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DigitalRaven posted:Also there’s a fountain pen thread over in PYF (I’d link but I’m phone-posting) if you want even more advice and pens and inks to drool over. I got you: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3531265 I can recommend Cult Pens if you're buying pens in the UK. They've very kindly offered to ship me a new cap for my discontinued fountain pen for free after I emailed them in a tizzy after losing it.
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Aug 22, 2021 15:21
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Oh, wow! I checked creative convention and the hobby forum, but didn't think to check pyf.
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Aug 22, 2021 15:33
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Cult Pens will also frequently chuck in a bag of haribo, which has kept my loyalty
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Aug 22, 2021 15:56
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DigitalRaven posted:Cult Pens will also frequently chuck in a bag of haribo, which has kept my loyalty And those little smiley face paper clips! A good company.
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Aug 22, 2021 16:06
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Hi folks! Crossposting this from the SFF book thread at Hopper's prompting. Dunno why I didn't think to put it here too since I actually started following this thread recently. Also, I don't think I've seen Jeeyon Shim's games mentioned in here yet, but both Field Guide to Memory and Shape of Shadows (which is currently ongoing and might not be available for a little while) are really fun if you're into keepsake games and making artefacts of play.DurianGray posted:If anyone else here has pre-ordered or plans to get Cassandra Khaw's upcoming scifi/horror novel The All-Consuming World, there's a really neat pre-order bonus available:
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Aug 22, 2021 20:23
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I just can't justify thirty bucks for a PDF game but I hear it's very good and I wish them all the luck in the world.
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Aug 22, 2021 20:53
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Yeah, it's definitely bit steep compared to most solo game prices I've seen. You do at least get a good amount of content (the Field Guide to Memory PDF is almost 140 pages). Playing them live, you'd get prompts 4-5 days a week and it lasts for 4 weeks or so. The prompts have taken me about from 15~ minutes to (more usually) a bit over an hour to complete and that's with a relatively bare-bones approach (I've seen some people go hog wild with embellishments that must take hours). But the downside is that since the story is so linear there probably isn't much replayability unless you tried to very consciously play your own character differently and create a very different sort of artefact.
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Aug 23, 2021 00:33
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potatocubed posted:If you're getting into solo games and you like creating artefacts of play, Wreck This Deck might be up your street. Hey, wanted to say again thanks for bringing this one up. Really neat mix of a solo RPG and like a guided art project that I had some fun with over the weekend. Also, I'm sure at some point I'll forget I've done this and some friend will stumble across this deck of cards with "DANGER DO NOT OPEN" scrawled on the outside and all kinds of hosed up cards with sigils and burns and stuff on them and I'll have some explaining to do.
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Aug 23, 2021 06:45
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Yeah, I ordered cards and I'm looking forward to trying it.
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Aug 23, 2021 06:47
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I've been trying Four Against Ragnarok after seeing it recommended in this thread and it feels a bit too easy? Like once you start to level a lot starts to feel very doable and I'm feeling like my characters are only going to start dying through things that instantly kill you via bad dice rolls. Combat seems too manageable.
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Aug 23, 2021 06:55
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Viridiant posted:I've been trying Four Against Ragnarok after seeing it recommended in this thread and it feels a bit too easy? Like once you start to level a lot starts to feel very doable and I'm feeling like my characters are only going to start dying through things that instantly kill you via bad dice rolls. Combat seems too manageable. I have this one lying around on my desk for 4 month or so now I have yet to start a game. Care to elaborate a bit more on your session?
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Aug 23, 2021 08:31
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I received my fountain pen, journals, and playing cards today. I bought Wreck This Deck and Ironsworn: Delve off DriveThruRPG. I just dug up a $25 gift card for barnes and noble, and I was curious if anyone knows of anything solo roleplaying related that they might carry. I searched for all the stuff on the first page of this thread, and didn't come up with anything. If not, I'll just get more stationary supplies.
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Aug 24, 2021 03:39
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Uganda Loves Me posted:I received my fountain pen, journals, and playing cards today. I bought Wreck This Deck and Ironsworn: Delve off DriveThruRPG.
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Aug 24, 2021 04:58
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I just ran across this and the concept made me laugh a lot: You Are Quarantined With Adam Driver And He Is Insisting On Reading You His New Script quote:Amid a global crisis, you have been quarantined inside your home with Adam Driver, the actor. The circumstances behind how you were locked in your home with Adam Driver are unimportant for the purposes of this game, but you may want to think about them in your free time.
