Author: admin

In this newsletter

Arcane Sword Press – RPG Rediscovery

En Garde! By Game Designers Workshop

I’m going to come out and just say- En Garde! is really awesome. It’s one of those games I’ve heard about over the years and always been curious about. I know it’s for me, but I often saw some negative writing about it online or declaring that it was a “product of its time” – which honestly can be a dismissive term for games that are quite honestly pretty great and playable. I mean, the OSR is my thing, so I’m going to be drawn to these mysterious old games, but in my experience, only some grognards whisper about En Garde! In passing before talking about more popular games. 

This game will sometimes draw the “I was playing this before you were alive!” statement but then can’t recall their own experiences with the game. And in my mind, that isn’t to do with the game not being interesting- it’s more that people just didn’t commit to the game, which is a shame because En Garde is really its own kind of game that I really, really like.

So what is my personal interest with En Garde? It’s one of those games that I learned about early on when digging into RPGs, and it is easily one of the first notable ones with a release in 1975. I read more that the game was very popular as a Play-by-mail game, which, mechanically, I can see why due to how it’s played, which I’ll get to in a bit. But what are the main reasons why I found En Garde intriguing?

1. The Genre: I love the idea of a game that attempts to gamify an iconic literary and media genre. Obviously, fantasy and sci-fi are major ones, but there are some less appreciated ones like Cowboys and Swashbuckling that I feel like should be more elevated. So the idea of a Three Musketeers game is really fun to me.

2. The game is an emulation of satire: You aren’t a hero in En Garde! You are essentially being a crummy social-climbing privileged POS in an attempt to emulate the lifestyle of the privileged men in the Ancien Régime of France in the first half of the 1600s. This game is overtly inspired by Alexandre Dumas’ works about the Three Musketeers and related stories. These were critiques about the social injustices and awfulness of the time period from a post-revolutionary France perspective.

3. Fencing: I am a fencer of 13+ years now, both modern epee (Olympic) and historical (HEMA), including a main interest in the rapier. I coach historical classes weekly for adults and have a deep interest in the history and context of dueling. Which En garde! It is directly inspired by the milieu in which the rapier was developed and used.

4. The Traveller Connection: This game was a primary inspiration for the creation of Traveler, featuring some of the creators of En Garde not only as some of the iconic Traveler writers (Frank Chadwick, Loren Wiseman, John Harshman, and Daryl Hany) but also as being published by Game Designers’ Workshop.

Now RPG Rediscovery is for games that are out-of-print, so this game review is a bit of a cheat because it is currently available as a print-on-demand product. However, it’s essentially unchanged since its publication over 50 years ago and is readily available. So I want to use this article to discuss the value of an original cool game that really needs to be given a spotlight.

I eventually bought the current print-on-demand version, where it then sat on my shelf for a number of years. Actually, I lost my last copy in my “great flood” but repurchased it because I knew I would actually play it some day.

This past year I finally brought it to Shirecon in Northern Connecticut, where Ben of Empty Castle Press and I rolled up characters while watching our vendor table. Fellow Analog Union member Jayson came by and hung out, and we got talking about playing a game of En Garde since he played it a while ago and also liked it. So we planned for TotalCon to play a session together in the Solarian room.

Now at this point I wasn’t entirely sure HOW the game was played, just how you make a character because the game doesn’t present all of its procedures clearly. So at TotalCon, we made our characters, played a game, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out the dueling rules.

So yeah, the main focus of this game was the dueling rules, which were developed as a mini war game, but then a roleplaying game emerged around it. And when I say roleplaying game, it’s more like a solo game. And by THAT I mean, the game is structured so everyone at the table is rolling on tables for events independently until two players overlap, and then they can duel. 

The Dueling rules are not great but also aren’t bad either. I will say they are a ‘product of their time,” much like I derided earlier, but it’s a more complex rock-paper-scissors that is overly built but with some variables as determined by a character’s stats or abilities. But we pushed the dueling rules to its limit, and Jayson was able to absolutely kill me by repeatedly kicking me (kicking is overpowered!), which was really funny. I can see what the writers were doing, but I can also see none of the writers had any experience with fencing, only Errol Flynn films. And that’s okay! The dueling rules are certainly a fun and funny way to have a game of risky swashbuckling, but the real meat of this game is the character generation and campaign.

Before I continue, I would like to state one thing that makes this game cool- it was designed to be played in one session. As in, not an ongoing campaign, but you could do that if you desired. I really like this idea- a game to fill in a game night session when you can’t get the whole group together for a session of D&D in 1975. This means all aspects of this game are gamefied with dice rolls; there isn’t a referee or DM. You use tables to develop a story based on your decisions and the dice results of those decisions. This honestly makes En Garde a solo-gaming pioneer, but you play alongside other players. So how does it work?

1. Create a character: You’d determine the class you were born into, your father and mother’s separate statuses (you could be born out of wedlock- oh my!), and your allowances from Daddy.

2. Weekly Actions: From there, the game has each player attempt to do one social climbing action each week, such as being seen calling on women, gambling, attending gentlemen’s clubs, joining the military, or visiting “floozy houses”. Players declare what they are doing each week simultaneously to determine if any players overlap. If you aren’t seen with women enough, spending enough money, etc., then your social status decreases. You have to maintain a certain level of spending to maintain your current status, while overspending to increase your status. It’s honestly a very interesting balancing act. You have four weeks to do this; otherwise, you lose any social points at the beginning of the next month, when you have to do it over again.

3. Risk-reward: You need money essentially. You can get it from allowances as stated earlier, but also if you are seeing a noble woman who you can charm into financing your lifestyle. Finally, joining the military is a way to maintain some income while gaining some status, IF you get into an esteemed regiment. Lastly, you can always get money from a “shylock” but have to pay him back; otherwise, there’s a chance you will be jumped, harmed, and robbed! Being in the military means you will be sent on a military campaign for the kingdom, where you may gain status by participating in battle or become wounded or even killed! 

4. Dueling: If two players declare that they are calling on the same noble woman, then a duel can happen, where the game then incorporates some action. Dueling consists of players pre-writing out their “routine” of actions based on the dueling weapon. Each action will use some amount of endurance, so players must declare when they rest per exchange instead of thrusting, cutting, etc. Both players reveal their declared actions and then consult a table to see who hit or if a miss occurred. When a hit happens, damage is rolled. Players can then decide if the duel continues or not. 

5. Additional Campaign elements: Players can invent money and hope for returns on investment to help them in their social climbing but may also go broke! Players can also be appointed official titles at high enough status or end up disgraced.

The main point of the game is the narrative that emerges based on the player’s decisions and luck of the dice, which may be modified for specific tables based on stats. The gameplay style of solo-but-in-a-group is pretty clever and is more of a zoomed-out way to roleplay the life of a wannabe gentleman, low-life noble, or con artist type. And the experience of actually doing this at a table and sharing what your character is doing and the risks or desperation of making decisions to climb socially makes for some very funny emergent play with friends for a couple of hours. 

This gameplay loop directly inspired the character creation mini-game of Traveller, famous for dying iconic character creation due to rolling two d6s to pass a check and 1d6 to roll on a selected table to advance your character, not unlike this game. The weekly events also impacted Traveller where a Traveller has to resolve actions on a weekly basis, since jumping in hyperspace takes a week of time, and the arrival and navigation of a star system or starport takes another week of time to complete jobs- leading to a level of time management and weighing the odds of using your time that is a core feature of En Garde!

En Garde! went on to inspire a game called Flashing Blades by Fantasy Games Unlimited, which extrapolates the gameplay here into a more traditional RPG in the 1980s that I plan on reviewing at a later date (sneak peek- it’s also very cool!)

