The Vintage RPG Podcast

You never know what you might find down the old straight track.  This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at Through the Hedgerow , an RPG game steeped in a perfect brew of British folklore. Play as agents of the Light, moved through time to oppose the rising Dark in a brilliant extrapolation of stories like Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence, Alan Garner's work and even, maybe, a hin...

Which sick witch is the sickest witch? You! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, Justin Sirois of Severed Books stops in to tell us all about the  Sickest Witch RPG. Born of both a now out-of-print board game and, sorta, out of an earlier RPG, Sickest Witch has you harvesting and salting body parts of their enemies to cast horrible spells in order to have your revenge on/smash your oppressors. Pe...

Is that the streetlight buzzing, or an insectoid monster wanting to lay eggs in my eye? This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we welcome the Goblin Archives on to chat about the  Liminal Horror ! A minimalist game spinning out of Cairn , LH has been wowing folks for a while with its sharp mechanics, spooky visuals and horrifying modules. And a Deluxe edition of the game is coming to BackerKit soon...

Still playing with toys after all these years. As promised, this week on the Vintage RPG Podcast we chat about the latest Dungeons & Dragons toys from Super7. That giant Tiamat comes up again, as well as wave 1 of their 6-inch figures based on the '80s cartoon series (which means we also talk again about those crap Hasbro figures). Also on tap, the excellent additions to the ReAction line: Formida...

What's the point of painting all these miniatures if they're never going to see the battlefield? This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, Stu breaks down and admits he really wants to play a miniature wargame: Mike Hutchinson's Hobgoblin ! It's a lightweight, minis agnostic, quick-playing set of rule to get your miniatures on the table and killing each other as fast as possible. Now I just gotta fini...

Oh, the Libyan Gorgon. [Tries to look like he knows what he's talking about] This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we crack open an ur- Monster Manual , Ernst and Johanna Lehner's 1969 A Fantastic Bestiary . Essentially a Dover clip art book (and reissued by Dover under a different title ) with some light historical context, there are textual clues that seem to indicate it was an important referen...

Who needs the sky, anyway? This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Yamil  about When the Sky Comes Looking for You , a zine for both Weird Frontiers and Dungeon Crawl Classics. Hired by a luchador loan-shark to collect a debt, the characters need to stop an airship before it gets to the otherworldly Near to make good on the contract. Sorcery, monsters, worms -- all in a day's work, righ...

Have you done all you can to prevent a würm infestation? I doubt it. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Brian Colin about  Sqwürmish , a delightfully gross, over-the-top miniature skirmish game for his Vast Grim RPG setting. Derived from Forbidden Psalm , in Sqwürmish you build a crew, pop 'em on the table and do your damnedest to survive, preferably without getting infested with w...

I think the horrible little spider guy might be up to no good. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, Christopher Drellow joins us to discuss  Glumdark , a collection of system neutral random tables that will inject plenty of darkness, terror, vileness, random teeth and silliness into your campaign. Yup, silliness too! Inspired by grim and perilous RPGs of the past and present, but also by early bo...

So an assassin, a dwarf and a goodie-two-shoes walk into a bar...  This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we're catching up on NECA's Dungeons & Dragons toys that have come out since the last time we talked about NECA's Dungeons & Dragons toys: Zarak, Strongheart and Elkhorn Ultimates. We'll cover the Super 7 D&D toys soon, promise! * * * Instagram? Old news. Join the Vintage RPG Newsletter ! That'...

Gotta build some muscles to swing a sword (and some cardio to run from monsters)! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk to designer Tyler Welch and illustrator Graham Barey about their new exercise-oriented zine The Adventurer's Guide to Exercise. Tyler's a personal trainer and has created a work-out regimen tailored to your inner Fighter, Thief or Ranger in the hopes of inspiring folks in...

Podcasters take a break, forget how to podcast. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, Stu and John come back from the longest break they've taken from recording since the start of the podcast and find it difficult to knock the rust off and get back tothe normal format. Instead, they chat about games they're playing, places their going and play a silly game involving obscure D&D monsters. * * * Ins...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, Stu and John discuss their recent trip to Philadelphia for PAX Unplugged! The tabletop convention keeps the vibes chill and because of that, it was our favorite of the year. Cool games, good pals, a great way to close out the year. * * * Stu wrote about his PAX Unplugged trip as well . * * * Instagram? Old news. Join the Vintage RPG Newsletter ! That's where a...

