Roleplay Rescue

What’s the deal with Rolemaster? Why did we love it back in the 1980s and does the recent release of Rolemaster Unified invigorate us to play it again? Back in Episode 1, I declared that I was embarking on a new quest. It’s a journey into the deep past to find a new pathway towards enjoying the games I like to play in the way that I most enjoy playing them. Today, I take a trip back to 1980 and re...

Bonus episode leaked from the Patreon to give listeners a taste of the raw and unedited horror that is the GM's Journal. A few folk have asked what the GM's Journal is all about so I thought the best way to respond would be to share one episode by way of a taster. Remember: the Journal is a very candid snapshot of my life as a gamer, is recorded throughout the week into my phone, and is nothing li...

Having spent quite a few episodes now revisiting and developing my own return to a more coherent practice with roleplaying games, I thought I would make a brief pitstop and talk about the Roleplay Rescue community.  The community is the life-blood of this podcast. Without it, I would be alone and isolated. I would possibly have stopped playing, but even if I was playing it would be alone - my...

Hello Rescuers! Here's a bonus! I have this vague idea that if I can produce a few episodes then I might release them on their own podcast feed, Roleplay Rescue's Solo Tales. This episode follows on from the main Roleplay Rescue Season 12, Episode 2 entitled “Crag’s Ruin”. I began wanting to explore the roots of my own hobby by revisiting my first imaginary game-world. This episode picks up where...

Today I have another of my conversations with a friend within the roleplaying games community. This episode we dipped into talking about characterisation in our RPGs, especially around NPCs. My guest, Simon Williams, is a British artist and illustrator as well as being the creator of the Legend of The Bones podcast, a hybrid Solo Old School Dungeons and Dragons actual play and dark fantasy audio d...

Following the release of Episode 5 to the RPR Patreon, Patron Brian called in with a long series of seven questions about GURPS which I felt were worthy of a full episode to respond to. Not only are they truly excellent questions, they were also deeply insightful and are perhaps the kinds of questions that many listeners unfamiliar with GURPS would find interesting. I also think that, putting asid...

In Episode 5, Barry aka GMShadow chatted with me about the need for a simple introduction to GURPS. Since then, we’ve been collaborating - along with other interested folk from the RPR Discord - to create Simple Dungeon GURPS. We have a working draft of Simple Dungeon GURPS and the playtesting is underway. In this episode, I wanted to share the progress made and the basic shape of that set of meth...

Do you ever find yourself not physically starting something but instead spending inordinate amounts of time and effort reading, researching, and trying to decide where to start? If not, I envy you. It's a particular problem I have and been struggling with again. In simple terms, this is the Resistance in a pretty unsubtle form. Thanks to Matt for the call-in at the top of the show, giving me a nud...

Following my recent conversation with GMShadow, my good friend Barry from The Shadow of the GM podcast - which you can listen to in Episode 5 - I’ve been delving back into both the Great Library of GURPS and rekindling my love of the megadungeon. This episode, I want to talk about the reasons why I’ve returned to the Dungeons of Thaarl - my own megadungeon - for a return to the classic fantasy Ope...

Today, I want to talk about the most durable, long-serving, and under-rated game structure in roleplaying games. Most GMs use some form of it in most sessions - anytime they come to a location in their world where the Player Characters need to explore. I want to talk about the humble Dungeoncrawl which has become tarnished over the years by people who totally fail to understand that the “craw...

This is another one of the conversations I’ve been having with various friends within the roleplaying community. This episode is a chat about how to introduce new players to GURPS by making the whole thing simpler and more familiar.  One thing to say is that I got my timeframes all wrong: I began monkeying around with GURPS around 5 years ago or so ago. Dungeons of Thaarl was happening in 201...

Ever since I first began roleplaying, I have always been engaged by a good fight scene. Combat has been the way in which I almost always begin to learn a new game and you can bet your bottom-dollar that any scenario I run with open with a fight. Why is that? Is it because, as I alluded to back in Season 9, I am at heart a Munchkin? One of those kids who came into the hobby in the late 70’s and 80’...

