Mark Smylie
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marksmylie.bsky.social
Mark Smylie
@marksmylie.bsky.social
Occasional illustrator, writer, and TTRPG game designer, former comics publisher (founder of Archaia once upon a time) and editor. Feeder of cats, birds, deer, possums, raccoons, and foxes. Not necessarily in that order.
Pinned
Having to rewrite this pin for 2025 because I'm now off FB.

WIP on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/c/marksmylie

A dusty website that I swear I will update one day: swordandbarrow.com/wp/

Stuff for sale (some of it also on Amazon but I won't link there): www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher...

Thanks!
Get more from Mark Smylie on Patreon
creating books, roleplaying games, games, and (occasionally) com
www.patreon.com
Final 24 hours in @drivethrurpg.com's CYBER MONDAY sale (which apparently ran for an entire week!). 30% of select ARTESIA titles from Aegis & Gorgon until this time tomorrow:

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher...
December 8, 2025 at 2:46 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
Funeral procession in Rhigos.

Sketch by @marksmylie.bsky.social

#Glorantha
December 8, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
Tascha didn’t just build a volunteer team of more than 100,000 people, she built a community across our city.

And there’s no one better suited to tell you how she did it than her.

thedigradio.com/podcast/thre...
Three Million Doors w/ Tascha Van Auken
Featuring Tascha Van Auken on how Zohran’s campaign mobilized an army of 100,000 volunteers to knock three million doors. Van Auken has been an architect of NYC-DSA’s field operation and its general e...
thedigradio.com
December 7, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
also, ICYMI, the book is OUT-out at the PEOW2 shop. the lil preorder sign is gone. peow.studio/shop/na
December 5, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa has died. Bummer news.

I mean, what do you even need to say about his performance as Shang Tsung? Iconic.
December 5, 2025 at 1:30 AM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
"Pop-up books? Pffff, seen 'em. Back in my day, before I got resurrected as a lich I mean, we had pop-UNDER books and they smoked pop-up books for breakfast."
A book from the 19th century that depicts the Rhine Valley by creating an impression of three-dimensionality and spatial distance.
@MasayukiTsuda2 #globalmuseum #books #travel #19thcentury
December 3, 2025 at 7:43 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
Huh.
Small town with magic monster-spewing gates opening everywhere.
Huge cast of characters of wildly different competence levels.
Lots of emphasis on tooling up and having random encounters.

Stranger Things is the Arkham Horror board game tv show.
December 2, 2025 at 11:03 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
Alaska school district considering policy to classify graphic novels as legally obscene. This over-expansive redefinition of "seriously offensive material with no literary value" is a serious risk to comics media nationwide. www.alaskasnewssource.com/2025/12/02/f...
Fairbanks school board reviews district library policy amid community concerns
The Fairbanks School Board is scheduled to look at Article Six of its policy, including what materials are allowed in different school libraries across the district.
www.alaskasnewssource.com
December 2, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
Only 2 hours left to get 25% OFF using code SMALLBIZ mouseguard.bigcartel.com
December 2, 2025 at 3:03 AM
Final Aegis item in @drivethrurpg.com's Cyber Monday sale: THE LAST BARROW, an adventure/thought exercise, presenting write-ups and stats of a lost barrow and its treasures for three different systems (the ARTESIA RPG, 5E, and @chaosium.bsky.social's RuneQuest):

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/3...
December 1, 2025 at 11:41 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
Tiny adventures on the grandest of scales—All #MouseGuard prints 25% OFF using code SMALLBIZ before midnight tonight

mouseguard.bigcartel.com
December 1, 2025 at 9:21 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
#MouseGuard Sketchbooks (including the digital collections that compile years worth of content) are 25% OFF using code SMALLBIZ until midnight (eastern)

mouseguard.bigcartel.com
December 1, 2025 at 8:42 PM
A closer look at another item in @drivethrurpg.com's Cyber Monday sale, HISTORIAE MUNDI: A HISTORY OF THE KNOWN WORLD. A sourcebook expanding on the history material in the ARTESIA RPG, along with the timeline info in ARTESIA ANNUAL #3, filled with info!

legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/3120...
December 1, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Next up in @drivethrurpg.com's Black Friday-Cyber Monday sale: the ARTESIA: ADVENTURES IN THE KNOWN WORLD RPG. Written with the Fusion rules (the base system for Cyberpunk 2020); winner of the 2005 Origins Award for Best RPG and nominated for 6 ENnies.

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/3...
November 30, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Next in @drivethrurpg.com's Black Friday sale: the 3rd graphic novel, ARTESIA AFIRE, wholly published by Archaia in 2003. The collected edition includes a story from ANNUAL #2 and a story that appeared in John Kovalic's DORK TOWER. 30% off through end of Monday!

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/2...
November 29, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Next item in the @drivethrurpg.com Black Friday sale: the 2nd graphic novel, ARTESIA FIELD, originally published in series format by Sirius in late 2000 and then as a graphic novel by Archaia in 2003 with a prologue taken from the first ARTESIA ANNUAL. 30% off!

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/1...
November 28, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
This is HUGE. Hard to overstate the importance to this event to the town and region. The international comics publishing will also take a hit but they have many other ways to promote and sell. The comics festival IS Angoulême.
November 27, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Here's a closer look at one of the items in @drivethrurpg.com's Black Friday sale, the first ARTESIA graphic novel. First published in 1999 by Sirius, then later by me via my first company, Archaia. Still available through DriveThru in pdf (on sale!) and POD formats under the Aegis & Gorgon banner.
November 26, 2025 at 3:38 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
Glad the one that is only hallucinating 48% of the time is gaining traction in healthcare, legal and financial services, where a single error costs millions
Found this absolute graph crime, where the dot that is lowest apparently has 48 % fail rate!?
#graphcrime #dataviz #ai
November 26, 2025 at 2:29 PM
If you're in the UK at #Dragonmeet this coming weekend, you can find these WIP previews of @martinhelsdon.bsky.social's book on the Esrolian city of Rhigos in #Glorantha at the Jonstown Compendium table in the @chaosium.bsky.social booth. Supplies limited! And profits to a good cause. Enjoy!
November 25, 2025 at 6:29 PM
DriveThru's Black Friday-Cyber Monday sale runs from now to the end of Monday. The ARTESIA graphic novels, a comics bundle, the Artesia roleplaying game, the History of the Known World, and The Last Barrow adventure book are all 30% off. Happy Thanksgiving!

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher...
November 25, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
Freed from the shackles of the Lunar Empire, the people of Sartar stand at the dawning of a new day.

Lands of RuneQuest: Sartar is coming in 2026!
November 24, 2025 at 9:00 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
We wanted to understand how regular Americans feel about the Trump administration. So we talked to three Russia-funded content farmers at a tea house in Islamabad.
November 24, 2025 at 8:54 PM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
Couldn’t say it any better myself. R.I.P. Udo Kier.
Udo Kier was one of the great character actors while also being a hell of a character offscreen, too. Truly one of God’s own prototypes. Rest in peace, you magnificent bastard.
November 24, 2025 at 12:44 AM
Reposted by Mark Smylie
Laughing at Donald Trump saying he'd definitely feel comfortable living in Zohran Mamdani's New York on the same day that half the consultant brain-poisoned Democratic party voted to condemn socialism
November 21, 2025 at 9:08 PM