Breakup Gaming Society

Here’s what’s worth staying inside and playing while your dopey relatives flirt with heat stroke at a Fourth of July parade. I went to a cookout last year where they didn’t even bother heating the food; the raw meet just braised to safe temp inside your body. Anyway, games:  Game of the Week: Cartographers (2:20)  Three episodes ago we met Stafford Airbiscuit, my cartographer from the hi...

Contributing writer Fritz Godard heads to Starkville to undertake a three-day apprenticeship in Space Hulk: Death Angel, the classic and brutal Warhammer 40,000 co-op card game. We played it — and classic Golden Era hip hop CDs on his boombox — for three days straight. I flipped the mic on and off with little regard to best recording practices as we stuffed our faces, guzzled beer, invented imposs...

Games of the Week • Ghost in the Shell TTRPG (5:32) Our resident tabletop roleplaying curation hound, Walt, leads a conversation with the disarming Alessio Cavatore, a veteran miniature tabletop game designer whose task was to help faithfully imagine the world of Masamune Shirow’s legendary Ghost in the Shell manga as an RPG under the Mantic Games banner . He shows us his passion for the material...

Stafford Airbiscuit has to go back to the queen with a score of 37. Which translates into a job rating of -45 per the solo grading rules. “So what were we doing out there, exactly,” she says, holding my map incredulously. “Well, the goblins kept attacking and the gnolls stole my lunch and went to the restroom on my lunch…” Games of the Week • Cartographers (3:51) Some queen tells a gnome they have...

Thank you again to episode sponsor Doghouse Reilly , purveyor of wearable visual puns and vintage hip hop lyrics. Games of the Week • Comanchería: The Rise and Fall of the Comanche Empire (3:24) My initial overview of Comanchería , which is finally on the table. This game models 175 years of conflict in the interior US West from the perspective of the Comanche. I got the first scenario set up, whi...

Weekend weather forecast for the Demon Wastes: Look for scattered sword-showers late morning through midafternoon Saturday, which should clear up just in time for the Parade of the Stricken.  Games of the Week • Metal Queens ov Skull Mountain (2:58) Our curated indie RPG series with Walt continues: He’s burrowed way back in the vaults to show us Metal Queens ov Skull Mountain . It’s a story-d...

Please welcome episode sponsor Doghouse Reilly — the Teemill storefront of my man Tim Sismey, who was our guest curator for last segment’s Track of the Week. Tim makes clever tees based on visual puns and opening lyrics from classic hip hop songs. He also made a special shirt for Breakup Gaming Society featuring one of my favorite lines from a Guru verse. Games of the Week • Final Girl: A Knock at...

My nervous system: the final frontier. These are the voyages of my moth-eaten brain. Its five-round mission: to play a fucking game correctly. Games of the Week (2:51) • SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, 2024’s big hit about managing a space agency that’s looking for hard evidence of somebody out there. I tried this weighty Euro-style game over the winter in solo mode for the first t...

Sam Altman and Marc Andreessen can frolic in my pickle water. The world they’re imagining sucks. We’re going to hide from it in the best way possible: An RPG actual play session where two ninjas have to kill Cheap Trick during their famous Budokan set in 1978. Ingest this into your model. News • If you live in Chicagoland and like supporting indie game designers, the Indie Boardgame Showcase is st...

How the hell do you make a product called Tony’s Choco lonely and not do a special Valentine’s Day bar with a fentanyl center and a little space on the wrapper to write a suicide haiku. Games of the Week (3:14) • I’m giving away creations from The Seahorse and The Hummingbird , Grumpy Spider Games , Long Tail Games and Ada Press . Listen for how to win the whole pile. • The Fantasy Flight Games go...

This episode is dedicated to the plucky neighborhoods of Minneapolis, out there in the freezing cold and getting blackbagged, maced, shot, harassed, and defamed for their troubles.  Also want to shout out Minnesota native and wargame YouTuber Zilla Blitz , and current Minneapolis resident Liz Davidson of Beyond Solitaire . On successive days, they posted short videos on their channels about w...

Use the code BREAKUP to get 50% off anything on the Quirk Events calendar, including the Indie Boardgame Showcase that’s touring Beantown, Chicago, D.C., New York, Denver, and Philly in ‘26. Games of the Week (3:40) • Launching my first probe in SETI was like seeing my soul break the gravitic well of holiday depression. Find out what happened on my first solo play. I also include tips for learning...

Use the code BREAKUP to get 50% off anything on the Quirk Events calendar, including the Indie Boardgame Showcase that’s touring Beantown, Chicago, D.C., New York, Denver, and Philly in ‘26. Want to demo your indie game design for attendees? You’ve got until Jan. 6 to apply. Games of the Week (3:41) • Ryuutama : Natural Fantasy Roleplay : An excerpt from my latest chat with Walt, who lightens the...

