(10/41: 2021) BRIAN YAKSHA
The Table-Maker in the Acid Western
Brian Yaksha doesn’t build games from the ground up. He builds the weather systems that blow through other people’s towns.
A nonbinary Bihari-Irish American designer working out of the American Northeast, Yaksha operates under the Goatman’s Goblet imprint — a one-person studio that produces zines, supplements, setting books, and procedural generation tools for the indie RPG ecosystem. The games he contributes to are other designers’ creations: Mörk Borg, Troika!, Best Left Buried, KNAVE, Dolmenwood. What Yaksha adds is atmosphere rendered as infrastructure — random tables that don’t just generate content but establish tone, prose that turns a d6 roll into a short story, settings that feel lived-in before anyone sits down to play.
It’s early. Five years of professional output. No standalone system. But the voice is unmistakable, and the trajectory points somewhere interesting.
The Frontier
Frontier Scum (2023) is the closest thing Yaksha has to a flagship title. Published through Games Omnivorous and Peregrine Coast Press, it started life as a Mörk Borg hack called “Doomdeath Gulch” and evolved into a rules-lite acid western RPG — spaghetti westerns filtered through LSD, violence, and self-destruction. The system runs on a light d20 chassis borrowed from Mörk Borg’s architecture. The setting is Yaksha’s.
And the setting is where the work lives. Frontier Scum doesn’t innovate mechanically. It innovates tonally — the random tables generate a world that feels specifically Yaksha’s, a landscape where the West is dying and everyone in it knows it, where the encounters are grotesque and beautiful and delivered in prose that reads like Cormac McCarthy writing dungeon modules. The supplement Tides of Rot, co-authored with Karl Druid, extends the world into splattercrawl territory.
The limitation is structural. Strip the prose and you’re left with Mörk Borg. The engine isn’t Yaksha’s. The paint job is.
The Supplement Ecosystem
Academies of the Arcane (2023), published by Melsonian Arts Council, is Yaksha’s most substantial single work — an 89-page supplement for Troika! Numinous Edition featuring 36 backgrounds, 90 spells, magical school creation tools, and tables for generating academic calamity and magical overload. It’s designed to be adaptable beyond Troika!, functioning as a toolkit for any system that needs a magical academy. The scope is impressive for a supplement. The craft is professional.
Throne of Avarice (2024), published by SoulMuppet Publishing, takes Best Left Buried’s horror framework and builds a setting about the horrors of colonialism — the Grand Duchy of Calmyn, procedurally generated through tables for citizens, victims, regions, and rulers. The Kickstarter hit its stretch goals. The Hexcrawl Toolbox, a collaborative project with Games Omnivorous, earned three ENnie nominations in 2024: Best Accessory, Best Cartography, Best Production Values.
The pattern across all of this is consistent: Yaksha takes established systems and fills them with atmosphere. The Rakehell zine series builds a city called Gog-Moloch for KNAVE. Denizens of the Dying World generates characters for Mörk Borg. Mythic North: Upsala extends VAESEN. Contributions to Dolmenwood‘s Monster Book and Adventure Anthology add creatures and scenarios to Gavin Norman’s world. Even the licensed work — writing for Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound and Paizo’s Lost Omens: Draconic Codex — is supplementary by nature.
Yaksha is a world-builder who hasn’t built his own world’s foundation yet.
The Scoring Case
Invention (3): “Competent variation”
Frontier Scum is a Mörk Borg hack. Academies of the Arcane is a Troika! supplement. Throne of Avarice is a Best Left Buried setting book. The procedural generation tables are well-crafted but represent standard practice in the OSR/indie scene, not a new mechanical approach. Nearly all work builds on other designers’ system architectures. Not 4 because no original framework or mechanic exists — even the strongest work is supplements and hacks of existing systems. Not 2 because the table design and prose quality show genuine design intelligence within borrowed frameworks, and the tonal innovation in Frontier Scum creates real atmosphere even on a borrowed chassis.
