Excellent visualizations by ProPublica making the case that CCS is a dead-end solution. You may want to remove that card from your Daybreak set. daybreakgame.org/card/1121

Gosh, I love this poem. I keep returning to one of my favorite Chesterton quotes. "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly." Please Use AI, via open.substack.com/pub/shawnsmu...

The Eighth Annual Uganda Village Boardgame Convention Crowdfunder is Now Live! The event is incredible, their needs are modest, and the money goes far! And Donna and I will match the next £1,000 that are donated to their crowdfunder.

I’m a climate scientist. Let me fix this headline. “Nearly a century ago, scientists showed that burning fossil fuels warms the planet. Today, we know human emissions account for over 100% of the warming. Yet dark money and disinformation still work to keep Americans addicted to fossil fuels.”

My May Newsletter is out. Giant Pandemics, upcoming releases, and more!

The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship won Cooperative Game of the Year, Thematic Game of the Year, and Medium Game of the Year at the Golden Geek Awards! Congrats to the whole team at @zmangamesofficial.bsky.social.

Excited to welcome our special guests for Game Market West Spring 2026, a tabletop game market where independent designers showcase/sell their newest games: @mattleacock.bsky.social @dodecadonuts.bsky.social @themisplay.com SumLilThings #boardgamesky #ttrpg #cute

Animal Rescue Team (the first game in our SU&SD Presents line) has been nominated for an Origins Award in the Coop/Solo category! Thank you to the panel!

My March update is up: Forbidden Legacy announced, Fate of the Fellowship availability info, The Four Doors design diary, Flickering Stars update, and more!

Matt Riddle and I have posted our Design Diary documenting the strange and circuitous history of The Four Doors. Development was a gauntlet: five different themes, four different publishers, four contributing designers. Includes: Goonies! Disease! Flooding! Vermin! and Meddling Locals!

Grab your jetpack, Forbidden Legacy will premiere at Gen Con this year! Designed with Rob Daviau. This one unfolds over seven chapters. www.wericmartin.com/forbidden-le...

Please take the time to read what the children detained in Dilley wrote me in their own words: www.propublica.org/article/ice-... 10/

Rhado calls The Four Doors "A miracle of design." @mattleacock.bsky.social

Latest newsletter is out! If you're interested in updates on my games, please take a second to subscribe.

when I worked on This Guilty Land, and immersed myself in antebellum primary documents, the thing that really struck me is how incrementalism today is just the same shit it was then, responding to the same kind of bad faith arguments by evil fuckers, & treating real change as impossible & infantile.

Outside/In from New Hampshire Public Radio aired a wonderful episode about Daybreak yesterday. Not going to spoil whether they won or not!

We were happy to join the first Sun Day day of action at San Jose City Hall today. Hope and expect this day to become bigger and bigger each year.

My September update is up! New and upcoming release info, appearances, trivia results, our trip to Middle Earth, and more. This is also a great time to subscribe if you haven't yet.

I try to keep my feed mostly positive, but this is worth a read. My plea to you is to get involved locally, not just in yelling into the void but in building community. Human connection is (hopefully) one way through. We are so much better than all of this.

My daughter and I played The Four Doors designed by @mattleacock.bsky.social and published by @happycampergames.bsky.social. The first was phenomenally good. I can’t wait to play more.

I love this so much.

I’ve just posted my full design diary for The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship on my blog. Lots of goodies including some time-lapse videos and some goofy bonus materials including a Middle Earth Tube Map.

June Update is up! Announcing the Four Doors and more! (also: psst, great time to subscribe if you haven't already)

If you're unaware of the incredible history and meaning behind the @dianajonesaward.org, I have a story to share with you.

Excited and honored to hear that Daybreak is up for the Diana Jones Award along with @charliehall.bsky.social, @rascal.news, and Rose Estes!

Happy Camper has just announced The Four Doors – a new cooperative card game by me, Matt Riddle, and Ben Pinchback coming this August. The Shadow Veil threatens to cover the land in darkness. Can you collect the relics and light the beacon in time? Lots of cooperative goodness in a tight package.

