This is the Analog Union newsletter for October 13th, 2026. Keep in mind that if you’re reading this in the distant future, some timely information may be out of date. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every week!
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Author: admin
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Dark Guide Tony’s Trash Can, Games at Under the Dice Fest, The Game Design Grind
Your friendly neighborhood TTRPG newsletter. -
Read Playtest Material Issue 1, Orb Tyrants on Kickstarter, Venturing Outside the Game Store
This is the Analog Union newsletter for October 6th, 2026. Keep in mind that if you’re reading this in the distant future, some timely information may be out of date. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every week!
Your friendly neighborhood TTRPG newsletter. 
October 6th, 2026
In this newsletter
Playtest Material | Orb Tyrants
Venturing Outside the Game Store
Friend of the Union – Laurie O’Connel
Read Playtest Material Issue 1
The desire to do something that everyone wants is sometimes all-powerful.
After a while designing RPGs, it seemed like every convention I went to had an extremely interesting critical discussion of this or that topic in RPGs, followed by: “but if only there were somewhere to discuss this!”
The need for more critical infrastructure in our scene has long been deeply apparent.
That isn’t to say that there aren’t some excellent role-playing game magazines. It’s just that there aren’t enough, particularly for an industry full of writers and brimming with opinions, undergoing rapid expansion and change.
And so Playtest Material was born.
The idea of Playtest Material is actually relatively simple. Every quarter, the magazine brings on board a new guest editor to curate in-depth articles, reviews, essays, and experimental writing around a certain theme. There is no marketing (except what little might come just from a game being spoken about), and reviews are encouraged away from good/bad ratings and towards explorations of what may be interesting, innovative, or culturally relevant about a particular work. The magazine pays for itself (in theory) through a print subscription and is otherwise entirely open access.
Our first issue, released on October 1 and guest-edited by David Blandy, invited articles taking comparative approaches between RPGs and other forms of media. Issue One featured everything from long articles comparing different theatrical and film sensibilities with role-playing, to experimental pieces about collaged games. It’s quite difficult to summarise in a paragraph, so the best place to read these articles is online at playtestmaterial.org. You can read the editorial for the first issue here.
Before Issue One came out, we launched a subscription drive. This was a resounding success, taking us from ten subscribers to 89. Ideally, we'd like to grow our subscription base further, as it is an important factor in our sustainability.
Read Issue One in full We are open for pitches for
Issue Two: Histories Super Savage Systems
Orb Tyrants on Kickstarter It’s Orbin Time!
Create a hideous Orb Tyrant, command its minions, devour wandering heroes, and graft the stolen organs of your rivals onto your own ever-mutating body.
Orb Tyrants is a miniature-agnostic skirmish game for 1–4 players. Each player creates a randomly generated floating horror, gathers four minions, and enters the deepest level of an ancient dungeon to destroy their rivals.
Build, or randomly roll, your Tyrant from grotesque bodies, armored hides, slime-dripping mouths, unnatural central eyes, twitching eye stalks, horrible mutations, and crippling weaknesses. Devour wandering Heroes to steal their powers. Tear out the organs from injured rivals and graft the useful pieces onto your own ever-mutating body.
No official miniatures are required. Build your own Orb Tyrant!
Miniature-agnostic battles on a 2′ × 2′ battlefield
Random Tyrant creation
Solo, one-off and campaign play
Automated Heroes and roaming dungeon threats
Minion hordes, organ harvesting, and permanent grafts
Roll through eight quick steps to create a completely unpredictable floating horror. Your Body Type establishes its BRUTE, DRIFT, GAZE, and GUTS, while its Mouth, Hide, Mutation, Central Eye, and five Eye Stalks determine what it can do on the battlefield. Finally, every Tyrant receives one Horrible Weakness.
Instead of building a perfectly optimized army, you are handed one grotesque Eye Tyrant with one goal: Dungeon Supremacy! Keep your Tyrant through a campaign and watch it become even stranger as it suffers injuries, devours Heroes, and grafts stolen organs onto its ever-mutating body.
Back Orb Tyrants on Kickstarter! 
Alewood Games
Venturing Outside the Game Store
Living every day as one of society’s freaky folk means I find much joy and comfort in the spooky season. It’s a time when quieter corners of the creative community reach out, gather after the sun goes down, and celebrate their general weirdness together. I recently attended one of those quiet corner events… it was brilliant and not for the reason you may think.
On October 1st, I strolled into the industrial-lit Peabody Heights Brewery backrooms surrounded by huge fermentors, cold concrete floors, and gaming tables covered in black cloth. The processing tanks were muffled by the cackling laughter of players and their GMs. It was a small but passionate gathering of the Baltimore gaming community.
Justin Sirois from Severed Books organized a casual meeting of me, John deCampos from Terrible Games, and Brandon Welch to GM our spooky games for anyone available to hang out for 3 hours on a Thursday night. Nothing to sell. Just good gaming and good vibes. About 11 other people showed up, eventually dividing into 3 tables and playing games for the evening. Most of my scheduled players canceled at the last minute, but I showed up anyway and was lucky enough to reel in 2 psychopomps for a macabre session of A Most Brilliant Spark.
The atmosphere was lively. Every once in a while, someone would get up, go to the bar, and ask the room if they could grab anyone else a drink. Most of the evening's soundscape was filled with character dialogue, dice rolling, and the hum of a half dozen fermenting vats. I’d strike up a random conversation with a non-gaming patron at the brewery on my way to the bar, often answering their questions about what we were doing in the back and what a roleplaying game is. It’s conversations like these that make organized gaming at a public venue so fascinating to me.
I’ve attended pretty much every game event Justin has organized at Peabody Heights Brewery since 2024. Some had explosive attendance while others were a little more cozy, but they were all hits with not a single miss. I say this because our little brewery game night reminded me that when it comes to building community, persistence matters more than results. Justin continues to host TTRPG events year-round, featuring local game designers at a venue that’s not a game store. As time rolls by, I notice more people picking up roleplaying games as a new hobby simply because they’ve stumbled upon one of these events. The momentum is slow but surely steady.
Justin said this kind of Halloween game night was a small test for a bigger version planned for next year. While he referred to that night as a single event with room for improvement, I couldn't help but see it as another community pillar in place to hold up a larger foundation he began building years earlier. At least four TTRPG events are now held annually at Peabody Heights Brewery, our community’s new 3rd space for gaming. If game store venues are our HQs, then everywhere else can be the front lines where we expand interest in our favorite hobby.
The persistent act of trying can make great impacts down the line, but those impacts can be hard to see while you’re in the thick of it. As a self-publisher who relies on crowdfunding to propel my business forward, I often fall into the anticipatory stress of concocting the “perfect event,” sometimes reluctant to move forward for fear of failure. Now, I see that persistence is the antithesis of failure. We are in a community-based industry, so the phrase “go big or go home” is absolute bullshit. We just need to keep going. Every organized game night, every funding event, every new release is another building block that connects people together. We are the quiet corner that reaches out so the weirdos can gather after the sun goes down.
If you’re in the Baltimore area, another free, unconventional game night is happening at Animal Boy sandwich shop and bar on October 12th, 6 pm- 9 pm: Horror RPG Nite, hosted by Brandon Welch and Mortua Manu.
For more Severed Books
hosted eventsHorror Night @ Animal Boy 
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.
Get Tickets Your editor this week has been John "Hambone" McGuire from Ham & Egg Publishing.
Keep emailing us at hello@analogunion.com to tell us 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
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What Dark Knocking is LIVE!
This is the Analog Union newsletter for September 29th, 2026. Keep in mind that if you’re reading this in the distant future, some timely information may be out of date. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every week!
Your friendly neighborhood TTRPG newsletter. September 29th, 2026
In this newsletter
What Dark Knocking Comes in the Still of the Night
Vampyre | Dark Guide Tony's Trash Can
Ham & Egg Publishing
What Dark Knocking is LIVE!
What Dark Knocking in the Still of the Night is LIVE on Kickstarter.
A three-episode adventure series for one GR and 2 to 6 players. Each book runs the complete adventure on the brand new 321RPG Fantasy ruleset. Flip it over, and the whole thing runs in 5E, written for 5E, not converted to it. No conversion math. No second purchase. Pick a side at the table and go.
3 books. 2 systems. 1 epic adventure.
Check out this video from Wittle Goblin to learn more!
We're stoked to finally do a fantasy adventure for 321RPG and bring that same energy and vibe to 5E. We know a lot of folks are still rippin' it, and we want to make sure everybody is invited to the party!
We've got dice and minis and will be rocking on Kickstarter until Halloween, so be sure to check out the campaign. We've even got early-bird rewards with a discount for the first 48 hours only! So swing by!
Back What Dark Knocking! Arcane Sword Press
Vampyre: The Game Of The Hunt For Dracula by TSR Hobbies, INC Long ago, before I was born, a market of games called microgames existed. These were small board games or war games that fit in a case you could easily transport to a friend's house or play at lunch at school. I believe the most notable publisher in this market was Metagaming Concepts, which first released the legendary Ogre by Steve Jackson. The Metagaming Concepts microgames were packaged in a ziplock bag that contained everything you needed to play a (relatively) simple war game. A few years later, Steve Jackson Games continued this by releasing their own games in a hard plastic slim case called a “pocket box” that could easily fit in a schoolbag, including games like Car Wars and Kung-fu 2100. A majority of microgames used similar components- that being chits as game pieces and tokens, and the map/board which folded up easily to the small size of the rulebook.
Metagaming Concepts and SJG weren't the only publishers, because TSR came along in 1980/81, trying to corner the microgame market with their own series of games. In my opinion, TSR microgames stand out more than the others because they have that early TSR charm, with art from legends like Erol Otus, Jim Roslof, Jeff Dee, Bill Willingham, Dave LaForce, and more, which already makes them more eye-catching than their contemporaries. Plus, their games generally have a more fun appeal for my taste! And since I'm a bit of an idiot, their games also seem the least complex to learn and teach! I have a number of the TSR games, but the one I want to focus on today is VAMPYRE!
