RPGBOT.Podcast

The good news is we found J-ZK. The bad news is her skull is open, Dave is fighting a man inside the internet, Marky has replaced diplomacy with a hand chainsaw, and everyone involved is eventually on fire. Welcome to the Cyberpunk RED finale, where friendship conquers evil, violence solves several problems, and our heroes save the girl, kill the villain, jump out of a twentieth-floor window while...

Welcome to Bytopia, the Upper Plane for people who looked at Heaven and said, "This is nice, but could we make everyone work a little harder?" The weather is lovely, the neighbors are aggressively helpful, the economy is apparently powered by ethical commerce, and there's another entire world hanging upside down over your head. Also, there are adamantine dragons, because apparently even paradise n...

Welcome back to Night City, where Tyler has acquired a another cat, Randall has acquired a bedazzled bulletproof vest, and Ash has apparently acquired the Cyberpunk equivalent of Five Nights at Freddy's. This week, Marky Day becomes Marky Knight and walks willingly into something everyone immediately identifies as a murder hallway. Dave gets set on fire by a computer, Marky discovers that cartoon...

Welcome to Night City, where housing is a shipping container, breakfast is kibble, and your most reliable neighbor is a rat named Greg. This week, Marky Day and Dave Costanzo accept a perfectly normal freelance job involving stalking, blackmail, corporate espionage, breaking and entering, and possibly assault. Fortunately, Marky has love in his heart, a mandolin in his bag, and the negotiating ins...

The ranger's journey from level 5 to 20 is a majestic tale of growth, survival, and discovering that Hunter's Mark may not actually deserve permanent custody of your concentration. Randall's Gloom Stalker becomes an invisible crossbow machine, Ash's Drakewarden takes to the skies aboard a fire-breathing murder lizard, and Tyler spends sixteen levels converting every available feat, spell slot, and...

Character creation in Cyberpunk RED is simple. First, choose whether you want to be a violent criminal, a corporate criminal, or a musician who can accidentally start a cult. Then roll enough childhood trauma to explain why you live in a shipping container. This week, Randall creates Cyberpunk Mr. Rogers, a relentlessly loving rockerboy whose most treasured possession is a weapon, while Tyler crea...

Tonight, we're talking vampires, history's greatest transformation from suspiciously bloated corpse to immortal bisexual aristocrat with a castle, a cape, and absolutely no respect for personal boundaries. We dig into garlic, holy symbols, counting mustard seeds, bricks shoved into mouths, and the alarming number of vampire prevention methods involving someone's severed head near their butt. Then...

Welcome to Ranger levels 1 through 4, where you can become a deadly shadow archer, command your own miniature dragon, or sacrifice your entire action so that a flying snake with the structural integrity of wet parchment can participate in combat. In this episode, we explore Favored Enemies nobody tracks, terrain nobody visits, spells competing for the same concentration slot, and the revolutionary...

Wizards of the Coast has revealed its plans for the future of Dungeons & Dragons, and apparently the strategy is simple: fix D&D Beyond, return to Gen Con, outsource adventures to people who know what they are doing, cross over with World of Warcraft, and traumatize a convention hall full of children with a Dark Sun trailer featuring a freshly removed spine. Tyler attended the secret briefing and...

Welcome to Night City, chooms, where the sky is red, the rent is due, your landlord is probably armed, and health care arrives by helicopter only if your credit score has a body count. In this episode, Ash introduces Randall and Tyler to Cyberpunk Red, a game about surviving late-stage capitalism after it bought a katana, installed cyberlegs, and decided empathy was bad for quarterly growth. The i...

Welcome to Pandemonium, the plane where the wind screams, gravity is a rumor, and every emergency exit has a reasonable chance of dropping you directly into the Abyss. Tyler explains the cosmology, Randall attempts to locate something resembling a usable map, Ash discovers that the wind is made from every scream anyone has ever screamed, and Producer Dan quietly realizes this entire episode will r...

Tonight, the RPGBOT.Podcast enters the discourse arena, where Paizo is financially bleeding, Archives of Nethys accidentally brought a flamethrower to a contract negotiation, and the internet has already decided who the villain is without reading past the headline. Ash arrives with enough hot takes to melt adamantine, Tyler desperately attempts to preserve nuance, and Randall keeps feeding increas...

We return to Wizards of the Coast's Villainous Options, now revised after the first round was lovingly pushed down the stairs by public feedback. Some subclasses survived untouched. Some got a makeover. Some were taken behind the shed, especially the Primordial Patron, which had one great idea and the mechanical confidence of a wet napkin. Good news, though: the demon sorcerer finally feels demoni...