Architecture (3): “Lightweight or derivative”
Academies of the Arcane at 89 pages is substantial but runs on Troika!’s engine. Frontier Scum is rules-lite, built on Mörk Borg’s chassis. Most output consists of settings, tables, zines, and supplements rather than standalone system architecture. No original mechanical framework supports any title. Not 4 because no game stands as an independent system — every major work requires another designer’s engine underneath. Not 2 because the supplement architecture is professional-grade: the tables interlock, the settings are complete, and the production values (three ENnie nominations for Hexcrawl Toolbox) demonstrate real structural competence.
Mastery (3): “Early career or limited depth”
Approximately five years of active professional work (2020–2025). Prolific but predominantly small-press supplements and zines. Three ENnie nominations via Hexcrawl Toolbox (collaborative project). Published through respected indie presses: Games Omnivorous, SoulMuppet, Melsonian Arts Council, Necrotic Gnome, Cubicle 7, Paizo. Clear voice, strong prose, identifiable aesthetic. But the career is young and the body of solo-designed standalone work is thin. Not 4 because five years doesn’t yet demonstrate sustained refinement across a body of independent designs. Not 2 because the output is professional, recognized by the industry, and published through credible channels with consistent quality.
Adjustments — +1
- ■ Longevity (+0): Approximately five years of active design work. Not yet 10+.
- ■ Full-time career (+1): Freelance writer, designer, editor, artist, and cartographer as primary profession. Goatman’s Goblet as professional imprint.
- ■ Awards (+0): Three ENnie nominations for Hexcrawl Toolbox (2024) but no wins.
- ■ Branded name (+0): Not recognized outside the indie RPG community.
- ■ Cross-genre (+0): All RPG supplements and settings. No distinct second game format.
- ■ Commercial success (+0): Throne of Avarice Kickstarter reached £8K stretch goal. No title approaching $10M lifetime revenue.
- ■ Design propagation (+0): No mechanics for other designers to adopt — the work is settings and tables, not systems.
- ■ Field stewardship (+0): No formal mentorship, education, or institutional contributions beyond personal publishing.
The Hidden Pattern
Yaksha is a set designer, not an architect.
Every project in the catalog does the same thing: takes an existing stage — Mörk Borg’s apocalyptic fantasy, Troika!’s surreal science-fantasy, Best Left Buried’s horror, KNAVE’s minimalism — and fills it with props, lighting, and atmosphere so specific that the stage starts to feel like Yaksha’s even though the floorboards belong to someone else. Frontier Scum is Mörk Borg’s stage dressed as a dying West. Academies of the Arcane is Troika!’s stage dressed as a collapsing magical university. Throne of Avarice is Best Left Buried’s stage dressed as colonial horror.
The hidden question is whether the set designer eventually builds a theater. Yaksha has the prose, the visual imagination, the procedural-generation craft, and the publishing relationships. What’s missing is a foundation that belongs to nobody else — an original system, a mechanical voice, a set of rules that couldn’t run on another designer’s engine.
Five years in, the trajectory is upward and the voice is clear. The acid western is vivid. The tables generate worlds worth exploring. But the floor beneath all of it is rented.
What Remains
Frontier Scum (2023) — acid western RPG on a Mörk Borg chassis. The setting that made the borrowed engine disappear behind the prose.
Academies of the Arcane (2023) — 89-page Troika! supplement. 36 backgrounds, 90 spells, a magical school generator built to outlive its source system.
Throne of Avarice (2024) — colonial horror setting for Best Left Buried. Procedural generation as political critique.
Hexcrawl Toolbox (2024) — collaborative cartographic toolkit. Three ENnie nominations. The map-maker’s calling card.
Five years of atmosphere. The theater hasn’t been built yet. The set designs suggest it could be extraordinary.
Total: 10 points. Year: 2021.
10 points. 2021. The table-maker in the acid western.
Five years of atmosphere. The theater hasn’t been built yet. The set designs suggest it could be extraordinary.