Chase Carter

1 week ago | rascal.news | Chase Carter

culture — 6 min read Michael Addison felt like he dodged a bullet by 48 hours. The game designer and owner of Nerdy Pup Games had been waiting for multiple lines of tabletop games to process after sitting in US Customs for two weeks. He originally estimated paying $5,000 just to receive his games, using the (now obsolete) April 4th tariff affecting goods from China, but the chaotic implementation of Trump’s flailing economic demands worked in Addison’s favor. This time.

2 weeks ago | rascal.news | Chase Carter |Rowan Zeoli

culture — 8 min read Early in The Electric State’s runtime, Chris Pratt’s John D. Keats points to all of the food squirreled away in his desert bunker that isn’t fit to eat — the Masters of the Universe tie-in Zagnuts (in the original packaging), tidy rows of SPAM cans, carefully wrapped candy bars. His character, a smuggler for nostalgic commercial goods from some vague '90s The Never Was, refuses to sacrifice potential profit to nourish his own body.

2 weeks ago | rascal.news | Chase Carter

tabletop — 4 min read Misreading rules is an indelible part of tabletop games. My weekly board game group would fill the group chat with post-game realizations, in the vein of “so, I double-checked that ruling” and “okay so my winning strategy shouldn’t have worked like that.” But board games are machines of tight clockwork, whereas an RPG’s rules can feel more like suggestions or guardrails.

3 weeks ago | rascal.news | Chase Carter

— 4 min read This post is for subscribers only

3 weeks ago | rascal.news | Chase Carter

culture — 4 min read If President Donald Trump’s most recent round of so-called reciprocal tariffs actually sticks around, April 2 will likely be seen as the beginning of the end for countless businesses and swaths of entire industries. His capricious economic scythe hit international countries that are currently vital to the manufacturing and production of tabletop games, from China (54%) and Vietnam (46%) to most of the European market and Canada (25%).