DMs After Dark

Well hello there campers! Welcome to Camp Pine Island, a wonderful little tract of wilderness you'll be exploring all summer long!  Nothing at all is haunted, dangerous, or creepy at all, and the summer's going to be just peachy... right?   Thank you for checking out another installment of our one-shot shenanigans, this time with Rene running the DMs through he and Christian's original game Pine I...

Roll dice. Flip cards. Spend tokens. Pull the wooden block. This episode of Modified Rolls breaks down the different types of resolution mechanics in roleplaying games and why they're important for providing a certain kind of experience.  From the mathematics of probability underlying the success/failure ratio of games to the tactile aspect of cards (just ask Amber & Christian how they feel about...

Welcome to Hjem, we've got all things to make your house a Hjem... *sigh*...   In this one-shot between our Invisible Sun and upcoming Honor + Intrigue series, Sara runs us through Short Order Apocalypse Advanced by SaintBaileys on itch.io The game itself is available as Pay What You Want on Itch ( https://saintbaileys.itch.io/ ), and is also featured in the Tiny Tome collection of short rules-lig...

I don't know about all of you out there in RPG podcast-land, but I'm a pretty typical millennial, binging TV series on streaming platforms and dealing with piles of books to-be-read that somehow just keep growing despite my best efforts.  Well, what if I told you literally everything you ingest makes great building blocks for your RPGs?!  Your in luck, because all you gotta do is a little bit of w...

Greetings one more (but maybe not the last) time from the Actuality.  Christian sits down with Rene and Sara to talk a little bit about his process prepping for and running Invisible Sun.  We talk about the game from a design perspective, Christian's thought process for the concept of the Hollow Men and Elpada, and rates the game.   We hope to do more of these in the future following our series of...

It started with dreams.  Dreams of Shadow.  Dreams of each of our characters' goals and desires.  It, too, ends in dreams.  The Deeps of Sleep hold the headquarters of the Hollow Men and the Bornless One plots to erase the very concept the young girl Elpada represents.   Bridget shows her true self.  Darcian has a theory.  Henri guides the crew through strange new planes.  Istanbull guards his fri...

So you wanna be the bad guy, huh?  Well, not THE bad guy, but A bad guy.  Maybe THE bad guy, I mean, who are we to tell you how your story's going to go?  Before you do that, though, champ, let's discuss a few things about playing evil PCs in a tabletop game. In this episode, the DMs discuss how to get the most out of playing evil characters in games that are traditionally team-based and heroic. ...

Even upon waking from the Shadow and returning to the Actuality, there are dreams and there are nightmares...   The crew have strange dreams.  Fray brings the group to a dangerous location.  Henri almost makes a deal.  Bridget tests the limits of her circles.  Istanbull sees through and makes a wall.  Darcian shows they can hold their own.   If you enjoy our streams, podcasts, or just our general...

Hello and welcome to the 2nd episode of 1d6 | 1d4, Sara's "chaos baby" of a podcast where 1d6 of the DMs sit down and talk about a topic for 1d4 minutes at a time.   This week, Sara is joined by Christian and Rene to ask the question: "What if we ran games longer than 3-4 sessions?"   Find out what games we want to run long-term and let us know if you think we should explore that in the future!  ...

Welcome back to the Actuality, our fellow vislae.  So... that lecture didn't go as planned with the whole exploding snakes and dissolving vislae thing, but our PCs did manage to rescue the strange golden-eyed child Elpada from the strange terrorists.  Where will they go and what will they learn?   Bridget & Darcian summon for help. Henri bonds with Elpada.  Istanbull observes more than he lets on....

Muahahaha! You've come this far only to fall into our evil villain monologue! Now you must listen to us as we explain all of the things that weren't communicated throughout the campaign so you understand what it is you're actually defeating!   ... Or... maybe your DM gave this episode a listen and realized that they need to sprinkle in details throughout that make the PCs feel like they actually u...

Greetings from the Actuality... Our story begins around the city of Satyrine, where our PCs are all pulled like matter into a black hole to the Vance campus for a lecture from an eccentric researcher.  For a variety of reasons (including the promise of good food, which, unfortunately, appears to have been a lie), the characters find themselves at the center of a mysterious attempted kidnapping.  ...