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Aug 24, 2021 06:46
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Viridiant posted:I've been trying Four Against Ragnarok after seeing it recommended in this thread and it feels a bit too easy? Like once you start to level a lot starts to feel very doable and I'm feeling like my characters are only going to start dying through things that instantly kill you via bad dice rolls. Combat seems too manageable. In Four against the Titans, the base level of everything you fight goes up as your party average level goes up, which keeps it harder. Also there's the Titan battles. I haven't lost a hero in my game, but it's been close at times.
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Aug 24, 2021 07:19
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Xlorp posted:Classy candlestick, and it uses all those candles you budgeted... The stationary, bargain bin playing cards and 2 pdfs really broke the bank. EDIT: VVVVVVV Doctor Zero posted:blank journal? A type of stationary. I enjoy writing and art too. I'm going to use some stuff for making crafts, some for journaling, and some for playing games. A number of people I know keep encouraging me to create more stuff, and I'm hoping fun materials will actually encourage me to do so. I spent 76 bucks on writing/art materials that I'll be using for years to come, and less than 20 bucks on games. I really don't want to start a derail, but I find it strange that I've been called out for getting stuff that was recommended to me in this very thread. Uganda Loves Me fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Aug 24, 2021 |
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Aug 24, 2021 07:32
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Uganda Loves Me posted:The stationary, bargain bin playing cards and 2 pdfs really broke the bank. blank journal?
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Aug 24, 2021 16:07
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ironsworn £0 ikea pencils £0 fancy notebooks £3600 dice app £0 someone who is good at solo roleplaying please help me, I can't bring myself to start writing in any of the notebooks I already own
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Aug 24, 2021 18:11
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90s Cringe Rock posted:
Ow, I'm attacked. Everything on hold even as I start thinking of new things to do solo. 
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Aug 24, 2021 18:17
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one thing that is handy, I find, is a door sign holder, one of the clear acrylic ones you slip a printed sheet in. you can throw a map or literally anything in there and draw or write whatever you like with non-permanent pens on top. there are other better ways to do it, I'm sure, but my workplace ordered a thousand too many and they're nice and rigid so they're usable when you're not at a table. you can also put like twenty sheets in there if you don't want your paper getting crumpled, they're handy for transporting reference/character sheets safely.
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Aug 24, 2021 18:18
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SkyeAuroline posted:Ow, I'm attacked. Everything on hold even as I start thinking of new things to do solo. spend less on games you will never play and stationary you will never use all together now: NO
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Aug 24, 2021 18:19
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90s Cringe Rock posted:ironsworn £0 Just open one and scribble on the first few pages. Once it has been soiled, continue with whatever it is you'd rather write in it.
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Aug 24, 2021 18:30
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There is nothing wrong with spending money on things like this for heavens sake. Not unless it's causing you problems. I actually have found this newish hobby to me is finally making me use the notebooks I've accumulated so hooray.
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Aug 24, 2021 18:34
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Megazver posted:Just open one and scribble on the first few pages. HopperUK posted:There is nothing wrong with spending money on things like this for heavens sake. Not unless it's causing you problems.
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Aug 24, 2021 18:38
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HopperUK posted:There is nothing wrong with spending money on things like this for heavens sake. Not unless it's causing you problems. It's a dril joke, if you missed it. It's okay to spend money. 90s Cringe Rock posted:spend less on games you will never play and stationary you will never use More seriously, it's actually been almost entirely free for me so far, just not successful. Ironsworn (several failed starts from "just character creation" to "maybe 20 lines of text from starting to losing interest): $0 Starforged (one attempt made it as far as 3 sessions, the rest same as Ironsworn): $20 I think? TYOV (actually kind of successful, but didn't finish my sole run and didn't have the repeat play value for me): $15 A couple Wretched and Alone hacks, including one that's disappointingly been taken down since: $0 And now I'm eyeing Blades in the Dark for solo troupe play to see if I can work through my RPG burnout, but I already own BitD from playing it with a group (unsuccessfully) so it may as well be a $0. And all my tools are electronic and free for a mix of reasons, so I'm all of $35 in on solo games and I've gotten at least a few hours of what I'd call successful play out of it. Not the worst return on a hobby I've had, for sure. Various issues holding me back from getting a lot more in there, but that's a whole other thing.
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Aug 24, 2021 18:45
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SkyeAuroline posted:It's a dril joke, if you missed it. It's okay to spend money. Yeah, there's a bunch of small solo RPG things that I backed off Kickstarter or bought off DriveThruRPG and some are good and some are "interesting to read the rules but I doubt I'll ever play" and some are so vague and nebulous that they're the equivalent of a high school writing prompt, but since they were all somewhere between $2 - $10 it's hard to be too mad about any of them. I just use dirt-cheap composition books for everything, they're like two bucks at my local Rite-Aid. The whole solo RPG games thing is pretty inexpensive, aside from Ironsworn and Starforged which I actually ordered all the print materials for. And even that all-in is less than most board games on Kickstarter.
