Olivia
Online
Green Knight
@ArchiveFan343
Joined June 2022
166 Following
25 Followers
69 Posts
DM: Before you lies a darkness so deep it feels almost alive, the air grows cold and unnaturally still as you descend into an abyss of black that seems to close in around you and choke out all light...
Players:
Been thinking a lot about gameplay loops (or mini-games) in TTRPGs today.
It seems like most systems really only have 1–2 core gameplay loops. Usually combat is one, and then a single skill check system handles almost everything else.
Personally, I think there's room for more.
What do you think? Do you prefer just a couple of core gameplay loops, or do you enjoy systems with more specialized mechanics and gameplay loops?
Curious where everyone lands on this.
America burned Japan's first gift of cherry trees. All 2,000 of them, on President Taft's direct order.
The 1910 shipment arrived in DC crawling with insects and nematodes. Agriculture inspectors condemned the lot, Taft signed off on the bonfire, and the State Department braced for a diplomatic disaster. Tokyo's mayor, Yukio Ozaki, responded by sending 3,020 more, grafted from the famous grove along the Arakawa River.
Those trees have spent a century paying the friendship back.
Four days after Pearl Harbor, vandals chopped down four of them. Park officials renamed the survivors "Oriental" cherry trees for the rest of the war to protect them from axes.
Then came the twist. By 1952 the original Arakawa grove in Tokyo, the parent stock, had nearly died from wartime neglect. Japan asked Washington for help. The Park Service shipped budwood from DC's trees back across the Pacific and restored the grove that created them. When a flood wiped out more Japanese trees in 1982, horticulturists took 800 fresh cuttings from the Tidal Basin.
These 250 new trees solve a real problem too. The Tidal Basin is sinking, and a $133 million seawall rebuild forced crews to rip out roughly 150 trees. Japan offered replacements before anyone asked, timed to America's 250th birthday.
So the genetics run in a loop. Tokyo's grove seeded Washington's. Washington's saved Tokyo's. The saplings going in this spring descend from both.
114 years of diplomacy, running on grafted branches.
Today, on Independence Day, feels like the right day to make this change. I'm officially rebranding to Archive Gaming!
I've spent years building worlds, designing systems, and planning projects. But now it's time to stop treating them like "someday" ideas and start finishing them.
Over the coming months I'll be sharing more of my work; my TTRPG system, adventures, maps, game design philosophy, video game projects, and the reasonings behind the decisions that shape them. I want to have real conversations with people who love games as much as I do.
So here's to building something worth leaving behind. Happy 4th of July! 🇺🇸
I want to start talking about and sharing my TTRPG work, the system I am working on, design philosophies and goals, ideas, adventures, etc... Have actual conversations about it all.
What's your preferred method of me doing this?
It's taken me a little bit to wrestle my thoughts into something coherent, but I've been feeling this for a while now and ever since #Destiny2 Episode 2: Revenant ended it's just compounded my feelings further.
Killing Off Rasputin was Destiny 2's Biggest Narrative Mistake! Allow me to explain:
Destiny’s storytelling has had its ups and downs, but few decisions have hurt the game’s narrative as much as the death of Rasputin. His destruction in Season of the Seraph wasn’t just a tragic moment—it was a massive mistake. Rasputin was more than just a Warmind; he was a bridge between humanity’s past and present, a character who, ironically, represented human struggle better than most of the actual human characters in the game. He gave players a connection to the world beyond the paracausal battles of Light and Darkness, and his story was actively building toward something meaningful. Then, just as it seemed like he was about to evolve into something more, Bungie abruptly killed him off. His sacrifice accomplished nothing, and the story has been worse off for it ever since.
For years, Rasputin was a fascinating enigma. He was one of the last remnants of the Golden Age, a powerful AI that had survived the Collapse and continued to shape humanity’s fate long after it had fallen. His past was full of morally gray decisions, from fighting against the Darkness to nearly destroying the Traveler itself. He wasn’t just a weapon; he was a character wrestling with guilt, responsibility, and the question of free will. That’s what made his relationship with Ana Bray so compelling—she saw him as more than just a machine, and he, in turn, began to redefine himself. His journey toward understanding his own humanity was one of the most unique and engaging arcs in Destiny’s history.
Then Bungie just... deleted him.
On paper, Rasputin’s sacrifice was meant to be a noble moment. He destroyed the Warsat network to prevent Eramis from using it against the Traveler, seemingly saving humanity from disaster. But almost immediately, it became clear that his death didn’t matter. The Witness still got exactly what it wanted. The Traveler still ended up in danger. The events that followed rendered Rasputin’s last stand pointless, and instead of a satisfying conclusion, we were left with a hollow, unsatisfying ending to a story that had so much more potential.
