@goblincow
🍐🐞 PREORDER: www.melsonia.com/products/pre-order-pudwick analogue game design | illustration | words | tabletop roleplaying games | goblincow.carrd.co he/him | audhd iconoclast newsletter | patreon.com/goblincow459
Good morning! It's December, which means it's time for my annual advent calendar!
The Mouth Of Winter is 25 chapters of grimdark fantasy, releasing daily through Christmas. Mercenaries break an ancient covenant. A monster wakes up. Nobody's having a good time.
loottheroom.itch.io/advent2025 ❄️
The booktok book marketing meme with arrows everywhere pointing at a book cover. Text is next to the arrows. It should make you want to read the book but somebody has clearly given up trying to write good marketing copy. The various text chunks say: Contains 0% romance, 100% poor life choices The monster has a better work-life balance than you Very cheap (this one is in really big letters) Why read it all at once when you could wait for daily chapters instead? Is it a novel or a novella I don't know A Christmas story (threatening) The protagonist becomes his father (it's a horror novel) A large Amazon "Buy Now" button is in the bottom right corner. "Amazon" has been scribbled out and replaced with "itch.io". At the bottom of the whole image is the following text: loottheroom.itch.io/advent2025 (people smarter than me said there should be a url here)
Okay it's been 15 hours of perfectly hinged marketing it's time for the weird shit
loottheroom.itch.io/advent2025
EVERYTHING IS POINTCRAWL!
Are hexcrawls just pointcrawls with extra steps? How do we choose the right type of map? Is it just the illusion of choice?
Might be the longest SCM article so far!
www.skeletoncodemachine.com/p/everything...
#boardgames #ttrpg #hexcrawl #pointcrawl 🎲✂️
Well, I promised I would, so I did!
Following in the footsteps of my esteemed colleague @byodinsbeardrpg.com (and several others), here is my write up (including all our numbers) of Dragonmeet 2025 and our experience tabling there.
Check it out and let me know what you think! shorturl.at/j9f9A
This update includes information you may find upsetting. Please take care when reading. From today, it is with a heavy heart that we announce trans girls will no longer be able to join Girlguiding. This is a decision we would have preferred not to make, and we know that this may be upsetting for members of our community. There will be no immediate changes for current young members, but more information will be shared soon. Most adult roles - including unit helpers, district helpers and administrative support - are already open to all, so we are confident that no volunteers will have to leave the organisation. Girlguiding believes strongly in inclusion, and we will continue to support young people and adults in marginalised groups. Over the next few months, we will explore opportunities to champion this value and actively support young people who need us. We stand in solidarity with trans girls and women.
i hope every single person who still buys harry potter merch or engages with that franchise is happy that they're literally making girl guides cry
girl guides uk have been forced very much against their will to exclude trans girls. full statement is here: www.girlguiding.org.uk/information-...
Me on a candlelit vigil for AIDS in 1987.
Me last week. Looking pretty healthy for 58 (28 years living with HIV).
I was diagnosed with #HIV in 1998, when I was 30.
Many of my friends had died of AIDS. I did not expect to live to 50.
I’m 58 now.
HIV treatment works.
Treatment also makes it impossible for me to pass HIV on during sex.
Ensure HIV treatment for all.
End HIV stigma.
#WorldAIDSDay
New Episode out now!
Ryan sits down with CJ Somavia of Hothead Collective to talk GLAIVE, a quarterly magazine dedicated to gaming and the subcultures surrounding its various forms of expression. We also talk, PAX Unplugged, the loss of third spaces, the "osr" and storygames, Inq28, and more.
10,000 Game Assets logo on a fresh blue cloudy sky background with an assortment of colorful game assets shown including gems, dice, pool balls, platformer characters, flowers, coins and chess pieces. (This is not a list of all things in the pack, just the illustration for this image)
Four screenshots showing that the pack contains: card game assets, puzzle game assets, platformer assets and pool assets.
Four screenshots showing that the pack contains: Adventure assets, RPG assets, darts assets, board game assets.
Four screenshots showing that the pack contains: icons, dice and letter tiles.
HUGE NEWS: Today we're launching a pack of 10,000 game assets! All existing Chequered Ink Assets + hundreds exclusive to the pack, across a variety of genres for commercial use in all your projects. AND they're all made by HUMANS 🫨 ci.itch.io/all-game-ass... #gamedev #indiedev
Indie ttrpg folks, where did we come down on GPSR now that the dust has settled a bit?
