Samuel Mui Soon

Graphic from the Blades '68 BackerKit crowdfunding campaign, showing stretch goal contributors Avalyn Ramsay writing "Psychic Commie Rats" and Aaron Lim writing "Report on the Inaugural Crowfoot Wargaming Convention of '68".

They announced my stretch goal for Blades '68! Let's get to $390,000 so I can write about The Inaugural Crowfoot Wargaming Convention of '68 (which split of from the Charterhall Conference On Historical and Strategic Wargames that started two years before). www.backerkit.com/c/projects/e...

Sometimes acting with true love really hurts

Sometimes it means going to war and getting bloodied

But with true love, eventually it all makes sense once you can see true love for what it simply is

Designing Lore Blocks An alternative to stat blocks designed for The 1 HP Dragon.

It's been a couple years since Reach of the Roach God was published, and I'm still thinking about how it pulled off stat blocks without stats.

It's a load-bearing piece of tech that's criminally underused.

www.explorersdesign.com/designing-lo...

The most important thing I've learnt in the past 28 years in my life is that it's never about what you can accomplish but about the bonds you cultivate and nurture with yourself and others

Winning is a losing game, but love is always the winning move

I believe in you!

Have you seen queer/gay Catholics before?

They're Catholic as fuck

And some of the most open-minded, compassionate ppl I know

In other news, I've unironically converted to Catholicism after much research, reflection, prayer, and contemplation

Nothing's more Catholic than fully being Catholic while being the sort of Catholic the Catholics would spend heaps of money trying to execute for heresy

I'll never regret my increasingly conscious decision to embrace myself as the sick fuck I really am

My main rule of thumb for doing stuff and living my life is to ask myself the question:

"Would this get me executed for heresy and witchcraft by the Catholic Inquisition in the 16th century?"

Gotta love how a lot of the intellectual, academic, creative, critical artists-writers-designers-philosophers in my circles are at their core massive and exuberant shitposters

Coming soon: The Thunder Perfect Mind An Occult Action Thriller Tabletop RPG

Get this occult action thriller ttRPG for 1-7 people. Perfect if you enjoy playing powerful undead revenants embroiled in breakneck action, interpersonal drama, and occult investigation. Soundtrack by @mollynoise.bsky.social and human-made art by @stregawolf.art. Jump in now for early bird deals!

„This city never changes, this city never stays the same.”

Peter Eijk’s A Visit to San Sibilia is a journaling game about chronicling your visit to the city of San Sibilia; a city not found on any maps and a city which always appears differently to every visitor.

Get yours @ peregrinecoast.press

There’s a new episode of The Brain Trust Podcast, season finale! We discuss the quantum mystery popularized by Brindlewood Bay (spoiler: I love it) & live-design a stoner/slacker investigation game! Maybe we’ll deliver that game, got a few in the queue for this year Braintrust.rocks

Just a few days left to get 16 games for just 10 bucks.

January A bundle by Chris Bissette, £150.00 for 60 games

Hello. It's my final week as a full time game designer, and as if to underline why I can't do this anymore, I currently can't afford to cover my bills at the end of the month.

All of my work on itch is on sale. Tell your friends, buy something, thank you very much.

itch.io/s/179351/jan...

These are all great! Thanks!

New!

Monster Truckers: Long Haul Into The Worstlands

www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/

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!

Oh hell yea this is perfect!

I'll buzz ya when it's been drafted

In addition to @breathingstories.bsky.social's seminal Autobiographical TTRPG 'Logan: The TTRPG', are there any other explicitly autobiographical games that anyone can recommend?

Feel free to suggest your own!

This is for an academic research paper I'm working on

Image of the itch bundle page for Showcase Zero 2025.

We also have a Showcase Zero 2025 bundle live now on itch.io/b/3476/showc.... Get 8 incredible games from @kobanya.bsky.social @backwardsttrpg.bsky.social @andrewgillis.bsky.social @cutestpatoot.itch.io @yanahn.bsky.social and me at over 50% off!

If you haven't checked it out yet, there's a bundle going on until the end of the month for games made by Playtest Zero community members, including two of mine!

RR&D Freelance Applications Rowan, Rook and Decard is a small tabletop game design studio based in the north of England. We are always looking for freelance artists, writers and other professionals, and we value applications fro...

We're looking for GenCon 2026 GMs!

We won't be going ourselves, on account of the *fucking everything* right now.

But if you're going, and fancy getting paid money to run multi-table games, please fill out this freelancer form.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Infinite Revolution: Overdrive is where mecha meets magical girl Designer Gwen C answers our new ultra-serious questionnaire.

Infinite Revolution: Overdrive designer, @gwencie.bsky.social, is the first subject to enter a new gauntlet, er-- recurring series: The Rascal 7.

Seven extremely serious, hard-nosed inquiries meant to drill down to the core of a game. This time: mecha, magical girls, and the guts of dead designs.

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.

If you can relate to this please let me know

It can't just be me

This can all sound woo-woo as fuck but I've spent more than a decade trying to understand this process

After researching shit tons of neurology, therapeutic science, and design/art theory (even programming), this is the best description I can come up with

In my deepest moments of flow, it's as if my mind and imagination accesses an infinite network-like structure of nodes and connections which carry energy flows

and when I write and design, I'm just doing my best to translate and record aspects of this structure that I can perceive

5/5

Because of this, I cannot say that the stuff I make comes from me... if anything, it comes from somewhere deep inside and beyond me that I physically sense but cannot easily translate into language

This applies to both lyrical and mechanical design

4/

And I know a game is finished when I playtest the game and the sensations in my body match the sensations created when I first dreamt of the game experience

To, each mechanic, each descriptor has a physical feeling, like individual brushstrokes of a painting

3/