TTRPG Bluesky is booming! I swapped over from X to Bluesky in mid October when Elon Musk announced changes to the block feature and removed the ability to opt out of AI training on his musky app, and I’m not the only one.
The site’s userbase has soared to over 24 million users! Those numbers include a huge TTRPG community, including hobbyists, creators, artists, editors, actual plays, TTRPG podcasts, and more.
For users hopping over from X, Bluesky can have a small learning curve. On the surface, it looks similar, but Bluesky has a lot of bells and whistles that X doesn’t have.
Last week I published my Bluesky TTRPG Starter Packs Directory, but Starter Packs are just one part of Bluesky. Here’s everything I’ve learned about the TTRPG community on the platform over the last couple months.
How Bluesky Differs From X and Threads
X and Threads both use large central algorithms to show you the content they think you’re interested in, with heavy weighting towards content from power users with hundreds of thousands of followers and sponsored posts. (In true petulant manchild form, Musk had off-duty X engineers tweak the algorithm to give his own posts a huge boost because he was miffed his Super Bowl tweets weren’t getting the attention he wanted.)
Bluesky, on the other hand, only has an algorithm in the Discover tab, which seems to show a mix of content from people you follow and people who follow you. Mixed in is also a healthy dose of users you aren’t following, but who share a lot of mutual followers with you. Finally, the Discover algorithm mixes in a small amount of trending topics posts.
Beyond that, Bluesky does not have a central algorithm. Posts in the Following tab are organized chronologically, so you always see the most recent posts from the people you follow.
Custom Feeds Are King on TTRPG Bluesky
Users can also subscribe to custom Feeds, which allow you to organize your interests.
- For example, I follow a Feed called D&D and Tabletop Gaming that tracks several Dungeons and Dragons- and TTRPG-related tags.
- Not interested in Dungeons and Dragons or WotC content? This Feed filters out posts that reference D&D in their texts or tags.
- Here’s a Bluesky Feed just for posts about the World of Darkness family of TTRPGs: Vampire the Masquerade, Hunter the Reckoning, etc.
- I also follow a Feed for epilepsy topics, since that’s something also related to my interests.
- Some Feeds are purely utilitarian. This Followers Feed shows me posts from people who are following me. It’s like the opposite of the normal Following feed!
- One feature I miss from X: Bluesky doesn’t currently allow you to disable reposts for users. Thankfully, the OnlyPosts feed shows you recent posts from your followers, without the reposts. It’s not as granular, but it does the job.
You can search for Feeds from the Discover New Feeds page on Bluesky at http://bsky.app/feeds.
What’s my favorite Bluesky TTRPG Feed?
Rev Casey, who I featured recently in an article about his Motif Oracle Notebook tool for solo TTRPGS, created a Feed called Invisible TTRPG Friends.
It shows you TTRPG-related posts, but ONLY those posts with no or few likes or reposts. It’s my absolute favorite TTRPG feed on Bluesky. I use it all the time to find smaller accounts to interact with.
Making your own Bluesky custom feed
The process of creating your own custom Feed is a little bit technical, but Bluesky offers a starter template.
Or you could use an app like Skyfeed to build one one for you.
Links Are Encouraged On TTRPG Bluesky
Other platforms like X and Threads have been known to devalue content that includes a link that takes you off-site — those sites want you to stay captive so that you continue viewing their advertisers and sponsored posts.
In some cases, this extended to even mentioning sites that TTRPG creators use to distribute their content, like Ko-Fi, Patreon, itchio, or Etsy. Users were stuck trying to find workarounds, such as leaving links in a reply to their original post so the link wouldn’t get buried by the algorithm. But if a user doesn’t open the thread, they’d never see your link, killing engagement.
Bluesky doesn’t devalue links at all, so you can include them in your first message, giving them much more visibility.
Many users are reporting that engagement is higher on Bluesky, and this seems to be true for the TTRPG space as well. This is great for TTRPG designers and creators (and blogs like this one) who rely on clickthroughs from their social media platforms to drive sales.
Before I closed my X account, I experimented with posting the same content on both sites, usually art and commentary from vintage TTRPG magazines. Again and again, Bluesky outperformed X, with posts receiving more comments, likes, and reposts, even when I had 50% as many followers.
The Best TTRPG Starter Packs To Follow
My account has grown considerably faster on Bluesky too — I used X for almost two years, and barely passed 600 followers, and I suspect as many as 15% of those were bots. In two months on Bluesky, my account has grown to over 1200 followers, almost all of whom are real live people.
I can thank TTRPG Starter Packs for that. Starter Packs are one of Bluesky’s best features.
Users can curate lists of other users that they think people should follow. Most of them are focused on specific topics, such as this pack for TTRPG Stock Art Artists curated by Fernando Salvaterra, or Wheelchairbadger’s starter pack for disabled TTRPG creatives.
They’re great for conventions too! Here’s a Starter Pack of this year’s PAX Unplugged panelists.
Starter Packs can have anywhere from 8 to 150 users in them. You can follow the entire pack with one click, although I think most users probably just scroll through the pack and pick and choose who they want to follow.
Here’s a link to my own TTRPG Chatty Kathies starter pack.
Want to follow the best TTRPG Starter Packs?
