Brian Ashford
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brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
Brian Ashford
@brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
1.4K followers 670 following 5.2K posts
Role-player, husband, parent. Woke PoS. He/him.

Staff at Ancient Robot Games in Edinburgh.

ominosity.wordpress.com

Why you are rolling the dice is far more important than which dice you are rolling.
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brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
I also just found this!

Gurps psionics I think.
November 17, 2025 at 4:08 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
I do have a few GURPS books in the cupboard.
A shelf of RPGs in a walk in cupboard.
November 17, 2025 at 1:38 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
I have been trying to gather all my RPGs into one place.
A bookshelf full of RPGs
November 17, 2025 at 12:32 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
I may have shared this with you already, I had a bit of a rant elsewhere about how framing all RPG discussion around rules is seriously holding back all of us.
I have said a few times this year, I'm done with rules. I don't care. I've played a lot of different rule sets, a lot of different styles and families of rules and they didn't make my play better, they just put different walls around the shape of our play. Sure, sometimes that's useful, but if we want to limit our play to a particular place, activity or vibe, we can just do that. So I'm focusing on play instead. What do we want from play, how do we explain it, how do we share that. That might just sound like a different way of describing what a rule is, but I feel like once the rule is written down the discussion is over. I want to keep the discussion. For years people have been telling me that system isn't just the rules in the book, it's the social contract too, and personal biases, and culture, and the venues' closing time... And that talking point has been used to shut down so much analysis, debate and criticism of rules and system and play that everyone is tied in knots and it's impossible to discuss anything anymore. Everything's a game. They are all RPGs. All play is system. Every GM choice is a Move... You can't talk about anything without someone talking exception to the implications to their thing, which you weren't talking about! IMO (and the IMO here is important - this is opinion. Not proven): since the Forge and maybe before, most indie designers have been trying to build RPGs with rules and we have been bumping up against the limits of that approach for decades. Burning Wheel found one frontier. Fall of Magic found another. Now people are rubbing their dice together over a pile of tarot cards hoping to spark something new, but the answer isn't in mechanics, it's in all the other parts of the "system" which make up RPGs which everyone keeps forgetting about because no one wants to talk about it. IMO (and the IMO here is important - this is opinion. Not proven): since the Forge and maybe before, most indie designers have been trying to build RPGs with rules and we have been bumping up against the limits of that approach for decades. Burning Wheel found one frontier. Fall of Magic found another. Now people are rubbing their dice together over a pile of tarot cards hoping to spark something new, but the answer isn't in mechanics, it's in all the other parts of the "system" which make up RPGs which everyone keeps forgetting about because no one wants to talk about it.
November 11, 2025 at 1:31 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
A table in Animal Crossing set up for RPGs. The owner stands at the side excited to play.
November 7, 2025 at 12:25 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
Specifically this bit:
The first of these is that the game’s strength is outside the game itself. The game is primarily a serving device into which the real appeal is poured: the setting, scenarios, or campaigns. No interest whatsoever. This is where Delta Green drops. This is where Mothership drops. This is a core one for me, and should be considered foreshadowing of where this is going.
October 29, 2025 at 11:07 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
God, who wrote this post which lists Justin Alexander alongside Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson and Brennan Lee Mulligan?

Oh. Right.
Screen grab of a post by Justin Alexander which reads "Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, Brennan Lee Mulligan, and Justin Alexander all run their campaigns differently than you do. What do they know that you don't? And what are the five keys you need to unlock these epic campaigns for yourself?"
October 17, 2025 at 9:32 AM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
Second hand bookshop find!
Three collections of Mythos fiction. The Hastur Cycle, The Azathoth Cycle and The Ithaqua Cycle
October 13, 2025 at 1:25 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
Well I never did get around to running my 2000ad anthology campaign with Savage Worlds. Now I guess I‘ll find something else to run it with.
A screenshot of a Facebook post by Shane Hensley of Pinnacle Entertainment Group where he talks about how much he respected Charlie fucking Kirk.
September 13, 2025 at 9:10 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
It's got a good floor plan for adventures too!
August 28, 2025 at 9:44 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
Errant also seems to have what you are looking for. It probably ticks the rest of your list too.
August 22, 2025 at 8:34 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
His Majesty The Worm has a whole chapter for you:
August 22, 2025 at 8:08 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
My players had to run away from a pretty serious boss in my WhiteHack game tonight.

One of them has been deafened, another was blinded and the third kept on being silenced. The fourth is a chaste monkey Monk.
Statue of four monkeys. In turn they have their hands covering their mouth, eyes, ears and crotch.
August 6, 2025 at 10:15 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
My to-read #rpg stack is needing some attention.