Look at that Erol Otus cover!
Vampyre is a straightforward game where players hunt down Dracula's coffins in six different locations on the hex map. Each of these six large hex locations has a stack of three random chits stacked upside down. When a player lands there, they reveal the chit. If it's a coffin, then it's destroyed. The first player to destroy three coffins wins. However, Dracula's dark forces will try to inhibit progress along the way, and players can become “nosferatus” or werewolves if bitten, creating an emerging asymmetrical gameplay where monster players try to hunt vampire-hunter players with limited actions.
Movement: roll a d6 to move across a hex map, with terrain changing your max distance. You can move the full distance on a road, but have limited movement up to 3 in clear terrain, up to 2 in forest heaves, and only 1 through the mountains.
Encounters: Each day, players roll 2d6 to see if an encounter happens, then check the encounter table based on the terrain they finished in. This can cause monsters to appear or the occasional strange occurrence that can provide vampire-slaying tools. Areas highlighted in orange are under Dracula's dark influence and have riskier encounters!
Monsters: Trying to stop the vampire-hunters means facing creatures under Dracula's command, such as gargoyles, werewolves, ghosts, vampiric brides, animals, humans, and even Dracula himself!
Equipment: Players can find different items to provide them with a bonus in combat, such as silver bullets, a silver crucifix, a knife, a gun, a vial of holy water, and “The Host”
Combat: If an encounter occurs, the player rolls on a combat matrix for either melee combat (for humans and animals) or supernatural combat for the spooky, scary monsters.
The Map: Look at this thing! It's like a map from a lost Basic D&D module. I really love the two-tone color on the black-and-white map. It really helps with the readability and gives it a certain atmosphere, perfect for a spooky game to play around Halloween.
One thing I feel is missing from modern games is the idea of the “Advanced Game,” a concept where, once you learn the base rules, you get additional gameplay options to expand the game's playability. I'm sure there are some out there, but I love the idea of an intro game to get the feel for something, then an advanced version for those looking for more replayability and depth. This was pretty common back then with chit-and-hex games and even with roleplaying games (Basic D&D vs AD&D).
Vampyre also included an advanced game where, once a player destroys three coffins, you flip the hex map over to a simplified dungeon map of Dracula's castle to finally stake him! For those familiar with the board game Dungeon, this is very similar in play.
Players have to hunt in each room while still encountering monsters to find Dracula's coffin, with each room containing a chit. This version also has an hourly time-passing clock, and each player advances it. Once midnight comes, the whole dungeon is restocked with monster chits. The more time players spend looking, the higher the chance they'll be turned into vampires themselves, leading them to hunt the human players!
This game is very fun and easy to play. The TSR minigames feel like they were designed to pass the time while you wait for the rest of your D&D group to show up, since this game takes about 30-45 minutes to play. Thematically, I absolutely love it. The idea of using plot details from Dracula, like the false coffins to throw off the people looking for him, is a great setup for a game. Later, in 1987, Games Workshop released a more in-depth game with a similar theme called The Fury of Dracula, and a new version is coming out soon that I'm excited to check out!
Microgames are extremely cool in concept. Designed as a budget game hanging on a peg, they pack a lot of personality. I’d argue more so than many board games I've seen emerge from the crowdsourcing world or major publishers. I find myself becoming less and less interested in extremely sleekly presented board games with millions of custom pieces that demand a full day's commitment to learn, only to be played once and then never again. Microgames are such a novel and cool concept, and I honestly think they should make a comeback. I really love the chit-and-hex map idea of play as flat components that can fit in a snack bag or flat plastic case, produced and sold cheaply. They take up minimal shelf space, and you can leave them in your bag for a pick-up game anytime, anywhere. Simple but fun rules, plus great themes and concepts, can really carry a game; I'd argue more so than more demanding games. Looking at other microgames from MicroGaming Concepts, SJG, TSR, and Task Force Games, there is a lot to draw inspiration from, and I've seen growing interest in these games, especially from folks who are into solo gaming. I find myself thinking about my adventures in Transylvania hunting the coffins more than I have with most board games. Bring back the Microgame!
Until next time!
Bryan
Mystic Punks
Dark Guide Tony's Trash CanOh man, another interruption from yer regularly scheduled trash programming!
This weekend, some rad Analog Union members and I will be at Under the Dice Fest in Enfield, CT. The air will be crisp, the foliage will be Kincaide-esque, the apples will be ripe for pickin’, and many heads will roll during the New England Mordheim Open.
My Reiklander Mercenary warband, The Rotted Widows, all grim souls who lost their significant others to followers of Nurgle, will not be playing, i.e., dying heinous deaths and/or losing multiple limbs.
BUT! OH MAN! Did Dark Guide Jay whip up some wargame insanity with just the right amount of bootleg to maybe (fingers crossed) get a cease-and-desist from corpo-jerks? Uh, yea! The Mystic Stryke Force zine debuts at UTD in a few days, with a kick-ass cover by Graham Barey!
Equal parts X-Force (Liefeld era only, plz), grimdank, and oldhammer, the skirmish game is all about yer Punks being judge, jury, and executioner, righting wrongs in the most effed up timeline. So, swing by and say hey if ya wanna snag a copy.
Dark Guide Tony
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!
Learn More 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.
Get Tickets Your editor this week has been John "Hambone" McGuire from Ham & Egg Publishing.
Keep emailing us at hello@analogunion.com to tell us 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
-
Alien buildings. Ordinary people. Meet ULTRADELVE.
This is the Analog Union newsletter for September 22nd, 2026. Keep in mind that if you’re reading this in the distant future, some timely information may be out of date. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every week!
Your friendly neighborhood TTRPG newsletter. September 22nd, 2026
In this newsletter
ULTRADELVE | Myco//Drift | Duck And Crow join the AU
Ham & Egg Re-launch | Moar Blood
Stillfleet Studio
Alien buildings. Ordinary people. Meet ULTRADELVE.
A little background: I created the Grit System for Stillfleet with science fiction and workers in mind. Many of us have boring day jobs and play TTRPGs to imagine ourselves in more interesting roles, heroic or anti-heroic. But what if we were knights or space marines? We’d have all sorts of labor, political, and economic struggles to deal with. I quickly found that players get the dark humor and the stakes right away.
Stillfleet is set millions of years in the future, however. While working on Danse Macabre: Medieval Horror Roleplaying, guest writer Konstantine Paradias pitched us on a near-future sci-fi game using the Grit System: a highly topical gig-economy Stillfleet prequel focused on exploring alien Structures (capital S) in a contemporary world. Less than a year later, our buddies at Plus One Experience have written, edited, illustrated, and picked up the game. Today, I’m introducing the resulting mayhem—ULTRADELVE—for Analog Union.
Start Your Delve Set after a mysterious alien visitation event called the Haze, ULTRADELVE is about ordinary people becoming Delvers: urban explorers, fameshark streamers, amateur scientists, and conspiracy theorists diving up into the titanic living Structures—created and then abandoned moments later by the Makers—that now pollute every city on Earth. Why did the Makers come? Why did they leave? Why did they leave behind dangerous technoruins full of wondrous Doodads? That’s for your table to try to find out!
Inspired by Roadside Picnic/Stalker/Annihilation and BLAME!, ULTRADELVE was written by Konstantine Paradias, who has worked as a senior narrative designer on a ton of awesome video games including Lords of the Fallen 2, Scrap Mechanic: Drilling Thunder, Raft: The Final Chapter, Wolcen 2, TankRat, and others. I edited the book. Studio artist Anthony Grasso has created all the visuals, delivering a fantastic, graphic-novel-worthy world of gig workers fused with alien Doodads, trespassing beyond the caution tape of the thin-stretched Structure Containment Initiative… (Seriously, go look at Tony’s art!)
It’s a beautiful short book, and we’re thrilled that Plus One Exp is bringing it to BackerKit this November.
Curious? Watch an interview with the designer about sci-fi games 
Watch Now A new member joins the AU!
Welcome, Duck and Crow Press!
Duck and Crow Press has slid into the Analog Union. Now the RUCKUS will come from inside the house as we expand our particular brand of troublemaking and share it with this, a more perfect union.
I’m Duck (aka Dale Houston), and I founded Duck and Crow Press because I wanted to make more games and get them out there in the world. I have been writing my own stuff for decades and decided to finally go for it. In 2025, I took a challenge, turned it into an opportunity, and jumped in feet first. Now we publish our own stuff and others'!
I’m all about creating stuff that is entirely human-made (no AI in anything in any capacity), supports small business (my printer is a local small business near me), and helps grow the community (which is why most of our stuff is system agnostic).
I make games with plenty of blood and guts (especially the Bloodbath Dungeon tournament adventures), but have also been trying new things with the works of 2084 and games like Little Stinkers and Factory Kids. The newest is a solo journaling game The Last Shoppe. It is a card-driven game about reminiscing about the past and building a community through interaction, all while running your quirky shoppe in a small village on the edge of the wilderness. The Backerkit goes live on October 15th (just in time for ArcaneCon)!
Some of my other projects in the works:- Rise Up: the 3rd in our tri-fold games series about working together against oppression.
- Bloodbath Dungeon 03: The Caliginous Cenotaph of Cemlyn (launching Feb 2027).
- BDA: Bloodbath Dungeon Adventures (our house system, replacing “BXDH”).
- Desert Cheese Adventure: created from an improv session with kids.
- Dungeon of the Weeping Queen: an adventure built around art from Better Legends.
- Children of the Goaled Dragon: a new adventure in the Undying Expanse campaign.
- PROPAGATION: an anti-AI art project, currently with 25 artists!
Be the RUCKUS you’d like to see in the world,
Support the Arts, local small businesses, and your local library.
–Duck
The Last Shoppe Pre-launch Friends of the Union
Josh Yoder, Crimson Adder Games
Josh (Crimson Adder) is an RPG, monster movie, comic book, and music fiend. With a strong love of midnight movies and monstrous games, his games tend to bring a slime-soaked good time.
