Aaron A. Reed
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aaronareed.bsky.social
Aaron A. Reed
@aaronareed.bsky.social
700 followers 280 following 90 posts
Maker of books, games, games about books, and books about games. Social media content syndicated to multiple platforms: https://linktr.ee/aaronareed
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aaronareed.bsky.social
Roguelike Celebration is happening today and my awesome friend Johnathan is giving this inspiring talk (gonna be a great time). www.roguelike.club
Wait, No, Hear Me Out: Simulating Encounter AI in Slay the Spire with SQL. Bring your best warding potions, safety sigils, and blessings: this talk is a light dip of some cursed queries to show how to simulate Slay the Spire's encounter AI with nothing more than SQL (and a lot of free time). Along the way, we'll go over some basic data structures for simulation, declarative vs imperative programming and how (with a little probability) even simple systems can lead to memorable, complex AI.
October 25, 2025 at 3:07 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
🎃🍁🍂AUTUMN SALE!🍂🍁🎃 All my books and games are on sale for one week only to celebrate the impending arrival of cooler days and pumpkin lattes.
RPGs: www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher...
50 Years of Text Games: if50.textories.com
Subcutanean: subcutanean.textories.com
Cool swag: aaronareed.net/store/
Screenshot of DriveThruRPG showing the Downcrawl Deck and other recent RPG titles at a 20% discount.
September 4, 2025 at 3:43 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
#Downcrawl2E Adventure Zine #2 is here (and ON SALE for launch week)! Explore a new underworld region clinging to an endless roof over bottomless void, in the legendary place Where The Rock Stops. #ttrpg #hexcrawl #DriveThruRPG
www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

and SPEAKING OF SALES... (1/2)
Cover art for Where the Rock Stops, a Downcrawl adventure zine, showing black-and-white woodcut-style art of a zeppelin floating beneath a rocky ceiling with huge dangling stalactites.
September 4, 2025 at 3:43 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
About to fulfill a long-time dream by hiking the John Muir Trail through the Sierra Nevada. If you need me, I'll be back in August. 😎🌲🏔️
Selfie of Aaron in his kitchen wearing a backpacking pack and a slightly nervous smile. Map of the John Muir Trail showing it starting in Yosemite National Park, passing through Ansel Adams Wilderness, Devil's Postpile National Monument, the John Muir Wilderness, and King's Canyon and Sequioa National Parks, and finishing at Mount Whitney.
July 2, 2025 at 12:29 AM
aaronareed.bsky.social
Played "500 Year Old Vampire" by @timhutchings.bsky.social at #KublaCon with a truly glorious arts and crafts spread provided by our GM, best letter writing and vision boarding game about being a sad vampire and sad vampire historian ever
An entire table filled with sundry arts and crafts supplies A collection of black butterfly wings, silver skeleton hands, seashells, spiders, and eyeballs wrapped in red thread, a visual representation of my vampire's utter abandonment of civilization and reversion to their primal nature. A depiction of the unfortunate incident where my vampire was forced to eliminate his mortal followers by burning down their village, which he promptly forgot about.
May 25, 2025 at 4:23 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
About to run the first ever playtest of a new game, such early days I didn't even want to put a version number on it. Always a bit terrifying but it's great to stop dreaming a new dream alone and start doing it together...
Portion of a printout in a basic unstyled font reading "The Mountain Dream, Jank Edition," and the start of a character creation section.
May 10, 2025 at 7:50 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
Oozing tendrils squirming through every corner of the Deep, Deep Down, and only you can stop them. "The Hypogean Solution" is an Adventure Zine for the #Downcrawl2E #TTRPG that lets you ride an undersea railroad, make strange new friends, and meet a slime god.

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...
Cover art for The Hypogean Solution showing a black-and-white sketch of two strange travelers camped under giant mushrooms by the bank of a glowing underworld river.
May 6, 2025 at 7:42 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
Got a review of #Downcrawl2E #ttrpg (thanks!) that thought the cover art was too garish (aww) so I made this minimalist version totally not inspired by #Traveller as a joke. Honestly it kinda works!

