Eastwood Guitars loves designing modern takes on classic unusual instruments, so I emailed them a while back to suggest a new version of the Japanese 1960s Winston/Kawai electric banjo. Just now, this model popped up for pre-order. Unreal. eastwoodguitars.com/products/eas...

DHS was created with an intentionally Orwellian name, amid the Islamophobic and xenophobic environment of the early War On Terror moral panic and its associated right-wing suspension of even the most basic human rights for everyone. Abolish the whole department.

Education is a public good for all. When politicians censor classroom teaching in order to narrow the field of topics that students can engage in, they rob them of a stellar world class education. This is what is happening at Texas A&M & other institutions in the state. 🧵

Pretty great pre-winter-storm haul at the used bookstore. Already own @jmstar.bsky.social's Durance & multiple editions of Montsegur 1244, so those will go to my university library's new indie games collection. But check out that old Chaosium larp book co-written by our Forge colleague Walt Freitag!

it sucks that to stay solvent in any kind of self-employed creative field rn you have to maintain constant cognitive dissonance - everything is objectively Very Bad but also gotta find and speak to an audience (who also knows that everything is Very Bad) and… it’s a lot!

At the end of the day, the Black Lives Matter era was about whether people should be killed in the street, and lots of people decided yeah and put those little blue flags on their cars. It spread to everyone because it stopped for no one.

We're playing @megueyb.bsky.social @lumpley.bsky.social 's Doomed Pilgrim + Firebrands excerpts + @johnharper.bsky.social 's Lasers & Feelings + Pocket Danger Patrol in my "Indie RPG Studio" class today. Wish me luck as I weird out some college students with micro-scale mini-games.

On my secret prior history of game design with @ludopolitics.bsky.social & the Oulipian influence on my work on Tacklebox

With all the buzz around Tacklebox, I'm so glad @rascal.news focused in on my favorite thing about the game—the reuniting of childhood friends @ludopolitics.bsky.social & @inauthenticity.bsky.social to flesh out its cards after diverging lives & decades apart. It was such a treat reconnecting them!

follow the page for The Endtimes Trilogy if you like weird storygames, GMless games, games with a GMPC who's a total jerk, games with playing cards, games with tarot cards, games with dice, games inspired by Krasznahorkai books, games inspired by 10 cloverfield lane, anthology trilogies, zines, etc

I’m planning a column about women and games next year. I want to discuss how stories about women are told/received in games, and how does womens’ criticism exist- where/what is it? If you are a woman game writer/dev/critic and would like to share your thoughts, dm or email [email protected] !

Narrascope 2026 open call: The Experience Bridging the Physical and Digital Worlds through Narrative Seeking projects in the realms of augmented/mixed reality, interactive installations, haunts, escape rooms, live performances that leverage tech, and more. narrascope.org/experience/

Happy to see "An Unknown Brand" included among the Scaffold Top 50! & many thanks to @justinhendrix.bsky.social and @somewordslit.bsky.social for publishing the story originally

Lying to Americans to manufacture consent --> manufacturing consent by simply appearing to manufacture consent --> consent pre-manufactured. No need to do anything

Here's some example maps that are fun to think about:

Neoplastomacy 1. Pick a neoplastic painting by Mondrian. 2. It's the map for a game of Diplomacy. 3. Every colored space (Red Yellow Blue Grey Black) is a starting Supply Center. Each color (other than white) is played by a different player. 4. Every space has a Supply Center. 5. It's Fall 1930. Go.

I need everyone to make a shitpost game that fits into at most 3 posts on here before the end of the year otherwise thr sun will not rise again

Things I re-learned this year: (1) Working harder can't fix Systemic Problems. I need to be strategic about tackling those, w/ others. (2) The U.S. Public is frustratingly hesitant about direct action against blatant cruelty & corruption. Shut it down! (3) People like my games? Always a surprise.

A quick publishing/writing wrap up for 2025: My story "A Haunting" was published in @ergot.bsky.social and later featured in @lithub.com.web.brid.gy's "One Great Short Story to Read Today"; you can read it here:

100% this.

Trying to figure out if I can make a Neoplastic board game for the Public Domain Jam, since several 1930 paintings by Mondrian and van Doesburg become public domain on Jan 1.

Reminder that when it comes to historically inspired art and media the question “but how accurate is it??” Is both one of the most boring to ask and also pretty unhelpful.

Thinking about the different contexts of "prompt writing" today. When I try to write good prompts for RPGs (for random cards, for PBTA moves), I'm trying to create interesting structures where I myself cannot know what the emergent outcomes will be -- they are context- & player-dependent.

I would like to wish everyone a Very Merry "things published in 1930 will enter the public domain in 6 days." itch.io/jam/gaming-l...

Jonathan is as great collaborator as he is a designer, with multiple all-but-art-complete RPGs publishers would be lucky to have in their catalog. Hell, I want to publish him again too—it'll just be 2+ years before I have room. Now's your time to seize the momentum & start a convo: www.jwalton.media

Ask me how good Lofty Beacons and RESTLESS are, just ask me, potential publishers

Year I first designed an RPG: ~1995. Year I first discovered indie RPGs: 2002. Year I first did a game jam: also 2002 (Game Chef 1). Year I first sold something at GenCon: 2006. Year I first made a significant profit: 2025. You never have to stop making games, even if it never becomes your day job.

