PS: One more thing...
Leaving Las Vegas
“And I check the odds and I place my bet” - Sheryl Crow, Leaving Las Vegas
Six years on Substack. Good software. Good people. Zero support for the Games category, which is the thing I’ve been writing about the entire time. I want to run the whole operation — Play Fearless, Diceology, SecretKC — under one roof with less effort, and enshittification…so I’m leaving Las Vegaaaaas🎶
🤬 THE NEW HOME
Play Fearless lives at playfearless.games now. It’s been there for a while — if you’ve clicked any link in the last few months you’ve already seen it. Built on Beehiiv.
You don’t have to do anything. Your Substack subscription gets moved over automagically — this account isn’t going anywhere, it’s just not where new posts will appear. Paid subscribers get folded into my Patreon, you’ll see a new “Back Room” post soon. When the next Play Fearless post arrives, it’ll read "Mad Jay · Play Fearless." Don’t let it go to spam.
Substack isn’t going anywhere for me either. I’ve got friends here — writers, readers, fellow travelers — and the Substack ecosystem is real. I’ll still be here in the notes and comments. Just not publishing here. If you want to keep up with Play Fearless specifically, the new home is where the work lives.
🤬 WHAT’S NEXT?!
Monday Musings was a weekly commitment. What replaces it isn’t a weekly commitment — it’s a depth commitment. About 38ish posts a year instead of 52.
In practice:
Played It! — A real Played It! takes a month of table time. I’ve been cramming them into a Monday slot that doesn’t fit them, and the writing shows. In the new home they get the space they need. The first one out of the gate: Played It: Monster of the Week, reviewing the Occulted Kansas City campaign that’s been running since last fall. More than 12 sessions in, and that one NPC created from a player miss has risen to Major Antagonist status. I see Wild Talents and Dragonbane following that.
Field Notes — ongoing dispatches from live campaigns. Occulted Kansas City. The KBA playtests when they start. Whatever’s at the table right now. Field Notes are my AP proof-of-work posts — here’s what actually happened at the table, here’s what it taught me, here’s what changed in the prep.
The Back Room — the subscriber-side behind-the-scenes series. Lifted: Indomitable design notes. Mad-Dice dev updates. The catalog as things ship. Stuff I’m hacking, tinkering, and non-gaming-game-adjacent.
Muses of Play — the podcast — is in edit on the Season I finale. Season II is in conversation. More on that when we get there.
Dice Unknown — a new podcast series — Rich Rogers and I are playing Wild Talents: The eXorcists. One-Roll Engine supers, not our first collab. I’m excited. We’ve already got two sessions in the books.
Diceology gets a reboot, a reorg, and a redesign. Details incoming.
The Mad Jay catalog ships when things are ready. Lifted: Vault 01, By Aecer’s Light, PF Greatest Crits, T2K: Heavy is the Crown, and — when Nathan finishes the layout — Lifted: Vol 1. All at rpg-trader.com. No algorithm. No middleman.
🤬 THE ADDRESSES
Everything, in its place:
The new home: playfearless.games
Mad-Dice: mad-dice.com
TinyCon: tinycon.events
The catalog: rpg-trader.com
Patreon: MadJayZero — where the maintenance and development funding lives for Mad-Dice and TinyCon, and where current Play Fearless subscribers fold in
Instagram and BlueSky: @madjayzero — same as always
🤬 ICYMI — THE GOOD STUFF
Roughly six years of Play Fearless on Substack. This post stays pinned as the signpost. The posts below are unlocked today — free for anyone, forever. Thanks!
How to Run a Great Roleplaying Game — The whole philosophy, short. TL;DR: Play games.
Played It: The Black Sword Hack — Two concurrent campaigns, nine posts, one verdict. Spoilers: It’s AWESOME!!
Monday Musings #133 — Why I’m Starting 2026 With a Table Instead of a Checklist — On getting out of your own head and back to the game.
Monday Musings #135 — Why the Most Dangerous NPCs Are Player-Generated — The Musings doing what they do best. A sharp take, fully argued.
Monday Musings #115 — Running Cyberpunk TTRPGs with Character Baggage and the Sprawl as Sandbox — Genre thinking at full stretch.
Hit Me With Your One-Shot! — How to run a killer four-hour session for strangers. The con table thesis.
The Order of the Titan, We Salute You — Planning, running, and surviving an epic Legacy 2e campaign arc.
Played It: Mythic Bastionland — The Great Pearl Knight Saga — One GM, two players, seven sessions, a ridunkulous amount of fun.
Field Notes: Occulted Kansas City — What the new home looks like in practice. Monster of the Week, weekly IRL, still running.
See ya on the other side!