The Vintage RPG Podcast

Halloween is nearly upon us! For the last few years, we've reserved this week to chat about Ravenloft, but this year we thought we'd talk about a game that seems truer to the spirit of the season:  Babes in the Wood , from World Champ Game Company. It's a delightfully spooky game about being a child lost in the woods on an endless Halloween. What could be better?  But that's not all! Comic writer...

Have you seen the Yellow Sign? We sure have. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we tackle the massive new Delta Green campaign  Impossible Landscapes  (2021). It instantly takes its places as one of the definitive RPG takes on Robert W. Chambers' infamous King in Yellow, delivering an unprecedented, mind-bending experience — and that's just reading the book. Playing the campaign is likely somet...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we have such sights to show you. Wait, no, wrong horror franchise. But pretty close — we're talking about  Kult , the mature existential urban horror RPG imported from Sweden by Terry Amthor and Metropolis Ltd. The designers clearly had Clive Barker on their minds. We honestly barely scratch the surface, though, talking more about the edginess of the 90s, the...

We're excited to have game designer and artist Amanda Lee Franck back on the Vintage RPG Podcast this week! Amanda's got a big old pile of exciting projects to chat about, from a zine about vacationing vampires ( Vampire Cruise !) to another about exploring a mysterious domed habitat ( Mouth Brood !). And that's just the start!

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we're taking a look at Goodman Games' series of alphabet sourcebooks:  The Dungeon Alphabet ,  The Monster Alphabet  and  The Cthulhu Alphabet . These are system agnostic design tools, full to brimming with random tables and amazing art, all aimed at helping you stoke your imagination to make cool things for your players. A must for every GM's shelf.

Space is a place that wants to kill us, be it with the vacuum, the cold, the hostile exo-environments, the hubris of humanity or a good old fashioned xenomorph. That's right, this week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a look at the Alien RPG. The latest permutation of Free League's Year Zero Engine is refined to be even deadlier. It boasts frameworks for both traditional campaign play and more...

"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble!" This week, we're doing a bit of black magic and calling up  demons . Specifically the demons in the  Ars Goetia , the 72 kings, dukes, presidents and barons of Hell. We run down the history of this notorious book of demonology, its unlikely origins and its connections to pop culture and roleplaying games.

Choo-choo! Stu recently wrapped up running the Call of Cthulhu campaign  Horror on the Orient Express  after about a year and a quarter of weekly sessions. A momentous occasion! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we thought it would be cool to chat about it. Who survived? What was left of them? Just how on rails was it? Were the flashback scenarios as good as advertised? We discuss, and manage...

They say forever is a long, long time and, if  Thousand Year Old Vampire  is an indication, forever sure does suck. Is that a pun? That might be a pun. Sorry. Anyway, this week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a look at Tim Hutchings' solo journaling game about memory, tragedy and confronting things you'd rather ignore. It is maybe the most intense solo games ever published. Also, Drew Cochran...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk to legendary RPG artist Erol Otus! What more can I say? 

"I will find a city, find myself a city to live in." That's the chorus of the Talking Heads song "Cities," and it kind of speaks to how RPG designers approached city design in the early days of the hobby. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we're talking about Midkemia Press and their signature approach to cities, called, appropriately,  Cities ! They were interested in finding ways to create th...

Echoing the success of Chaosium's recent  Call of Cthulhu  Classic collection Kickstarter, this week on the Vintage RPG Podcast we take a look at the first  Call of Cthulhu  campaign:  Shadows of Yog-Sothoth . Which has very little to do with good ol' Yoggy and much more to do with waking up Cthulhu well before the alarm. As the first, it's now really what you'd expect from a CoC campaign, but it...

What happened to Cthulhu? Was it a curse? Did TSR finally go to far? Did Chaosium steal the fire of the gods? Was it banned? Was it burned? On this week's Vintage RPG Podcast, we reveal the shocking true story behind  Deities & Demigods  and the removal of the Cthulhu and Melnibonean mythologies. Actually, we don't, because it was never a big secret and most of the details have been floating aroun...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at the first book of monsters for D&D. The  Monster Manual ? Oh, no, not that — the first D&D monster book was  All the Worlds' Monsters  (1977), from Chaosium! We talk about how salty that made TSR. More interesting,  All the Worlds' Monsters  is sort of the first step in a long legacy of collaboration in the RPG industry on Chaosium's part, so we tal...