There’s nothing quite like En Garde! Highly recommended! There is an official website you can check out here

Next time: Metamorphosis Alpha by TSR!

• Bryan

Mystic Punks

Dark Guide Tony’s Trash Can

Guys. Seriously, y’all. I’ve got something important to share. I’ve seen the light, and it’s bathed in the oily, shimmering kaleidoscope of psychedelic goodness that is the Romeo Is a Deadman video game.

This game is acid tokusatsu crammed into an unreliable-narrator blender and stuffed with sci-fi horror-tinged Back to the Future tropes and adorable zombie gardening. Well, not zombies. They are called Bastards instead. 

Does it have RPG elements? Sure. 

What about kooky mini-games? Yep.

How about eccentric characters to interact with? Uh, totally. 

Does it make sense and/or stick the plot landing? Eh, maybe. As of writing this, I’m about halfway through gameplay. So, check back with me. Or not, cuz I dunno if neatly wrapping up the narrative is what Romeo is aiming for here. 

Don’t get me wrong, the plot takes on a bizarre logic that the hard-working employees at Mystic Punks, LLC revere. But its pull is that it’s a neon-soaked doomed romance story presented in a mash-up of incongruent aesthetics. Emphasis on mash-up. 

My brain went into overdrive making comparisons with Romeo’s visuals. The game’s hackin’ n’ slashin’ battles draw comparisons to the beautiful chaos of Julie Mehretu’s early work.

And the inventory pause screen (apologies, I couldn’t snag an in-game image) transported me back to the long-defunct Warp Records site created by The Designers Republic.

I get it that all this might not be for everyone, acquired weird tastes and all. But, regardless of medium, it’s super refreshing to see risk-taking in storytelling, especially combined with standard RPG-leveling systems, such as attribute and weapon improvement. And Romeo has that in excess. 

All that said, I’m admittedly very green to Romeo’s developer, Grasshopper Manufacture, and the work of their founding auteur, Suda51. But, man, I’m on board to continue the trip, planting one Bastard at a time.

 –Dark Guide Tony

Ham & Egg Publishing

321RPG/5E Crossover

What Dark Knocking Comes in the Still of the Night? A thrilling fantasy adventure from Ham & Egg Publishing that offers you two great ways to play. A 321RPG and 5E version of the module. 

What Dark Knocking Comes in the Still of the Night? A new three-episode 321RPG flip-book adventure series for 1 Game Runner and 2-4 players. Each book includes the full adventure for the brand new 321RPG Fantasy ruleset and flips over to a complete 5E conversion on the other side. Printed in classic style, 8.5 x 11 B&W with a color cover. 

You get 3 books and 2 systems. 1 epic adventure. 0 excuses not to play.

Written by Geo Collazo and John McGuire, with cover and interior art by Zack Giallongo. More artists and surprises to be announced

The campaign also includes two brand new resin minis, Russ and Otus, the adventure’s villains, and the premiere of our new Dual 20 Die! 

The Dual 20 is a modern take on a 50-year-old classic, meant to bridge the gap between 321RPG and 5E with a single 20-sided die. 

On Kickstarter this September from Ham & Egg Publishing.

Friends of the Union

The Mercys

We’re the Mercys from Cedar Grove, New Jersey. Our influences are The Velvet Underground, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Kinks, 1960s music in general, and anything alternative. 

We just finished recording our first album at Big and Tall Recordings in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey. This album is due to be released on October 31, 2026. Our first single, ‘Well I Think Ur Pretty,” is available on streaming everywhere, and our second, “My Dear,” is set to be released on July 30, 2026.

Analog Union

Join the Analog Union subreddit

The Analog Union subreddit has launched, and it’s starting to grow! Join us in our new community where you can tell us what you really think of all these shenanigans we’re getting up to. We listen, and we care. And I really want to see what you’re up to in your gaming world.

It’s easy to find; it’s literally r/AnalogUnion.

Get in now so you can say “I was there before it was cool.” (Spoiler alert: we’ll never be cool)

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.

If you enjoy the Analog Union newsletter, please tell your friends to sign up at AnalogUnion.com.

Until next time!

—JHM

In this newsletter

Night Noon Games

Cyclic Dungeon Design in Avenge the White Mare

If you’re anything like me, you can come up with a great idea for a dungeon, but you just don’t really know where to start writing it. One tool I think is really great for just this is Sersa Victory’s Cyclic Dungeon Generation system. I used this methodology to build the scaffolding of my new Shadowdark adventure Avenge the White Mare (which is accepting late pledges over on Kickstarter!), and today I’m going to walk you through the process with the hope you’ll give it a go for yourself! 

As the name implies, Cyclic Dungeon Generation makes use of cycles to design a given adventure. These circular loops within a dungeon are represented with simple flowcharts and contain four distinct icons: a start, a goal, three-to-four arcs that represent paths through the dungeon, and two insertion point diamonds where additional sub-cycles can be added.

There are 12 types of cycles, the most simple of which is “two alternative paths:”

You can see there are two ways for a party to reach their goal, with an insertion point for potential sub-cycles on each path to the goal. It’s important to remember that, as flowcharts, these cycles are abstract representations of an adventure, so one point on it could represent one room or many.

Within Sersa’s wonderful guidelines, you’ll find roll tables to generate these cycles for an entire adventure. 

[If you don’t want spoilers for Avenge the White Mare, stop here and just check out Sersa’s documentation on this design method!]

The overarching cycle I rolled to represent the entire dungeon is called a “gambit:”

This cycle gives the adventuring party a short path to their goal with an optional reward after the goal, should they want to pursue it. 

The start of this cycle is just the beginning of the adventure, and the goal is the sárkány dragon’s chamber. The reward, should players choose to brave the danger, is a treasure trove and an epic magical item called “Stonecrumblers Gauntlet’s.” (These can help the players defeat the dragon, making traversing the danger even more enticing!) The danger itself is the dragon’s chambers, likely with the dragon within it. You can see two diamonds marking the insertion points for sub-cycles as well.

The first sub-cycle is a “simple lock-and-key:”

This cycle presents the party with a short path to the goal, which they find is locked. Finding the key requires further exploration into the dungeon. There are two types of locks though: hard, which actually requires the key, and soft, which players may be able to circumvent with clever play or at a significant cost. Since I want to encourage clever gameplay in my adventures, I went with a soft lock knowing someone might still outsmart my locked goal.

The start of this cycle is the first insertion point of the overarching cycle. The goal is the sárkány dragon itself, the lock is magical copper tendrils which hold the chamber doors shut, and the key is the magical Copper Orb that hovers above the castle’s peak. Since this is a soft lock, other magic items can repel the copper tendrils, but less effectively. 

I did not want to include more sub-cycles within this sub-cycle because I was designing a one-shot, and I didn’t see a need to go too far down that rabbit hole!

For the second sub-cycle, which was placed at the bottom of the overarching dungeon cycle and which would lead to the lucrative reward, I rolled “dangerous route:”

This gives players the option to take a very short route to the goal, but only if they are willing to head through something dangerous. Otherwise, they can take a longer route.

The start for this cycle begins at the second insertion point in the overarching dungeon cycle. Players must work past the danger that is the sárkány dragon. This will lead them into the basement level of the castle where they are presented with a floor that drops away into simmering molten copper. Above the liquid metal is a lattice of copper cords. The molten metal + difficult lattice represents the danger needed to reach the goal of the gauntlets.

There is a less-risky way to get to the gauntlets, but it requires more exploring and taking other risks as well. Again, there were no additional sub-cycles added here.

When you put these all together, you get an overarching cycle diagram that looks like this:

Clockwise from the left, you can see the starting point of the gambit-cycle dungeon at 9 o’clock, followed by the simple lock-and-key sub-cycle at 12 o’clock, which leads to the overarching dungeon goal at 3 o’clock, and finally the dangerous route sub-cycle at 6 o’clock.

