I talk to Asa Donald about destroying character sheets, the role of music in RPGs, and channeling real-life burnout into mech games. Transcript adapted from an interview with Asa Donald on May 8th...
The most divisive trivia question I've written
Yesterday I wrote 52 trivia questions as part of an expansion for Trivy, my take on a trivia / bingo hybrid. But I’m no stranger to writing trivia questions. Background In college, I used to writ...
Coughing up Inspiration
I want to talk about Inspiration. Some people use Inspiration to mean “a message from a muse.” A quick jolt, a bolt from the blue, the perfect idea that sprouts fully formed, like Athena from the ...
March 2025 Roundup
Below are things I’ve learned, remembered, or found interesting in the past month: The word “Till” (meaning up to) is older than the word “Until”. Until is actually a lengthening of until ...
Crackpot Tetris
The other day1 I bleeted2 about my belief that Tetris may be the best video game ever made. I later clarified that, like a reasonable person, I don’t consider the original3 Game Boy or NES release...
A handful of steam (part 2)
Rogue Waters Pirate-themed XCOM It’s an XCOM, complete with tactical turn-based combat. This is thoroughly pirate-themed, with ship-to ship combat occurring before each fight. You can cleverly ...
A handful of Steam (part 1)
This week, I’m reviewing 5 Steam demos that have either been lurking on my backlog, or (in the case of Monster Train 2) I just found out about today. Possibly because it was just released today. M...
Quick reviews: January 2025
Books and Comics Starstruck (2/5) Sometimes one of my kids will come home from school and tell me a long, involved story featuring people I’ve never met and events I don’t understand. I li...
Leveling up in Excel (Part 2)
Last time, I explained how there are ten tiers of spreadsheet mastery, and that by conquering each of them you unlock a new level of proficiency. The first 5 are competency, while these five bring ...
January 2025 Roundup
Below are things I’ve learned, remembered, or found interesting in the past month: Courtesy of Astral Codex 10, the Southern Television Broadcast Interruption, where a broadcast was interr...