Excited to once again be working with @printinkling.bsky.social on developing a boffo new wearable for Breakup Gaming Society. It won't be for sale, but it will be part of the — if I may say so — inspired small gift package I send to people who follow through on the Donate page. Stay tuned.

Your stocking stuffer and problem is solved. Give Midnight Market a look and shop some small game makers.

Started a living post at Breakup Gaming Society where capsules and links for all my #indie #ttrpg interviews with @liberludorum.com will live. Episode 104, dropping in six days, will feature a chat about the soul-flensing and stunning Lichoma.

I'd never seen anything like Cave Evil when it hit my radar in 2011. An utter commitment by three friends who simply had to design the dungeon wargame they wanted to play. I interviewed co-designer and fellow Coloradan Nate Hayden about the decision to reprint it in 2024. Interview's down there 👇

"Once your eyes map a face in the night boughs, you’ll start searching it out whether you want to see it or not; mine is a giant or golem with a steam shovel jaw." - From Session 5 of my ongoing work with Dwelling, a solo RPG for ghosts from @goodluckpress.co Listen or read: link in comments 👇

Alula, a hidden land that reveals itself to travelers in the Faraway card game, is coming to grips with an influx of wiry fintech people in Mercedes-Benz sprinter vans, bringing with them what might be the modern analog to blankets infected with smallpox: podcasts. I reviewed 8 of them 👇

My man @skrrtvonnegut.bsky.social puts his homemade plum liqueur over an ice cube 1:1 with rye or blended whiskey and a preserved cherry garnish. Help name this cocktail. Submit your name ideas in the comments. At end of Nov. Skrrt and I pick a winner, who gets some Breakup Gaming Society swag.

I wrote down some of my favorite sentences from J.G. Ballard's debut novel, The Drowned World (1962). Hit the link below if you want to hear me read my Drowned World simile collection (and hear plot spoilers) 👇 #sciencefiction #jgballard

Use a maqui's most powerful action and they may end up tied to a chair somewhere, coughing up teeth and secrets. I contend with the evocative mechanical dilemma at the heart of Resist! from @saltandpeppergames.bsky.social in Episode 101 of Breakup Gaming Society. 👇Listen with link in comments

Well... this is what I get for devoting my energy to a dying industry. My department has been made redundant and I'm out of a job. If you know anybody who's looking for an emotionally dysfunctional super-genius, tell 'em you know a guy.

Coming up in just a few days: Episode 101, featuring my first plays of Resist! from @saltandpeppergames.bsky.social and a retrospective of David Thompson designs that conquered my table this year. #cardgames #podcast #soloboardgames #wargames

"I have some of the ingredients and none of the touch. But those wouldn’t be enough, either. I don’t have the infrastructure: The bower of Saturdays and people who would just appear in them, or me in theirs, while I was mistaken for sweet and bankable."

Episode 100 features: • Review of the brisk and charming Fireworks 2p card game from @thinkdeepplaylight.bsky.social • Interview with @liberludorum.com about two wild #indie #ttrpgs from @sandroad.moe: Burnout Reaper and Digital Angel Hear it all with link in comments 👇

Got a touch of orange and a fistful of ice for my second sit with Kansas City Whiskey. Jumped into the recording room with @liberludorum.com and talked two TTRPGs that were too wild for the wusses at Itch.io — Burnout Reaper and Digital Angel. Hit the link in comments to hear our chat 👇

A very happy one to @whovian223.bsky.social: Voracious player, voluminous blogger, con junkie and all-around swell pal and fun opponent. Cheers, brother. 🫡

Now that a solitaire wargame (Thunderbolt Apache Leader) has claimed #1 on my favorites list, these kinds of posts are catnip.

Outmatched Commonwealth forces in Malaya about to get bulldozed off the Eastern Road by an overwhelming Japanese push in Battle Card from @postmarkgames.bsky.social Link's down there if you want to hear me talk this one up 👇 #ww2 #sologames #printandplay #boardgames

A great listen all round www.breakupgamingsociety.com/episodes/bat...

