News

RinCon 2017 Recap
Mark and Brendan went out to RinCon 2017 between September 29 and October 1, and they had an awesome experience meeting people, playing games, and fighting gazebos! RinCon is in Tucson, Arizona, and features a combination of board games and...
Halcyon City Herald Collection now on DriveThruRPG!
I’d be nothing without them. They’re my partner, my sibling, my friend, my rival, my other half. Our powers are tied together, and so are we, through and through. We’ve known each other forever, and I can’t imagine life without...
New at Gen Con 50!
We’re thrilled to have the following games available for the first time at Gen Con 50! You may have played them, perused the PDFs, or paged through your friend’s copy, but now you can pick up your own! Find us...
Magpies Landing At Origins Game Fair
The Magpie crew will be at Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio from June 14th to 18th, and we hope to see you there! Make sure to stop by the IGDN booth to say hi to Marissa (as well as...
Gen Con 50 Highlights
We’re back and (mostly) recovered from Gen Con 50, and what a time was had! From the ENnies to the Indie Groundbreakers to the Magpie Game Room to the Booth to everything else that was Gen Con, it was overall...
Dragons & teen superheroes at the ENnies!
Epyllion & Masks: A New Generation up for an ENnie! The ENnie nominations are up, and Epyllion: A Dragon Epic and Masks: A New Generation are in the running for Best Family Game. Please also remember Magpie Games in the...
Which Hero Are You?
We saw Spider-Man: Homecoming, and loved it! We were wondering though, do you think Spider-Man is a Janus...or a Protégé? Wake up. Breakfast. School. Work. Homework. Sleep. Repeat. It burns me up, being stuck in this life, unable to make...
Where do Gamemasters Get Their Fun?
Every single RPG with a GM has a motivation to run the game, an agenda, for the GM. Most of those games would be better if they stated that agenda explicitly. Because beyond telling the GM what to aim for,...
May the 4th Be With You
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… The galaxy is under threat from a terrible menace. A shadowy empire, led by a dark lord, is bent on subjugating the free peoples of countless worlds to a new...
A Look Back at 2016
As we advance steadily into 2017, we wanted to do a quick look back over some of the best parts of 2016, and look ahead to what they could mean for us moving forward! The Magpie Nest Grew Over the...
Masks Won Silver in Best Family Game!
I didn't have to do this. I could probably have had a safe, decent, simple life. It'd have been nice, but...come on. Come ON. SUPERPOWERS! ALIENS! WIZARDS! TIME TRAVEL! SOMETIMES ALL OF THEM AT ONCE! Sure, I'm out of my...
Fight, Party, and Save the World with Brendan!
Brendan Conway will be at Dreamation 2016, running both his game Masks as well as Wicked Fate. Dreamation runs from Thursday, February 18th through Sunday, February 21st in Morristown, New Jersey, and you will have FIVE chances to play with...
2016 Origins Roundup
Hey Origins Attendees! Magpie Games is excited to support Games on Demand at Origins 2016. We've got a whole bunch of new stuff to show off, as well as opportunities to play Urban Shadows, Epyllion, and Masks! Here are a...
Podcast and Video Roundup
Although all of us here at Magpie Games keep ourselves pretty busy writing, designing, and publishing games, sometimes we get the chance to talk about them as well! Several of us here have been on podcasts and YouTube videos to...
Games of 2016: Pandemic Legacy
It’s the end of the year! And that means it’s time to talk about end of year assessments of the most important piece of culture: GAMES! I might come back to this, so I’m not going to cap myself at...
Gen Con Highlights
It’s been a bit since GenCon closed off, and we want to cap off how grateful we are for such an awesome convention! Thank you to everyone who came by to the IGDN booth and said hi! Here are some...
Con Report! - Origins
It’s been two weeks since Origins Magpie had a whirlwind of a time, and we wanted to look back on some of the awesome games and events we’ve had! We had a blast running a smorgasbord of games! We had...
Two Minutes Hate: FAQ
Since posting “Two Minutes Hate,” I’ve received dozens of emails, read hundreds of comments, and spent 20+ hours talking on phone/Skype with people from multiple communities. After those conversations, I feel I need to both make some apologies and clarify...
Two Minutes Hate
UPDATE: I wrote this post in 2016. In the wake of information that has since come to light, including Mandy Morbid’s post <LINK>, it has become apparent to me that I was wrong. I’m leaving the post up so that...
Enjoyment vs Experience: The Dark Souls Dilemma
Dark Souls 3 came out recently, spurring much writing on it and the Dark Souls series. In particular, this pair of articles, one from Adam Smith of Rock Paper Shotgun, one from Rob Fearon on his blog We Make The...
Picking the Right GM Move in PbtA: Part Two
You can read part 1 here. Navigating the Territory In the first post of this series, I talked a lot about harder moves and softer moves, how to make them, and what those terms mean. I argued that any move...