Sotiris (he/him)
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sotirispitelis.bsky.social
Sotiris (he/him)
@sotirispitelis.bsky.social
1.6K followers 1.2K following 1.7K posts
Physicist by day, ttrpg nerd by night.

Writing @evergreen-ttrpg.bsky.social — a tabletop rpg about a vengeful Nature and those who endure Her.

Join the public playtest at https://evergreen-ttrpg.com/!

More stuff at https://sotiris-pitelis.itch.io.
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sotirispitelis.bsky.social
So what's everyone working on this #WIPWednesday?

I put the finishing touches in my draft for @evergreen-ttrpg.bsky.social's quickstart just a couple of days ago! Now it's on to editing and layout.

Here's a tidbit from one of the creature entries in the quickstart ✨

#ttrpg
Simple black text on a white background. The header is "Misdreamers," and the text reads: Butterflies have a largely unknown hierarchy which culminates in the dreadful misdreamers, the butterfly lords. These creatures are probably sentient to some degree, although they lack any traditional means of communication with the Peoples. In fact, mortal minds are so detached from the misdreamer’s existence that they struggle to grasp the creature in its entirety; if they try to perceive it they get sluggish and hazy, inebriated with incomprehension. Misdreamers use this to lure and debilitate their prey. They don’t consume any kind of material food; instead, they live off creatures’ thoughts and dreams. Sentient minds are especially delectable to a butterfly lord, whose prey is usually left alive but dazed, dissociative, or even fully catatonic. Misdreamers are usually accompanied by their hosts, swarms of butterflies that have pledged allegiance to the lord and share in some of its otherworldliness. Sensory details: A disorienting torrent of orange and black. A blur in the air. You know where it is but your eyes glaze over it. Headache and sluggishness.
November 12, 2025 at 8:22 AM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
This #SelfPromoSaturday I'll pull a WIPWednesday and show you a snippet of funky weather ideas categorized by @evergreen-ttrpg.bsky.social's four seasons.

What about you, #ttrpg folks? Show me your (human-made) stuff! Remember to interact w/ each other and repost what you like ❤️
A snippet of a table with notable weather. The columns are Evergreen's four seasons (gush, burgeon, hush and gloom). 7 out of the 12 rows are shown, each with a different option for a weather effect. Gush: - Relentless rain, weighing you down. - The Sun shines through the fog, like an eye in the sky. - Fog that looks like people, judging you from afar. - Uncharacteristic silence. Nothing moves. - Insect swarms clouding the sky. - Clear skies, beautiful stars even early in the afternoon. Didn’t this constellation look different yesterday? - Whipping wind, trying to steal your things. Burgeon: - A pleasant breeze carries the smell of wood and tree sap. - The Sun shines emotionally — shame, you think, or anger. - Just the right temperature. You could get used to this. - A chiming melody out of nowhere. - White fluffy clouds, the definition of comfort. - Everything is scarily vibrant. Leaves are too green. Flowers smell too intoxicating. - The trees feel happy. You swear they giggle. Hush: - The Sun shines proud. It’s too hot and you want to do nothing. - An anemic, lifeless breeze. Its cool air soon turns warm. - Light scatters and refracts. Your eyes burn, exhausted. - The air ripples, the sky pulses with heat. - The light carries on well into the night, painting the sky red. - Flower petals sizzle under the Sun. They give off tendrils of smoke and the world smells burnt. - A rumbling from the bowels of the earth. Gloom: - Persistent darkness, threatening to swallow your light sources. - Everything is frozen, sticky and slippery. A sharp stillness. - A drab day, like someone sucked the color from the world. - Whispers that start where your light ends. - Wind that rustles the branches of bare trees. They sound hollow. - Roiling shadows even in broad daylight. Well, as broad as daylight gets these days. - The Sun doesn’t rise at all today.
October 18, 2025 at 9:02 AM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
I'm almost done with @evergreen-ttrpg.bsky.social's quickstart, I promise.

