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natewarren.bsky.social
TheLordChiefRockaNumberOne
@natewarren.bsky.social
110 followers 170 following 480 posts
Broadcast node for Breakup Gaming Society, a podcast about board games, booze and hip hop with an autobiographical, comedic and melancholic bent
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natewarren.bsky.social
I'd never seen anything like Cave Evil when it hit my radar in 2011. An utter commitment by three friends who simply had to design the dungeon wargame they wanted to play.

I interviewed co-designer and fellow Coloradan Nate Hayden about the decision to reprint it in 2024. Interview's down there 👇
B/W illustration of a Skeletal Monstrosity creature from the Cave Evil dungeon wargame, depicting a four-legged skeletal being with immense horns rising from its raised hindquarters. It is surrounded by stat numbers and card effect description.
November 2, 2025 at 3:04 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
My man @skrrtvonnegut.bsky.social puts his homemade plum liqueur over an ice cube 1:1 with rye or blended whiskey and a preserved cherry garnish.

Help name this cocktail. Submit your name ideas in the comments. At end of Nov. Skrrt and I pick a winner, who gets some Breakup Gaming Society swag.
A big bowl of plums in clear infusion liquid. Pieces of lemon are visible.
October 17, 2025 at 3:37 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
I wrote down some of my favorite sentences from J.G. Ballard's debut novel, The Drowned World (1962).

Hit the link below if you want to hear me read my Drowned World simile collection (and hear plot spoilers) 👇

#sciencefiction #jgballard
A black pen, an open notebook and a paperback copy of J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World. The notebook is filled with paragraphs of hand block print, which are favorite sentences culled from the book.
October 6, 2025 at 9:36 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Use a maqui's most powerful action and they may end up tied to a chair somewhere, coughing up teeth and secrets.

I contend with the evocative mechanical dilemma at the heart of Resist! from @saltandpeppergames.bsky.social in Episode 101 of Breakup Gaming Society.

👇Listen with link in comments
Scenario Book and Rulebook for the solitaire war game, Resist! Booklets depict Spanish maquis poised for action and peering out of the cover of woods. Above, rectangular mission cards and cards with satchel icons.
October 2, 2025 at 1:33 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Coming up in just a few days: Episode 101, featuring my first plays of Resist! from @saltandpeppergames.bsky.social and a retrospective of David Thompson designs that conquered my table this year.
#cardgames #podcast #soloboardgames #wargames
Cards from the Resist! game showing cartoon illustrations of four Spanish maquis — Manuel, Anastasio, Ricardo, and Sagrario — and a Spy at the back. Visible on the table beneath: A grid of cards showing available missions and the hidden military/police forces the maquis will face if they attack a given target.
September 28, 2025 at 5:41 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Episode 100 features:

• Review of the brisk and charming Fireworks 2p card game from @thinkdeepplaylight.bsky.social

• Interview with @liberludorum.com about two wild #indie #ttrpgs from @sandroad.moe: Burnout Reaper and Digital Angel

Hear it all with link in comments 👇
Photo of components from the two-player card game, Fireworks. Rules and reference booklets at top, fireworks cards in middle, ringed by piles of cardboard Spark tokens in primary colors.
September 17, 2025 at 2:05 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Got a touch of orange and a fistful of ice for my second sit with Kansas City Whiskey.

Jumped into the recording room with @liberludorum.com and talked two TTRPGs that were too wild for the wusses at Itch.io — Burnout Reaper and Digital Angel.

Hit the link in comments to hear our chat 👇
Rocks glass with orange twist on the rim and large ice cube is looped by a microphone cable. In the middle of the white table, a pile of green, red and yellow dice. At back of table, more dice and a bottle of West Bottoms Whiskey Co.'s Kansas City Whiskey.
September 12, 2025 at 9:54 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxie
Picture of yellow '70s Ford Galaxie with black top, looking like a good 12 feet for so of pure Dee-troit steel.
September 9, 2025 at 6:46 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Outmatched Commonwealth forces in Malaya about to get bulldozed off the Eastern Road by an overwhelming Japanese push in Battle Card from @postmarkgames.bsky.social

Link's down there if you want to hear me talk this one up 👇

#ww2 #sologames #printandplay #boardgames
A black and white map of WW2 Malaya showing a string of B/W six sided, two-value dice, representing Allied/Commonwealth troop positions and strength from the Battle Card print-and-play solo wargame series.
September 4, 2025 at 5:03 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Check it out @printinkling.bsky.social, one of your frogs hopped the pond and now adorns the laptop of James from the War with a Mate podcast.

