Crate Digging: January 2026
Pyrotechnics is now on Board Game Arena, plus seven other tabletop things you should know about.
8 of Breakup Gaming Society’s Current Favorite Internet Things
🎲 I'M NOT LEARNING TO PLAY MAGICAL GATHERING was an entry from a 2024 Tumblr contest that countered NaNoWriMo with the invitation to craft an RPG in 200 words or fewer. Turning M:TG into a debate battle still feels fresh to me: “After each ATTACK, the other players may each DEFEND (spend 30 seconds explaining why the ATTACKING player is wrong).”
✍ Among Cats and Books’ Map of the the TTRPG Blogosphere I’ve got an RSS reader that tells me the coals of the blogosphere never went out, but ACaB’s data-digging turns it into visual magic. I feel both godlike and neighborly seeing this abstraction, like being a kid who peeks through a fence at a carnival suddenly getting to see the carnival from a satellite.
📚 Tabletop Bookshelf plans to achieve physical manifestation this spring in Milwaukee: “…combining our curated bookstore with a gaming lounge, gift shop, and provisions area. Our physical space will offer gaming tables for rent, online order pickup, and a welcoming community hub for tabletop gaming enthusiasts—all while maintaining our commitment to celebrating indie and solo TTRPGs through exceptional, bespoke service.”
🎲 Rucksack looks so good and feels so approachable, I sometimes wonder why David David’s work under his Grumpy Spider imprint doesn’t share shelf space at Target or something. Breakup Gaming Society now has a copy of this, which reminds us of our time with lighthearted improv and wool-pulling games like Snake Oil and Balderdash.
🎙️ Shelf Stable Kenny Katayama and Tom Bowers keep the hobby’s near-past memory tissue supple and moist with surveys of enduring board games that shouldn’t go down the memory hole. I bet you’re gonna about hear something you meant to buy in 2019 and go back and buy it.
🎲 Pyrotechnics, which was reviewed favorably in prototype form last summer on Breakup Gaming Society, is now not only polished and real and ready to play, it’s also been implemented on Board Game Arena. Grab a pal and have a 10-minute fireworks contest, this little display is tight and bright.
🎟️ Indie Board Game Showcase 2026 is hitting Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Chicago, and Denver from Feb.-March. Use the code BREAKUP to get 50% off your ticket. Get your ass out of the house and watch an indie designer beam as you stroll to their table, craft brew in hand, to try the game they made. Top-tier human feeling.
📰 W. Eric Martin’s Boardgame Beat launches Jan. 26 and will be the new home of this former BoardGameGeek industry reporting legend. He’s still building out the site, hence the Greek text, but this will be a bright dial on the Breakup Gaming Society media dashboard when it goes live.
Get my foolproof system for learning complex Euros in as little as 10 weeks.
Get my foolproof system for learning complex Euros in as little as 10 weeks.
Crate Digging: December 2025 (Stocking Stuffer Remix)
A UK buddy slams one of my favorite Guru lines on a tee, plus capsules on new indie games from people in my network.
4 Small Creator Finds from Folks in My Network
👕 Doghouse Reilly Thanks to our clever friend Tim — who sets rap lyrics on tees with simple, striking type solutions — one of Breakup Gaming Society’s favorite Guru lines from the immortal “DWYCK” track featuring Nice & Smooth is now on a T-shirt that you can order and wear. (Check out the rest of the Doghouse offerings, including his Lego treatments of Run the Jewels iconography.)
🎲 Resilience Daybreak was probably the biggest recent title that let players confront real problems with fist full of agency. Greg Loring-Albright brings that proposition down to the street level, to your friends, even your refrigerator, to get his point across in playable and teachable moments. His Resilience print-and-play lets 2-4 players team up and place dice to prep a neighborhood for crisis.
🎲 Twisted Trumpets A tile-laying design debut from Matt Rodela, who used to gig as a trumpeter. Here you’ll be competing to build a fanciful labyrinthine instrument in response to the oft-changing whimsy of a royal family. Can you bend that brass to fit royal specs, both public and personal goals, and even accommodate birds nesting in the instrument?
🎲 TerraClash The boys behind this one reached out to me about this Kickstarter effort; they’re promising a roguelite deckbuilder and dicechucker that runs co-op, solo, or in full backstab mode for up to six players. Oh, and you can go long campaign if you like the action and want that persistent RPG feel with one of eight characters. Looks like they’re banking on brisk action and boundless replayability here.