Any leads on good value EU Responsible Persons?
sometimes you have an image in your head and you just have to get it out
I’m looking for someone who knows their way around InDesign, has a passion for the hobby, and would be up for taking some layouts off me for Secret Passages issue 3 and – if we both have a lovely time – beyond.
If that sounds like you, DM me!
#ttrpg #zine #design #indesign #graphicdesign
Tiny Tome 3 is funded!
Pick up 50 games by 50 indie creators, and if it hits the first stretch goal my game Litter, Detective! will be included too!
Tiny Tome 3 is funded!
Pick up 50 games by 50 indie creators, and if it hits the first stretch goal my game Litter, Detective! will be included too!
Tiny Tome 3 from @long-tail-games.bsky.social just launched!
It has a lot of great games from some amazing designers (and my game Rêve too).
Its already funded and will be shipping in time for the holidays. Check it out here:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/lon...
Want free stuff? Follow and share this link!
I'll select three random sharers to receive a complete set of Tiny Tome. That's 150 single-page RPGs in 3 books!
www.kickstarter.com/projects/lon...
Proud to say that seeing Tiny Library for the first time at Dragonmeet 2 years ago inspired Litter, Detective! which is now one of the stretch goals to be included in Tiny Tome 3!
October has been the biggest month of my life and I'd love this full circle moment to be part of it.
Get it 4 xmas?! 👀
One page games can be fun romps and artistic explorations of the edge of the medium, but they are cost prohibitive to print and distribute -- which is why the Tiny Tome series by @long-tail-games.bsky.social is so great for both designers and players. And one of my games is in here! 🤩
There's a lot of neat games in here!
(mine is hiding amongst them, find it if you would like to will your skeleton to someone as dice)
161 people have signed up for Tiny Tome 3!
You can be like them - gaming hipsters who are here to kick ass and support the scene.
50 single-page RPGs from 50 different creators 🔥🔥🔥
www.kickstarter.com/projects/lon...
The latest stretch goal has unlocked another adventure!
"Lair of the Gobbler" will now be part of the DURF Adventure Zine!
www.kickstarter.com/projects/emi...
This guide really is COMPREHENSIVE.
If this topic remotely intersects with your work you should give it a read, this is such a valuable resource.
TTRPG creators, there are innumerable reasons, and a nigh indescribable bliss to be found, if you dare learn to draw. And at least, if you do not, it's cool for you to learn some of the basics, since you will sooner and later need to work with artists:
www.patreon.com/posts/compre...
🍐 FINAL 24 HOURS to preorder the new Troika! book from @melsonian-arts-council.itch.io written & illustrated by me!
🐞 A richly interconnected pointcrawl ecosystem of faction politics exploring definitions of dungeons & personhood both, by way of creepy-crawly hijinks for fans of bugs with swords!
Here, I did the hard part and googled it for you; here's the first reasonable result for "free rss readers". I've tried about half of these and they were all reasonable. Look at what features you need to pay for, they're all slightly different, and choose one. bloggingwizard.com/free-rss-fee...
RSS is, and I say this without hyperbole, an incredibly useful tool for psychological independence in the current environment. Newsblur, as Vajra suggests, is good, I use Feedbin, there are others. Most remarkably easy to set up.
Warning: if you grabbed a Love Minis, Hate Fascism shirt from me/Fenris a couple of weeks ago, please make sure it was me you ordered from. Just had somebody here asking about the poor print quality of their shirt...when I've not received them from the printers yet.
Fucking scammers.
My friend’s dad Malcolm Ducker, former RAF pilot, dad & grandad, is among those still being held in a maximum security Israeli prison for the crime of trying to bring food & medicine to Gaza with the Global Sumud Flotilla. Read: www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-and-...
My cat and the Wyrd Science Magazine
Got my latest copy of @wyrdscience.bsky.social and it’s already my favorite volume so far (and I’m not even in this one!)
mockup of the Doomspiral core book showing two of the character backgrounds, the choir crusader and the tomb robber scum.
To call the Forsaken heroes is preemptive; perhaps their deeds will be few and worthless, or worse — they may be great, yet bring naught but ruin.
As for their past, speculate as you wish. At this point, neither you nor they can ever truly know.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/sou...
