Of course, it didn’t come out of nowhere. Tomkin has been a lifelong solo player, starting as a child in the ‘70s and ‘80s by pouring over D&D manuals and puzzling out the game by trying to play it alone. Even when he found groups later, they tended to fizzle out. Solo and one-on-one play was his main channel into the tabletop RPG hobby. After discovering Mythic, a “GM emulator” by Tana Pidgeon, and Apocalypse World, he began working on his own system. In 2016, he started the project by first creating its cover and naming it Ironcall, and then began years of noodling away in Microsoft OneNote. He attracted a small but passionate group of people following the development and giving feedback on Google+. 

Today, Ironsworn is seen as the game that opened the floodgates. It boosted the popularity of solo RPGs and spawned multiple popular solo actual play shows. Tomkin has become a recurring collaborator with Free League, designing the solo Strider Mode for The One Ring alongside various other contributions. Ironsworn is an Adamantine best-seller on DriveThru, which is the highest tier the site has, and the player base for the game has only grown with time;  the official Discord server currently hosts around 11,000 members. Building on such success, Tomkin has released expansions and sequels like Ironsworn: Starforged (with artist Joshua Meehan), iterating on the original game in small but impactful ways, all of which have been popular and well-received.

But now he’s thinking about changing the formula entirely. 

Tomkin is working on something that’s tentatively titled Ironsworn: Legacies. He has two main goals: one, make an even better rulebook; and two, overhaul the mechanical underpinnings of the system entirely. From a rulebook design and layout point of view, Tomkin wants to implement what he’s learned while working on Starforged and Sundered Isles. He wants to rearrange content from the often overlooked final chapter of the game, tie concepts down to single spreads, and add much more support for people who have trouble getting started. He also just wants it to have a new look.

“Ironsworn was a one-person effort,” said Tomkin to Rascal over email. “I think the manipulated stock photography of the original Ironsworn is perfectly acceptable. But, particularly in this age of generative AI, I want to embrace illustration. I want the art to be bolder, messier, more dynamic, more human.”

The mechanical overhaul is more drastic. “The core Ironsworn mechanisms of action rolls, progress tracks, and progress rolls are solid,” he said. “I am, however, taking a fresh look at the procedures of the game — previously presented as a fairly large number of moves.” For context, Starforged has more than 50 moves, mainly because every mechanic in the game including referring to oracles, beginning sessions, and earning XP are all framed as one. Tomkin feels that the large number of moves has become a barrier for players as they spend more and more time wrestling with deciding which move is the right one to trigger. It's a mental overhead that he never intended and doesn’t see as being valuable for the play experience.

“My current work in progress has stripped things back to a core action,” he said. “[E]verything ultimately collapses back to the action roll. This action roll works as it always did, but with a meatier resolution process that lets you select misfortunes and advantages based on your position and level of success. As some in the community have noted, this shifts what was previously front-loaded crunch (selecting and interpreting the right move) into a meatier outcome as you choose how to spend whatever advantages and misfortunes you acquired in the action.” He hopes this stripped down core mechanic will make play feel more streamlined, as players aren’t in any doubt how they resolve any given action. 

But simplicity can also be boring, and lack of detail can be overwhelming. To support players in incorporating fictional details, Tomkin’s main facilitation tool is something called codexes: “The codexes are information dashboards for various situations such as interactions, journeys, investigations, and fights. Basically, all the verbs of Ironsworn — the common actions and situations you engage with—get a codex.” These codexes could be seen as a procedure combined with an oracle but importantly, you interact with each piece only as much as you want. “Each codex offers a mix of procedures, prompts, and inspirational tables to help guide and interpret what otherwise might be a somewhat dry resolution mechanic,” said Tomkin. “They are additive, and can be used and ignored as folks like, but I think they are a solid tool to help motivate and inform play.”

Tomkin’s ultimate goal is “simpler input, meatier output”, but of course, he isn’t sure that any of this will work. For now, it feels like a fruitful direction. “I'd say that reactions so far mostly range from somewhat negative to cautiously positive,” he said. “It's possible it's a development dead end, but I hope not. I'm trying not to get too far out over my skis or too attached to these ideas, but I'll admit that throwing it all is a possibility I view with dread.” 

