It's like Bible study for D&D fanatics! Slaying the Dragon author and historian Ben Riggs & TRPG scholar Dr. Scott M. Bruner read and analyze the most sacred texts of Dungeons & Dragons (from original edition rules to modern adventures)! They are often joined by special guests, including current and former Wizards employees, contemporary academics, and modern designers, to meditate on the inspirations, ambitions, past & future of the medium of tabletop roleplaying. Listen to a historian, an academic, and some special guests read D&D texts aloud and comment on them!
This is the Wildest Magic System You've Ever Seen! THIEVES OF THE TOME is an ENnie-nominated game where you bring a book to the table and you use it to cast magic! Check out creator George Philbrick's other games here: https://dairykillsme.itch.io/
A chat with multiple ENnie-nominee Justin Sirois! Pickup his fantastic game, THE SICKEST WITCH here: https://www.severedbooks.com/ Back his most recent Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/justinsirois/sickest-wretch-for-sickest-witch-new-non-witch-class-book Find more Sick Witch stuff here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnhambonemcguire/under-the-shadow-of-the-noon-day-witch
Delta Green is the RPG of modern existential horror. Events from the game appear to have been bleeding into our reality. We discuss with the following luminaries: Ross Payton is the man with the golden throat. He has been podcasting continuously since George W. Bush was president and YouTube was still good. He has won more ENnies than I have nipples, he created his own RPG, Base Raiders, but my favorite piece of his is The Night Clerk, a system free horror scenario which reminds me of a piece from Delta Green, actually, but that's a separate piece of our discussion. Audience, please welcome a slumming Ross Payton! Next up is a man whom I am somewhat afraid to attempt to summarize. His career has been both broad and deep, and his work was really formative to the shape of myself growing up. Delta Green took the Cthulhu Mythos and made it modern. It imagined a war of shadowy and hyper-competent conspiracies within the bloated bureaucracy of the United States government, which is something that is becoming somewhat more and more difficult to imagine with each passing week, but that is neither here nor there. Additionally, Cthulhu is real and he is coming for us all. Eldritch and hoary members of the audience, please welcome the rector magnificus, the shadow that haunts us in the shape of a man that wears the name Dennis Detwiller. Dennis, thanks for taking the time to come on the show! You are not cleared to click this link: https://www.delta-green.com/ Support Ross Payton's work here: https://www.patreon.com/cw/RPPR
MUSHIE MISSIONS is the ENnie-nominated game of mushrooms and their parties! Catch up on what the game's creators are doing here: https://brightbardgames.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoo1Ubpl1xozAFe5w9xmzI_j065xA3c2Xet-BCrJRIFaB7Mz2SSM
Wanna know about the products nominated for an ENnie? Start here! We talk to Samuel Gregor-Stewart about TERRA ANTARCTICA, a pulpy adventure of Lovecraftian horror! Buy it here: https://store.asmodee.com/products/arkham-horror-rpg-terra-antarctica-eng Vote here: https://vote.ennie-awards.com/vote/2026/ Check out the Scarring Party here, especially track 10: https://open.spotify.com/album/1UfaEfrl0tcsaZwqUOhgYJ?si=xd7ZN3I5TQmtztAYGx5JlA
Today, we have three of the most brilliant and prolific game designers of our time on the show, and my buddy Brent. First up is Owen KC Stephens. Owen has more ENnies than I can count, and was part of the design team for STARFINDER 1st edition, and of course STAR WARS SAGA EDITION, and he's the owner and publisher of Rogue Genius Games. Next up is Rodney Thompson. Rodney worked on the 4th edition DARK SUN CAMPAIGN SETTING, and the creation of 5th edition, and is notable today because he was also co-designer of STAR WARS SAGA EDITION Thirdly, we have one of the most nerd-famous people I know, Chris Perkins. Chris's career stretches back to Dungeon Magazine at TSR, and goes all the way up to the release of the 5.5 rules for D&D in 2024. In a career so long and varied, it is hard to pick out highlights, but I would point to CURSE OF STRAHD, which is an excellent expansion and translation of RAVENLOFT into 5th edition, and of course, he is also one of the co-designers of STAR WARS SAGA EDITION. Lastly, and I promise not least, we have my buddy Brent. Brent is here because I have heard from him and others that the best campaign they ever played in was a STAR WARS SAGA EDITION campaign run by him. The concept of the game was simple: "What if a small cadre of fledgling Jedi got mixed up in the early days of the Rebel Alliance and changed the course of events in the Galaxy?"
