The Vintage RPG Podcast

The only place to go is down! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Josh McCrowell, the evil mastermind behind His Majesty the Worm . Grab your tarot deck and prepare yourself and your kit bag for the endless dungeon underneath the city. Venture deep enough and survive the darkness long enough and you might come across the Worm himself! * * * Physical copies of His Majesty the Worm wi...

Enter: the Neon Lord himself! This week on the Vintage RPG podcast, we talk with Brian Shutter, the radioactive brain behind Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland . He's got a pair of massive goodies coming to a BackerKit: Deities & Demi-Bros , a guide to the gods of the squared circle, and Deadly Dudez/Toxic Creeps , a massive monster manual! Plus some more surprises. Listen up, or Lord Randy will dr...

This week on the Vintage RPG podcast, we check out Brindlewood Bay . It's a little bit Murder, She Wrote , a little bit Golden Girls and a little bit "The Call of Cthulhu," wrapped up in a Powered by the Apocalypse package. Can you meddle your way to the solutions of these TV-style mysteries? * * * Stu's book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it ! Patreon? Discord? Co...

Two weeks later and Stu is still tired. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, Stu regales us of his adventures at GenCon 2024. The crowds. The vast convention space. The games! The revelation that the hobby at large is so very clearly a union of many smaller, constituent hobbies. It was a lot. * * * Stu's book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it ! Patreon? Discord? C...

This week on the Vintage RPG podcast, we check out The Court of Ardor in Southern Middle-earth (1983), a sourcebook for MERP that predates MERP and significantly expands Tolkien's world. It mainly introduces a cabal of elves in the service of Morgoth who, well, they act a lot more like the royal family of Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles than anything in Tolkien. But it is still pretty cool! * * *...

This week on the Vintage RPG podcast, we're looking at Casket of Souls (1987), a puzzlebook by Ian Livingstone that spins out of the success of the Fighting Fantasy series. You, too, can pore over Iain McCaig's lush art work, looking for clues to solve the riddle and win the titular, gold-plated casket! Well, you could in 1987, anyway. The contest is long over, but half the fun is the journey righ...

This week on the Vintage RPG podcast, we're looking at Barony (1990), a game that sought to redefine RPGs with concepts that were decades before their time. Open-ended character progression, keyword-based health, a free-form magic system that anticipates Mage — how the heck does this exist? And why don't more people know about it? And who the heck is Conrad?! * * * Stu's book, Monsters, Aliens, an...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out The Sorcerers' Enclave , a cool narrative art book by Aaron Howdle that mixes the intricate maximalism of finding books and cut-aways with the aesthetics of early Warhammer and other dark fantasy staples. Is it an RPG book? It isn't not an RPG book! More like this, please. * * * Experience Points has been nominated for an Ennie Award! Vote for it...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk to Isaac VanDuyn about his ambitious RPG that seeks to fulfill the promise of all those evangelicals from the '80s who were so worried about tame old D&D corrupting the souls of their children. The result (illustrated by Kim Diaz Holm and featuring the cartography of Lex Rocket) is a lush and grim game of occult secrets and blood-soaked horrors wrapped...

Welcome to Dove's Bay, the most horrible island in Maine (take that, Stephen King)! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out Grimrock Isle (1992), the second Call of Cthulhu product from Triad Entertainments. It's both a solo and a group scenario, spread across several booklets contained in a snazzy folder. Just about every mythos threat imaginable lurks in Dove's Bay, which is sort of t...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we're looking at CM4: Earthshaker (1985), the BECMI module that pits players against a 1,280-foot-tall robot run by an entire clan of gnomes. Well, not exactly, the gnomes run the robot as a tourist attraction, the players have to deal with the evil NPCs who try to hijack the robot. And they better win, because, well, the tarrasque is just 50 feet tall. * * *...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look back at Paul M. Sammon's coverage of the making of Conan the Barbarian in the April 1982 issue of Cinefantastique. The double issue has three features by Sammon — a lengthy piece of reportage on the filming and interviews with designer Ron Cobb and director John Milius — and lots of behind-the-scenes photos. It's a charming bit of work that contrasts i...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Tyler Vance, the fine artist behind Void: The Frontier . Tyler's been exploring Void for a while now, having published three rules-agnostic setting zines that pair his enigmatic narratives with his equally mysterious paintings. Now he's concocted a gorgeous card game, now on Kickstarter . We talk about the game, his process and his often unsettlin...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Megan Dawson Jaffe about the new Nerdy City RPG Holomatixx: A New Wave Order . Spinning out of their other Omni System games like the kid adventure Rememorex and the game of transforming robots, Commandroids , Holomatixx takes on pop star superheroes in the vein of Jem and Holograms and Barbie and the Rockers . On Kickstarter now ! * * * Check out...