Next, this zine fiend is publishing his own system.
The Drift system is rules-lite and narrative-first. There is no HP or AC; instead, Myco//Drift has you spend your own stat points for damage and to fuel your abilities, showing the toll battles take as they rage on. The first world he is unleashing that uses the Drift System is Myco//Drift!
Myco//Drift is an Existential horror action RPG you can play co-op or solo, putting you in the mind of a former child soldier in a lost war against Kaiju-sized mutated insects that can manifest a giant fungal bio-mech. The same spores that mutated the insect were used on you to let you wield your suit. You are connected to the bugs, the ghosts of your dead teammates, and otherworldly voices from beyond through the Myco//Drift.
Myco//Drift has the pilot going on one last mission. As you hexcrawl through the fungal wastes, uncovering mysteries, battling giant bugs, and fighting off mutated cultists.
If you're interested in getting into the action, the already funded game is still accepting funding. The Quickstart, actual play, and character /solo aid generator are all posted on the Gamefound page.
Myco//Drift on Gamefound Check Out Crimson Adder Games Ham & Egg Publishing
Patreon Re-launch Coming October 1st!
Ahoy!
Hambone here, stepping away from the grind of promoting our upcoming Kickstarter for What Dark Knocking Comes in the Still of the Night to make a pretty fun announcement.
Ham & Egg's Patreon is getting a refresh on October 1st!
We're pretty stoked about it. We put a lot of thought into what would make it worthwhile for our Patrons and for us to commit the time to, and I think we landed somewhere cool.
Firstly, it's still FREE (for the most part). The free tier gets you updates on and some BTS on the projects, plus Geo's monthly blog, weekly-ish chapters of my novella, The World's Worst Detective, game supplements, Etsy discounts, and more.
The "and more" for the launch is pretty cool. If you're already signed up, or sign up at the Free or paid ($3) tiers between now and November 1st, you'll also get a full-length PDF adventure for Zombie Braineaters! Night of the Ghouls for FREE.The $3 tier also gets you a PDF copy of The Devil in New Jersey.
We'll have more info on Patreon, and to find out what that is, why not click the link below? It's FREE!Join our Patreon! 
What Dark Knocking adventure 2 cover reveal! Art by Zack Giallongo
While we're on the subject of things you should totally sign up for, our get notified page for What Dark Knocking Comes in the Still of the Night has some cool stuff for you to check out.
It also has a link to enter a giveaway for our Dual20 Little Green Rosetta: Galaxy Edition!
I've got the dice in hand from Bellum Creations, and they look superb and roll nicely, too. We're giving away 5 dice on September 29, so why not sign up?
Sign Up! Solarian Games
Should we make custom dice for Moar Blood? (POLL)
Moar Blood is the miniatures skirmish game that we’re launching on Kickstarter in late October. Moar Blood has a simple combat system. You roll a handful of dice, and you need enough successes in the die pool to hit and do damage. The cool thing is, you can use any dice you want. Even numbers are successes, and odd numbers are failures. So you could literally grab a handful of different dice and roll them; all you care about is odds and evens.
To make it more fun, Peter designed a custom die with pips for success and a blank face for failures.
We've been using these dice to play Moar Blood for a while now. They're 3D-printed resin, which is great for prototyping, but they don't really have the heft that "real" dice will need if we're going to sell them as an accessory for the game.
I've been trying to figure out the best way to get them made. Because they're not a standard shape, we can't just go to any dice maker and say, "Give us a couple thousand dice." They have to make a custom injection mold, which they'll use to cast the dice.
The trouble is, unless you're making tens of thousands of dice, the mold cost can be prohibitive. We're talking about $2,500 just to make a mold for one shape.
After getting quotes from multiple factories in the US and China, we've decided we're going to do an experiment and see if we can make them ourselves.
On a smaller scale, many artisan dice makers design and cast their own dice in batches of a few hundred at a time. There are lots of tutorials to follow, and if we can do it, we can keep the dice cost low enough that we don't have to charge some crazy number like forty bucks for ten dice.
So that's our task next week. We're going to buy the equipment we need to make our own dice and do some tests. Will it work? Maybe! Will it fail? Also maybe!
It's entirely possible that we'll get to a point where we say that custom dice are just too ambitious for this first version of Moar Blood, and we keep the rules that say "use any dice; evens are good, and odds are bad."
Or we might pull this off, learn how to make custom dice, and offer these sweet Razer dice as an optional campaign reward.
What do you think? Should we offer custom dice if we can figure out how to cast them ourselves? Vote in the poll (button below) and let us know what you think.
Vote In The Poll Here! 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
Get Tickets 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!
Learn More 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.
Get Tickets Your editor this week has been John "Hambone" McGuire from Ham & Egg Publishing.
Keep emailing us at hello@analogunion.com to tell us 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
-
What it takes to get a game like Moar Blood into production
This is the Analog Union newsletter for September 15th, 2026. Keep in mind that if you’re reading this in the distant future, some timely information may be out of date. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every week!
Your friendly neighborhood RPG newsletter. September 15th, 2026
In this newsletter
Moar Blood | Mystic Punks | The Highest Level of All
Solarian Games
What it takes to get a game like Moar Blood into production
Moar Blood is the miniatures skirmish game that we’re launching on Kickstarter in late October. We’ve been iterating and playtesting for a long time, and now it’s finally coming to life. I thought it would be fun to bring you along for the ride as we do all the nitty-gritty that comes after the game design and writing, when it’s time to actually make something people can buy.
This is the first time we’ve made a miniatures game. What I know best is print publishing. I started my career in print, and our first products as a game company were Gygax Magazine and Top Secret, a TTRPG. I know how to make a box set, source components, and put it all together, but miniatures games take it to another level, with terrain, little figures, and all that stuff.
I’ve learned through experience that it’s best to start small and keep things simple your first time out. There are lots of huge six- and seven-figure campaigns for minis games, but that’s also a big risk. So we decided to start by just focusing on the rules. You can play Moar Blood with nothing but a rulebook, if you want. Our earliest playtests were literally wood cubes for characters and a big sheet of paper with a maze drawn in Sharpie.
As we iterated on Moar Blood, it grew into a more visually rich experience. Peter designed walls and platforms in a CAD program and printed them on his resin 3D printer. He printed minis, made great-looking floor tiles and cards, and even designed a “two-sided” die for Moar Blood’s game engine, Razer.
We decided to make our Kickstarter campaign modular, like the game. The cheapest level will literally just be a PDF of the rules, and the basic physical reward level will be a hardcover copy of the rulebook. From there, we’ll let people add the parts they want, up to a deluxe level with everything.
Both Peter and I believe the best way to run a Kickstarter campaign is to have everything 100% complete before the campaign starts, so that all we have to do is pay the factory to get going. That means we have to have everything designed and sourced in advance. We’ll post updates on the pre-launch page so you can see exactly what goes into that.
For the book, we’re going with the same company that printed the Top Secret Tradecraft Manual. They’re in Minnesota. I love their quality, and they’re great people to deal with. Printing domestically saves time, money, and a lot of hassle with importers, time zones, communications, and all that.
The arena floor will be a cloth mat, printed on both sides. I’m getting quotes from different manufacturers, including one who does cloth mats for souvenir shops and a company that normally makes bandanas.
We’re probably going to do the terrain as 3D-printed resin, but not print it ourselves. There would simply be too much to make, and the quality of a printer one person can afford at home is not the same as what you can get by going to a professional manufacturer who can print resin in large amounts that’s just as strong and detailed as what you could get with traditional molds.
The minis might be resin as well. When you’re making hundreds instead of thousands, mold costs for casting minis can drive the total price sky-high. But I’ve also been getting quotes from small businesses that do white metal casting, and we’ll see if that becomes possible!
We want a bloodthirsty audience for the arena. Our friend Ilya, a terrain creator, hooked us up with an artist who’s drawing some killer crowd scenes, and I’m planning the material to print them on. Right now, it looks like we’ll design the arena walls with slots on top where the crowd scenes can be inserted.
And finally there’s the dice! Razer lets you use any dice you want. It’s a die pool system where you count up successes and failures based on whether each roll is odd or even. As I mentioned, Peter has designed a cool new shape with four sides, two that are blank and two that have a pip, effectively a “d2” that can be considered odd/even.
To make the dice, we need a manufacturer who can cast a whole new shape. In my opinion, 3D printing doesn’t work for dice because they need the heft and balance you get from pouring into a mold. We’re sourcing those from several places, and it’s a learning curve. If we can make it work, we will; otherwise, we’ll do the campaign without custom dice, since they’re cool but not essential.
Once we have everything sourced, we’ll decide which item combinations to offer. Right now, we're thinking of making it as modular as possible and not trying to do a custom box, but packing it in standard mailer boxes so we don’t have to make it an all-or-nothing proposition. I think it’s good that you can choose which parts you want.
Sourcing is fun as heck, I think. I really dig working with different vendors, meeting new people, learning how it all works. But it is REALLY time-intensive, too. Designing games is incredibly fun and rewarding, but I think most people never think about how much goes into figuring out how to actually get it produced when the time comes. So here we go on our campaign of transparency to show you how the stew gets made!
Follow us on Kickstarter for updates as we figure it all out!
Follow Moar Blood Updates Here Dark Guide Tony's Trash Can
Broadcast Interruption!
Broadcast interruption!
Something different this time than yer regular trash programming.
Fulfillment is nigh for the Mystic Punks Kickstarter, and the Core Rulebook, among the other KS-related goodies, looks beautiful. Everyone at Exalted Funeral waits for the final contents to hit their warehouse before shipping out to all you awesome, super-patient backers.
For those of you who don’t know, Mystic Punks started as a solo RPG before branching off into the weirdness that it is today. Dark Guide Jay and I have updated those 1-player rules in the new book, and for a long while I wanted to play and share a solo campaign. Let’s (sorta) start that here!
