2025 Indie Board Game and TTRPG Preview: Check My Small-Game Haul

This is adapted from the script of Episode 98, “ˆLight and Get Away, It’s the Fall Small Games Preview.”

So back in Episode 96 we met Walt, who told us about Carolina Death Crawl from Bully Pulpit games — a roleplaying game that turns you and three others into Carolina boys who signed up for the Union army and who just got stuck together behind Confederate lines after Potter’s Raid, a real life late-war action by the Union to strike at the Rebs’ railroad supply lines.

The longer I marinated on what Walt told me about the game, the more attractive the concept looked: A historically based TTRPG that quick-starts stories and characters that you bring to life. The handful of plot points of the mission are propelled by character flaws and motivations instead of tactical stuff, and the outcome always promises to be grim: Only one character is going to make it home.

Carolina Death Crawl TTRPG: “I have provisioned myself for the terrors ahead and tremble to think of what I may find.”

I got my set of cards in the mail yesterday and I just met Walt’s group on Discord. We’re gonna play this thing and I’m already thinking about whether I want to go method and try a Southern Carolina accent. Of course, there are other decisions to be made beforehand, including what tone we want to set: a comedic adventure, a mournful horror slog, or something else.

The cards in this Carolina Death Crawl box have a series of plot cues, each with surefooted period language and flavor, suggesting a propulsive and lean storytelling exercise with minimal overhead and lots of character development. 

The nice thing? I don’t have to sell the experience to anyone. I failed at that when I bought a Mork Borg design with a killer-looking book a few years ago and realized that when the locals say “roleplaying” they really just mean D&D. It’s like trying to talk food with people who only like Applebee’s.

Fortunately for me, Walt’s group are passionate indie TTRPG dudes, so I’m eager to see how one of these games are run and stretch my collaborative storytelling muscles inside Carolina Death Crawl’s economical framework. Look for a session report on that before the year is out.

Also on the way: Pyrotechnics, a two-player card game designed by Michael Byron Sprague and published by designer Jason Katzwinkel’s The Seahorse and the Hummingbird venture. I bought a one-yard-from-the-finish-line prototype of this because I watched Jason’s feed for years as he built small-game designs in public, wrestling with and solving everything from visual design to game structure to the undergirding math of the thing. It was fascinating. It’s the thing I want to point people to when they hear I have a boardgame podcast and I like playing games: “Well why don’t you make your own game?” Because that shit is hard, that’s why. Why don’t you make a game where you shut up?

Anyhow, Pyrotechnics promises a 10-minute playtime in which you and your opponent are fireworks designers, each trying to be the first one to empty out the cards in their hand. This effort runs off three simple actions — Research, Discover, and Showcase for when you’re ready to drop a new display from your R&D shed — but it looks like the fireworks in terms of thinkiness comes in the form of an economy of six colored token varieties called “Sparks.” When you pick one of the three actions, you trigger mandatory exchanges of Major and Secondary Sparks that keep them moving between your supply — and your opponent’s.

Pyrotechnics from The Seahorse and the Hummingbird: Two players compete via a three-action and token exchange system to set off the best fireworks and be the first to empty their hand.

I’m impressed by the quality of this prototype, but not surprised. Based on what I saw Katz post on the average day, even his preliminary output is sharp and tight and fastidious in the good sense of the word. Use of color, type, and space, down to the satisfying heft of the accordion-fold rulebook and guide, shows pro-level thinking from Katz, game designer Michael Sprague, graphics guy Gavin Pouliot and editor David Kessler.

“Think Deep and Play Light,” urges a piece of text on one of the player guide panels. The latter directive seems wonderfully easy to meet: I got all the pieces out, read the rules…it was late on a hot afternoon and my brain was half-spent, but even one trip through the components and I knew I could sit down and test-run this two-handed on any given morning. 

As for “Think Deep”: I’m curious to feel my way through how the flow of Spark tokens drives the tough decisions and creates opportunities for ruses. As a piece of descriptive copy on the game’s landing page promises, “You’ll bluff, block, and bait your opponent—timing your Research, Discover and Showcase just right to outmaneuver them.” 

Here’s hoping. As reported to me in DMs by Jason Katzwinkel, this pretty little game is 99.4% complete and will be available soon for a modest $15.

One thing missing from my summer mornings in 2025 has been a quick-player solo game to cycle along with the first few cups of coffee. Enter Battle Card from Postmark Games, who specialize in beautiful print-and-play puzzle and adventure games.

Battle Card is a bid to make a historically faithful strategic wargame that presents you with the same decisions a WWII general would have had to make, but at a highly streamlined satellite’s-eye view. 

