Today is the second of two extended conversations I’ve shared with some gaming luminaries over the course of a week, focused on answering some practical questions around the barriers I have long experienced in running consistent campaigns. These conversations were largely unplanned and are really just that - hopping online to talk and discuss some key ideas with my guest. This second conversation is with Simon Williams, a British artist and illustrator as well as being the creator of the Legend ...
Jul 01, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Season 12Ep. 19
Today is the first of two extended conversations I’ve shared with some gaming luminaries over the course of a week focused on answering some practical questions around the barriers I have long experienced in running consistent campaigns. These conversations were largely unplanned and are really just that - hopping online to talk and discuss some key ideas with my guest. The first conversation was with Johnn Four, the founder of RoleplayingTips.com which began as a GM tips newsletter. Throughout ...
Jun 24, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 12Ep. 18
Newfound clarity has given birth to some confidence and a much greater sense of my preferences in gaming. The last few weeks have seen seismic shifts in my sense of wellbeing alongside a growing sense of who I am as a GM. As with much of Roleplay Rescue, there is a sense that in sharing my own journey back towards the roleplaying I enjoyed so much as a young man, perhaps there is also an invitation for others to follow. Following on from Episodes 14 and 15, I have found myself nudged towards set...
Jun 17, 2023•27 min•Season 12Ep. 17
Today I have another of my conversations with a friend within the roleplaying games community. This episode we dipped into talking about sparking creativity with younger students of varying ages - a comparison between my guest’s creative writing courses that utilise roleplaying games and my own school-based RPG club for teens. My guest today is Runeslinger - Anthony Boyd - the creator of Casting Shadows, a blog offering commentary about roleplaying games and techniques for both players and adjud...
Jun 10, 2023•1 hr 10 min•Season 12Ep. 16
Hello Rescuers! Here's another bonus - the third episode of Roleplay Rescue's Solo Tales! This episode picks up where that one left off. Because this is a personal solo game, I’m going to be using a variety of tools and methods to create a game that I enjoy. In other words, while I am sharing the game in the hope of inspiring others to try solo play, I am also very much playing the game for my own enjoyment. Thanks to Jon from Tale of the Manticore and Simon from Legend of the Bones for their in...
Jun 07, 2023•20 min
Having realised that I’ve been chasing my tail for the past 40 or so years in accepting a very simple misunderstanding as truth, the past couple of weeks have been an enriching and enjoyable period. While work and other commitments still limit my time to engage in play, the times when I do sit down to roleplay have been increasingly rich and enjoyable. The mission of the podcast has always been about helping gamers get back to the table. Throughout the past 12 seasons of Roleplay Rescue, we’ve b...
Jun 03, 2023•29 min•Season 12Ep. 15
What if you didn’t need anything more to have the best games of your life? What if you didn’t need another product, another tool, or another set of rules? What if everything you really need to have a cracking session, whether with your friend or online, was already in reach? Today’s episode is inspired by my recent reading of Jamie Smart’s hugely interesting book, “Clarity” - the second edition of which was published this year, ten years after the first, and which I heard about through a recent ...
May 27, 2023•22 min•Season 12Ep. 14
What’s the deal with Rolemaster? Why did we love it back in the 1980s and does the recent release of Rolemaster Unified invigorate us to play it again? Back in Episode 1, I declared that I was embarking on a new quest. It’s a journey into the deep past to find a new pathway towards enjoying the games I like to play in the way that I most enjoy playing them. Today, I take a trip back to 1980 and revisit the fantasy roleplaying game we played the most in that formative decade. Then I take an initi...
May 20, 2023•25 min•Season 12Ep. 13
Bonus episode leaked from the Patreon to give listeners a taste of the raw and unedited horror that is the GM's Journal. A few folk have asked what the GM's Journal is all about so I thought the best way to respond would be to share one episode by way of a taster. Remember: the Journal is a very candid snapshot of my life as a gamer, is recorded throughout the week into my phone, and is nothing like the polished typical episodes. Listener discretion is advised! This week saw the new King's Coron...
May 14, 2023•35 min
Having spent quite a few episodes now revisiting and developing my own return to a more coherent practice with roleplaying games, I thought I would make a brief pitstop and talk about the Roleplay Rescue community. The community is the life-blood of this podcast. Without it, I would be alone and isolated. I would possibly have stopped playing, but even if I was playing it would be alone - my home group died with the first lockdown in 2020 and has not recovered. Friends who gathered at my table a...