Regardless of whether it works out or not, it’s clear that the original Ironsworn isn’t going anywhere. Tomkin is calling it an “alternate edition” instead, with the original game staying available due to the conveniences of PDFs and print-on-demand. He also doesn’t intend to immediately sit down and convert Starforged and other titles into this new engine. “We just restocked Starforged with the fourth printing, and it has plenty of life left,” he said. “I'm planning a supplement for megacity adventures sometime in the next year or so, and I have some other ideas beyond that.” Instead, Legacies might get its own line of “world supplements” — alternate codexes that easily bring new genres and situations into the game. Though this remains firmly in the land of speculation.

Tomkin currently finds himself at a familiar spot — just like with the original game, there’s a long read ahead of him to reach this new version. “A project like that seems insurmountable as you're working on it,” he said. “There's so much to write, so many false starts and dead ends, so many hours spent trying to hone a single paragraph, so many frustrating realizations that some aspect of the game is not working. Days of frustration powered by little moments of joy. And when it's done, you look back and wonder how the heck it all came together. And then you do it all again.”

It's all wins as Chase and Thomas convene for Episode 39 of the Rascal Radio Hour. Three notable tabletop RPGs were decorated with awards and a hall of fame induction at Origins Trade Show, and United Wizards of the Coast officially elected the first every union within the venerable publisher.

The pair run down the rest of the headlines in a decidedly more optimistic week for the hobby and its attending industry before discussing the games each have been playing recently. Thomas' Band of Blades group are reaching the end of their campaign with a satisyfing, but also suprising, execution. Chase bring part two of his ongoing Diplomacy affair, which sets up either a glorious or disastrous part three.

The Question Dungeon takes the form of a deadly political soiree as both crew members cross s(words) with user-submitted queries. Someone asks for half-year predictions on what novel games the industry might produce; another listener wonders why the concept of dungeon crawling has such staying power in our imagination.

Here's an excerpt:

Thomas: Slightly Reckless Games is not some huge studio. Berserkr is not necessarily a super successful game, but the the studio has an [anti-generative AI] policy. They just crowdfunded a game called Devil Division, which is the first potentially large or rather full-scale hack or reworking of MCDM's Draw Steel. It uses the Draw Steel engine to tell a kind of shonen anime, 1990s' action sort of game. They said they don't use generative AI at any part of the company. So, you know, when these questions come up, specifically what people noticed what was in the text of the game, there is a lot of "it's not just X, but y." If you look up Wikipedia's page on identifying LLM writing, for example, you'll see a lot of different sentence structures, and this is one. And it doesn't appear like once or twice. It's a recurring pattern.

People were like, hey, why is this weird pattern showing up? And some of these sentences are not good as well, right? People are pointing out that saying something like Frigg isn't just a combatant, she's inevitable. What does that mean? Who thought Frigg, the goddess from North Mythology, was a combatant? Who thought runes were just a force and not a language?

We reached out to Slightly Reckless Games as well, and they made a clear statement saying that they did not use AI. They said that every sentence was written by them. The the founder of the company is the main writer. They've said very clearly that they didn't use it. And functionally, for us, that's the end of the line in terms of us reporting this story, right? If they say we haven't used it, fine. We can't really write about it at this point. There is no good way of proving there is no evidence for this allegation. It's possible that it's not.

We're not gonna put out an article that says this allegation was made because even that's problematic in a different way, right? We can't normalize a constant reporting of AI allegations when there is no clear evidence or consensus. We can't run this text through an AI text checker. Even though I've heard from some people that they're reliable, I've heard from a lot of other people that they're not. The question of false negatives and false positives abound. So, what are you going to do? That just puts us in a weird place. This industry, especially the independent side of it, cares a lot about not supporting or using any generative AI in any way.

There are all of these disclosures that have been sort of forced onto platforms. They don't want to even think about this, whether it's Steam or Kickstarter or YouTube. Nobody wants to police this. So, we get these declarations, but even then we don't really know what to do. This is an ongoing problem, and maybe it's the limitations of journalism as an institution about how we think about and report on generative AI in creative industries.