This game unites a publisher and a designer I admire: Postmark’s typically brilliant and efficient graphic design with game designer David Thompson, who has a special knack for interpreting the drama and details of a wartime setting into a wide variety of accessible tabletop experiences. The hit Undaunted series was his brainchild. He designed Resist! a solo game set during the Spanish Civil War. Another of his designs, Pavlov’s House, is on my table right now. 

Battle Card lets him flex his gift for lightweight elegance inside Postmark’s maximum-value-with-minimum pieces ethos: All you need is a printout of whatever map you want to try and a fistful of your own six-sided dice, which represent division- or army group-level units whose values change as they attack or defend.

Battle Card, The Malayan Campaign: Allied forces (white dice) try to find the best mix of “fight and flee” to lose with honor against the Imperial Japanese Army (big red craps dice).

Right now I’m looking at a map of the Malayan Campaign, when Japanese forces swiftly overran British Commonwealth and Allied defenses. In this one you take the role of Allied forces who had to slow the advance of the surging Imperial Japanese Army long enough to organize a retreat to Singapore, a major British stronghold.

As the Brits and their cohort, you’re not going to “win” in the pure sense, but you get the essence of the pressure the commanders were under — find the right balance of retreat and rearguard attacks to get the bulk of your men and machines back to Singapore without getting blown to shit. All with one page of rules.

This could be a long string of fun mornings, I thought to myself. Then I looked at the download folder and realized that for five pounds UK, I also had map files and concise rules for:

• Operation Market Garden, when the Allies tried to airdrop their way to a European invasion foothold in 1944.

• The Battle of Moro River, where you play as Canadians contending the Germans for key ground during winter conditions in Italy.

• Operation Brevity, a Commonwealth forces effort to relieve the siege of Tobruk in North Africa while seizing key ground from Rommel. 

• The Battle of Mortain, when Americans tried to fend off German counterattacks during the big summer of 44 push in France. 

• Operation Eidelweiss, where a German player races to lock down southern Russian oil fields in ’42.

And it doesn’t look like the same rules and challenges were just cut-and-pasted into a different-shaped maps. I’m seeing wrinkles that change dynamics, objectives and tactics — for example, the effect of weather is factored in for Moro River. 

Jesus Christ. All for five pounds? This is simply an insane value right off the bat. More on this as I get my teeth into the introductory sheets. [UPDATE: I’ve recorded my impressions of the introductory battles — Malaya and Market Garden — in Episode 99: Battle Card Review + Meet The Lads of “War With a Mate”]

Speaking of insane value, “free” ranks pretty high up there. My big bro Noisy Andrew — who is my opponent and teacher for learning Squad Leader — has been prepping a copy of his print-and-play design, Dive Dive Dive, for me.

It’s a coop game for 1-4 players inspired by The Hunters — a classic solitaire U-boat game from GMT Games. Andrew wanted to present his own twist on it. So when he’s done trimming cardboard, I’ll also be trying my hand at dueling with Allied Atlantic convoys per his system.

Dive Dive Dive: Cutaway of your sub and key systems status. Image: partymeeple

Noisy is like your kind big brother who knows how to do everything. Every day he’s elbow deep in fixing a friend’s car, working on real boats he knows how to sail, playing with instruments, and also making small games, many of which are free to try.

This is a good chance for me to engage with something a pal made and broaden the range of wargames I get to experience without committing to a big-box purchase and a six-week grind with a ruleset. We’ll circle back to ol’ Noisy with complaints and questions, not only about how the game works, but why he was inspired to make his own tweaks to one of wargaming’s most beloved modern naval campaign designs.

Oh yeah, remember Walt and Carolina Death Crawl from the beginning of this preview? He is also shipping me a copy of Lichoma, a meatpunk TTRPG designed by Strega van den Berg, with writing and editing support from Tessa Winters; Ashley Kronebusch, Ian Long, and Walt, who operate under the Bogfolk collective banner. 

They successfully Kickstarted this grim and bawdy commentary on capitalist reductionism in a town where meat — to wear, to eat, to sell, to kill, to screw — is the last economic cornerstone of a collapsing city’s economy. There’s nothing left to extract — except your muscle tissue and a few laughs. 

“Bodies are grafted together pieces of shit that solely serve as meat-machines to perform labor. It doesn’t matter anymore who you are.” Image: Strega Wolf van den Berg/Bogfolk

In a future episode, Walt’s going to talk me through how and why this was made — and how it is played. Get an eyeful of Lichoma for yourself on itch.io or watch the crew play it on YouTube, where the Plus One Exp channel hosted a live session.

