Today, we took the kiddos out for an afternoon of skipping rocks and swimming at McCormick's Creek state park about an hour outside of Indy. I'm grateful to have some time with the family before the hustle and bustle of the next few days. Tomorrow, setup for #Gencon2026 begins in earnest.

Then, Saturday is the big jamboree. We'll all be on hand for tons of previews for our upcoming projects, box signing, general hangs, and a few surprises.

Friday night we're hosting panels with tons of folks from the company and from Eerie Idol Games. Come for the conversation and bring your questions!

In the evenings we've got a heap of programming planned in our room. On Thursday, We'll be running the largest John Company Megagame yet. I've spent a bunch of time this week prepping for it and I cannot wait for you to see what we have in store.

During the day, we'll be doing a mountain of demos in our room. All of the events have been sold out for months, BUT you should still try to get in. We usually can take walk-ups and we'll do our best to make space for you.

We have got a huge show for you all. This year we are partnering with our friends at @theoldkingscrown.bsky.social to show off An Old King's Crown as well as take a peek at games they have in the works.

But now it’s time. We’ve used the spring and summer to continue hammering on the design. I am delighted by how finished it feels. There’s still a few things that need tightened and reworked, but I’m immensely proud of this design. It has been a delight to show the game off at conventions.

I wanted to make an economic game. At the time, I was playing a lot of Splotter games, a lot of Container, and a lot of Winsomes/18xx. I felt the space of economic games shifting towards our current baroque moment and wanted to make a love letter to those stripped down and jagged games.

I had a sheet of counters, a paper map, some rules, and some dice and cubes. Even the cubes felt like they were pushing it a bit. For the subject, I chose the Opium Wars.

In a little less than an hour we are kicking off the John Company Megagame here at #SDHistNorth.

Having a blast here at Union Depot in Saint Paul at the first SD Hist North. Today is Traffic and Hellraisers and the John Company megagame this evening.

When we created Buried Giant, one of the things we wanted to emphasize was that we were working in a traditional of play that was so much bigger and older (and weirder!) than what we think about as the tabletop industry. We even put it on our landing page!

As a personal aside, I was interviewed by this earlier this year while in the hectic early weeks of Buried Giant and while working on my own essay on expansions. So, if you want even more you can find a heap of words here: buriedgiant.com/blog/Arcs-be...

I also gave two talks: a keynote at the invitation of @matthewdunstan.bsky.social and @philwh.bsky.social for designer day and a talk about negotiating and tabletalk in games for the con generally. Blake shot footage and recorded both, so there's a good chance we'll be able to share them.

We spent most of the time running demos. Our Oath kit got 5 generations older and I managed 4 games of An Infamous Traffic.

Blake and I just wrapped up the last day of #PLAYCon. Big kudos to the whole @boardgamebbq.bsky.social team for running a fantastic convention. It was lovely to see so many old friends and meet lots of new folks. It was such a treat to attend. (Thanks to Teena for a couple of the pics)

Went on a quick run this morning with my little brother Blake before kicking off Designer Day here at #PLAYCon in Sydney. @boardgamebbq.bsky.social

I'm preparing to head off to Australia for #PLAYCon by moving our Oath kit to a slightly more travel-friendly box. I'll have New Foundations and Infamous Traffic with me. If you're going to be in Sydney next week, I hope I see you there!

Today Matt and I are shooting some videos about the development of Oath: New Foundations and how the design changed over the course of its development.

CounterFish is a good time. Got the W on Nuke and we loved celebrating our teammates clean shots by instantly reminding them that they needed to take their turns over on FF. Both games were done in about 30 minutes. No downtime!

Tonight's fare is somehow CS2 while playing a simultaneous game of Fresh Fish with the same crew.

And yet, it's never going to leave my stack of games. After I'm dead and gone, there's a much higher chance that one of my kids takes our family Catan set than probably anything else I own. And I think that's wonderful. There's a whole lot of life left in these pieces.

I also did a full inventory. I was reminded that at some point we lost two red roads and I found some proxies. Maybe I'll find a couple matching replacements some day, but the set is no worse off for it.

As with the first replacement, I decided to keep the wooden pieces. We bought a set of the Viking pieces and some other bits and bobs through the years. We gave them a wash and a dry and touched up some of the paint.

We hadn't played for a year or so and when I took it out this weekend, it was clear that it was on its last legs. The dice designs were just about worn off and the resource cards were sticking together a little worse than usual.

Over the weekend, my kids and I played a ton of Catan, and after decades of service, we decided to retire our beloved set. Here's a little appreciation thread for objects of play and their gradual decay 🧵

The kids and I celebrated the end of the school year with a lovely set of matches of Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. What a masterpiece!

At some point I joined the Blender subreddit. I have no business being there, but I stay for gold like this.

It's a banner day here at Buried Giant Studios. We finally received our new printers, so we can get back to making nice play testing kits again, and we're officially listed in the building's directory. Most of the new furniture comes within a couple weeks. Game nights are right around the corner!

When I was a kid I saved up to buy a used copy of Ogre Battle with a torn label. All I knew about the game was what was promised by this little fragment and it did not disappoint.