Chase: It's where I see the use of regulatory bodies in other industries. But that does presume that the tabletop industry at large wants to make sure that no AI is used in the the production of games. I think for the small press side, that's true. When you get to the larger publishers, some of them are very adamantly saying "no AI". But others will say there's no AI in their games, but we're not really leading the charge on making sure that this is something that everybody is adopting. It really comes down to individual folks having to say, I don't use AI, and then us believing them.

I remember covering a lot of false positives within Magic: the Gathering and D&D art while at Dicebreaker. There was a lot of like witch hunting online. And I'm not not to say that like we shouldn't try to call folks out, but how do you do it in a way that is responsible and doesn't push small creators, who are already overworked and burdened, to then personally combat any sort of allegations. History has shown that the internet does not exercise good judgment in these matters.

But you're right that there's just so many cases of language that has been unfortunately co-opted by AI as a marker. Listen, we are users of the double dash and the em-dash here. And it sucks that that has become something that tips a lot of people off to AI.

Thomas: Yeah, you'll see in that subreddit thread that people are like, and these dashes, and these dashes, that's evidence. And it's a bit like, come on. There's dashes there because we love using them.

Chase: Yeah, it's because we can't fucking shut up and just use a period before starting a new sentence. We gotta keep going. One more parenthetical.

Thomas: No, exactly. You gotta keep saying things in between other things.

Iron Country is drawn from Thomas’ own experiences of growing up as a teenager in the Northwoods of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. It’s a fictional belt of mining towns that have been hit hard by the gradual death of the mining industry in the latter half of the 20th century, which carry parallels to the earlier period of gold rushes and coal booms that shaped the folklore around the American West. But you aren’t here as a visitor, but a hunter who’s investigating the goings-on of Iron Country, as well as protecting its people from the supernatural: the cryptids, monsters, and the encroaching darkness simply known as the void. Based on the Forged In The Dark system, Thomas’ Bump In The Dark was initially crafted as a hack of another paranormal game, External Containment Bureau, but soon outgrew the project to become a standalone title. It’s also inspired by the episodic, “monster of the week” format — and the RPG of the same name, with cycles generally following a given structure called a hunt: discovering the hook (or the inciting incident), investigating the mystery, conducting a showdown, and concluding with fallout. 

There are plenty of opportunities for action-packed downdowns, but fighting monsters isn’t the crux of the game; devoid of the usual structure and systems that govern combats in crunchier RPGs, monsters in Bump In The Dark generally take a more amorphous shape, with the GM building upon cues from the players themselves for a much more collaborative and improvised play. Thomas wanted the game to be a frame for exploring themes like deindustralization, capitalism, labour, community, and finding hope in hopeless times, such as through interactions with the game’s myriad human — and supernatural — factions. The monsters aren’t the worst thing happening to the town — they’re only the latest disaster. Or maybe they’re just a manifestation of a very large, slow, ongoing tragedy. 

Bump In The Dark crafts a modern parable of hardship and hope in a unique and beautiful slice of land that has lost a lot of what it once had. And it tries to do so without ignoring that everything, even the land itself, was acquired through violence. In the rulebook’s statement of intent, Thomas took the opportunity to acknowledge white supremacy, colonialism, and other forms of oppression that took place on the very lands Iron Country is inspired by. “Indigenous people, people of color, queer folks, and other historically and currently marginalized people are part of these communities. I think it’s important to both acknowledge the real history of settler colonialism and imagine different ways of relating to each other. Not to whitewash history, but to conceive of a better world,” they wrote.

Responses have been edited slightly for clarity.

1. If your game had walk-on music or a climactic needle drop, what song would it be?

In the last campaign we played, "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden came up several times. It feels appropriate to the 1990s vibes of the game. Or maybe "In the Pines" by Lead Belly. That would be a great song to play over the end credits after a shocking season finale.

2. If your game grew like a plant, what was the seed of the whole thing? And what about you made you the right kind of soil to receive and nurture that idea?