Stu was tied up with lots of crap this week, so have a re-run! Original show notes: Make ours Marvel! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a look at TSR's massive, 8-volume compendium of Marvel comics lore, The Gamer's Handbook of the Marvel Universe (1988-1992). They're like a monster manual of superheroes and villains, some awesome, some doofy, some downright perplexing. They also amoun...

Stu's ongoing West Marches-style Old-School Essentials campaign is a year old, so this week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we thought we'd see how things are going (and how many characters have died). And since you can't really trust the Dungeon Master, we invited two of the players — Justin Wigard and Clay Fleischer — on to share their impressions of the 34-session "mystery crawl." * * * Wanna play?...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at Shadowgate (1987, 1989), the point-and-click fantasy adventure videogame. Explore a mysterious castle while trying to find a way to stop the Warlock Lord from destroying the world! Tremble in fear as your torch burns low! Get eaten by every monster! Have a soundtrack-induced panic attack! All this and more awaits you in Castle Shadowgate. * * * Stu'...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Gavriel Quiroga about his new game, Black Rainbow Society . A sequel of sorts to Hell Night , this game doesn't feature players in the roles of fiends from hell, but rather normal humans grappling with the knowledge that there is more to existence than the mundane world (a staple theme of '90s RPGs, many of which are clear inspirations here). Gavr...

At the very end of last year, Bryan Ansell, a man who played a pivotal role in the world of tabletop games, passed away. To understand just how important Ansell was, this week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Timothy Linward, Wargamer staff writer and author of the forthcoming Grimdark: A Very British Hell . Tim walks us through the early days of Citadel Miniatures, his rise to prominence...

Where does the game end and real life begin? This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at Gameplayers , Stephen Bowkett's 1986 novel. At first blush, it seems to belong in that silly microgenre of panicky novels dedicated to wondering about how kids can cope with fantasy as powerful as tabletop RPGs (see Mazes & Monsters and Hobgoblin , both 1981). What we get, though, is a coming of age story...

Set phasers to stun! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out FASA's 1982 Star Trek RPG. It's an interesting game in it's own right — a hack of Traveller, when it comes down to it — but is also super interesting in regards to fandom, IP canon and licensed RPGs. Climb on board as we explore these strange old worlds! * * * Stu's book,  Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk to John Patrick Cooper about Get in the Van , his live music-themed Troika hack. Form a band (hardcore, hair or thrash) in the year 198X, hit the road, do battle with the audience, rock their faces off and get to the next gig. A tight, fun little ode to the road dog life. Also, surprise, Cooper designed Dead Mall , our favorite Tunnel Goons hack about...

There may be a million ways to die, but you're probably only going to see the first two or three. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we're remembering the classic coin-eating arcade game, Dragon's Lair (1983). That's the one that features the cell-shaded, professionally animated (by Don frickin' Bluth!) adventure of Dirk the Daring that was hidden behind an endless series of near-impossible ref...

If the Colour is out of Space it should maybe consider weeding some of its shelves, amirite? This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we're going back to witch-haunted Arkham, Massachusetts by way of Chaosium's latest edition of the  Arkham sourcebook (previously known as Arkham Unveiled , H.P. Lovecraft's Arkham and The Compact Arkham Unveiled ). This is a ground-up renovation of Keith Herber's orig...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we're checking out Caverns of Thracia (1979)! Considered by some to be the late Jennell Jaquays' finest work, we talk about some of the ways it differs from her previous Judges Guild module, Dark Tower , the cool way it handles random encounters and its place in the high trinity of '70s adventure design. Fun Fact: while folks, particularly in the OSR, think Ca...