VACATION
hi everyone! i'll be taking a break until the end of the year. expect this month's patreon essay (THE GAME OF THE BALL) to still come out for paying members, and underside playtest to cont...
2025-11-16 12:54:57 +0000 UTC View Post
rose quarter-drifting posts
ULTRADAMNATION: INDEBTED TO THE GODS OF THE DARK -- a first look
wip playbook art for THE CHOSEN ONE, by HZZRD666a while ago i was having a chat with a friend abou...
2025-10-31 03:34:01 +0000 UTC View PostTHE GAME OF THE BALL, PT. I
On a summer’s day an alien lands in Buenos Aires. He steps out of his spaceship, conical and rough like a snail’s shell, and speaks through a glistening translation bubble. He says, to the bewi...
2025-09-28 23:17:42 +0000 UTC View PostUNDERSIDE PLAYEST: Update 1.1
hi everyone! the first month of playtesting has been extremely fruitful, and i put out the playtest's first revision a few days ago--i posted about it in the playtest discord but not everyone keepi...
2025-08-30 11:32:52 +0000 UTC View PostUNDERSIDE PLAYTEST
hi everyone. thank you so so so much for your patience and support all this time. i'm beyond excited to announce that underside's first playtest release is finally here!
i have a lot...
2025-08-01 04:50:22 +0000 UTC View PostUNDERSIDE PREVIEW: LIFE QUIRKS (MAJOR ARCANA)
so, with the underside beta playtest release on the horizon is less than 30 days, most of the work is going into tables and lists: stuff that you pick at character creation and advancement...
2025-07-02 20:02:58 +0000 UTC View PostBIG UNDERSIDE UPDATE
sorry, it's been a while. i think that weekly patreon posts, at least while it's not my primary form of income, aren't really feasible for me, and i burned myself out trying to do them. here's the ...
2025-06-03 22:38:32 +0000 UTC View PostNO-HEADED GIANT
a poem, this week. it's the first of an as-yet unreleased collection with magnesium oxide. next week i think i'll...
2024-10-08 01:45:19 +0000 UTC View Postunderside dev diary #14: comprehensive progress update
those of you who have been keyed in to underside's development will know there's been some pretty notable schedule slip. i've got a lot of shit going on in my life! so instead of promising...
2024-09-30 17:22:25 +0000 UTC View PostPRAXI preview #1: backgrounds
for the last couple months, as well as underside, i've been working on a lighter project i announced a while back, a tactical communist OSR-inspired thing called PRAXI: Protocol Against Xe...
2024-09-22 01:59:29 +0000 UTC View Post
DISCORD? YES/NO
if i made a HORIZON MACHINE discord server where i could share snippets from upcoming projects that aren't worth doing a whole patreon post for, and where people could talk about underside 2024-09-15 14:28:05 +0000 UTC View Post
underside dev diary #13: deworming
i love worm. underside only exists because of worm -- it started life as capes in the dark, a hack of blades in the dark that made it about worm. most p...
2024-09-14 18:02:13 +0000 UTC View Postunderside dev diary #12: home moves (+ apology)
hi everybody! thank you to everyone who has kept supporting me over the last few months. to make a long story short, my rent was suddenly raised, i was forced to move on very short notice, and then...
2024-09-07 21:13:10 +0000 UTC View Postunderside dev diary #11: statless in seattle, pt. 6
so, off the bat, some bookkeeping: after a very busy march i am back in full force for april. i also have good news for people who bought commissions, which is that--and i apologize for the long tu...
2024-04-07 15:27:52 +0000 UTC View Postnew stuff coming soon!
hi everyone -- happy to report that the busy period has passed and dev diaries + writing scraps should start being uploaded regularly again. thank you all for your patience :)
2024-03-12 20:40:25 +0000 UTC View Postunderside dev diary #10: statless in seattle, pt.5
i anticipate being very busy over the next couple of weeks: as such, this dev diary and the two following it will be very brief. this one's about the combat skills and the thought that went into pi...
2024-02-24 04:50:36 +0000 UTC View Postunderside dev diary #9: statless in seattle pt.4
first of all, sorry for the lack of updates this last couple weeks! one of my girlfriends was visiting and it's surprisingly hard to write patreon posts with a puppygirl clinging to your leg. i'm b...
2024-02-17 04:18:02 +0000 UTC View PostRULEBOOK AS NORTH STAR
there are a lot of ways you can conceptualize TTRPGS. usually i use the lens of 'collaborative storytelling' but for this post i am going to say that playing TTRPGs is just playing pretend. now if ...
2024-01-30 21:22:32 +0000 UTC View PostPRAXI: Protocol Against Xenoimperialism
i've got something that isn't an underside dev diary this week: the charming magnesium oxide and i are working...
2024-01-27 05:28:50 +0000 UTC View PostI DONT CARE HOW MANY ROCKS YOUR TTRPG CHARACTER CAN CARRY UNLESS WE'RE PLAYING SISYPHUS 2E
TTRPGS ARE AN ABSTRACTION OF AN ABSTRACTION. A STORY IS ALREADY AN ABSTRACTION OF REALITY AND THE TOOLS AND RULES THAT A TTRPG GIVES YOU TO PLAY WITH ARE ABSTRACTIONS OF THAT STORY. EVERY WORD USED...
2024-01-23 00:50:03 +0000 UTC View Postunderside dev diary #8: statless in seattle pt.3
so that's approaches sorted out. but approaches are only half the battle. in underside, when you do something dangerous and you're not sure you'll succeed, you make a conflict roll...
2024-01-20 16:46:17 +0000 UTC View Postmonday scrap: another poem
this one's actually for an upcoming project, another release with the lovely magnesium oxide. but becaues you're in the premium torture labyrinth you can look at it early :)
2024-01-16 01:52:17 +0000 UTC
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underside dev diary #7: statless in seattle pt. 2
so when figuring out what approaches to put into underside, citizen abel and i talked for a while about what we actually wanted out of them. in the end, to help guide the choices, we split...
2024-01-13 06:47:34 +0000 UTC View Postdesign scraps #1
in the HORIZON MACHINE development discord we have a commonplace channel where we drop move or design ideas that don't belong in any projects we're currently working on but that we want to revisit....
2024-01-09 02:29:27 +0000 UTC View Postunderside dev diary #6: statless in seattle pt. 1
the first edition of underside, capes in the dark, had a stat system, mostly inherited from the 'official' (made by the creator) worm ttrpg weaverdice. ultimately, it did...
2024-01-06 02:49:42 +0000 UTC View Postdecember update
december was the first month i started taking this patreon a bit more seriously. i took a two-week holiday break in the back half of the month but now that it's the new year it's back on the grind ...
2024-01-02 02:05:22 +0000 UTC View Posti don't like GMs
not, like, as people. i've been a GM for many games in my time. i don't like the role as it is widely understood--i especially don't like dungeons and dragons' 'DM', because i think it enc...
2023-12-18 23:48:30 +0000 UTC View Postunderside dev diary #5: pvp enabled zones
across basically all superhero media but especially the darker, grittier stuff that underside is based on, a crucial part of any hero or villain team is the violent fracturing ove...
2023-12-15 20:03:07 +0000 UTC View Post