Year End Revie--WAKE UP, OMEN [#Itchmas Day 11]

25 Dec, 2024

For all that I haven't really published anything this year, my time on the scene has been tremendously enriching. I've been diving deep into podcasts like Dice Exploder and RTFM, and joining discords.

The ttrpg media ecology is vibrant, and to all external appearances appears to be thriving: Quinns Quest is blowing up in a big way, and Rascal seems to be getting its feet solidly under itself.

It was a true delight and privilege to run 20 hours of Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast for Possum Creek at GenCon this year-

wake up, omen

Ahem.

To get back to it, sure, I've been working on some projects. I've tinkered away at Mortal Coil, a post-life purgatorial wandering game to provide the newly dead closure. I've playtested a version of both that and IRON/Flesh, my current inspiration-striking mech ttrpg system, with the fine folks that Aaron Lim wrangles together for Playtest Zero.

If GenCon was a chance to appreciate the scale of the hobby, BigBadCon was a chance to connect with the self-selecting crowd of folks I most want to share my community and companionship. Highlights include playing disc golf and greeting the gnomes of Golden Gate Park with Meg-

WAKE UP, OMEN

Wha-?

Sorry, I don't know what's coming over me. But where were we? Right! The people!

Community and connection have been on my mind, lately. I certainly recall a groundswell feeling of togetherness and hope in the wake of #EmotionalMechaJam several years ago. But... that sense of a lyric indie scene has been diluted and diffused, even as it propagates in numerous directions. I've seen game designers start and burn out; I've seen heartbreak and backstabbing hurt; I've seen folks so badly burnt that they aren't coming back; and I've seen platforms we took for foundational topple. I've learned that online togetherness is a tenuous mirage: a reflective pool of deceptive depth. It is a venue that can facilitate connection, but not a stable utopia.

Community is work, and putting oneself out there consistently. It is to lift and carry others, in the hopes of being carried when you yourself need. It is specific and interpersonal, not a projected cult of personality for follow-backs and ^votes and +++marks. It must be curated and protected.

In a politically unstable landscape, while our institutions are fully co-opted and captured to be turned against us, that sort of community needs to be especially nurtured. Build bonds of connection: we will need them in years to come, to carry each other through what comes next.

I've had a good crew to roll with these past two years. A stable house to land, some like minded folks--these things can make all the difference to one's con experience. They can put proof to such sought community. Gabe, Riley and David, Zeb and Sil, Tezra and Cash... let us not slight or neglect Hunter J Allen. Here's to good times at the Nonbinary Frat House (not to be confused with the Non-Euclidean Frat House), and to disc golfing at every venue our feet can tread.

WAKE UP OMEN

Even in the post-apocalypse, trillionaires have their boots on our necks.

BREAK THEIR ANKLES.

Coming crashing onto the scene, we have the entrant for #Itchmas Day 11:

TITANOMACHY: DREAMS OF THE HUE¹ is a rip-roaring, lurid, gonzo, cyber-bio-punk boss rush of a ttrpg.

Jump into a nanite-sculpted memetic echo of future Houston to liberate it from the blood-sucking oligarchy caste. With modular character class aspects that have to be read to be believed in terms of how sharp and hyperbolic they go, T:DotH shares a lot of DNA with my #Itchmas Day 10 post, Ascendancy.

The itch landing page and the character sheets are a maximalist garish assault on your eyes, leaning fully into the retro-futurist geocities vibe, but the (free!) demo quickstart reveals inside it another welcome surprise: layout by the phenomenally talented Mina McJanda, who close readers of my Itchmas series will again recognize from one of my Day 9 picks.

The two characters I've made in Titanomachy so far, just going off the stripped-down quickstart options, have been a post-human cyborg sealfolk union organizer, and a digitized upload-mind in an android body that is coated in a musculature made up of its nanite-plant Venom symbiote. And trust me when I say: this is barely scratching the surface of the options available.

Put this one on your radar, folks. It's speaking to the modern moment a damn sight more than many-a game out there. Yeah, it's by some of those friends I mentioned up there in the preamble, but that just makes me more proud to vouch for them.

What are you waiting for, Omen? These titans won't fell themselves...

#12DaysOfItchmas