Today I worked on GM aids, including some nice random tables. This is a simple one, but still one of my favorites.

#ttrpg
A table titled "Needs" instructing people to roll 1d12 and pick results out of two columns. The first one is titled "This person needs..." and the results are "companionship, redemption, practical help, approval, confidence, to heal, rest, wealth, respect, hope, knowledge, purpose". The second column is titled "Do they realise what they need?" and it has only two results. 1-6 on the d12 is "No", the rest is "Yes".
October 4, 2025 at 9:04 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
Perhaps this is my sign to call it a night
A photo of the lower left corner of a computer screen displaying a Microsoft Word document. The word count is centered, displaying 33333 words.
September 30, 2025 at 9:09 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
Still working on @evergreen-ttrpg.bsky.social's quickstart, but things got out of hand and I started talking about spiders.

Uh... send help I guess?

#ttrpg #WIPWednesday
White text on black background. Its header is "Weavers" and the text reads: Arachnophobia is very much warranted. Not because of spiders, however; they are just the smallest, tamest version of something much worse. Some creatures, thankfully few and far between, possess two singular characteristics: too many limbs, and an incessant urge to hunt. Some eat their prey, some bury it, some keep it forever. It doesn’t matter; it’s secondary to the need to catch it. Many of them use nets and webs to snatch poor souls, so the Peoples call them weavers. Nobody quite knows how weavers came to be. No two of them look alike. They would all be considered entirely unrelated if not for the crystal-clear notion that these things only want to hunt. Maybe they’re part of Nature’s vengeance upon the Peoples. Maybe they are the progeny of a primordial hunter-beast. Or maybe this is just what predators eventually become. Spiders, for one, seem to revere them. Sensory details: Goosebumps. Unexpected silence. The feeling of being watched. Many limbs moving independently. Spiders all around. Something skittering just out of sight.
September 10, 2025 at 6:38 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
It's #WIPWednesday and I was in the mood to write some #ttrpg stuff recently (prompted by @ursus-lunae.bsky.social's excellent suggestions), so behold: a new trait for Evergreen full of juicy, mostly narrative abilities 🌲
A screenshot of black text on an offwhite background. It reads: Birthright✧ (3 Grit): You carry a mark from the season or the situation of your birth. Pick one of the options below: - Born in gush: You are at home in the damp, the noise and the buzzing critters of the season of rains. You have no trouble resting and traveling in adverse weather conditions, and you can roll Communion to gain intuition on your immediate surroundings based on the behavior of the local insect populations. - Born in burgeon: The season of Nature has left its mark on you. You have a boon to Communion and Spirit when you interact with Greentouched creatures of Nature (but not mere animals). - Born in hush: Like the quiet season, you are also detached from the Green. You have a snag to your Communion and a boon when you roll to resist Green-related effects. - Born in gloom: You carry the darkness of the somber season. You can see relatively well in the dark even with the weakest light source, like a candle or moonlight. You can take 1 strain to snuff out a light source no larger than a campfire. - Born under an eclipse: You came to the world when the veil was thin. You always know when you’re being watched (but not by whom). - Born during a storm: Something roils inside you. You can never sit still. You have a boon to all skills rolled to navigate storms, and you can take a Mark to burst in lightning; roll Vigor against all Adjacent creatures’ Evasion. Each one that fails suffers 2 strain and is flung to a zone further away from you.
August 20, 2025 at 9:04 AM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
Today I passed by our family fantasy bookstore to pick up Mappa Mundi by @threesailsstudios.bsky.social which we had backed on kickstarter.

It. Is. Gorgeous!