The seed was playing a game set in a world inspired by my experiences as a teenager in the ‘90s, in a geographically isolated, deindustrialized and dying town. I think I was able to nurture that idea because it was so personal to me, and because I was either hyperfixated or hypomanic enough to just keep working on it until it was done, really wanting to get it right and make it something that only I could make.

3. If your game was food, what would it be?

Oh wow. The first thought that came to mind was "rusted metal," but that's not food, is it? I think there's a way it's a real meat-and-potatoes kind of game, but I'm a longtime vegetarian so I'll say a good vegetarian chilli. A lot of different ways you can make it, and you can alter the tone and texture, how spicy it is, etc. but at the end of the day it's still this distinct, classic food.

4. If your game was a machine and we could break it down into parts, which is the smallest part that you think best captures the essence of what you're trying to do?

I think the implementation of the beats system in downtime really gets across the importance of relationships to the game — not only among the pact of monster hunters, but the relationship with the town and surrounding community.

5. If we broke your game down into parts, what's the thing we wouldn't see? What do you think only emerges out of the entire thing moving together?

What a fascinating question! I think it would be [about] what a truly collaborative experience it is. I don't know that you can really fully grasp that just from reading it. How fun it is to take your hands off the wheel and let the game go where it goes and let it surprise you.

"Indigenous people, people of color, queer folks, and other historically and currently marginalized people are part of these communities. I think it’s important to both acknowledge the real history of settler colonialism and imagine different ways of relating to each other. Not to whitewash history, but to conceive of a better world."

6. If your game had to commit a crime, what crime would it be?

This is very much a game that would steal food for people who are hungry, diapers and formula for crying babies, that kind of thing. Trying to help people survive capitalism. It would de-arrest people and break people out of jail.

7. If your game was to win an Oscar, who would it thank in its acceptance speech?

Even though it's my name on the spine of the book or whatever, this game was really a community effort, from the artists to playtesters, folks doing some additional writing for the game, the community that came up around the game during playtesting and crowdfunding, and maybe my favorite part of making this game has been that collaboration and sense of community. So thank you to everyone who has been part of the Bump in the Dark community in some way. I would also thank my spouse and child for putting up with me staying up all night too many nights in a row, my main artists, Alison Cooley and Ashley Altadonna, my pals in the Spout Lore Discord, and my besties in the Design Loop: Em, Riley, December, Mikey, Hendrik, Eli, Nevyn, and Sam.

Writing about Warhammer has been my bread and butter since I started covering minis games professionally in 2022. In those four years, I’ve offered my considered opinions about every single new edition box across all flavours of Warhammer. Legions Imperialis did slip through the cracks though, so I present my mini review: Eh, it’s alright, but I will forever be mad that the Anti-Tank rule doesn’t make something better at shooting tanks, it makes it worse at shooting at everything else. My first article here was my impressions of the Age of Sigmar Skaventide box, which was rescued from the wreck of Dicebreaker (RIP). 

What made me decide against it? I blame this guy. 

While GW doesn’t have a public release calendar, it does have a predictable schedule. The big summer release gets a reveal in March or April, followed by a couple of months of hype, then turns up in June or July. This is exactly what happened with Armageddon, except that rather than revealing the entire box at contents at once, GW made the baffling decision to drip-feed some of the new minis over the course of a month before doing a full unboxing. Armageddon continues the standard 40K pattern of having space marines arrayed against someone else. In this case, the someone else is orks, a 40K army that I love in theory, but have never felt the pull to collect. The Ork Enjoyers in my circles have assured me that the new minis are very nice and represent some much needed upgrades (and the brand new Big Mek Dakkarig is one of the coolest GW minis I’ve seen in ages) but it’s outside my wheelhouse. It’s the space marines I was looking at.

That space marine is the most boring miniature reveal imaginable.

It made me suddenly understand, on a deep, primal level, the folks who say all space marines look the same. For starters, he’s an Intercessor, the most basic of space marines. Space marine players, by and large, do not need more Intercessors, and the current kit is absolutely fine. Unlike the ork equivalent, this mini is not filling any kind of gap or providing an overdue update. He’s also the living embodiment of this Simpsons meme.