What a wonderful [insert the name of your made up fantasy word weekday analogue for Friday]!  In this episode of Modified Rolls, the DMs talk about their experiences, advice, and ideas on all things homebrew campaigns.  Whether it's an original story in an established universe (have you listened to our Modified Rolls about running games with Canon?) or an entirely original world of your (and hopef...

In our penultimate Meet the DMs, we meet the 2nd half of the Bot, the 2nd half of the gingers within DMs After Dark, and everyone's favorite corn-shuckin Iowan Troy! Troy regales us with his history of roleplaying which goes back to him in 2nd grade making up stories with a D&D 3.5e PHB!  He talks about the power of RPGs, his love and involvement with Studio Agate's Shadows of Esteren, which was t...

Welcome back from the Shadow, our fellow Vislae, take a stroll and reacquaint yourself with ... the Actuality.    In this session zero for Monte Cook's Invisible Sun , Christian does his best to herd the cats that are the other DMs as we navigate the complex terminology and incredibly surreal world of Invisible Sun.  The DMs sit at computers in the Shadow (our Earth world simulation) to create a c...

In this installment of our interview series, Meet the DMs, we learn all about one half of our librarians and one half of what we affectionately call the Bot (along with her brother Troy), Amber.  Rene interviews her about her history with RPGs, how she's turned her love of the hobby into part of her career, and all of the amazing things she believes games can do.  She's by far the most professiona...

We're back with another episode of Modified Rolls, continuing our little run of "How to Prep & Run [Blank]."  Last episode talked about the wonderful world of one-shots, the stress-free experimentation station of RPGs.  This time, we're going bigger - the published stuff.  That's right, you bought a big written adventure and you're going to run your friends through an epic tale and all the good st...

Good morning, afternoon, and/or evening, and welcome back to another deep dive into the DMs as we continue our Meet the DMs series with an interview of Sara by Christian. Sara regales her journey in RPGs starting from the amazing 1st Edition D&D game with her grandfather and family, her long and storied history with Pathfinder's Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path, one-shots and her work with the...

Thank you for joining us for the final installment of Good Society , the Jane Austen RPG from Storybrewers Roleplaying.  In this dramatic finale, horses will race, hearts will break, and fortunes will be on the line.    If you enjoy our streams, podcasts, or just our general nerdiness, please consider giving us a rating on your podcast app of choice! Like, follow, and subscribe to our Facebook , ...

Welcome back to Meet the DMs, our interview style series where we sit down with one another and ask the hard-hitting questions, get real deep and introspective and... or just talk about what we love about RPGs and what led us to this wild endeavor we call DMs After Dark!   In this episode, Jess interviews Christian, the elder among the DMs, and he regales us with tales from the beforetimes of RPGs...

Hello all you listeners of what we've been referring to as the After Dark Army (let us know if you like the term or not), join us for a little look behind the screen of our first 9 months of streaming and podcasting.  Christian, Jess, and Rene briefly discuss what we've learned so far, how we're doing our best to improve quality of our episodes both from a roleplaying game experience for you to wa...

Hello everyone, a quick little bonus episode for you to kick off this week, something we've been wanting to do since much, much earlier in our existence - an interview-style little blurb where we discuss our journeys as DMs/GMs and all things gaming.   In this first episode Troy sits down with Rene and asks him about what got him into the hobby (and who, because that just happened to be Troy) and...

Come, all ye faithful, to the annual festival of the turning, a time of goodbyes and new beginnings, when our goddess The Hourglass is sure to renew all in our lives and nothing at all is wrong or anything... Seriously, we've been talking, she's good... She, uh, told me to enjoy the pope corn and pay the tithes and ... bless ... uh oh.   Welcome to another one-shot, this time playing Jordan Palmer...

On this week's Modified Rolls, the DMs After Dark go over one of their favorite things to do: run one-shots.  The less-stressful one-night-stands of RPGs are a great way to dip your toes into the DM's seat, offer up an alternative style game amidst a long-term campaign, or just goof on being ridiculous characters in a no-consequences zone.  From running published one-shots from the indie RPG commu...

Welcome to Pineapple Falls  - a nice, relaxing retirement community in sunny Florida, where absolutely nothing ever gets weird or flipped upside down (if you know what we mean).  At least, not under the reign of Homeowner's Association President Carol, who's turned this place from its rowdy past to a respectable retreat for senior citizens.  However, Carol's recent decisions are rubbing some of th...