#ttrpg folks, I'll pop back with a review at some point but until then do yourselves a favor and check it out ❤️
A hand holds up the box set of Mappa Mundi, with a bookcase displaying other ttrpgs on the background.
August 18, 2025 at 6:38 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
Damn the sky looks cool today
A vertical photo of a street and the sky above it. The sky occupies most of the photo and it looks amazing: big, dispersed clouds, some lit up by an unseen sun and some dark, bisected by a hazy but straight line probably made by an airplane.
July 27, 2025 at 4:00 AM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
I wish that you will have players as invested in your #ttrpg campaigns as @ursus-lunae.bsky.social is in mine 💚
A screenshot of an instagram story. It has a Spotify widget showing a playlist titled "Evergreen". Below it is the text "Lazy Tuesday energy: vibing with the @evergreen_ttrpg playlist while I daydream and organize campaign notes. Lore deep-dives>productivity."
July 15, 2025 at 2:29 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
The quickstart I'm working on right now still has a ways to go and I can't share anything from it yet, but this table of meaningless occurrences from our public playtest document is still one of my favorite bits of writing:

(if the screenshots are too hard to read, check the alt text ✨)
A list of paragraphs in white text over green background, each accompanied by a number: 1. The repetitive creaks and groans of the caravan are occasionally disrupted by a screech from some faraway creature. It sounds disturbingly similar to the screams of a child, although it’s clearly not. 2. In the early morning, as people get ready to start traveling again, the cold is biting and the fog is dense. The caravanner suggests that they all spend a few minutes enjoying a hot tea together before they set off. 3. The caravan’s lamps make shadows dance at the edges of the travelers’ vision. The light barely makes it to the nearby treeline, but it still feels somehow wrong, as if the travelers are disturbing a place not meant for them. 4. As the trees get more and more dense, fewer rays of sunlight make it through their branches. The forest itself seems to grow darker day by day. From morning until noon, those rays that manage to cut through the foliage are sharp and precisely defined on the fog; a spectacular sight. 5. By now, the group is used to the buzzing, clicking and chittering of insects and other critters of the forest, to the point that they don’t pay much attention to it. At some point, the sound abruptly vanishes. Maybe it was disrupted by some nearby predator, but there are no signs of the beast. The silence weighs heavily on the travelers. Their words reverberate, swimming in nothingness. Then, as quickly as it vanished, the bustling of the critters reappears. 6. As the wind howls, one of the travelers thinks they can make out some music between the cacophony, but the noise is too chaotic to be sure. (paragraph #6 is in the next image, but the alt text character limit was too low to fit it so I moved it here) A list of paragraphs in white text over green background, each accompanied by a number: 7. Around midday, the smell of the group’s almost-cooked lunch mixes with the scents of the forest. It evokes a sense of adventure and wilderness, and it whets the appetite for good food with good company. 8. When the group takes a break to stretch their legs, one of them notices a smooth, pale, half-buried rock. Driven by curiosity, they unearth it only to realize that it’s a faun skull with its horns broken off at the root. 9. As the group is getting ready to rest on a particularly cold night, they have a choice to make: either sleep in the chilly caravan as usual, or huddle up outside and start a campfire. If they opt for the former they shiver, toss and turn until they’re able to fall asleep. If they opt for the latter, they can see the stars; they are remarkably bright and they seem colder, like they picked up a bluish hue. The next night they’re back to normal. 10. The group comes across a natural clearing. A tree has been knocked down, presumably by the elements, and it took some of the smaller plants with it. The area is large enough to stop and rest for a while, and the fallen tree makes for a comfortable bench. 11. This morning feels almost suffocatingly cold and damp. The travelers can smell the moisture in the air, feel it on their fingertips. Then, the sun breaks through the early fog, and it warms the travelers up. Their breath comes easier. The scent of dampness is replaced by the smells of the forest, green and flowery. They find renewed vigor in this unexpectedly pleasant turn of events. 12. During a quiet part of the journey, the group is shaken by an unexpected, earthy rumbling, like the hungry belly of some enormous beast. It turns out to be the rumbling clouds of a faraway storm, but by the time the travelers realize this, it’s hard to dispel the mental images of gaping maws with rows and rows of teeth... and the thunder does sound hungrier than usual.
July 9, 2025 at 10:49 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
A mobile screenshot of the sidebar in Fate Core's rules
June 26, 2025 at 12:29 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
Here's my contribution from Metal Raiders, it's a cool one!
June 23, 2025 at 4:13 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
Okay let's see what we can do ✨

