Tuesday, July 7th

In this newsletter

Mystic Punks

Oof. Who Let This Guy In?

Yo! Dark Guide Tony here. Half of the Mystic Punks RPG crew, along with Dark Guide Jay, who told me he’s in his flying Moog octopus, creating killer synth beats while hovering above planet X’lickgang.

I’m super stoked to be here as an Analog Union contributor, where I plan to bring you my trash influences by the pound (until Hambone puts me back in trash timeout). They’re cheaper in bulk. Trust me. 

If ya like what ya read from me, be sure to check out all things Mystic Punks!

Dark Guide Tony’s Trash Can

Peanut Butter Wolf said it best with their vinyl weighing a ton.

That’s me, for real, only it’s trash. What kind of trash, you ask? Whattaya got?

Movies, comix, paperbacks, TV shows, anything is fair game. And it’s always a source of research and inspiration for RPG stuff. 

But for this week, let’s keep it focused on movies. 

We all know that physical media is dying a sorta slow death, but on the upside, people still want their objects, be it for collectibility, reproduction quality, or “ownership”. And thankfully, for movies, we have many labels and distros (Vinegar Syndrome, Visual Vengeance from Diabolik, Bleeding Skull, J4HI, to name a few) that keep the trash dream alive. 

My latest trash rabbit hole: Martial arts revenge à la arena death match.

The trash: Angelfist (apologies for no DVD pic, my bro leftshoe is currently borrowing it) and Dragon Fire, both from 1993.

Both of these flix center on the protag’s family member being murdered post-kumite. So, it’s pretty clear what the bereaved siblings will do: Look for answers in a seedy urban underbelly, show off their sweet fighting skills, kick multiple hineys in aforementioned kumite, find love, and, duh, exact ice-cold vengeance. 

These two movies are great examples of how, even a few years later, they are still riding Van Damme’s Kickboxer wave. Although production values and, just barely, acting are the most obvious differences between Kickboxer and my picks, the latter have real earnestness and heart. That’s not to take away from Van Damme’s splits, but a key distinction between real cinema (lol) and trash is usually with a DIY attitude in execution. 

For example, Angelfist’s Catya Sassoon (Vidal Sassoon’s daughter!) spars against Roland Dantes in a sweaty stick fight, which may, but probably not, highlight Sassoon’s agile flips. My money’s on the stunt double, but regardless, Sassoon gives it her all, wielding the dual death sticks, proving to Dantes her vengeance quest will not be denied.

Likewise, Dragon Fire’s concrete arena was probably shot in the corner of an abandoned Pep Boys. But hey, add a makeshift despotic throne and a flaming oil drum, and I’m convinced I’m looking at 2050 Los Angeles. 

I strive to bring that same energy to Mystic Punks and RPGS, whether writing or running games. The more trash I have in my repertoire, the more tools I have at my disposal for hooks, plots, and fun. 

And just like watching trash movies with yer buds, isn’t that what we love about RPGS? The community, and laughter, shared through storytelling, peppered with the occasional flaming flying roundhouse kick shot in slo-mo.

• Dark Guide Tony

Solarian Games

Revisiting Eamon – text adventuring in 2026

In 1979, Donald Brown, a young computer programmer in Iowa, was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons by Sherry & Bill Fesselmeyer, founders of the Des Moines chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Bill wasn’t a programmer, but had an idea for a computer-based version of Dungeons & Dragons, and Donald took on the challenge. In doing so, he created The Wonderful World of Eamon (later shortening it to “Eamon”) and did something that had never been done before.

Text adventure games weren’t completely new. A group of gamers at MIT had written a game called Zork that ran on mainframes, and there was one text adventure that home computer users could buy called Adventureland. But they weren’t like D&D. You could play the game once, and it was over. What Donald Brown did was revolutionary. He made a game engine. In Eamon, you could create a character, just like D&D, and bring your character from one game adventure to another. As soon as he wrote Eamon, he wrote the Eamon Dungeon Designer that let anyone write their own adventures with no computer programming knowledge at all. 

Donald gave Eamon away for free through the Apple II club that met at the Computer Emporium in Des Moines, and it spread quickly through gamers copying floppy disks in person and sharing them over the phone lines with the newly invented idea of a bulletin board system, or BBS. While other game designers were selling their software, Donald put his out for free and turned it into a community. As gamers wrote their own Eamon adventures, they gave them away for free as well, in the punk spirit of the early computer scene.

I was in grade school at the time, and had just discovered Dungeons & Dragons for myself. My friends and I played every weekend, but it wasn’t enough for me. I spent my spare time drawing maps of imaginary worlds and rolling up characters I would never play. One summer at computer camp (I know, you’re already feeling jealous of what a cool kid I was) a friend gave me Eamon and the Dungeon Designer, and from then on, I could play something like D&D any time I wanted to!

Compared to actually playing a tabletop role-playing game in person, with the infinite canvas of paper and pen, Eamon was small and restrictive. A floppy disk from the era holds just 140KB, about a tenth the size of a small picture on the web today. There wasn’t enough room for all the rules of D&D, or even all the stats. The adventures themselves were simple dungeon crawls because they had to be. But it was enough.