I got my setup all ready.
Working on completing one of many custom character sheets for my current Punk, Burbera Asheye. I’m sure she is gonna die, but that’s half the fun of MP. Risk/reward and all that stuff, right? 
Some crazy influences that I’ll try to weave into the campaign.
And last, but certainly not least, my temperamental companion Katsu, who very soon will drape themselves over the computer that I type this on.
Burbera's first adventure?
Friday Night Fish Fry!
The Red Snappers are a gang that usually stayed in their predictable lane of “normie” criminal activities, but recently started dabbling in the occult. One of their new members, Dirty Sergei, a Red Snappers majick-user, reached out to you via crystal ball, worried about his gang’s recent activities.
Sergei explains that the Snappers are summoning, harvesting, and synthesizing Crimson Slimes into a potent, lethal narcotic called Cherry Crush. Burbera has no love for Crimson Slimes but understands how the Red Snappers have crossed into gravely dangerous territory with their unchecked majick. You are certain Cherry Crush alone could bring disaster to the city's innocents and, more importantly, irrevocably turn the urban landscape into a sinister, warped hole of demons and mutants. There’s no time to lose! Let’s go burn the Red Snappers’ operation down to smoldering rubble!
If ya want more, my Patreon will have the first post later this week. Let’s keep it free, but hey, I love coffee. If yer so inclined, throw some change my way to keep me caffeinated and keep the strangeness flowing.
Dark Guide Tony
Arcane Sword Press
The Highest Level of All
Fantasy Wargaming: The Highest Level of All , compiled and edited by Bruce Galloway
For those who know of this game, it's quickly written off as a curio of the RPG hobby. A book that came in hardback with a slipcase in digest size, designed to LOOK like a book you happen upon in the library. The design feels like an older grimoire that was republished in the 80s by an esoteric printing house. I mean, look at the cover!
I know that if I found this when I was younger, I would be obsessed with it. Nowhere on the cover does it say “roleplaying game”, “Fantasy Roleplay”, or even “game”! So the obscured nature of this book potentially being found within the 000 range of the Dewey Decimal System, right next to the esoterica and occult books which I pored over as a kid, makes it easy to confuse what it is- an RPG that attempts to emulate the medieval experience and mindset that also attempts to educate you on history. Which is cool! Until you read it. But I think Fantasy Wargaming (FW) is an ambitious, if not confused, execution of a still novel idea that was ahead of its time in some regards, but also grossly missed the point of being a game.
FW feels like it was designed for someone like me, a medievalist who enjoys RPGs. But I'm also more focused on games that are, you know, playable. Going back to my theoretical younger self in the library, once I cracked this book open, I would be hit by 98 pages of history, then followed by pages with paragraphs describing charts and formulae, then tables about noble structures, followed by warfare (more math), then a massive chunk on the mechanics of magic. This section honestly reads almost like an incomprehensible (to my child’s mind) explanation of how magic works (not as a game mechanic), and that alone would be enough for me as a young reader to try to wrap my head around it. The last section has a bestiary of medieval creatures with a handful of fun but simple woodcuts. But, again- this book does not clearly state that it's a game, and how it's organized makes it read as such. The game refers to wargaming in the introduction and gives an overview of RPGs, but then BOOM: chapter one: medieval history. Game mechanics don’t appear until Chapter VI on page 99. Why??? I believe the aim of this book was to explain what medieval-centric roleplaying was, along with what the fantasy genre was (chapter V: Moorcock and more…) to a perceived general reader. I mean, the book seemed designed to educate the reader on what this newfound “fantasy wargaming” is exactly, but then it crammed in a medieval simulation in the back half of the book.
Fantasy Wargaming isn't the first to do it: I recall Chivalry & Sorcery, published in 1977, as the first RPG to lean heavily into a simulationist, medieval-realist roleplaying experience. C&S is another game that SHOULD appeal to me, but it feels less like fun and more like a math equation. At least FW is shorter and tries to inform the reader about what life in medieval England in the High Middle Ages was like. My copy of C&S has a 6-point font and pages upon pages of dense text for hundreds of pages, a design choice that seems hostile to the reader. So I appreciate FW's flawed attempt to make a more usable version of this concept. I find this disappointing because many older games from the period get lost in the weeds of accuracy/simulation vs. playability, only to release something that feels hostile to newcomers to the hobby while also being a mess for veteran hobbyists. This was a primary motivator for me to make Demesnes & Domination, a resource for incorporating feudal structure and high-level domain rules in your high-level OSR games informed by medieval research. Every other attempt I've seen is overwritten or too confusing for my obtuse brain.
That said, FW is cool, and I think it's an underappreciated footnote in gaming history. For decades it's been derided as this odd book, but I do appreciate what it's attempting to do. If anything, I'm shocked by the negative reviews from contemporary reviewers, who I think set the tone for this book’s legacy, when more overtly obtuse games out there at the time got better reviews. Yes, the formatting is flawed, but if the editor flipped the structure, with the history in the back of the book, to come off as more game-forward, I could imagine this book having a different legacy.
One aspect I like about this book is how it came about. FW was created by a university RPG group at Cambridge University in the UK. From my understanding, the group developed a set of rules, and then Bruce Galloway compiled them for release. This also makes sense to me, because there is an academic feel to this game- it is more of a lecture on the medieval milieu and then developing systems of interactions within this framework than, say, Warlock from Caltech.
That said, this is part one of an ongoing Fantasy Wargaming series of posts. I plan on going deeper into the game because I honestly think it deserves it. There is a lot to unpack, and I plan to do so over the next few months. Recently, an academic press published a book on its history called The Highest Level of All: The Story of Fantasy Wargaming by Mike Monaco. Because it's an academic press release, the book is pricey. But dear reader, I bought this tome and plan to pour through it to better understand this misfit of a game. So stay tuned for more! Consider this entry an instruction of sorts, a Part I: Introduction to a multipart series that will be updated infrequently while I cover other games in the interim.
On another note: I'm pretty deep into getting ready for ArcaneCon and getting Spacer ready for release, so I will do my best to stay on top of future submissions so bear with me if I miss a week!
Bryan
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
Get Tickets 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!
Learn More 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.
Get Tickets Your editor this week has been John "Hambone" McGuire from Ham & Egg Publishing.
Keep emailing us at hello@analogunion.com to tell us 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
-
Arena combat where you can win by dying
This is the Analog Union newsletter for September 8th, 2026. Keep in mind that if you’re reading this in the distant future, some timely information may be out of date. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every week!
Arena combat where you can win by dying September 8th, 2026
In this newsletter
Moar Blood | Playtest Material issue 2 | Sci-Fi Terrain, IKEA style | Murder by Mummy
Solarian Games
Moar Blood
We're doing something we've never done before at Solarian. We're making a crazy, over-the-top skirmish game, minis and terrain and a new dice system and everything.
It's called Moar Blood. You play contestants in a violent game show set in a gonzo future, sending out clones to battle to the finish in front of a bloodthirsty audience, vying for points based on not just defeating opponents, but doing it in the most crowd-pleasing way possible. You can even win on points by dying, if your death is spectacular enough and gets the audience on their feet cheering.
It started out with game from the 1990s that we loved. At first, we kicked around the idea of doing a new version, but the deeper we got, the more we realized we wanted to make something new of our own.
Peter already had a system he'd been developing that was a good candidate. So he started tearing it apart, rebuilding, and that became the game engine for Moar Blood that we're calling Razer. More about that in a future newsletter, but basically it lets you use literally any dice you have sitting around because it just looks at odds and evens in a die pool to determine success.
From the start, we had a pretty clear idea what we wanted Moar Blood to be. It needed to be fast. It needed to be easy to learn. And it needed enough going on under the hood that there were real strategies to discover once you got into playing it.
We wanted social combat. Smack talking needed a mechanic. Showboating needed to matter. Doing something spectacular instead of the safe, sensible option needed to be rewarded. This is an arena sport, the crowd wants a show!
We've been running Moar Blood at conventions for quite a while now. We've run one-on-one matches, massive free-for-alls, and team games. At one point we had three teams of five players each beating the hell out of each other at the same time.
People found things we never expected, they broke rules, exposed slow spots, and came up with strategies we hadn't expected. The final rules are a result of lots of real-world playtesting and great ideas from the people who have played.
Peter's an engineer, so he designed his own 3D terrain. It's a modular system that clicks together quickly, stays together while you're playing, and lets you build countless combinations for different arenas.
The terrain will be available from us, or you can just get the digital files and print it yourself if you have a 3D printer. It's expandable, so you can add new pieces in the future as we design them.
You can use any dice you want since it's all about odds & evens, but what the hell, we also made our own custom dice that you can see in the picture above. Making a custom shape for dice requires a big order, though, so those will be a stretch goal if we get enough backers to make the dice cheap enough for everyone. There's going to be a full-color rulebook, a cloth battlemat to go underneath the terrain, and minis that you can buy from us or print for yourself. You can play the game with paper, pens, and some wooden blocks if you like; or you can go all-out and get the fancy stuff we're making for it.
Follow us on Kickstarter where we'll be updating everyone with the behind the scenes process as we go along, getting the book laid out, all the pieces sourced, and everything set up so it's finished and ready to make before the campaign starts, and all we need are the backers to bring it to life.
Join us on the journey!
Follow Moar Blood on Kickstarter Stillfleet Studio
Playtest Material Issue 2: Histories
Hey y’all, this is Wythe Marschall from Stillfleet with a quick announcement. I’m proud to be serving as guest editor of the second issue of Playtest Material, the new journal of TTRPG studies aimed at both practitioners (gamers) as well as scholars/professional critics.
The lead editor, Laurie O’Connel, is a brilliant game designer whom Christopher Pickett and I have interviewed on Why We Roll. The first issue, “An RPG is Like,” releases October 1 and features some true bangers—a few of which are previewed on the site right now.