Happy Canada Day & July 4th! In honor of the holidays, we are dropping one of our greatest hits from the past. Enjoy! Kevin Kulp & Jeff Grubb have, between them, created entire cosmologies and entire timelines. Kulp is the award-winning creator of Timewatch and the investigative fantasy game, Swords of the Serpentine. Grubb, a legend in his own time, is the engineer of the Forgotten Realms, creator of Spelljammer, and writer of Manual of the Planes. Hear the pair discuss the secrets of creating new worlds with Ben Riggs.
First up, we have fellow D&D historian Michael Calleia. For years, Dave Arneson & Gary Gygax hinted that they could not speak freely about the creation of D&D for legal reasons. Michael followed up this hints, searching archives and court documents all across the United States until he found a gem in Chicago. The July 1973 draft of Dungeons & Dragons. He is a master researcher and has been kind enough to share some of his gems with me. Michael, welcome to the show! Next up, we have game designer Amabel Holland. Her linkedin describes her as I design weird angry board games for a living and am extremely trash online . She is also arguably the game designer with the greatest clippings in America since The New Yorker did a 4,000 word profile of her and her work three years ago. She works at Holland Spiele where her title is, and I quote, GAMES WEIRDO. Her linkedin reads, "I design weird angry board games for a living and am extremely trash online." She is also the second former librarian turned game designer from Michigan I have had on in the past two weeks. She is here because Michael was quite taken by one of her more recent games... Check out Michael's deep dive into the National Archives here: https://chanceand.com/2024/02/27/a-journey-through-the-july-1973-draft-and-dds-foundational-saga/ Pick up Amabel's numerous amazing games at Holland Spiele: https://hollandspiele.com/ Michael was hanging out here when we recorded: http://www.nycwargames.com/
In which Producer Chris continues to mess with all our minds by leaving at least one obvious error in the show! Today, I have two masters of their craft, two gaming greats whose work is capable of standing on its own two feet and maybe even punching other games in the face, or gutting them like fish, or blasting them out the airlock depending on your genre. First up is Luke Gearing. He is one of the Mothership boys over at Tuesday Knight Games, and is known for Gradient Descent, Fever Swamp, and most relevant to my mind, WOLVES UPON THE COAST, which I am currently running. Welcome Luke! Second in order but by no means in significance we have Kevin Crawford, the man with the mind behind the WITHOUT NUMBER line of games. STARS WITHOUT NUMBER is the dream campaign which I seem eternally unable to get my gaming group to play. His successful crowdfunding campaigns outnumber my ex-girlfriends, and his influence on game design in the 21st century has been remarkable. He is also tremendously hard to lure into an interview, so I will publicly brag that this is the second time I've managed to seduce him into a conversation. Welcome Kevin! Support Kevin Crawford's current Kickstarter here! You can find a free adventure by Luke Gearing for VIOLENCE here!
This week, in honor of crossing 100 episodes, we take a peek behind the curtain of the show to have a chat about the pod itself. Where we're going, and where we've been, are both chewed over. Enjoy!