Alt-Text Helps Your Posts Get Discovered
The accessibility culture on Bluesky is large and in charge and the site strongly encourages the use of alt text. Alt text is simply descriptive text that accompanies images. This text can be read by screen readers or can just provide more context for users who may have some degree of sight impairment.
Many users outright refuse to repost image content that doesn’t contain alt text.
There’s another reason you should be using alt-text though: Feeds and the site’s search function can use alt text to show your posts to more users. On the flip side, an image with a descriptive alt text can also be hidden by the mute feature if the alt text includes a muted word.
To remind yourself to include Alt Text, Bluesky offers an option to require it on posts that include an image. You can enable it by going to Settings -> Accessibility.
Hashtags Are Back
Although sites like Threads and X have been devaluing hashtags for some time, tags have been given new life on Bluesky. The site uses them to fuel Feeds, moderation lists, the mute function, and more.
The TTRPG community uses a bunch of different hashtags. Here’s a few of them:
- Game specific tags like #dnd, #vtm, #lancer, and #pathfinder are great for tracking posts about your favorite games.
- TTRPG designers often use weekly tags like #wipwednesday and #selfpromosaturday to share news and developments about their projects.
- Art tags like #dndart, #ttrpgart, #dndcharacter, and #dndcommission are constantly booming with tons of amazing artwork.
- The #battlemap hashtag is a ridiculously good resource for finding maps to use for your games.
- #solorpg and #gmless are useful hashtags if you’re looking to learn more about solo games (whether games designed for solo play, or using tools like oracles to run solo D&D and similar systems).
- Hashtags like #ttrpgprompt and #ttrpgquestion are always great for finding discussions about game mechanics, worldbuilding, or playstyles.
- #sessionreport is a small, but growing hashtag used to share TTRPG session reports.
Add tags you use frequently to your profile description
Bluesky includes a handy little feature: if you put tags in your profile description, users can use them to find all of your posts using that tag.
While it’s probably not best to try to cram every tag you use into there, if there are major topics you post about frequently, such as a particular game system, it can be a great way to organize your posts for other users.
Curate Your Experience With Labelers
Labelers are a tool that Bluesky offers to allow users to add annotations to their own posts and to the posts of others.
Some Labelers are purely informative or just for fun, like labelers to add your favorite color or your Final Fantasy XIV job, while others have moderation-related functions, such as marking users known to post racist content or to have posting habits that indicate the user may be a bot.
Bluesky-labelers.io is a great site to browse Labelers. Here’s a couple of notable ones:
- The Pronoun Labeler is helpful for knowing what to call all the random pixel people you meet online. Subscribers of the Labeler can select their preferred pronouns to display on their profile. Dozens of pronoun combinations are offered, ranging from the standard to the esoteric.
- I don’t use this one myself, but the TTRPG Class Identifier is a Labeler and bot that lets you show off your favorite TTRPG class and ancestry on your profile. It also allows users who subscribe to the Labeler to engage in Jousts and Duels, with other features like Questing Parties in development.
- Looking for art for your TTRPG character or a custom battlemap for your campaign? Hiresky is a Labeler that a lot of artists use to note when their commissions are open or closed.
- With growing sentiment against the use of AI imagery, especially in TTRPG works, some users may find the AI Imagery Labeler useful. I’m not sure exactly how users are labeled on this service — it seems to be a combination of user self-admission of using AI and reports from others. I know of at least one person whose content was falsely labeled by this labeler as genAI content, so use with caution.
Since the original publication of this article, P.J. Coffey added this helpful commentary about the AI Imagery Labeler:
Labellers, specifically the AI imagery one, are based on a human acting on reports rather than an automatic process. So when a label goes on an account then all images from that account get hidden as AI imagery.
I noticed that a large proportion of people getting blocked were trans, so I stopped using it as it seems very vulnerable to exploitation to isolate already marginalised users.
If you want to build your own Bluesky Labeler and have the know-how, here’s a github repository with a Bluesky Labeler Starter Kit.
You Can Block Bad Actors in the TTRPG Space with Blocklists
Along with Labelers, Bluesky allows users to create their own moderation lists or blocklists.
The ways these work is a little misunderstood. When you subscribe to a blocklist, it automatically blocks every user on the list. If a user is removed from the blocklist, your account will automatically unblock them. You can also manually unblock the user if you wish. When names are added to the list later, you’ll also block those accounts.
There have been some instances of bad actors using blocklists maliciously (for example, adding trans accounts to transphobia blocklists), so I suggest using them with caution.
I’m only aware of two TTRPG-specific blocklists at the moment.
- Dicefunctional manages a TTRPG AI Blocklist
- R. Rook Studio manages a Trolls and Harassers of TTRPG Land blocklist.
Bluesky Is Where TTRPG Talk is Happening
Whatever your game, there seems to be active chatter on Bluesky about it.
Of course there’s an active Dungeons and Dragons community, but I’ve also found active chatters talking about games like Pathfinder, Vampire: the Masquerade, Cyberpunk 2020, Blades in the Dark, Symbaroum, Shadowdark, Lancer, Basic Fantasy RPG, and so many more.
There are thriving communities around solo TTRPGs, itchio indie games, and the OSR crowd. Whatever your flavor of TTRPG, there’s someone on Bluesky talking about it.