Except it’s not a new hat, it’s an old hat. To explain that, we have to dive into some 40K lore, both in and out of universe. Primaris space marines were a new kind of space marine introduced with 40K’s eighth edition in 2017. For a long time, Warhammer miniatures had been experiencing scale creep, which is to say that the average human mini was getting bigger. It’s not necessarily a huge issue unless your army contained a mix of brand new and much older minis, but it had reached the point where space marines, who are supposed to be eight foot genetically engineered super soldiers, were looking a bit small. GW could have opted to produce new versions of existing space marine units that were bigger and with better proportions, however it decided to come up with a story to explain the new wave of embiggened marines with new armor, new weapons and new vehicles, which, coincidentally, allowed it to produce an entirely new range of miniatures.

In the decade since, the Primaris range has expanded, while the older “Firstborn” marines have been phased out. The line between the two has also become increasingly blurred, especially with tenth edition and the release of new Terminator miniatures, which were just improved versions of the classic minis scaled appropriately to the Primaris range. Going into the eleventh edition of the game, the Firstborn have been almost entirely supplanted by Primaris marines, with only a handful of the old kits still available in the 40K range—and with Firstborn marines taking the starring role in The Horus Heresy instead.

But there’s a twist. One of the key features of the Imperium in 40K is that it struggles to make anything new. Very few people understand how any of the technology works. Almost everything dates back to the Horus Heresy ten thousand years previous, and even that is based on rugged frontier tech from the Dark Age of Technology. It’s an interstellar civilisation with a technological base that consists almost entirely of the equivalent of flat pack furniture, and even the experts only know how to read the instructions. Which they do while reciting prayers and anointing everything with holy unguents. Primaris marines and their gear sidestep this by being the result of a genius scientist tinkering for ten thousand years. But on the whole, space marines like their old relics and tend to replace damaged kit with existing parts, or bestow particularly revered components as rewards.

In terms of modelling, this was enabled by Primaris heads and pauldrons being easily swappable with existing Firstborn ones, and there were even some character minis or veteran squads released that had a smattering of Firstborn armor parts. The Intercessor shown alongside the Armageddon announcement has a Mark 7 helmet (Mk. 7 being the most common Firstborn armour pattern, the default from 40K’s second through to seventh editions). It is, quite literally, the same space marine with an old hat.The fact that it’s taken me, someone who has enjoyed space marines for over thirty years, four paragraphs to explain what makes that space marine different from minis that have been available for almost a decade, should tell you why I met that reveal with a resounding shrug. As the rest of the Armageddon box’s contents were slowly unveiled, I continued to be distinctly unimpressed. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing inherently bad about the new miniatures — the new land speeder is very cool — but even as someone who has only been sporadically acquiring Primaris space marines for the past five years, there’s nothing in that box that I need and nothing I want enough to pay £185 — of my money or Rascal’s — for. So I decided that I’d let Armageddon pass me by.

And oh boy did that feel liberating.Writing about games, no matter how much you love them, is a job. With Warhammer, particularly 40K, dominating the hobby, I’d felt obligated to write about it. That pressure is enough to suck the fun out of anything. Removing that obligation, deciding that I didn’t have to care about 40K, has actually reinvigorated my interest in the game. I’ve been reading the new rules in this edition, which are evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and they seem solid enough. In a week or so, I’m attending one of my semi-regular gatherings with internet chums, and with 11th edition being the hot new thing, I’m tempted to take down a modest 1000 point army and give the new rules a shot. A few weeks back I sorted out all of my unpainted miniatures and slung most of them into a big box which a friend is taking to the event so that they can be redistributed, freeing me of much of my backlog. I’ve done a spring clean of my hobby.

I like 40K. Much like D&D, it will always have a place in my heart even if it’s far from my favourite game these days. It’s a genuine pleasure to be able to engage with it on my own terms, rather than out of professional duty. I’ll probably play a handful of games over the next three years, and pick up the new Codexes for the armies that I own when they’re released. Does that mean I’m never going to write about it again? Not at all, if I have something interesting or insightful to say (or a massive rant to get off my chest) my words will find their way here as always. For the most part, however, I’m entering my casual Warhammer 40K fan era and I’m loving it.

