A photo of the Arcs board game in the middle of play
Had an amazing time playing the first act of Arcs: The Blighted Reach today. The core game is pretty good (8/10 maybe) but this is even better. Love the wider decision space, the “NPC” units and each player having their own objectives. The campaign element seems smart for “emergent stories” too.
Eurgh - 20 seconds in and it sounds exactly like that “Google AI Podcast Generator”. I would bet money that they write down a few bullet points, generate the audio with the Google Podcast Generator and then make slides and imagery after based on the generated audio and script. Hate it!
En liten recension av Drakar och Demoner.
open.substack.com/pub/rollspel...
Yeah, the dream future - everyone sits at home alone and talks with all their AI bots!
Heh, I assume that idea exists if you’re into miniature painting. But I just feel AI is always the lazy answer “cool new thing! It’s reskinned ChatGPT! Impressed!?”
How idiotic of them to respond that way! Why not “sorry you feel that way, we are experimenting with new tools and thought it was fun to try out” instead of starting a dumpster fire of a thread.
Also, what a shit idea. User submitted schemes would be more fun, foster community and not need AI.
This is the most incredible footage of blue whales I’ve ever seen
Never realised that the main challenge writers faced today was that not enough words have been written to fill in all the books people want to buy! But if you can generate a book in a day with Claude, I guess readers should just use Claude to generate their own mediocre slop instead of buying yours?
That sounds promising! For me, 30 FPS is painful on a full monitor but actually feels fine on a handheld - might need to make this my next Steamdeck game after Monster Train 2…
I had so much fun with this on Wii back in the day, aiming with the WiiMote!
Glad to hear the remake holds up. I picked it up on sale and need to play it at some point. Wonder how well it plays on SteamDeck vs a full PC.
BG Stats 2025 Plays: 232 H-index: 7 Games: 77 New: 55 Players: 14 Locations: 8 Hours: 252 Days: 107 Arkham Horror: The Card Game: 42.3h Kingdom Legacy: Feudal Kingdom: 17.3h Marvel Champions: The Card Game: 16.9h The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era: 14.0h Dragon Eclipse: 11.9h Arcs: 9.8h Pandemic Legacy: Season 1: 8.5h Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs: 8.4h EXIT: The Game – Advent Calendar: The Intergalactic Race: 6.5h 46 categories: Card Game: 46% Fantasy: 29% Fighting: 27% Science Fiction: 23% Adventure: 20%.
BG Stats 5 x 5. Total time played: 7h: EXIT: The Game – Advent Calendar: The Intergalactic Race; 42h: Arkham Horror: The Card Game; 17h: Kingdom Legacy: Feudal Kingdom; 8h: Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs; 17h: Marvel Champions: The Card Game; 3h: Flip 7; 12h: Dragon Eclipse; 8h: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1; 1.5h: EXIT: The Game – Advent Calendar: The Missing Hollywood Star; 6h: Heat: Pedal to the Metal; 2h: The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game; 3h: Robo Rally; 14h: The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era; 10h: Arcs; 3h: Compile: Main 1; 2h: Escape the Dark Sector; 2h: Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game – Clone Wars Edition; 1h: Railroad Ink: Blazing Red Edition; 5h: ELDEN RING: Realm of the Grafted King; 4h: Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island – Collector's Edition (Gamefound Edition); 4h: The Castles of Burgundy: Special Edition; 3h: Mistborn: The Deckbuilding Game; 3h: Android: Netrunner; 2h: Reign of Cthulhu; 2h: Scrabble Card Game.
BG Stats 5 x 5. Total time played: 1.5h: Origin Story; 1.5h: Warp's Edge; 1.5h: Star Wars: Unlimited; 1.5h: Thunder Road: Vendetta; 1.5h: Glim; 1h: Doomlings; 1h: Dracula vs Van Helsing; 50m: Arkham Horror: Lovecraft Letter; 38m: I Made You a Mixtape; 36m: Frasier - The Card Game; 30m: Mindbug: First Contact; 26m: Neon Reign; 16m: Skull; 4h: Star Wars: Rebellion; 3h: Nemesis: Retaliation; 3h: Dune: War for Arrakis; 3h: Terraforming Mars; 3h: Mansions of Madness: Second Edition; 3h: Cloudspire; 3h: Dune: Imperium – Uprising; 2h: Spirit Island; 2h: Destinies; 2h: Marvel Dice Throne: Battle Chest; 2h: Elder Sign; 1.5h: Freedom Five: A Sentinel Comics Board Game.