Of course, the dungeon isn’t complete at this stage. I still needed to figure out what all the rooms would be along with all the monsters, hazards, NPCs, treasures, and other D&D nonsense you’d expect to find in a dungeon. However, the cyclic dungeon generation system gave me a great outline in which to build off of. I’m excited to use it again soon, and I think you should give it a try, too!

And of course, go check out Avenge the White Mare over on Kickstarter!

PS. If you are subscribed to the Analog Union Newsletter, I’ll send you a free Analog Union sticker if you back at a physical tier!

Ham & Egg Publishing

What Dark Knocking Comes in the Still of the Night? 

The heroes are away. The sky is falling. And in the ruined streets of Rivenedge, four untested trainees find a black cat with a message scratched into her collar. Follow her into the city of Ool, where the harvest festival never ends, the mayor never dies, and you learn what it costs to trust a stranger who cannot tell you her name.

What Dark Knocking Comes in the Still of the Night? A thrilling fantasy adventure from Ham & Egg Publishing that offers you two great ways to play. A 321RPG and 5E version of the module. 

What Dark Knocking Comes in the Still of the Night? A new three-episode 321RPG flip-book adventure series for 1 Game Runner and 2-4 players. Each book includes the full adventure for the brand new 321RPG Fantasy ruleset and flips over to a complete 5E conversion on the other side. Printed in classic style, 8.5 x 11 B&W with a color cover. 

You get 3 books and 2 systems. 1 epic adventure. 0 excuses not to play.

Written by Geo Collazo and John McGuire, with cover and interior art by Zack Giallongo. More artists and surprises to be announced! 

The campaign also includes two brand new resin minis, Russ and Otus, the adventure’s villains, and the premiere of our new Dual 20 Die! 

The Dual 20 is a modern take on a 50-year-old classic, meant to bridge the gap between 321RPG and 5E with a single 20-sided die. 

On Kickstarter this September from Ham & Egg Publishing.

Analog Union

Join the Analog Union subreddit

The Analog Union subreddit has launched, and it’s starting to grow! Join us in our new community where you can tell us what you really think of all these shenanigans we’re getting up to. We listen, and we care. And I really want to see what you’re up to in your gaming world.

It’s easy to find; it’s literally r/AnalogUnion.

Get in now so you can say “I was there before it was cool.” (Spoiler alert: we’ll never be cool)

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.

If you enjoy the Analog Union newsletter, please tell your friends to sign up at AnalogUnion.com.

Until next time!

—JHM

In this newsletter

Arcane Sword Press

RPG Rediscovery

This week, we will take a look at Universe: The Role-Playing Game of the Future by SPI

No shirt + suspenders + helmet = 24th cemetery fashion

It’s no secret that I’m a Traveller guy. It’s essentially the Sci-fi RPG equivalent of D&D’s fantasy focus. It’s one of the few RPGs I can think of that succeeds at making a “setting-neutral” sci-fi game that allows the player to define their campaign, much like how they would use D&D to create their own fantasy campaign using tropes. This is much harder with Sci-fi due to the sheer nature of the genre being devoid of any unified, agreed-upon tropes because it’s so encompassing of any speculative fiction, which makes it an enriching genre to explore. But Traveller really gets close to this by focusing on pulp sci-fi as the basis, much as D&D is inspired by pulp fantasy (plus some older works). Most sci-fi games are defined by the media the game is based on (Star Wars, Star Trek, any tie-in game) or have the game’s setting front and center as it drives the mechanics and narrative of the game due to the need to define the scope of the game’s Science Fiction boundaries (Metamorphosis Alpha).

That’s why Traveller stood out to me, beyond its simple but robust mechanics and free-kriegspiel gameplay focus. It’s designed as a sandbox for players to define their OWN sci-fi experience, rather than playing within a defined sci-fi setting with its own expectations. Traveller did eventually develop a setting based on feedback that some players may prefer a premade setting to making their own, but this has never made a defining aspect of the classic Traveller run, only an optional supplement to engage with as desired. Now you may be thinking- did any other games attempt to make this same approach to a “generic” sci-fi game? Kinda, I have yet to find one that really makes that double whammy of both setting neutral but inspiring to activate my mind. But many tried, and Universe is one of those attempts!

This is the only example of play in the game

Universe gets an A for effort, but man, oh man, did my eyes glaze over this game, nearly any attempt to read it. It really tries to cash in on the success of Traveller, but absolutely misses what made Traveller a good game. You see- SPI was a wargaming company. They made countless games using chit-and-hexes, many well respected amongst that spectrum of the hobby. I mean, heck, D&D emerged from Chainmail! But Universe lacks the cleverness you get from RPG writing- designed for spurring imaginations and is instead focused solely on providing DATA for running a GAME without wiggle room for fudging. In other words, the impression I get is that the writer didn’t understand the difference between wargaming and roleplaying and wrote it like a wargame. It’s almost as if someone was told to write a Traveller-like game but never played it, or even played an RPG before.

This is the only interior art in the whole book

This book has ZERO artwork; everything is laid out in a three-column layout of walls of text. Each section has sub-sections to make parsing it out easier, but only marginally. The book is laid out into a Gamemaster Section, a Charts and Tables section, and an Adventure section- an obvious stitch-up of the separate booklets in the box set bound to one spine. It’s funny that there is no Player-facing information here, or rather, the writer thinks that’s what the Gamemaster Section is for, since it includes character creation?? Regardless, character creation is complex and confusing (100+ skills?!), and much of the bulk of this game. I respect that the GM thinks I’m smarter than I am by presenting me with its contents, seemingly aimed towards smartie-pants players. But alas, I’m merely a Luddite who gets confused when character creation has division math involved. 

• Quick tangent: I’m so glad that more (not all) modern games are more clearly written for comprehension and learning, unlike many older games that seem overwritten to sound smarter than they were. Gygax was famous for this, and I always view this type of writing as more self-indulgent and elitist in a cringy way (you can only play this game if you’re SMART enough to decode the rules!) as opposed to, you know, being written effectively to get more players interested or teach the game. That’s my opinion as an educator and indie game writer, but I digress.

I really wish this game had more artwork, because SPI was at its peak in graphic design and illustration with its early 80s output. I honestly love the cover for Universe, suspenders and all!

So what IS cool about this game then? The galaxy poster! This game comes with an accurate, three-dimensional poster that encompasses most of the star systems within 30 light-years of our solar system. I also appreciate Universe’s attempt to inject scientific plausibility into its sci-fi, implying a more tangible yet still fantastic game. 

It’s worth mentioning that Universe also had a tie-in game, Delta Vee, published with Ares issue 9, with a follow-up in issue 10. Issue 10 also has an article written by one of the freshly hired staff writers who was assigned to Universe, and I feel that the following section basically outlines my issue with the game

Nothing screams fun and immersion like determining formulas! How the article is written is frustrating in a similar way to how Universe is written, and you can barely glean this from their attitude in the writing. Ugh. It’s worth mentioning that as soon as TSR acquired SPI, Universe was shelved because they were focusing on their own sci-fi RPG, Star Frontiers. As I mentioned in my Ares magazine article, TSR wasn’t exactly great to the acquired talent or properties from SPI. This is a missed opportunity on TSR’s investment because SPI’s staff had artistic and graphical talent.

To wrap things up, would I play Universe? Sure, but as a player, just to experience it. I easily found forum posts of people who loved it when they were young, so it had its fans, so it must be fun to play, right? I would never run it as a GM because it seems like a thankless and tiring task. But again, why play Universe when Traveller exists (and is free)? Is that ignorant of me? Probably, but I dare you to learn Universe and have a good time doing so. Again, that’s harsh, and I don’t think it’s fully founded, and Universe has intrigued me enough to revisit it down the road to hopefully view it with a fresh perspective.