Hear Fox in the Forest designer Josh Buergel curate trick-takers and Q-Bert tracks.
Hear Fox in the Forest designer Josh Buergel curate trick-takers and Q-Bert tracks.
Crate Digging: December 2025
Sit at the table for Fiona’s one-shot TTRPG walkthroughs and check out the new TCG-lite launch from Postmark Games.
4 of Breakup Gaming Society’s Favorite Finds on the Internet
🎙️ What Am I Rolling? I ran across Fiona K.T. Howat’s solo TTRPG playthroughs in the course of learning more about the Long Haul ‘83 game. What you’ve got in Howat is an expert wielder of audio who paints a table, what’s on it, and her string of roleplay choices with warmth, wonder, and lucidity. If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about what a solo TTRPG session feels like, you couldn’t ask for a better guide.
🎵 “Dark in My Heart,” Lee Hazlewood A production, songwriting, and arrangement legend puts one of the funniest and most bitter songs you’ve ever heard over a rollicking tambourine and some simple picking. A sliver of sunlit instruments briefly lights up the head of a narrator who sounds like he’s working on a 7 a.m. drunk in a rank North Hollywood bar.
🎙️ How’s It Goin’ Fucker? Trinidad, Colorado doesn’t have many podcasts, but probably the most infamous was made by Dave Gutierrez and Glenn Walters, who teamed up to do this epic and violent journey of a friendship. How’s it Goin Fucker? never really got off the ground. Pete and Glenn were lifelong friends who spent enough time on YouTube to think they could “get in on this Internet podcasting thing,” but the “episodes” consisted only of a few promo teasers of them driving around the Trinidad-Raton area, likely north of .08 BAC, with a camera pointed out the window, shouting the show’s title at people. You think you’d get tired of seeing downtrodden pedestrians gaping at the camera, but I’ve watched all the promos at least five times. They made dozens of these and claimed an auto body shop was their sponsor, but I don’t know.
Dave and Glenn’s friendship was a weft of brotherly feuds that flared up in the potentially lethal and sometimes ingenious second incarnation of the “show”: Glenn got hopping mad at Dave over a weekend house-sitting debacle that involved a suppressed .22 rifle, a starlight scope, and a mound of trophies, some of which may or may not have been neighbors’ pets. Their content scheme devolved to a pretty popular series called Bet You Can’t Get Out from Under This, Fucker — an escalating duel of trap-setting capers. The capstone was Glenn luring Dave into an abandoned coal camp-era schoolhouse and collapsing the entire second floor on him. This is documented in some detail in a series of stories that tripled street sales of the Trinidad Chronicle-News.
After multiple surgeries for Dave and a speedy trial for Glenn, both had time to reflect. Their rapprochement resulted in the poignant third incarnation of the show. I Miss You, Fucker features Dave reading Glenn’s letters from Trinidad Correctional Facility from the comfort of his therapeutic scooter, which features a large picture of Glenn on the back strap. Because Dave spent two weeks watching YouTube Shorts about Chinese influence on YouTube, he has deleted the channel. But if you ever see him motoring down Commercial St. and you hear a lot of “How’s it goin’ fucker?” being shouted across the thoroughfare, don’t fret, it’s all love.
♣️ 52 Duels The ingenious Postmark Games boys are at it again, spinning off a deck dueling game from their affordable and clever 52 Realms Adventures dungeoncrawler. If you like to battle your friends and just want a game — as opposed to a giant, litigious casino that just happens to contain a game — here’s one of the off-ramps from being a Wizards of the Coast paypig.
Hear my sessions from Dwelling, a solo RPG for ghosts.
Hear my sessions from Dwelling, a solo RPG for ghosts.
Alula’s Top 8 Podcasts: A Magical Continent Strip-Mines Itself for Content
Alula, a hidden continent that has now become an ecotourism paradise, comes to grips with an influx of wiry fintech people in Mercedez-Benz sprinter vans — bringing with them what might be the modern analog to blankets infected with smallpox: podcasts.
Alula, a hidden land that reveals itself to travelers in the Faraway card game, has now become an ecotourism paradise. The residents have changed as the place comes to grips with an influx of wiry fintech people in Mercedes-Benz sprinter vans, bringing with them what might be the modern analog to blankets infected with smallpox: podcasts.
