Fail Forward

Goddess of Victory: Nikke is one of my favorite games of all time.

Roll d10 for a futuristic fashion trend for Mothership, Traveler or whatever your preferred spacefaring horror or horror-adjacent game is: 1) O2 Deprivation - Purpled fingertips run across compressed tracheas.

[this is generally a non-gamey post so you've been warned] Who is the real you?

When running "Combat as Sport" players and refs are mostly concerned with a "balanced game" where mastery over rules, procedures, execution and options results in victory.

OKOK so I want to get at least one post out every month and here's my hurried last-minute entry for May (been dealing with a lot lately, but I have a feeling June is gonna be a big month for me blogging so bear with me here~~) Firstly a preview of what I'm

This one is gonna be short because I'm once again being emotionally, physically, financially and temporally drained by teeth issues completely out of my control (the horrors persist but so do I) BUT I wanted to throw in my hat for Warren's lovely little M…

Looping forests.

I won't bury the lede here; Is Marathon good?

It's 8 p.m. on March 3rd 2026, a little over 24 hours from the conclusion of the Marathon Sever Slam - No not that Marathon, instead its new younger sibling; a live service extraction shooter with immaculate aesthetics but horrific always-online restricti…

Two weeks ago I celebrated a pretty awesome one year milestone, and this summer I'll be hitting the big 3-0 ~ This all still feels surreal given there was a time it was looking like I wouldn't even make it to 20 (and that was if I was lucky).

Nova over on Playful Void has a lovely little series called "Make Dice Work For You" - It's an excellent primer on dice, maths and using probability curves that I think every budding designer should read.

The Sims is a series of games that despite its obvious "genre" (that of simulation) actually has a lot going on that defies neat categorization.

There's this pattern that happens every time I go to a new falafel place: They'll ask me how spicy I'd like the sauce, I'll say "medium spicy" then they'll look at my pasty boyish frame that weighs 120 lbs wet and give me the mild sauce.

Today Clayton of Explorers Design released an incredible article about an issue that's been living rent free in my brain and I finally have a word for: Dominant Mechanics - "...rules that cannot co-exist in a system without monopolizing play and overriding

Twisted views.

Sunken plains of mire and rust.

Today I returned from PAX Unplugged with two systems sticking out in my mind among the priceless revelry, the exciting zine swapping, the enthralling games and the absurdly quality Red Bull™ tavern; One was Twilight County, a cunningly simple little indie…

This post, while relatively stand-alone, is the final part of a three part series called "The Glamour" - You can read the first titular part here, and its sequel here.

This post, while relatively stand-alone, is the second part of a three part series called "The Glamour" - You can read the first titular part here, and the finale here.

This post, while relatively stand-alone, is the first part of a three part series called "The Glamour" - You can read the second part here, and the finale here.

On the evening of Wednesday July 23rd 2025, unannounced yet clear as rolling thunder, NSFW games as well as games with queer and LGBTQ+ themes began to disappear.

I was explaining to my friend and local game designer Phandas Trove my goals with making Inheritors' somewhat unwieldy hex crawl more digestible on the player side; The player team would have access to a large map of the Hex Crawl, and then each player wo…

The Bird Warren, aka Prismatic Warren, aka the Warren whose leader board I am seventh on (and climbing perhaps) is running yet another blog wagon - like a fool who's been living under a rock distracted by card games, insurance nonsense and ~4 hours a day…

[[This is part of a series of light fiction I've been writing to both practice my prose and flesh out the world of Inheritors]] A faint warmth fills your body.

We're talking about violence, racial killings and rape - Which uhhh, very heavy needless to say.

from godard's alphaville - just LOOK at that stark lighting Preface: I've always believed more art is better.

With 65 minutes on the clock, I'm intending to keep up with my "minimum one blog a month" goal - And this time (as ever) getting a little personal ~ Lately I've been a bit quiet on the design front (not just due to smooching cute guys, a renewal of my God…