May 13, 2023•27 min•Season 12Ep. 12
Hello Rescuers! Here's a bonus! I have this vague idea that if I can produce a few episodes then I might release them on their own podcast feed, Roleplay Rescue's Solo Tales. This episode follows on from the main Roleplay Rescue Season 12, Episode 2 entitled “Crag’s Ruin”. I began wanting to explore the roots of my own hobby by revisiting my first imaginary game-world. This episode picks up where that one left off. Because this is a personal solo game, I’m going to be using a variety of tools an...
May 10, 2023•24 min
Today I have another of my conversations with a friend within the roleplaying games community. This episode we dipped into talking about characterisation in our RPGs, especially around NPCs. My guest, Simon Williams, is a British artist and illustrator as well as being the creator of the Legend of The Bones podcast, a hybrid Solo Old School Dungeons and Dragons actual play and dark fantasy audio drama. Big thanks to Simon for coming back to the show! Legend of The Bones Podcast: https://legendof...
May 06, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 12Ep. 11
Following the release of Episode 5 to the RPR Patreon, Patron Brian called in with a long series of seven questions about GURPS which I felt were worthy of a full episode to respond to. Not only are they truly excellent questions, they were also deeply insightful and are perhaps the kinds of questions that many listeners unfamiliar with GURPS would find interesting. I also think that, putting aside the specifics of GURPS, these are useful questions to ask of any game system. Because the question...
Apr 29, 2023•36 min•Season 12Ep. 10
In Episode 5, Barry aka GMShadow chatted with me about the need for a simple introduction to GURPS. Since then, we’ve been collaborating - along with other interested folk from the RPR Discord - to create Simple Dungeon GURPS. We have a working draft of Simple Dungeon GURPS and the playtesting is underway. In this episode, I wanted to share the progress made and the basic shape of that set of methodological guidelines which leverage the GURPS rules system. Massive thanks to Frank for calling-in!...
Apr 22, 2023•34 min•Season 12Ep. 9
Do you ever find yourself not physically starting something but instead spending inordinate amounts of time and effort reading, researching, and trying to decide where to start? If not, I envy you. It's a particular problem I have and been struggling with again. In simple terms, this is the Resistance in a pretty unsubtle form. Thanks to Matt for the call-in at the top of the show, giving me a nudge on a topic I blogged about some weeks ago: The Fear of Starting. This episode, I aim to share tha...
Apr 15, 2023•31 min•Season 12Ep. 8
Following my recent conversation with GMShadow, my good friend Barry from The Shadow of the GM podcast - which you can listen to in Episode 5 - I’ve been delving back into both the Great Library of GURPS and rekindling my love of the megadungeon. This episode, I want to talk about the reasons why I’ve returned to the Dungeons of Thaarl - my own megadungeon - for a return to the classic fantasy Open Table format. The Alexandrian blog post, “Game Structures Part 3: Dungeoncrawl”: https://thealexan...
Apr 08, 2023•32 min•Season 12Ep. 7
Today, I want to talk about the most durable, long-serving, and under-rated game structure in roleplaying games. Most GMs use some form of it in most sessions - anytime they come to a location in their world where the Player Characters need to explore. I want to talk about the humble Dungeoncrawl which has become tarnished over the years by people who totally fail to understand that the “crawl” is a fundamental and sturdy structure for any moment when the characters enter a location they want to...
Apr 01, 2023•24 min•Season 12Ep. 6
This is another one of the conversations I’ve been having with various friends within the roleplaying community. This episode is a chat about how to introduce new players to GURPS by making the whole thing simpler and more familiar. One thing to say is that I got my timeframes all wrong: I began monkeying around with GURPS around 5 years ago or so ago. Dungeons of Thaarl was happening in 2019, which is 4 years ago. Doesn’t time fly? My guest, Barry aka GMShadow, is the host of Shadow of the GM p...
Mar 25, 2023•48 min•Season 12Ep. 5
Ever since I first began roleplaying, I have always been engaged by a good fight scene. Combat has been the way in which I almost always begin to learn a new game and you can bet your bottom-dollar that any scenario I run with open with a fight. Why is that? Is it because, as I alluded to back in Season 9, I am at heart a Munchkin? One of those kids who came into the hobby in the late 70’s and 80’s as a pre-teen adventurer with a predilection for violence? Or is it a little more nuanced, having ...
Mar 18, 2023•18 min•Season 12Ep. 4
This is the first in a fresh sequence of conversations I’ve been having with various friends within the roleplaying community. This episode features a chat about how to move from beer and pretzels style gaming towards something a little deeper, richer, and longer lived. My guest, Arlen Walker, is the host of Live From Pellam’s Wasteland which you can find both as a podcast and on YouTube in video form. Arlen does most of his recent work on YouTube and his thoughts can range wildly, but include a...
