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

Todd tells us about his world, Skjaald, and his fantasy TTRPG system he's designing for it called Skjaald Sagas . The main continent for Skjaald is Driktsuung, a place with varied biomes similar to North America. The people of Driktsuung are divided into the Six Realms with different governmental structures for each Realm. All the typical fantasy races are present with a few twists. Magic is deepl...

Ryan is designing a TTRPG system and setting called Ethereal . In the setting all cryptids like Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, and Mothman are real. An international government organization known as the Beacon exists to control these cryptids and keep them away from humanity. The players act as agents of the Beacon, solving different cryptid crises in an X-Files or Men in Black fashion. The sto...

Luca presents his world, dubbed Codex Inversus. Luca is from Italy and has used Italian Renaissance art as the inspiration for his campaign setting. Whenever he writes a new piece of lore its accompanied by a photoshopped piece of Renaissance style art. To see all the amazing art you can check out Luca's links below. Codex Inversus is a world that its creator god abandoned. With the creator gone,...

Daniel tells us about his community published campaign, Mists of Eldoria! Mists of Eldoria is available for anyone to download and run for themselves via Daniel's Patreon page. Of the nine parts of the campaign four are finished so far. You can follow along with the adventure as Daniel and his own group explore Eldoria and get closer to defeating the ancient evil at the heart of the continent. Eld...

Austin is here to talk about her Forged in the Dark game, Beam Saber, and one of the setting's she's released for it, Rush Wars. Beam Saber is designed for mech battles but with the numerous supplements it can be adapted for any sort of vehicle conception. Gundams, planes, robot dinosaurs, fast cars, or even the vertical maneuvering equipment in Attack on Titan are all possibilities within Beam Sa...

Ben tells us about Kobold Press's fantasy setting, Midgard. Midgard started off as an open design campaign setting in which the main author, Wolfgang Baur, allowed fans to vote on options for what would be included. That project expanded into the Kobold Press company which now has their own TTRPG, Tales of the Valiant. Ben is a contributing author to many different RPG publications, including but...

Dylan tells us about his campaign, set in the official Forgotten Realms setting! At long last Setting the Stage is covering the big D&D setting. Set sometime in the future of Faerun, Dylan's campaign focuses on a sentient and malevolent crystal that wants to mind control everyone in the world. This crystal is a representation of the forces of Lawful Evil within D&D's alignment spectrum alo...

Maia is our guest today presenting her actual play campaign, Pinehurst Academy. Maia used the City of Mist system for her game. From the City of Mist website, "In City of Mist you play ordinary individuals with powers that emanate from myths and legends investigating supernatural crimes and mysteries in a noir City where the truth is always hidden behind the pervasive Mist." Maia has used a fairly...

This week's stars are Arin and Caleb from the Black Flare podcast. Arin is the GM for the podcast using the Delta Green rules system and Caleb is the podcast's producer and editor. They work together to create a phenomenal, slow-building horror story. Delta Green is an RPG for telling Cthulian Lovecraft stories in a more modern setting typically in the late 1990's or early 2000's. The PCs all have...

This week's guest is Amanda, another member of the Quelmar organization. Quelmar was featured previously in episode 32 with James, the original creator of Quelmar. Amanda is a Quelmar DM and is currently DMing a Quelmarized version of Hitpoint Press's Heckna!. Her interview focused on her homebrew campaign without a "proper" name dubbed the Delicious Homebrew. The Delicious Homebrew focuses on a w...

Somewhere there is a door. Today's guests are Emma and Maia, the creators of the Yeldplay actual play podcast which was nominated for a 2024 CRIT award. Yeldplay is the official podcast of the Yeld RPG to showcase the system's unique mechanics and style of play. The Yeld RPG lets your roleplay as children that find a door to the Magical Land of Yeld. The children can explore Yeld and return home,...

This episode features one of the other CRIT award nominees from 2024, Josh, who tells us about his game Last Fleet . Josh and his partner, Becky, are the main drivers at Black Armada Games which makes TTRPGs (among other games). Last Fleet is a Powered by the Apocalypse game that simulates a situation similar to that of the Battlestar Galactica show. In the far future humanity is on the run in the...