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Aug 24, 2021 19:07
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Yeah, I know I'm sensitive and I'm familiar with the dril tweet. Dunking on people/getting dunked on is part of the SA experience, and it's part of why it's so fun. Still pretty hyped about this stuff. EDIT: At the risk of sounding like I'm trying to prove how Not Mad I am, only one journal was for games. The others are for other stuff in my life. Uganda Loves Me fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Aug 24, 2021 |
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Aug 24, 2021 19:08
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Megazver posted:Just open one and scribble on the first few pages. Nonono. You need one notebook for sketches, one for each game, one for ideas, one for interesting ideas, one for sketches of maps, because you don't want to sully the sketches one, one for story numbs and notes, actually one for story nubs and one more for notes, one for the todo list for each game, actually one per game is wrong, it should be one per character per game, one to sit and look pretty and you wouldn't dare touch it, okay two, okay five, one for uninteresting ideas, one for ideas that begin with the letter T..... ad infinitum
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Aug 24, 2021 19:13
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I made a joke about cutesy twee animal RPGs being a thing https://twitter.com/metaltxt/status/1429179288402624516?s=21 And then uh… actually made the game. It’s a journaling RPG about being a hedgehog sweater salesman. Seemed fitting for this thread right now. https://hauntedoak.itch.io/sweaters-by-hedgehog
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Aug 25, 2021 02:13
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Lol, my friend just sent me that joke and the game link because I've been going on about Apothecaria so much. (He fits the description in the other tweet, PISSBARF THE BARBARIAN or whatever.)
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Aug 25, 2021 02:28
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I just bought the hedgehog sweater game and I'm gonna absolutely use my fountain pens and one of my stockpiled fancy little notebooks for it. (For real though, these sorts of games have gotten me to use the goofy little notebooks and handful of fancy pens I already had and wasn't really using. And I'm very happy about that.)
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Aug 25, 2021 04:02
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90s Cringe Rock posted:spend less on games you will never play and stationary you will never use I'm in this post and I don't like it.
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Aug 25, 2021 07:32
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I went through the Wreck This Deck pdf, and I like it. It's a fun presentation. I'm working my way through the Ironsworn books. I really enjoy learning a new system and the associated lore. I think I'll focus my creative energy on Ironsworn for now. I may experiment with Roll20 or the Augur client. In the meantime I'm enjoying journaling (my day-to-day personal journal) with the Metropolitan fountain pen. The slow pacing of my penmanship is a big departure from typing stuff up, and makes me approach writing differently. I'll work on penmanship and maybe a little calligraphy as I learn the mechanics of Ironsworn.
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Aug 25, 2021 17:11
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I bought the hardcopy of Apothacaria so will be giving it a go. I haven't really played journaling games before
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Aug 25, 2021 20:54
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Uganda Loves Me posted:I went through the Wreck This Deck pdf, and I like it. It's a fun presentation. I'm working my way through the Ironsworn books. I really enjoy learning a new system and the associated lore. I think I'll focus my creative energy on Ironsworn for now. I may experiment with Roll20 or the Augur client. In the meantime I'm enjoying journaling (my day-to-day personal journal) with the Metropolitan fountain pen. The slow pacing of my penmanship is a big departure from typing stuff up, and makes me approach writing differently. I'll work on penmanship and maybe a little calligraphy as I learn the mechanics of Ironsworn. Can you give a quick run down of how Wreck this Deck works?