Submissions to the second issue, “Histories,” open September 15 and close October 15. We’re looking for a variety of articles, reviews, and conversations of different lengths analyzing intellectual, material, and labor histories of the RPG industry alongside articles diving into the uses of fictional histories.
Future issues will examine other themes, so if you’re interested in the wider dialogue about RPGs, bookmark PlaytestMaterial.org, consider subscribing to the quarterly print edition, and keep your eyes peeled for calls to come.
For now, if you have an idea for “Histories,” read the call for submissions and drop a line. Happy gaming, and happy writing!
Read the full call Friends of Analog Union: 9d10 Games
Sci-Fi Tabletop Terrain, IKEA flatpack style
My friend Ilya has a Kickstarter going that I've backed, and for totally selfish reasons I want to see it succeed. Selfish as in, I have backed this and I want it to work so I can use this terrain in my own games, haha.
Ilya makes these flat-pack MDF gaming sets that you can arrange in an endless number of combinations. His last two were for fantasy games, and now he's made a sci-fi version called Facility 404. You can lay it all out flat to make rooms and corridors, or use the clips, supports and girders to build the whole thing up into a three-dimensional set. And when you're done, it all packs flat again instead of taking over a closet.
I think it's wicked cool. We've got our own sci-fi skirmish game coming out soon, Moar Blood, and I'm 100% going to be using this for my home game. That is, if the Kickstarter funds. It's damn close right now, maybe you'll be the one who pushes it over the finish line.
So take a look. If you think it's as cool as I do, maybe throw a few bucks at it. And if you know somebody else who'd be into this, send it their way.
Thanks for reading! -Jayson
Take a look at Facility 404 Saltheart RPG LLC
BURN 2d6 is back with a new adventure!
Murder by Mummy is an adventure for the BURN 2d6 Pulp Era setting contained in the BURN 2d6 Core Rules book. Written by Andrew Hind, the adventure is a thrilling callback to the best of the pulp era. While set in fictional Harbor City, the adventure can be easily adapted to fit any urban setting.
In this adventure, the Player Characters must rescue a friend from a sinister cult and unravel a plot that could spell doom for the world.
“…Rebecca is a pretty, young woman with strawberry blonde hair, freckles on her nose and cheeks, and a lithe build. She is an intelligent and headstrong woman, and a cheerful companion. As the Characters enter the hall, they spot her standing by one of many sarcophagi that stand upright along the perimeter of the room. Rebecca spots them and waves them over with an uncharacteristically worried look.
Suddenly, the sarcophagus swings open, and a greying man dressed in a suit and wielding a pistol reaches out to grab Rebecca…”
Will your players figure out a way to save her?
Buy it now on DriveThruRPG 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)
Join the Analog Union on Reddit 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
Get Tickets 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!
Learn More 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.
Get Tickets Your editor this week has been Jayson of Solarian Games.
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!
—J
-
Magical Athlete, Tribute to departed heroes, What Dark Comes Knocking, Wind-Up Vampire
This is the Analog Union newsletter for September 1st, 2026. Keep in mind that if you’re reading this in the distant future, some timely information may be out of date. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every week!
Orb Tyrants, Metamorphosis Alpha, Alewood Games, Game Jamming, Top Secret, and more! September 1st, 2026
In this newsletter
Magical Athlete | Everybody Dies | Knights in White Satin
Dark Guide Tony’s Trash Can | It’s Orbin Time
Get Haunted Industries
I am a Magical Athletic Supporter
Holy cow! I have discovered something that has knocked my socks off.
I am not a board game person. I have nothing against them, but with only so much time for gaming, like my nose, I have to pick and choose what to fanatically obsess about.
Time is moving fast. My kids are now teens with social lives, and I am happy for them. But I’m also lonely as a dad. I’ve been looking for something quick that could bring us together, even if only for a few minutes, to help keep those family bonds strong.
I found it.
I FOUND IT.
Thanks to the recommendations on the Get Haunted Discord, I headed to the store and picked up Magical Athlete, a simple, hilarious, downright cutthroat board game that checks all the boxes:
Easy to learn: It took me longer to peel off the plastic wrap than to learn the rules. Roll a d6. Move. That’s basically it. I even played it with my dogs.
Fun: Each character has a special power that creates complete chaos and makes for a completely unbalanced experience—in a good way! Candy Land with a machete, pals.
Replayable: Pick from 36 crazy characters, each with their own special power and beautifully produced meeple. The LSD-puppet aesthetic immediately reminded me of The Letter People from kindergarten.
I busted it open. We rolled. We swore. I lost.
We are now on a three-night streak, and it is becoming a much-needed family ritual.
Fifteen minutes of fun, baby. No phones. No headphones. Just time with the fam. I spent $27 and somehow became an emotional millionaire.
Bada bing. Bada boom.
In the words of those kids from Reading Rainbow: “But you don’t have to take my word for it!”
Learn More Ham & Egg Publishing
Everybody Dies
Last week, in just three days, the world lost Peter Cullen, Tim Curry, and a woman who was truly an angel walking among us: Dolly Parton. Three artists whose work shaped the lives of so many.
I could go on ad nausem about any one of them, especially Dolly and Tim. Instead, I encourage you all to take some time to celebrate the artists who shaped and touched your life.
There is no higher tribute than creation, but if you can’t, that’s cool too. Play their music, watch a movie (Transformers: The Movie hits even harder this week), go see a concert. Whatever works for you.
They will be missed, but, in the words of Tim Armstrong, “Through music we can live forever.”What Dark Comes Knocking & the Dual20
We’re just 28 days away from the launch of our latest Kickstarter campaign for What Dark Knocking Comes in the Still of the Night. We’re really excited about this one because, in addition to the flip book adventure, we are also launching our first-ever dice: The Dual20.
Learn More Wind-Up Vampire Press
New Union Member, New Name, New Release
Well, well, well. Look at who forgot their lessons from Dracula 101. Analog Union just went and invited me inside. Now you’ll never shake me loose from this group of the best rpg makers out there.
Wind-Up Vampire Press is the brainchild of me! Melanie C. Green. Originally using Meldar16 Games as a personal art handle and then as a co-publisher for indie comics, I started making D&D adventures and zines in my Atera Redux series. While making my first non-D&D ttrpg, I also upgraded my partner Sean, from mere editor to co-writer and dishwasher. This expansion also led to our very recent company name change, and the return of the Meldar16 name as my personal handle.
These days, we work together to expand Atera Redux, so we can eventually make one of those nifty box sets the kids like so much. For our original games, we strive to make simple, pick-up-and-play games that match the vibes of our own gaming groups. Light on rules, lighthearted, and light on the wallet.
Wind-Up Vampire also doubles as a small press (thus the name). With our 4 printers of the apocalypse (Epson of Satan, Epson of a Bitch, Epson of Sam, and Epson of a Gun), the paper guillotine of the proletariat, and the bookbinders of doom, every last release of ours is hatefully printed and assembled by Mel.
Speaking of releases, we have a brand-spanking-new one: Knights In White Satin. Did you know the Moody Blues song is Nights, not Knights in White Satin? Weird, huh? This misheard lyric inspired the image on the cover of this book, which in turn sparked ideas for the rest of the dungeon.
Take medieval love poetry, fold in dark fairy tales, and add the extra peril that comes with any game of Shadowdark, and you have Knights in White Satin. In this adventure, Nokto Keep has long been a pit of despair. Figuratively sinking the spirits of those that reside within, while literally sinking into the cliffside it was built upon, tales of trouble and love lost still attract the brave to wander within. The Keep’s occupants are engrossed in a magical malaise that permeates every bit of stone.
Glimpses of moonlight, flowing satin, and love poetry would normally gladden the heart, but here they are an ever-present danger. Delve into its deepest depths to discover its most dangerous denizen.
Get print copies of Knights in White Satin on our website, PDF copies on itch.io, and PDF copies on RPG Trader!
Learn more on our website Mytic Punks
Dark Guide Tony’s Trash Can
Man, I love me some grimdark. But, like most things in life, it’s best to enjoy it in moderation. Like, every once in a while, I’ll crave something heavy. I’ll say yes to the NY strip, with the mashed potatoes (made with heavy cream, of course), and, did you say, mac n’ cheese? Yes, please.
Same with grimdark. When done right, there’s something undeniably satisfying that can stay with ya. Like after finishing a meal at a 1980s chop house, complete with amber glass ashtrays.
We all know that Mr. Workshop is the go-to for your grimdark needs. His macabre emporium of horrors beyond all imagination sets the chaos star standard for the genre. However, I find that his literary offerings can be hit or miss. But not with C.L. Werner’s Mathias Thulmann trilogy from the early 00s. Werner writes in a pulp tradition that engages the reader with enough darkness, cheeky gravitas, and adventure to understand its influences, moves at a brisk pace, and isn’t needlessly bogged down by bloated lore.
But what about a contemporary offering? Enter Patrick Klindon’s and Ludovic Lalliat’s Regicide from Image Comics. Klindon has been firing on all cylinders with their revenge-driven Gehenna and 80s-jungle exploitation romp, Tigress Island series. And Regicide is no different.
The variant cover from Atom Cyber alone was an instant pull.
Set in old Tara Rumânească, which, according to the computer, may or may not be Transylvania, we travel with aging but mighty peasant farmer Mihas and the mysterious Dr./MF Doom-looking Doru. His village elders have reluctantly enlisted Mihas to accompany Doru to kill the nation’s king, its source of suffering.
Lalliat’s art perfectly captures the despair that has permeated the land and left its people dying. Equally engaging is how they render Mihas’ barehanded violence against bandits and supernatural creatures. I can’t recall a time when a non-suped protagonist is weaponless out of the gate and does such brutal damage. Yea, it’s that good.
Image touts the series as “Dracula meets Berserk,” which, sure, for an elevator pitch, will turn heads and drive sales. But the real meat here is a long precedent set by grimdark tales and art, and Klindon is great at giving us just enough to know where the darkness is headed. But, more importantly, equally deft at dropping more shrouds of shadow when necessary.
