Seyed P. Razavi (aka Syd)

drivethrurpg.comLast Dance in Shoreditch - Chaosium | Miskatonic Repository | DriveThruRPGA night out. A missing friend. A city that won’t look the same by morning.Last Dance in Shoreditch is a modern-day Call of Cthulhu scenario set in London’s after-hours underworld, where investigators ...

4 Apr

My first title is now live on DriveThruRPG! Last Dance in Shoreditch is a modern-day Call of Cthulhu scenario set in London, where a missing friend, the city’s nightlife, and something far worse collide after dark. Very excited to finally put this out there. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

blog.monkeyx.gamesCartel #6Sofia González wanted the restaurant blessed before anyone died in it (previously 1 2 3 4 5). The place still looked half-finished, with staff hurrying between tables and the last details of…

In the final episode of the Dogs of Durango: Sofia serves dinner with death on the guest list, Isabel chooses escape, and Juan watches his family come apart. Then the trap closes, and Durango collects what everyone owes. blog.monkeyx.games/2026/10/28/c...

Seyed P. Razavi (aka Syd) reposted

Jon at Handiwork Games

@handiworkgames.bsky.social

Replying to @handiworkgames.bsky.social

One of the first reviews of FiveEvil to drop was from the ever-thoughtful Seyed @monkeyx.bsky.social blog.monkeyx.games/2025/11/02/f...

blog.monkeyx.gamesFiveEvil - A Quick Review, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Fear 5E AgainEvery so often I am reminded that Past Me cannot be trusted with a Kickstarter account. At some point he apparently thought, “You know what you need, as a person who has deliberately drifted away from...

Seyed P. Razavi (aka Syd) reposted

Malcolm Craig

@malcolmcraig.bsky.social

I was just re-reading @monkeyx.bsky.social's review of Hot War 2e (from when the PDF came out) and was very vividly reminded of what an insightful, thoughtful, and generous critique it is. blog.monkeyx.games/2026/02/20/h...

blog.monkeyx.gamesHot War: Fallout, Monsters, and the Messy End of EmpireThere’s something distinctly British about imagining the end of the world and immediately worrying about the paperwork. For many of the generation before mine, the formative apocalypse diet was…

blog.monkeyx.gamesCartel #5Sofia González had spent most of the evening trying to make dinner feel ordinary (previously 1 2 3 4). Isabel sat across from her looking exhausted and frightened, stripped of much of the sly…

In this episode of the Dogs of Durango: Sofia turns her restaurant into a trap, Isabel faces an offer of betrayal, and Juan learns how much loyalty costs when Carlos comes to collect. As opening night approaches, everyone thinks they know who the trap is for. blog.monkeyx.games/2026/10/18/c...

blog.monkeyx.gamesCartel #4Isabel García had gone to the rooftop because there was nowhere else left to be alone (previously 1 2 3). Dusk had settled over Durango, softening the streets and rooftops below while the day remained...

In this episode of the Dogs of Durango: Isabel learns her frame-up has another author, Geraldo follows a killer to Sofia’s restaurant, Juan pays for Eduardo’s disappearance, and Sofia learns the price of her new beginning. Campaign blog for our Cartel game: blog.monkeyx.games/2026/10/09/c...

After reading them online for a good while I've made the plunge into the omnibus editions. Probably some of the best X-Men / superhero stories written. This should keep me busy for a while.

blog.monkeyx.gamesCartel #3The RV had been moved again, which was supposed to make it safer. Isabel García had found a car park far enough from the school to avoid another confrontation with the mothers and anonymous enough…

18 Sept

In this episode of the Dogs of Durango: Sofia finds out if words can kill, Isabel deals with grief and Juan is pulled into a dangerous torrent of lies by all sides. Campaign log for our Cartel game: blog.monkeyx.games/2026/09/18/c...

The Conversation has stayed with me less as a thriller than as a film about Harry Caul. He makes his living invading privacy while needing almost pathological privacy himself. Gene Hackman makes that contradiction feel painfully human rather than merely ironic. (some spoilers ahead) 1/10

Harrison Ford is wonderfully unsettling here, partly because he looks impossibly young. Stett barely seems to act at all. He just appears, watches, knows things. His exact relationship to Ann, Mark and the Director stays slippery, another connection Harry can sense but never quite resolve. 9/10

And that ending. Harry destroys his apartment searching for a bug and never finds it. Fifty years of technology later, the scene feels less paranoid, not more. Then he plays the sax. The one voice he has that doesn’t require explanation. Exposed and alone, but briefly still his own. 10/10

Then the medium turns on him. A conversation stolen from strangers loops through his head. His own saxophone is played back to him over the telephone. Recorded sound stops being evidence he uses but a threat against him. Harry discovers what it feels like to exist as somebody else’s tape. 7/10