When I saw @zillablitz.bsky.social mention the new Combat Commander anniversary box, I should have known @whovian223.bsky.social was already on it. Anyway, here's a big roundup of upcoming wargames from one of the nicest guys in the hex-and-counter ecosystem:

Check it out @printinkling.bsky.social, one of your frogs hopped the pond and now adorns the laptop of James from the War with a Mate podcast. James and Andy let me be on their show because of Defiant Frog's unyielding diplomatic stance.

Pyrotechnics from @thinkdeepplaylight.bsky.social leads off a small-creator parade of things I'm going to play this fall, also including work from @bullypulpithq.bsky.social @postmarkgames.bsky.social @bogfolk.com and @partymeeple.bsky.social down in Perth. Peep the preview. Link in comments. 👇

My big bro @partymeeple.bsky.social sent me a pic from his workshop, where he's brutalizing the card corners off of his PnP submarine game, Dive Dive Dive, before he sends it to me. What a guy.

Tipped some remote Palomas with @liberludorum.com and talked the Lichoma TTRPG from @bogfolk.com. The drinks must have worked, because I bungled the audio. Except for Track of the Week: "Murder by Contract" by Depth Charge, coming up in the next Breakup Gaming Society episode.

TIL my new Florida pal and Ep. 96 guest, @liberludorum.com, founded a Mörk Borg content and resource directory. I have never played a Mörk Borg title — or almost any indie TTRPG for that matter — but I recognize the passion and diligence. Check the product. morkborg.exlibrisrpg.com#content

I finally get @hollandspiele.bsky.social's Sykes-Picot: The Secret Treaty to Partition the Ottoman Empire on my table. And a beer-fueled screed off my chest. Plus, a Masta Killa track. It all works, trust me. Ep. 97 link in comments if you'd like to check it out 👇

I love watching the evolution of @printinkling.bsky.social's Potion Hero character. I've seen PH on the beach, wishing it was a kaiju and more, but I missed this one:

As advertised, @cube4me.bsky.social's tray counters neatly hold all the pieces for Squad Leader, which I finally punched and sorted after 40 years. Nice job, @thebrdgmschronicle.bsky.social and team! If you have a favorite wargame, they've prolly got a tray for it. #hexandcounter #wargames

"I peer at a noise: There’s a soft sizzle coming from the table. It’s the slaw, the pepper slaw is collapsing and rotting. I can hear it fall by sections." Read or hear Dwelling Solo RPG Session 3: The Honey-Chili Heart with link in comments 👇 #indiettrpg #journaling @goodluckpress.co

While I don't know the Combat Commander system, I do enjoy @whovian223.bsky.social's meticulous blow-by-blow accounts of his battles. Since I'm learning Squad Leader with @partymeeple.bsky.social, the narrow scrapes and wild mishaps all ring true. #HexAndCounter #wargames

Episode 96 is live, featuring an interview with @liberludorum.com about the Carolina Death Crawl RPG from @bullypulpithq.bsky.social. If you've never met Walt or heard about this game, you should do both with link to episode in comments 👇 #indie #ttrpg #civilwar

Tried a thing. My variant as pictured. Walt of @liberludorum.com went with Haku Vodka and Florida Avenue Brewing's Big Boy Blue as his booze pillars. We drank and he told me about @bullypulpithq.bsky.social's Carolina Death Crawl. This and more in the next Breakup Gaming Society episode.

The crushing boredom of three drinks. The thrill of being attacked by the Bahmani, Vijayanagara, and Timur's Mongols all at once. The idyllic propulsion of an Herbaliser beat with Roots Manuva rhyming on it. I just released Episode 95 of Breakup Gaming Society. Link in comments 👇

Tonight there will be a "meet and greet" happy hour with all regional Governors! One lucky attendee will be bastinadoed. See you there! (Turn 1 of my second game of Vijayanagara: The Deccan Empires of Medieval India 1290-1398 with @thebrdgmschronicle.bsky.social and @whovian223.bsky.social.)

