Rascal News

Chase and Caelyn return from Dragonmeet to show off the games, memories, and various illnesses they collected over the weekend. Later, the pair discuss DriveThruRPG's heavily criticized Partner Shipping Program, two big evils within trading card games (licensed crossovers and speculative markets), and how fun it is to flick orcs. Finally, the Question Dungeon summons the ghosts of conventions past...

Hear that? It's the sound of well-ground axes. Of longstanding grudges. Thomas watches Chase remount a vertiably parade well-trod soapboxes on today's episode. These include the transient nature of Discord, crowdfunding platforms, and valorizing dungeon mastery as work done in the service of play. Chase tries to keep the griping to a minimum because we've got a Kickstarter union win and Satanic Pa...

It's a board game bonanza this week as Chase and Thomas are joined by BoardGameWire 's Mike Didymus-True to discuss a news week heavily skewed towards the meeple-side of the tabletop industry. The crew talks about Spiel Essen, the largest trade show-convention hybrid in the world, and some of the most interesting games Mike saw while in Germany. They also discuss the state of content creators and...

Chase is joined on this episode by writer, critic, academic, friend of the show, and hater of Commander: Cameron Kunzelman. The two wax long on the current, Fortnite-ified state of Magic: The Gathering, as well as its carefully and expertly maintained past. How does one square financial success and wide availability with an anemic playerbase and eroding creative identity? Later on, the pair discus...

Chase and Thomas professionalize the tabletop podcast space one news story at a time. GAMA makes some serious-sounding moves -- including the surprise resignation of executive directory John Stacy -- but that includes a not-so-serious "rebranding". Kickstarter workers go on strike. Game designers aren't getting paid by itch.io. An updated Cypher System somehow earns over $1 million. And that's jus...

Thomas returns to the podcast to discuss the two chunky investigations he produced since we last had him in front of a microphone. Zatu and Brandfox are not only depressingly common stories within the tabletop industry but also criticially important ones to tell. We talk inside baseball regarding how we structure stories and what it means to center a specific person within a broad narrative. The p...

( Hey gang, Chase here. My audio produced this very strange, high pitched whine throughout. I've done my best to either cut or minimize it, but this could still be an unpleasant listen for some folks. My apologies -- will have this sorted by the next episode. ) Two members of the newly founded Rogue.site, Ryan Gilliam and Cass Marshall, join Chase and Rowan to talk about their worker-owned video g...

Um, actually, it's pronounced 'PEE-dunt'. This is the slightly grating but technically correct energy that Caelyn and Chase bring to this episode. After discussing more tariff nonsense, the pair discover that most of the news is a huge bummer and they'd rather delve into their experience creating characters for the Cosmere RPG. Caelyn talks about hidden information and futzing about in Foundry, wh...

The crew psychoanalyze each other at least twice during this episode of the Rascal Radio Hour, which features everyone but Rowan (she brought home an illness souvenir from Gen Con) wading through a dense thicket of tabletop news from the last two weeks. They discuss two new RPGs adapted from book licenses and what exactly is gained when making that jump. Later, they break down White Wolf's new cre...

Rowan and Chase finally deliver a tight 60-minute podcast discussing itch.io's abrupt deindexing of explicit and games tagged as "NSFW" or "adult", among others, thanks to pressure from payment processors and right-wing citizen lobbyists from Australia. It's a strange and sad affair with ties to Steam, sex work, and the political wielded by corporations against individuals. The pair also wade into...

Chase and Lin Codega co-host an episode that is all about licensed games and this week's dirty word: franchise. The pair discuss the cancelled Tomb Raider RPG and what IP-scrubbed game might rise from its ashes, along with the continually disastrous Diamond Comic Distributors bankruptcy leaving some tabletop publishers bereft of consigned books. The big story of the week is D&D's apparent "full fr...

We're tackling a stuffed two weeks of news on this week's episode. Thomas and Caelyn join Chase in discussing Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins' professional shuffle over to Darrington Press, and what it does and doesn't mean for the future of Daggerheart. We also cover Rebel Scum's censorship on DriveThruRPG, Draw Steel's imminent public launch, and the complicated politics of a crowdfunding bund...

Someone on this podcast doesn't like Belonging Outside Belonging games, and the other doesn't find much use in industry awards. Both Chase and Thomas showed up ready to ruffle feathers on this week's podcast, but only after discussing BackerKit's new self-crowdfunding plans, impressions of UK Games Expo, and what Cephalofair's Price Johnson is doing at the US capitol. Elsewhere, the pair have been...