I’ve been watching it in bits; they seem to be going at it in a highly comedic way. I just saw a buildup scene where the party hit a giant weapons store en route to a contract grudge demolition of a popular ferris wheel and a character named Grub Grub, who keeps a seeing-eye cockroach in a kangaroo-like pouch on their midsection, was musing about whether or not the roach should have its own firearm. I’m also digging the group’s rapport and in-character banter.

Watch this blog and future episodes of Breakup Gaming Society for impressions and playthroughs of titles from this grab-bag of indie tabletop inspiration.

52 Realms Adventures: The Ayahuasca Method

A Note from the Editor: I turned former Donnybrook Writing Academy colleague Fritz Godard loose on a solo dungeoncrawler to see how a guy with a well-developed sense of fun, but no experience in playing this type of game, would respond. This is his story.

Solitaire, sudoku, a dice-based version of Catan my ex-wife stuffed in my stocking, and pocket pool are the only non-virtual games I have ever played by myself.

Before taking a look at Postmark Games’ 52 Realms: Adventures — Map 1, “Tomb of the Ever-Wandering Soul” — I assumed a “dungeon crawler” was what they called the Roomba at an S&M club. I never would have assumed it could be a solo game where all I needed was a standard deck of cards, two markers, a map, and a character sheet.

I was out of my element from the beginning of the assignment. The photo on the page to download the map and directions had cards spread across the table as if someone was trying to cheat at solitaire.

I’m supposed to negotiate a dungeon by stocking an inventory of Equipment, Items and Loot from drawn cards, and then draw more cards to determine who I’m doing battle with and what they are doing in the battle. So many gaming questions would have been answered once I printed the instructions; instead the printed instructions sat menacingly on my desk for weeks.

I even asked myself if reading is really all that it’s cracked up to be. Maybe I should settle into the new world and let the YouTube algorithm create my personality and control my destiny. This was the size of my apprehension. Then I got the courage up to finally peek at the game, saw the five pages of horizontally printed instructions, and set it down for another two weeks. The hardest part of the game was starting it.

Or maybe it was after my first few plays, when I fled to Colombia.

My First Wight

It was nearly the end of January before the guilt of disappointing Breakup Gaming Society’s 3.5 average daily listeners got me back to the table. The first thing I had to do was choose a character: Seer or Barbarian. I decided to go with a Seer because it was blue and the face on the card looked like something straight from Jim Henson’s nightmare-inducing ‘80s workshop. 

My first battle I fought something called a Wight. Is a Wight something known in the gaming world? It sounds vaguely intimidating, but also slightly sexy.

My first battle I fought something called a Wight. Is a Wight something known in the gaming world? It sounds vaguely intimidating, but also slightly sexy. Will I get seduced by the Wight unless I pack my ears with wax? While trying to decipher the enemy’s essence and actions, I realized that it was best not to risk trying a new endeavor on an empty stomach. So I quit to go get myself a chicken sandwich for a couple of weeks.

[Ref’s Whistle] Illegal Potion, 10 Yards, Loss of Down

Weeks later, while on some down time from my brewery shift during the Viking Bluegrass Festival in Golden, CO, I decided to play again. In honor of all the braided hair, Grateful Dead tattoos and refillable leather-crafted beer steins at the event, I chose to be a Barbarian. 

I struggled to grasp the numbers and baddies before the rooms, but once I did, I was good to go. I defeated my first Goblin, then merked a Ghoul. I drew my first Curse of the game, but luckily I illegally used a Health Potion to get rid of it. REMINDER: A Health Potion doesn’t work on Curses.

I got to face my first B-level baddie: With the miracle of more inadvertent cheating, I defeated the B-level Lizard. On to the Lizard’s Lair: I drew three cards to keep two, but gained another Curse.

ACES ARE BAD IN THIS GAME: So bad, that I now hate aces and if I encounter you in public and tell you “You’re aces!” it is an insult and I hope your life gets as fucked up as my game did when I drew this ace. I drew the ace of spades (Motorhead now sucks, too) and had to take a fatal wound.

Trying a Different Kind of Cheating

I tried again, aiming to collect maximal Equipment, Items and Loot to assure my victory. Eventually I got all the way to the Boss, loaded to the teeth with all the necessary cards to defeat it. I lasted one round because I exhausted the deck, and therefore myself, and died. 

Even my subconscious mastery of accidental cheating could not overcome No Cards. I was smoked, and this was without following the clearly labeled instructions: “At the start of each round, exhaust 1 EQUIP,” a rule I would forget to follow for my next handful of plays. 

Intermission: Flee to Colombia for an Ayahuasca Refresher

I give the instructions another thorough reread and discover that my equipment stockpiling was illegal. REMINDER: You can’t go back through a door once you’ve passed through it.

