Tag: games

• Gullet of the Rust Demon (June 30, 2026)

  At least half of my enjoyment of Gullet of the Rust Demon, a one-page, system-agnostic tabletop RPG adventure by Dan D., comes from the “establishing shot” of the dungeon exterior at the top of the sheet. The tufts of grass and single, stray flower, cartoonish as they are, do so much to suggest where some adventurers might come across this minimalistic dungeon’s entrance, and how quietly, temptingly anomalous it would appear.

• Project Lion (June 27, 2026)

  My friend and fellow New Yorker Francisco González launched a Buttondown-based newsletter last year to announce the release of Rosewater, the latest in his long-and-growing oeuvre of independently produced point-and-click adventure games. Having played and enjoyed that one over the intervening winter holidays, I was delighted to see Francisco start to use the newsletter as a development blog for “Project Lion”, the public code name for his current work-in-progress.

• To Hell and Galgenbeck (January 5, 2026)

  This week finds me gearing up to run a session or two of Mörk Borg, a doom-metal role-playing game and tiny cultural phenomenon that I discovered in November. As part of my research and preparation over this past weekend, I came across To Hell and Galgenbeck, the official Mörk Borg webcomic. It’s pretty great.

• Hidden messages in shiny covers (November 30, 2025)

  Two physical books I purchased while traveling last month, the RPG rulebook Mörk Borg and the Jeff VanderMeer novel Borne, have something in common on their covers, neither of which I discovered until well into my ownership of either: “secret” images or messages, applied in some kind of clear material that is literally invisible in direct light but shines when viewed obliquely.

• Down in the mörk (November 28, 2025)

  I spent last weekend at PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia. It had been a long time since I’d last attended a tabletop gaming conference of any kind with my game-loving partner, and I pushed to have us attend this, both because-of and despite how it slotted perfectly between two other interstate trips that filled out most of November for us. We traded away a chance to catch our breath at home for several days of exhausting overstimulation that reminded me why I love non-digital games at least as much as video games, and caught me up on recent trends and innovations I’d been missing. It was a terrible idea, and I regret nothing.

• Bringing up the conversation UI (September 12, 2025)

  Sometimes I feel the urge to say something snide, cutting, or otherwise intentionally hurtful to someone I love. It may come in response to some perceived slight or annoyance, or in shock and retaliation for something hurtful they just said. The words rise up my throat in a peristalsis of emotion, and it takes an act of will to delay their expulsion.

• Cursed weapons (August 31, 2025)

  In A Haunting Relic From America’s Past, Wright Thompson describes his encounter with the Army-issued pistol that was used to beat and murder 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955. Thompson located the gun while writing a book about the context and legacy of that murder. Subsequently, the person who had inherited it—a local crop duster—donated it to the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, where it just went on permanent display.

• X SHIP (August 17, 2020)

  Zarf detailed a retroactively obvious but quite forgivable plot hole in Myst which nobody in that game’s fandom can recall ever having discussed before.