Exciting new additions are making their way to the Woodland in the Hirelings & Landmarks expansion, coming soon to Root Digital! Discover new wonders in the Woodland and claim your throne with a little bit of hired help! Read More: 🔗 news.direwolfdigital.com/the-hireling... @leder.games

October 25th I'll be giving a talk for this year's Roguelike Celebration @roguelike.club among an absolutely stacked speaker lineup. I'll be talking about Oath and what happens when you apply roguelike procgen conventions to tabletop games and the sorts of strange stories that follow.

A little evening prototyping.

Hey there Delilah I am writing the Quixote Adding hermeneutic weight to what Miguel wrought crude and floaty Vis-à-vis The work— attributed to me? Or only he?

reviewed Silksong, whose friction is fundamental to its humanism. (may we, twisted by this historical moment into alienated vermin, be like the bugs) www.slantmagazine.com/games/hollow...

“the story of the #crossbronxexpressway is a lens through which we can better understand our modern world.” pre-orders charging means the game ships soon. i recorded a podcast called endnotes to hold folk over while they wait for it to arrive. @gmtgames.bsky.social [ link below]

As #TIPC4 is rapidly approaching (8-10 October register now for FREE: interactivepasts.com/the-interact...) we have all sorts of SUPER COOL stuff for this year's celebratory edition! A Game Dev panel, a Playful Archaeology Panel, workshops, pizzas, and of course amazing talks! Check the thread!

💣 A royal secret is out… 👑🕵️‍♀️ Queen of Spies is our next game! From the brilliant minds of @beyondsolitaire & @djackthompson . Follow the Gamefound campaign here 👉 gamefound.com/en/projects/...

Today we're announcing a small change in plans on our fall schedule. I'm still busy with the second edition of An Infamous Traffic and Hell Raisers is making great progress, but higher demand than anticipated and the vagaries of Trump's stupid trade policies means we need to get reprinting!

this is absolutely electric. here's some first thoughts about jay's inclusion of Molly House in this manifesto (I was nodding along while reading and honoured to see it mentioned!) and how we sort of stumbled into this approach.

good morning, i wrote a manifesto about a new direction for game design / play possumcreek.medium.com/the-expressi...

new site from ex-polygon folks just launched. hell yeah

For those interested, here is the official trailer for Cross Bronx Expressway, a boardgame designed by Non-Breaking Space. www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5aZ... @nbsp1618.bsky.social

I've always wondered if the discussion around these games reflects the quality of the work or the fact that I happened to write lot about them. It's really a core insecurity I have the games that I've worked on. Would they speak without this critical framing (the designer diaries, etc)? 🧵

I'm so grateful to Charlie for writing up this session report. One of the downsides of running an event like this is that it's hard to get a sense of how it's all going in the moment. Well, if you want to know, give this a read.

Recovered from my parents house: here is my first attempt at fiction, recorded by my dad when I was 4 or 5 years old.

BREAKING: Silksong will be out on September 4. Two weeks from today. Really. Often, games that take 7+ years to make are plagued by mismanagement and painful burnout. But for Silksong? Team Cherry was having a blast. They still are. This is their story: www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Reminder that the best conference for understanding generative systems, and how people play them, is full of kind people, online and you can go to it.

@colewehrle.bsky.social and I put together a puppet show at GenCon this year and it's one of my favorite creative pursuits I've done in a long while. Come and be charmed by cardboard 2D puppets youtu.be/h4gyN3yS2Vc?...

Just finished a lovely and zany game of Wellington. The Armée du Sud won the game by a nose after rebuffing Blake's incursion into southern France.

Instead of regurgitating the bromide that LLMs are just "autocomplete on steroids" (even by people who know better), maybe we can actually engage in some public education. The problem with genAI is better expressed through a classic computer science concept, known as SYMBOL GROUNDING. 🧵

Genial trifft es! @colewehrle.bsky.social

Come forTake, stay for the hot gen con takes.

Word is y'all like Arcs a bit. And also, that you'd like us to finally finish our 2nd campaign. FINALLY IT IS HERE! See y'all tonight! www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR17... @leder.games @colewehrle.bsky.social @d20plusmodifier.bsky.social @patrickleder.bsky.social

What a Gen Con! Molly House + John Company are sold out in the US right now, so this year was wild and wonderful. We saw lots of folks and old friends, ran a 50 person John Company journaling TTRPG megagame, and i even played a synthesizer for an Oath puppet show. 10/10 @leder.games

Over #gencon2025 we've been playing a very special Oath chronicle. I've been taking notes throughout and, at the end of each game, have been playing the role of the court chronicler. Tonight (6pm, room 135), at the Chancellor's behest, we will present our true and accurate historie to all assembled.