Next time- En Garde! By Game Designers’ Workshop! 

• Bryan

Mystic Punks

Dark Guide Tony’s Trash Can

Y’all watching the new The Ghost In The Shell gifted to us by our benevolent Cyber-Overlord β∑zøS? Already a few episodes in, and it follows the original manga pretty close to the hilt, especially in terms of Masamune Shirow’s art, super dystopian post-capitalism, and (yay!) humor. So yeah, it’s beautiful animation, AND it’s evergreen in relevancy. Oh, digi-mana from electro-heaven!

It got my trash mind thinking about my early 90s Cyberpunk 2020 stuff, which, like a lot of books from my youth, is hopefully now in the hands of a happy gamer. Anyways, at Origins 2024, while eating the most insane Polish food ever, I picked up a worn copy of R. Talosorian Games’ catalog-style Chromebook resource book. Pretty typical for a splatbook to upgrade yer punk, but I wanna focus on the glossy pages midway through.

First, let’s set the tone:

So, Chromebook came out in 1991, Dark Horse Comics published a censored GITS manga stateside in 1995 (the original Japanese manga was out in 1989), Lawnmower Man had the best graphics, and AOL’s dulcet tones were firmly implanted in everyone’s brains. The vibe was cyber, and all y’all were jackin’-in. 

Chromebook hits us with these beauts as a part of their Fashion 2020 line. Now, signatures are credited to Karl Wu, but please hit me up and correct me if ya know otherwise!

These post-New Wave, Nagel-esque representations of sophistication, aside from the shared pink hues, are such a far cry from contemporary cyberpunk aesthetics, yet interesting. Mainly, Chromebook taps into a late-20th-century style commonplace in strip-mall beauty salons. And I’m not disparaging this concept—quite the opposite. 

Although these illustrations aren’t breaking new ground, even when they were fresh in ‘91, I’d wager that the swirling stew of trash music videos, Spencer Gifts, and movies gave the average suburban gamer enough reference for informed character development. Ya know, a Rule of Cool diving board of sorts. Or, as Chromebook perfectly states: Style, Elegance, Substance. 

• Dark Guide Tony

Solarian Games

Tabletop Gaming on the radio

WESU 88.1 FM is the community radio for Wesleyan University. I got the call last-minute to join Jon Johnson, host of Pint O’Comics, to talk about tabletop gaming this weekend, which turned out to be a lot of fun. 

We talked about creating Top Secret, the new Tradecraft Manual, crowdfunding, game production, zine culture, ModCon, and even Gygax Magazine.

I wonder what the Sunday afternoon radio audience made of all that nerd talk in one place. His show is usually about comics, so I guess they were ready for what we were laying down. Weird to be on actual radio in this streaming world. I kinda miss radio, especially college radio. WESU is a fun station; I’m going to start listening to them a lot more now.

So hey, if you want to spend an hour listening to the radio like some kind of savage, check it out below. I stuck it on YouTube with captions and everything; have fun! 

Stillfleet Studio

The Game Design Grind: Why We Play, Actually

We didn’t get into making TTRPGs because of actual-play streams (AP). We’ve found, however, that some of the best feedback we receive is from friends who are AP performers and their discerning audiences.

For the launch of Danse Macabre last year, the game’s lead creator, Christopher Pickett, and I invited a dozen AP streamers to try the game during an early stage as a sneak peek. This was a fun, invaluable, and surprisingly simple strategy that resulted in several great one-offs.

We just did the same for the launch of The Sometimes Kingdom RPG in print, with a two-parter featuring special guests Nihara Nichelle, Apollo Pierce, and Rachel Kordell alongside the game’s creator, Ethan Gouldini, and me.

So why do we produce AP, if that’s not our primary goal? In one sentence: because we want people to see what our games are truly like to play—not only when the creators play them, but when new players try them out, with no/low prep.

To use a phrase I learned from our friends at Plus One Exp, this is “exegetic AP”—a genre of play example that helps a viewer see, hear, and feel the meaning of a game, how it works, and what it’s about.

This is kinda sorta marketing, yes—we want the performers to have fun, say funny one-liners, etc.—but it’s not a “hard sell.” The sort of non-edited AP that we aim for is about being honest with players, showing them your system live, with some of the same time pressures that players face at home.

Other benefits of forcing yourself to create AP of your games include: reaching out to cool new humans, getting feedback on core rules, forcing yourself to develop and test decent intro scenarios, forcing yourself to whip up promo graphics (even designing games live so you can play them later), and so forth.

If you’re new to TTRPG design and camera-shy, start with your friends. Use normal headphones; don’t even worry about mics if you don’t have them. Something about being in front of a camera can lead to more urgent, open gameplay. Just have fun!

Analog Union

Join the Analog Union subreddit

The Analog Union subreddit has launched, and it’s starting to grow! Join us in our new community where you can tell us what you really think of all these shenanigans we’re getting up to. We listen, and we care. And I really want to see what you’re up to in your gaming world.

It’s easy to find; it’s literally r/AnalogUnion.

Get in now so you can say “I was there before it was cool.” (Spoiler alert: we’ll never be cool)

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.

If you enjoy the Analog Union newsletter, please tell your friends to sign up at AnalogUnion.com.

Until next time!

—JHM

In this newsletter

Night Noon Games

Why Kick-Ass Cover Art Matters

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” wouldn’t be such a well-known idiom if it weren’t for people’s tendency to judge books by their covers. This is usually seen in a negative light, but as a creator, you can use this quirk of human nature to your advantage! How? By having some really kick-ass cover art!

The system I spend most of my time writing for is Shadowdark RPG. The game itself is great, but when I’m at The Arcane Library booth at a con, we get loads of people who stop to learn about it for the first time for no other reason than the unique and evocative art

There are plenty of other RPGs on the showroom floor, or on the shelves of a friendly local game store, or on Kickstarter, but cool art will get peoples’ attention. The art makes them want to pick up the book, and once they pick up the book, they find out that there’s a cool game behind those rad covers!

Cover art can also communicate what your product is about. Take these examples from fellow Union members Bryan Larkin (Arcane Sword Press) and John “Hambone” McGuire (Ham & Eggs Publishing):

Without saying anything about it on the cover, Bryan lets every fan of Traveller know that this is a supplement for them by borrowing the game’s simple yet recognizable visual language. Hambone takes things one step further with his art by not only including a comic book-style send-up of the 1989 trade paperback cover of The Uncanny X-Men: Days of Future Past, but also by incorporating the cover of the original Weird Heroes of Public Access zine into the crumbling wall.

My latest project for Shadowdark is a second-level adventure inspired by Hungarian folklore called Avenge the White Mare (live on Kickstarter through July 27th!). I wanted the cover art to be evocative of the system by using black & white art, but I also wanted it to stand out from other Shadowdark products by using a bold, linocut relief print technique courtesy of my buddy Nick Holland:

(Why are there two versions? Because the copper version is a hand-printed special edition option!)

I also wanted the art to be cool enough to put on a t-shirt. You can be the final judge of that, but I think I’ve been successful there with both the zine’s cover art and the linocut carving of the adventure’s big bad, the three-headed Sárkány:

But what happens when you can’t afford art? You’ve still got options!

The covers for Lair of the Frog God by Chaoclypse and Into the Odd Remastered by Chris McDowall exclusively use FREE public-domain art that was photobashed to create. Chaoclypse even made an excellent instructional YouTube video about it. (More public domain art resources on New School Revolution!) As for one of my older RPGs, MechTek, I just took a tablet and made something that is at least charming. I know that you can do either of these things, too!