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Aug 25, 2021 21:00
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Skwirl posted:Can you give a quick run down of how Wreck this Deck works? I haven't actually tried it yet, but it seems like the basics are very simple. The essential rules are short and open-ended. Each of the four suits in the deck has a theme, and every single card as a unique and specific trait. Knowing virtually nothing about tarot cards, it seems a bit similar to that. You have various actions you can perform, such as fortune telling, rituals, trapping a demon, and hexing. Fortune telling seems very straightforward: you ask a question, and use the cards to guide the answer. You draw 3 random cards. Each one has a specific role: one relates to the situation, one relates to what's "on the surface", and one relates to "what's hidden." You consider the role of each of the 3 random cards, and use the corresponding traits on the table to interpret a meaning. Then you put that together to further your story. That's probably more detail for that step than is needed, but I think it's useful for contrasting it with the other actions. Rituals, trapping demons, and hexing are all very open-ended. The short instruction guide gives you some basic guidelines, then encourages you to go online and see what other players are doing with the game using #WreckThisDeckRPG. You're encouraged to come up with your own rituals and share them. You're encouraged to bend rules to fit your ongoing story. There's one table of card traits, but you may perceive the traits of specific cards as changing over time. You modify the table to fit your story. Of course, you "wreck the deck" by modifying the individual cards over time. There are some guidelines for this, but you are encouraged to develop your own modifications for cards and share them. Depending on your level of involvement in the game, it seems like the cards themselves are more like characters in the game than static things. Of course, there are the demons too. You harness their power for specific actions, but the power comes at a price. Failed rituals can loose the demons, or damage your cards. If you have too many demons in your deck, you may have trouble completing actions without using a demon card. You can tell the demon to not interfere by taping an X over the card, but it may cause you trouble anyway. Much of this is up to the player's interpretation and imagination. You can cast a hex too, but that involves destroying a card. The hex is more powerful if the card contains a demon. The guide is only 13 pages. It seems less like a set of rules than a system for developing your own set of rules. I haven't read much about Ironsworn yet, but I get the impression this is a much less guided experience. It encourages doing your own research on the various demons and rituals, based on player-created content. This seems very appropriate and thematic to me. My original plan was to mess around with this until I get through the Ironsworn materials. After this writeup, I'm itching to play it right now. EDIT: For some reason, googling the hashtag didn't come up with anything, but this link works: https://twitter.com/hashtag/WreckThisDeckRPG?src=hashtag_click. Looks like there is a community for this. Uganda Loves Me fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Aug 25, 2021 |
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Aug 25, 2021 21:56
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Uganda Loves Me posted:The guide is only 13 pages. It seems less like a set of rules than a system for developing your own set of rules. I haven't read much about Ironsworn yet, but I get the impression this is a much less guided experience. It encourages doing your own research on the various demons and rituals, based on player-created content. This seems very appropriate and thematic to me. My original plan was to mess around with this until I get through the Ironsworn materials. After this writeup, I'm itching to play it right now. Yeah, as I think I said earlier in the thread, it feels like a mix of a really loose RPG and a guided art project. I've enjoyed it. You start by journaling the general community your character exists in and what problem they think they face. The general loop, as I've been playing it, is like 1. "fortunetell" (which is the basic equivalent of using oracle tables in something like Ironsworn) to see what the current situation is or what problem my character might be facing and then either 2. do a ritual using one of the demon cards I already created (journal the ritual methodology) and resolve whether it succeeded or journal the result if I failed (which might involve physically damaging the deck), or 3. If none of my current demons seem to apply, think up a new one and how to trap it in a card (which involves doing something creative to a card). It's definitely looser than something like Ironsworn, but I find it really compelling in that you end up with this cool homemade physical object in the form of your deck that really embodies your play experience. I could see ending a "campaign" of this when I get sick of my current story, with my character dying as the result of a bad ritual or succeeding in his general goal, and then picking up the game again down the line and starting a new run but build off the same deck, saying someone else found it or whatnot.
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Aug 25, 2021 22:58
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StarkRavingMad posted:Yeah, as I think I said earlier in the thread, it feels like a mix of a really loose RPG and a guided art project. I've enjoyed it. You start by journaling the general community your character exists in and what problem they think they face. The general loop, as I've been playing it, is like 1. "fortunetell" (which is the basic equivalent of using oracle tables in something like Ironsworn) to see what the current situation is or what problem my character might be facing and then either 2. do a ritual using one of the demon cards I already created (journal the ritual methodology) and resolve whether it succeeded or journal the result if I failed (which might involve physically damaging the deck), or 3. If none of my current demons seem to apply, think up a new one and how to trap it in a card (which involves doing something creative to a card). I've enjoyed your write-ups of various games. I like the idea of a "lose" condition and passing the deck on. Kind of like a roguelike with meta progression. I want to do something similar with the gaming journal. I think I'll start at the back and work my way forward with wreck this deck, and leave the front of the book free for another game. Doing something backwards seems fitting for a demonologist. I see this as an art project, where I want to end up with something fun to look at. I'm trying to figure out which of my art supplies will actually stick to a card right now. I'm actually thinking ink that smudges might be an interesting mechanic. Protect those sigils, or else. EDIT: VVVVV Oh, those look cool. I like the idea of using sigils. Uganda Loves Me fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Aug 26, 2021 |
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Aug 25, 2021 23:44
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You could use the sigil-drawing rules from Sigils in the Dark to combine with Wreck This Deck in a fun way I think.
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Aug 25, 2021 23:55
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Maybe a little lighter in tone than Wreck This Deck calls for, but Everyday Sigils by Helvetica Blanc might also be some inspiration.
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Aug 26, 2021 00:09
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