The murder twist is perfect because Harry hears the words correctly and still gets them wrong. His guilt supplies the interpretation. Even afterwards there’s another question. Did Ann, Mark or Stett know Harry would listen closely enough to act? Was the surveillance itself part of the trap? 8/10

His Catholicism plays into that. Harry understands guilt almost sacramentally, but confession can’t solve the problem because he can’t confess what he actually does. He wants absolution while keeping the compartment sealed. Eventually guilt fills the space secrecy was meant to protect. 5/10

I loved how the film makes sound itself unreliable. We hear the same conversation again and again. Distant, broken, filtered, cleaned up, remembered, reinterpreted. The recording seems to become more truthful as it becomes clearer. But in fact, Harry is imposing a story on it. 6/10

That makes the women around Harry fascinating. His secrecy has an attraction, but intimacy requires disclosure. He wants to be known without being knowable. He can listen to anyone, yet cannot bear the reciprocal risk of another person listening to him. 3/10

The film keeps worrying at the difference between involvement and responsibility. Harry insists he only records things. What happens afterwards isn’t his doing. But he knows that’s a lie. His guilt comes from consequences he helped make possible without ever choosing them. 4/10

Harry’s privacy isn’t really freedom but armour. Amy is attracted to his mystery but eventually finds there is nothing she is allowed to know. Meredith gets closer precisely by seeming to accept the barrier, then uses that intimacy against him. 2/10

blog.monkeyx.gamesCartel #2Geraldo Juarez did not sleep it off (see part #1). Somewhere between the first bottle of tequila and the point where good judgement stopped being a consideration, the question Ortiz had accidentally…

3 Sept

Things have only gotten more complicated in Durango. A session filled with secrets, intrigue and potential betrayal. blog.monkeyx.games/2026/09/03/c...

@thegrognardfiles.bsky.social

2 Sept

Without saying your age, what is your favourite movie that came out when you were 20 years old?

Paul@spookshow71.bsky.social

Without saying your age, what is your favourite movie that came out when you were 20 years old?

Seyed P. Razavi (aka Syd) reposted

Dirk the Dice

31 Aug

I’ve spoken on about finding a gangster TTRPG that captures the tinderbox of living a life of crime. I was a nervous about Cartel because of trivialising the milieu. But,playing in a campaign run by @monkeyx.bsky.social … it’s great. Tense. Creative. Thrilling. blog.monkeyx.games/2026/08/28/c...

blog.monkeyx.gamesCartel #1Durango had a way of making the dangerous look ordinary. Violence hid behind stucco walls and tinted windows. Money changed hands in kitchens while children did their homework in the next room.

28 Aug

A tense first session of our Cartel game. A truly unique experience. blog.monkeyx.games/2026/08/28/c...

wyrd.scienceWyrd Science – Tabletop Gaming Magazines, Merch & MoreEverything that we have on sale including magazines, merch, t-shirts, art prints, books and more.

28 Aug

Look what the postie brought! I've reviewed them here: blog.monkeyx.games/2025/10/24/c... And here: blog.monkeyx.games/2026/02/20/h... Plus a write up of our Cold City mini-campaign here: blog.monkeyx.games/2026/05/15/c... blog.monkeyx.games/2026/06/19/c... blog.monkeyx.games/2026/08/10/c...

Seyed P. Razavi (aka Syd) reposted

Wyrd Science Magazine

@wyrdscience.bsky.social

16 Aug

24 hours left on our flash sale. Buy anything on our site & get a second item half price, ad infinitum. Just use the code WeKilledTheSun at checkout Fill out your Wyrd Science, Glaive or Secret Passages collections or just fill out one of our Lukasz Kowalczuk t-shirts with your incredible physique

blog.monkeyx.gamesWho Judges the Judges?Necropolis looks, from a distance, like a story about monsters. Judge Death returns. Mega-City One falls. Corpses fill the streets. Dredd comes home to put things right. Read on its own…

14 Aug

I've been reading the stories leading to Judge Dredd's Necropolis, which prompted a piece on democracy, authority, media, and why this story has haunted me since childhood. blog.monkeyx.games/2026/08/14/w...

Seyed P. Razavi (aka Syd) reposted

Bad Moon Cafe

@badmooncafe.bsky.social

12 Aug

Our Borough manager Jasmine talks through some board game recommendations! We've got huge board game libraries at both venues including casual, party and serious strategy games! Book your table at the link in our bio and bring your mates for a brilliant evening of tabletop gaming!

blog.monkeyx.gamesCold City #3The Schwarz Latern had lost its glamour by the time the agents returned. The songs had thinned. The laughter had gone sour. The early drinkers were gone, leaving only the professionals, the wounded…

10 Aug

The concluding part of our Cold City scenario: blog.monkeyx.games/2026/08/10/c...

