Advertise on podcast: Unwritten Earths Symposium

We welcome friend and fellow Tracy Barnett (the Other Tracy) to the show! We discuss his games (Iron Edda, School Daze, and more), his trajectory as a game designer, changing practices for getting games out into the world, the many benefits of zines and low-fi creation, writing directly into layout, and more. Turns out, making things is good for the soul! Find Tracy's games at theothertracy.itch.io and on rpgtrader. He's also on Bluesky. Show Notes: Long Tail Shoutout to John Harper MICE (Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo) CZF (Chicago Zine Fest) MagCloud Games Mentioned School Daze Iron Edda You are the Dungeon Fate Core, Fate Accelerated and Dresdan Files Accelerated (Evil Hat) Dread RPG Design Zines ndp Poster Games Wolfspell And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

We welcome long-time friend and crackerjack game designer Gregor Hutton to the show! This far-ranging discussion includes his games (3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars, Remember Tomorrow), all the ways we work on games while not Working On A Game, keeping the joy alive, the evolving landscape for the kinds of games we make, maths and managing spotlight, and being a good actor in your local community, among so many other things. Find Gregor's games (Best Friends, Remember Tomorrow, 3:16, Solipsist) at BoxNinja.com and GregorHutton.itch.io. Show Notes Ron Edward's Adept Play Happening (Sweden) 2000 AD (Comics) Return of the escaped Japanese Snow Monkey (BBC) System Matters (German RPG Publisher) The World at War (1973-1974 British TV Series) Trollen Wheel (for making braided cords) Two Games One Name Games Mentioned Shatterzone (West End Games) Hell 4 Leather (Joe Prince) A|State 2nd Ed (Handiwork Games) The Trouble Engine (SRD) Big Mother F’n Crab Truckers With Great Power: Master Edition (Michael S. Miller) Capes (Tony Lower-Basch) Night Witches (Bully Pulpit Games) Monsterhearts 2 (Buried Without Ceremony) And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

In this episode we get fancy and talk about the aesthetics of truly-true game mechanics. The same probabilistic outcomes and mechanical functions can be served by many different styles of rule. We talk about different ways to appreciate the form of a game mechanic as well as think about how the expression or description of rules can be a fruitful design space. Show Notes: Balanced Ternary(a base 3 numeral system using -1, 0, 1) Amadeus (1984) Games Mentioned: FUDGE/FUDGE Dice FATE (Evil Hat Productions) How We Came To Live Here (Galileo Games) The Time We Have (moreblueberries) Moonsailors (Annamyriah de Jong) Bacchanal (Half Meme Press) Oh F**k, The Killer!(That House) Agon (Revised/PARAGON edition) Usagi Yojimbo Role-Playing Game (First Edition) Burning Wheel / Mouse Guard Violent Delights (Kickstarter preview page) HeroQuest / Hero Wars Megadamage in Palladium/RIFTS Dread Imp of the Perverse And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

It's finally time for us to seriously address the elephant in the room for truly-true roleplaying games: fun. We talk about how hard it is to describe fun, what elements of gameplay (can) lead to or combine to create fun, and why "make it fun" isn't a very fruitful design goal. Look, we're game designers, we have to treat fun with the gravitas it deserves! Show Notes: Go Play NW Games Mentioned: No Thanks! Moonsailors And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

In this episode, we carefully consider our words in order discuss the different purposes served by creating abstractions with your game rules, and how word choices can both result from and drive game design. Remember, 90% of game design is naming things! Games Mentioned: Swords Without Master Mortal Skein Imp of the Perverse World Wide Wrestling And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

In this episode, we talk about being at the top of the truly-true Design Ziggurat where small changes have big effects. Specifically, one of the signs that a game is close to done is when enough of the design is settled that an insight that leads to a significant change is just a small thing that doesn't require significant playtesting or changing of anything else. It's not a departure, it's a product of the experience you have with the design. Games Mentioned: Swords Without Master Imp of the Perverse And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