Did quite a bit of board gaming this year - by my standards at least! Feel like I got to enjoy a wide variety of games this year. Heat, Kingdom Legacy, Elder Scrolls, Arcs, Origin Story and Dragon Eclipse are some standouts for sure. #BGStats
Love this. Generally, when my players are fighting any intelligent/humanoid species and they realise their chance of winning is now very low - I nearly always take this option. Not all survive, but the ones that do become interesting NPCs or memorable stories in the future!
Food, snow, a long walk, presents, music, Die Hard and a bit of gaming… What a lovely and relaxing day.
Now to finish XMas by spending an hour writing a bit more of the solo adventure I’m creating to flesh out the TTRPG world (and system) I’m writing! Poifect!
#TTRPGDesign
Nice! After reading the first couple, if I have some ideas - I will share :)
Thanks for your work in putting together such a cool zine! As someone who has been playing RPGs and Board Games since being a kid in the 90s, it’s very cool seeing something like this!
Just backed this myself to get the PDFs of issues 1-3. Excited to read these during future travel of some sort on my iPad!
This is a day late for my Swedish friends already, but MERRY CHRISTMAS to all my nerdy BlueSky buddies (and non-nerds of course).
I don’t understand what prompts a human being to even send a message like that to another human being. Like, what were they expecting…?
“Oh, thanks for letting me know! That’s very useful constructive feedback!”
Outside of banking and airplanes etc, I think the key is being pragmatic (not religious) about testing. In game dev, I’ve seen a lot more value from higher level tests than unit tests “do bad guys still attack players”. But I’ve seen value in low-level tests with procedural generation for instance.
Hadn’t heard of ‘Secret Passages’ before but this is cool! Sure, the internet is full of endless writing about everything - but there is something special about sitting down and having a proper “start to finish” magazine experience that I feel is more focussed and relaxing.
A screenshot from RPGGeek reflecting the data shown in the main message.
Might be missing some, but happy with the variety of #TTRPG games I played in 2025!
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
- Warhammer Age of Sigmar Soulbound
- D&D 5E
- Star Wars: Edge of the Empire
- Coriolis
- Arkham Horror
- Sentinel Comics
- Delta Green
- Marvel Multiverse
- In the Ashes (Solo)
Sabaton were absolutely amazing this evening - what a show! So much energy. The Legendary Orchestra leading into the show were awesome too.
This reveals such a profound difference in values between [most] artists and [most] "AI" enthusiasts. Walk with me. 🧵
These things are always just terrible - 50 clips each 2 seconds long because that’s the longest you can get anything to look good or stable using AI video.
I dislike the use of Gen AI generally, but for a company this big to save a few bucks this way. Eurgh.
My RPG pile at the moment is…
- Our Brilliant Ruin
- Vaesen
- Coriolis: The Great Dark
And, as a bonus - a solo experience I want to read through…
- In the Ashes
This is very cool. It’s great to read an explicit page about the sort of projects they back, and the level the project should be at when you reach out. Also - huge respect for “if we don’t get back to you in 90 days - please ping us again” instead world of “silence means no” this is wonderful.
Haha - that might have helped!
A screenshot of my board game stats for November 2025 presented as a list of board game box art images in a grid.
Got a lot of board gaming time in during the dreary and dark Swedish November! Heat: Pedal to the Metal is probably going to be my “most pleasant board game surprise” this year!
That’s a lot of plays of King of Tokyo - Duel! I keep meaning to try out Deckers because it looks great, but haven’t got to it yet.
New Quinns Quest review is a boxed RPG special! 📦✨
I dunno folks, I think running RPGs out of 400 page hardback books might be dumb and bad
