The Big Red Couch RPG Podcast

A rowdy bunch of biker mice, looking to make their bones pulling off a big score, are about to learn a lesson about hubris. The mentor of an impetuous adventure attempts to tease out the story of how their student has most recently misapplied their patient instruction. Further ruminations of why pillaging the people of the past for “good stock” is morally, and existentially, perilous....

The tiny band of survivors are all that’s left of Humanity. They don’t have the right skills, or enough people, to rebuild, but they do have a time machine and the ability to pluck people out of history who’d otherwise have died in various disasters, and those people would have the skills. Everyone in the past knew this sort of stuff, right? And they’d be really grateful, a...

  A quirky fraternal order is stranded far from home and their charitable objective.  Can trans-dimensional bar-flies help them fulfill their task? The lodges of the Shriners protect arcane secrets as it’s members protect our sleeping world from nameless horrors. The drifts of nigh-invisible infra-red laser lensing  creatures lie between you and your objective.  But as you forge ahead,...

We are living in a detailed and exacting simulation of the most boring possible universe. Once you know that, can you reach outside the simulated environment to other environments? Or maybe to the people who are doing the simulations? Alternatively, can you hack your own simulation? The reason that our part of the universe looks like it does is that we live in a heritage cluster with a strong &amp...

  The Temporal Survey team SHOULD have reported back by now. They SHOULD have been back a moment after they left. But they’re not, and while the standard dead-drop messages they left prove that they made it, they also give no sign that they ran into trouble. Which means you need to send ANOTHER team back to see what happened to them, haul them out of trouble, and not screw up the timeli...

Quarreling Gods look for arbitrators among the very mortals they are supposed to guide. In a society that worships rational concepts as if they were competing supernatural powers, a disruptive and mercenary acolyte is tampering with a delicate balance. Justice can be automated.  And now he’s got the tools to do it, that’s just what the Son of Justice plans to do. Between the machinery...

In a transhumanist post-mortality world, it makes sense to store memories and knowledge in a secure cloud, bringing them into local storage only when needed. And that works fine until something goes wrong, the cloud is rendered inaccessible, and neither you nor the vaguely-familiar folks you’re stuck with remember how to get your memories back. Post-Mortality doesn’t mean post-scarcity...

  A handful of children explore the crumbling, deserted ruins of a world torn asunder by conflict. Returning to an evacuated orbiting O’Neill colony after the “hot” war finally cools, it’s original inhabitants find it overgrown…     …and overrun? Would-be diplomats from space recount their escape from the doomed planet below, and the sacrifices of the peopl...

When someone on the ‘mad’ side of the Alchemist spectrum releases a self-replicating magic-consuming substance across the land, the high-magic realm swiftly grinds to a halt as Dragons stop flying & floating cloud cities crash into the ground. On the plus side, the undead menace is gone. On the minus, those beautiful crystal bridges probably can’t support their own weight. Th...

  Garbled prophesies of the modern social media world prompt a confused destructive intervention. London is torn down the middle, with a modern city driven by electricity & electronics facing a parallel evolution, based on steam & clockwork, across the Thames. A deep sea encounter with a sentient creature spurs a contest to contact the new life form, be they ally or enemy. Infiltrator...

Hello Long-Suffering Audient! Ben & Craig had some real-world events rear up and bite them in their collective asses this month, but rather than taking the merciful option and just staying quiet, they’ve instead chosen to present an artifact from the distant past, when Ben & Tonya & Craig attempted to make characters for “My Little Pony: Roleplaying Is Magic”. My Litt...

Troubleshooters in the Bosky Groves Living Deliberately while being hunted by shadowy agencies ‘Thoreau’s Angels’ or ‘Pre-Industrial Shadowrun’? A Parlor Game with Time-chewing horrors     Dunedin’s Recent (January 2018) Fire Henry David Thoreau – The post on Language Log that inspired Burning’s prompt. Diogenes Album –   Nothing like...

A message is passed up from the bottom of the ocean, species to species, until it reaches those weird creatures which live right on the edge of vacuum, above the point where liquid water can exist. Explorers from the deep clumsily jet onto land to investigate this strange dry part of the world, and maybe don’t understand that the tiny bipeds have views on the matter. Down in the inky depths,...