And solo games connect us more clearly to the ancient practice of journaling & chronicling & letter-writing, as well as fiction that uses that structure (Frankenstein, Dracula, Journal of a Plague Year, The Moonstone, Silence, etc.). What is a character sheet if not a record of a fictional person?

Nice thread. Other alternative histories, through Diplomacy & the negotiation games that came before & after (including "model UN," etc.); "memory palaces" and other imagined fictional spaces; "make believe" of all kinds; interactive theatre; experimental art: Dada/Fluxus/Situationists, etc.

Tacklebox is kinda blowing up at the moment, thanks to Quinn's Quest (~1500 copies & counting). Just in case anyone's interested, I would also be open to co-publishing some of my other games (Geiger Counter, Planarch Codex, Restless, Tomb Priestesses, Lofty Beacons, Metrofinal, Last Kings, etc).

Currently reading: "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell (1996). Continuing the trend of religious-themed weird fiction.

Thrilled to learn that my story "A Loss" has been nominated for @altcurrent.bsky.social's Best Small Fictions by @newworldwriting.bsky.social. Thanks to Kim Chinquee, Elizabeth Wagner, and Evan Harrison for nominating it and for all their work at New World Writing. You can read "A Loss" here:

Check out the full video on the Quinns quest YouTube channel at YouTube.com/ at quinns_quest or by searching “Quinns quest” in the search bar. You can get a copy of Tacklebox through our website, link in our bio. Get weird with your friends! #ttrpg #larp #indiegame #roleplayinggame

Restructuring with a hard r

I really wanted to love "Hollow" by B. Catling, which is a surreal dark fantasy novel about a group of haunted mercenaries transporting a prophetic semi-human creature to a distant monastery. I was totally on board until the final handful of chapters, which just fizzled out, instead of exploding.

Here's a surprisingly interesting game design problem that I've been pondering. Take a standard D6 with dots, and figure out what the next six dot patterns would be, continuing the existing sequence. These are only some of the options I came up with.

There's not many semi-trad RPG properties that I would be excited to work on, but I hope that @jdragsky.bsky.social calls me up if SJGames decides to do a new edition of In Nomine. The U.S. & original French versions are SUPER DIFFERENT (French is funnier & more sacrilegious), but both are great.

Gosh, tabletop RPG are so amazing, especially now that there's so many talented, messed-up, horny weirdos making games. Y'all are the best. For real. 🫶

The amount of game design my brain does whenever I'm on break and well-rested... it makes me think HOW MUCH MORE CREATIVE people would be if jobs weren't designed to overwork you.

The games industry brings in 300 billion dollars a year. The guy who made DOOM gets his projects canceled, the guy who made Katamari Damacy is broke, everyone in your feed is begging for a job and there are 50 new games coming out on Steam every day all going towards buying Gabe Newell's next yacht

I was feeling pretty upset last week, so I did the normal thing & channeled it into an angry/sad dreidel-powered micro-RPG about vengeful angels in a gnostic world-as-prison. The basic move is "when you demand something from the world," with Full, Half, None, & Give results. The GM is the demiurge.

Today I'm GIVING THANKS not just for this review, but for @ludopolitics.bsky.social, @inauthenticity.bsky.social, @patrickedell.bsky.social, & Ellie White's hard work making these games possible! Quinns really gets what makes Tacklebox & Better Strangers special, so click away to learn for yourself!

No surprise: slowly grinding through Silksong in my few spare hours has definitely got me thinking about a specific unfinished Blades hack, which I last tinkered on with Stras a couple years back. Got to finish a couple other things first, though.

Agon is the deal of the day @drivethrurpg.com! If you're interested in fast-paced heroic action in a mythic world, now's a good time to check it out. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/3...

I know we shouldn't be surprised, given [gestures at all of U.S. history and contemporary politics], but it's still a bit surreal watching our country get frog-pot-boiled (or crab-pot-boiled?) by a slow-motion authoritarian coup.

Announcing our next slate of TTRPGs—Cosmic Century Knights by @oneshotrpg.bsky.social & @worldstoforge.bsky.social, Homecoming by @meghanlynnftw.bsky.social, and Chuck by Tyler Crumrine—coming to Kickstarter September 2! Learn more and sign up for notifications at www.kickstarter.com/projects/cru...

Jason Lutes (Perilous Wilds/Freebooters/etc.) sent me this photo of @possibleworlds.bsky.social at GenCon, selling the new edition of Tacklebox -- alongside Tyler's own game Better Strangers and other high-quality entertainments. Major thanks to Tyler, @inauthenticity.bsky.social, & our backers!

I know this isn't news, but it's amazing how regularly we get hit in the face with the Overton Window these days.

The special issue on the 30th anniversary of #LaraCroft in Feminist Media Histories is out now... coedited by Josef Nguyen & Amanda Phillips... online.ucpress.edu/fmh/issue/11/3

With apologies to our Swedish comrades...