Lots of new followers lately, so re-intro time! I'm Elaine, Scottish TTRPG producer by day, mini-painter and v-tuber by night. I currently work at Rowan Rook & Decard on Heart and Spire, and previously worked at Cubicle 7 on the Warhammer roleplaying games, Broken Weave, and too many other games.

(I haven’t activated windows in over a decade so that text is fully invisible to my eyes by now)

Yeah that’s the windows goblin. It shows up randomly to steal your money.

Yeah this game has a little bit of the sauce, for sure.

Ah that’s the ‘fruitful void’.

Hell yeah, I had a good time with it a couple years back, a fun read (Note: read ‘fun’ as ‘a rollercoaster of misery and tragedy’.)

I'd have a WILD phd thesis to defend, that's for sure.

Hmmm. Are you afraid of psychologists, calvin? What makes you feel that way?

Tho I will admit, I do sometimes still wonder what the Psychologist version of Elaine's life would be like... I still have a huge passion for Psychology, so I don't doubt that's where I'd have ended up. But telling storied, guys... It's great.

I do think it's neat to work in TTRPGs and NOT have DnD be my entry point to the hobby and industry. DnD wasn't even on my radar till 5e came out in 2014! By then I'd been playing the like of Inquisitor, Dark Heresy, and Warhammer Fantasy RPG for YEARS.

Crazy to think that without Inquisitor, I'd have a completely different life and career (I'd likely be a Psychologist). I picked it up on a whim a few years before university and it was the first time I sat forward and said "Wait... you can tell STORIES with GAMES?" it completely rewrote my brain.

Such a weirdly clunky game, full of obfuscated and complicated systems, and bugs aplenty. But man, when it all comes together it’s amazing. Big orchestral swelling music as you hold on for dear life to a falling cyclops to stab it in the eye. Hook it into my veins.

Back on my Dragons Dogma 2 shit this weekend. Low-key love a dark fantasy game world that feels like it just doesn’t give two shits that you’re there. Saw a griffon land nearby. Thought ‘Hey it’s beside the starting town, I bet we can take it’. Narrator: ‘They, in fact, could not take it.’

Had a similar experience with Hades 2. Never played the first game and was weirdly surprised when I just nailed the second run.

I have so much work on my plate right now, Nat. You can't be showing me sick shit like this. I don't have time for the sexy roguelite junky anti-grav racer of my dreams.

I grew up in Glasgow in the 90s and so many folk seem to forget or downplay how bad it got! Folk laugh in disbelief when I say if you went to the wrong part of the city wearing the wrong colour you’d get chibed! Glasgow is way chiller nowadays IMO, there’s just more camera on the streets.

Pleasantly surprised by how little Amazon seems to know about me. Most of my flags are to the tune of, "Damn... this bitch reads a lot of books."

"My Treasure? Go! Find it!"

You're doing a lot of doomscrolling for someone who has a bunch of unread RPG books on their shelf 👀

I’ve even found myself in past roles where we’ve had long term pay freezes, and asked if we could at least ease the non-compete clauses so we could try make some money on the side via freelance work etc, only to be refused. It’s a horrible anti-worker mentality.

Unfortunately anti-worker non-compete or creative ownership clauses are common in games dev. I’ve fought against them my entire career, so I’m thrilled to see folk talking about them in a high profile case like this. Fun fact: One of the reasons I joined RRD is cause we’re morally opposed to them!