Lucas Zellers 🚀 Glatisant
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lucaszellers.bsky.social
Lucas Zellers 🚀 Glatisant
@lucaszellers.bsky.social
200 followers 310 following 160 posts
God-haunted.
I make and market games, especially TTRPGS
🛡️ Glatisant with Graftbound
🦅 Book of Extinction, resurrecting lost animals in D&D
🐲 Precious Things with Wet Ink Games
🃏 Bonds Between with Bright Bard Games
https://scintilla.studio/linktree/
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lucaszellers.bsky.social
@graftbound.bsky.social spotted at #PAXU! Find Bonds Between and The Peddler's Prize at the @ipr.bsky.social booth this weekend
Bonds Between on a shelf of other RPG zines next to Wreck This Deck, an early inspiration for the game The Peddler's Prize statement zine surrounded by other RPG zines
November 21, 2025 at 6:59 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
Andrew Bosley you've done it again!
Playing River Valley Glassworks by @allplay.bsky.social and it is 100% my vibe: fast, intuitive gameplay with a cute, eco-industrial theme
The river, lake, and faction pieces from the board game. You know I picked the otter! 🦦
October 24, 2025 at 8:44 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
The perfect #synthwave album is Night Cruise by Max Cruise. Just in case you were looking.
A Spotify album page for the Max Cruise album "Night Cruise." The song "Apex" is playing. It is a rock solid jam, a soulful vibe for broken yellow lines and neon signs.
October 22, 2025 at 1:53 AM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
2/4: The central question of Glatisant is how can a dream care for its dreamer? It's a parable for an object of faith, so rare in this life, that loves you back as much or more than you love it. And this baffling moment in the campaign feels like it could have walked out of the mists of this book.
A screen capture of the Glatisant Kickstarter page, showing $9,491 pledged by 280 backers with 3 hours to go.
October 16, 2025 at 4:12 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
1/4: I didn’t expect these last few hours to be so tense! It feels like we’re racing the clock to $10K by 4 pm 🕓. That last stretch goal and the five-figure threshold are tantalizingly close, an absolute joy if we make it! Even if we don't, though, I'll be more than content. Here's why:
A poster image in the style of Glatisant with the text "How can a dream care for its dreamer?"
October 16, 2025 at 4:12 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
These two figure in Korean folk art from the Joseon dynasty as satire of a feudal class system. I could write this game, but I want a Korean voice to tell the story.
September 12, 2025 at 6:10 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
Major mechanical update for Glatisant: the Beast can now move to any adjacent card in the spread rather than only moving diagonally.

It's one of a host of improvements implemented during the editing process as we approach the Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/gra...
August 9, 2025 at 1:18 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
🐲 Monsters in Games: How to Design a Monster that Matters
Make the most of monsters in your games. Drawing on fairy tales, history, cartoons, and academic scholarship from all over the world, panelists show you how to design a satisfying, meaningful monster.
tabletop.events/conventions/...
April 30, 2025 at 2:26 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
🔪 The Terror Toolkit: Running Horror RPGs at Your Table
Veteran game designers give you the tools to bring horror to life at your tabletop. Learn the ins-and-outs of a good scare and how to make the game satisfying and safe at your table.
tabletop.events/conventions/...
April 30, 2025 at 2:25 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
⛵ Epic Fantasy Quests that Actually Happened
Discover some of history's most epic quests to inspire your next TTRPG, like a zombie plague of flesh-eating fungus or the Ice Age giants that saved a shipwrecked crew. Stories from Book of Extinction get more detail here.
tabletop.events/conventions/...
Steller's sea cow, a massive manatee-like marine mammal, nuzzles a canoe loaded with sailors in this artist's rendition. The waterline splits the image in half, showing a snow-covered, rocky arctic island above and a bed of kelp slowly undulating beneath.
April 30, 2025 at 2:23 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
💀 How Monsters Go Extinct
Discover goofy "lost" monsters from D&D's shadowy past, witness the explosion of biodiversity in monster manuals, and learn the forces that drive all creatures—even monsters—to extinction.
tabletop.events/conventions/...
Artist's rendition of a basilisk, a mythical six-legged reptilian creature. Source: Doug Stewart (June 1993). Monstrous Manual. (TSR, Inc)
April 30, 2025 at 2:15 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
🦉 Do Owlbears Lay Eggs?
Build more immersive TTRPG worlds by answering hilarious questions about fantasy's most famous monsters in this light-hearted, informative panel. Do owlbears lay eggs? Are dragons actually lobsters? Why do dragons live alone?
tabletop.events/conventions/...
A grizzled owlbear leaps over a fallen tree trunk amidst a hail of arrows on this book cover for "The Last Owlbear" softcover book
April 30, 2025 at 2:13 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
If you're at Origins Game Fair this year, come learn about monsters, ecology, and games!

I give panels at the conventions I attend, and Origins is my local. Here's what I'm offering this year:
A panel room in a convention center. Some numpty in a scarf, who looks kinda like me, takes a selfie from the dais facing two columns of chairs, where various and sundry lovable nerds go bananas.
April 30, 2025 at 2:07 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
If they follow the rules of #ecology, one dragon would need a hunting territory maybe thousands of miles across, which may be why they aren't typically portrayed as part of complex societies. That's just my theory, though - what's yours?