And you know, I think it was better that way. There’s a reason people still want to play TTRPGs with other humans in physical spaces today, even though technology has progressed so far that you can have an experience nearly as rich and infinite as a TTRPG all on your own, in your room, with an AI-generated game master, or a gorgeously rendered video game like Baldur’s Gate 3. But no. We’re humans, and we need other humans. A simple game like Eamon scratches the adventuring itch without ever feeling like it threatens to replace the face to face activity of a TTRPG.

This week, I decided to go back to Eamon and revisit the game that meant so much to me as a kid. And what I found was more than I could have hoped for. It turns out Eamon is very much still alive today, with new versions, new adventures, and a community that keeps it going. But more about that in a minute.

Anyone who watches our weekly podcast, Tabletop Weekly, has seen my little collection of vintage computers, including a stack of Apple II computers. I do have an Apple //e that is my “daily driver,” but it’s still in the storage stacks, and I wanted to jump right into playing Eamon. So I fired up an emulator on my Macbook called Virtual II, created Tim the Enchanter, and started playing. It was as good as I remembered. 

Naturally, the next thing I wanted to do was make a new dungeon for the game. The Eamon Dungeon Designer will walk you through each step, creating rooms, monsters, treasure, and effects. But as I mentioned, these are small programs on small disks, running on machines with about the same power as a TV remote has today. You have to design your dungeon beforehand on paper so that you can just enter the details into Dungeon Designer. I thought I’d go old school and see if I could re-create the classic AD&D module The Village of Hommlet. 

To keep things simple, I didn’t try to enter the entire module. I skipped the village and went straight to the ruined moat house. Even simpler, I just put in the dungeon level. But it worked! It was a lot of typing and some creative re-imagining for the stripped-down Eamon ruleset, but after an afternoon of blissful retrocomputing, I had the Hommlet dungeon ready for my digital text avatar, Tim the Enchanter, to make his way through.

I have to say, I had more fun with this than I can remember having with any video game. I don’t know who it was that said “your imagination is the most powerful graphics engine,” but that’s exactly what happened for me. I’ve caught the text adventure bug.

The best news is, text adventures are alive and well today. I’ll keep it focused right now on Eamon. The Eamon Adventurer’s Guild is online and active, as well as the Eamon Wiki where you can find everything from a history of the game to a multitude of ways to play on any device from a vintage computer to a modern laptop or even a phone. If you have ever found yourself doomscrolling and wishing you could spend your time having more fun and less regret, I highly recommend diving into a proper oldschool text adventure. There are literally hundreds of adventures written by community members from 1980 right up through 2026. They run the gamut from fantasy to modern to sci-fi, and they also make great inspiration for adventures you can adapt for your own “real” tabletop games.

Give Eamon a try, and please, write to me and let me know if you do, and what you think of text adventuring!

Friends of the Union

Dungeon Books: Jersey City, NJ

Analog Union

The Ennies Emporium on BackerKit

Dungeon Cats is a rules-light tabletop role-playing game for 3-6 players. You will pretend to be cats, and explore dungeons, fighting vile creatures to gain treasure! Dungeon Cats can be played in under an hour and is a casual introduction to TTRPG’s.

Also, check out Small Party by Justin Sirois!

Sickest Witch, nominated for Best Game and Best Rules + Party with the Ennie Nominated Original Series. Small Party, an art-forward series of figures featuring our favorite creators.

Stillfleet Studio

The Sometimes Kingdom RPG: a limited actual-play series!

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a universe of folkloristic magic and high-octane, Fast and the Furious-style adventure? Where a living witch’s cabin with giant chicken feet is literally on the run from the cops? And only a highly trained team of Gig Adventurers with an eldritch vintage muscle car will stand up for the rights of hedge magic-users?

We’ve all asked these questions, I know. This July, our team is going to answer them in the form of a two-part actual play of The Sometimes Kingdom RPG starring three amazing actors.

Tune in Sunday, July 12, at 6 PM EDT and the next week, July 19, at 6 PM EDT (after the World Cup final) as special guests Nihara Nichelle, Apollo Pierce, and Rachel Kordell join yours truly (Wythe Marschall) as Adventurers on a quest GMed by Sometimes creator Ethan Gouldini.

ShireCon

North Canaan, CT – September 25th & 26th

ShireCon is celebrating its 8th year! Two days of role-playing and board games in the Berkshires! Come for a day and a half of OSR and modern gaming. Visit our vendors selling old and new games and enjoy the local fare in North Canaan, CT

Under The Dice Fest 

Enfield, CT – October 2nd, 3rd & 4th

Under The Dice Fest returns this October 2nd- 4th! 

UTDFest is focused on independent tabletop gaming, with a focus on miniatures and wargames! The New England Mordheim Open returns, along with roleplaying games, game tournaments, workshops, live music, and more! You don’t want to miss it!

ArcaneCon

Northampton, MA – October 16th & 17th

ArcaneCon is returning October 16th & 17th, 2026. Join us in a celebration of indie, old school, and old school-inspired RPGs, miniature games, board games, and more! ArcaneCon is Western Massachusetts’s premiere tabletop hobby convention! Game submissions are open now!!! See more information at Tabletop Events.

Your editor this week has been Hambone of Ham & Egg Publishing. 

Keep on emailing us at hello@analogunion.com to let us know what you’d like to see more of/less of and to share ideas.

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Until next time!

—JHM