Finally, and perhaps above all else, do not succumb to the siren song of using generative artificial intelligence for your project. This whole article is about why people judge your book by its cover, and ethics aside, if people see AI art on the outside, they’re going to think there is AI everything on the inside!

One final idiom for you: “You only get one chance to make a first impression,” so make sure your cover art makes that great first impression on people!

Until our next adventure, stay inspired and keep those dice rolling!

Michael Putlack

Night Noon Games

PS. All subscribers to the Analog Union newsletter who back the physical tier of my Kickstarter campaign will get a free Analog Union sticker, so go check it out now!

Analog Union

The Analog Union Has a Subreddit!

It’s been almost a year of the Analog Union, and we’ve been having a great time making this newsletter. We’re grateful to you for subscribing, and even more so that you’re all actually reading it each week and checking out our posts. The next logical step is to actually make this a real two-way community where we can all talk to each other.

We’ve created a subreddit for the Analog Union where you can hang out and talk about gaming with us. It gives us a chance to hear what you want in the newsletter and from the creators in the Analog Union, and to learn more about what you like and what you’re doing.

If you’re already into Reddit, you don’t need any explanation, but if you’re not, here’s a simple overview. Reddit is a lot like a forum, and each group or topic is called a subreddit. Every subreddit has its own rules and its own way of doing things. We’re making ours a welcoming, inclusive space to talk about anything in the tabletop gaming realm.

When you go to https://www.reddit.com/r/AnalogUnion you will see a fairly new community, and it relies on you to jump in and make it a fun place to be. We’ll post every time there’s a new newsletter so you can comment on it. You’ll see Analog Union members posting about what we’ve got going on, as well as just talking about gaming topics in general.

Reddit has “user flairs” that you can attach to yourself, and they’re specific to each subreddit. So for ours, you can wear flair that says you’re a gamer, an artist, a designer, a writer, or any other role, or create your own custom flair. 

If you’ve got something you want to promote about yourself, or you’re looking for collaborators, or even gamers to play with, that’s allowed, so long as it doesn’t get spammy. Read the rules when you join; they’re pretty simple. Be cool, stay on topic (games!), and don’t start fights. 

We’re excited to make a place to hang out with everyone, and can’t wait to see you there. You’ll be able to spot Analog Union members by our flair, so please say hi! (And invite a friend!)

Horseshark Games

Pick Up at Gen Con 2026!

By James A. Pozenel, Jr.

Gen Con is right around the corner, and there’s a new shipping option at horsesharkgames.com for this month only!

When you order from the HSK Online Store, you’ll have an option to pick up your order directly from Horse Shark Games at Gen Con. Save on shipping. Order direct. Get your books signed if you want.

Pick-ups will probably only occur on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday (July 30th, 31st & August 1st) and mainly during the hours of 9 am – 6 pm.

Don’t worry, Netcrawl RPG will be at two booths during Gen Con. Both Indie Press Revolution (booth #449) and Goodman Games (booth #109) will have copies of the core books on hand.

Get Haunted Industries

How To Do Stuff On the Cheap and Easy

By Joey Royale

Ciao Paisans! How ya been? Good for you. Ok, look- I am here to remind you again, you don’t need to be a rich computer scientist to make cool stuff. This week, I started making a series of videos for the Staplecult YouTube page to show how I make my zines, including sourcing and manipulating images.

I went to Goodwill the other day and picked up an old handyman book for $1.50. I am in the process of making a zine solely from the images in this book, a free version of Affinity, and my twisted mind. These videos will cover the creation of the zine, and then I am going to get into why (sometimes) I give myself strict constraints when creating something new.

Tiger Wizard

Dungeon Cats at the Ennies Emporium

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.

If you enjoy the Analog Union newsletter, please tell your friends to sign up at AnalogUnion.com.

Until next time!

—JHM

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.

If you enjoy the Analog Union newsletter, please tell your friends to sign up at AnalogUnion.com.

Until next time!

—JHM

In this newsletter

Ham & Egg Publishing

Heartbreak Is Forever: Heartbreak In Stereo’s 25th Anniversary

As much as my spirit may feel like that of a hopeful teenager, and my fashion sense is that of a child who dresses himself, I am 47 years old. 

The reminders don’t often come in the form of cracking knees and back pain, as they do from folks making posts on Instagram that say, “Such and such album is 20 years old today.” Last week, it showed up as a message from an old friend about my 30th High School Reunion. 

Safe to say, I’ve been around for a bit. 

When I look in the mirror today, especially in sunlight, I no longer see “Hambone the Black”, as much as “Hambone the easing towards more Salt than Pepper” with fully white sideburns. But 25 years ago, on a Feria Starry Night, four of my best friends and I drove to Nada Studios in Newberg, New York, and recorded an album called Heartbreak In Stereo. 

Frank Iero, Tim Hagevik, Neil Sabatino, Shaun Simon, and I had a band called Pencey Prep. We had big dreams and an unshakeable work ethic. In the year leading up to the album’s recording, we might have actually practiced more than almost any other local band. At gigs, we were tight to the point of a near-psychic connection. 

Heartbreak was the culmination of that. It’s raw, it’s real, and it’s everything a bunch of late-era kids from New Jersey had in our souls. We left it all on the tape. The album may have sounded a lot different if there had been anybody there from the label to tell us no, but as it was, Pencey Prep had always been an afterthought in their eyes. 

Still, 25 years later, the album is a crystal-clear window into a very specific place and time in our lives, now remastered for your listening pleasure. 

While there were many albums that challenged me, helped me shape my tastes, and, in so many ways, made me feel less alone, Heartbreak In Stereo is the album that changed my life.

A quarter century ago, dear reader, I bet on a long shot. I bet on myself, I bet on my band, and I bet on our shared dream. Sure, it didn’t quite turn out as planned, but it’s the reason I am here today. The amazing friends I’ve made, my grand adventures, and the brilliant woman who chose me as her favorite Pokémon are all because 25 years ago, Pencey Prep shone very brightly, very briefly. 

I’d still take that bet.

Solarian Games

Tabletop Weekly

Tabletop Weekly recently hit our 100th episode, so I thought this would be a good time to encourage you to join us every Sunday. It’s the partners of Solarian, Jayson (me!) and Peter, talking about what’s happened in tabletop gaming each week.

We go live at 9 pm Eastern every Sunday, and the chat is always open.

The show gets released afterward as an audio podcast, and the videos can all be found on the YouTube page – just go to TabletopWeekly.com to subscribe.

This week, we talked about:

• HBG Con – the mini con run by House of Books and Games in northern Connecticut, where I’ll be running a 1970s TV police drama as an RPG

• UK Games Expo 2026 saw tabletop creators push back against AI, as vendors put up “human made” signs, industry professionals spoke out against generative AI on panel discussions, and creators criticized UKGE leadership for lacking clear anti-AI policies.

• Wizards of the Coast is hiring for an AI engineer role, despite pledging not to use generative AI, and is reportedly preparing to put AI in customer-facing features on D&D Beyond.

• A new homebrew tool for D&D lets you use tarot cards to weave together character traits and personality quirks during character creation and even guide you with ideas during your game.

• The Wire meets The Shire in a new RPG called The Merryshire Detective Club, where you can play hobbits who are amateur sleuths in a “cozy crime” mystery game.

We love interacting with the audience during the show, and even have an afterparty on Discord for our Patreon backers. Tabletop Weekly is a great way to check in on what’s happening in gaming every week, so let us be your podcast companions!

Arcane Sword Press

RPG Rediscovery! Returns with KILLER by Steve Jackson Games

I’m writing this as I wait for my return flight from BETWEEN TWO CONS. I’m in Portland while camping out at Dark Future/Black Water. Place rules! And luckily, they have a used copy of Killer!

$20 and it’s yours!

