Jacob Wolf Lefton

@watermosaic

actor - jacoblefton.com | reel - | ttrpg & actual play | Tales Held Dear - youtube.com/@taleshelddear | @wederrakeep.bsky.social witchy podcast coming Jan 2025 He / They

669 Folgt1.334 Follower2.404 Posts

Twitch Website Bluesky

comedy film

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir watermosaic.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Jul 10

I wanted to know how Pokémon originated and I stumbled across this story of how they tried to redesign Pikachu for the American audience, and... wut?? Mainstream American aesthetics are so fucked...

Text from Wikipedia: In an effort to enhance the franchise's coolness, NoA considered a graphical redesign and contracted a few external artists to create some test-designs for the American market.[191][196] The mockups they proposed included 'graffiti style' drawings,[196] 'beefed-up' and more muscular-looking Pokemon,[197] and a new Pikachu that looked like "a tiger with huge breasts".[195] Arakawa concluded that it "didn't work",[196] and by that time, the anime had begun its production in Japan, leading NoA to conclude it was too late for a graphical revamp anyway.[191]

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Jul 4

I constantly have this Orwell quote ringing in the back of my mind.

When I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.

George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Jun 30

It was a media conference so I had to talk about why roleplaying games are important in media. Here's my unvalidated graphic about adaptation, cultural reference and actual play. This is for the producers in the room to make an economic argument for why we should pay attention to roleplaying games.

A circular relationship map connecting several roleplaying game media properties from adaptation to cultural reference to actual play and back to adaptation. The properties include the Dungeons & Dragons film (adaptation, cultural reference), Stranger Things where they play D&D (cultural reference, actual play), D20 (actual play), Critical Role (actual play), The Legend of Vox Machina animated series (actual play, adaptation)

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Jun 20

Q: Anything else you want to tell us? If not, thank you for your time! ❤️

A: If you put generative AI in Audacity, I'll bin it and never come back. You will instantaneously incinerate every last particle of goodwill I have for your company ❤️

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· May 25

Join us for a 30 minute fantasy roleplaying improv comedy adventure! This Saturday you can tune in online to the livestream or in person in Berlin as Tales Held Dear joins the headliners for the DASATHON improv marathon fundraiser for Berlin's home-grown Das Improv Festival! DasImprovFestival.com

Poster for Tales Held Dear at Dasathon!

Text:
We're part of Dasathon 25 hour improv marathon
Tales Held Dear
Improv comedy meets D&D
Sat. May 30th at 6PM - Comedy Cafe Berlin

(Portraits of Pip Roper, Jacob Lefton, Tetiana Mulenko, Sam Caravaglia)

(Bottom)
May 29th 8pm - May 30th 9pm
DasImprovFestival.com
All proceeds support Das Improv Festival / Das Improv Collective e.V.

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· May 12

#BERLIN! Magic is in the air and it's time for Tales Held Dear, fantasy roleplaying improv comedy! Join us at 9:30pm on May 15 at Comedy Café Berlin with some amazing guest adventurers quest a quest that has never been quested before! Tickets on sale now! www.comedycafeberlin.com/event/tales-...

Tales Held Dear poster with four adventurers looking grim.
Says:
Tales Held Dear
improv comedy meets D&D
Next Show: Friday May 15, 9:30pm
instagram: @TalesHeldDear

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· May 3

Spellcasting is magical; it just works — until suddenly it doesn't. GMs if you've got spellcasters, here's a fun curse to throw on them! Can you guess which household appliance inspired this dastardly piece of work?

When casting a spell, cursed player rolls a d20. On a critical failure, the following happens:
The spell slot is used,
The spell does not take effect.
GM secretly notes down the spell.

GM secretly rolls a d6. The spellcaster must make this many successful spellcasting, arcana, or other applicable/amusing checks (DC 15), or take a nap and wake up again. Until then, whenever they ask what’s going on, answer randomly from this table:

“Your spell had an error casting.”
“Your spellcasting class is not recognized.”
“Contact your local spell slot dealer for official refills.”
“You cannot cast your spell in an unrecognized format.”
“Spellcaster cannot be found.”
“Spooling…”

On a successful check, tell them you’re reducing the counter and that they feel something may have changed.

Until the counter reaches zero, treat every spellcasting attempt as if they rolled another Nat 1, as above (including noting the spell).

When the counter reaches zero, next time they try to cast a spell, they immediately cast all spells in the order written down before the spell they intended to cast.