Last year, this was my favorite part of Gen Con and this year it got bigger and better in every way, transforming what was a black box production to a massive piece of theater. I don't know how or when it's going to happen, but we'll do our best to put together some documentation on how to run this.

Tonight!

Time for my favorite gen con event, the Orc Stomp! #gencon2025

it's #gencon week. @colewehrle.bsky.social @wehrlegig.games and i will be at it again. this time we're doing the mega game version of the john company rpg the company archives. if you're around Friday evening come check it out. www.gencon.com/events/277585

In this episode, @colewehrle.bsky.social and I dive deep into the tension between control and chaos, discussing how historical research fuels good design, and why the best games ask players to grapple with uncomfortable truths. justingarydesign.substack.com/p/cole-wehrl...

Tom Lehrer made all of his music 100% public domain so if seeing people sad about his death makes you want to check them out… it’s free. he wanted you to share them. tomlehrersongs.com

I dive into the other side of Arcs from @leder.games, @colewehrle.bsky.social and @d20plusmodifier.bsky.social. Welcome to the Blighted Reach. giantbrain.co.uk/2025/07/26/t...

Just about packed for #gencon2025!

New video essay! This time I'm joined by special guests @colewehrle.bsky.social , @xoe.gay , @jdragsky.bsky.social , Erin Escobedo, and @beyondsolitaire.bsky.social as I explore the impact of player counts & scaling on the types of experiences games create. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-s2...

First sighting of Molly House in the wild! (At @excelsiorbristol.bsky.social)

A little after hours Almoravid with Clay (scenario C. Parias Wars, 1086). I've only ever done the intro scenario and the full campaign and am finding quite a lot of meat in these shorter spotlight scenarios. @volko.bsky.social

I finally decided to put my thoughts down about Arcs from @leder.games , @colewehrle.bsky.social and @d20plusmodifier.bsky.social. The first part will look at the Base game and Leaders and Lore. Later this week, the Blighted Reach. giantbrain.co.uk/2025/07/21/a...

Even if you have a tangential interest in game studies, this review is well-worth your time. Any emerging field is going to have some sloppy scholarship (that's certainly true of game studies). But, what makes this review worthwhile is how it reckons with the costs of that behavior.

We're on NPR's best games of 2025! Love seeing Molly House and some great indie projects alongside Death Stranding and Donkey Kong. @miasmacorp.bsky.social @colewehrle.bsky.social

Our group played ARCS extensively during last year. Let me share our observations and impressions in the form of REVIEW. Enjoy! 👇 theboardgameschronicle.com/2025/07/13/r... @colewehrle.bsky.social @leder.games

2-Player play-through of Molly House by @miasmacorp.bsky.social and @colewehrle.bsky.social is live! Haven’t got a new game to the table this often in a long time. youtu.be/l-1xRqRMNKs?...

Dang, this game rips so hard. With about 30 minutes of prep, this game yielded the best roleplaying session I've run in a long time. Kudos to @bastionland.bsky.social for the game and @itsquinns.bsky.social for the lovely review that led me here.

We're at it again! @colewehrle.bsky.social @nbsp1618.bsky.social and I are running the absolutely wild John Company RPG during Gen Con. This time, we'll play The Company Archives as a 25+ player mega game with an 8 ft board and model ships?! It'll be something ➡️ www.gencon.com/events/277585

I sometimes tell folks that Arcs is the game I'm most proud of as a piece of design. I usually don't get into the details because, as the length of the video indicates, it's a little tricky and some of the things I'm proudest of in the game are things I want players to sort out for themselves.

I say this without exaggeration: Indiana University is one of the great universities. It is so much more than its state deserves. My first courses there were in journalism and comparative literature, and they are still paying dividends in my own creative practice. What a fucking tragedy.

New video up on the channel! This time I took a look at the Ricky Royal designed solo mode for Molly House, from designers @miasmacorp.bsky.social and @colewehrle.bsky.social and publisher @wehrlegig.games ! youtu.be/Tzh1HxO5Hjo?...

This is very good. I have read a lot of investor reports for big game companies over the past few years, and it is very clear that the key measurement of success in all entertainment is time: how much time of yours can a company capture, and how efficiently can they do it?

Welcome to the public domain, GODS’ MAN (1929) by Lynd Ward. 🖋️📖 A haunting, wordless story told through woodcuts, this early graphic novel follows an artist’s Faustian bargain. Read it here ➡️ archive.org/details/gods... 🧵 #PublicDomain #PublicDomainDay #GraphicNovel #ArtLiterature

Episode 13 is a special one: a chat with Cole Wehrle! Available now on the Romp feed: bit.ly/LGRompPod