Now That Is Chess

Nothing comes close to the relief and elation that comes from reading a paragraph of someone totally and completely seeing The Vision, shout-out to @newmadras.bsky.social for this.

the neopets ttrpg kickstarter is going great

A new edition of Good Society is set to grace the ton! With revised rules and additional sumptuous art, this new edition will be useful, usable and scandalously good looking. Check it out and help support this unique game of regency romance, scandal and drama! www.kickstarter.com/projects/sto...

What a pleasure, to get a chance to go on Yes Indie'd and talk to Thomas about design and blades and other things. Link below!

Talking about nerdery, my conversation with Tim for the Yes Indie'd podcast is now live. The episode is titled "Maximal Minimalism" and you can get it wherever podcasts exist: pod.link/1496698286/e...

If you like the whole Delta Green vibe, then I recommend Tom Sweterlitsch's The Gone World for some phenomenal inspiration.

the epstein files make it abundantly clear that individuals having this degree of wealth is directly the cause of every horrible thing in the world, and any coherent vision of a better future cannot involve billionaires existing. They have to go, be it taxed out of existence or otherwise removed.

We're turning two years old later this month! Come celebrate with some birthday programming, including a crossword, special podcast episode, and a 20% membership discount during February only.

Perfect piece of art, no notes.

Describe your Bluesky account in one image

Veteran Dice Tower reviewer Sam Healey resigns in wake of saying Alex Pretti, Renee Good were to blame for ICE killing them, after comments began impacting review giant’s annual pledge drive: boardgamewire.com/index.php/20...

A little something-something I’ve been working on with the most awesome @scorchadoom.bsky.social Creativity in the TTRPG space. Should be going live today, it’s been a while since I did any podcast work, a brotha’s a bit rusty!

Got interviewed in Rascal News! Super appreciate the interest in our project, thanks a lot!

Y'all we got a stack of cool #TTRPGs to unleash for Zine Club next month! Plus a special #ZineMonth 2 pack you can add on. Games from @rufflejax.bsky.social @theurbanavian.bsky.social @navaarsnp.bsky.social @carrion-comfort.com w/contributions from @rocketsandpens.bsky.social & @twopancakes.com!

chess is pretty great because you can be staring at the board like a recently concussed dog and people assume you're deep in thought, but in card games if you take more than ten seconds to take your turn, people tend to assume you forgot the rules.

OK, I can't quite believe this. Sometimes you read a sci-fi story & think, "well, that was fun - but *obviously* there's zero truth in it!" In "20 Trillion Leagues Under the Sea" by Adam Roberts, a retelling of Verne's classic, there's a vast ocean *under* our seas. Total nonsense? Well... 1/

I didn't get into my "talking in TTRPGs is movement in videogames" shtick but SWM is always my go-to example to talk about the power of designing the how-we-speak side of the game.

Have found tumblr user probablyday's #woosterposting series. In shock

🚨 If you submitted a game to the No ICE In Minnesota charity bundle jam, please approve your submissions here itch.io/b/3484/no-ic... 🚨 All submissions unapproved by Febr 6 will be pruned so the bundle can start on time on Feb 9. Please share for visibility & tell your friends who joined the bundle

wait, so Visa, Mastercard et. al can go after video game storefronts for six fucking months for having porn games but the moment X/Grok starts generating ACTUAL CHILD PORN they CHANGE THEIR POLICIES? dawg,

If you see this post your dragons! As you can see, I really like experimenting with styles :)

I think I have video envy as a writer. It's so powerful to be able to just show the holograms disappearing in Death Stranding and the lions in the nursery in the adaptation of the Veldt. Because I haven't seen/read the stuff he's taking about but now I have, actually.

Beautiful new video by Jacob Geller. Almost all of the media mentioned is stuff I haven't engaged with - Twilight Zone, Death Stranding, etc - Inside is the primary exception. I used to think knowing the media was an important part of the experience but Geller handles it so gracefully.

Yesterday the local Indonesian Tabletop RPG community that my friends and I have been growing since Q4 2025 held its first convention! Call of Cthulhu, Nobilis, DURF, Mothership, Daggerheart, D&D 5e. 40+ participants. Hopefully this will inspire the local scene to keep on growing!

It's really exciting to see the design minds of Andrew Gillis and Luke Jordan working on Apocalypse World: Dark Ages with the Bakers' blessings. Can't wait to see the game.

The best part is that I portrayed John Milton as a kind of holier than thou high weirdo and then they met a funny droid guy and were like "this robot feels more human than the human we murdered" And that's Gradient Descent

they murdered john milton without finding out his name

reading the book of revelations as prep to run gradient descent

I've got a really annoying 2026-style problem. I've been sharing someone's writing on the newsletter and someone has told me that it's AI. I don't know if I trust the AI detection tech. Should I? My gut tells me the only way to know is to talk to the creator but who wants to have that talk?? Ugh

🚨 We have just over 3 days left of the No ICE in Minnesota Game Jam before we start prepping for the Charity Bundle. No late submissions will be accepted so we can start on time on February 9. 🚨 Thank you to everyone joining and sharing the bundle’s game jam 🖤

This is the new thing I am excited about. I got too tired to be invited on RTFM and so I made my own book club podcast. But it's not just me trying to say smart things about games. It's a two part show, with the second part being me engaging with audience feedback and comments!

this headline choice is normally used for things that are annoying to do?

In which I talk at length about how games are made here in the RRD swamp, and the difficulties of making our next one be about pirates www.patreon.com/posts/148772...

New Blog Post! I (Emily) wanted to put down some tips for those of you who are hiring layout designers to layout your games. Thanks to the Explorer's Design discord also for their thoughts.

We are pleased to announce Wildthorn Books, a new imprint from Tor Publishing Group:

Band-Aids & Bullet Holes, my John Wick-inspired bloody revenge opera deckbuilder RPG named after a Taylor Swift lyric, is coming to Kickstarter in May. Look good, feel bad, do violence, cry about it, repeat. Just like your day job.

What's your fantasy? No, seriously: A Land Once Magic wants to know.

This is part of how I'm planning to get more coverage of new games on the site and let designers talk about their work in a format I hope readers will find entertaining.

An idea pitched and developed by @newmadras.bsky.social, beautifully realized by @crapstacular.bsky.social: The Rascal 7. One of our new approaches to covering more games in interesting ways. It's so rad to work with talented and creative people.

Five creators who worked on Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast have spent the past year fighting a legal battle against Possum Creek Games and Steve Jackson Games. Neither the tabletop RPG nor their working relationships survived the fallout.

PMG won the Knickerbocker Award for Best Games Journalism last night at the @nyvgcc.bsky.social! It feels like we've come such a long way since we first launched this thing nearly eight years ago, but winning a journalism award at an event in NEW YORK CITY still seems totally mad to me.

how intimidating am i on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the wrong answer >_>

Today's goal: clean my entire house

I run Gregor Vuga's Sagas of the Icelanders once a year at our online con. It's always a hot ticket! It's such a beautiful, flawed gem. Few other games even come close to nailing their editorial stance so confidently. Anyway I just ran it again for the umpteenth time. Still great, 13 years later.

When the Italians cook... THEY DELIVER #ttrpg

This is such a fun idea! Looking forward to seeing some weird creations!

"Solidarity and creativity can be powerful forces, especially when the world around you feels uncertain and everything else is literally crumbling. Create, create, create; build amidst the crumbling." Khee Hoon Chan speaks to Ludic Pen about the difficulties of being creatives in Venezuela.

I did the first interview for this with @kastark.bsky.social aaaaages ago but finally the piece is done. All three conversations were great. They're having fun over there.