A few weeks back, we talked about the Pagan Publishing  Delta Green  sourcebooks for  Call of Cthulhu . This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we're chatting about the standalone  Delta Green  RPG from Arc Dream (2016). Based on  Call of Cthulhu  sixth edition, the game makes some key modification to the sanity system. It also finds ways to reinvent the mythos while keeping the focus of the horror...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk about the  Encyclopedia Magica , a four volume collection of every magic item created for Dungeons & Dragons, from 1974 to 1993. It is a massive and intricate undertaking, pulling from every TSR publication — including the magazines! In the days before the internet and searchable digital databases, the fact that this exists (and missed just one magic i...

On this episode of the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk about the book. In its current, unedited form, it is 165 chapters long, each chapter focusing on a specific book or product, and spans five decades of RPGs. The focus is on how RPGs have developed and changed over the years, so while D&D is in there a lot, the hope is to introduce folks to the wild and crazy world that waits beyond the world's ol...

Get to level 100, fight 10,000 zombies, beat up Orcus, steal his stuff and murder Tiamat in  H4 — The Throne of Bloodstone , one of the most ridiculous D&D adventures ever published. Is it good? Is it bad? YES! Join us as we check it out. Plus, something a little different and a lot charming: in our Indie Elevator Pitch this week, we chat with Jonathan Sacha about his  Goblins & Gardens tarot card...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Andrew Walter, one of the key artists defining the look of RPGs for the contemporary era. You've seen his art on the covers  Old School Essentials  and  Troika . He wrote and illustrated  Fronds of Benevolence , co-designed  Slipgate Chokepoint . He's all over the place! We talk about all those things, melty art, the glory of Russ Nicholson, death...

These are the end times, my friends. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Momatoes about her forthcoming RPG  ARC , a game played at the edge of the apocalypse. We chat a bit about the synthesis of OSR and storygame philosophies present in  ARC , countdown timers and why so many games lately seem to be about the end of the world. And more!  ARC  is on  Kickstarter  right now (it fund...

Rise up, dead RPGs, rise! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chart the origins of the Old School Revival, specifically the  Old School Reference and Index Compilation , or  OSRIC , the retroclone of the first edition AD&D rules that kicked it all off (sort of). We also talk a bit about  Castles & Crusades , the D20 System, the Open Gaming License and more! Clarification: Gary Gygax, didn't c...

Are you afraid of the dark? You're gonna be after you play  Campfire . This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk to Adam Vass and Will Jobst about their Kickstarter for their new storytelling horror game, featuring art by the one and only  Trevor Henderson . Check it out!

When we recorded this episode, I discovered my microphone was broken, so I fashioned a very large bullhorn using some bamboo poles and the sail cloth from an old schooner in the back yard. I pointed the bullhorn in the general direction of Hambone's house and shouted very loudly into it. Meanwhile, Hambone had to scurry around with an ill-fitting baseball mitt in order to catch each individual wor...

This week on the Vintage RPG podcast we enter a world of conspiracy, spycraft and cosmic horror with a look at the original  Delta Green  (Arc Dream's stand alone  Delta Green  RPG and Pelgrane Press'  The Fall of Delta Green  will each get their own episodes in the near future). We check the issue of The Unspeakable Oath where [redacted], the Pagan Publishing sourcebooks that lay out [redacted] a...

This week on the Vintage RPG podcast we check out  Book of Vile Darkness  (2002), D&D 3E's super edgy overcorrection of the family friendly 90s era. It's kinda weird! You'd think after decades of criticism about how D&D was a tool of the devil, you wouldn't go and put out a book that A. is of limited utility to most games and B. makes the critics' case for them. It's still pretty cool, if you dig...