(The actual cover: www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5... )
Black cover with stark red and white text in the style of the original Traveller RPG release, with white words reading "This is Free Forager Kharis, scribbling this note to anyone who might find it. A sentient slime mold with fuzzy purple tendrils is taking over the Down. My last Journey ended in disaster. All Volumes, lock down your borders. Ration Tack. Guard your Map Rooms. It is coming. Mayday."
April 13, 2025 at 6:11 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
Sorry for all the #Downcrawl related posts lately, but: I've got a web store up to sell remaining leftover bonus items from the crowdfunding campaign! If you wanted some sweet metal map coins, dice, the Delver's Guide, or other swag, grab it before it's gone! aaronareed.net/store/
Triangular metal coins with antique bronze finish showing cave passageways and runes. The Delver's Guide is a spiral-bound reference book for Downcrawl 2E containing every move and table in the game. Cover art by J.P. Targete. Beautiful green and gold dice handmade by Dice Extractions for the Downcrawl campaign.
April 3, 2025 at 9:38 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
After a long journey (appropriate), 🚨 Downcrawl 2E #TTRPG & the Downcrawl Decks are now live for sale in print & digital!! 🚨

* Build a weird, wondrous underworld, alone or together
* Journey System for dangerous travels
* Optional rules for solo or GM-less play

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...
The Downcrawl rulebook and Downcrawl Deck, with cover art showing weird wanderers overlooking a stalactite city suspended over lava. The Downcrawl Deck cards, which have color-coded combinatorial prompts making it easy to generate two-part table results. A page spread from the Downcrawl rulebook, showing the start of the chapter on Journeys.
April 2, 2025 at 4:45 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
Migrating the TTRPG collection onto a new shelf that was supposed to have more room but I may have a problem
A very full bookshelf
March 30, 2025 at 8:31 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
Found in old files: flier made by my local movie theater in spring 1999, after they learned hundreds of #StarWars geeks had started setting up tents in the parking lot across the street, the day before advance tickets to Phantom Menace went on sale.

OCR'd version: pastebin.com/SR7GqtJq
Scan of flier: see link for transcription. Scan of flier: see link for transcription.
March 29, 2025 at 5:45 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
Downcrawl bonus items all packed and ready to ship!! I spend all my remaining Tack to help them navigate successfully to their destinations...
Triangular metal Tack coins custom made for Downcrawl 2E
March 24, 2025 at 6:22 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
Downcrawl packing party this weekend... one down, ~799 more to go.
(yes I've got friends helping... amazing friends)
Some Downcrawl card decks placed on bubble wrap and a book mailer, ready to be folded up and addressed.
March 22, 2025 at 1:44 AM
aaronareed.bsky.social
It's definitely not hyperbole to say most big projects actually do require blood, sweat, and tears. Downcrawl drew first blood tonight as I was unpackaging Tack coins from the manufacturer's hard-edged plastic sleeves (to repackage them in cozier linen bags). Only 1400 more coins to go...
Thumb held up with band-aid against background of coins. A pile of triangular brass-colored Downcrawl Tack coins. A box of small linen bags containing Downcrawl Tack coins.
March 4, 2025 at 5:21 AM
aaronareed.bsky.social
If 12-year-old Aaron with his red box D&D Basic set knew that one day he'd commission a few hundred dice for his very own TTRPG, the velocity of his head exploding might have exceeded the sound barrier. These lovely handmade d6s for #Downcrawl courtesy Dice Extractions: www.etsy.com/shop/DiceExt...
Green d6 dice with large gold numerals, lined up and getting ready to be shipped from the makers. Pic courtesy Dice Extractions.
February 20, 2025 at 9:35 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
Just put in a print order for 720 #Downcrawl Delver's Guides, 400 Adventure Zines, and a great many Index Bookmarks and blank Folk & Volume cards. Expecting 650 pounds of #TTRPG supplements on my doorstep in three or four weeks 😎🎲
Montage of Downcrawl bonus material covers, featuring mushroom art and an array of fonts
February 14, 2025 at 9:10 PM
aaronareed.bsky.social
Reading Sister Alice by Robert Reed (2003) which posits (essentially) LLMs as speakers for the dead civilizations that leave them behind. This makes me feel some things
"Now,” said Perfect, "count the failed worlds." Again, Ord knew the exact number. Memories encoded in a tireless net flowed into him. He saw Perfect tracking whispers through a wilderness of stars. Some whispers vanished, while some grew stronger, but all ended with a technological world freshly killed. Wars had done the damage, mostly. Sometimes there were accidental plagues or machines run amuck, or a battered ecosystem would collapse back to the microbes. Nothing with a voice remained, save the occasional computer or automated antenna still pointed at the sky, begging the stars for help, for alliances, for second chances, for God. Counting was easy; remembering took an age. Images struck at Ord, leaving him spent and sore, and sorry. And Perfect had suffered far worse. His hopes were ruined each time; nothing but ruin was waiting for him. Armed with a Chamberlain's skills, he would sift through the gruesome traces—bone shards and burnt cities and oceans of encoded data—then he would build phantoms of the dead, complete with voices and desires, and their telltale flaws. These examples lent insights. Perfect could ask the phantoms why and how they had so willingly pushed their homes into oblivion.
January 31, 2025 at 6:24 PM