Okay, so back to the game- Killer. This game is kind of cheating because it’s not so much of a traditional RPG; it’s a LARP! Yes, that’s right, I am talking about LARPing. It’s a game where you pretend to be an assassin in your everyday life. The basic premise is that you are a secret assassin and you are assigned a friend to “assassinate,” but you are ALSO being “hunted”. This is a meta game, as in it is actively played while you live your life. So, any moment you see a friend, they might pull a squirt gun on you and complete their objective! 

I actually ran this game years ago, back in 2009, using a website instead of the book. I knew about it as a college campus game, but I organized it around my friends in our hometown. I also had a reward for the last assassin standing to give players a motive. The main element of this game is the amount of paranoia that grows as you keep playing the game. There are designated “save zones” and specific weapons that count to help give some control to the game. But yeah, let’s dive into the “weapons”!

The game encourages creative ways to “kill” your target. I’ve already mentioned squirt guns, but other examples are:

• Dart gun
• A Banana held like a gin
• A Rubber snake left in a bag
• Water balloons
• A pillow dropped from a window to be an anvil
• Hot sauce or salt in a drink as a poison
• Booby traps, like a strip of paper with “bomb” written on it, slipped between the pages of a book
• A flashlight as a “laser” for a sci-fi flare
• Etc. etc

The book also includes scenarios for different goals, including free-for-all, team assassins, etc. My personal favorite scenario is The Agents from 2080, where some players are future assassins trying to alter history.

The book provides a lot of guidance for organizing a game of Killer, along with safety tools and fun roleplaying elements like contracts and death certificates. I was thinking of running a version of this game at the upcoming Under The Dice Fest (badges on sale now!), but I’m not sure I’ll be able to rope in enough folks. We will see!

Even if you don’t plan on organizing a game or Killer, the book is a lot of fun to flip through. There’s a great sense of humor running through it that really captures the charm Steve Jackson Games was known for in the early 1980s. It’s a great read, and honestly, a really novel concept. I don’t know if SJG were the real creators of the game, but they certainly wrote the complete guide for running it! Check it out!

Hardest advert ever.

Next up on RPG Rediscovery- Universe: The Role-playing Game of the Future by SPI

Until then!

Bryan

Nominations are open for the 3rd annual Golden Fez Awards

The Golden Fez Awards are held every year at TotalCon gaming convention in Marlborough, MA. The 3rd annual awards are open to any tabletop RPG published in 2026. You can nominate your own game, or submit one that you just happen to be a fan of.

The Golden Fez is a tribute to Solarian co-founder James Carpio, who passed away in 2024. James loved all sorts of tabletop games, and we’ve crafted the categories to represent the qualities that he loved most in games. 

Categories include:

The Holy Hand Grenade Award

Given for best new game mechanic.

The Pick Up and Play Award

Easiest game to learn.

Honey, I Shrunk the Dice Award

For micro-RPGs that will fit on one page or less.

The Velvet Smooth Award

For best design and production.

The Hack the Planet Award

Presented to the most unexpected idea. Originality in any form, whether it’s rules, setting, design, or anything else.

The Bucket of Blood Award

Best combat rules

The Golden Fez Game of the Year

Game of the Year is given to the one game published this year that we feel best embodies all of the things about gaming that James loved.

Nominations will be open from Tuesday, June 23rd, through Monday, November 20th, 2026. You can suggest one or more categories for your nomination, or let the judges decide. 

Go to GoldenFez.com to nominate your favorite TTRPG or submit your own!

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.

If you enjoy the Analog Union newsletter, please tell your friends to sign up at AnalogUnion.com.

Until next time!

—JHM

In this newsletter

Solarian Games

Nominations are open for the 3rd annual Golden Fez Awards

The Golden Fez Awards are held every year at TotalCon gaming convention in Marlborough, MA. The 3rd annual awards are open to any tabletop RPG published in 2026. You can nominate your own game, or submit one that you just happen to be a fan of.

The Golden Fez is a tribute to Solarian co-founder James Carpio, who passed away in 2024. James loved all sorts of tabletop games, and we’ve crafted the categories to represent the qualities that he loved most in games. 

Categories include:

The Holy Hand Grenade Award

Given for best new game mechanic.

The Pick Up and Play Award

Easiest game to learn.

Honey, I Shrunk the Dice Award

For micro-RPGs that will fit on one page or less.

The Velvet Smooth Award

For best design and production.

The Hack the Planet Award

Presented to the most unexpected idea. Originality in any form, whether it’s rules, setting, design, or anything else.

The Bucket of Blood Award

Best combat rules

The Golden Fez Game of the Year

Game of the Year is given to the one game published this year that we feel best embodies all of the things about gaming that James loved.

Nominations will be open from Tuesday, June 23rd, through Monday, November 20th, 2026. You can suggest one or more categories for your nomination, or let the judges decide. 

Go to GoldenFez.com to nominate your favorite TTRPG or submit your own!

Ham & Egg Publishing

Secret Country Rides Again!

Today is a big day for your ol’ buddy HB! First up, it’s release day for Secret Country’s 4th full-length album, Word To The Wise, from Killing Horse Records. I am really proud of this record. After a two-year recording process–still 12 shy of Chinese Democracy, take that G’n’R!–Word To The Wise feels like a natural progression of a sound that has one foot firmly planted in country and one foot in rock n’ roll. It is available today on all streaming platforms, so please check it out if you will. 

We are Secret Country, and we play Outlaw Rock n’ Roll!

Secondly, and to me, the most important thing, today I am seven years sober!

My life has changed in the most profound ways since I prioritized myself, my mental health, and my well-being. Hell, part of the reason why I am in the hobby at all is that I finally made the choice to live, and to do so without alcohol. 

I’m not one to preach and I also won’t deny I had a hell of a time until I didn’t. But that long weekend I took over two decades definitely went on way too long. For me, I knew I needed to get off the ride about two years before I finally was ready to speak the words. It wasn’t easy, dear reader. Because I know sometimes in life it might feel like we’re stuck, trapped even, but we never really are. There is help if you need it, and no shame in asking for it. I am glad I did. 

Be excellent to yourself and each other. 

-Hammy

Stillfleet Studio

Looking Under The Hood: Designing Games Together

Even though our tiny company focuses on making TTRPGs using a common system, we are firm believers in experimentation. Every time you sit down to write a game—to create a new shared experience at the table—you can approach the tasks involved a little differently, from a new perspective, leading to new results.

With even a small team, differences in styles (of writing, art, mechanical design, emotional goals, etc.) become obvious. Part of the fun of collaboration becomes comparing notes and forging consensus to create final products.

Recently, the Stillfleet Studio held a little symposium to compare some of our own intra-Grit System Game Jam experimentations. We offered sneak-peeks of several summer 2026 zines, games, and game aids. And we talked a lot about cats (ugly, strangely named, magical, existentially cursed).

In addition, we believe in constantly learning from others. The real reason to host a podcast about TTRPG design is, in some ways, to learn from our guests.

This summer, we kicked off a short series about the development and launch of a new Forged-in-the-Dark-ish game by our friends in NYC called Road Warriors in which players are struggling stand-up comics. It’s not a game about telling jokes: it’s a game about being the butt of the joke, and it’s both brutal (your “hit points” are self esteem!) and funny to play in an easy, no-need-to-try way.

Check out our chat with one of the creators (we talk about the Grit System and the Agon System) and our actual play of the game (comedy set at a funeral). You can hear how the game is still evolving in small ways as it heads toward publication.

We’re excited to have a final interview with the whole team and get into the weeds of FitD mechanics (clocks, risk management) and/versus the ancient art of open-mic joke delivery.

ShireCon

North Canaan, CT – September 25th & 26th

ShireCon is cleebrating it’s 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.

