Tavern Watch Podcast

All good things must come to an end, and sometimes, so must all foul things -- like vampiric rituals meant to bring one's wife back from the dead by opening the very gates of Hell itself. Our pirate crew has done a good job so far freeing prisoners and seeing them off to safety, preventing Albrecht the Tideborn from having any more sacrifices for his ritual. But does he actually need more? Onl...

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a bunch of crypts in the lowest level of a vampire's lair, holding silver, lurking undead enemies, a secret our big bad guy doesn't want found, and more. Curse of Strahd ? Not this time! The rotting vampirate vessel haunting the Dark Caribbean, the Maelstrom , of course includes a graveyard at the very lowest level -- one with three feet of salt...

Deep in the bowels of the vampirate-laden Maelstrom , our scurvy scallyways discover something truly unexpected: an entire forest, inside the hull of a ship. Not only that, but those crows seem to be cawing somewhat ominously, and inside the forest is a cave. But the real machinations of the pelagic vampires are yet to be discovered, Albrecht the Tideborn still stalks those who would disturb whate...

On the briny seas of the Dark Caribbean sails a ship unlike any other; a ghostly ship, made of rotting wood with sails of red flesh, heralded by an ominous green fog, and crewed by vampiric pirates: the Maelstrom . Last time it made landfall, the Maelstrom took aboard several captives, including a specific VIP; on top of that, the ship contains untold wealth gathered from across the seas, and a my...

Against all odds, the Dungeons & Dragons Warcraft crossover book seems like it might actually be good . It could've gone the way of the cheap cash grab , but instead early previews make it look like Wizards of the Coast and Blizzard have put a lot of thought into the implementation of classes, dungeons, and all of the details that make Warcraft Warcraft . Honestly, no one is more surprised...

There are a lot of interesting things to touch on in the  tabletop RPG  space in this month's Tavern Watch Podcast, especially if you're a fan of Paizo's games like  Pathfinder  or  Starfinder . Paizo offering  everything they've ever published on DriveThruRPG  looks to be a winning move as the company continues to struggle with a large stock of print books to be...

Some days in the Wasteland, you accidentally stumble into a robot-operated dinosaur cloning facility, and then you have to make an ethical judgment on what to do with the lives of intelligent (and very polite) cloned dinosaurs and deathclaws. But being a resident of the Wasteland means being adaptable, so we'll probably figure it out. So join us for the final episode of our actual play of the&nbsp...

It turns out being kidnapped by talking Deathclaws really isn't that bad, as long as you don't mind the moral quandaries that come along with them... and I'm not sure anyone in our party is actually came prepared for moral quandaries, but we're going to do our best. Join us as GM Matt Rossi escorts us across the wasteland in this actual play of the  Fallout TTRPG! Here's our misfit crew for t...

Welcome to the wasteland, where our plucky party of adventurers is on a high-speed (relatively) train to the star-studded town of New Vegas. If they ever make it out of the Gary Wasteland, of course, because GM Matt Rossi is here to disrupt our day (with adventure). So if you'll come this way, your train is waiting... Here's our misfit crew for this adventure: Liz Harper as Nellie, a Miss Nannie w...

Those kids from  Tavern Watch  are finishing up our run of the  Kids on Bikes  TTRPG, and pretty much everything is hitting the fan all at once. The town of New Novemberwood, and one of its founding patriarchs -- the famously-lucky Mr. Pineapple -- have had it too good for too long, and after a few unexpected spikes of good luck for a lucky few, it's time for the other shoe to...

Tavern Watch  is back with another episode of  Kids on Bikes , catching up with the kids of New Novemberwood as -- despite all the weird stuff happening to them lately, mostly related to astonishing feats of good luck -- they remember that they have a homework assignment due Monday. What starts as an ordinary trip to the retirement home to chat with residents about town history leads to...

It's just another day in the sleepy little town of New Novemberwood, just a regular old day like any other. But this is  Tavern Watch  playing  Kids on Bikes , so you know it can't be  just  any old day. For the students of Pineapple Honors, it sure seems ordinary -- right up until some outrageous (and unlikely) drama breaks out during lunch. Is luck taking a turn for some...

