Spellburn

    Tonight’s spellburn is going to be a great show. Tonight we Invoke Patron Bond!  Since the dawn of Spellburn the Judges J have called to the void, our aim is to commune with the great powers of imagination and the worthy wordsmiths of Goodman Games and the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Community. We now unreservedly spellburn our life essences in service to the DCC RPG community to invo...

Some say DCC RPG is just for one-shots.  Some say it’s a great campaign game.  Some say it’s a great con game.  Some say it’s perfect for the home table. Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.  One thing you don’t hear a lot about is high level adventures in DCC RPG!  Why not?  And let’s make some and let’s talk about some!  I’m Judge Julian and with me tonight is a partner in crime...

Just when you think everything has been done and there are no more frontiers, Goodman Games answers the question no one had in their brains. “What if we make adventures based on classic pinball games?” Of course the answer to that question is Pinball Crawl Classics (live on Backerkit right now). O n this episode of Spellburn, we’ll talk pinball adventure design shop with 3/5ths of the Pinball Craw...

It’s hard to believe but here we are in Spellburn’s 150th episode.  It’s been 13 years of Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and 12 plus years of Judges J!  We wanted to mark the occasion by breaking things up a little bit with a very special guest tonight– the Dark Master who started at all, sending his thralls far and wide over the land, bringing chaos and cultists to every friendly local gaming store i...

Marzio Muscadere barely needs any introduction any more!  He’s done a host of DCC RPG adventures, including Star Wound of Abaddon, Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen, Across the Veil of Time, House of Jade & Shadow and the beloved holiday adventure the Doom that Came to Christmas Town.  He’s also an authority on Mighty Deeds with his book Steel & Fury, as well as his own products like Death S...

Hello Peace-friends and welcome to another episode of Spellburn! Eric Bloat, the big cheese over at Bloat Games, has been in the game publishing business since 2017, when he launched his first kickstarter Dark Places & Demogorgons. Since then he has been on a tear. Many other successful crowdfunding campaigns have come and gone. So many I cannot possibly do it justice. Vigilante City, Zombies,...

  GENCON – sometimes known as the great gathering of our people!  Gamers come from far and wide to the amazing and fascinating tourist destination of – INDIANAPOLIS…  there they find… about 80,000 other gamers, lots of beer, pizza, food trucks, meeples and lines… especially lines!  But along with that, we have the best selection of RPGs and vendors in the world, and games aplenty on han...

    DCC RPG codified supernatural patrons as something in between a game mechanic and narrative device. The notion was fresh, novel, and perfectly aligned to the game’s focus on Appendix N. Patrons are so good that the concept has worked its way into other RPGs.  The cast of patrons and gods facilitates a table’s worldbuilding. This unique quality as pieces on the chessboard of the Moorc...

Is 2025 the year of the monster?  We have Dungeon Denizens 1 hitting the streets, we have a second Denizens collection on the way, and we have a huge collection of MCC mutates in Unnatural Selections from our pal (and yours) Luau Lou Hoefer.  Now he’s got a whole new ball of wax, the Gammatastic Voyage.  He’s teaching kids, he’s rockin’ Hawaiian shirts and he’s putting hawkodiles, lazer-snakes, ka...

It’s been 13 years since DCC RPG was published.  The heavens thundered, the earth shifted, the stars quaked in the heavens!  Much phlogiston has been disturbed, billions of radish farmers and chicken butchers have died, much gold and glory has been won and an untold number of patrons have been assuaged (and betrayed).  There’s no second edition of DCC RPG coming, BUT that doesn’t stop me from wond...

Our next guest has been around DCC RPG for many years.  You may know him from the very well received Tales of the Smoking Wyrm, from his Youtube show the Scrivenry, or from his ongoing Earthcrawl project which he is currently developing and funding via his patreon page. Of course you may also have said a friendly hello to him at the Goodman Games booth at Gary Con!  We welcome of course Trevor Sta...

It’s March and it’s Madness.  This year, I had a fever dream of DCC RPG as a March Madness style tournament. Complete with brackets, groups, and 6 rounds of community voting. We have made it to this ultimate evening, the finale of insanity! Sometime later in this hour, the Judges J of Spellburn will crown the Champion of Madness. The supreme publication of the DCC 3PP community. 64 titles started...

It’s February and that means Zinequest!  Across the RPG scene, there are lots and lots and LOTS of zines including those for DCC RPG!  This episode we are hanging out with three third party zine creators, we’ll talk about their projects, read some exciting emails, do some tavern talk– all this and more on this month’s Spellburn! Links in this episode: (Paul Wolfe):  Witch Lords of Skull Mountain (...