My May update is up. This one is focused on The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship.

Yesterday there was a massive outage in Portugal. No power, water, internet or phone signal from 11h30 to 00h30. We were prepared. What better time to crack open our copy of Daybreak, a co-op game about dealing with climate change? We finished it by candlelight, and won! @mattleacock.bsky.social

Lisa and I did our first interview about Animal Rescue Team!

Boardgamers, do yourself a favor and check out Illuminating Games. Chris Farrell provides in-depth analysis of a surprisingly wide variety of games every week. This week: Molly House, Slay the Spire meets AI, and more.

Had a fun conversation with Keepers of Fun about the 5 games I'd select to restart my collection. The premise: "Inspired by Turkey's strict import restrictions, this series explores what games truly matter to collectors." On the day of the interview, Turkey announced even more severe restrictions.

The @newyorker.com piece linked below is worth a read. The factoid that sticks with me: when at least 3.5% of the population participates in nonviolent opposition, movements are successful. (And you get there not just through yelling but also shared joy)

Just posted my April update! Information on new releases including The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship and Animal Rescue Team, upcoming appearances, and more.

Amabel continues to make thought-provoking and persuasive arguments about the ability of boardgames to express and advocate for ideas. I imagine a future where we wonder how we were so dismissive (frivolous, toys, etc.) but then one remembers comic books, film, and even the novel. Recommended!

We are experiencing an assault on science unparalleled by anything I’ve seen in my life. It’s not one issue or another anymore, the entire institution is under attack by the most powerful individuals in the country. This Friday, where will you be? standupforscience2025.org

Per Dr Atul Gawande, ex USAID: “All malaria supplies protecting 53 million people, mostly children, including bed nets, diagnostics, preventive drugs, and treatments – terminated.” There are no words that sufficiently describe this level of cruelty and sadism.

Joined over 500 folks in Palo Alto (including Joan Baez!) and over a hundred in Sunnyvale to protest Musk and Trump's illegal dismantling of our government. Keep calling, keep protesting, keep the pressure on.

Molly House is a strange and meaningful beast, at once a celebration of queer love, a critique of imperial power, and a call to solidarity. More than that, it is a game that can't help but be personally meaningful to the lonesome and tired. My review: spacebiff.com/2025/02/12/m...

Just finished Cardboard Ghosts by @amabel.bsky.social If you're into understanding systems or helping other people understand systems—especially systems of oppression, you should definitely check this one out. Highly recommended. She throws the gauntlet on page 102. Let's pick it up!

Honored to learn that Daybreak has been awarded the Lizzie Magie Prize for 2024! The award aims to highlight what board games bring to society as a cultural object. Also should note that Lizzie Magie was a cooperative game designer herself, filing her patent in 1903.

After watching @nopunincluded.bsky.social 's great preso covering dodgy skin conductivity tests, I suggest checking out this preso I did on tracking emotional reactions using remote playtesting with video. I don't get faces in frame as much as I'd like, but even good audio is super helpful.

This is such a great video. And, sadly, the conversation about rules and arousal is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to publishing (and design) best practices which are couched in half-cocked studies and which often try to cover for far bigger issues. Short 🧵

This is not normal, or natural, or inevitable. youtu.be/ZfBkw0j-QIs?...

The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship has just been announced! Thrilled to announce that there's a new Pandemic System game coming in 2025 based on Tolkien's masterpiece.

Excited to see that Daybreak won the Spiel of Approval Award for 2024! And if you haven't checked out the Spiel Foundation, be sure to have a look—they do great work.

Excited to announce *Animal Rescue Team* co-designed with friend and real-life animal rescuer, Lisa Towell, coming next year from Play to Z. This will also be the first game in the SU&SD Presents line. Fun to work with Zev again; we first teamed up on a game called Pandemic back in 2007.

More please!

Quick, we need to send some boardgamers to help the folks at COP win at Daybreak.

Hank Green makes the case that populism was inevitable in this moment of a new communications technology (many-to-many social media), and along the way makes observations about the role of trust in a functional society, along with many other nuggets of brilliance. Spend a half hour on it. Trust me.