James and Andy let me be on their show because of Defiant Frog's unyielding diplomatic stance.
Open black laptop with red backlighting. To the right of the trackpad stands a green Defiant Frog sticker, hands on hips, chin up, not having any of it.
August 23, 2025 at 12:30 AM
natewarren.bsky.social
Pyrotechnics from @thinkdeepplaylight.bsky.social leads off a small-creator parade of things I'm going to play this fall, also including work from @bullypulpithq.bsky.social @postmarkgames.bsky.social @bogfolk.com and @partymeeple.bsky.social down in Perth.

Peep the preview. Link in comments. 👇
Hand holds Twilight Flare card from Seahorse and Hummingbird's new Pyrotechnics two-player game. Center: A red, blue and purple starburst on an evening sky. Upper left and bottom: Icons key to exchanges of Spark tokens (visible in soft focus on white tabletop below) that occur if you play the card.
August 21, 2025 at 2:51 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
My big bro @partymeeple.bsky.social sent me a pic from his workshop, where he's brutalizing the card corners off of his PnP submarine game, Dive Dive Dive, before he sends it to me. What a guy.
Illustration of Ork Mekboy with massive capacitors on his back, coursing with electricity. He has some kind of tool in his right hand, a Ork choppa in front of him along with a little gretchin or runt there to help out. The other boyz call him Noisy.
August 15, 2025 at 11:19 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Tipped some remote Palomas with @liberludorum.com and talked the Lichoma TTRPG from @bogfolk.com. The drinks must have worked, because I bungled the audio. Except for Track of the Week: "Murder by Contract" by Depth Charge, coming up in the next Breakup Gaming Society episode.
Countertop with several limes and two grapefruit; in back of that a box of Morton Coarse Kosher Salt, a bottle of simple syrup, a bottle of Herradurra Reposado.
August 13, 2025 at 6:09 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
I finally get @hollandspiele.bsky.social's Sykes-Picot: The Secret Treaty to Partition the Ottoman Empire on my table. And a beer-fueled screed off my chest. Plus, a Masta Killa track. It all works, trust me.

Ep. 97 link in comments if you'd like to check it out 👇
Shadowed hand holding up four cards from Sykes-Picot: The Secret Treaty to Partition the Ottoman Empire. The cards have numerals at upper left, symbols at upper right (black star, fleur, blue crown) and hex configurations in the middle. Line illustrations of 19th Century style European men are at the bottom of the cards.
August 5, 2025 at 8:47 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
As advertised, @cube4me.bsky.social's tray counters neatly hold all the pieces for Squad Leader, which I finally punched and sorted after 40 years. Nice job, @thebrdgmschronicle.bsky.social and team! If you have a favorite wargame, they've prolly got a tray for it.

#hexandcounter #wargames
A hand holds up a translucent plastic tray whose compartments are filled with green, tan and blue cardboard counters from the Avalon Hill wargame, Squad Leader.
July 29, 2025 at 9:15 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
"I peer at a noise: There’s a soft sizzle coming from the table. It’s the slaw, the pepper slaw is collapsing and rotting. I can hear it fall by sections."

Read or hear Dwelling Solo RPG Session 3: The Honey-Chili Heart with link in comments 👇

#indiettrpg #journaling @goodluckpress.co
A pile of kitchen stuff drying in a sink after being handwashed: Metal trays, big red mixing bowls, a colander....an open flask is visible at rear.
July 28, 2025 at 5:54 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Episode 96 is live, featuring an interview with @liberludorum.com about the Carolina Death Crawl RPG from @bullypulpithq.bsky.social.