Wraithlands
Teeth
James Bond 007
Coriolis The Great Dark
Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader
Streets Tell Stories LA campaign sourcebook (Underground RPG)
Alien Destroyer of Worlds - box (contains Twilight 2000 1e)
A stack of RPG books and box sets. Including: Wraithlands Teeth James Bond 007 Coriolis The Great Dark Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader Streets Tell Stories LA campaign sourcebook (Underground RPG) Alien Destroyer of Worlds
August 5, 2025 at 12:37 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
30 - Fighting Fantasy, The Introductory RPG (1983) was literally decades ahead of it's time. The rest of the industry head to go through 80s maximalist simulation, 90s confused smoke & mirrors mega plots and 00s storygames before they came back to light play-focused games like this.
A novel sized paperback on a shelf. It looks well read. The spine is orange. The cover features a tiger person bursting out of a dice which is so big it's beyond the horizon. The tile reads "Steve Jackson, Fighting Fantasy, The Introductory Role-playing Game"
August 1, 2025 at 7:43 AM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
I finally finished Paper Mario Origami King this morning. No joke it is one of the best CRPGs I have played. A joy to explore and constantly charming and funny. Recommended!
Paper Mario looking thoughfully at his frenemy Paper Bowser who has been folded up and looks like an envelope. Olivia, an origami princess floats nearby.
July 31, 2025 at 11:01 AM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
I got my own print off Stars Without Number. A5 spiral B&W. Cheap, great at the table. Slightly too small to comfortably read cover to cover but good for reference.
A5 spiral bound Stars Without Number. B/X D&D behind for scale. Stars Without Number lying flat, open to a spread.
July 29, 2025 at 2:59 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
The cover of the Troika supplement Acid Death Fantasy. Lurid colours, lime green, yellow, orange, deep red. A fine rider on his sand surfer desperately tries to put run the enormous creature bearing down on him, maw wide, ready to swallow him whole.
July 25, 2025 at 10:14 AM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
One of my favourite things about Thousand Thousand Islands was all of Munkao's awesome spear weiders.
A gorgeous line drawing of a South East Asian woman holding a spear.
July 24, 2025 at 9:50 AM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
Here's my thoughts on the system so far.
Not really reading but I've been listening to the Critical Role AP of DaggerHeart. Outside of combat it's the same old loose RPG casual play, during combat though it's all about the points! Roll to hit, gain 1 Hope, roll damage, target loses 1 HP, spend 1 Stress to do another 1 HP worth of Damage. GM spends 1 Fear to do 2 or 3 HP Damage to everyone, PCs spend 1 Armour to keep 1 HP. It's not enthralling to listen to. It might be more fun in play but you probably have to be really invested in pools of points.
July 8, 2025 at 10:47 AM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
Last post. I hope I've been clear.

I'll leave you with this image of the probability curves of 1d6, 3d6, 6d6 and 10d6. I think it shows quite well how aging more dice widens the likely results adding more randomness.
Graph of the probability curves of 1d6, 3d6, 6d6 and 10d6, each one progressively wider and more spread out than the last.
July 3, 2025 at 2:51 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
If we compare the curve for 3d6 with similar distributions of 2d10 and 1d20 we can actually see the effect I'm arguing against. As we move from one dice to two to three we can see the distributions clustering more around the average results (10.5 or 11).
Distribution graphs of d20, 2d10 and 3d6 generated on anydice.com. The d20 is a straight like sharing all results are equally likely at 5%. the 2d10 line is a triangular distribution with the extremes of 2 and 20 only at 1% but the peak is at 10%. The 3d6 curve is more gathered around the mid point with a peak at 12.5%
July 3, 2025 at 2:26 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
You probably know this as the normal distribution. Everything in probability maths ends up here after a bit.

Here's an image of the distribution of 3d6, you can see that it is far more likely that you will roll 10 or 11 than a 3 or an 18.
Bar chart showing percentage chances of each possible result when rolling 3d6 3 and 18 at the end only have 0.45% 10 and 11 in the middle meanwhile have 12.5%
July 3, 2025 at 2:15 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
I'm not jealous of my cat. That would be ridiculous. It's just a nap and I don't even need a nap.
A ginger tom cat on a grey sofa sleeping and looking very comfy using his paw as a pillow.
June 20, 2025 at 12:32 PM
brianbloodaxe.bsky.social
This is the vibe.
Black & White line art of an old space ship in a hanger with a man sitting on the ground leaning on a wall just out side. He looks tired.
June 17, 2025 at 7:50 PM