Episode 100! And is this our best episode ever? A thing Wizards of the Coast has said is that 2024 D&D was the fastest selling version of that game ever produced. I predict that Wizards sold 50,000 copies in the first couple weeks and then made that boast. I would also predict that the other two people we have on the podcast beat that record, because we have Rowan Hall & Spenser Starke here. Starke and Hall are two of the cooks sweating over the stove and serving us Daggerheart from Darrington Press. Daggerheart sold out its initial print run in two weeks, even though it was supposed to last a year. All of which is prelude to say, Hall and Starke are bestselling game designers whose work has broken out of the nerd ghetto to run riot in the culture at large. ENWorld praised Daggerheart as a high fantasy mash up of D&D 4th Edition, the Genesys System, Blades in the Dark, and the Cypher System, producing high fantasy combat in a collaborative storytelling environment. Also on the show, we have Ben Costa and James Parks! They are the ENnie-award winning creators of Land of Eem, a warm, funny, and charming fantasy RPG. Before that, they created the world of Eem in their graphic novel Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo, and I am delighted to have them on the show. Welcome Ben & James! Check out LAND OF EEM here! And of course, DAGGERHEART can be found almost everywhere, but here's a link anyway.
First up, we have the gamer's friend, Seth Skorkowsky! Seth is a novelist, YouTuber, multiple ENnie winner, and nerd about town. His YouTube channel is a smorgasbord of RPG goodness, with a tentacle in practically every foetid pool of our beloved hobby. As a historian, I thought his piece on the three waves of moral panics around RPGs was particularly excellent and if you're listening to me, you should check that video out. Welcome Seth! Next up, we have not a game designer, no no but a foul necromancer. The early 21st century was a dark time for fans of the Call of Cthulhu RPG, my favorite RPG. Releases for the game were rare as hen's teeth. Then, ownership shifted, the start rolled right, and Call of Cthulhu 7th edition was unleashed upon the world. Paul, you and Mike Mason managed a feat akin to that of the D&D 5th edition team in bringing back a beloved game and making it relevant to a new era. Since then, it has been something of a Golden Age for CoC gaming, with your latest release being CAMPFIRE TALES: SCOUTS AGAINST CTHULHU! Welcome Paul! Pick up SCOUTS AGAINST CTHULHU here! Find Seth Skorkowsky's excellent fiction here, and you thrilling YouTube channel here! Support this channel on Patreon here!
Today we are diving deep on the demonic, and imagine what if, instead of running away from demons and devils in Dungeons & Dragons, creators and companies ran towards it? Recently, we had Gavin Norman of Old School Essentials fame to talk about the Demonic Grimoire which is funding on Backerkit as you hear this. But May is Old School Essentials month on Backerkit, and Gavin Norman and the other Necrotic Gnomes celebrating an Exalted Funeral have gathered an entire cult of creators to summon an entire Luciferean library. Hellish hardbacks! Possessed pamphlets! Satanic scrolls! Cthonic codices! Malevolent manuals of memes from Mephistopheles! The wicked works of Woland, the only demon brave enough to visit Stalin's Moscow! Today we have two of the eldritch elders, monstrous masters whose manuscripts will be birthed unto this wicked world whether we would have them or no. First up is Nicholas Montegriffo. His contribution to this macabre and malign month is HELLBLASTER: AGAINST THE CYBERFIENDS! The adventure's pitch reads thusly: "Under a burning sky rent asunder by eldritch storms, a jagged wreck from an unknown world vomits corruption. Abominations of fiendish flesh and mirrored chrome spit hot plasma death from iron orifices. Amid howls for blood and cries of pain, priceless artifacts of alien technology sound a call to adventure. Inspired by classic modules and early-90s dark industrial aesthetics, HELLBLASTER: Against the Cyberfiends is a location-based adventure for high-level characters, set in a crashed spaceship captured by the forces of hell." Also joining us is Luciferean luminary and accursed augur, Allen Hall. Allen's works include UHF CONTACT, a series of adventures for LIMINAL HORROR, & THE MOUNTAIN OF POWER, an awesome pamphlet adventure for Old School Essentials. His contribution