If you've never met Walt or heard about this game, you should do both with link to episode in comments 👇

#indie #ttrpg #civilwar
Card spread from Carolina Death Crawl RPG from Bully Pulpit Games, as IDed in the top card with an upside down skull. Cards at left labeled Kill, Destroy, Disgrace. Cards at right labeled Background Card, Raid Card, Escape Card
July 16, 2025 at 6:32 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Tried a thing. My variant as pictured. Walt of @liberludorum.com went with Haku Vodka and Florida Avenue Brewing's Big Boy Blue as his booze pillars. We drank and he told me about @bullypulpithq.bsky.social's Carolina Death Crawl. This and more in the next Breakup Gaming Society episode.
A bottle of Stolichnaya vodka, a canister of Signature Select Limeade frozen concentrate, and an orange beer can: Juicy Oasis from Breckenridge Brewery
July 14, 2025 at 4:47 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Tonight there will be a "meet and greet" happy hour with all regional Governors! One lucky attendee will be bastinadoed. See you there! (Turn 1 of my second game of Vijayanagara: The Deccan Empires of Medieval India 1290-1398 with @thebrdgmschronicle.bsky.social and @whovian223.bsky.social.)
Detail of provinces in central/southern India from the boardgame Vijayanagara: The Medieval Empires of Deccan India 1290-1398. Black cubes throughout represent Delhi Sultanate troops, cylinders with crescent moon represent Sultanate governors, and discs show presence of Qasbahs. A number of green cylinders are also present in three regions, showing Bahmani Kingdom nobles who are compliant (for now).
July 2, 2025 at 3:02 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
"The idea was always the melody that would corkscrew us inside each other. It’s always the melody. Hijacking that was the false voice that you think will make you understood at 17."

You can read or listen to Session 2 of my Dwelling solo RPG session from @goodluckpress.co with link in comments 👇
End of a gray fabric couch in reflected evening light.
June 30, 2025 at 5:33 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Their sprint crossed the merest sliver of an alert German machine gun squad's field of fire. Six Russian squads shredded. An expensive jog that ends in close-quarters fighting.

I play Avalon Hill's Squad Leader for the very first time and talk about it in Episode 94, link in comments 👇
Closeup of unit counter stacks and terrain of a Squad Leader board: Brown (Russian) troops across top, divided from a barely visible German stack (blue) by two hexes (ED and F45) showing a section of road.
June 17, 2025 at 5:45 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
"A small hand reaches out, grabs my wrist loosely, thumb playing along my radius with a tentative, imploring pressure, then darts straight for the left pocket of my sweats, digging for something.

I am rapt with its anger."

I played Dwelling, a solo RPG for ghosts. Link to session in comments 👇
At left, Bookmark MicroRPG collection with top one visible (The Backbone of Beasts). Right, Dwelling paperback solo RPG book, showing the roof and eaves of a house at night lit by a violet light.
June 4, 2025 at 2:21 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Reads in a day or so, rattles around your rib cage for years.

I just read this a second time, trying to parse some of the technique Johnson used to make this plaintive wail in my head.
Cover of a paperback on a wood table: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson. Black and white, with an illustration of a horse galloping across a cloudy/moonlit night with a steam engine and its smoke plume seeming to chase the horse.
May 29, 2025 at 9:41 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
"...the sun now here to police chicken bones, the drying husks of night-bloom playlists, shot glasses, dice and the many yellow victim meeples from Final Girl that didn’t survive the second, deadlier night inside Wolfe Asylum."

This and more in the latest episode. Listen with link below 👇
Photo of a bottle of Michter's Straight Rye Whiskey, a metal shot glass on its side, catching the morning light. Out of focus in the back, multicolored meeples and cards from the Final Girl: Madness in the Dark board game.
May 19, 2025 at 5:30 PM
natewarren.bsky.social
Even before I saw the review for Dwelling, I had a dream where my high school heartache appeared to me as a psychopomp of some sort in the atrium of a corporate art gallery.

I'm gonna fit that into here somewhere because this indie solo journaling game feels necessary. Here we go.
Book for the solo RPG, Dwelling, and stuff that comes with it: A card from the maker depicting a woman in a white dress playing a lyre, the book itself with a key bookmark sticking out, a package of Bookmark MicroRPG Collection games with a B/W vector-type illustration of a stag, and a larger placeholder sheet with a die-cut keyhole.
May 15, 2025 at 3:52 PM