At levels 1 through 4, the 2014 Monk is a beautiful dream: you punch, you kick, you spend ki like a raccoon with a stolen credit card. Then levels 5 through 20 arrive, and suddenly the class asks, "Would you like to stun a dragon, run across a lake, catch a missile, become immune to poison, astral project emotionally, and still somehow worry about running out of ki before lunch?" This episode dive...

This week on the RPGBOT.Podcast, the hosts ask the eternal tabletop question: what happens when your beloved fantasy RPG grows up, gets a driver's license, discovers firearms, and immediately becomes everyone's problem? We begin with PishPash My Memory is Trash merch, accidental mug design crimes, Pride, wizard bazookas, and Ash's long-simmering legal case against the movie Bright. Then we get to...

Before the rogues can reach legendary proficiency, the episode must first survive the real high-level threats: Producer Dan being sleepy, Tyler's aggressively early bedtime policy, Ash explaining the freedom of having no kids, a Starfinder boss who walks through space walls, and the devastating possibility that a spider might disrupt Tyler's routine. Once everyone finally remembers this is suppose...

Monks are supposed to be serene masters of body, mind, and spirit, which is adorable because in 2014 DnD 5e they mostly begin life as a lightly dressed Dex-Wis-Con spreadsheet sprinting toward danger with 10 hit points and a dream. This week, the RPGBOT crew enters the monastery to ask the big questions. Can you punch your way to enlightenment? Is ki a precious spiritual resource or just a tiny ba...

Once the table finally escapes the opening chaos and cat crimes, Tyler, Randall, and Ash dive into Pathfinder 2e rogues, proving that the class is not just a sneaky knife gremlin. It is also a walking toolbox, a social menace, a battlefield problem, and so much more Show Notes This episode begins the RPGBOT.Podcast breakdown of Pathfinder 2e rogues, covering levels 1 through 10 and exploring how t...

Welcome to  Forgotten Odysseys , the game where surviving the Trojan War is apparently the easy part. Adam Bradford, also known as BadEye Adam, has created a MÖRK BORG-compatible Greek fantasy nightmare where the gods hate you, the sea hates you, the dice hate you, and sometimes your own party decides that prophecy is just a polite suggestion to commit murder. In this episode, the crew sets sail f...

Welcome to the Abyss, the multiverse's least relaxing vacation destination, where every layer is somehow worse than the last, the locals are made of teeth and bad decisions, and the gift shop only sells trauma. This week on the RPGBOT.Podcast, we descend into the infinite chaos of demonic nonsense to ask the important questions: how do you survive a plane that actively hates zoning laws, why are d...

Welcome to Part 4 of our  Ravenloft: The Horrors Within review, where the real horror isn't Strahd. It's Ash's campaign. In the span of ten minutes, his players accidentally created Baba Yaga, nearly invented a magical nuclear weapon, tried to break the multiverse "just to see what happens," and immediately asked if they could automate it with a Rube Goldberg machine. At this point, the Dark Power...

Ravenloft is a setting built on fear, tragedy, and impossible choices. Naturally, we spent the first ten minutes arguing about whether Florida is its own Domain of Dread, listening to Ash tell a story about getting magically demoted from noble to peasant, and debating whether "lofting ravens" is a real phrase. Honestly, the Dark Powers couldn't have written a better introduction. Show Notes In Par...

So today's episode is about the Help action, the mechanic that exists so your party can finally contribute after rolling three consecutive natural 2s. We'll answer life's toughest questions: Is sacrificing your turn to give someone advantage actually worth it? Can an owl legally become the MVP of every combat? And how many class features can be stacked before your DM quietly starts targeting the f...

The real horror in Ravenloft wasn't ghosts, vampires, or eldritch patrons. It was Riverside updating its interface five minutes before recording. Suddenly the buttons moved, the fonts shrank every time someone mentioned the layout, and Tyler entered a state of existential panic usually reserved for failed concentration checks. By the end of the night, we had learned two important lessons. First, c...

Ravenloft is supposed to be full of gothic horror, tragic villains, and creeping dread. Instead, we somehow spent twenty minutes imagining a Midwestern Strahd saying You betcha before drinking your blood, arguing about wet burritos, and debating whether North Dakota counts as a real place. By the time we actually opened the book, the greatest horror wasn't the Dark Powers. It was realizing that so...