are no instructions or log of activities & goals, because in the "real world" nobody tells you what to do or reminds you what you have done.

(Bitch in the Real World I can call a friend who's not involved and ask for advice. I can sue the shop that sells poison mixed in with its food. I can use a screwdriver or wrench or a book to break a window; I don't have to find The Rock first.  I can label the pockets in my backpack so I remember what I put in which spot. I can carry a notebook and make checklists of tasks.)

But erm. "Realism" was not the point of the rant. "Changing the game conditions" was. Life-sim games have built-in assumptions about how relationships work. Politics-sim games have built-in assumptions on how business and politics work. It's not even "You can't challenge them." You can't hint at the possibility of challenging them; it'd be like trying to add romance options to an action platformer. You can maaaaybe throw in a mod to make it look like that's what's happening - but there is no, "flirt with Bowser, go on some dates, maybe get married, and 'win' by talking him into releasing the princess." 

Nobody expects (or really wants) that in their platformers. It's hard to tell people that sim games are just as limited, just as constrained: That they don't have "realism" but "a simulation of a particular set of functions, and stuff outside of those isn't allowed to exist." 

I give F&F a pass on not seeing "after" the revolutions. Queer marriage wasn't on anyone's radar; the goal was "let's make it illegal to arrest and maybe kill gay people just for existing." And for all that: It's a glorious message of "hey, when everything sucks, remember we've been through worse, and we'll get through this together. When you feel pain, fall into your brothers' love.

Copyright was originally intended as corporate law. Up until ~75 years ago, it was nearly impossible for individuals to clash with it. (What were you going to do, hand-write 10 copies of a popular book? Put on a play at your local school without paying the license fee?) 

But we now have ways to make copies easily and the whole foundation of the law is falling apart. And of course, enforcement is being aimed at individuals because they're easier to go after, not because they're causing the most harm to corporate profits

I'm in the Discord attached to the Reddit (mostly ignore it because of the anti-journaling bias), and there's a constant influx of newbies asking "what do I do? How do I play a game ALONE?" The general answer is "Any way you like! Do whatever you want!" Which is true but not helpful.

And it's obvious what they mean is, "I don't have a GM or a group and this seems to say there are games that will provide that experience without the people." And it won't. It provides a different experience,  and some players decide they like that or even prefer it.

I sometimes try to nudge them about "what do you like in group RPGs, so we can try to find solo games to suggest?" It's always really hard to get past the "I'm trying out a new type of game and want to know what the rules are."  It's like. "What are the rules for taking a walk?" Are you trying to enjoy the scenery, get exercise for your health, get to a destination, just get out of the house for a bit? 

I have considered doing megabundle review things.

...I have nearly a hundred bundles (not all megabundles) and a spreadsheet of over 15,000 items. While I'd love to do a review project, the fact is, damn near nobody is interested in reviews of 2-page TTRPGs or 15-minute platformers. Even the really cute ones. Nor in managing the admin for a review project focused on Games Nobody Knows About That Are Never Going To Be The Hot New Thing.

If you find someone who wants to manage such a project, definitely let me know. 

…I entirely forgot that people are likely to worry about making a mistake in following the rules. (I play a lot of journaling games; there sometimes ambiguities but rarely the kind of rules that involve "mistakes.")

100% agree. If you like following the rules, great! (I do, for the most part.) But if you think you missed something... the key issue is "was I enjoying the game" rather than "was I playing it right?" You can always try it again if you care to. If that makes you feel like "ugh, so much to redo..." then skip it. 

To be fair: "This Is How You Lose the Time War" won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and BSFA awards for its category in each, long before BD recommended it. A lot of  readers believe it was/is an excellent story; it's not surprising it got a lot of acclaim when it broke out of the fairly insular scifi reading community. (That said - everything else you mentioned is accurate. No publisher is going to find their own Bigolas Dickolas to promote their books; that's not how it works.)

****

Fanfic communities have a lot of tiny curators, both individual and group activities, to help people find the fic they like and avoid the stuff they don't like. Part of why it works as well as it does, is the lack of commercial activity. There is no "I got this for free in exchange for an unbiased review" bullshit.

(There's bias in "I decided to review this at all." If they got their free book because they found it on a park bench, would they have read & reviewed it? If they picked up the game in a bundle of 350 games for $5, make each one effectively free, would they have played through it and reviewed it?)

 I buy megabundles. Lots of them. I have literally thousands of games almost nobody has ever heard of. Some are indeed gems. (A lot are... not gems. Discussions of obscurity should mention that there's a reason most obscure things are obscure, and it's not "they have not found their true audience where they can shine.") I'd love to help the people who'd like this or that particular game find it; I'm not sure there's any way to do that beyond "hang out in a few places where games are discussed and occasionally mention one that seems relevant." 

Until there's a lawsuit requiring payment processors to stop discriminating, probably.

I agree that using AI to sort would be terrible.

I can't think of another way to filter. Lowering games that haven't been edited recently might be part of that, but it still means that someone trying to filter out either gore or sexual material would see some.

They can make new settings but it'll be hard to sort the things that are already here. They would need to use AI to decide whether a game had "extreme gore" or "sexual content" because a lot of creators are inactive and won't return to re-tag their older games. (Or they are active, but don't want the hassle of recategorizing a lot of games.) 