If you enjoy the Analog Union newsletter, please tell your friends to sign up at AnalogUnion.com.

Until next time!

—JHM

In this newsletter

James A. Pozenel, Jr., Horse Shark Games

Book Nook

A review of André Norton’s Witch World & Web of the Witch World

By James A. Pozenel, Jr.

Among the many things the OSR movement brought us, it renewed the spotlight on Gary Gygax’s Appendix N. For the uninitiated, Appendix N is a list of books and authors that the creator of D&D cited as influential to the game’s development. Since joining the DCC RPG cult back in 2015, I’ve taken the time to read many of the authors and books in the list. But I repeatedly bounced off one member of the list – André Norton.

Born Alice Mary Norton in 1912, she became a force of nature in the sci-fi fantasy genre, churning out a prodigious number of titles (see Wikipedia’s bibliography here). And therein is part of the problem. Gary Gygax only name-drops André Norton in his Appendix N list with no specific titles.

I’d read that Witch World was a notable series in her corpus of work, but I usually encountered a random book from the series, which has four distinct cycles and several volumes of collected short stories for a total of 33 different books! Those first books of the Estcarp Cycle seemed to elude me on my bookstore visits. Sometime in 2024 or 2025, I finally found a treasure trove and picked up the first 5 books of the series. Then they sat on the TBR pile until the past couple of months.

I’ve finished the first two books in the series, Witch World (1963) & Web of the Witch World (1964), and I can confidently report that they are worth the read for pulp aficionados. Are the plots deep and complex? No. Is the prose particularly noteworthy? Also no. They are, however, easy to read, and Norton moves the story along at a pretty fair pace. I am not going to spoiler too much, but the premise is a modern day soldier and spy needs to get away from all the enemies he’s made and so, per the oft-used trope of books written during this time period and genre (early to mid 20th century pulp), he manages to transport himself to another world with strange customs and of course fantasy sword and sorcery vibes. The perfect getaway!

These well tread tropes of planar travel and a fantasy setting are not why Witch World merits your attention. As the first book, Witch World, winds its way to its climax, we learn the bad guys (called the Kolder) are also from another planet/plane(?) and have a portal into Witch World, and they don’t use magic but technology (sorry, for the straight-up spoiler). Now we have some sci-fi in our fantasy! Wild stuff! At this point, it starts dawning on me why Gary Gygax has included Ms. Norton in his Appendix N.

Web of the Witch World continues the worldbuilding, and we become a little more acquainted with Witch World’s previous pre-historical society. A society that had “magical” powers and fell apart somehow. The survivors from this legendary society become like gods to these fantasy folk. A whole group of isolationists are semi-mutated and passed off as unusually misshapen humans as far as Witch World is concerned. So there is now fertile ground for some post-apocalyptic storytelling in Witch World! Amazing stuff to throw out there in the first ~450 pages of a series that continued being developed into the 21st century.

These layers are all pretty cool from the standpoint of writing and worldbuilding for our games. However, one of the strongest qualities André Norton brings to these books and to their place in our time is characters with real human depth. The protagonist and his eventual partner worry about each other in their private thoughts. For example, he wonders if his adventuring partner still loves him. Another character wrestles with a desire to be free from patriarchal society and just gets on with being a hero despite the odds and danger.

The other three books of Witch World’s Estcarp Cycle might sit on the TBR pile for a bit longer, but I don’t think they will stay there for long.

Night Noon Games
Welcome Night Noon Games to the AU!

The Analog Union is stoked to welcome Michael Putlack of Night Noon Games to the AU!

Michael has been self-publishing RPGs under the Night Noon Games banner since 2021 and has been working full-time in the RPG industry since 2024! His main focus is creating for Shadowdark RPG, including freelance writing and editing for the likes of Roll for Combat, JP Coovert, and Bob World Builder, as well as handling operations, logistics, and strategy for The Arcane Library. 

He also enjoys writing for his own systems and other off-beat stuff! Michael’s accomplishments include a $20,000 kickstarter campaign for his acclaimed Creating & Adapting Monsters for Shadowdark RPG zine, as well as getting cease and desists from both Darrington Press (probably warranted) and Space Camp (most definitely unwarranted).

Michael is absolutely thrilled to join the radical group of people here at Analog Union, and you can check out his latest projects below!

Avenge the White Mare with this new Shadowdark zine!

The first issue of the Attack the Light zine series, this adventure, based on Hungarian folktales, pits adventurers against the Sárkány dragon holed away in his Copper Castle. RPG newcomer Nick Holland is providing all of the hand-carved, abstract figurative relief print art within the zine. This unique style fits in with existing Shadowdark works while still standing on its own. (Be on the lookout for a special edition zine that includes a hand-printed cover by the artist himself!)

Attack the Light 1: Avenge the White Mare launches on Kickstarter on June 14th as part of Kickstarter’s Sidequest initiative, which teams 20 RPG creators together to run simultaneous campaigns for their zines. It’s going to be a hoot!

As an Analog Union subscriber, you can get special access to the Attack the Light preview issue right here! Plus, be on the lookout for a special reward available exclusively to Analog Union subscribers!

Baywatch meets Lovecraft in Nyarlathotep’s Liegemen & the Sea Weed!

It’s 1994, and the lifeguards are keeping watch over the beaches of Southern California. Not only do you need to keep beach-goers safe from dangerous riptides, heavy surf, and errant jet skis, but also from Lovecraftian horrors from the depths! 

A new strain of the devil’s lettuce has hit the streets. This “sea weed” packs an extra kick, and it’s up to the lifeguards to find out who has been bringing it into town before its true effects are revealed under the full moon!

Nyarlathotep’s Liegemen and the Sea Weed is designed for use with R’lyehwatch. HOWEVER, due to the game’s generous third-party license and system reference document, everything you need to play the game is contained within Nyarlathotep’s Liegemen!

The zine is currently on itchfunding through the end of June and is expected to ship out in early August! If you order today, you’ll immediately receive the current, fully-playable PDF version of the zine.

Friends Of The Union

Alisha Garfinkel-Gross, Visual Artist

Meet Alisha Garfinkel-Gross!

Alisha lives in Jersey City, NJ, with her husband and her four cats. When she isn’t personally creating, she works in the advertising and PR industry, leading creative production. Her passions include playing Scrabble, eating Italian food, seeing live music, collecting 80s toys, and watching horror movies. 

Here she is in her own words. 

Photography found me in high school, and I followed that call all the way to the San Francisco Art Institute. But after college, like most people, I was pulled into the fast-moving world of career life. Slowly, almost without noticing, I stopped creating for myself. I sought out healing work at The Bridge to Recovery, and emerging from that experience, the spark returned! In October 2025, I shared my work publicly for the first time in thirteen years.

As a neurodivergent artist embarking on my own mental health journey, what I create comes from a quiet place inside—a place where seeing becomes feeling. We may stand before the same view or carry the same emotions, yet how we experience them is uniquely our own. My work is my translation of those moments: how they move me, how they speak to me, how they live within me.

Ham & Egg Publishing

The World’s Worst Detective – A Novella

Ahoy!

It’s your ol’ buddy Hambone here with a pretty fun update.

Some of you may have heard, or recall me talking about the book I always wanted to write.

It started back in 2015, or whenever the first year Geo and I went to GenCon was, we went to a bunch of writers symposiums and planned on writing books when we got home. Geo wrote the exceptional A Girl Named Doom. I got discouraged and distracted. But I had this idea. A down-on-his-luck detective and the kid who hired him for a milk run that turns into a supernatural snafu. A semi-hard-boiled Cervantes-esque riff on pulp detective novels called The World’s Worst Detective. 

