DEIFY was an impulse buy yesterday and has consumed my morning. A solo-journaling RPG where you chronicle the myths of a God, from the moment it's birthed as a stray thought through its meteoric rise (and eventual fall as you are forgotten).

The game play consists of answering journal prompts determined by pulls of Tarot cards. How you choose to answer the prompts will change the various characteristics of your god (domains of power, epithets relations with mortals and gods, sacred places and items etc).

I normally prefer more "gaming" elements in my solo RPGs (dice rolling, resource management, risk and reward etc.) But the themes of Deify has made for a really fun writing exercise. Easily the first Journaling game to really click with me.

#ttrpg
#solorpg

A table of 100 Epithets to inspire your Visages in Sigil & Shadow (or any fantasy game dealing with petty gods or powerful spirits).

#TTRPG
#SigilAndShadow

https://chaosgrenade.com/d00-epithets-of-hideaway-gods

We endured the onslaught of the Texas Freezepocalypse by staying at an AirBnB across town from us. We still haven’t had our HVAC replaced post-fire, and since it was my kiddo’s birthday we thought staying someplace warm and fun was priority.

The house was nice but the star of the show was the garage converted into a game room. We took turns playing Galaga on an arcade cabinet with some breaks for Mario Kart on a big TV (the pics don’t do justice).

We’re back home running space heaters and bundling up, roads still icy but no pipes frozen.

I'm slowly, somehow, taking my office back. There's a collective trauma I associate with it -- everytime I sit down to play, create something fun or just spend "me time" ends up being riddled with guilt and just forcing myself to work on things (paying bills, managing estates, or making something for the sake of profit more than expression).

Recognizing this, I've decided to turn my desktop PC into a "headless" remote access device, tucked away under my desk on a nice stand to keep it ventilated well. Removing all the clutter and accessories frees up that space for me. I have a second desk I like to use for hand-written stuff or crafts like miniature painting -- by relocating the paints and tools to the computer desk it actually gives me a lot of breathing room, and honestly I think I'm going to turn it into my main desk.

My next step: buying storage bins and maybe some shelves for our storage unit and putting away the books/board games I'm not playing at this time.

I've been seriously questioning if I should just walk away from the #TTRPG hobby lately, right? Just a lot of spent emotional and mental energy (not to mention finances) with little reward* these past few years.

But then, at a new patient visit, my doctor found out about Sigil & Shadow and instantly geeked out to me about how everyone at their practice have tabletop game nights and have started exploring rpgs. He bought my book.

And then, when showing my late brother's house to an interested realtor. she saw his GURPS stuff and told me about how her and her wife have a room mate who hosts weekly D&D nights they love helping out dinners with.

The horrors are real these days but it's cool when our dumb make-believe elf games can still give total strangers something to connect with.

Feel silly — I have the massive “All-In” Kickstarter for Dolmenwood, the boxset for Nimble, a lot of supplements and zines for Shadow Dark….

And yet there I was yesterday buying Daggerheart and the new D&D Starter Set (Heroes of the Borderlands). To be fair I was at Barnes & Noble during a 30% off sale and I had a gift card.

Anyways, no regrets on either (even with me being kinda over D&D 5e — not because I’m an indie RPG writer who begs you to play anything else, just tired of only getting to play *that*).

The Starter Set I plan on running for a friend +1 , who are both pretty fresh to RPGs and already watch CR and Dimension 20, and want to learn to play under me. The other one… I think my wife summed it up best last night: “I really don’t want to like this but it’s hitting everything I want”.

Here’s hoping to maybe, just maybe, I get my time in behind the GM Screen in 2026. If not, I hope I still get some BattleTech and solo games in like last year.

#ttrpg

2025 was a shot in the gut. Lost my brother to cancer, lost a lot of steam and joy in my hobbies. Pretty much had to deal with one crisis after another — most recent being an attic fire last Thursday.

Despite all of this (and it being 80+ degrees in Texas, with no HVAC thanks to said fire), I am happy for the holiday. My wife, kid, and doggo are still here. We still have a house to live in. Food on table, meds in the cabinet, clothes on our back.

Tomorrow morning I get to indulge my kiddo in his current hyper fixation with a myriad of robot model toys and books. Christmas Day we still plan on opening our doors to “family we choose”, this weekend we get to see my in-laws without anything to hide.

I plan on walking the rest of this year and into the next treading carefully with a big stick.

New to retro.pizza, not necessarily new to Mastodon but it's been a minute since I was active.

I'm R.E. Davis, I write spooky nerdy weird shit. Mostly known for the tabletop rpg SIGIL & SHADOW, which has been called "Great Value World of Darkness". One reviewer said my style was "1970s fiction meets 1990s desktop publishing" and I'm adopting that as a marketing blurb going forward.

I enjoy games -- mostly tabletop stuff, but I'm also big into video games -- console, PC, handheld emulation etc. My family wears Nintendo mascots like others do sportsball.

Happily married, proud full time dad, I'm a Virgo and on anxiety meds. Wife and I are the "B" in LGBTQ+ and I listen to ooonz oonz oonz goth music as a religion.