to OSE Month is titled "Out of the Iron Labyrinth" and it's described thuslhy: "OUT OF THE IRON LABYRINTH is a hell escape adventure built for play with Old School Essentials. Whether they were kidnapped by a cult, traded to a demon by an evil wizard, or accidentally banished by an errant spell, your character must navigate the Court of Yllthrax, one corner of the infinite Iron Labyrinth, in order to find a way back to the Material Plane. Designed for play by one player character, Out of the Iron Labyrinth can be played with a GM or as a solo adventure using the included solo tools. Perfect as a self-contained module or as a side adventure when the party in your campaign gets split up (or when only one player can make it to game night)." Back HELLBLASTER here! https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/bloodstar-productions/hellblaster-against-the-cyberfiends Back OUT OF THE IRON LABYRINTH here! https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/m-allen-hall/out-of-the-iron-labyrinth
We're trying something different this week. I spend a lot of time talking to game designers and, of course, I'm a historian and history teacher watching the news every day. A thing I have personally become convinced of is that the United States is going to need a new constitution, and of course, I also spend a lot of time talking to game designers. Game designers, it would seem to me, have a lot to say about how one might want to structure a new government, but I didn't know of anyone having that conversation. So I decided to try it out myself. I managed to get 5E designer Mike Mearls together with Professor Christopher Robichaud of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government for a conversation on how a game designer might shape a new American government, and that's what you are going to hear today. Now if you are a regular listener to this show, I hope you enjoy what you're about to hear, and I hope that the question of how a game designer would build a new government is far enough outside the left-right dichotomy that people across the political spectrum can listen. Right now, I don't have any further plans to have more conversations like this, so if you want more, you'll have to let me hear about it. Comment to this video, share it around, and I'm attaching a link to a survey in the show notes. If you love this and want more, let us know. If you hate it, frankly, I want to know that too. But now, here's Mike Mearls and Dr. Christopher Robichaud. Tell us what you think about this episode here: https://forms.gle/Jipou4cfi4o5fitd9
Two games enter! One game leaves! And the YouTube algorithm dances in the blood! But seriously, this is a great conversation with Gavin Norman of Old School Essentials and Mike Mearls of 5E D&D. Gavin is the mind behind Old-School Essentials and Dolmenwood. Fellow Ben, Ben Milton at Questing Beast, praised Dolmenwood as the best release of 2025. Gavin's work is famous for taking the wild, dangerous spirit of classic fantasy roleplaying and presenting it with modern clarity: clean, usable, and elegant at the table, while Dolmenwood brings that eerie fairy-tale vibe: moss, mushrooms, and the kind of folklore that smiles at you right before it bites. Next up is Mike Mearls. Meals will likely be able to eat out on the fact that he was the co-lead of D&D 5E for the rest of his life. For my money, it was the best version of the game ever published by Wizards. The quality of 5th edition was one of the factors leading to the RPG golden age of the 21st century, making Mike into something like a D&D Michaelangelo or Leonarodo Da Vinci. Welcome Mike! Get ready for Gavin's crowdfunding campaign for DEMONIC GRIMOIRE here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/exalted-funeral/old-school-essentials-demonic-grimoire/launch_party The OSE adventure Mearls talked about is here: https://necroticgnome.com/products/adventure-anthology-1
This week we talk to two cartoonists who are making a name for themselves in the TTRPG space, Jason Lutes and JP Coovert! Jason Lutes is the designer of The Perilous Void, which Ben "Questing Beast" Milton named one of his best products of 2025. The Perilous Void is on Bundle of Holding right now for dirt cheap! JP Coovert is a brilliant designer and cartoonist whose STAR BORG takes the slammin' layout and simple mechanics of MORK BORG and sends it to a galaxy far, far away. Check out Jason's work on Bundle of Holding here: https://bundleofholding.com/presents/PerilousVoid Or his SERVANTS OF THE CINDER QUEEN here: https://lampblack-brimstone.itch.io/servants-of-the-cinder-queen Or STONETOP here: https://plusoneexp.com/collections/stonetop STAR BORG! Nothing but STAR BORG can be found here! https://jpcoovert.com/products/star-borg JP's Patreon is here: https://www.patreon.com/jpcoovert