Mar 11, 2023•51 min•Season 12Ep. 3
This one's a highly experimental episode. As I said last episode, I want to explore the roots of my own hobby by revisiting my first imaginary game-world. Through dreams and many hours of day-dreaming as a teenager, I uncovered a rich fantasy realm that I am long-overdue returning to visit. Despite a few attempts to bring other tools to the table, games that I deeply enjoy and seek to explore, the reality is that the first game I stole from my Dad - RuneQuest and the even simpler Basic Roleplayi...
Mar 04, 2023•22 min•Season 12Ep. 2
Somehow I’ve found my way back to the microphone and it’s time to embark on a new quest. For me, it’s a journey into the deep past to find a new pathway towards enjoying the games I like to play in the way that I most enjoy playing them. It’s my hope that, at least for someone else, this quest will resonate enough to carry you along with me too. Massive thanks to all the callers today - Jason, Justin, Jonathan, and the Pink Phantom. Please keep the comments and questions coming! Game on! Rolepla...
Feb 25, 2023•20 min•Season 12Ep. 1
Back in July, as Season 11 opened, I spoke about how some roleplayers experience deep anxiety around playing and running games. One of the most repeated comments I have received over the past 4 years of producing this podcast has been the one about how much my honest talk about anxiety has resonated with others. This episode ends a season of Roleplay Rescue that opened with a broad theme: An Anxious GM’s Guide To Fantasy Roleplaying. I’d like to take the opportunity to review where we’ve been an...
Jan 14, 2023•27 min•Season 11Ep. 26
Johnn Four is the founder of RoleplayingTips.com which began in 1999 as a GM tips newsletter. Throughout the years, Johnn has published a GM advice column in Dragon Magazine, several books about how to improve your GMing, and continues to write on the topic of running better games. Johnn has teamed up with Jochen Linnemann to create Campaign Logger, a tool designed to help GMs capture all the details that get made up during sessions for the length of the entire campaign. Johnn is, however, perha...
Jan 07, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Season 11Ep. 25
On the principle that everything is play, I sat down down to work out how I want to take forward my roleplaying games hobby for the foreseeable future. I have decided to record my thinking, as if I am talking to a gaming friend, because I find this helps me to work out my ideas. None of this is new, original, or even surprising. Daniel Jones has provided me with the majority of the ideas and methods outlined here and to him I simply say “thank you”. But this is the first time I’ve brought all my...
Dec 31, 2022•31 min•Season 11Ep. 24
Today I want to revisit the topic of “Gaming With Teenagers”. It’s very much a conversation aimed at adults, so I’d like to apologise up front to any actual young adults listening to the podcast. Caveats aside, this all comes from my experience in setting up and running RPG gaming clubs across three UK secondary schools - aka high schools - and working with teens aged 11-18. Here are my Top Ten tips for introducing them to the hobby. Massive thanks to all the callers - to Simon from Legend of th...
Dec 24, 2022•31 min•Season 11Ep. 23
This is the fifth in a sequence of conversations I’ve been having with various friends within the roleplaying games community. This episode continues my quest to find the game I really want to play, focused today upon the question of how to achieve greater Otherworld-immersion and build the kind of Otherworld that matters to us. My guest is, of course, Daniel Jones. Daniel is the originator of the term Otherworld-immersion and a proponent of the idea that changing the methodology of our roleplay...
Dec 17, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Season 11Ep. 22
This is the fourth in a fresh sequence of conversations I’ve been having with various friends within the roleplaying games community. This episode continues my quest to find the game I really want to play, this time through re-investigating the topic of solo roleplaying. My guest, Simon Williams, is a British artist and illustrator as well as being the creator of the Legend of The Bones podcast, a hybrid Solo Old School Dungeons and Dragons actual play and dark fantasy audio drama. His evocative...
Dec 10, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 11Ep. 21
This is the third in a fresh sequence of conversations I’ve been having with various friends within the roleplaying games community. This episode picks up a thread that I’ve been noodling around for a while, namely the value of Gygaxian-era Dungeons & Dragons and what makes OD&D and AD&D valuable. Big thank you up front to my guest, Jason, and I hope that you find this as interesting as I did. The Nerd's RPG Variety Cast: https://anchor.fm/jason376 Game on! Roleplay Rescue Details: V...
Dec 03, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Season 11Ep. 20
Another conversation to share with you today, this time someone who has recently inspired and reinvigorated my hobby through his excellent podcast. While we did begin in interview mode, the primary focus of this conversation was to chat about fantasy game worlds and some of the ways in which those were particularly important to more Old-School flavours of the hobby. Kevin is the host of The Redcaps Podcast, the podcast where he dips his hat into the blood of his listeners and rambles on about Ol...
Nov 26, 2022•58 min•Season 11Ep. 19