In this special Gen Con edition of the  Tavern Watch Podcast , we're looking at a mountain of new product announcements for our favorite games, some coming soon and others stretched out over the next few years, but all of them exciting. Mostly. Wizards of the Coast rented out out a whole theater for its big reveal, with a bunch of new upcoming releases for  D&D  -- including, ye...

This week on the  Tavern Watch Podcast , we wander very naturally into one of the most age-old discussions among tabletop players and GMs alike: do you have a preference for crunchy systems or streamlined ones? Do you get giddy at the idea of  Shadowrun 's forty pages of equipment and entirely separate game-within-a-game for Technomancers? Is  D&D about as heavyweight a game as...

In the final episode of our  Legend in the Mist  actual play, the Inkwell Club has managed to calm down the frenzied (and cursed) Spring Renewal Festival, only to see that several townsfolk are still caught in the thrall of something sinister and being led down the narrow switchback paths to the bottom of Skunk Glen Ravine. What awaits them there, other than a pile of the village's cast-...

Our  Legend in the Mist   actual play continues! Our party, the Inkwell Club, has helped solve a number of weird problems and disputes leading up to the Spring Renewal Festival in the little burg of Ravenhome. Surely all the problems are out of the way, right? Surely it's not an issue that folks are smiling a little too wide, yelling a little too loud, and dancing a little too closely to...

The  Legend in the Mist  TTRPG has finally released, and  Tavern Watch  is here to dip our toes back into the world of rustic fantasy adventure! It's time for the Spring Renewal Festival in the little town of Ravenhoem, kicking off the warmer part of the year by tossing out the old and welcoming in the new, but everywhere you look it just seems like things are going awry: there...

This week on the  Tavern Watch Podcast , we discuss one of the favorite pastimes of tabletop GMs: stealing borrowing very liberally from our favorite movies, books, and even other games for our own tabletop games. Matt has put players into an episode of  Star Trek  before, and Phil borrows heavily from everything (including perennial Blizzard Watch Discord favorite  V...

After finally catching up with the lost pet they were sent to chase, our mercenary crew only has only one problem: they're under attack by goose lizards (or possibly cobra chickens). Well, maybe two problems, because also their ship is grounded. But it's probably fine. It's gonna be fine, right? This week on Tavern Watch Plays, we're doing an actual play of  Planet Mercenary ,  a comic s...

With their ship missing and a cheerful reality TV show host narrating their every move, our mercenary crew's simple mission — retrieve a lost pet — has gotten a lot more complicated. We probably should have expected that when someone hired an entire mercenary company to find one lost pet. This week on Tavern Watch Plays, we're doing an actual play of  Planet Mercenary ,  a comic space op...

Our crew of mercenaries has an unusual mission: to rescue some kind of space kitten, whose owner is very concerned for its wellbeing. But its owner's brother will pay us to  not  bring it home, so it's probably a troublesome space kitten. (But it's just as likely to be completely average kitten.) At least we're pretty sure it's a kitten. Our client didn't give us many details, but it's g...

This week on the Tavern Watch Podcast , we discuss some exciting news for fans of all things that go bump in the night: a new  Vampire: the Masquerade project was teased for GenCon 2026, including a commitment to "human-created" art, as opposed to AI slop. Elsewhere, several of the new and returning Darklords from D&D's upcoming Ravenloft book  were revealed, including an all-out sta...

In this week's Tavern Watch Podcast, we're discussing  Daggerheart , the much-hyped TTRPG from Darrington Press and Critical Role which is  celebrating its first anniversary . One year in, our biggest complaint is that the game still doesn't do anything radically new to break typical TTRPG paradigms, but it packs a lot of mechanics (and tools for GMs) in a flexible system that's relative...

In  Tavern Watch 's finale of our three-part run of  See You Space Cowboy , our tenacious bounty hunters have tracked the NFTHound and his remaining cronies to an unmarked warehouse, full of cheaply-paid goons and a bunch of impressionable youth that the villain is trying to sway to the side of his sleazy world of electronic currency and extremely expensive digital pictures of ugly apes....

Hot on the trail of some scumbag NFT and crypto traders (aka their latest bounty targets), the  Tavern Watch  team lays an ambush for their bounty in this week's episode of  See You Space Cowboy  on our TTRPG actual play podcast. What follows is one of the most chaotic fight sequences we've ever had; shots are fired, a few people get knitting needled, there's a mishap with...