Today, we pick the brain of the creator of the Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood! Ed is a man who needs no introduction, but who will be subjected to one anyway, a man who's bibliography is longer than his already lengthy beard. Ed is the original creator of the Forgotten Realms, which has been translated into hundreds of novels and one pretty good movie. Joining him is Jon Hage. Jon is the designer behind Sleeping Giant Gaming, creator of the Woven Worlds of Allera, and author of Hamel's House of Oddities, a 2025 ENNIE-nominated adventure. You can find Ed's majestic work for Fate of the Norns here: https://www.fateofthenorns.com/store/product/ath-cliath-boxed-set/ Buy Hamel's House of Oddities here: https://www.sleepinggiantgaming.com/explore/hamels-house-of-oddities/
Today, we have two remarkable designers here to share with us their insights and thoughts. Alex Roberts is the winner of the Diana Jones Award, and the designer of STAR CROSSED and FOR THE QUEEN. Joining her is Graham Walmsley, creator of CTHULHU DARK and a TRAIL OF CTHULHU designer with many credits to his name. Back Graham's current Kickstarter for PLAY UNSAFE here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grahamwalmsley/play-unsafe You can pick up Alex's award-winning STAR CROSSED here: https://bullypulpitgames.com/products/star-crossed
Tonight's first guest is a hunter of hunters, a designer who seized upon the monster-of-the-week TV formula and used it as the bones of a horrifying gaming monstrosity of freakish limbs, a brutish head, a harsh brow, a criminal brain, and yes, it's alive!! Michael Sands is the creator of Monster of the Week, the game that turned supernatural investigation, bad decisions, and glorious improvisation into one of the great engines of modern tabletop roleplaying. From Wellington to game tables all over the world, he's built not just a hit game but a whole haunted ecosystem around it, with books like Tome of Mysteries, Codex of Worlds, and the newly released Hunter's Journal and Slayer's Survival Kit. It's also what I'm running for my group at the moment. Welcome Michael! Our other guest tonight is Tim Denee, a designer with a gift for taking sharp ideas, stylish worlds, soldering them to systems under pressure. He's the mind behind Deathmatch Island, which is Battle Royale or The Hunger Games the RPG, and he has pushed forward the timeline of John Harper's magnum opus Blades in the Dark forward a hundred years with Blades '68, which recently funded, creating a retrofuturist new age of crime, glamour, and trouble. Welcome Tim! You can find Tim's BLADES 68 here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/evil-hat/blades-68 MONSTER OF THE WEEK can be found here: https://evilhat.com/product/monster-of-the-week/ Yesterday, I interviewed 1st edition D&D artist Erol Otus an 2nd edition D&D artist Jeff Easley in the Hugh Hefner suite in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Sometime soon, it will be up on our Patreon page. Join here for a mere $3 a month!
My first guest tonight is one of the great mad scientists of tabletop gaming. Epidiah Ravachol helped create Dread, the game that made a horror RPG out of a Jenga tower. It's brilliant, cruel, elegant game design that makes players sweat before anything terrible has even happened. He's just launched a sword & sorcery RPG called Swords Without Master. Please welcome Epidiah Ravachol! My next guest is Quinn Murphy, the creator of COMMUNITY RADIO, an improv-driven RPG about a weird town, dark humor, supernatural trouble, and the public radio station trying to narrate its way through the madness, which, frankly, is an incredible pitch. He's also the founder of Thoughtcrime Games, which is a ten-out-of-ten company name. An editor and contributor and layout designer of the GRIOT ANTHOLOGY of African-American game designers. Please welcome Quinn Murphy! Support Epidiah's SWORDS WITHOUT MASTER here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unwrittenearths/swords-without-master Pickup COMMUNITY RADIO here! Enjoy the GRIOT ANTHOLOGY here!