Adventure gamebook? How about an adventure game world ?  This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at Fabled Lands, a seven-volume series of adventure gamebooks by Dave Morris, Jamie Thompson and Paul Gresty, featuring art by the legendary Russ Nicholson. Unlike most gamebooks, which tell one story, each volume of Fabled Lands is dedicated to a single region of a larger world, allowing for san...

Hone that tradecraft, or you'll find out what they do to spies around here... This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, Hambone takes the lead, talking about running Top Secret: New World Order . He also played in a session of Renegade's G.I. Joe RPG , so we talk about that, too! Also: Ron Meischker chats with Hambone about PAGE 2 , coming in January. Use code VintageRPG for a ticket discount! * * * I...

Whimsical, but also dangerous. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk to Jean deMers about  Ballads of Oræd , forthcoming from Exalted Funeral . A setting book for Old-School Essentials, it's a 232-page gazetteer of a mysterious world full of music, talking animals and, of course, horrible monsters and dangerous locales. It's also a massive portfolio of deMers' evocative, Tarot-like art, wh...

Talkin' 'bout collecting! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk to the Rick Meints, president of  Chaosium ! He doesn't just run the company, he's its biggest fan, with a collection of Chaosium games, art, documents and ephemera that likely dwarfs all others. We talk about collecting, RuneQuest (Rick's primary RPG passion, as he penned the wonderful Meints Index to Glorantha ), the company...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk to the Benjamin Marra, artist extraordinaire! We're supposed to talk about INTERMEDIARY MUND , his new RPG zine from Exalted Funeral , and we do , and it makes good on the promise of a lot of those pesky Satanic Panic fears from the '80s! But the real meat of the chat winds up musing on the central appeal of old school fantasy art, and how it has infor...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy , the most straight-down-to-it art book I've ever encountered. Absolutely jam packed with amazing art from across all four decades of the gamebook series. Do you dig black-and-white fantasy art, particularly from the UK in the '80s? Then buy this book, you won't be disappointed. * * * Instagram? Old news....

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk to our very own editor, R. Alex Murray about a little off-Broadway show he's in called Dungeons & Dragons The Twenty-Sided Tavern . Part actual play, part interactive theater, all rowdy-as-heck adventure, Alex and his colleagues are trailblazing a whole new (boozy) way to play with 499 friends. * * * Instagram? Old news. Join the Vintage RPG Newsletter...

What RPG allows you to travel to the future to team up with the ghost of John Brown to violently overthrow corporate taskmasters? This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at  Lords of Creation , my pick for the weirdest RPG ever made. Maybe. Designed by Tom " B/X " Moldvay, it's one of the first multi-genre RPGs and it marked Avalon Hill's (failed) first foray into RPGs. And, best of all, it...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at Eat the Reich , a beautiful game about reveling in the messiest annihilation of nazis imaginable. Become an anti-fascist vampire. Get air-dropped into Paris. Drink all the nazi blood. A one-shot(ish) of fun for adults of all ages, tuned to variable levels of experience, gorgeously illustrated. A glorious, utterly uncontroversial piece of gaming. * *...

Flip the switch to the UHF dial! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with the one, the only, Joey Royale about Weird Heroes of Public Access , coming soon in hardcover to BackerKit . Unearth strange mysteries, save your community and get it done in time to tape the next episode of your show. This is your chance to get into one of the best, coolest, most heartfelt RPGs of the decade! * *...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we drag out West End Games' weird universal system, MasterBook, and its bizarre licenses. Why would you refurbish the shuttered RPG Torg into your universal game when the D6 system was right there? Why would you think the movie Species was ripe for RPG adaptation? Or Tales from the Crypt ? Mysteries abound. * * * Stu's book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the...

You're in love with this city. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Jacob Mooney, co-creator of  Machine: Impossible , a game about cyborg superspies protecting their home and making it a better place for everyone to live. One of the many cool things about the game is how players collaborate to make the game world, so while it may default to a cyberpunk near-future, it can really be...