Failure Tolerated is a blog by Sean McCoy, co-founder of Tuesday Knight Games, co-designer of Two Rooms and a Boom, and designer of Mothership. He used to do a weekly podcast about boardgaming, and occasionally writes horror fiction. You can support this blog by donating here.

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Why Setting High Stakes Matters

Writing Rooms in Pairs

Stop Worrying About Layout Software

Can We Make This An Image? Designing Better Tables

A Small Rant About Investigation in RPGs

My Articles

May 20, 2026 - Treasure Encumbrance Matrix

February 12, 2026 - Talking to the Dungeon

January 16, 2025 - Writing Rooms in Pairs

December 10, 2024 - Why We Did Mothership Month

February 28, 2024 - Stretch Goals Are Haggling

February 27, 2024 - The Insufficiency of Language

February 15, 2024 - The Bottom Line

February 7, 2024 - Add It to the Key

January 18, 2024 - Environmental Horror Design

November 30, 2023 - High Level Shortcuts

November 19, 2023 - Prep Isn’t Play

November 9, 2023 - Megadungeons Are Anti-Product

November 6, 2023 - Dragons Are the Encounter

October 29, 2023 - Hex Map Encounter Levels

October 27, 2023 - My Favorite Problems

October 23, 2023 - Luke Gearing on Into the Megadungeon

October 7, 2022 - Thinking About Safety Tools in RPGs

June 22, 2022 - Getting Rid of Dogfights

June 6, 2022 - The First Line of Every Edition of Dungeons & Dragons

June 4, 2022 - James Maliszewski: The Tékumel Interview

May 31, 2022 - What I’m Working on

May 8, 2021 - Violent Encounters

August 4, 2020 - Leveling Down

August 1, 2020 - Heating up

July 8, 2020 - Gradient Descent Dive 07: Anatomy of Bad Session

June 24, 2020 - Learning to Crawl

May 27, 2020 - Gradient Descent Dive 06: Session Report [Mothership]

May 13, 2020 - Gradient Descent Dive 05: Session Report [Mothership]

May 6, 2020 - Gradient Descent Dive 04: Session Report [Mothership]

April 14, 2020 - Gradient Descent Dive 03: Session Report [Mothership]

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