iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Today’s game: Keep The Faith, a 2-5 player game about how religions transform over time. Our religion featured a magical monkey who ate a magical acorn (there was some schismatic tension over this) and pooped a tree of life. Design Greg Loring-Albright. Published by CMU Press.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Today’s arrival: Terry Brighton’s Hell Riders: The True Story of the Charge of the Light Brigade.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Today’s game: Coalitions (6 players), by Andy Rourke, published by Phalanx. I really enjoyed this. Some smart design choices here - especially with regards to the diplomacy system.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Today’s game: Witch Hunt 1649 (Martha McGill, CMU Press). It was sort of mean. Played with 6 people (two of whom went on trial and were executed, one of whom was exiled).

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Today’s delivery: The Weimar Republic (Gunnar Holmback, GMT Games).

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Today’s arrival: Frank McDonough, The Weimar Yesrs: Rise and Fall 1918-1933.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Sessions of Narrative-Driven Analog Games @ RPI - students are playing a range of story-making games such as Nanofictionary, Once Upon a Time, The Storymatic, PitchStorm, Inventory Management, For the Queen, and Untold Adventures Await, in preparation for demoing their own designs.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Today’s game, The Reason Why, a prototype about allocating blame for the Charge of the Light Brigade. Many mechanical things to alter, but the narrative and broad design concept appears to hang together.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Latest arrivals (spot the odd one out):

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

From Pea Ridge (1980), optional rule:

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Yesterday’s arrival, Nine Space Games, by Jason Morningstar. Serious contender for being part of my Narrative-Driven Analog Games course this semester.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Unpacking mail that came for me while away from home this summer #6: The Weimar Republic, published by GMT Games.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Unpacking mail that came for me while away from home this summer #5: Education and Analog Role-Playing Games, Edited by Susan Haarman.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Unpacking mail that came for me while away from home this summer #4: Introduction to Global Military History, Jeremy Black.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Unpacking mail that came for me while away from home this summer #3: Coaltions (and expansions) from Phalanx.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Unpacking mail that came for me while away from home this summer #2: Hunt for Blackbeard from Fort Circle Games.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Unpacking mail that came for me while away from home this summer #1: Bretwalda (and expansions) from Phalanx.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Today’s arrival: Designing Historical Games For Classrooms, by my friend, @gamingthepast.bsky.social

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Today’s adventure: travelling from Oxford to London:

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Today’s game at BrotherCon, Sheffield, UK, Imperial Struggle.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Today’s games at BrotherCon, Sheffield UK: War of the Ring (Free Peoples get the Ring to Mordor a turn before Lorien falls), then we begin We The People (and make all manner of mistakes on our first run out). Much fun had by all (both of us).

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Yesterday’s game - taking this prototype out for a walk - Fall of Camelot.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Read of the last month: Battle cry of Freedom. Excellent single volume on the war, covering not just the military dimension, but also politics and social history. I recommend it to those interested in the topic.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Today’s game: Game of the Generals by Sofronio H. Pasola Jr. (1970). Essentially similar to L’Attaque/Stratego, but flags (HQs) can move and if they reach the opponent’s back line and aren’t challenged that’s a win. 2 spies, who defeat everyone apart from privates also keeping things fun.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Yesterday’s read: Farmer Giles of Ham. Beautiful illustrations in this, by Pauline Baynes.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Today’s read: Smith of Wootton Major. Written 1964/5.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Today’s reading: Leaf By Niggle (by Tolkien) - it’s like reading a response to Kafka - I believe scholars generally consider it an allegory of his anxieties that he will never finish LotR:

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Publication day. Thank you to @enwright.bsky.social, Iain, and Nick for making this so. I think this is a meaningful contribution to the field of historical games. My chapter is on historical rhetoric and board games, with a case study on Crisis: 1914. lnkd.in/evi5Z7Nw

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Progress assembling my Fall of Camelot prototype:

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Assembling a prototype for my Fall of Camelot game:

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Two other games from this semester’s historical simulations class Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - one on the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, and the other on the development of the homophole movement in the U.S. prior to Stonewall:

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Today’s development: Assembling the prototype for The Reason Why, a 5 player game about allocating blame for the Charge of the Light Brigade:

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Today’s development: physical prototype of my Bartleby the Scrivener game arrived:

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Monday’s game in Historical Simulation: Weird An’ Mire of Letters (selected writers trying to balance inspiration, community, and finances during the Great Depression).

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Today’s game in Historical Simulations (a prototype by a PhD student) on the Chinese Educational Mission (1872 to 1881), where 120 teenaged Chinese boys were taken to Hartford, CT and educated- until the Chinese government, fearful the students were losing their traditions, brought them back:

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

The first two prototypes in my Historical Simulations class at @rpihass.bsky.social Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, and Scribes of Danielic Memory (some rather smart brainwork has gone into these and I’m very chuffed with what my students are showing me so far):

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Today’s game: 7-player game of Elizabeth: England Aflame. The agents in the pay of Spain and Portugal took a surprise win as the Spanish Armada landed. Playing at Circle DC convention.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Today’s game: Cabinet Noir (ministerial rivalry in Napoleon’s Empire). Played with 5 players today. Everyone lost - no one backed the winning factions and everyone accused each other of not doing enough to help the Empire. C’est la vie.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Today’s development: The Emperor’s Choice (my design) and The Emperor’s Voice (Wes Crawford’s design) - related games on Japan’s surrender and an attempted coup August 1945. To be published by Worthington. (All prototype art is temporary.)

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Today’s game: Space Cadets. Co-op turn-based real-time hybrid:

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Today’s game: The Emperor’s Voice (by Wes Crawford, to be published by Worthington) the 2-player game, as one side attempts to find and smash the Emperor’s Recording and to prevent surrender from happening - the night of August 14/15 1945.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Today’s second game: looking over Wes Crawford’s The Emperor’s Voice, about the August coup in Japan.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

Today’s first game: back to Junta, 4-players.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Today’s reading: The Long White Cloud, second in Kingsley Poole’s trilogy on the Huntston family - this time we’re on the Western Front in 1917. Excellent pacing. Well written.

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Maurice Suckling @writegameread.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Today’s development: update to the board for what is now likely to be called “The Emperor’s Choice”, a 2-player game about the fraught Japanese cabinet discussions on August 9 1945, leading up to surrender and then the attempted coup.

Board prototype courtesy of Linus Zhang.

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