I have seen co-op bundles with NSFW games. I believe the bundle itself will be delisted. (Most of the recent charity bundles have not been listed on the bundles page.) Whether that's allowed is probably a question for the bundle manager.

I picked up this game in the "No ICE in Minnesota" bundle; it says it's been quarantined because it has warning signs that it might be malware.

The page was created 2 years ago, but the game was uploaded a month ago. (March 2026, roughly.) 

"You act like using AI helpers is like asking the machine: hey google, make a video game and put my name under it." 

That is exactly what vibe coding is for

If you're using AI-generated materials - those can't be copyrighted. If you're claiming copyright on a game full of materials that are already in the public domain, you're scamming the people playing/buying the game. 

And it's not unreasonable for people to want to know who made the game. There's a difference between "I made this game" and "I grabbed a bunch of free resources and had a bot write parts of this game for me." 

If you made the game, and someone liked it, they're likely to enjoy your next game.

If you used a bot/AI generator to write code and generate the pictures... they may not care for your next game, because by that time, the AI software will have changed, and you have no control over what's available through it. 

Several images are missing from this page; they say the source files have been deleted.

Thanks! That helps a lot. :) 

This looks great for adventure games with oracles; I'm having trouble figuring out how it works with prompt-based journaling games like Wretched & Alone games or Carta games. 

Hi - I've added image fields to the form PDF so images can be inserted - how can I send that to you? 

(It's easy if you have Acrobat Pro. Less easy if you're working with other PDF-editing resources.)

I suspect it's the opposite. In a few years, LLM and image-based AI-generated content will collapse because it's all funded by smoke and mirrors; there's no actual profit plan, especially since the content made by AI isn't protected by copyright. 

(How many studios will release a movie that's in the public domain the moment it hits the screen? How many game devs want their logos and characters to be free for anyone to copy?) 

We're seeing a huge amount of it right now because there are lots of free and low-cost AI generators available, but when the venture capitalist firms that were chasing NFTs realize that the general public isn't going to pay as much for AI generation than they do for human-made goods, and in many cases will refuse to pay for them at all, the bubble will burst and all the public AI tools will vanish.

There'll still be plenty of self-hosted LLMs and art generators, but without the power of Google or Microsoft's servers behind them, they won't have anything like the same capacity.

Hi - for the Imagery and Topics - can we use any of the three words in the Themes table for that roll? Or is the all-caps word supposed to be one of them, and the other two words something else?

Throwing my voice in for "I'd like to know when/if this goes live." 

Most bundles are no longer showing up on itch's bundle search page, so the creators will need to post them on social media and update the game jam info so they're searchable. 

The Random Assets Flip Jam page is saved at the Wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220116061715//jam/random-asset-flip...

aaaaaah I adore Glitch revival projects, and this is lovely! (Saw the preview image and thought... are those... Groddle forest trees?) 

How do I report someone who's doing this in the itch.io discord server? 

Hi - what version of Creative Commons license is this published under? 

Thanks.

The GM Booklet has a spot that says "Creative commons place holder" - I figured I'd wait a while and check back to see if it was updated, but it hasn't been. Which creative commons license is going to be applied?

Ooh, so glad you're enjoying it.

If you want more visual resources, the original novel is at https://archive.org/details/godsmannovelinwo0000ward - I kept a very rough outline of the events but put a strong twist on the meaning. (...The original did not involve the fae at all.)  There were a lot of other striking pictures that I didn't include but might be useful for exploring the story possibilities. 

on reroll with a positive spin - 

1. You have pinched an unpleasant spot only he is hyper-sensitive in a way that has cross-wired pain to pleasure momentarily. Also, Lord Moon is known to be a Kinky Bastard so it's up to you why he might decide he likes it this time.

13. Maybe you damaged something that was a gift from someone he hates. Or you damaged the same thing again, but he's already gotten angry at you and now he's just amused.

And there's always the option of "drag in another character" to add complications or a twist on what's happening.

It looks like this means there's no way to tag non-erotic mature topics, like gore, child abuse, or war trauma.

Is that correct? Those topics should no longer be marked "sensitive" or "mature?" 

You may need a good way to inform people about the bundle, because itch has removed a lot of bundles from the bundle search pages. The two currently featured bundles on the front page - Queer Games 2025 and the No ICE in California charity bundle - aren't findable on the bundle pages.

I normally check the co-op bundles page to find new ones before they get featured (and a lot never get featured); it looks like that may not work in the future. I'm guessing they've removed all bundles that include at least one shadowbanned game that has tags that Mastercard/Visa object to.

Please update something here or in the game jam description with a link to the final bundle. Search engines can find the game jam pages, and people can find the bundle from there if it's listed.

Thanks.

It's likely to be very important to find ways to inform people about bundles - the two currently featured on the front page aren't showing in the bundles pages at all. I regularly check the "co-op bundles" page for new ones, but I think they've removed all the bundles that include any games that are currently shadowbanned.

One of the issues is that it covers no-/low-risk purchases and erotica has always been considered high-risk - it may not require payment processors to cover adult content. 

I assure you that many, many games are developed without any use of LLMs at all. That means they're not "essential." 

The current tag is "AI-Generated Content." It sounds like you have some and therefore couldn't tag your content with "No AI." However, the new tag is only required for assets - not for ttrpgs or video games.

The CloudPDF account has been suspended :(

Can you upload it to itch so it can be downloaded?

What is this? Is it a game or a game accessory tool?

Ooh thank you!

Awesome; thanks!