Ben comes up with a game about creating that “Walking Away From The Explosion” shot, and Craig pitches a furry/anthro game without realising it. Here’s that other image, Also, you should all know that the entire time Ben was talking about the McElroy Brothers, Craig was imagining this. Even though he knew it wasn’t the same person(s). – T. Jones Doomtree –  Grey...

Who blew up Planet Zircon? Heavily-Stereotyped Interdimensional Dragons attempt to determine the perpetrator of a terrible crime. Monomaniac Alien Dragons come to Earth in order to be detectives as a lifestyle choice, despite having little grasp of culture, genre conventions, and indeed what constitutes a crime. FireForce! The 80’s Cartoon of Exiled Law Enforcement Dragons having adventures...

A behemoth interstellar freighter hauls its dangerous cargo, as well as it’s crew and their baggage. The day “The Excerebrators” arrived and put your brain in a forklift was pretty traumatic. But even after they are overthrown, can you go home? The phase “Untouchably Sexy Maglev Trains.” Hench-men placement services and work place negotiation with super villains. &nbs...

Henchmen On A Train Evil sidekicks plot to kill off each other’s Villains. Sticking it to the Übermensch Heroes are assigned sidekicks, even if they don’t really want them, and having seen behind the cape, as it were, the teen protege’s are underwhelmed & disaffected, and turn to villainy. Trouble is, they’re still a bit crap. The Supermanchurian Candidate Sidekick usua...

  One player, multiple GMs?  What chance does that protagonist have, unless they are the very stuff of fable? Craig Destroys Democracy (at least according to Ben) An inspiring yet incompetent captain and a resourceful and long-suffering crew.  Shenanigans ahoy! Heroes don the mantle of the gods, attempting to change the very fabric of reality.     NASA Astronauts Provide A Perfect R...

Every Person, or Group, or even Empire is made up of stories, those they’re told, and those they tell themselves; Change the story, and you change THEM. What Terrible Secret Lurks In The Heart Of The Canadian Wilderness? And Possibly In The Heart Of Every Canadian? A group of friends journey through a crumbling MMORPG to fulfill one last Quest. There’s no risk here, but your boss isn&#...

The minimally-edited Big Red Couch Gen Con Report. Or, more accurately, what Craig did on his holidays. Gen Con (the event) Gen Con (wikipedia) QAGS (Hex Games) Monarchies of Mau, from Onyx Path Publishing (early access edition) Pugmire, also from Onyx Path Publishing Cypher System, from Monte Cook Games Masks, from Magpie Games Trail of Cthulhu, from Pelgrane Press Cthulhu City, also from Pelgran...

  Due to dwindling pool of traditional recruits, the job of reaping souls is given to mechanical replicas.  Results are…    ….mixed. A relic of the before-fore times, a metal Goliath hunts those trapped in its deadly arena.  Is it a scourge to flee or the biggest score of a lifetime? An aging mad scientist and a grizzled hero face each other for what seems like the millionth occas...

A specialised but oddly thematic team operates on the edges of a semi-collapsed future. Extraterrestrial battle fleets we can deal with. Rogue dimension-shifting monstrosities can be contained. We’re not sure what to do about George the coffee guy. What are the different approaches to Secret Agenting? “Well, yes, our scheme IS underhanded, but we never expected it to get out of hand in...

A writer’s villain appears to have escaped into the real world, and is running for office.  Is it a direct consequence of their visit to a mysterious source of inspiration? A powerful artist’s muse has been stolen.  Or have they actually been extracted and freed?   United Kingdom General Election 2017 Proportional Representation MMP – The flavour of crazy voting New Zealand...

Years ago, a group of apocalyptically powerful super-heroes & super-villains decided that all they were doing was making things worse for themselves & the world in general, so they went into hiding. When a great threat emerges, they reluctantly team up to deal with it, but are trying to do it on the down-low, so that nobody knows that they’re back. When you’ve spent your time w...

  A group find themselves unexpectedly deified, long before hitting the level when that’s supposed to occur.  What did they do to deserve this accolade, and can they live with their future selves? The quarry of determined pan-dimensional agent tries to throw them off the scent by making them the focus of this reality’s premier religion. A gaggle of cultists attempt to get their un...