Plus Expenses is our bonus show for Patrons, dropping every other week between our regular episodes. This one is on the public feed for everyone, to round out our Origins Interviews episode with our reflections on the convention. Thanks so much for listening - if you dig this, you can get it for just $5 a month over at our Patreon! In this Plus Expenses, we talk about: The Origins interviews, how the convention felt, “networking”, being a two-session guy, Imp of the Perverse, DriveThru Deal of the Day, decision-making for Games on Demand, good playtest/bad session, energy use during games, Eppy’s bluesky post about AI - it won’t help you!, refreshingly human-made focus at the dealer hall, Eppy’s dice adventure, character sheet usage for different contexts, live Swords sheets feedback and development, a Swords Without Master story, a Mortal Skein (playtest) story and playtesting philosophy, our White Whale Episode, not recognizing things when they work, and if you want more of this, sign up for our Patreon - only $5 a month! And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

We went to Origins Game Fair! It was a great time, and we were lucky enough to catch up with old friends and chat with new ones for the show. This episode consists of 6 in-person interview/conversations with game designers, GMs and publishers about Origins, Games on Demand, boothing, and game design theory and practice. We felt extremely fortunate to have the chance to chat with all of these incredible folks, and hope you enjoy the conversations! General Note: These were captured on a shared mic in shared spaces, so the audio quality is... informal. We think it's all listenable but you'll notice variations from interview to interview. The Interviews: Dr. Evan Torner - We talk about Games on Demand at Origins, and playtesting. Check out Analog Game Studies and Evan's work in LARP and tabletop Jim Crocker - We talk about "the year of no hustle" and managing your relationship to the hobby as someone who also makes their living in it "Indie Games Here!" Booth - We talk about boothing at Origins with Viditya Voleti (A Land Once Magic), Brian Flaherty and Elliot Davis (Many Sided Media, moreblueberries), and Nell and Ali of spilledcoffeecreatives Gene Koo - We talk about The Bonsai Diary and cultivating communities of practice (like Designed in the DMV) Vincent Baker - We talk about party games and the changing relationship with convention attendance and boothing TheOtherTracy - We talk about friendship, what getting better at game design means, and talk about a bedrock member of the community that has since passed, Morgan Ellis. Rest in Power, Morgan! And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

It's the summer, which means time for a sweaty, exciting episode about... distribution platforms! A new challenger has entered the arena, and we discuss the role of these digital marketplaces as part of actually getting games into peoples hands, the features and constraints they each have and how those can shape the design of your business, and what's exciting about this new option, rpg-trader.com. Note: we have no relationship with the site other than (as of this release) adding our products to it to see how it goes. On this episode, we discuss the following platforms: rpg-trader.com DriveThruRPG Itch.io Payhip Indie Press Revolution lulu.com Lightning Source / Ingram Show Notes: Our Wisdom Episode (in which we discuss using your game design skills to design your business) The "Indie RPG Bookshelf" Nathan was recalling was also called the Unstore, and appears to no longer be a going concern Tabletop Bookshelf (Retailer) Ten Acre Games Gumroad controversys include: banning adult content (2024), laying off workers, and being part of DOGE (2025) The only news sources I can find for the linktr.ee thing are all pro-AI, but you can look that up for details carrd.co And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

We come back from a brief sabbatical to consider a bundle of topics from our Scholars. We talk about prompts in truly true roleplaying games (and reclaiming them from their AI-related meaning), things in our lives we've adopted from games and that we adapt into our game design, and different interpretations of the idea of a "standard" in game design. An assumption, yes, but what about a mode of experimentation, like a Jazz Standard? This is one of our more after-hours style conversations that touches on lots of the things we're always thinking about. Show Notes: Jorge Luis Borges Quote (from The Garden of Forking Paths): "Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary." Asa Donald/Backwards Tabletop Poul Anderson, author of The Broken Sword and Three Hearts and Three Lions The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman Jack Vance's Dying Earth Games Mentioned: Vast & Starlit What Is a Roleplaying Game Sanguine Games' Usagi Yojimbo Apocalypse World Flip 7 And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

