Monday Musings #91 🤬

Electric States and Monster Hunting with Riggs and Murtaugh.

Good Monday, Gamer!

“I’m too old for this Sh!t!" — Roger Murtaugh, Grognard

Last week, I watched The Electric State. I almost bailed in the first 30 minutes, but then—suddenly—it got interesting real fast. Admittedly, I have a bias: I plan to run The Electric State RPG by Free League, and I thought the film might help with visuals, tone, and setting. (Though to be fair, the RPG book already does an excellent job of this.) I enjoyed the movie. It’s campy, but if you pay attention, it’s also kinda dark. There's something about the ruinous Americana aesthetic that sticks with you. I’m looking forward to getting the game on the table.

For those unfamiliar, The Electric State is based on the artbook/story by Simon Stålenhag, known for Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood. It’s a vision of a desolate alternate 1997, where a runaway girl and her robot companion journey across a collapsed America dominated by decaying drone technology and an eerie, forgotten war. The RPG leans into road trip storytelling, emotional connections, and the surreal horror of its setting—and I do love a good road trip!

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Tarot & RPGs: More, Please.

Sarah DOOM! posted about Tarot cards in RPGs, and I’m so here for it. I wanna hear more! In Lifted: Indomitable, I use a classification system called TAROT (Threat Assessment of Rogue Operatives and Technology). It’s both diegetic and meta—a way to map Foes and Factions in and out of the game world. I’d also love to see more solo RPGs embrace Tarot as an oracle system for play. There’s something powerful about drawing meaning or prompts from the cards instead of rolling a d100 on a random table.

Tarot and ttrpgs

Cold City Playtest: Scene Sorcery

My Cold City Pt. II session was delayed due to IRL interruptions, but I managed to run a short demo for a couple of friends. Think Hellboy meets Lethal Weapon—monster hunting, fun banter, and then… Crisis. A character broke. That moment shifted the whole tone and was a fantastic stress test before my main playtest game.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Cold City for me is how CONTROL (the GM) sets and cuts scenes, with a strict rule against letting them blend together. There are scenes that establish setting, situations, locations, etc. And there are conflict scenes. There’s a whole chapter on this! I wanted to see how it played out, so I focused on hard cuts between scenes. Riggs and Murtaugh turned every damned scene into a conflict. LOL! But this process is a different game feel for me. I'm still processing, but it almost feels gamey, and I like that feeling. Players had full autonomy within a scene but couldn't linger or bleed one into the next. It’s like learning a new GMing skill—almost a kind of sorcerous scene-setting magic. I’m here for it!

Cold City Hot War is still live on Kickstarter. 8 Days left!

Mad-Dice.com is Underconstruction

Thanks to the gamers over at the Indie Game Reading Club Slack, I grabbed a domain for my online dice roller: Mad-Dice.com. I was not, however, willing to drop $10K for MadDice.com or $5K for OnlyDice.com (though, respect to the hustle).

In just a week, I’ve built a dice roller that:
✔ Uses standard dice notation
✔ Supports exploding and kept dice
✔ Has quick-roll buttons and macros

Now comes the boring part—setting up guests, users, and rooms before I get too deep. Once that’s done, I’ll push up a rough beta for you all to dice fight on. (Wait… is there a dice fighting game?? There should be.)

ICYMI

🔥 Sandbox Settlements: Prep, Run, and Thrive
🎲 Types of Rolls in TTRPGs

What are you prepping, playing, or planning about?

Catch ya next week!