10 is way too much given my past output so I'm saying: 5 Games I Want to MAKE (or finish) in 2026! - Tacticians of Ahm (Tactical Fantasy) - Stranger Stars (Mothership Total Conversion) - Voidbreakers (Horror Investigation) - 1,000 Miles from Home (Road Trip) - Astral Command (Solo PbtA Trek-like)

We are still building a world with A Land Once Magic over on Discord. It remains Very Cool. Here's our latest prompt's answer. Song and sound are inherently magical in our world so birds do not need wings to fly and are more like organic flute and chime-covered footballs than what we have on Earth.

Man, I loved Giant Bomb for years, but since the post-Gerstmann/Nextlander era I jumped over to Minnmax as my primary gaming outlet, and now I just can't go back to listening to a panel of 7 (mostly white) men. Shame they don't have a more diverse group. Not even one woman in 2025 is wild (bad) imo.

i had to drop what i was doing to make this

When they ask me what radicalized me

Simply Having A wonderful

d&d

MeatCastle GameWare - Annual #3 is coming in next week's Missive! 6 TTRPG freebies all in one 24-page zine. I'll be taking pre-orders at that time as well for the physical print run (which will be super limited). Pre-orders will be open for two weeks and then I'll order prints and get them shipped!

Does such a thing as a PbtA wargame exist? Like a grids n minis wargame?

Flatline on the Blocks has been such a fun project! I hadn’t written for Mothership in a while after writing Resonant so it was a good time to work with everybody. #osr www.backerkit.com/c/projects/s...

The Star Fallen is my science fantasy alien background for Cairn 2e. It's very cool, I promise. Get it HERE (for free): meatcastlegameware.itch.io/the-star-fal...

Too close to Christmas and whatnot now so I'll be dropping the next Missive (and MCGW Annual #3) during the break in between Christmas and New Year's to make sure folks have time to check it out while laying around and eating too much food.

My Christmas has been paid for because somebody included The Wretched in their Christmas gift guide. Talk about the stuff you like.

Wow. As a huge fan of Call of Duty in the early days and Medal of Honor before that AND Titanfall/Apex Legends after that, this is really terrible. One of the biggest names in game development for a long time. I still remembering following all the drama around them getting booted from Infinity Ward.

I want to be salty on the timeline, but I am using the spirit of Christmas to stay my hand... for now.

Today's used bookstore grabs

This post showed me that people here (and elsewhere) just assume, because I make stuff for OSRy games, that I'd never played PbtA/story games or that I was, for some reason, opposed to them. A good plan for the new year would be to not let the endless discourse build up imaginary walls in our mind.

Sad to report congress has decided to no longer enforce the winter solstice. Days will continue to get shorter until, eventually, we live in a world of endless night

*me thinking about making PbtA things now* "This better not awaken anything in me..."

Heading into Moria tonight in an Apocalypse World: Fallen Empires game set in The One Rings' Moria - Through the Doors of Durin! Very excited for this.

Tombstone Edition is officially PWYW for all eternity!

I summed up @samsorensen.bsky.social and @sean.tuesdayknightgames.com 's OVER/UNDER in a game. At least, O/U if you were a cowboy. And if you were hacking @johnharper.bsky.social 's Lasers & Feelings as well as the Datacache. (Anyone else I can tag in here? 😛 ) markwallace.itch.io/garbage-in-g...

MeatCastle GameWare Annual #3 is coming in the next Missive! Hoping to get it squared away this weekend. As usual, I'll be doing a small pre-order campaign for print copies. 24 pages, including a microsetting, two Mothership supplements, a Cairn adventure and background, and a honey heist hack!

It's nearly holiday break for me now, so it's finally time...

guy who just learned it's not polite to call an artist's work "content": hey man it's cool to meet you i'm a huge fan of your slop

Being cursed with game design brain means having a notes app teeming with little things like this that quickly lose most, if not all, of their original context and meaning.

It's that time of the year again

Most of us did not choose to write or draw or design so that we could put products on the shelf. We chose to do it because it’s a set of skills we enjoy exercising, that give us fulfillment. It’s like asking a pro pitcher to just let a machine pitch for them. Fuck off and give me the ball.

I would be doing what I do even without itch.io, without software, without an audience. Without pens and paper, I would still think it to myself. It's an essential part of being alive for me.

The Wretched has seen a massive uptick in sales recently, which I'm very happy about. If you haven't checked it out yet it's currently on sale, which seems like an excellent excuse to give it a go. https://loottheroom.itch.io/wretched

I just backed Apocalypse World: Burned Over on Kickstarter: www.kickstarter.com/projects/lum...

Worked on Stranger Stars' Panic Tables today. Rather than 20 unique effects per class the plan is 10 "standard" effects that appear on all panic tables with 10 bespoke options per class. That said, the order and placement of these standard effects may change. Means 70 panic effects, rather than 120.

If my site analytics are to believed, the people crave blogs! Working on another post soon! Either more Panic/Stranger Stars or wilderness travel stuff I've pondered a lot living on a wild, rocky island these last two years. In the meantime, you can get caught up: meatcastlegameware.com/blog

if you think about it, a megadungeon is the ultimate walkable city

Very weird video game year. I feel like there were a lot of good games, but not a ton of great ones, ones that really stuck with me. Normally, I'm struggling to pick my Top 10, but this year I'm struggling to fill a Top 5 I'm enthusiastic about - unless I'm spacing some.

Need a hat I can wear at my day job that says "I'd rather be blogging... about niche indie TTRPGs!"

Today on Ansible Uplink, I invite @scarius.bsky.social back on for a Binary Stars episode, where we review two Mothership RPG pamphlet adventures: Piece by Piece by @dgchapman.bsky.social and The Ship Who Swallowed a Spider by @molgannardpress.bsky.social

Continuing my journey through Narnia with my third book, The Horse and His Boy!

Four RPG books I'm printing new/collected editions of in 2026.

Made a short video on my minimalist dungeon terrain setup! www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qzm...

insanely good thing to say when you enter a room

I love this! A fun little side story to motivate you to read more/faster (or embrace fate).

Ran some Cairn tonight! Attempting to finish clearing a tomb they had to leave previously, they managed to get out there and then have a member almost immediately die from a viper bite. Thanks to the kindness of Sand Gnomes living in the tomb, the outrider was cured. Plus,two spellbooks were found.

once #10 was pointed out to me a few years ago it sticks out like such a sore thumb

In a very special Bonus Episode of Between Two Cairns, @bradkerr.net and I interview @samsorensen.bsky.social about Over/Under, a massive wargame/LARP held during Mothership Month. This episode is only available to Patrons but will see a wider release in the future. www.patreon.com/posts/story-...

ICYMI, I reviewed all twenty options on Mothership's Panic Table to find out what I like, what I don't, and what I'd change for my own projects in the future. I might make this single table review post into an ongoing series (people seem to enjoy it)! meatcastlegameware.com/blog/2025/12...

Whenever I see people talking about OVER/UNDER, this is what it sounds like to me.

eternal life from earthly vacation