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Apr 10

Hey BERLIN! We have a very special Tales Held Dear show we'll send off our longtime founding member Marijne who is moving on to new opportunities. Join us Friday April 17 in Neukölln for fantasy roleplaying improv comedy to help us give her a great finale! www.comedycafeberlin.com/event/tales-...

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Apr 9

Some of our cast of characters! PCs and NPCs. I 3D printed a bunch of these minis on our little Prusa!

A collection of minifigures for tabletop roleplaying. It includes an elf wizard, a rhino warrior, a six-armed giant gorilla, a broad shouldered and grim human paladin and a flying-kick monk. Some are gray with spray paint primer, two monks are light gray plastic and one antler-wearing druid woman is painted with light brown skin and blue clothes.

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Mar 9

Quote posts turned off but I think it need to be said loudly and by many voices - the floor, the minimum, the bar to clear for any candidate I can support is putting these people in jail. I don't care how career-anything they are.

Screenshot of:
Reposted by me
Zane Schacht - voice goblin
I will vote for whatever democratic candidate vows to throw every single person involved with this admin in jail

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Feb 24

I do not understand what happened - my 2025 year in review post got 55 views on Feb 20, and I do not know where they came from. This is like a reverse-long-tail graph, which honestly, I'll take. Did any of you go on over to my blog recently?

sceenshot of a graph in showing something like a reverse long tail. It says 211 unique visitors, starts at 30th December 2025 and has very low visibility until spiking around mid to late February, with the highest spike on 20th of February

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Feb 9

This is from The Spice Cookbook, one of my favorites that I shamelessly took from my parents and had beautifully re-bound by @lowmountain.bsky.social a few years back. A fantastic cookbook! Don't know if you can get it anymore.

Title page of The Spice Cookbook with illustration of a kitchen.
By Avanelle Day and Lillie Stuckey
Illustrated by Jo Spier
David White Company, New York

Photo of the outside binding of The Spice Cookbook - dark red burgundy spine and cinnamon colored covers, a small ship stamp in the bottom corner of the front cover. This is the new binding from Colin Urbina.

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Feb 9

This reminds me of the note in The Spice Cookbook about 'President Harrison Molasses Cake' "Our great-grandmothers may not have had the vote, but judging from the titles of many old recipes, they certainly were conversant with current events."

Photo of recipe of President Harrison Molasses Cake.
"Our great-grandmothers may not have had the vote, but judging from the titles of many old recipes, they certainly were conversant with current events."

In transit so not transcribing the recipe but I will later if you ask.

Second column of the President Harrison cake, also with the top of Fourth-of-July cake.

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Jan 10

Reading the Phantom Tollbooth to my kiddo and this passage jumped out today. We are facing down the demons trying to protect Ignorance.

And out the demons came- from every cave and crevice, through every fissure and crack, from under the rocks and up from the mud, stomping and shuffling, slithering and sliding, through the murky shadows. And all had only one thought in mind: destroy the intruders and protect Ignorance.

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Jan 7

A new work-in-progress Wednesday post! Again, another personal project involving youtube piano tutorials and midi to music score software, you can read more about it here: blog.jacoblefton.com/wip-wednesda...

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Jan 1

And the old wild west game Aces & Eights has a whole specific mechanical section on how to sway a jury when you're on trial!

Photo of a few juror leaning diagrams from the game Aces & Eights, showing dice used to lay out juror leaning toward 'guilty' or 'not guilty'

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Dec 29

My friend Emily Manthei premiered for her first feature film, "Berlin Loop" about a young woman who falls in with Berlin's bike-theft mafia and then falls into a time loop trying to get revenge. I have a small role. It's a solid project and I'm proud of everyone! www.emilymanthei.com/berlin-loop

Berlin Loop movie poster, showing the lead Fatma (Derya Flechtner) riding hard on a bike.

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Dec 28

I did so much this year. I've got a big post on Monday but this specifically lifted my soul in so many ways. The Witches of Wederra Keep @wederrakeep.bsky.social - Act 2 begins in mid January with Episode 11! (I just finished design & score for ep13, and I think it'll be one a month for a while.)

The cover for The Witches Of Wederra Keep. In the foreground are three illustrated witches - one is older, with glasses, a purple outfit, and a basket of mushrooms. One is young, with blonde hair and a bird on her shoulder, wearing a pink fur and white dress. The last has wild brown hair, a green cape, and a knife. Around them is a series of stills - a mermaid on a rock facing a man, a group of adventurers travelling through a forest, dark figures and devils, etc.