Let’s talk about the 800 pound gorilla in the room… DCC RPG is more popular than ever, played worldwide, being played on a football field in Indianapolis at GENCON… and meanwhile the Fifth edition of the world’s most popular RPG is probably more popular now than D&D was at its heyday of the 1970s!  (Especially with the kids, at least that’s what the parents tell me.)  What does this mean for D...

Happy Holidays, It’s our last Spellburn of the year, Judge James is out there riding his reindeer so we have a special guest host with us tonight – Judge Joey Royale from Joey Royale’s Pizza Party!  And our special guest tonight, the atomic overlord himself, Christopher Rick of double ziggurat fame–  we’ll talk atomic clock devices, megamaidens, rad-bombs and we’ll ASCEND THE ZIGGURAT– all t...

Well it’s Judge James’s birthday – today, November 25th, and he has some questions. Not “Where do babies come from?” or “Why, god, why?” but “How does one navigate publishing their own RPG?” So in the spirit of James becoming older, we had some friends over to celebrate and help guide us and others, on the foolish journey of creating an RPG! Links from this episode: Crowdburn! Evil Nev...

The smell of woodfire… the crackle of leaves….. The flash of ghostly presences out of the corner of your eye… the sound of Peter Frampton coming alive (wait… wrong podcast.)   It’s almost Halloween!  We’ve survived another year, another Game Hole Con, and tonight we bring you a bloodcurdling guest from the world of DCC Dark Fantasy…. An esteemed publisher, writer and youtuber, Mr. Nick Baran (even...

Hi-tech RPG campaigns take the fantastically magical and turn it into applied science. Tonight’s show is all space, computers, laser guns. The only swords we’ll be talking about are of the vibro variety. We’re going to dive into high tech games like MCC RPG and the various DCC 3rd party publications that bring sci-fi settings to the table in this month’s episode of Spellburn! Important! Jess...

We’re back from Gen Con and have some special guests to get a thorough GENCON wrap from!  But that’s not it!  We’re revisiting the and to talk about all this we have our pals, esteemed epistolary patron DM Cojo and Starless Sea Sailor impressario, Judge Harley!  All this and more on this  month’s Spellburn. Links for this episode: Netcrawl Backerkit – NOW LIVE! Deities and Demibros! (for Neo...

  We’ve been talking about it for years, we’ve been doing it for months, and now it’s time for a deep dive on Organized Play in DCC RPG!  But not with just anyone. No more, “But how does it work?” or “What is that, anyway?”  We went to the man himself, the Slime-Lord, the judge who’s run 1000 Insane Worlds, the expert on deep space turtles, the provider of Blades against Bandwidth– yes, of co...

  More and more great products from the days of yore are being converted into DCC. We’re only hours from the newest backerkit project Caverns of Thracia going live– a classic mega-dungeon adventure from Jennell Jaquays! We’re going to talk about Caverns of Thracia, as well as some other recent projects like Crypt of the Devil Lich, Dark Tower and more!  And our guest is conversion king Judge...

It’s a superhuman and heroic spectacular tonight on Spellburn! They said it couldn’t be done, but in true DCC tradition, they did it anyway! I’m talking of course about superheroes, masked men, vigilante crusaders, dark night detectives and of course, mutants cursed to protect a world that despises them. Earth’s Mightiest Judges are joined by some new third party designers working on superhero gam...

Neither Chuck Barris nor the Unknown Comic will be in attendance this evening. Gonzo – what is it? How do you know your game is gonzo? It is one of those things that you’ll only know when you see it? Is DCC RPG the gonzo game some purport it to be?  Making his Spellburn debut, from Super Savage Systems, the Neon Lord himself, Brian Shutter creator of The Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland! Also mak...

  Installation 665 Kickstarter by Purple Pirate Games and Judge Julian Netcrawl preview on DrivethruRPG! Jair’s Home – Backerkit Mutant Mayhem Minis CincyCon Secrets of the World Harvesters – Purple Pirate! Discordance at Dzyvatz by Purple Pirate Judge Phil’s Zine of Goodies (Vol 3) Critical Hit Parader, Vol 1 (with Blue Oyster Cult adventure!) Critical Hit Parader &#8...

  In the DCC world, we love our music! Even dating back to the hallowed “G+ era”, we had Doug’s DCC Music group that turned people on to tons of great tunes. For a long time we’ve wanted to do a Spellburn episode with some DCC related bands and today that dream is coming true!  We’re going to talk to some inspirational musicians about DCC, music and RPGs, sources of inspiration and much more!...