The main character’s name is Terry Toombs, the last name being a nod to Roddy Piper, who died as I took my first swing at the book. The first is because Stan Lee drilled the idea of alliteration into my brain at a formative age. The story takes place in the late 90s, and I have it mostly plotted out in my brain. At the very least, I know the finish, which, according to RL Stien, is where you start.

The prologue and  Chapter 1 are up now, with a new chapter coming every week. It is FREE to read; all you have to do is sign up for the FREE tier on Ham & Egg’s Patreon. It’s a raw look into my writing process, straight from my Google doc to my Patreon. I am pretty proud of it, and I hope you give it a shot. You can check it out at the link below.

Arcane Sword Press

Roleplaying Rediscovery

Roleplaying Rediscovery: “It Came from the Late, Late, Late Show” by Stellar Games

Hello, and welcome to the first installment of my new editorial, Roleplaying Rediscovery, where I find a random, out-of-print RPG, learn it, and tell you all about my takeaway from it! I’ll have a few sections to help give this some structure.

1. A General Overview

2. A mechanic that stood out to me

3. If I would play it, run it, or skip it

Let’s get started with “It Came From the Late, Late, Late Show!”

This is a game I bought on a whim after I saw it listed on eBay. I knew nothing about it when I purchased it (along with two expansions in a lot), and I never heard of Stellar Games. I was drawn to the fun drippy ooze font associated with kitschy horror magazines, comics, and movies. But also that title AND the illustration of two zombies watching TV and eating popcorn in a simple but charming black & white illustration by Bradley K. McDevitt, who also did interior art.

What’s it about? The game is framed around two things: players make up an actor, and the GM is a Film director who tells the story, BUT the actors then play a role in the film being directed. So the idea is you are playing in a pulp horror film where insane stuff happens, and your character (the actor) plays out their role to fit the vibe. So it’s a horror game, BUT the players can break the fourth wall and their film character to interact with the director as the actor, asking questions or spending their FAME to change what the director determined for their character. Thai is actually a very fun mechanic, and I really don’t think I’m doing it justice until I describe the FAME stat or how the game works mechanically.

FAME is essentially like and XP pool where the higher your fame, the more famous you are so you can burn it to influence the director if you don’t like one of their calls or to even have all of the players pool their fame to spend it to suddenly cut to a new scene if something is going awry, as if the film reel was cut then spliced into a new part of the film. The only way you gain XP is by playing into the film’s tropes and being really overt with it- the dumber and more typical you lean into the film and your actor’s role, the more fame you earn. So it rewards you for being risk-taking, but you don’t want to accidentally kill off your character! What an Idea! The only other game I can think of that leans into this dual character dynamic is the Monty Python RPG, but that’s still its own flavor of a similar concept.

However, I really wish the rest of the game’s mechanics lived up to this premise. It’s a d100 game where you roll under your stat or skill to succeed. It feels directly inspired by Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying system. And much like that and other d100 systems, there are a lot of skills, TOO MANY skills! 14 “combat” talents and 68 “other” talents. They range from Cheerleading to Spaceships. This is a reflection of the actor’s skillset, which can be used in clever ways, I guess? But also- how does an actor have talent in spaceships? It’s up to the actor to make it work, then make it make sense while acting in a movie. Some skills make sense, for example: Screaming! Now, that’s a skill for a horror actor! There is also parachuting if you want your actor to do their own stunts. But Animal Husbandry? What about “Mental Map”? Or Nuclear Physics??? Don’t worry, they added Occult Knowledge just in case you end up running a Call of Cthulhu campaign between films (but that’s not the game, see below!). The combat talents are the same type of hyper-specific skills (rifle, sword, spear, throwing, etc.), but Artillery or “Strategic Weapons” gets lost on me. Remember- this is meant to be reflective of the actor’s personal talents, which they would demonstrate in whatever movie the director is directing. I WILL say the combat talent of Power Tools definitely fits the vibe.

You determine your skills by rolling a d10 twenty times and applying the result to any of those 82 talents. Twenty!!! So you can have a 3 in Geology and a 9 in Computers, but a 2 in Bow, etc., so wacky! I guess the idea is to make your ideal character actor- But it would make more sense if you played your actor outside of the film for roleplaying AS a B-movie actor; but that’s not this game’s focus! So these skills are lost on me. It’d make more sense to have each player make up a skill they could bring to their character’s actor’s skillset to make them more “hireable,” or have a metagame outside the film that explored this aspect, instead of picking twenty of the 82 presented.

This game IS cool though- the premise rules, the use of FAME as both XP and as a narrative currency is really fun. The mechanics are meh, but I’m also really not into d100-based systems, but it makes sense. This game feels built for a fun one-shot, but you could also easily build a campaign around different movies and deal with different genres by different directors.

So would I play it? Absolutely! I think you need the right group, though! If you play with strangers at a con and one of the players is too annoying or is trying to be funny, I can see it killing the game. This is easily why Monty Python requires players to play as straight as possible while absurd stuff happens to them. I would absolutely run this as well. It seems like character creation isn’t intensive at all (roll 4d10s for each stat and 1d10 for twenty different talents), and then you choose your props from the prop department before the film starts shooting. The expansion rules add other genres like sci-fi and martial arts films as a premise, which I can see being fun for the right group. If you like Roger Corman films or straight-to-video shock schlock,  I definitely recommend tracking down a copy. Unfortunately, there is no official way to find this in PDF, and it’s been long out of print, so eBay is your best bet.

Next time on Roleplaying Rediscovery: KILLER by Steve Jackson Games!

Until then!

• Bryan

Under The Dice Fest 2026

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!

ShireCon

North Canaan, CT – September 25th & 26th

ShireCon is cleebrating it’s 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.

If you enjoy the Analog Union newsletter, please tell your friends to sign up at AnalogUnion.com.

Until next time!

—JHM

In this newsletter

Joey Royale, Get Haunted Industries

Reach for the stars with Flames of Orion

I was never a skirmish game guy. First, I didn’t have much exposure to the scene. Second, I was intimidated by the incredible level of detail hobbyists poured into their miniatures—not to mention what I assumed was a price tag far beyond my budget.

Then I attended Under the Dice Fest and met the Hive Scum crew. Everything changed.

Now my basement workbench is stacked with Speedpaints and Rust-Oleum cans. I’m chopping up bits and kitbashing monstrosities like it’s my full-time job. Writing this article was nearly impossible because most of my fingers are currently fused together with super glue. The hobby is downright addictive, opening the door to an entirely new world of creativity and visual storytelling.

But enough about me.

This is about Flames of Orion, a game created by Stephen Hupfer—a genuinely great guy and a constant source of inspiration. Steve, along with Gage and Terry, make up the excellent Hive Scum podcast while putting out the Under the Dice zine and the annual Under the Dice convention (https://underthedice.com/utdfest/).

Flames of Orion grabbed me immediately because I felt comfortable with the rules after about ten minutes of reading. I’ve explored a few other skirmish games, but the crunch can get overwhelming. Before long, I’m staring at a wall of special rules and considering a nap. Flames of Orion is refreshingly approachable. It’s practically pick-up-and-play, which is perfect for a knucklehead like me.

In Flames of Orion, players command a squad of four mechs battling up to three opposing squads on a compact 2′ x 2′ battlefield filled with terrain. The rulebook strikes a wonderful balance between lore, rules, optional systems, missions, and artwork.

And speaking of the artwork—Holy Cow! Every illustration oozes with personality and action. I really appreciate each piece of art containing a caption with the artist’s name. Very classy touch.

The center of the book features full-color spreads showcasing beautifully painted, kitbashed mechs that practically beg you to start building your own. There are also photos of real-life space hunks enjoying the game, which is obviously an essential component of any great tabletop experience.

As the man himself, Steve says, “EXPLOSIVE & DESTRUCTIVE fun!!”