The feed of updates to brendanmcleod.dev
Tons of previews for my upcoming game, Star Wars Zero Company, have dropped today! Here’s some of them. Christopher Odd - IS Z-COM Our New X-COM “ … I can say this with confidence: you’re really going to enjoy this game.” IGN - Star Wars Zero Company is XCOM set in a galaxy far, far away, and even those unfamiliar with turn-based tactics games like me can easily get hooked by it As a massive Star…
We talk with Ian Williams about his recently-announced book on miniature wargaming, the material conditions of craft, the power of nostalgia, and the impact of hydration breaks on association football. Find Ian on Bluesky ( https://bsky.app/profile/brocktoon.bsky.social ) and follow his blog ( https://stuckness.ghost.io/ ). “ The Doodad Economy”, which we reference in the show, can be found here:…
We talk with Eve Golden-Woods about tabletop mechanics, the Book of Kells industrial complex, regency romance novels, and Ancient Babylon. Find Eve on Bluesky ( https://bsky.app/profile/evegoldenwoods.bsky.social ) and on itch ( https://evelorien.itch.io/ ), where you can download the award-winning ttrpg, The Creation of Wonder.
We talk with Bria Davis about Discord servers, Blaseball, passing on lessons learned, and eggs. Bria Davis ( https://bsky.app/profile/thevoidencore.bsky.social ) is Community Director at Young Horses ( https://younghorsesgames.com/ )
you ever been more tired than you’ve ever been in in your whole life? I haven’t shipped a video game since 2019, owing to a combination of projects failing, companies dissolving, and me changing jobs to escape toxic circumstances when there seemed like no other recourse. That means I haven’t had a game on store shelves since then, but more pertinently, I haven’t gone through the motions of getting…
I went to Macon to attend a small workshop being run by my friend Cameron. We kitbashed some wargaming minis, painted them, and then played a big game of 1490 Doom ! I’d never been to Macon before. It’s a nice-sized college town with a very walkable downtown area! I’m excited to go back and see some more of what it’s got to offer (and eat some more of its food.) Before I left town, I visited the…
We talk with Holly Nielsen about Amberspire, games in historical contexts, citing sources, and the Whiggish nature of skill trees. Follow Holly on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/hollynielsen.bsky.social Amberspire releasing May 6! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3350750/Amberspire/
I travelled to Galway to attend the FÍS Game Summit, where my friend Nic was giving a talk and my pals Eve and Sam would be around. I was excited to visit a foreign country for the first time and see some friends while I was at it! The event was grand - it was held in a very nice hotel (where I was staying) and it was especially well run, with some great talkers, posh facilities, and a very…
I went to Milwaukee to attend Adepticon , a wargaming miniatures convention! I demo’d a few games, saw a lot of neat miniatures, and hung out with some good pals. I didn’t see a whole lot of Milwaukee, but it was nice enough. Pretty cold. I’d go visit again!
We talk with Chris Kindred about DJing, teaching game design, and hauntology. Follow Chris on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/chriskindred.com and find their work at https://chriskindred.com/
We speak with Meredith Gran about nostalgia, sense of time and place, cartooning, and getting a project across the finish line. Follow Meredith on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/meredithgran.com Meredith’s new game, Perfect Tides: Station to Station, is out now on Steam for PC and Mac, and coming soon to Switch. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2088810/Perfect_Tides_Station_to_Station/
This is a master post to all of my Mythic Bastionland session reports for the short campaign I ran: Zero - Tiger, Tome, and Blood One - The Weaver Knight Two - The Enthroned Seer Three - Judgment Four - The Haunted Coast Five - The Abbey of St Genesius Six (Finale) - Whale-Blood
Content warnings in this write-up for mind control and harm to animals. Spoilers included for the mechanics of The Pool, a Myth in Mythic Bastionland. We started this session with a conversation about how much more we expected to play, and wound up agreeing that this would be our last session, provided we got to a reasonable conclusion with the Myth we were currently trying to resolve. Part of…
We talk with Non-Breaking Space about expressive play, mechanics of scale, hidden information, and librarians. Non-Breaking Space ( https://www.nbsp1618.games/ ) is the designer of Cross Bronx Expressway ( https://www.gmtgames.com/p-953-cross-bronx-expressway.aspx ), a competitive city-builder that simulates urban and societal development in the South Bronx between the years 1940 and 2000. He is…
2025 really just needed to be better than 2024. It was, thank god. It was still very hard! I feel very fortunate to have the job that I have, but it’s been a lot of hard work without many breaks. What time I haven’t spent on my 9-to-5 has been spent making stuff. This year, I… Finished OATHSWORN , the Band of Blades actual play that made my debut as a podcaster. 77 episodes (plus some bonus…
A short one this week, because 1) it’s been a couple of weeks since we played, and 2) I didn’t take detailed notes! We started by rerolling our stats according to the “ Courtier” rolls (d12+6 instead of d12 + d6), so that the Knights stood some chance of succeeding on their dice rolls. Some folks’ stats went up. Burgith, amusingly, now has a 10 in every Virtue! The company of knights traveled east…
I haven’t had an Xbox console in a long time, so I completely missed this game when it came out. I’d wanted to try it ever since Control came out - with Remedy on the rise, didn’t I owe it to myself to check out this entry in their library? It turns out: no, I didn’t need to. It feels of-its-time in the worst ways: run-and-gun gameplay where your “ hero” murders hundreds of other humans without a…
On October, I went to Chicago for a week to visit my friend nic! This post has a bunch of my photos from the trip. I spent a week there, bouncing back and forth between days by myself exploring the city, and days hanging out with nic and other pals. Sunday Arrival Here’s me and nic when I first arrived. I was very tired. My trip started with a Chicago hot dog. It was hot! I stayed in a nice little…
WHALE ROADS is the chronicle of a year-long, 30+ player West Marches campaign of Wolves Upon the Coast by Luke Gearing . A 250-page “ zine” filled with play summaries, original art, and Referee commentary. Available now, and it’s 100% completely free. Gathered together from the Ranged Touch community, three Referees led us on a journey across the dark isles of the north as we sought food, freedom,…
We talk with Andrew “ dicey” Shouldice about teaching game development, making maps, managing projects, and the joy of the game manual. Andrew Shouldice is the creator of TUNIC ( http://tunicgame.com ). Follow him on social media ( https://bsky.app/profile/dicey.bsky.social ) and check out the PICOSteveMo game he made with his partner, King Stephen, out now ( https://dicey.itch.io/king-stephen ).