A heavy succulent meal, indeed.
Dark Guide Tony
Super Savage Systems
Orb Tyrants: Coming Soon!
Get notified of launch! 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)
Join the Analog Union on Reddit 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
Get Tickets 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!
Learn More 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.
Get Tickets 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
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Orb Tyrants, Metamorphosis Alpha, Alewood Games, Game Jamming, Top Secret, and more!
This is the Analog Union newsletter for August 25th, 2026. Keep in mind that if you’re reading this in the distant future, some timely information may be out of date. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every week!
Orb Tyrants, Metamorphosis Alpha, Alewood Games, Game Jamming, Top Secret, and more! August 25th, 2026
In this newsletter
Orb Tyrants | Metamorphosis Alpha | Alewood Games
Game Jamming | Top Secret Tradecraft Manual
Super Savage Systems
Orb Tyrants: Coming Soon!
BE THE TYRANT!
ORB TYRANTS is a skirmish game of battling dungeon horrors all fighting for control of the vast network of underground ruins called the Dungeon.
Each player creates a floating horror by rolling its body, mouth, central eye, five eye-stalks, hide, mutation, and horrible weakness. One Tyrant might be a plated brute dragging chains through the dungeon, while another might be a fast, half-rotten wormball that blasts lightning and cooks their enemies from the inside. Tyrants bring it to the table and fight for the Dungeon.
Rival Tyrants invade your territory, while heroes arrive looking for fame and treasure. Use your minions to swarm objectives, become a power-up for their master, and turn feral when those masters eventually fall!
Orb Tyrants are powerful in their own right, but they have other tricks up their eye stalks. They can kill a Hero to devour its power, sever an eye-stalk from a rival Tyrant, harvest it, and graft it onto themselves.
Survive long enough, and your Tyrant becomes something far worse than the horror you started with.
INSIDE THE DUNGEON
- Fast skirmish battles for one to four+ players
- Completely random Orb Tyrant creation
- Five different eye-stalk categories
- Autonomous Heroes controlled by a deck of cards
- Minion hordes that fight, capture objectives, and feed their masters
- Organ harvesting and grafting
- Rules for campaign advancement, injuries, and lairs
- Solo rules and a full set of scenarios
- Miniature-agnostic rules. Use whatever horrors, monsters, and dungeon terrain you already own
In the end, only one Tyrant will earn the title of Dungeon Lord!
Get notified of launch! Arcane Sword Press
Roleplaying Rediscovery – Metamorphosis Alpha
Metamorphosis Alpha: Fantastic Role-Playing Game of Science Fiction Adventures by James M. Ward and Published by TSR
In 1976, during the infancy of roleplaying games, a game totally out of left field emerged – Metamorphosis Alpha by James Ward. This game, like D&D before it, has seen some imitators, but none have the dialed-in conceptual focus of Metamorphosis Alpha (or MA). Many have heard about MA, but few have played it compared to its younger brother, Gamma World, or its offshoot, the AD&D adventure module Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
In my years of reading, collecting, and diving into RPGs over the last 50+ years, few have left a strong “I really want to play this” feeling like MA has. So I am very excited to finally dive into it after all of these years. This game is very noteworthy for being the first published science-fiction role-playing game ever released, and it’s absolutely wild!
Metamorphosis Alpha has a fantastic premise that none have really attempted to capture to me: A massive generation ship called The Warden that is miles and miles long is waylaid by trying to avoid a large radiation storm in space and fails, causing the ship to become a floating world with new mutated plants, animals, and people wandering the many, many levels of the ship.
The ship is destined to sail into the endless void of space, long past the intended world it was set out for. Players are the inhabitants of the Warden and may or may not be aware that they are on a massive starship, since an unknown amount of time has passed and different intelligent cultures have formed on different levels. MA also provides an overview of each level of the Warden in a paragraph or two, including features such as maintenance shafts, elevators, and other means of transitioning between the levels.
One thing I want to point out is that the Warden isn’t a megadungeon: it’s a series of overworld exploration maps where characters can find dungeons, cities, forests, etc., depending on the level they are exploring. The ship is 50 miles long and 25 miles wide and 8.5 miles tall- that’s huuuuuuge. You can’t actually make a dungeon fit that space, which is why each level is its own world. Some levels are literal natural habitats with trees, lakes, etc., while other levels are storage for colonization planets. But keep in mind, each other level creeps into each other, so there’s a chance you encounter a psionic fungi-dominated wolfman with a tentacle tail on maintenance level or a security robot lost on the jungle level.
The referee is assumed to make locations and other points of interest on the various levels. James Ward says you should only prepare three levels for the beginning of the campaign and grow up front here, which I think is good advice, because preparing 21 levels of hundreds of square miles feels daunting! He also provides some sample maps for a couple levels with points of interest to help provide guidance, which is very helpful. This is worth noting, because nothing like this game reeeeeally existed in 1976, and even today, it does a better job of providing referee advice and assistance than many modern games.
Making a character is pretty simple; you choose one of three options;
Humans: who could be descendants of prior crewmen who forgot about the ship and are basically D&D characters OR you could just come out of cryosleep and see the ship is in dire straits
Humanoid Mutants: You were a human hit by the mutation, so you have gained some mutant traits (more on that later)
Mutant: You are not human in the slightest and may be an animal or plant that has developed sentience along with some other strange mutations.
Then all players roll 3D6 for their stats: Radiation-Resistance, Mental-Resistance, Dexterity, Strength, Constitution, and if they are Human, Leadership-potential. Players that are mutants are able to roll to see how many mutations they have and choose or randomly roll for them. Some mutations are very helpful, but you are also expected to have hindering mutations- a personal favorite being 10 extra limbs that move independently!
Past this point, the book outlines the future tech players can find and loot, basic combat rules, and my favorite: the elevator bracelets. Players can find six different types of bracelets, and different colors grant different levels of clearance. And that is fun: these are basically magic keys that open up more areas of the ship or hidden areas. I think this is very fun, and I immediately thought about how a tribe of mutants might have the leader wear one of them and the players have to figure out a way to get it from them so they can access the ship’s robot maintenance area. I guess this leads me to the strengths and weaknesses of this game.
No Clear Rule System: There isn’t a unified rule system here, or any examples of procedures beyond using the resistance tables, recruiting mutants, overland movement, and combat. I personally don’t find this a drawback, though! This game is in the legacy of OD&D, where the game is a toolbox where the referee fills in the gaps. But James Ward does a fantastic job evoking a vibe, and I wouldn’t mind making up a mechanic on the fly. But I’m also familiar with how people would houserule OD&D, so I would do something similar here (roll 3D6 and roll under the stat to succeed), but I can see that being hard for others unfamiliar with games from the period. You are encouraged to buy polyhedral dice (from TSR) to aid with using rules if necessary, but you don’t need them.
The Book provides guidance instead of boundaries: The game is left very much open-ended for the referee to go crazy within it using the tools provided. This means that you are expected to provide simple ship-level maps on graph paper to the players and let them explore. MA has example mutants, procedures for making NPC mutants, pre-made encounter tables, and technology items that can be found. Jame Ward repeats that referees should make up whatever they desire and are encouraged to expand on the tools provided.
Organization: While yes- this game is a product of the early days of RPGs and is inspired directly by OD&D, it IS better organized and laid out than its predecessor. I would also say James Ward is a better teacher of a game than Gygax was, and I had a lot of fun reading this book. Yes, James Ward was definitely emulating the way Gygax described things in his modules, but he is far clearer and more straightforward to understand. I didn’t find myself having to re-read areas of the book, and that’s a major plus for me. On the downside, the book does feel like a group of notes taped together in no particular order. For example, the items in the game are after the starship overview and before character creation.
No Adventure Hooks: The game doesn’t come with a starting adventure or anything for players to dig into, and there’s no material for creating adventures. This isn’t a bad thing, but I can see people reading this and being like “what do I do with this?” I immediately thought it would be fun to attempt to take control of the Warden and steer the ship back towards the intended planet to complete its mission. Or play the game straight with D&D characters searching for the temple of a god, only for them to realize it was the ship’s computer, Fred Saberhagen style (but you kind of can’t tell the players they are playing MA)
Metamorphosis Alpha never really reached its potential, and whenever it was re-released, it was always tied to some forgotten contemporary game system or publisher. In the early days of Dragon Magazine, Ward provided additional rules for MA and was hoping for a future expanded release called Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega. This seemed to be shelved so TSR could focus on its primary product, AD&D, instead of its niche titles.
Metamorphosis Alpha to Omega WAS released by TSR during its twilight years under its Amazing Engine rules that no one remembers. Goodman Games released what I would call the best version of MA out there- The Metamorphosis Alpha Collectors Edition, which includes not only the base game, but all of the different articles from Dragon magazine and Space Gamer, plus some more content and errata by James Ward himself and others, including current writers like Michael Curtis. Goodman Games also released a number of support materials for MA during this period in the early to mid 2010s, including adventure modules that are not currently available in print or PDF.
I’m lucky I was given the paperback version of this rerelease for Christmas when it was still available, but it is now only available in a limited hardcover edition for $120. Hopefully Goodman Games will republish it in paperback soon! After the Goodman Games era of MA, it jumped around among different publishers, and Catalyst Games is currently planning a “modern” version. Looking at some other editions past the initial first edition (which Goodman Games supported), I am not hopeful since those other publishers seemed to have missed what makes Metamorphosis Alpha unique, instead moving closer to bland sci-fi detritus you find in used RPG bins.
I cannot overstate how cool Metamorphosis Alpha is. It is not only the first Sci-fi RPG but also jump-started the mutated post-apocalypse games you see carried on by Gamma World and then into RIFTS and Mutant: Year Zero. It’s the first true “gonzo” RPG setting, a term I’m not a big fan of, especially applied to this game, but it is the origin of what people mean when they say gonzo in RPGs. But that’s a different discussion for a different time!