Dornackl now makes jerky out of endangered animals, but he’s doing numbers
My last visit there, I saw my first boutique store run by a transplant and everybody had started a damn Ululu podcast. I had to listen to a lot of them because it would have been rude not to, so for better or worse, here are my reviews of Ululu’s Top 8 Podcasts:
1) That Uddu That You Do, hosted by Dornackl of the Desert
Listen, I have no shaman-level knowledge of the folk medicine of Alula, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to carve pieces off an Uddu stone and use them in a proprietary burger sauce recipe. My last stop was 24+ hours in the desert, 6 of which I spent watching Dusteen carve off pieces of it, mash them up with Okiko fat, and rant about how his clan was the worthiest of all the desert folk. His mic wasn’t even on. I think the worst part was when the light went out of the stone and it stopped hovering and crashed to the floor, that was the most demoralizing thing I think I’ve ever seen.
2) Daily Mushroom Forest Thoughts
My host played me an episode and the podcast started out with an ad for Red Robin because they’re hosting it on LibSyn. I don’t even know how that’s possible. And I’m not good at hiding my reaction to stuff, that was a long fuckin’ 1 hour 37 minutes, I can tell you that.
3) I Still Don’t Know How to Pronounce This Podcast’s Name and I’m Not Going to Try
I did a pit stop in a town where I saw my old two-headed pals, Klasaatz and Klaaseesin — or is it “pal”? I never quite grasped their conception of singular vs. plural. Anyhow, Klasaatz remembers details with eidetic clarity and Klaaseesin has a gift for interpretation and context. They’re like the play-by-play and color commentary team on an NFL broadcast, except they’re talking about all the people who move through their stacked pueblo of houses during the summer. At one point I appeared in one of the recollections and they reminded me about why I first came here. The live episode I saw them record was 8 eight hours long. Absolutely hypnotic. Five stars.
Maybe you’re just not spiritually evolved enough to afford the Tier 1 personal coaching package
4) Breath of the Okiko
I think the general problem with becoming a solo version of a media network is that your broadcast time and release schedule far outstrip your ability to meaningfully populate it. Turn on your local news during a flood or fire, they will have a couple poor schmucks at major intersections bouncing back and forth between graphics and the studio team for hours with no new information. The urgency is the information. “As you can see, there are some emergency vehicles moving around in back of me…” That’s what Breath of the Okiko tries to do, except it’s about a self-absorbed former tourist who settled here and now they’re trying to one-up everybody else for authenticity and turning every damn thing they see into some tarted up tale of transformation. Even back home, I get very nervous about people who advertise how centered and virtuous and empathetic they are right up front. People who do this are usually hopelessly lost or they’re hoping you are so you’ll buy their three-tier Alula Self-Actualization Coaching Package. Fuuuuuck that.
5) The Stave and the Garland
From the banks of a pristine river, this host talks over the ambient sound of moving water on the banks near where they practice martial arts. I tried to sit in for a bit of it and I have to say, I think I cracked a rib, but it still felt somehow playful. There’s one episode and so far it’s 136 hours, 28 minutes and climbing. They’ve definitely got the ASMR listener segment dialed in.
6) The Shifting Lands
I’d never considered double-decker teasers with the intro music. The first cold-open teaser made me feel a bit pandered to, but if you’re podcasting, it’s a very hard tactic to resist: “A missing donation box. A quiet town torn apart. Find out what happens when you don’t stay out of Riverdale.” But what I liked here is how the host flips the setup right into the first tale, which centered on Ululu’s forest taxonomy, which I never get tired of hearing about. It’s pretty slick.
7) Journeyed
Another dickhead for whom the most fascinating thing about Alula is…them. The intro was so laden with tautological statements, I actually whimpered a bit around the 2:48 mark, which got me a nasty stare. The show description has typos in it. Horseshit like this is one of the reasons nobody believes anything anymore.
Third question in every conversation ever is “Do you like hip hop?” Say no.
8) Crappshawn’s House of Bars
You know that look when you’re talking with somebody at a party who works at a dab store and hangs out with dab people who live the dab life but it’s still a fairly cool conversation until you realize they’re about to rap? It doesn’t matter whether you’re in Colorado or Alula, the few seconds of body language and the way they look into your eyes is universal and you think, “Oh God, please don’t rap,” and then they rap and you put your hands in your pockets and stare at your shoes and bob your head once in a while because they’re looking at you the whole time and gesticulating in your face? All I’m saying is please don’t rap, especially to a guest who’s trapped in your yurt for the night. You don’t have any bars and it’s not cool. Please don’t rap.