I retract forever my claim that Arkham Horror 2nd Edition can be played on an aircraft. Game of the Week (2:30) I interview Fox in the Forest designer Josh Buergel about trick-taking games he admires and plays — and preview his next design in the genre. Discussed: • Friedrich • Maria • Bridge • Fox in the Forest • The Crew • Arcs • The Six of VIII • Torchlit • Scout • Bacon • Haggis • Sykes-P...

Getting cool stuff from real people in the mail is the new Bitcoin. See what might be in your Breakup Gaming Society swag envelope. Game of the Week (3:17)Final Girl: Madness in the Dark is back on the table. I showed it to a non-tabletop buddy and he got so excited, he got his own base game and the Killer from Tomorrow movie. Hear what happens as one dude in Wyoming struggles against a robot kill...

Was happy to learn that Fake Minotaur Buttholes, a game for the whole family, is now available at Target. Games of the Week (2:29) • SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is set up and previewed. It’s going to be a very Euro winter. • A deep-dive with Walt into the rancid alleys and bleak implications of Lichoma , an impressive indie meatpunk TTRPG. Drink of the Week (44:06) Some light wo...

Ah, Halloween, when I turn out every light in my house except for a floodlight trained on a pile of cursed items in my driveway. Game of the Week (4:04) I chat up fellow Coloradan (and fellow Nate) Nate Hayden, one of the three cats who designed the wild demonic underground wargame, Cave Evil , which became a nigh-unobtainable cult hit in the years following its 2011 release. But the crew who made...

Drink of the Week (2:28) Get in on the naming contest for our Chief Mixologist’s plum liqueur-and-whiskey drink. I’m sending goodies out to the clever bastard who submits the winning name. Game of the Week (5:21) Something’s wrong in the lush paradise of Ululu. Dickheads are showing up there just to score points; they don’t care about the ceremonies anymore and all the locals have started podcasts...

Games of the Week (2:46) Put out the welcome mat for the underdogs: This house became a David Thompson house in 2025. First impressions of Resist! and follow-ups on Pavlov’s House and Battle Card . Track of the Week (20:38) My favorite RZA beat: “Careful (Click, Click)” by Wu-Tang Clan Thank You, Jason and Joseph Thanks to Jason and Joseph for contributing to the show . I mailed each of them a Bre...

Drink of the Week (3:01) I head back to Kansas City , this time with an oversized ice cube and an orange twist. Games of the Week (11:24) • Review of Pyrotechnics from The Seahorse and the Hummingbird, a buoyant and sparkly two-player card contest about fireworks that packs a lot of smarts into an incredibly short playtime. • Walt returns to show us Burnout Reaper and Digital Angel, two near-futur...

Drink of the Week (1:53) A buddy stopped by on a road trip and left me a bottle of Kansas City Whiskey from West Bottoms Whiskey Co. I hit it a few nights ago and it hit back and now we’re friends. Games of the Week (5:39) • I’m through the first two of the six maps in Postmark Games’ Battle Card , which turns WWII strategy dilemmas into accessible puzzles for a casual player and a fun diversion f...

Always keep spare indie games in your duffel to pacify the constabulary while traveling. Drink of the Week (3:06) Made my first-ever homemade Paloma. Worth the squeeze, as a tequila I normally like to sip straight became suddenly disappointing. Games of the Week (6:43) • My attempt at rousing the locals with a gambling version of King of Tokyo failed • Check out previews for a gang of indie TTRPGs...

Cribbed my cold intro from a few lines of this Bukowski poem if you feel like reading the whole thing. Drink of the Week (2:19) It’s hot, so I keep it simple with a cooler of Michelob Ultra in the living room and try to reason out why I went all in on this podcast. Game of the Week (10:36) Finally got my hands on the trickery of Sykes-Picot: The Secret Treaty to Partition the Ottoman Empire from H...

Walt of the Līber Lūdōrum blog and the TTRPG-making Bogfolk crew joins us for all three segments. You’re gonna dig Walt. Drink of the Week (3:01) Walt and I each made our own variant of a lemonade-vodka-beer punch. I went limeade-Stoli-fruity IPA. He went pink lemonade-Haku-fruity ale. Game of the Week (15:46) Carolina Death Crawl from Bully Pulpit Games . A Southern Gothic card-driven and GM-less...

Three boring drinks, a war for 13th Century India, and a luxurious summer cooldown track at the end. Drink of the Week (4:02) Sam Adams Summer Ale briefly rouses the poet in me. Stella Artois and Hurradurra Reposado put him back to sleep. Game of the Week (8:03) In southern India, the emergent Bahmani and Vijayanagara empires assert themselves against the iron grip of the Delhi Sultanate. And I to...