Next time: Fantasy Wargaming by Stein and Day Publishing
Until then!
Bryan
Alewood Games
Alewood joins the AU!
Greetings! I’m Rhodrick Magsino, owner, writer, art director, and all-around jack-of-all-trades when it comes to running Alewood Games.
I started publishing TTRPGs only 4 years ago, trying to branch out my storytelling into a new medium after a 20-year filmmaking career.
From 2008-2014, I was the co-owner and creative director for a tiny multimedia production coop in Chicago called Little Brass Bird. The recession hit us hard, so we connected with every artist we personally knew in the city, gathered our resources, and started producing designer toys and weird animated videos. It was a way to sell and cross-promote each other, secure future work, and keep fine-tuning our craft during a nationwide financial dry spell. We were one of the first crowdfunders on Kickstarter in 2009, and were invited by then-CEO Yancey Strickler to premiere our funded web series at their Kickstarter Film Festival in Brooklyn, NYC.
During this time, I was an avid D&D player and board gamer. I started to design my first board game when the coop dissolved in 2014. Alewood is a Wild West tabletop drinking game that was eventually released in 2020, right when the pandemic hit.
A year later I moved to Baltimore, my film career was stable but creatively stunted and my backlog of niche game ideas was having trouble finding a place within the boardgame community. *Poof* I crossed paths with Zine Month. Suddenly, my Tom Waits lyric-writing game had a format and an audience. I switched gears with explosive energy in 2022 by publishing my first zine and have been on a consistent yearly release schedule since then with my 5th title, A Most Brilliant Spark, launching later this fall.
My other titles include: Remember Frankie?, Traysikel: Ride or Die, ARKYVR, and OMENDROME.
Learn more about Alewood Games Learn about Rhodrick’s media work Stillfleet Studio
The Game Design Grind: Game Jamming
This is the last week you can submit to the first-ever Grit System Game Jam on Itch. Why would you do such a thing? I can think of a couple of reasons:
You enjoy designing games for fun, specifically TTRPGs, specifically modern adventure TTRPGs with a focus on narrative powers/powers as scenes (in the same design world as PbtA, FitD, and Together We Go) and player agency.
You want to write games for more than fun, so you’re interested in connecting with and getting some attention from players, GMs, and other designers via a judged game jam.
In general, a game jam is a great way to give yourself two big creative constraints: time and theme/content.
Maybe you find game design fun, but it takes up a lot of time. Great! A game jam is only open for a set period of time.
Maybe you enjoy game design but have so many gigantic heartbreaker ideas, you don’t know where to start. Great! A game jam usually has a theme or focus on a system.
Sometimes, jam creators provide fairly specific creative direction or useful tools. Other times, they’re open to whatever. Either way, the real goal, IMHO, is to entertain and surprise yourself while crossing the finish line and hitting “submit” at the end.
I personally love a game jam because it gives me a reason to procrastinate from working on The Latest Big Mega Amazing Project and simply have fun writing up a page or two of weird lists, rooms in a dungeon, etc.
Tony Grasso (Blister Critters) and I recently hopped on a chill stream with Tony Vasinda (Plus One Experience) to chat about game jams in general and the types of submissions we’re seeing for the Grit System jam.
TL;DR, we’ve been blown away by the depth of the responses so far: full-on new games, twisting and expanding upon the system! That said, we are still very much open to one-pagers, experimental thoughts, weird lists, and rooms in a dungeon (even on a spaceship). So if you’re considering a jam—
Jam on it! Solarian Games
The Top Secret Tradecraft Manual is available now!
The first official supplement for Top Secret® is now on sale in our store, in hardback and PDF.
The Tradecraft Manual™ is the first companion book for Top Secret. The core rulebook lists all tradecraft proficiencies with short descriptions. This book dives deeper into each proficiency, answering questions players have asked the author over multiple campaigns and hundreds of games since this edition of Top Secret was published, under the full title Top Secret: New World Order®.
268 full-color pages of skills explained in detail with recommended die rolls, mechanics, and narrative examples. The Tradecraft Manual also includes new rules for car chases, water chases, foot chases, training, and more.
Scott Kongable, author of the Tradecraft Manual, is the foremost GM for Top Secret, having run multiple bi-weekly campaigns for over six years. The updates to Top Secret in this book are the culmination of literally hundreds of sessions in both campaign play and convention play.
Everything in the Tradecraft Manual is compatible with the existing published rules and missions for Top Secret, and it can be a great asset for any modern action role-playing game.
It’s been a lot of fun making this book, and I hope you’ll have fun using it in your game!
Get the Tradecraft Manual here 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)
Join the Analog Union on Reddit 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
Get Tickets 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!
Learn More 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.
Get Tickets 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
-
Fighting Arcade Games, The First Person You Should Design For, Dark Guide Tony’s Trash Can, Moar Blood, and more!
This is the Analog Union newsletter for August 18th, 2026. Keep in mind that if you’re reading this in the distant future, some timely information may be out of date. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every week!
Fighting Arcade Games, The First Person You Should Design For, Dark Guide Tony’s Trash Can, Moar Blood, and more! August 18th, 2026
In this newsletter
Big Conventions | Adventures In Collecting | R.I.P. Reggie Bannister | Ham & Eggiversary
Tiger Wizard
Fighting Arcade Games
Who was your favorite character to play in the arcade? I was absolutely in love with Scorpion, but Raiden had easier moves. These reboot movies seem cool too. I mean, I’ll always be a fan of that JCVD and Raul Julia (rest in power), but the new Street Fighter jam seems legit.
On Wednesday, 8/19, Exalted Funeral will host our annual Summer Sale.
It’s an arcade fighter game themed. Every year there are a bunch of free items you can pick up, and they go fast. See the picture above. The sale starts at 12:01 am Eastern time. More free stuff will drop later in the sale, too.
Let me draw your attention to this silly thing I made.
It’s a short, free zine for OSR games, with drawings, romance, magic ninjas, and more. These go fast, so try to snag one. I have a lot of fun making these every year, and this one is particularly dumb.
Everything in the Exalted Funeral store is on sale, so get yer freaky game on.
Get Over There! Also, my small Ennie-Loser TTRPG Dungeon Cats will be restocked for the sale. It’s been out of stock for a while, so if you haven’t grabbed a copy yet, this is the time.
Be A Cat! Hope you’re having a great email reading experience today!
Cheers.
Alewood Games
The First Player You Should Design For Is You
Last week, my friend made her boss cry by simply explaining the premise of my new game, “A Most Brilliant Spark.” The week before that, two playtesters told me they had a moment of silence at the end of their game and then shed a few tears for their doomed character. I was told that they loved the melancholy and needed the cry.
“A Most Brilliant Spark” will be my 5th publication, and it’s only now that I’m beginning to really see the connective tissue between all of my games. It’s good ‘ol trauma, folks! So, let’s explore what the heck that even means. How did I get here? Have I always been here?
Back in Chicago, I was a sound designer for film; I spent 15 years adapting my craft to someone else’s vision. I was a chameleon. Each film had a performing version of me in it, but it was never truly me. When I look at my personal work from that time, they all had an air of whimsy to it in order to appeal to as many folks as possible, and even the sad pieces were tailored to be ironically cute.
I was safe. I was digestible, but I was hiding.
Then, I moved to Baltimore to work for PBS, where most of my efforts went to episodes of Frontline, POV, Independent Lens, and other high-stakes social/political coverage. Witnessing the horrible things we do to each other and to this planet literally became my day job. I made my living by not looking away, like a public broadcasting Ludovico technique where they “flashed nasty bits of ultraviolence,” but that form of trauma didn’t keep me in line; it made me angry. And let me tell ya, Baltimore knows how to organize people who are angry at the status quo. That’s when I started self-publishing zines. That’s when I found the indie TTRPG community. That’s when my other voice started to reveal itself.
I was vulnerable, but I was unapologetic.
Each game ultimately asked, in some form, “who are you and what are you gonna do about it?” I don’t know if this form of expression came about purely from external influences or if it’s been slumbering within me for years. All I know for sure is that it feels right. The games I publish are deeply personal, which makes playtesting exciting and a little scary. I have turned my insecurities and fears into game mechanics, and truth be told, they always play out way more fun than the actual experience! It’s been a transformative journey. The connections I make with players and my fellow designers feel real, not transactional. I’m incredibly fortunate to have found a creative community that encourages me to truly unmask, a punk community that inspires me to keep fighting. While trauma initially sparked the revolution, the community gave me direction.
So, make your thing and make it yours. I guarantee someone out there needs it more than you, and you have plenty of folks to help you along the way.
“A Most Brilliant Spark” will be crowdfunding on BackerKit later this Fall 2026!
Subscribe For Game Updates Mystic Punks
Dark Guide Tony’s Trash CanAh, trash comix. Whenever I’m low on inspiration, need a break, or an equally important whoa! moment, I can always turn to b/w 80s and 90s comics to rekindle my love of the DIY spirit.
As I work through my tsundoku (Yes! I get to use the word! Thanks, Jert!) of comics, I finally got around to reading Nathan Impaler, Monster-Hunter. Dating from 1990, Night Realm Publishing put out this gem of pure, uncut B-movie-inspired bliss.
Cover by Ron Kazman
Here’s the skinny: Beefy bandolier-strapped Nathan Impaler and his supernatural cat-dog-rat, Nickle, hunt monsters for profit, and the unchecked, wanton violence they can wreak on the urban landscape. So Nate gets a contract from a vamp who pays him in a literal coffin load of 24K 99.99% bullion (ha!) to kill his master, Dracula.
Alright. I’m in. And jealous I didn’t think of that for a Mystic Punks adventure.
Over the thirty pages, we are treated to what Nate does best in an abandoned warehouse littered with hot band graffiti and an unprecedented amount of Misfits love. As Nathan knifes and blasts his way through the undead, we are left with a mild twist ending that honestly plays out better than it should.