The forest is in turmoil! A rabid fire-wielding sorcerer known as the Flame Manipulator is burning swathes of land for no apparent reason. A tribe of silverfang wolves are trying to fight back but they have started succumbing to an inexplicable disease. (1/4)
Nine yugioh cards from a pack of Legend of the Blue Eyes White Dragon. In order, we have Dark Gray (a deer/goat/horse like creature with wings), Dark Energy (a hand clutching a sphere with a symbol on it), Silver Fang (a wolf howling at the moon), Flame Manipulator (a person essentially firebending), Steel Ogre Grotto ¢1 (a steel golem), M-Warrior ¢1 (a blue muscular dude with a lance, a mask, and magnetic powers), Sparks (a picture of jumping fire-sparks), Vile Germs (eight frankly adorable furry ball-shaped creatures) and Gravedigger Ghoul (a humanlike undead wielding what is ostensibly a fancy shovel).
June 23, 2025 at 3:48 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
Psh, easy.

Well no, not for *me*. For @jdragsky.bsky.social.

Half the playbooks in Wanderhome are spiritual in their own ways, and it always felt properly done (at least to me, a not-spiritual person).
A black and white screenshot of a paragraph titled "The Pilgrim" with a beautifully elaborate capital P. The paragraph reads "The gods have given you a path forward, a place you hope can finally give you what you seek. Some days you worry you'll never make it there at all. You are alive. Your care is enduring, faithful, and expressed one step at a time."
June 22, 2025 at 11:35 AM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
I absolutely know! A great tool for this (other than a lot of thinking, reworking, editing and copious amounts of caffeine) is sidebars with notes and hyperlinks.

I first saw this in Fate Core and also adapted it to my big project, Evergreen, both for links but also short rule reminders ✨
A screenshot of Fate Core, where a sidebar next to the main text refers readers to different pages for different rules and content, in this case "The NPC Types, p. 213" and "Secret or Hidden Aspects, p.79." A screenshot from Evergreen's playtest document, where the sidebar has notes on the rules that also point the reader to the relevant page. In this case "You start with two Breaths and two Wits. You gain more depending on your Vigor and Stability (p. 28)" and "Steel depends on your armor (p. 58)."
June 18, 2025 at 4:26 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
This #WIPWednesday finds me realizing that Evergreen's second playtest will take a *lot* of refinement and editing before it communicates the vibes of the game properly.

Don't get me started on prose, that's not even on my mind yet.

What about you, #ttrpg folks? What are you cooking?
A screenshot of a text document. It's titled "Haven" and it reads: "Evergreen is designed first and foremost to be played using Haven as a base of operations and exploring the surrounding wilderness, uncovering mysteries and connecting dots. These are the common elements of a typical Evergreen campaign: • There is either a steady group of players or a bigger pool of people, with some of them taking part in each session. • The players’ characters all live in Haven, a remote community at the edge of civilization. • The characters set their own goals based on their personal quests and Haven’s needs. They venture out into the wilderness around Haven to achieve those goals. • Sessions are often — but not always — standalone; the players pick their objective, journey out to see it through, and return home. Often, multiple standalone sessions connect into larger story arcs. • In between sessions, characters spend time contributing to Haven or to their own projects. • Haven changes over time; it flourishes and suffers depending on the players’ adventures."
June 4, 2025 at 11:54 AM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
I really liked their Amateur Camcorder font:
The cover of a ttrpg book. An inverted white triangle sits on top of a texture black background. Below it, it reads "The Mountain A system-agnostic setting about Sisyphean climbing, liminal civilization, and false hope ("false" is crossed out) Words & layout by Sotiris Pitelis. Art direction by Niki Lampada"
June 3, 2025 at 12:55 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
#ttrpg creatives, sometimes abstraction is the key to inspiration. Can you reduce your work and inspiration to a single color each?

