F A Q

Why not charge money? People living in economic precarity need the togetherness and good times of conversational games more than anybody. (Having all grown up at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder we can tell you discovering the hobby was life-changing).


Why prisoners? Anybody who’s been locked up knows that prison is mostly being bored out of your mind. This lack of mental engagement really fucks you up, makes your brain turn on itself. We’ve seen conversational games ease this misery in two ways:

First is the pro-social aspect. Conversational games are one of the few things in prison that bring people from all races to the same table. Its central feature is cooperating to achieve common goals. It’s a social simulator that inherently forces you to take others’ perspective. Most fundamentally, it gets people amped up to spend time with other humans – a basic component of human happiness.

Second is creative fulfillment. Having that crew you regularly meet up with for games makes all the difference. When everybody knows there are other people looking forward to whatever they write / draw / brainstorm, it makes the creative process way more gratifying.


Cash is tight right now – any other way I can support? Word of mouth is a massive help. If you tried one of our games and liked it, it would mean a lot if you passed it along in your scene or even shouted us out on social.


Can I donate? Thanks for asking. We have a tidy little donation page here.


Where’s that Hounds of Order painting from? It’s a landscape of Azuchi Castle, destroyed in 1582. The artist’s name is lost to history.


Is St. Disma a real saint? It’s the old-fashioned French form of Saint Dismas, the good thief.


What’s up with [game mechanic]? It’s probably less stupid than you think. Maybe. We have a whole page on our design rationale and principles here.


Why don’t your games have maps? Maps, even fictional ones, are banned in many US prisons and jails.


Did you bite that one 2019 show when you were making Illadelph? No, Illadelph goes back way before that (proof). It was based off a game one of us ran about a bizarre, genre-mashing version of their own city starting in 2008.


How come we haven’t seen you around the usual spaces? Mostly because we’re trying to introduce new people to the hobby, so you’re more likely to find us slinging literature at a basement show than tabling a convention.