Magic: The Gathering's crossover with Final Fantasy drops on June 13, but unfortunately Chase doesn't know much about the storied Japanese RPG video game series. So, he brought in a couple of bona fide experts to talk about this already massively successful set. The Verge reporter Ash Parrish and TCGPlayer/ChannelFireball content manager Emma Partlow discuss FFxMTG's mechanical quality, the secret...

Uh, oh. It's another episode with just Chase and Rowan. Time to get punchy, and we're not only talking about our favorite way to bully the disappointingly nerdy fascists ruling reality. The pair dig through a chunky layer of news that includes Rowan, Rook and Decard's decision to not attend Gen Con this year, Itch.io's negligence in distributing charity funds to a group saving lives in Gaza, and G...

The entire crew gather to mourn the sudden and untimely death of games media outlet, Polygon. Along with Giant Bomb and the Daily Dot, Polygon's sale to Valnet -- and the immediate layoff of nearly every staff member -- constitutes an unnecessarily tragic blow to games journalism. Included in the layoffs is Charlie Hall, the outlet's one-man tabletop desk and an indelible piece of Rascal's own cre...

Rowan rejoins Chase to unspool the myriad and unclear ways tariffs have already begun affecting the tabletop industry. From clarity on book exemptions and companies already shuttering production for the year to determined stands against economic despotism by Canadian designers, the Tariff Era (or maybe Tariff Wars? we're still workshopping) has arrived. Later they discuss what it means for Jeremy...

Chase and Caelyn convene the first Brits-only episode of the Rascal Radio Hour, talking about everything but the April 2 tariffs (check the website for those bits). The pair go heavy on the deluge of miniatures news that came out of Adepticon 2025, including a shot in the arm for Caelyn's favored Star wars: Legion, an East Asian-inspired Warhammer 40k faction that doesn't immediately sour our tast...

Most of the Rascal crew, plus guest Lin Codega, chew through a heavy news week that includes the shuttering of Sigil, Wizards of the Coast's own virtual tabletop, and one Texas Representative's crusade against imagination that might harm roleplayers in its evil intent to demonize trans (and transgressive) youth. Rowan regales with stories from their time at Breakout Con in Toronto, and Caelyn remi...

Ever wondered what a tabletop RPG version of Catan would look like? Of course you haven't because that's a silly thought exercise, but that didn't stop the Rascal crew from indulging. Thomas and Caelyn join Chase as he returns from the 2025 GAMA trade show to discuss tariffs, distribution, and all the fantastic stories he missed while knocking back Old Fashions in Kentucy. The trio also discuss th...

Welcome to a special episode of the Rascal Radio Hour! Chase sat down with Remap Radio 's Cado Contreras to talk about something near and dear to her heart -- Android: Netrunner. Fans of Remap and Cado especially will know this is something they have been threatening for years, and we made it happen to promote Rascal's First Anniversary Pledge Drive . The pair discuss the winding history of this T...

Buckle up for a genuinely unhinged episode, y'all. Rowan and Chase are left alone to nurse their emotional wounds, inflicted by the fascistic psychosis blanketing the United States. The antidote? A lot of weighty sighs and really terrible jokes. Rowan recounts her followup conversation with the creators behind January 6th insurrection-based wargame Fight for America! and the disappointment it fost...

Most of the crew huddle against the dark winds of reality, their only light and warmth a microphone and news from the tabletop industry that they must share with you. After expunging a bit of the poison they've absorbed over one hellish week, Rascal's intrepid journalists talk about a fairly beefy news section that includes AI guidelines, weird rules about Warhammer parades, and hobby subreddits o...

The crew gather for the first Rascal Radio Hour episode of 2025, and they somehow manage to keep it under two hours. Please clap . Caelyn regales us with her time as a gym leader while Thomas and Chase keep accidentally reinventing video games. Meanwhile, Rowan is--as the title suggests--hungover on a Thursday. We talk through our recent industry-focused article , along with its clarifying followu...

The entire Rascal crew celebrate their first holiday season together by recording what might be their most chaotic episode yet. Chase jokes too close to the edge about kinks, Thomas digs up a piece of his mysterious pre-Rascal backstory, and Caelyn introduces everyone to Big Divorced Energy. Everyone waxes passionate about the website's first year, and then we plunge into what is eventually dubbed...