This is the first in a fresh sequence of conversations I’ve been having with various friends within the roleplaying community. This episode features a chat about how to move from beer and pretzels style gaming towards something a little deeper, richer, and longer lived. My guest, Arlen Walker, is the host of Live From Pellam’s Wasteland which you can find both as a podcast and on YouTube in v...

This one's a highly experimental episode. As I said last episode, I want to explore the roots of my own hobby by revisiting my first imaginary game-world. Through dreams and many hours of day-dreaming as a teenager, I uncovered a rich fantasy realm that I am long-overdue returning to visit. Despite a few attempts to bring other tools to the table, games that I deeply enjoy and seek to explore, the...

Somehow I’ve found my way back to the microphone and it’s time to embark on a new quest. For me, it’s a journey into the deep past to find a new pathway towards enjoying the games I like to play in the way that I most enjoy playing them. It’s my hope that, at least for someone else, this quest will resonate enough to carry you along with me too. Massive thanks to all the callers today - Jason, Jus...

Back in July, as Season 11 opened, I spoke about how some roleplayers experience deep anxiety around playing and running games. One of the most repeated comments I have received over the past 4 years of producing this podcast has been the one about how much my honest talk about anxiety has resonated with others. This episode ends a season of Roleplay Rescue that opened with a broad theme: An Anxio...

Johnn Four is the founder of RoleplayingTips.com which began in 1999 as a GM tips newsletter. Throughout the years, Johnn has published a GM advice column in Dragon Magazine, several books about how to improve your GMing, and continues to write on the topic of running better games. Johnn has teamed up with Jochen Linnemann to create Campaign Logger, a tool designed to help GMs capture all the deta...

On the principle that everything is play, I sat down down to work out how I want to take forward my roleplaying games hobby for the foreseeable future. I have decided to record my thinking, as if I am talking to a gaming friend, because I find this helps me to work out my ideas. None of this is new, original, or even surprising. Daniel Jones has provided me with the majority of the ideas and metho...

Today I want to revisit the topic of “Gaming With Teenagers”. It’s very much a conversation aimed at adults, so I’d like to apologise up front to any actual young adults listening to the podcast. Caveats aside, this all comes from my experience in setting up and running RPG gaming clubs across three UK secondary schools - aka high schools - and working with teens aged 11-18. Here are my Top Ten ti...

This is the fifth in a sequence of conversations I’ve been having with various friends within the roleplaying games community. This episode continues my quest to find the game I really want to play, focused today upon the question of how to achieve greater Otherworld-immersion and build the kind of Otherworld that matters to us. My guest is, of course, Daniel Jones. Daniel is the originator of the...

This is the fourth in a fresh sequence of conversations I’ve been having with various friends within the roleplaying games community. This episode continues my quest to find the game I really want to play, this time through re-investigating the topic of solo roleplaying. My guest, Simon Williams, is a British artist and illustrator as well as being the creator of the Legend of The Bones podcast, a...

This is the third in a fresh sequence of conversations I’ve been having with various friends within the roleplaying games community. This episode picks up a thread that I’ve been noodling around for a while, namely the value of Gygaxian-era Dungeons & Dragons and what makes OD&D and AD&D valuable. Big thank you up front to my guest, Jason, and I hope that you find this as interesting a...

Another conversation to share with you today, this time someone who has recently inspired and reinvigorated my hobby through his excellent podcast. While we did begin in interview mode, the primary focus of this conversation was to chat about fantasy game worlds and some of the ways in which those were particularly important to more Old-School flavours of the hobby. Kevin is the host of The Redcap...

Admitting my discomfort with the Old-School label and talking about my own relationship with the OSR as a movement appears to have touched a couple of people in a helpful and powerful way. Two listeners have taken the time to send me not one but several messages on the topic and I am every keen to share their thoughts with you. But that’s not all. Today I also want to reflect on the journey that r...

Special moments come along but rarely and today is a special moment for me. Sometimes we meet people with whom we share seemingly little in common and then we discover they play D&D too. My guest today is someone from a very different background and experience of roleplaying games whom I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with. While our conversation was focused around the topic of Pantheons in D&amp...