The Jaunty Mantis TTRPG Podcast

Nine Worlds / Norse Cyberpunk | Actual Play, Pt. 5 The Jaunty Mantis is a podcast of creative questions for curious gamers. New episodes every week. Run on Foundry VTT. This video is an independent production under the Nine Worlds Third-Party License and is not affiliated with MetaMorphic Digital Studio.

Nine Worlds / Norse Cyberpunk | Actual Play, Pt. 4 The Jaunty Mantis is a podcast of creative questions for curious gamers. New episodes every week. Run on Foundry VTT. This video is an independent production under the Nine Worlds Third-Party License and is not affiliated with MetaMorphic Digital Studio.

Nine Worlds / Norse Cyberpunk | Actual Play, Pt. 3 The Jaunty Mantis is a podcast of creative questions for curious gamers. New episodes every week. Run on Foundry VTT. This video is an independent production under the Nine Worlds Third-Party License and is not affiliated with MetaMorphic Digital Studio.

Nine Worlds / Norse Cyberpunk | Actual Play, Pt. 2 The Jaunty Mantis is a podcast of creative questions for curious gamers. New episodes every week. Run on Foundry VTT. This video is an independent production under the Nine Worlds Third-Party License and is not affiliated with MetaMorphic Digital Studio.

Nine Worlds / Norse Cyberpunk | Actual Play, Pt. 1 The Jaunty Mantis is a podcast of creative questions for curious gamers. New episodes every week. Run on Foundry VTT. This video is an independent production under the Nine Worlds Third-Party License and is not affiliated with MetaMorphic Digital Studio.

Fresh off our Shadowdark actual play, we sit down to argue about what actually happened down there — and why three experienced players kept walking into fights the game never wanted us to take. Matty loves Shadowdark and never wants to play it again. Chris has discovered he doesn't like dungeon crawls, which is awkward, because he runs one. Peaches would go back tomorrow. And Jesse, who ran the th...

Shadowdark Dungeon Crawl | Actual Play, Pt. 5 The Jaunty Mantis is a podcast of creative questions for curious gamers. New episodes every week. Run on Foundry VTT with the Shadowdark module. THE PARTY ⚔️ Jorbin Ironhelm — dwarf fighter (Matty) 🗡️ Ralina Biggins — halfling thief (Peaches, aka The Beast) ✝️ Iraga Dragu — half-orc priest (Chris) 🎲 Game Mother — Jesse This video is an independent pro...

A sun-scorched courtyard. A 20-foot bull of black onyx with thirty skulls threaded onto its horns like beads. A floor of cracked, chewed bones. And hoofprints leading to a door.

The torch goes out. Something with hooves hunts these halls by sound. And the party's newest member smells faintly of pine.

A bronze bull. A cracked wall. A body pinned between them — and a gem worth dying for still embedded in the statue's forehead. The party descends deeper into the tomb and learns what happened to Orwin the Younger... and why nothing good ever comes from going down. The Jaunty Mantis is a podcast of creative questions for curious gamers. New actual play episodes every week. This episode: sprung trap...

Player character death is 100% on the table. No PC can see in the dark — but every monster can. The Jaunty Mantis crew puts Shadowdark RPG to the test with a real dungeon crawl. Jesse takes the GM seat and leads a dwarf fighter with immaculately waxed facial hair, a halfling thief who will absolutely pick her own party's pockets, and a soft-hearted half-orc priest into the Lost Citadel — chasing r...

We reviewed Troika! by Melsonian Arts Council once before — but we hadn't played it yet. Now we have. Does actually playing it change anything? (Yes. And no.) Jesse, Matty, and Chris dig into what it's actually like to sit down at the table with an acid fantasy OSR system, whether rules-light games are good for new players, and the eternal question: if story is all that matters, why try different...

A bull-bodied hero eats twenty people's worth of fondant in one fistful, and asks for one thing: a sausage. They're illegal in Troika. He's offering money.

Roll to ignore the cats. The tiger can tell you really want to pet it, so it's ignoring you harder. Part 7 of our Troika! one-shot on The Jaunty Mantis. The elevator gets four new passengers, the attendant makes an extremely poor choice, and a tiny knight in painted armor enters the party's life and never leaves. Cast Jesse as Gormer the Underbursar Matty as Darlo Tik'l Anna as Moth Chris as Game...

Gormer pulls a gas mask out of the door in his forehead. Moth's fashion sense becomes an Art Nouveau gas filter. A small egg-shaped man hustles them out of eleven silver. Part 6 of our Troika! one-shot on The Jaunty Mantis. The party rides the elevator up through floors none of them asked for, solving puzzles that didn't need to exist. Cast Jesse as Gormer the Underbursar Matty as Darlo Tik'l, Red...

Darlo rolls double sixes. The oops table opens. From there, things only get worse. Welcome to The Jaunty Mantis — a podcast of creative questions for curious gamers. This is Part 5 of our Troika! one-shot at the Blanc Mange & Thistle, where three strangers share a hotel room on the eve of the Feast of the Chiliark. In this episode: a demonic puddle on the stairwell, an experimental burning, an...

Moth picks a fight with an owl. Everyone else suffers the consequences. Plus: Darlo discovers his new favorite hobby, Gormer's combat strategy is "wave knife around hopefully," and the staircase ahead has a problem the party is not prepared for. The session-one finale of our Troika! Numinous Edition mini-campaign. Session 2 incoming. CAST - Jesse as Gormer the Underbursar (Sorcerer of the Academy...

A staircase mural of beaked figures, serrated keys, and a horde of screaming demons. Two knowledge rolls. Both fail. The party concludes everything is fine. Spoiler: it is not. Episode 3 of our Troika! Numinous Edition mini-campaign. SYSTEM - Troika! Numinous Edition by Daniel Sell, published by the Melsonian Arts Council. Buy the game: https://www.melsonia.com/ We are not affiliated with the Mels...

Darlo bonds with his new roommates the only way he can: by demanding the most inedible pickled vegetable on the menu and sharing it with them. Plus: a herbal beverage best described as "Jagermeister, but vodka," and a hotel festival that involves shooting fireworks at neighboring rooftops. Episode 2 of our Troika! Numinous Edition mini-campaign. CAST: Jesse as Gormer the Underbursar (Sorcerer of t...

A door-wizard with disastrous luck, a death-priest who'd rather be elsewhere, and a swamp-mystic with a mission walk into a hotel. It's the only room left. They're sharing it. Episode 1 of our Troika! Numinous Edition mini-campaign. Character creation, the first stat-roll catastrophe, and the most reluctant agreement to share a drink in podcast history. Jesse as Gormer the Underbursar (Sorcerer of...

We played a few sessions of Mothership and then immediately gathered around the microphone like a group of nervous space janitors who just opened the wrong airlock. In this episode of the Jaunty Mantis, we poke, prod, and lovingly scream about the sci-fi horror RPG from Tuesday Knight Games.