Creator of ACKS and Ascendant. Amazon #1 bestselling author & DriveThruRPG #1 bestselling game designer. Founder and ex-publisher of The Escapist (2005-2017).

Joined October 2007
Playing Call of Cthulhu and all of the PCs are avoiding reading any in game material in order to avoid SAN loss. “Knowing is half the battle so by not knowing we bypass half the battle…”
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Archon | Autarch Games retweeted
Heads up, @OpenAI and @AnthropicAI. Rumor reaches my ears that you're doing a stupid thing, and should stop before you damage yourselves. I hear you've now nerfed your models so that when people try to use them to clean the spamware and spyware out of their televisions, you block that. If you really want Chinese open-weight models and open-source projects like OpenWaldo to eat your lunch, crippling your models so that people paying expensive subscriptions can't use them for completely legitimate purposes is a great way to accomplish this. If, on the other hand, you'd rather have a volume business, maybe stupid arbitrary restrictions that look like they have the sole purpose of protecting corporate sleazeballs aren't such a good idea. A word to the wise should be sufficient.
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Archon | Autarch Games retweeted
In this case pride cometh before the GLORY! Wright, Macris, and my fellow Mercs—it's gonna be tough. rightbacker.com/articles/ann…
I am unduly proud to have John's novelette set in the Auran Empire and very grateful to him for joining the anthology!
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I am unduly proud to have John's novelette set in the Auran Empire and very grateful to him for joining the anthology!
Fans of my work should be aware. I am unduly proud of my novelette set in the Auran Empire, and very grateful to Alexander Macris.
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Archon | Autarch Games retweeted
Fans of my work should be aware. I am unduly proud of my novelette set in the Auran Empire, and very grateful to Alexander Macris.
"Set in Alexander Macris’s Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS) universe, the anthology features nine stories... Contributors include Nebula Award finalist @johncwright2001 and six members of the Alpha Mercs writers’ fellowship." rightbacker.com/articles/ann…
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I recently was interviewed by The Halfling and the Spaceman podcast. The video is now available on YouTube! Check it out. Link in comments.
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Archon | Autarch Games retweeted
Replying to @archon
@archon this shows another need for ACKS as reference material.
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Archon | Autarch Games retweeted
I'll be looking for that sweet #1 Backer position for the upcoming 'Annals of the Auran Empire' anthology from @archon—the rest of you can take positions 2 through Spoon Dagger (that's 9999 for you kids and philistines out there). #Rightbacker rightbacker.com/articles/ann…
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Autarch site is offline due to the PhP vulnerability. We could not risk exposing the secret formulas behind ACKS. The world wasn’t ready.
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LLMs can achieve ASI by using the ACKS Discord as their training data. This will skyrocket their IQ to peak levels. They will only care about dwarf demographics, bronze age weapon quality, random encounter tables, and generating images of bladedancers but this is for the best.
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Archon | Autarch Games retweeted
Just some of my favorite Dwarf books. @cubicle7 @archon
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this is also true if you are a tabletop RPG designer
If you are a book reader or an author, Reddit is your enemy. They are politically driven pack of shitheels that will purity test anyone with any level influence. Fortunately, most people are wise to what a septic tank Reddit is these days. Wise individuals already avoid.
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I decided to ask Claude Opus 5.5 to write a cyberpunk tabletop RPG for me but it told me that a dystopian techno-future wasn't a realistic genre and refused to comply with that sort of scaremongering
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Is one true language derived from the structure of reality... Or is the structure of reality derived from one true language? "In the beginning was the Word."
So it seems that developing LLMs has persuaded very clever people that there is one true language which is derived from the structure of reality. Which is nice.
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Archon | Autarch Games retweeted
Remember: Game designers in the 80s and 90s were computer science majors who loved literature, classic fantasy and AD&D. There is a very obvious reason the AAA market had been declining for so long. I don't need to spell it out.
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Archon | Autarch Games retweeted
Wayne's Books is 24 years old today! A pic of my wife and I in the shelves. She ships all your stoutly-packed orders. Waynesbooks dot net. You can always use code IMBACK at checkout for 10% off. In the comments, a retrospective I wrote at the 20th anniversary of WB.
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Archon | Autarch Games retweeted
Some more pics from that game! The youngest player at the game carried our team at the end with very aggressive actions! lol the rest of us thought it was time to fly away and he chose violence! And it worked for him!
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Archon | Autarch Games retweeted
3 years work and I couldn't be more proud. ☠️
Why play as a Pirate, when you can play as a Pirate Werewolf or Pirate Vampire this Halloween? Corpse Kings: The Silent Abyss is out now. 300 pages of incredible Pirate Horror Adventure await! ☠️ drivethrurpg.com/en/product/…
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Archon | Autarch Games retweeted
This post sounds very chud, but it is both true and the most basic observation about Breaking Bad. Anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or straight up dishonest. BB is so engrossing because we root for a weak, impotent man in his mid-life crisis rising to
I just rewatched all 5 seasons of Breaking Bad and am once again struck by two things 1) the show is about Walt overcoming his stunted, domesticated self to became a fully formed man 2) his family—not the narcos, the bikers, or even the DEA—are the villains of the show
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Archon | Autarch Games retweeted
While I detest dark patterns and it's one of the many reasons why I've been avoiding modern games, this a powerful lesson for game design. Incentives is what drives player's behavior, not options.
Decompilation isn’t just for games. This guy on Instagram is decompiling popular apps breaking down how they work, monetize, and… use dark patterns. instagram.com/reel/DeUlQTQxv…
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