3 Aug

The list of games I want to run keeps growing but the number of days of the week stay the same 😔

Seyed P. Razavi (aka Syd) reposted

Gaz

@evilgaz.bsky.social

28 July

Having played some Cy Borg, I'm thinking about cyberpunk shizzle (Neuromancer film upcoming), is there an Into the Odd / Mythic Bastionland style hack for this sort of thing? Essentially looking for a rules lite, but rules interesting vehicle for cyber shenanigans.

8 July

I think we need more Dark Sun style consequences of extreme power mechanics.

sam “ludonarrative disinterest” sorensen@samsorensen.bsky.social

one thing I have noticed in my experience running long RPG campaigns is that most players are pretty uneasy being Extremely Powerful. like "D&D as power fantasy" is a common through-line, but I've found that once they hit a certain threshold things change very sharply and you enter new territory

Seyed P. Razavi (aka Syd) reposted

Wyrd Science Magazine

@wyrdscience.bsky.social

8 July

A good day to remind you all that you can spend £5.50 on a 28mm @countbinface.bsky.social model from Troublemaker Games, £3 of which goes to NHS supporting charities Now who is selling some frog faced fiends and a scale model pier for them to fight over? www.troublemakergames.co.uk/product-page...

blog.monkeyx.gamesOutgunned: Bullets and Banter (Review)I am not, by any reasonable metric, an action movie person. If you looked at what I deliberately sit down to watch, it’s mostly horror, slow weird fiction, or something with too much subtext and not…

26 June

Can a TTRPG stop trying to simulate action movies and start making you feel like you're in one? I read Outgunned, a game built for explosions, one-liners, and impossible stunts. Here's my review: blog.monkeyx.games/2026/06/26/o...

24 June

The heat has brought on a bout of madness.

21 June

If you see this, post a vampire that isn’t Dracula.

John Harper@johnharper.bsky.social

If you see this, post a vampire that isn’t Dracula. (It's hilarious that this is his main image in the wiki.)

RossyDoesDrawings (commissions open)

21 June

Every time a gamer steps back from Yet Another Kickstarter I think an angel gets her wings.

Seyed P. Razavi (aka Syd)@monkeyx.bsky.social

I managed to talk myself out of it and withdraw my pledge. And for the low, low price of 1,299 SEK I can show you how!

Seyed P. Razavi (aka Syd) reposted

@rossydoesdrawings.bsky.social

21 June

In the deep forest There is a troll His fur is like a nest His back is like a knoll Rest your feet if they hurt He is the troll bus and his name is Burt.

20 June

What t-shirt are you wearing today?

This post is unavailable.

20 June

If Mothers Day means flowers....

blog.monkeyx.gamesCold City #2The Schwarz Latern waited below street level, where Berlin kept its cheaper sins and dearer secrets. Red bulbs marked the stairwell. A woman with a cigarette watched the door, her coat hanging wrong…

19 June

Grab your trenchcoats and prep your gravelly voices, as we're back to shadowy streets of Berlin for the second chapter of our Cold City campaign files: blog.monkeyx.games/2026/06/19/c...

Reflection on Against Time and Death: The game works because the cards force humility. You plan a brilliant move, then the hand tells you to lose, bluff, or spend your only strong card early. The fiction gets sharper when the mechanics deny total control. 1/4

Seyed P. Razavi (aka Syd)@monkeyx.bsky.social

🧵A Thread for our game Against Time and Death (a duet Time War across the Weave). Two operatives trade scenes + secret letters for 8 exchanges, rewriting Threads toward their faction’s future. 1/n

The final Arena win didn’t flatten the story. It gave Suture a cleaner defeat and Minerva a heavier crown. The ending felt right because victory still left evidence behind. Even the Arena learned to move together. 4/4

Post-script - the "board state" at the end

Seyed P. Razavi (aka Syd)@monkeyx.bsky.social

The letters were the strongest part for me. Each exchange ended with action, then distance. The rivals never met properly, yet the letters made the relationship feel direct, intimate, and dangerous. 2/4

The best part was watching Arena and Collective stop being abstract ideologies. Competition became loneliness, hunger, respect, and rank. Cooperation became care, pressure, shame, and consent. Both sides gained teeth. 3/4

Seyed P. Razavi (aka Syd) reposted

Wyrd Science Magazine

@wyrdscience.bsky.social

11 June

Out of interest (& this is a genuine, non-loaded question) what visible impact have any of the higher ed courses teaching variations of game design had on tabletop game design? Can we point to actual things that have emerged from these courses? Ideas, coherent schools of thought, movements? In the…