A photo of a glass trophy that says:
TOWF
T.O. Webfest
WSC Honorable Mention
The Witches of Wederra Keep
Presented by WSC Webseries Canada

Glass trophy with laurels and text:
Award Winner New Jersey Web Fest
Best Premise of an Actual Play

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Dec 18

I'm writing up a little year in review and a lot of you downloaded things from watermosaic.itch.io so thank you. That's 120+ downloads just for games written this year 💝 Timespell is an outlier but it's been up there for five years. Also, I've written a fair number of games all of a sudden! Wow!

Project Views Downloads
Timespell 2,317 845
(Un)Fortunately, Fate 105 28
Spin Out 94 28
Insatiable Mountain 84 25
Get Those Sweet Sweet Shower Thoughts 42 17
reveal your heart quest 77 16
Games for an Ordinary Life 82 12
Shitty Robot 27 6
Grandmother Guide - Broken Sky Edition 3 0

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Dec 14

Happy Hanukkah first night from us to you :)

Selfie of Jacob by the window with a menorah on the window sill behind him - two candles are lit for the first night of Hannukkah.

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Dec 8

Absolutely rocked it!

Selfie of Jacob in costume ready to play Paulina in The Winter's Tale.

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Dec 8

I decided to run a follower and supporter drive for the end of the year! I love Wederra Keep and other creative work, but costs are rising & my income was very low this past year. I have episodes coming and other work as well. Goals: 💲 100€/month 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 100 followers www.patreon.com/WederraKeep

Poster of The Witches of Wederra Keep with the three witches, Minerva, Charley and Circe (and her wolf Pocho). It says "The Witches of Wederra Keep, Supporter goal: 100€/month, 100 followers.

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Nov 23

This art nouveau tile we have looks like a fairy crying and where the tears hit the ground, red berrys spring up and ripen! What are they crying over? And what's their station that affords them such a green jacket with shoulder pads like those?!

Photo of a symmetric art nouveau tile with a green cup-like shape with two flowers at the top and blue green leaf-shapes arcing out drom them ending in small red dots or berries.

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Nov 22

We had a great Tales Held Dear show last night! Here's Tetiana playing evil movie star Big Dipper, literally stars, and I'm a bigshot auteur director. It doesn't go well for us! Fantasy roleplay improv comedy in Berlin, once a month! Come see us! Or, invite us to your city, we'd love to travel 🤩

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Nov 17

Doing into this today - I'll be Cleomenes in The Winters Tale for our December 8 Shakespeariment production in Berlin. We get a 90-minute version, learn the lines in a month, rehearse once for two hours and then put it on to a packed audience, similar to the original troupe.

Photo of the first page of The Winters Tale script on the carpeted floor with highlighters and mug on corners of the paper

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Nov 16

Oh my god, here's the fuckin map folks, that's what was supposed to be in the first post!

Map from the ttrpg campaign for The Infinite Isles!

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Oct 31

Are you in BERLIN next week? Tales Held Dear is performing at the boardgame café Tales Untold on Saturday Nov 8! 🎟️ Tickets: www.eventbrite.de/e/tales-held... ⚔️ Grab your foam sword, strap on your pointy ears, and dive into a fully improvised, epic fantasy quest, as suggested by you, the audience!

A photo of four people dressed as adventurers - druid, barbarian, paladin, warlock - stand in a dark forest with stark expressions. Text on the poster reads:

Tales Held Dear
Improv Comedy Meets D&D
instagram: TalesHeldDear

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Oct 29

Good morning 😌

A clear vase with red, pink and white roses. Two small decorative gourds with googly eyes. A card that says 'I trust myself more than capitalism.'

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Oct 27

If you can give €20, I offer a thank you note on a handmade art print postcard of my own design. If 30 people help at this level, I'll meet my goal. Easy! Here's the designs I'll be using from my archive - a winged fawn or a dapper mantis. You can contribute here: ko-fi.com/jacoblefton/20

A collection of art print postcards. There are two designs. 1) A fawn with feathered wings looking over its shoulder. 2) A stylized oval portrait frame with a portrait of a praying mantis breaking the boundaries of the frame.

Jacob Wolf Lefton@watermosaic· Oct 27

I'd love your support 💝 "Is This A Dad Thing?" is a short documentary about my journey inducing lactation and breastfeeding. We're in the official selection at Aesthetica Film Festival, and I'm traveling with my daughter to York for the premiere. Please help us get there! ko-fi.com/jacoblefton/