The Vintage RPG Podcast

And now for something completely different! Well, not completely, but it  has been a while since we did an interview. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Brian Saliba and Craig Schaffer about Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme (which totally isn't an RPG at all, no sir, not one bit).

Hambone is setting the pace this week on the Vintage RPG Podcast as we talk about WHPA-13: Weird Heroes of Public Access (2022) from Get Haunted Industries . It's an RPG zine about strange goings on around town and the romance of UHF TV, what's not to love?

Deeper and deeper we go. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at the first issue of DNGN (2022), a megadungeon zine for Old-School Essentials from Singing Flame. We also discuss the one-page dungeon format and a little bit about the infamous Stonehell .

Chaos lurks just under the surface. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk about the Enemy Within campaign for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. We recap the original, theorize about where it went off the rails, enthuse over Cubicle 7's five-volume remaster and discuss the perils of satire.

Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarge! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at the Battlesystem, TSR's mostly failed attempt to shoehorn wargaming back into the Dungeons & Dragons experience. We also talk a bit about TSR's failed foray into making miniatures. Mess after mess. But at least it gave us that amazing Jeff Easley painting!

Nothing is what it seems! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at the classic Dungeons & Dragons monster, the Mimc. Or do we? Here be twists and turns!

Lost, now found. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at NECA's "Lost Wave" of Dungeons & Dragons toys. When LJN Toys shut down the D&D toy line, these four toys — Valkeer the Barbarian, Skylla the Sorceress, Pulvereye the Cyclops and a Kelek variant — were in various states of completion, but unreleased. Now, thanks to some miracle or the blackest of magic, forty years later they've been...

For years I've said I wasn't going to paint miniatures. No talent, I said. No patience, I said. Too expensive, I said. I have enough hobbies, I said. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk about how I've started painting miniatures!

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at  The Bestiary (1987) for Bard Games' Atlantis RPG. While I'm fond of the stuff Bard Games made generally, this book is over-the-top awesome because it is primarily illustrated by legendary comic artist Bill Sienkiewicz. Page after page of gorgeous, scratchy inks! Join us as we wax rhapsodic!

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out Luka Rejec's special Halloween scenario  Let Us In (2021), a lean, mean, system agnostic horror zine that uses a timetable to keep play at a tight three hours. Black, white and orange goodness, all the way through.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we're lost in Christopher Manson's  Maze  (1985). This is an unusual book, part armchair treasure hunt (for a $10,000 prize), part pick-your-path gamebook. The aim of the game is simple: find your way to the center of the maze and back in the least number of moves, then answer a riddle. The deeply enigmatic art in the book is meant to transmit both question an...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out the classic board game  Dungeon!  (1975). The origins of the game are entwined with the origins of Dungeons & Dragons, and all the dungeon crawling board games since owe Dave Megarry's creation a debt of gratitude.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out Chaosium's new Call of Cthulhu sourcebook,  Cults of Cthulhu . Despite the big squid being in the title of the game, the Great Old One is oddly absent in the majority of the RPG's material, partly because he's snoozing on the job, mostly because Nyarlathotep, that ham, steals the spotlight. This book aims to correct that by sketching the history a...

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 amount to being an interesting in-universe history for one of the most important transitional times in th...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we travel down the darkened hedgerows of British folk magic traditions with a look at Of Shadows: One Hundred Objects from the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic  (2016), from Strange Attractor Press. As the title says, this is a collection of objects selected by photographer Sara Hannant that present in all their shadowy glory a kind of whirlwind tour of occult a...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat about Monstrous Arcana, a series of sourcebooks and adventures late in the D&D 2E days that explored three of the game's most iconic monsters in alarming detail. The series is one of several crystal balls through which we can see some inkling of what 3E might be — in fact, the sourcebooks lead pretty directly to the excellent  Lords of Madness  sourceb...

Another week, another discovery of some weird ass bootleg D&D toys! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, Stu discovers Arco's dime store line of little plastic monster dudes, Dragons n' Monsters. This one is more bootleg than most! We also chat a bit about Arco's weird tie-in toy line for the movie  The Sword and the Sorcerer  and the forthcoming "lost wave" of LJN Dungeons & Dragons toys from NE...

Desert power! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at the classic strategy game  Dune  (1979 from Avalon Hill, though Stu played the 2019 reprint from Gale Force Nine). There are a lot of cool things in  Dune  that have become staples of modern board game design, but it still manages to deliver a unique, spice-flavored experience.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a turn at being the villains in  Reverse Dungeon . An adventure from very late in the 2E D&D line, it is very much the D&D-ification of the classic videogame  Dungeon Keeper , but with some unexpected twists and turns.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we do some urban exploration and investigate  Dead Mall , a neat Tunnel Goons hack about the ruined temples of capitalism. We also discuss Nate Treme's Tunnel Goons and   Satanic Panic at Crowley Place Mall , a zine scenario for  Dead Mall .

If you like tables, we've got some books for you! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out Jennell Jaquays' series of Central Casting books, for use creating both player and non-player characters of alarming depth and, sometimes, bizarre circumstances. There are three flavors:  Heroes of Legend  (1988), our focus, which tackles fantasy backgrounds;  Heroes for Tomorrow  (1989), for scien...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we run to the border…lands. OK, never mind, I'll leave the jokes to Hambone. For real: this week we're talking about the RuneQuest box set  Borderlands  (1982), an excellent campaign about getting a job and doing it well. There's no real narrative arc, no cackling villain, no dark plot. Stuff happens and the players take care of it, but the real point of  Bord...

Aaaand we're back! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a look at the horror storytelling game  Dread  and its unusual method of task resolution (hint: it involves a  Jenga  tower). And heck, let's make it a double: we also discuss the storytelling game of doomed romance,  Star Crossed , which  also  uses a  Jenga  tower!

A re-run? Yep, sometimes you just gotta rest the brains. So have a remastered  Players Handbook ! Originally aired to a whole different world, on December 23, 2019. Original hype text: We crack the cover of the classic  Players Handbook  (1978) for first edition Dungeons & Dragons. We talk a lot about Trampier's iconic, forbidding cover, of course, but also dig into the equally iconic interior ill...

Coming from an era of RPGs in which you could still get away with just naming your game  Wizard , this week on the Vintage RPG Podcast we're looking at  Melee ,  Wizard  and the larger  Fantasy Trip  RPG. We focus on its innovative use of point-buy mechanics, but also get into the game's larger place in RPG history.