Macklepenny Mediastories · talks · games

Stories, talks, and games
from a lifelong misfit.

Macklepenny Media is the creative house of Robin Macklepenny — writer, speaker, and recovering software manager. The throughline is simple and a little stubborn: we're all misfits, and we're always stronger together. Books that make you groan, talks that make you think, and games that make you grin.

▶ Meet Bothead Read the stories
Books · Robin Macklepenny, author

Aunty Robin's Story Time

Shaggy-dog stories for modern times: each one a long, lovingly-built path to a pun so groan-worthy you'll want to inflict it on someone you love. (An enemy works too — we don't judge.) Once a story's in your head it's yours to keep, retell, and pass off as your own. That's the deal.

📖 Find it on Amazon →

From the introduction
"You are giving these stories a home (however temporary) in your mind. Once there, they become your own to do with as you please."
Speaking & Leadership

Build bridges, not walls.

Robin speaks and teaches on one stubborn idea: strength lies in vulnerability. Drawn from decades of being managed badly (and, now and then, beautifully), these talks and classes help teams drop the armor, trust each other, tell better stories, and remember that we're always stronger together. Misfits especially welcome — turns out they make the best MVPs.

Available for talks, workshops, and leadership classes.

Games · Bothead Studios

Bothead's Field Day

Here's the pitch: take a brain, put it in a jar, bolt the jar to a tank, and send it to the park to play capture-the-flag. Who does that? We do that. Bothead's Field Day is a gleefully unhinged multiplayer romp — grab the flag, grapple-tag your rivals, and bend the rules of reality with a deck of mods (yes, there's an Upside Down; no, we won't apologize). Lose your head. It's fine — Bothead lost his ages ago. That's what the jar's for.

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Capture & Tag
Real-time CTF with grapple-hand tag-outs.
🃏
Reality Mods
Thunderbolt, Fly, the Upside Down & more.
🤖
Make it yours
Your colors, your face in the jar, a case of trophies.

▶ Play now — it's free

The collective

Who we are

Macklepenny Media is a small family collective. We make things we believe in, and we try to leave the place a little kinder than we found it.

Writer · Speaker · Games

Robin Macklepenny

Author of Aunty Robin's Story Time, speaker on leadership and vulnerability, and the misfit-in-chief behind Bothead Studios. Firm believer that we're always stronger together.

Artist · Vocalist · Musician

Elizabeth Jarboe

Artist, vocalist, and musician — and a tireless advocate who works to feed and shelter people experiencing homelessness. Proof that creativity and compassion belong together.

Counsellor · Coach · Fiber Artist

Kai Macklepenny

Grief counsellor, life coach, and fiber artist. She helps people through the hardest passages and makes beautiful things by hand — steady proof that care, too, is a craft.

The family

Doing some good, too