State of the Meat: Spring 2026

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Welcome to the first State of the Meat write-up, in which I organize my own thoughts on where my creative time is going to be focused over the next year or so. I’ll go over MCGW projects and freelance projects (as much as I am able), plus blogging/critique/other words and video things since it all pulls from the same bucket of creative free time available to me.

MCGW Projects

These are my personal projects or things I am releasing under the MCGW label. While I would still love to publish other folks work as well, I’m not sure it’s in the cards with my current time commitment situation (but if you think you’d be a good fit for the first MCGW-published only book, let me know)!

If I’ve chatted about something in the past and it’s not on this list, its fairly safe to say its either something I’ve explicitly “canceled” in my mind or something that isn’t likely to ever actually see the light of day, at least not in the next year or two at minimum.

Systems:

  • Tacticians of Ahm - Finalize rulebook, commission art, pass to layout

    • This game has been a causality thus far of my international moves, work visa situation, etc. where my creative time has varied drastically since it’s initial conception. That said, the rulebook is 90% complete and has been well-playtested so I’m hoping to add Examples of Play and pass it on to layout later this year. The supplemental books will come later but I want to get the core rules finalized and out the door ASAP (while maintaining quality, of course). I still believe in and love most of what I’ve created for this game so far.

  • 1,000 Miles from Home - Finalize rules, write examples of play, layout

    • This road trip-focused Lasers & Feelings hack is about 90% written. I’m going to get a few examples of play in, playtest it a bit, and get it into layout, using photos I took during actual road trips of my own in the past! I think folks will like this one, and it’s something very different from a lot of my past work.

  • Voidbreakers - Finish alpha manuscript (tables, lists, etc.), playtest

    • This is a modern horror investigation game that’s a blend of Panic Engine and Call of Cthulhu with a “skills as clue unlock” subsystem where I remove chance and rolls around key investigation elements making sure your expert characters notice things only an expert like them would. Ideally, this would play well with existing CoC scenarios. It’s about 75% written, just need to complete the stress lists. This one is sort of my version of a fantasy heartbreaker, only because I’m me that means it’s horror investigation instead.

  • Stranger Stars - I’ve written a lot already about this Mothership total conversion here before. As a backburner project, this is one I hope to continue concepting and building out the setting further over time. No real timeline pressure on this one.

Adventures:

  • STATIONS - This deep space, crucifix-shaped monastery module for Mothership is about half-written. The map is more or less set, the key players are decided, etc. Now, I need to do the nitty-gritty writing work on the rooms, decide on my specific hook(s) for the dangers/threats, and then see about a few pieces of art. I hope to, with most of my stuff going forward, get more artists and a layout person on board to polish these up more than I can before they drop.

  • Goblin Planet - This is the sequel to There is a Goblin on Icarus Station, also for Mothership, in which your crew find an entire planet enslaved by a variety of goblins. There’s magic, teleportation, and equal parts goofy and horrific shit going on. This has been my Next Big Adventure for several years now, and I haven’t given it the focus it deserves. I’d say it’s about 15-20% written right now, but what’s there is a lot of the superstructure that was pretty vital to lay out before diving too deeply into any one avenue. The big factions and important players are laid out. There’s a Goblin class! The basic shape of the world map and some of the things I’d like to explore are down on paper. Now - again, I gotta do the actual legwork on this.

OTHER:

  • Missives - Write “farewell” post, put in maintenance mode

    • I’ve been wanting to get off of Substack for ages now. Upon reflection after looking into transitioning to other newsletter services, the Missives in general are a vestigal element of a full-time freelance life which I am no longer living. I have really enjoyed writing and creating for the Missives for over three years now, but they simply eat into too much of my limited creative free time these days. So I’m going to crossing them off my to-do list permanently and shifting my focus, when inspiration strikes, to the blog (that’s where you are now).

  • MCGW Blog - Write only when I’m inspired to, continue Wolves solo play

  • Youtube - Translate good posts (possibly solo plays?) into video

    • I have really enjoyed making the few videos I have in the past, and they always get a very solid reception. I’d really like to branch out more into Youtube especially by adapting some of my better blog posts, solo play narrations, and more. This would be on a new MCGW-specific channel (linked at the bullet above).

Freelance Projects

I haven’t been actively pursuing freelance since returning to full-time day job work a little over a year ago, but I do still enjoy working on projects as I’m able when folks reach out my way. Although they aren’t technically freelance, I also include collaborative works and their component parts like my stretch goal adventure for Flatline on the Blocks here as well.

That’s pretty much the state of it! It’s a lot, maybe too much still, but also I feel like I’ve done depressingly little over the last two years or so and want to get focused and get better at bringing things to a close. This is the list!

I didn’t mention it elsewhere on here since it’s a private group more or less but The Meat Grinder 2.0 has been going well so far. We are three cycles in and have had some really great submissions and a lot of solid feedback across all of the groups.

Thanks for reading! - Christian