Shelfie #002

My name is Seraphina Garcia Ramirez, and I’m a writer, podcaster, developmental editor, and critic. I love games, and I love talking about them almost as much—my biggest project now is Dice Exploder, a podcast created by Sam Dunnewold and soon to be hosted by yours truly where we have a new cohost on every episode who brings on a specific game mechanic to discuss and dissect.

Chaotic—the photos you see here are the most organized my physical collection has ever been, and it’s dwarfed by my digital collection which lives on itch, Google Drive, DriveThruRPG, various publisher specific digital storefronts, and numerous Discord chats with attachments sent years ago that I haven’t gotten around to downloading.

Not pictured here is an entire box of Pathfinder 2e sourcebooks I have moved off my shelves, which was once the predominant game in my collection. I ran PF2e for years, and it still holds a special place in my heart, but my interests have simply shifted further and further away over time. I still keep this copy of the Core Rulebook on my shelf though—it’s a game that brought me a lot of joy.

I don’t understand the question. How dare you sir. What kind of question is that to ask in polite company? Don’t visit such a foul evil upon me, even in speculation.

“a baby fell from the sky”, a larp by designer aura belle about a group of people in Tennessee in 1947 who need to decide which of them will be leaving tonight with the space baby that fell from the sky six months ago, emanating low level radiation and psychic visions throughout Hallelujah Falls. It arrived in a shipping envelope, which is where I still keep it for organizational purposes. Aura made these by hand and mailed them to anyone who emailed her, for free. It’s not available anywhere online that I can find, and it’s one of the most haunting and strange games I have in my collection.

As part of gathering materials for play, it asks you to procure a glowing space baby, and instructs you in how to do so—“take a baby doll from a thrift store, scrub off the facial features, pluck out the hair, and douse it in glow-in-the-dark paint.” I am ashamed to say I have not yet done so, but I hope to soon. When I do, you will not be able to stop me from sharing pictures everywhere I go.

You Will Die In This Place.

… is a game written by Elizabeth Little. Or maybe it’s a game compiled by Samantha Little, collecting the work of one Charlotte Avery. I don’t think they stop being the authors just because they are only a fiction. Am I more than a fiction to you, reading this now?

It’s a fully playable dungeon crawling ttrpg. It’s also a metanarrative. Neither of these things come first, neither of them come last.

I’m fascinated by the way we communicate through art, how we embed ourselves into it. Our pain, our hope, our trauma. I think it’s beautiful. My games are special to me because of the ghosts that haunt them, the spirits of the people that wrote them and the people that played them with me. Sometimes the ghost of the person I was when I played them, too.

This book might be very cursed. It’s too late for me. But you could probably save yourself, if you really wanted to.

Alice is Missing was, in retrospect, my first dalliance with larp. A game where you play in complete silence by texting each other, playing teenagers investigating the disappearance of their friend.

Alice is Missing showed me the power of experience, how much could be accomplished at the table by shifting engagement and mentality into a different space. It’s the first analog game that made my entire table cry, more than once. I still remember listening to the voicemails we recorded before play started, while that timed soundtrack played in the background, processing the grief I was feeling for a person I’d made up 90 minutes prior.

Books are overrated. One of the most beautiful games in my collection is City of Winter, not only for the visual artistry contained within, but also because of the human beauty contained within these cards and rules.

It’s a game about a family travelling in hopes of a better life. I am an immigrant, a traveller, part of a family. I have lost or forgotten traditions that meant everything to those that came before me, and I have picked up new ones that I hope to pass on one day.

Usually, not at all. But Jonas asked me to participate in this, so I finally got around to condensing the many piles of books and zines mixed in with the rest of my belongings and sorted them all onto these shelves.

For the games with recognizable spines—tallest to shortest, left to right, bottom to top. The zines and similar bits and bobs are splayed out on top, and the smaller boxes of cards and such have been carefully tetrised into the gaps.

Why did I do it this way? Sleep deprivation and illness were probably factors, but mostly I thought it looked nice for these photos.

TEETH by Jim Rossignol and Marsh Davies, a Forged in the Dark comic horror game of monster hunters in the moors of Northern England in 1780. It’s weird exclusion zone horror, the art is vivid and wretched, it’s funny as hell, and I was a damn fool for only getting a PDF when I first picked it up. I have not made the same mistake with GOLD TEETH, their new game about piracy in the Caribbean in the same world. My copy of that gorgeous game is on its way, but I will have to patiently wait for another print run one day before I can acquire its older sibling.

Swords Against is a strange, perplexing, beautiful … thing? It is technically a beginners box, except. Well.

It purports to be a non playable recreation of a boxed set found at an estate sale by the publisher, Amabel Holland. It contains an adventure module, a fanzine, a letter from the author of the module, a pencil, a code wheel, some photocopies, and a sealed letter from the late owner of the box to the author of the module which you have been asked not to open.

I don’t know what Swords Against is, other than art. It’s certainly not an adventure or rulebook in the sense that there is not enough here to table as might have once been intended.

I do know from what I have been able to decipher and piece together of the mystery within that if I ever open the letter and read it, I will likely cry.

I simply can’t pick just one, so you’re getting pictures of several.

These are the newest additions to my collection- two sets of d6s from Dispel Dice, partnering with Rowan Rook and Decard for Eat the Reich. I just really like the neon, and the beautiful art by Will Kirkby.

These are my Triangle Agency dice. When the kickstarter happened, I grabbed extra sets to give away to my players whenever I managed to get through a whole game. I finished running a campaign that I talked about with Sam on Dice Exploder, but I’ve only seen one of those players in person since to hand dice off to. In the meantime, these sets live with me.

These are dice I got at Big Bad Con in 2024. That con was the first larger tabletop convention I had the chance to attend, and it was a magical experience—I met a lot of really cool people, made some amazing friends, and got the chance to experience games and conversations that I still think about to this day.

These dice belonged to a late friend of mine, Misha Dixon. He passed a year and a half ago, and I only had the chance to know him for a few years before that, but he was responsible for organizing the Community Game Night that I’ve been attending (and now helping facilitate) since I moved to Ithaca. He left his game collection to CGN, and his dice were passed on to anyone who wanted a few as part of that.

I still remember when he invited me out for coffee, and told me that he wanted to organize a steering committee to steward CGN so it wouldn’t be just him, both to divide up the work and just in case he wasn’t around to take care of things one day. He told me that I was a valuable part of the community, that he thought I was good at talking to people and bringing them together, and that he thought I could do good stepping up and taking on some of the responsibility for game night.

I do my best to live up to that. I think I do alright.

You know, when Jonas asked me to do this I was worried I didn’t have enough of a physical collection to lean on for this. I asked if I could lean on my digital collection instead, and he said that was no problem.

Well. It turns out I do in fact own quite a few books. But I shouldn’t have been worried about the quantity of books, because the part of this shelfie I enjoyed the most was spending intimate time with their quality. The zines shared with me by new acquaintances, the postcard and bookmark games from a vendor I talked to at a con, the mementos of friends I won’t forget any time soon. Even the games I haven’t played bring me back to the people who recommended them or the conversations I’ve had about them.

My digital collection is still a treasure to me, but there’s something about objects—the power and memory they hold. For other people those objects might look one way or another—for me they’re games. Books, cards, dice and all. Friends, till the end.

Thanks, Jonas, for inviting me to take these photos and answer these questions. It was a delight.

I’d love to hear Jay Dragon talk about her collection—I’ve seen it before, but I’m sure she has more stories to share.