Udy tells us about his experiences with the Seventh Sea TTRPG system, the Scion system, and the focus for this episode, Pendragon! Pendragon is a generational RPG where you play a small noble house in England during the time of Arthurian legends. You play a knight or lady with responsibilities to your subjects, your lord, and the king. As play proceeds, your character finds friends, makes enemies,...

Malcolm, a member of the Advanced Age Roleplaying Gamers (AARPG) podcast, joins us to talk about one of his campaigns named Our Town. The concept for Our Town came about accidentally where rather than going on an adventure, the players all stayed in town and wanted to kick out any outsiders that wanted to change their little village. A rival baron to their lord schemes to take over their town and...

Ben tells us about his setting and independently designed TTRPG system, Cybertopia. Cybertopia is a fiction first system set in the near future. Amazing Corp saved the world from climate and energy catastrophes with a magical clean energy machine. As the world moves into a post-scarcity economy, Amazing Corp has risen in power and influence beyond most governments. The players are small pieces in...

Roger tells us about his world Savinaru. It was created by elementals, primal forces of creation. Ever since Savinaru has been plagued by demons, primal forces of destruction . Savinaru is in the midst of its Industrial Revolution via magic. Magically powered public transportation networks are being built and weaponry has advanced to muskets and cannons. Roger wrote Savinaru to have many subversio...

Our guest for this episode is Derry, DM of the Dice Will Roll podcast and winner of a 2024 CRIT award! Woo! Derry talks with us about his journey with RPGs, actual play podcasting, and Pathfinder's official setting of Golarion. Derry started doing actual play podcasting because many of the more popular TTRPG podcasts featured a mostly white suburban dad stereotype and there were not many queer TTR...

I talked with Dain about his 2024 CRIT award nominated, actual play campaign, No Quest for the Wicked . Dain's campaign uses the Starfinder rules and is loosely based off the Starfinder setting by using the same set of basic aliens for racial options. Each of the different races experienced some sort of disaster on their homeworld. Before extinction they were saved by the Val'ai, an advanced alien...

Bob tells us about his various experiences with D&D and writing. Bob is the writer of the Jubal County Saga, a series of books about Howard Marsh, a meth addicted magician living in the American South. Bob has also designed and published a few dozen single page RPGs and a few longer ones. All of this in a joking collaboration with three partners who are definitely not octopi in trench coats. B...

Peter tells us about Tales of Elsewhere, his own RPG system that he's using for his campaign. Characters are made with a Culture (where they're from), a Profession, and an Inciting Incident that sets them on their adventuring path. These different traits combine to decide your character's skills which are the only character number relevant to action resolution. In Tales from Elsewhere skills decid...

This marks the first of a couple episodes where I got the chance to interview different people/groups nominated for one of the 2024 CRIT Awards . Kevin tells us about his campaign and actual play podcast, Wing Women . The campaign uses the Powered by the Apocalypse Night Witches rules system developed by Jason Morningstar of Bully Pulpit Games. Night Witches is inspired by the WW2 Russian 588th Ni...

Jeph started playing D&D in school with a group of friends as most typically do. They played a couple different small campaigns, swapping between different DMs. One constant in their group was "Big Campaign," the world that Jeph ran that everyone always came back. Jeph has run Big Campaign for at least seven major campaigns and now hosts a podcast that covers the continuing adventures within t...

Gallo tells us about his D&D campaign that was designed for a girlfriend's teenage daughter. Her one request, "I want Bob Ross to be in it." Gallo ran with the idea and created a world where Bob Ross's evil alter ego, Rob Boss, is the villain. He used his paint brush to create a painted forest full of painted monsters. The physics and tone of the world are heavily inspired by Who Framed Roger...

Adam is the main DM for the Majestic Goose Network, a collection of actual play podcasts that grew out of Adam's home games with his family. The network started with One Shot Onslaught, a series of one shot D&D adventures from DM's Guild. It grew from there to around a dozen shows on various TTRPG topics. This episode focuses on Adam's homebrew campaign dubbed Halfway to Heroes. The campaign w...

Edric tells us about his campaign that takes place during the American Revolutionary War where all myths and folktales are real. Magic exists but spellcasters must keep their powers a secret or be burned as a witch. Eldritch horrors and evil spirits threaten North America while historical events proceed along a parallel path to our own reality. Edric modeled the campaign events around the PCs' bac...