Fred Diana is on writing duties, but the real standout is Yan Rozentsveig’s art. It looks like a stiff fever dream of an outsider Tim Bradstreet. And I’m gonna say this loud and proud: THAT’S NOT A BAD THING. This is where the heart of trash comix really shines, with cartooning that shows an unbridled idgaf attitude. For naysayers out there who scoff at this, I don’t know what to tell ya. I can’t save ya.
But! If yer even slightly interested in going down this trash hole, I can’t recommend Power Comics enough to help ya on your journey.
Solarian Games
Moar Blood! MOAR BLOOD!
Moar Blood is an over-the-top miniatures skirmish game set in a gonzo future where cloned gladiators battle to the “death” (they’re synthetic avatars; there’s always another waiting) in front of a bloodthirsty crowd on the game show to end all game shows. Points are earned for eliminating rivals in the most theatrical manner possible, even for dying spectacularly. That’s right, you can even win if you die!
We’ve been playtesting and refining Moar Blood at game conventions and gatherings for quite a while, and it’s finally time to make it a reality.
To make the game available to as many people as possible, we’re not just going to do one big expensive box set that costs hundreds of dollars because of all the terrain and miniatures inside.
Moar Blood will be available as a simple rulebook on its own, either as a PDF or as a hardcover (with the PDF included). You can play it with the minis you’ve already got or anything else you choose.
Of course, if you do want the bleeding cool goodies to go with it, we’re selling the terrain and miniatures as well, as STL files you can print on your own 3D printer or as physical pieces that you can just set up and play with.
The rule system is fast and easy to learn, another thing we’ve refined over many game sessions with people who’ve shown up at game conventions and learned everything right on the spot. It uses a system by Peter Bryant called Razer that lets you use literally any dice you happen to have with you.
If you’d like a sneak peek, there’s a free beta preview available on our Patreon. It’s part of the free tier; you don’t have to pay anything to join and check out the beta. Of course, the full game will be more refined and full of content we haven’t shown anyone yet.
Moar Blood launches on Kickstarter on October 6th. Tap the button below to get notified at launch and be one of the first to back us. Early birds will get extra goodies!
Get Notified When Moar Blood Launches 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)
Join the Analog Union on Reddit 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
Get Tickets 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!
Learn More 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.
Get Tickets 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
-
Big Cons, Adventures in Collecting, R.I.P. Reggie Bannister, & Eggiversary, and more!
This is the Analog Union newsletter for August 11th, 2026. Keep in mind that if you’re reading this in the distant future, some timely information may be out of date. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to your inbox every week!
Big Cons, Adventures in Collecting, R.I.P. Reggie Bannister, & Eggiversary, and more! August 11th, 2026
In this newsletter
Big Conventions | Adventures In Collecting | R.I.P. Reggie Bannister | Ham & Eggiversary
Stillfleet Studio
The Game Design Grind: Big Conventions
A half-empty stadium sits filled with tables and chairs. Daylight filters in along with people wearing stuffed book bags.
Where are we? Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Indianapolis Colts, the first day of Gen Con 2026. Soon, the tables will be packed with gamers playing TTRPGs. And this isn’t even the main venue! The convention center and attached hotels are even more full.
Gen Con is a massive game convention. While fun, it’s costly to attend, and it’s a danger for the immunocompromised. From a small publisher perspective, getting a retail booth is competitive. Everyone is haggard from talking day and night. It’s a classic (one might joke “old-school”) business grind. So why does Stillfleet or any small TTRPG studio bother to attend?
Because for four days, an entire city is transformed. You can’t order a latte: it’s a “Necromancer’s Breath” (etc.). An overheard conversation may jump from a critique of a Magic: The Gathering set to an endorsement of Kids on Bikes. Anyone you pass may invite you to sit and try a new board game.
A mega convention is not simply “a con.” It’s a wholesale disassociation with that other grind—the one in which most of us have day jobs and can’t count on strangers to know what a saving throw is. Psychologically, this is reinvigorating. We get to see people playing our games, our friends’ games, and games in general, en masse. Specifically, for an indie publisher:
1) A big con is a golden opportunity to run games for a random sampling of nerds from across the U.S. (And—depending on which vile anti-immigration politicians are currently in office—the world.) We can get honest feedback and build word-of-mouth interest.
2) We can show off our games and learn what else is happening via our distributors. Many indies distribute via Studio 2 or Indie Press Revolution, or distributor–publishers like Plus One Experience and Exalted Funeral. They’re all at the big cons with booths. We don’t often get to be in the same space with our distributors and with our indie comrades who make the games that inspire us.
3) We exchange ideas, and we challenge each other. Panels, seminars, and—more so—networking events provide spaces in which creators can learn and teach. We come away with a list of to-dos, people to follow up with, etc.
In fact, I met some of the other Analog Union folks for the first time at Gen Con this year. I don’t know who I’ll see at the other big con we attend, PAX Unplugged, so I may not see them again until next summer. So even if much of Gen Con exists for the likes of D&D, Daggerheart, and other non-indie games, we’ll return to Indy to connect with other gamers who support small studios that focus on innovation and storytelling. Numbers-wise, it’s simply easiest to find these folks at a big con.
Final observation: even if the big cons are driven by the big trad games, the indies are seeing real growth. To highlight just two names, Justin Sirois of Severed Books, part of Analog Union, was nominated for two of the biggest ENnie Awards (the biggest in TTRPGs), for Best Game and Best Rules 2026, for Sickest Witch. And Viditya Voleti and moreblueberries (Elliot Davis) were nominated for Best Rules for A Land Once Magic. These are two very different, very rad indie games that deserved all the attention they received, and it was inspiring to hear that sentiment echoed widely.
(Full disclosure, I technically won a small part of a group “Judge’s Spotlight” ENnie as part of Plus One Experience’s RPG Zine Club Year 2, for PICARO! Big ups to Wes Franks, Tony Vasinda, and the POE team.)
Takeaway: if you see an indie game at a big con that looks fun, consider giving it a try, and see if the creator is around.
Another way to help make TTRPGs better is to participate in game jams. Reminder: the Grit System Game Jam is open for submissions until August 25!
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Adventures In Collecting
Adventures in Collecting launched in 2019, and when it did, the world was markedly different. The podcast (that’s all it was then) was a way for two brothers to connect more regularly and record their conversations about a hobby they always shared, despite their seven-year age gap: toys. We weren’t “content creators” or “influencers,” just two adults setting a time on the calendar to talk — and we did a lot of that.Those conversations quickly grew into interviews, those interviews into opportunities, and those opportunities into… well… content. Lots and lots of content.
Flash forward 7 years and through hundreds of recorded episodes, thousands of posts, a global pandemic, and the advent of gen AI, we have organically grown Adventures in Collecting into a trusted source of news for the toys and collectibles community. We’ve had the opportunity to interview the likes of Jeremy Padawer (President of Jazwares), Todd McFarlane, and even famed screenwriter Bob Gale. We’ve been given the chance to break news for multi-million dollar corporations like Hasbro — hell — we got to attend a special VIP screening of an original 1954 print of Godzilla straight out of Toho’s archive.
It still doesn’t feel real sometimes, and that’s something I never take for granted. The fact that people show up to see my toy photography, that companies trust us with early looks at their products, and that we keep getting invited to events and conversations is not lost on me.
I’ve learned a lot along the way, but the main thing we set out to do is still at the core of all of this. It’s really easy to let the world force us to disconnect with the people we care about — and while this podcast has opened my doors to a rich community filled with folks from seemingly every walk of life — it also gives me an excuse to sit down and have thoughtful conversations with my brother.
Check Out The AIC Podcast Check Out The AIC Instagram “Hot as Love” across the Rainbow Bridge
Reggie Bannister 1945-2026
On Sunday, August 9th, the world of horror lost a titan as Reggie Bannister shed his mortal coil at age 80.
Reggie was an actor, musician, and producer. He is best known as Reggie from the Phantasm series of movies, where over the course of five films he stood steadfast by his best friend as they fought an endless battle against the Tall Man.
According to Deadline, Bannister’s other credits include Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation (1990), The Demolitionist (1995), Wishmaster (1997), Bubba Ho-Tep (2002), Cemetery Gates (2004), The Mangler Rebor (2005), Last Rites (2006), The Rage (2007), The Quiet Ones (2008), Carnies (2009), Sawblade (2010), Not Another B Movie(2011), The Ghastly Love of Johnny X (2012), Bloody Bloody Biuble Camp(2012), The Obsidian Curse (2016), and Bonejangles (2017)
For me, this one hits harder than most because Phantasm is my all-time favorite horror movie. I loved the character of Reggie, and the balding yet ponytailed ice cream-slinging everyman he brought to life was proof that anybody could be a hero.
Let’s also not forget he looked cool as hell wielding the iconic four-barrel shotgun and behind the wheel of the Hemi ‘Cuda that became staples of the Phantasm series.Here’s to you, Reggie Bannister. I hope you have the top down on the ‘Cuda as you cross the Rainbow Bridge.
Watch Phantasm Here For FREE Ham & Egg Publishing
Ham & Eggiversary
August 8th, 2026 marked the 6th anniversary of Ham & Egg Publishing. Time sure does fly when you are having fun.
I just wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude to all the folks who contributed to our longevity as a publisher. To all the artists, backers, contributors, our friends and family, and players. Thank you.
Because of you, we have been able to release eighteen titles–for 321RPG and other systems–as well as two co-releases, and even more to come later in the year. We’ve even expanded to minis, novellas, soundtracks, and soon dice.
More important than that, however, is that we made friends and found a place in the TTRPG community where we belong. We are so grateful to be here.So, on behalf of Geo, my creative partner of over 20 years, and myself, thanks.
If you’d like to see what we’ve got coming up next, click the link below to learn more and get notified when we go live.Stay safe out there, and may the dice always roll in your favor.
-JHM
Learn More! 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)
Join the Analog Union on Reddit 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
Get Tickets 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!
Learn More 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.
Get Tickets 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