This session was a fun one, but it began to really show what we most like and what we most dislike about Mythic Bastionland! First off: we decided on a short time skip of a couple of weeks. This isn’t just a decision that we made on our own - the game actively prompts you to think about this, which I think is great. At the end of each session, or during a natural break in their journey, the group…
This session wrapped up the confrontation with the knights’ first Myth! It had two fights and a climactic confrontation, all in the same hex. My usual level of description is probably going to be a little lighter here in part because 1) we were learning how combat worked and 2) I took less good notes, since I was adjudicating combat. The enormous dog - a Retriever of Justice! - had just arrived at…
What the idea DiCaprio plants in her head in Inception? “ Your world is not real”? I’ve been really feeling that, lately: the world writ large and writ small both feel false, fictional, and hard to reckon with in a real way. Here’s what I’ve been saving up for a links post since the last time I did one. nex3: hades II has a legibility problem Whether it’s a consequence of the game’s wildly popular…
I’m in Chicago, taking a week off from work to try and rest, unwind, and generally distance myself from the near-daily stress of my current workload. It’s been very nice! I’ve seen some fun stuff and had a good time hanging out with friends. Expect a photodump sometime when I’m home. I already feel like I’m really ready to throw myself into a big TTRPG project again soon (although I have a couple…
This week, the knights met a Seer who is also the ruler of a holding, and were deeply unimpressed with him. Rather than heed the Seer’s immediate call for service, they escaped into the dark to continue their own quest for the local Myth - a Myth which has taken an dark interest in them. Burgith, Alana, and Matilda entered the holding of Caer Gynnydd. Caer Gynnydd is in the heart of the Bright…
We talk with Sophie Abromowitz about stage comedy, worldbuilding through systems, FROMSOFT games as detective stories, and the origin of the hot dog.
Our story begins in the dead center of Spring, after the Company has spent the past two weeks traveling across sandy wastes to reach Norfydd - a remote realm known for its prosperity and its odd happenings. One of the things I love about Mythic Bastionland is the calendar: it gives you just enough structure to keep track of things. For example, since it’s the middle of the spring, I can tell the…
This is the first of a series of session reports that I’m going to write for a game of Mythic Bastionland by Chris McDowall , a dark fantasy game of mythic knights in a strange land. I’m not positive how long our adventures will last, but I wanted to keep a chronicle of them. Our session zero established some pretty straightforward lines and veils, and listed some pretty solid Touchstones for what…
We talk with Joannes Truyens about burnout, secrets, narrative confusion, and Michael Crichton technotrillers.
We talk with Cameron Kunzelman about Magic the Gathering, writing for different kinds of audiences, the conditions of producing things, and xenomorphs.
We wrap up our coverage of The Prisoner by answering some of your questions. Matthew’s list of Prisoner-alikes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1olVZvAkpC6qTYzt-XvLE1DNpnZY24lP6rN69BcXgS1g/edit?usp=sharing Thanks for listening!
We talk with Brian Bucklew about the joy of collaboration, outer space, Jenga, and water.
“ To do the thing, you have to do the thing.” To be a writer, you must write; to produce things that people read, you must write them down and put them where other people can read them. Further, to do those things, you must spend time doing them, which means you must be conscious and deliberate about making that time. I have not been conscious and deliberate about much besides work, for the past…
We reach the final episode of The Prisoner as Number Six comes face to face with rebellion, authority, and a curious sort of praise for his private war in the name of individuality. But who’s running the Village, anyway? And what will Number Six do now that he’s won? He HAS won, hasn’t he? Join us for a long discussion of the contentious, curious final episode: FALL OUT . Send your questions to…
Content warnings for: alcohol abuse, motor accidents, psychological manipulation, nervous breakdowns A clash of wills! A favorite Number Two returns to put the screws to Number Six. Will the secrets of the spy’s resignation be revealed with regression therapy? What will reveal about Six’s life - or McGoohan’s? Who really IS Six in this scenario, anyway? Learn all this and more as we go back to…
We talk with Jason Grinblat about the joy of bugs, extrapolative narration, system suspense, and milk.
Sometimes, when The Prisoner plays with the format of the show, it produces some interesting results - results that can give you a new lens with which to view the show. Sometimes it results in an episode like this one - a spy farce with uneven budget, odd performances, and even odder costume choices. Join us to find out how Number Six deals with THE GIRL WHO WAS DEATH . Next time: ONCE UPON A TIME…
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