Realizing I neglected to play by the rules made me doubt myself. Instead of starting another game, I let it sit for two weeks. By week three I figured I better start looking for burnt-out buildings where I could leave my dental records. The Colonel surely wouldn’t expect a review if I am burned to death in a fire, right? 

Instead of faking my own death, I pawned enough of my uncle’s coin collection to get a one-way ticket to Medellín. Why use the Get Out of Jail Free card on a fake death when I could just as easily flee the country? 

On my fourth night in Colombia a nebbishy guy with Birkenstocks and a Guinness harp tattoo sat in a VIP booth next to mine. When I heard him order a bottle in English, I invited myself to his table for a nip and to chop it up in a familiar tongue.

Please do not ask the guides anymore questions about Wights, every asshole from the U.S. wants to know about Wights.

Turns out the guy had just come from an ayahuasca retreat in the valley between the Andes and the Amazon. He told tales of visiting infinity and being shown the secret to the universe. If this ayahuasca can show the secrets of the universe, it will surely know what a Wight is and how I can win the prize at the end of Tomb of the Ever-Wandering Soul. Instead of paying my tab, I snuck out to find the retreat before any of the BJJ-trained security guards found me. 

The retreat with the most positive Google reviews was only a 40-minute bus ride from my Colombian den of sin. I sat through word circles where everyone from backpackers on a gap year to grizzled boat captains went on about the intentions and exceptions for their encounter with “the medicine,” as we were asked to call it. 

None of their trauma or insights compared to my noble pursuit to master this indie dungeoncrawler. By the time I took my second cup at the ayahuasca ceremony, I was well on my way to answers.

I saw a room full of stacks of paper, each sheet with a thousand lines on it. When I asked my spirit guide what it was, they replied, “All the ways you have played the game wrong and the countless number of outcomes if you play the game right.” 

“Ok, cool. But do I have to read all of these? I was hoping to just get some quick answers here.”

Then I saw a guitar with a plastic tube that collected all of the tears produced by the songs played on the guitar. How was this going to help me beat the game, though?

Then I saw God. A giant H.R. Giger machine, a trillion years old, broadcasting consciousness to create the vastness of the universe. 

I asked God who made them. And they replied, “I made myself.” Pretty tight. 

“What is a Wight?” The question caught it off guard. If God didn’t know what a Wight was, then this motherfucker wasn’t God. I grew 10,000 feet tall and began stomping on the machine that claimed to create the universe. 

The next morning I was on a bus to the Medellín Airport before anyone could drag me to another word circle. Back stateside, I needed a few weeks to fully integrate back to a realm that hasn’t touched the infinity of pure bliss only produced by locally-sourced fake tits chased with ayahuasca. When I felt properly balanced, I returned to the game. 

The Acolyte Returns to the Dudgeon

My sixth playthrough clicked. The instructions sounded like poetry. The cards and the markers danced across the map with ease. I won the first battle in two moves, taking the baddie’s character card per the Barbarian’s skills. 

Second battle: Equally as swift, doubling a spade attack from a 10 to a 20. I only encountered one Curse before I got to the boss. I won. I beat the boss, in shock that it fell with such ease. Mother Ayah must have guided me. Then I look back and realize that a) my doubling attack doesn’t work on the Boss b) I forgot to exhaust an equipment card prior to each turn. Still, I sensed an honest victory in my future. 

I entered the dungeon again the next day, determined to remember all the rules and give it my best shot. I got extremely lucky with my equipment cards. In the initial draw I received a King of Hearts and Jack of Spades. As a Barbarian, the Jack of Spades let me defeat nearly all of the early baddies in two turns and — another Barbarian perk — allowed me to take the character card as a reward. I had a stacked hand of equipment and items by the time I got to the Boss. 

I was sure that I would win, even without the doubled attacks. But when I drew a Wight, my confidence wavered. Using the Deadly Riposte ability, I slightly damaged the Boss Wight on the first turn with a block, moving two down on the health bar and landing on a two-card refresh spot. After three more turns my collection of equipment was diminished and it looked like Boss Wight would be my demise again. But I used a Strength potion and refreshed all of my equipment. Two more rounds and I was victorious, for real. I had won the game and defeated my self-doubt. Suck it, Boss Wight!

52 Realms: Adventures - Map 1 “Tomb of the Ever-Wandering Soul” proved I can learn a new skill and even have a little bit of success with it in time. Now that I know the world of tabletop gaming isn’t as impenetrable as I once thought, I’m looking forward to learning my next game, and maybe even getting the second map for 52 Realms: Adventures.