Reading D&D Aloud

Tonight I'm joined by W.F. Smith, the mind behind Prismatic Wasteland, one of the sharpest OSR blogs in the game. And if you've heard of Barkeep on the Borderlands, that's him too: the barhopping, pubcrawl-fantasy fever dream that took home a Gold ENNIE. Warren writes like a man with a notebook full of bad ideas he's somehow made playable. W.F. Smith, welcome to Reading D&D Aloud. Our other guest...

This conversation was incredible. Our first guest is Riccardo "Rico" Sirignano, co-founder of the Italian studio Two Little Mice, whose games have incredibly good game design and incredibly engaging premises, or as JRR Tolkien would say, absorbing secondary worlds. He's one of the minds behind Household, and Outgunned, the last of which took home a Silver ENNIE for Best Game and was named a 2024 E...

Trench Crusade is the gorgeous minis skirmish game that is sweeping the nation. I talk with Mike Franchina the artist who conceived it, and Green Ronin publisher Chris Pramas. Back Chris's current Kickstarter where you can play undead samurai out to kill Oda Nobunaga here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nikchick/nobunagas-black-castle And try out Trench Crusade here: https://www.trenchcrusad...

Billy Wardlow was scheduled to be executed in just a few weeks. He decided to spend the little time he had left playing D&D.  But why?  This is a reading from the book I'm currently writing, tentatively titled, Critical Hit: How and Why D&D Conquered the World in the 21st Century . Let me know what you think in the comments below. 

From Deadlands and Pinnacle in the 90s to the Marvel Multiverse RPG today, Matt Forbeck makes the adjective prolific look insufficient. He writes so much that there is a unit of writing named after him, the Forbeck, and exactly how many words long is a Forbeck Matt?  Steve Kenson has been designing RPGs professionally since 1993, and in 2002 he designed Mutants & Masterminds, a game that became on...

This adventure won a silver ENNIE a few weeks ago at Gen Con. Imagine Renaissance Venice with all the art and politics and war we already know about, but now with flippin' MAGIC! Tyler Denison and Sarp Duyar both worked on this magnificent adventure, and we sit down to chat about it. You can find Historica Arcanum - Serenade for the Damned here: https://www.metismedia.net/product-page/hardcover-wi...

Pawel Kicman's WHISPERS OF THE WOODS is oily with atmosphere and new takes on old monsters. (You won't believe what he did to the basilisk.) And it's so fantastic it won the Gold ENnie for Short Form Adventure this year! We discuss herein. See more of Pawel's work here: https://heltung-storytelling.itch.io/  

Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Josh McCrowell are both ridiculously talented designers and ridiculously frequent guests on this show. But they ain't never been on together! Hear their wisdom here and now! Back Gareth's current Merryshire crowdfunding campaign here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/pelgrane-press/merryshire-detective-club Buy Josh's brilliant work here: https://www.exaltedfuneral.co...

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-...

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 fa...

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/1UfaEfrl0...

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...

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, creato...

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 en...

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 t...

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. Stark...

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 s...

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 Ne...

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 t...

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, dangerou...

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' l...

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...