Quote post this with:
- the defining color for your current project
- a color you find very evocative right now

I'll start!
An ashen pale grey with hex code #A7B099. A bright, pastel orange with hex code #FFCB50.
June 3, 2025 at 7:59 AM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
Update: there's no kill like overkill
A plate with a huge pile of hand pies
May 30, 2025 at 11:18 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
I'm running a ttrpg session for new folks tomorrow, and I got the urge to treat them to something.

It is... almost midnight.
A photo of circular pieces of dough topped with a leek and feta filling, surrounded by flour.
May 30, 2025 at 9:36 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
Sounds fun, hit me!
An image of a circle with the words "How did you discover this user?" and an arrow pointing towards the users (in this case my) avatar.
May 30, 2025 at 2:22 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
How's everyone doing this fine #WIPWednesday?

I've started working on @evergreen-ttrpg.bsky.social's second (and final) playtest, which will include all the rules of the game and enough content to run a few West Marches sessions of your own!

What are your WIP #ttrpg projects?
A plain text document in Times New Roman. It's a rough outline with various comments in the different list entries. It reads: 1. Some warm words (introduction) a. Mention that the final book will have similar form, but more content 2. Reading guide 3. The Lands Under the Sun a. Nature & the Green b. The Peoples 4. The rules a. Skills (rolling, boons/snags, Difficulty, skill list) b. Getting hurt (Strain, Mettle & Steel, Marks, healing, death) c. Grit (gaining through facets, spending) d. Modes of play (Journeys, Conflicts, Trials, Exploration) e. Equipment 5. Creating a character a. Starting Grit b. Ideas for Drives/faults/quests (random tables) c. Trait list 6. Running the game 7. Haven a. The way to Haven b. The settlement c. Haven rules (skills, projects, attacks) d. The trouble ledger - 1-4 pages each, for now enough for a few sessions 8. Stories a. 1-4 pages each, for now 3 examples 9. Landmarks a. 1-4 pages each, for now 3 examples 10. Denizens a. 1-4 pages each, for now every creature referenced above 11. The Truth 12. Next steps 13. Playtesters & Art guide Below the outline, "LOTS OF RANDOM TABLES" is written in bold centered script.
May 28, 2025 at 8:06 AM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
Since it's #WIPWednesday, let me share a couple of traits I've written for @evergreen-ttrpg.bsky.social ✨

This is the "shut up" line of traits. There is some game terminology but I'm sure you can figure out the gist. 3 strain is a dangerous amount of damage.

Show me your WIP #ttrpg stuff as well!
A screenshot of text that reads: "Mediator (2 Grit): You have a boon to your Spirit and Communion when you try to defuse situations before they turn violent. Last Change (3 Grit | Mediator): When a situation devolves into violence, you can take 1 Mark to impose serenity; for the next few minutes, each creature around you that decides to be violent takes 3 strain."
May 21, 2025 at 12:39 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
Is this a rough draft? Sure. But sometimes I'm happy with what I write ✨

#ttrpg
Black text on light gray background. It reads "Solar Feud (3 Grit): Your touch can put out flames. The sun no longer warms you up; you'll never have to fear its heat, but you have to find other ways to keep warm."
May 4, 2025 at 1:39 PM
sotirispitelis.bsky.social
Don't want to spoil this particular encounter in the premade adventure for our #ttrpg Evergreen, but
A closeup sketch of a fey-like creature. It has a humanoid face and arm but its features resemble a bird, maybe a peacock, with thick plumage and lots of decorative ornaments, pitch-black eyes and a hooked beak-nose. It smiles slightly and looks vaguely ominous.
May 3, 2025 at 10:07 AM