#dnd #dragons #magicalrealism
April 26, 2025 at 1:29 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
How to alter cards in #BondsBetween: Just go ham. Make me proud. Like, don’t even come home until you have ink on your fingers, clippings in your pocket, and dirt on your face. What are you, an adult or something? Get out there and play games.
An ace of hearts with a sticker depicting an anatomically correct human heart.
April 23, 2025 at 6:33 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
If you were a dragon under two feet long, where would you adventure?

Precious Things needs more settings but I'm having trouble choosing; which are your favorites?
🏰 Medieval fantasy
📝 Regency fiction: The Bennet Family Library
⛵ The Age of Sail
🐎 Western
🔍 Noir: The PI’s Office
🌌 Science Fiction
Medieval fantasy The heroes of Castle Keep are too focused on the dragons laired in the mountains to notice the ones burrowed into their walls. For fans of Dungeons & Dragons, Mistborn, and Lord of the Rings. Regency fiction: The Bennet Family Library Sealed letters, aspirations beyond one's station, and clandestine offers of marriage: nothing in the Bennet house goes unnoticed by its most unnoticed residents. For fans of Pride & Prejudice, Emma, and Bridgerton. The Age of Sail: The HMS Bounty Whether the cap'n knows it or nay, this ship has the best ratters, riggers, and look outs on the seven seas: you. For fans of Treasure Island, Disney's Atlantis, and A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan. Western You live at the OK Saloon. You are aware things are not always okay. For fans of High Noon, John Wayne, and Tombstone. Noir: The PI's Office He may be a down-on-his-luck, fast-talking ne'er-do-well of a private eye, but by the gum on his shoes, he's your private eye. Any case he takes in the office you share might as well be your case too. For fans of The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. Science Fiction: The smuggler's ship She may not look like much, but we love this rusty old starship. She's quick, tough, reliable, and most importantly, the closest thing this spinning universe has to home. For fans of Cowboy Bebop, Firefly, and Star Wars: A New Hope.
January 12, 2025 at 8:09 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
"You will be visited by three spirits this evening"

The three spirits:
Left to right: An ivory-billed woodpecker, Carolina parakeet, and passenger pigeon specimens photographed at the Field Museum in Chicago. All three birds, once abundant in North America, suffered human-caused extinction. They're all featured in the monster manual of extinct animals I wrote for 5th Edition D&D called Book of Extinction. These birds changed my life.
December 25, 2024 at 3:46 AM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
@lucasferreiracm.bsky.social made some of the only illustrations in existence for species in Book of Extinction; he went out of his comfort zone to deliver a killer experience for readers and a tribute to the legacies these creatures left behind!
A dark brown anthropomorphic mouse wields a gleaming scimitar in a jaunty one-handed stance. She is dressed in classic pirate garb with a puffy white shirt, a red belt sash, and gold rings on her tail.
December 13, 2024 at 1:53 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
If you see this, post a bird.

Dodo from Book of Extinction!
November 18, 2024 at 1:15 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
If you see this, post a monster
November 12, 2024 at 11:24 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
Paint & Take at Gaelcon Dublin! My gnoll's eyes came out great and I'm more pleased than usual with the dry brushing. I still need to work on color mixing and detail painting.

#miniaturepainting #ttrpgs
A hand-painted miniature of a gnoll, a humanoid hyena-like monster, on a gaming table.
October 26, 2024 at 12:55 PM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
"You're not a monster," I said. But I lied. What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be. From the Latin root monstrum, a divine messenger of catastrophe, then adapted by the Old French to mean an animal of myriad origins: centaur, griffin, satyr. To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once." -Ocean Vuong, from "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous"
October 23, 2024 at 10:52 AM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
The best part of writing games is seeing what people add to them.

I released The Contract six years ago and it's still my best-selling @dmsguild.bsky.social adventure, but I never thought to play it out like the movie Clue. You can bet the next time I run it players are getting my best Tim Curry!
October 21, 2024 at 11:27 AM
lucaszellers.bsky.social
I'm Lucas, I make monsters. Follow for monster thoughts, conservation stories, and TTRPG inspiration.
My best monsters are in #BookofExtinction, a D&D monster manual with @magehandpress.bsky.social.
I interview insightful game designers on Making a Monster, wherever you get podcasts!
On this square cover image for a podcast, the head of a dragon is illustrated in sepia tones on parchment and annotated in blue chalk, showing helpful advice like "give chin scritches" and "this nostril is NOT a blowhole." The masthead reads "Making a Monster" in wide block letters. Five creatures stand arrayed in a background like mystical forest in this cover image for Book of Extinction, a bestiary of extinct animals for D&D 5th Edition. A purple dodo bird occupies the bottom left corner beside a stalking, blue-green, semi-transparent wolf-like thylacine. Above them are an aurochs, lit with an inner green light of growth and fecundity, and a great auk, its back sprouting icy spikes like the arctic waters it once inhabited. Above them spread the magnificent antlers of a eucladoceros, like those of an elk but much larger, shedding a warm solar radiance from within like the monstrous sun deer eucladoceros inspired for Book of Extinction.
September 20, 2023 at 2:17 PM