Whoa. 2023 was a big year for me and my place in tabletop RPGs. So many firsts. So many celebrations. It’s a year I’m preemptively telling myself not to compare other years too. Quite honestly, it feels like a series of painless lightning strikes, each event leaving me breathless, invigorated, and a little stunned. That said, designing and talking about tabletop RPGs isn’t my full-time role. A lot of what I made happen this year came out of sacrificing my wellbeing and skipping events with family. Looking forward, I’ll be reprioritizing my health and relationships. But I’m not stepping away fr ..read more

I’m back from my first PAX Unplugged, and while it’s been a few days, I still feel like I haven’t recovered–in a good way. The only other large tabletop convention I’ve attended is Gen Con, and I’ve only been twice. Both times, I felt like the event swallowed and spit me out. Don’t worry, I’m into that. PAX felt similar in the sense that there was so much and so crowded, but it also felt more focused and strangely enough, more friendly? So now that I’m back, Gen Con or PAX Unplugged? I lean more towards tabletop RPGs over board games these days, and it felt like a lot of the audience at PAX Un ..read more

Trophy Dark was created by Jesse Ross and published by The Gauntlet With fewer than 40 pages of rules and about 2/3 of the book dedicated to “incursions” (the system’s version of adventures), Trophy Dark, a one-shot tabletop roleplaying game ideal for 2-3 players and a game master, is the collaborative horror RPG of my dreams. It’s a game that hungers for blood and warns you of its intentions on the cover:  “This is not a game of brave adventurers slaying dragons and dragging gold back to town. This is a horror story of treasure-hunters meeting tragic ends in a haunted forest that doesn ..read more

What waits quivering beneath the crashing sea? Read The Isle, written by Luke Gearing and published by Spear Witch, to find out. No time to read this review? Jump to the Review at a Glance section or watch my short TikTok video. Designed for The Vanilla Game, a lightweight retroclone OSR-system, The Isle is a body horror dungeon crawl adventure that’s pretty playable in most fantasy systems with minimal reworking. I could see someone running it with Mörk Borg without much issue. This review is of the physical book, but it also comes with a PDF and an EPUB (yay EPUB!). Something draws your pl ..read more

When we started working on The Sticker Game in August 2022, we weren’t ready for the amount of work we (mostly Cassi) signed up for. I have very little audio editing experience, and quickly realized that I would need to learn about music rights, producing, and vocal editing. (If you didn’t know, The Sticker Game is an interactive audio drama where you create a journal using your sticker collection.) I ended up using the audio editing software Cakewalk by Bandlab to create The Sticker Game because it was free at the time, and it was not a cakewalk to figure out. But I’m obviously pleased as pun ..read more

Quick note: I’m not an expert and mostly a fledging game designer. BUT I have experience in writing circles and getting reader feedback. It’s not exactly the same, but I think some skills are transferable. When I send out a playtest survey, I look for several things: Actionable feedback Marketing language Game sentiments overall (may not be actionable, but when combined with multiple survey inputs, it’s very helpful.) First, as I’m writing a game, I note the insecurities that pop up. “Is this good enough” isn’t specific, but maybe I’m worried a rule section isn’t clear or the sequence of in ..read more

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2d85461f5a162208fabbd10fc7332236 The post 3273c139c8aa7145dd5f517430b8351b appeared first on Cassi Mothwin ..read more

I recently figured out how to jazz up my Itch game pages with CSS, and I figured I’d share. This is a pretty simple process, but it did take some tweaking for me to figure out exactly how to get it the way I wanted. I hope this helps make the process easier for others! Here’s how it looks! 1. Email Itch Support To unlock CSS editing on your account, Itch has to do something on the backend. Go ahead and email them and request CSS permissions be unlocked on your account. You can find more information about how to request access on the bottom of this page. This isn’t a big deal. Just email them a ..read more

The ocean’s depths have long tormented travelers and explorers. Over the centuries our imaginations have run wild with what might lurk below the surface, what alien worlds belong to the unreachable deep. Ebb Tide, a solo horror journaling game by Stephen Kohler (LordPaido), won’t take you below the sea water while you play, but you’ll learn to fear what’s down there, waiting. And your mind will conjure up all sorts of mysteries and explanations as to what horror (or salvation) might pull into its clutches. No time to read? Jump to review at a glance. Ebb Tide: A solo tabletop game Ebb Ti ..read more