Setting the Stage, Campaigns for D&D and Other RPGs

Michael tells us about a D&D horseback riding experience at SaddleSnaps! The Chicago-based stable hosted a weekend camping, horseback riding, and D&D event. About 50 players came from across the country for this new experience. During the event, the players were split up into three groups. Each of the groups engaged in the "Exploration" and "Social Interaction" pillars of RPGs as a LARP. T...

Hem tells us about their actual play campaign, The Sprouting . Within the world of The Sprouting, Earth's history diverged during the 1800s when an eldritch horror was summoned into our reality. The horror lay in wait for centuries, building up a secret army of plant monsters. In 2020, the plant monsters struck, ruining infrastructure and attacking population centers across the world. One hundred...

George tells us about his D&D actual play called Fears and Fortunes. The campaign follows the adventures of Sly, granddaughter of the Seer of Bearuport. Sly accidentally releases a bunch of ghosts from her late grandmother's tarot deck. She and her band of companions must find the fourteen ghosts that escaped and imprison them within the deck once more. The campaign is sponsored by Forgotten A...

Seiya tells us about his TTRPG system and setting, Synesthesia Synthetica (SNS). SNS is a biopunk game adjacent to the cyberpunk and steampunk genres. After an asteroid induced climate disaster, Earth has rebuilt itself using bio-technology instead of the metal based tech that surrounds us in the real world. Genetically modified humans have split into distinct species and mutant horrors prowl the...

Travis tells us about his world of Tetara. Travis runs Tetara as a paid game on StartPlaying. Each group's campaign runs in a different region of Tetara. As the campaign progresses that group gets to shape their region through their actions. After a region has been molded through play, Travis tends to run a second campaign in that region to explore the consequences of the first campaign. Here's a...

Zoe tells us about her campaign in the world of Thedas from the Dragon Age video games. The campaign is an actual play on the Degenerates with Dice YouTube channel. Zoe uses the Dragon Age TTRPG published by Green Ronin. In the campaign, a pair of noble twins are cut out of their family's inheritance. They must go on adventure to make things right and earn their birthright. Lots of fun and definit...

Ryan tells us about his new adventure, Serenity Springs! It's a cozy little suburb. Or at least it seems like it at first. Until you realize its in a dimension like Ravenloft and evil entities lurk around every corner to threaten the citizens and visitors with awful, gruesome death. Just don't bleed on Mrs. Dotty's petunias! If you liked what your heard you can follow the Kickstarter for Serenity...

Dan talked with me about his Kickstarter campaign, Idols of the Neon Dark . It's a D&D 5e supplement that tries to bring the fun and atmosphere of K-pop to Dungeons and Dragons. The media frenzy around KPop Demon Hunters inspired Dan to create a product based on the musical genre that his young daughters could enjoy with him. Idols of the Neon Dark contains an Idol character class to represent...

Alan tells us about his Daggerheart campaign setting, Fractus, that launched on Kickstarter recently. Fractus was a normal planet until it exploded and stopped halfway through. Now bunches of asteroids rotate a swirling magical maelstorm at the center of the planet. The people of Fractus survive on the asteroids which are large enough to support life. The land is now separated by air rather than o...

Joel tells us about his actual play podcast, Critical Bits! The campaign was a teen super hero story using the Powered by the Apocalypse system Masks . The Masks system is great for teen drama and coming of age stories for superheroes that still live with their parents, have school, and don't know who they want to be yet. Joel and the players did a great job of capturing those feelings in a world...

The Fallout TV show has ended, but you can still get more Fallout in your life with TTRPGs! Kylie talked with me about her actual play campaign, Fallout: The Garden of Atom. The show follows Pete and Reed as they leave their Vault in Florida. They travel towards Orlando in search of Pete's father who left Vault 71 a few years previously. Along the way they meet the wasteland survivor, Ruthie, and...

Duncan Rhodes comes on the show to talk about his new book, The Creative Game Master's Guide to Extraordinary Locations: & How to Design Them or just Extraordinary Locations. The book is filled with 30 adventure locations to drop into your campaign, modify, or use as a full adventure path! The locations are loosely stated out for D&D 5e but could easily be adapted for any fantasy system. A...