"The idea was always the melody that would corkscrew us inside each other. It’s always the melody. Hijacking that was the false voice that you think will make you understood at 17." You can read or listen to Session 2 of my Dwelling solo RPG session from @goodluckpress.co with link in comments 👇

Their sprint crossed the merest sliver of an alert German machine gun squad's field of fire. Six Russian squads shredded. An expensive jog that ends in close-quarters fighting. I play Avalon Hill's Squad Leader for the very first time and talk about it in Episode 94, link in comments 👇

Fuck Trump. Shuffling around calling everybody fat, cheating at golf with his little hamburger titties.

I interviewed a friend who muddled his way through a solo dungeon crawl game basically as a favor to me. I used his experience as a reference point to informally plot that "hockey stick" moment on the graph where the pain and confusion turns into payoff. Interview link in comments 👇

"A small hand reaches out, grabs my wrist loosely, thumb playing along my radius with a tentative, imploring pressure, then darts straight for the left pocket of my sweats, digging for something. I am rapt with its anger." I played Dwelling, a solo RPG for ghosts. Link to session in comments 👇

Reads in a day or so, rattles around your rib cage for years. I just read this a second time, trying to parse some of the technique Johnson used to make this plaintive wail in my head.

The first 20 Tracks of the Week from the first-ever 20 episodes of Breakup Gaming Society: Golden Era classics, deep cuts and some COVID-era underground stuff. Picked by me and a rotating cast of weirdos. ⚠️ CONTENT WARNING: Cage is on this. Fucking CAGE ⚠️

"...the sun now here to police chicken bones, the drying husks of night-bloom playlists, shot glasses, dice and the many yellow victim meeples from Final Girl that didn’t survive the second, deadlier night inside Wolfe Asylum." This and more in the latest episode. Listen with link below 👇

Even before I saw the review for Dwelling, I had a dream where my high school heartache appeared to me as a psychopomp of some sort in the atrium of a corporate art gallery. I'm gonna fit that into here somewhere because this indie solo journaling game feels necessary. Here we go.

Ring the bell. Longtime Breakup Gaming Society supporter Christopher F. Smith got shown this randomized set from my '80s comics box and chose Spanner's Galaxy No. 4. That's what he wanted, so that's what I sent him. Link in comments if you want to see what other supporters picked. 👇

Big ups to @whovian223.bsky.social and @partymeeple.bsky.social for showing me the ropes on Board Game Arena (Faraway and Race for the Galaxy, respectively). Meet both these fine gents, get my impressions of BGA and provisional reviews of the games:

Shuffle killing it this morning. Had to show you. That's the post.

"He’s scarcely spit the dust out of his mouth from the German mortar shell that hit the roof almost right over him before a sharpshooter, seeing him dazed and temporarily out of cover, sizzles the top hairs of his Ushanka with a rifle round." Episode 91 is live. Link in comments 👇

Drink of the Week preview sip for you: Infused Ketel with some coffee beans for a modded White Russian (using Frangelico instead of Kahlua, as I already had the coffee flavor in the vodka). I had several, which will be documented in the next episode of Breakup Gaming Society, releasing this week.

Now on the shelf at my FLGS in Trinidad: Signage that keys to select titles that were reviewed on Breakup Gaming Society. You can hit the QR code and listen to audio excerpts for Tokaido, Project L and Survive the Island. My bid to find some local synergy and, in absentia, curate for others.

My guest writer in charge of reviewing @postmarkgames.bsky.social 52 Realms: Adventures had to flee to Colombia for an ayahuasca retreat so he could query various deities about how to beat the game. It worked.

Pavlov's squad attempts to suppress the entry of a German machine gun team into an assault lane already full to the gills with Panzers. It is not successful. The northern wall of the House is breached.