*If you understand that reference, have a cookie. If you know why it’s technically wrong, you get two. Answers to the Rascal Discord.

**Look, I wrote the entire article without being smug about the fact that GW is including the core rules in a sensibly sized book! Aren’t you proud of me?

The union’s full statement was:

Today is a momentous day for the workers of Arena! After months of planning, waiting and organizing, our dream is finally a reality; the votes have been counted, and our union of UWOTC-CWA has been officially elected.

From this day forward, we have a union!

To the thousands who signed our petition letter, the journalists who let us tell our own story, every person who reached out with words of encouragement, our stewards at the CWA who helped guide us, we cannot thank you enough for your support.

We stand on the shoulders of giants, and we can only hope that our victory in turn inspires others to start unionizing at their own workplaces. Change is possible when workers stand together!

We hope to share good news of a ratified contract with all of you soon. 

As stated in our previous reporting, this labor action was driven by a plethora of reasons, but largely because of a disintegrating trust between the management and the workers of UWOTC. A lack of layoff protections, growing AI concerns, a return-to-office mandate, and  failures of communication encouraged the people working at Wizards of the Coast to collaborate with the Communication Workers of America — the largest communication and labor union in the united states — to form the first union in the company’s history. 

In late May, Rascal reported on the actions that the company had taken to discourage the formation of the union ahead of the vote, including “optional” meetings, letters sent home, and a “daily” email campaign to Magic the Gathering: Arena employees. On the bluesky thread, UWOTC thanked both the new union members, journalists (like those at Aftermath and here at Rascal), and the supporters who signed letters to management. All of it helped the team fight back against the anti-union practices of the company.

With the election results in hand, the union is in a place to start bargaining with the company. Whether or not the company does that in good faith, or expediently, isn’t guaranteed. Wizard of the Coast has previously retained the use of Pinkertons for asset recovery, and while we don’t know whether or not they will hire a law firm to negotiate with the union, it’s doubtful that they will rely on in-house counsel for this. 

Regardless, UWOTC is here, and the workers — and their supporters — are celebrating. The workers are also open to welcoming other parts of the company into the warm embrace of worker solidarity. Arena today, maybe Dungeons & Dragons tomorrow. After all, it’s dangerous to go alone.

But individual games aren’t the main focus of the Hall of Fame, which mainly honors people whose contributions have influential or vital to the tabletop industry. This year, three people were inducted — two board game designers, Antoine Bauza (7 Wonders, Hanabi) and Richard Borg (Memoir '44) — alongside fantasy artist Wayne Reynolds. Reynolds has worked across the industry, having contributed to Pathfinder, Magic the Gathering, Warhammer. But is probably best known for his work on D&D and was commissioned by the UK Royal Mail to illustrate stamps for the game’s 50th anniversary. He joins Elizabeth Danforth and Larry Elmore among others in the short list of artists.

The Origins Trade Fair also announced winners of its 49th annual awards. Once again, the awards  are primarily focused on board games, to the extent that all the board game categories are broadly referred to as a “game”, such as Gateway Game of the Year. In their coverage of the awards, ICV2 commented, “There were also no categories specifically for TCGs, gaming accessories, and collectible games (segments of the games industry which represent a large dollar amount of sales within the overall games market).” The conspicuous lack of TCGs may be due to the fact that it’s the dominant category that, at least to some extent, crowds out board games in hobby shops; as such, they don’t really require any support from GAMA in its role as the trade body for the tabletop industry. 

For the two RPG awards: Land of Eem took home the title of Roleplaying Game of the Year (beating out heavy-hitters like Daggerheart, the Cosmere RPG, and Starfinder) and The Sutra of Pale Leaves - Twin Suns Rising, won Supplement of the Year. Land of Eem, designed by Ben Costa and James Parks and published by Exalted Funeral, is a colorful all-ages fantasy adventure game pitched as “The Muppets meets Lord of the Rings”. The Sutra of Pale Leaves is a Call of Cthulhu campaign featuring the King in Yellow set in 1980s Japan. It stands out as a departure from how publisher Chaosium usually operates; the supplement was primarily developed by an external studio called Sons of the Singularity.