Hamish

Playing Outside the Mainstream - McFarland Playing Outside the Mainstream Essays on Indie Tabletop Roleplaying Games Edited by Stephanie Hedge Series Editor Matthew Wilhelm Kapell 978-1-4766-9424-5 978-1-4766-5811-7

I have a chapter in Stephanie Hedge's forthcoming edited volume on indie trpgs. I engage in a retrospective self-examination of the design and publishing processes of The Sprawl. Lots of other great chapters too! mcfarlandbooks.com/product/Play...

Playing Outside the Mainstream - McFarland Playing Outside the Mainstream Essays on Indie Tabletop Roleplaying Games Edited by Stephanie Hedge Series Editor Matthew Wilhelm Kapell 978-1-4766-9424-5 978-1-4766-5811-7

Stephanie Hedge's forthcoming edited volume on Indie Games will also be worth a look. I have a chapter in there on the design process of The Sprawl which speaks to some of the things that PbtA does well. Preorder link here: mcfarlandbooks.com/product/Play...

I also like Fate for getting students to come up with historical aspects. My 2022 CJ article "Imagining Classics" deals with this in part.

Hi @guyintheblackhat.bsky.social and @friede.bsky.social and @profmikesell.bsky.social ! @peregrinekiwi.bsky.social Happy to say I am getting to the (brief) appendices for Designing Historical Games and working on historical TTRPGs and Solo Journaling RPGs. 1/

Coming soon: Realis A new tabletop roleplaying game by Austin Walker

Surprise, we're getting pretty close to the final version of REALIS!

ICYMI: I've been making a TTRPG about mystical moons and living spaceships and sentences that can kill you. A preview is available now (see my pinned post), but the full version draws near!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/cru...

Close up on a butternut squash and bacon risotto.

Tonight's butternut squash and bacon risotto was definitely in season!

I am begging us to keep basic humanities education the norm

This article presents this burst of historical games through the lens of Historical Fiction rather than the Historical Game Studies, but nevertheless it's great to see some engagement with historical game studies in the media criticism space! Author: @reidmccarter.bsky.social

The graphic has a deep blue background with white text and a white outline image of an N95 mask. The text reads - Striking? Mask up to stay safe for school. There is a small yellow ocher framed white circle in the bottom right with Aotearoa Covid Action's logo inside.

It's not just about salary, it's about working conditions. At ACA we believe teachers and students deserve clean air classrooms, adequate sick leave, and access to vaccines and antivirals. We don't accept the "new normal" of constant sickness and teachers quitting the profession due to Long Covid.

Find Your Union - NZCTU Want to know what union you can belong to? Use our Find Your Union tool that covers over 350,000 working people in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The current Government wilfully spreads misinfo about unions despite being well aware unions are the collective voice of workers that rebalance the scales so that people in work are protected from exploitation and harm.

It’s a good time to join one. #nzpol
I’m retired but I’m a solidarity member.

Windbag: Why Wellington’s vibe shift is coming in 2026 Things are about to change in the capital, and it has nothing to do with the mayoral race.

Are they backreading @thespinoff.bsky.social? thespinoff.co.nz/society/20-0...

This is why I will never buy another sucker punch game unless they apologize and offer that employee’s job back.

Screen cap of parodic version of William Blake's "The Tyger" that begins: Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright (Not sure if I spelled that right) What immortal hand or eye Could fashion such a stripy guy? What the hammer that hath hewn it Into such a chonky unit? Did who made the lamb make thee, Or an external franchisee?

In honor of National Poetry Day, the greatest parody rewrite of all time:

Dog Eat Dog is my pick for the best designed TRPG, full stop.

I hadn't heard about EX TENEBRIS and it's kickstarter, but this (looong) interview-meets-description definitely sold me on it. If "40k investigation but you don't play as fascists" sounds good to you, have a read.

Text clarifying that the early bird tier is the same as the basic tier but costs more.

Honestly, *chefkiss* right here.

CRINGE WIZARD: A TTRPG Isekai Light Novel A light novel about a guy forced to live through the terrible TTRPG campaign he ran when he was a teenager.

(I still need backers for my light novel about a guy surviving a badly-run RPG campaign, so if you like my work (or posts) I'd appreciate it if you spread the word! Tell your friends, your parents, your Discords, your subreddits, buy a haunted pizza joint and then tell the ghosts about it)

More people need to understand that saying only “criminals” should be subjected to expanding state violence around us is what led to the broader public being targeted by it, too. Criminality is subjective, and power determines what it is or is not.

Govt and union trade blows over strikes New data shows there has been 22 “work stoppages” - strikes and lockouts - in New Zealand this year so far, adding to 47 in 2024.

Fuck off Judith

It's your government that have caused people to take the extreme measure of striking, not the Unions
#nzpol

Buried in the detail about reducing earthquake strengthening is the removal of requirements for disabled access and fire safety. You know who does that? Sociopaths.

Just to be blunt, if you want Wired and 404 and The Verge to employ reporters who understand the memes on bullet casings and can connect them to gaming culture while having the legal and support resources to deal with waves of harassment when we do it… you have to subscribe and pay for the work

is there any kind of logical reason as to why stuff keeps publishing fluff nonsense on these far right personalities

(I usually take "long" as "unending multi-year campaigns that fade out rather than have an ending".)

Normalise arcs and endings.

Another useful thread, this one expanding on AW's cycle of play and the tension between "gets good after 6 sessions" and how some people interpret "not good for long campaigns"
bsky.app/profile/supe...

Another useful discussion of AW and it's play cycle. bsky.app/profile/supe...

Even if you don't vote for your council (pls do but), tick that box for the referendum.

It is BINDING for three terms - so if it fails, no Māori ward for nearly a decade.

And EVERYONE votes, not just Māori. Tāngata Tiriti step up, Pākehā mā, you need to vote.

One could definitely get bogged down in minutiae, still not satisfy everyone, and also make the whole thing unwieldy. I like the length of the manifesto as published.

I don't have anything coherent to share here; something else to mull over, re-read jay's manifesto and re-read the source texts (because this is one of those big source-based games I do).

One thing reading the manifesto and some reactions prompted was some thoughts on (damage) Conditions, the part of one particular design that I'm currently lightly stuck on.

* It's not really a counter-manifesto (depending on how you define that), but as a philologist the aesthetic appeal of certain words and phrases is absolutely part of how I design games. (Kratophagia is probably my purist expression of that.)