This is the second of a two part interview with Calico. If you haven't listened to the first episode with him, you should go do that before listening to this one. The first episode was #72 and this is #72.5. Calico returns with additional info on the world of Psychomortis. We get to hear more information about the Ecclesia church that rules over the world above Pandora's Labyrinth. More about the...

CalicoVisions tells us about his game system and setting Psychomortis. The game is constructed to challenge players and characters to look inside themselves to find what's really important to them. In the far future the Earth has suffered from the arrival of the Iris which caused vast changes across the world. PCs are trapped beneath the Earth in a vast maze known as Pandora's Labyrinth. They seek...

I talked with Aaron Ryan about two of his book series, Dissonance and The End . Dissonance is a near future world where aliens have attacked, killing most humans and animals on Earth and driving humans into hiding underground. Humans finally develop technology to fight back and the war enters a new stage while the characters also struggle to determine the motivation for the alien invasion and nefa...

Sensei Suplex joins us to talk about his campaign, Project Aurora. Suplex started Project Aurora in college with some friends. They agreed to have a few different campaigns done by different DMs to all exist within the same shared world. Suplex transitioned to paid DMing and the world expanded beyond that into a huge RPG experience with dozens of DMs and thousands of people playing, all in a share...

There were some audio issues in this episode that we did our best to correct. Hopefully you can understand everything or close to everything! If you can't, you can always drop into the Discord to ask additional questions. The story of Godstorm starts 70 years ago when a fisher from the city of Gulia went deep into the ocean. He came back many days later covered in various marks. The marks gave him...

John tells us about his campaign setting, Tahlvaen. The world was something he dreamt up in childhood that he's now turning into a campaign setting for D&D. Tahlvaen is threatened by eldritch entities known as the Outer Five. These nasty beings were cast out beyond the Veil that separates them from the Tahlvaen. The eight Veilborn gods protect the world from the Outer Five, but all planar trav...

John tells us about his actual play show, Blittle League Blaseball! The show is based on the now passed internet phenomenon, Blaseball. In Blaseball, baseball teams play against each other while using magical and technological powers. Their furious battles satisfy the Elder Ones and prolong the time before the Antediluvians rise and consume the world as we know it. So if there are professional Bla...

KC Broadhead is a certified life coach who uses D&D and other TTRPGs as a motivational force for his clients, mostly young men and boys. He meets with each person weekly to check on their goals for self improvement. Based on their progress each client is rewarded some building points that can be spent on their character in their weekly session. People who work more consistently on their goals...

Al from the Point of Insanity Game Studio and Podcast is here to talk about a couple of different things! We started off by discussing the Dark Sun campaign setting, which was a post-apocalyptic campaign setting released for D&D in 1991. Next was the changes in D&D over the editions/years. After that was Al's Point of Insanity Network podcast, a variety podcast about a number of different...

Kevin tells us about his setting and TTRPG, Orbis. It's a crunchy mech combat game! Central to Orbis is the Ion Tempest storm. It started long ago and afflicts the world with electrical storms, cold snaps, heat waves, and odd magnetic and gravitational fields. History of the world before the arrival of the Ion Tempest is lost. Some sort of apocalypse occurred to this science fiction civilization t...

John tells us about his setting and TTRPG system he's developing, Dalteria. Dalteria the world was originally lifeless. Long ago on Earth, magic existed. When God flooded Earth, the wizards took all the magic with them. Noah built his ark while the wizards left Earth to settle and terraform Dalteria with their magic. Millenia later the people of Earth advanced enough to develop colonization starsh...

Deor tells us about his game system and setting, Black Noon. Interesting fact about Deor is that he has never GMed a game of his own. Black Noon should end up very player-facing in how its written and how it plays. The Black Noon system is a 2d6 system. Rolls are modified by adding more dice or with bigger modifiers. When adding more dice you always select the best two dice from the bunch (or wors...

Today's guest is Helix, the GM of the actual play podcast, RPG Major . RPG Major is a detective show in a fantasy version of modern Seattle. The show is half RPG/half musical improv, setting it apart from many other actual plays. The game is run using the Genesys system. Every few minutes a song drops in to cover the group's activities and emotions. The whole show is accompanied by live acoustic g...