To make matters worse, his death paved the way for Eramis' so-called redemption arc, which felt completely unearned. Eramis was introduced as a ruthless warlord, someone who despised the Traveler and everything it stood for. Yet, after a few reluctant interactions with the Witness, we were suddenly expected to believe she was having second thoughts. Destiny has had some great redemption arcs—Crow’s story, for example, was handled with care and depth—but Eramis’ felt forced. She hadn’t done anything to justify her change of heart, and Rasputin’s sacrifice was wasted on a character who never really deserved that kind of narrative focus.
What makes all of this even worse is that Destiny had already set up a much better fate for Rasputin. For years, players theorized that he might be resurrected as a Guardian. The idea wasn’t far-fetched—he had consciousness, he had free will, and Ana had already stored his core into an Exo body. The pieces were there for a story about Rasputin returning as something new, something beyond a Warmind. Imagine the possibilities: a former machine god experiencing life as a Guardian, no longer bound by cold logic but instead driven by true choice. Instead, Bungie dropped the idea entirely. We didn’t get to see Rasputin struggle with his new existence, we didn’t get to see how he would react to his past actions from a human perspective—we got nothing.
And where have Ana and Elsie Bray been since all of this happened? Nowhere. Two of the most important figures in Rasputin’s story have been completely absent from the narrative. Ana, who spent years fighting for Rasputin’s survival, was left with nothing, and instead of exploring the emotional fallout of losing him, the game just moved on. Elsie, whose knowledge of timelines and past failures could have added so much depth to what happened, has been missing in action. The Brays, once crucial players in Destiny’s ongoing story, have been sidelined without explanation.
Killing off Rasputin was a mistake, but what makes it worse is how little it mattered. His story was finally getting to a place where it could evolve into something truly unique, only for it to be cut short for no good reason. Destiny has always been at its best when it balances its cosmic-scale conflicts with grounded, human struggles. Rasputin was one of the few characters who represented that balance, someone who connected players to the reality of humanity’s survival beyond just wielding the Light or fighting the Darkness. Losing him, especially in such a meaningless way, made the story weaker.
Unless Bungie finds a way to bring him back, either through some backup or even revisiting the Guardian theory, Destiny’s narrative will always feel like it lost something irreplaceable. The world is emptier without him, and the story has suffered because of it.
The Scavenger's Guild is out now! And it's FREE!
Inspired by the wonderful people at @tct_adventures, we've created a full fledged guild you can add to any of your TableTop campaigns. In this 32 page PDF you'll get Lore, Background, NPCs, Rules & Mechanics, Tools, and 21 pages worth of Rollable Tables!
https://t.co/Kn9MsjZW6S
Check out the Scavanger's Guild!
Inspired by the wonderful people at @tct_adventures and the Solasta Scavangers, we've turned them into a full fledged guild you can add to your TableTop campaign.
In this 32 page PDF you'll get Lore, Background, NPCs, Rules & Mechanics, Tools, and 21 pages worth of Rollable Tables!
And it's all for FREE! We hope you enjoy!
https://t.co/Kn9Msk0tWq
Inspired by the wonderful people at @tct_adventures and the Solasta Scavangers, we've turned them into a full fledged guild you can add to your TableTop campaign.
In this 32 page PDF you'll get Lore, Background, NPCs, Rules & Mechanics, Tools, and 21 pages worth of Rollable Tables!
And it's all for FREE! We hope you enjoy!
https://t.co/Kn9Msk0tWq
Your leisurely stroll along the beach suddenly gets interrupted as several pairs of armored claws emerge from the ground. Gigantic crabs dig their way out of the sand eager to tear into their next meal; you draw your weapons and get ready for a fight. Roll initiative! https://t.co/6p4Hl3jY0b
Things are ramping up in Divinity’s Reach with games, fireworks, and new rewards to celebrate The Lunar New Year! The Year of the Snake means charming rewards await starting Jan. 28 until February 18!
Dev Update #05 - Back to Combat! Violence. Rolling the dice to bash your enemies on the side of the head or to turn them into ash. The glory of battle! https://t.co/ATpCt3mceo
TTRPG design tip - when making a new game, force yourself to make up a couple dozen characters in the system. The stuff you find tedious or boring? That's the stuff you need to cut, because the people paying you for the game will hate it 5x more than you do.
Running with the Uruk-Hai by Denis Gordeev
@tct_adventures Cant wait, I am eagerly awaiting all information about this game and the demo!
Working hard on the Character Creator… Look forward to a future article when we finally implement it in-game! https://t.co/ke8kwrL8jQ
The Inauguration would be so much better if, instead of hours of songs, introductions, and speeches (that let's be honest most people don't care about); it was instead just:
You're President now. Grats! Now get to work!
Performance art.
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