Nathan and Eppy finally turn in their spring semester homework, discussing where they are at with The Marian and Robin Roleplaying Party Game (and spinners!), and Fair Winds and Following Seas (and music!), respectively. Informed by both formal exploration and input from Scholars over at our Discord, both of these games are starting to get somewhere. Show Notes: Two Hundred a Day "Live" Episode with Emily Care Boss Numberphile "Cones Are Messed Up" (Martini Glass Video) Maid Marian and Her Merry Men (BBC series) Games Mentioned: Remember Tomorrow Bullwinkle & Rocky Role-Playing Party Game Jason Morningstar’s The Skeletons Rogue Trader (2009), but Nathan was probably playing Dark Heresy (2008) And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

No, this isn't about games we don't like; following up on a question from our Wisdom Episode, we talk about the parts of making games that are not fun, from merely boring all the way to actively hate. This turns into a conversation about how we get through those periods, how the unique nature of truly true roleplaying games makes perfection impossible, and harnessing the hate that flows through you for good. We balance that out with an update on something we're loving right now, the incoming artwork for Swords Without Master! Nathan's game Mortal Skein is out! Here's the playtest materials on itch. Show Notes: Great Courses: English Grammar Boot Camp CSS Tailwind CSS Pomodoro Technique Forest Timer App (the tree-growing one) Will Jobst's Plasmodics: Mutant Freaks in the Weird Future Swords Artists: Shel Kahn Jabari Weathers GORAN Simon Roy Big Bluesky Thread of the Swords artists And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

As is tradition on this first day of April, we're going through some of the wisdom we've accumulated as self-publishers over the years, in hopes it'll help out those who are starting their game design journey. We try to address some of the basic questions that you might not know you should be asking, and talk about the core work of finding an audience, benefits and drawbacks of different kinds of conventions, designing your business like it's a game, and starting small in order to give yourself the space to learn and grow. If there's any fools today it's going to be us, but hopefully this is helpful - and if raises further questions, please get in touch so we can continue this conversation! Show Notes: Tabletop Game Alliance of Washington State Heart of the Deernicorn itch.io Drivethru Indie Press Revolution Payhip 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars FreeTaxUSA Vast and Starlit And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

In this episode, we visit the mailroom to field some listener questions! We discuss design rituals that we each have, the experience of having games or mechanics fall flat for us in play, and some potential homework for future episodes. The conversation includes digressions into spinner design, playtesting our way out of mechanics that don't work, and how we approach disappointing experiences as something to learn from. Thanks for all the mail! Shoutouts to: Playtest Tuesday, The Imaginauts, and Paul Czege Games Mentioned: Bullwinkle & Rocky Role Playing Party Game Slugblaster Prince Valiant: The Story-Telling Game A Sword Points South (a work-in-progress from Eppy) Night’s Black Agents / Dracula Dossier GURPS Wushu: The Ancient Art of Action Roleplaying Imp of the Perverse And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst

In this episode, Nathan and Eppy report back about their "do this with that" homework assignment. Eppy debuts The Marion and Robin Party Roleplaying Game, and Nathan outlines how Remember Tomorrow reconfigures Fair Winds and Following Seas. Then, we reflect on how using other games as the basis of new work (hacks, if you will) can be a really helpful part of the game design process. Show Notes: Eppy plays Swords Without Master with New Edge Sword & Sorcery New Edge's 2026 Backerkit (runs through March 14!) List of Games that Blew our Minds, courtesy of Camilla Zamboni Games Mentioned: Remember Tomorrow Bullwinkle & Rocky Role Playing Party Game PSI'RUN Otherkind Dice And there's more: Unwritten Earths Symposium Our Patreon Join the Discord Nathan's games Eppy's games Music by Will Jobst