Did you know that the Pinkerton National Detective Agency -- famed protector of Abraham Lincoln in the 1800's, and union-busting goon squad in the 1900's -- is still around? And they have time to chase down Magic: the Gathering fans for using prohibited card sets? It's true: Dan & Paul discuss the latest WOTC goony actions, other game-companies that lost their sanity checks, and more. Pinkerton is a private security guard and detective agency established around 1850 in the United States by S...
May 01, 2023•59 min
Paul & Dan get to chat with Matt Finch about his new full-blown edition to the Swords & Wizardry D&D retroclone, now on Kickstarter! Since 2008, Swords & Wizardry has been the hallmark game for tabletop fantasy roleplaying using the 1978 ruleset, with less focus on rules, more focus on your friends and the epic adventures you're embarking on together! Swords & Wizardry is the ENNIE award-winning retro-clone of the original 1974-1978 rules for Dungeons & Dragons, an editio...
Apr 17, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Dan & Paul recap our annual 25-person indie house convention we hold annually on the sparkling shores of Plymouth, MA. Check our review of hour our classic games went, new games we got to try for the first time, and more surprises. Also: how did the ongoing AD&D Slavers series wrap up In the Dungeon of the Slave Lords? Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the...
Apr 14, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Paul & Dan chat with Scott Legault, chair of the new Rising Phoenix Game Con in Massachusetts this April! What's it like to start a new game con today? And can leveraging the better part of a decade's experience in professional DM'ing help out? Visit the Rising Phoenix Game Con website here Register at Tabletop Events here Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the...
Mar 27, 2023•1 hr
This week, Paul & Dan get to host Luke Gygax and find out about all the happenings at the upcoming GaryCon XV convention! Luke Gygax is the son of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax and Founder of Gary Con. He literally grew up at the gaming table with the designers that built the foundation of the RPG industry many of whom come to Gary Con. He played the iconic character Melf, aka Prince Brightflame, whose name has remained on spells from AD&D to today. Luke has authored sever...
Mar 17, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Dan & Paul discuss our personal, customized version of D&D: Original Edition Delta! Initially, Paul & Dan preferred different editions of Dungeons & Dragon, with some personalized house-rule modifications made for each. Over time, we realized that the house rules we made coincidentally met in the middle, and we were running pretty much the same game, after all. So we joined forces and put our rules out publicly as Original Edition Delta -- the best old-school retroclone set of ho...
Mar 06, 2023•1 hr 3 min
Dan interviews Paul on his weekend trip to the first convention of the season, Total Confusion, the largest gaming con in New England. How to prepare in short time if you're busy like we are? What's the best way to boost your save vs. con crud? Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D to...
Feb 27, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Paul & Dan reflect on the legacy of digital tools for D&D from Wizard of the Coast, and what the prospects are for what's next! Read the analysis by Janelle Jaquays on Facebook Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful discussions on D&D and other TTRPGs every week. Comparing the pros and cons of every edition from the 1974 Original D&D little brown books to cutting-edge releases for 5E D&D today, we broadcast live on YouTube and Twitch so we can take ...
Feb 21, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Dan & Paul hash over the benefits & flaws of working with other people in your TTRPG design, DM'ing, nd play! Collaboration (from Latin com- "with" + laborare "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most collaboration requires leadership,[vague] although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. Teams that ...
Feb 06, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Dan & Paul sit down with Linda Codega, the exceptional journalist at io9/Gizmodo who broke the story of WOTC planning to de-authorize the Open Game License that's been used for D&D-compatible and other games for over 20 years -- and subsequently forced a total surrender by WOTC on their sinister plans! How did Linda catch and produce this game-changing story? How does one balance journalism and activism? Will the D&D and indie gaming industry ever be the same? Linda Codega, for Io9 i...
Jan 30, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Are you currently looking for an alternative the the D&D roleplaying gaming? But still committed to medieval-style fantasy gaming? Dan & Paul review the current top retroclones on the market -- and what what the state of affairs going forward may be if the Open Game License is thrown into disarray! Some D&D fans prefer earlier editions, and new games address the perceived inability of newer editions to preserve the tone of classic D&D while fixing some of the perceived rules issu...
Jan 29, 20230
Justin Alexander is one of the most prolific and insightful RPG writers around. Between his long-running blog at The Alexandrian, his work at Atlas Games, his hundreds of published books and articles, he has among the most in-depth knowledge of what makes for great gaming. And right now he's been following the drama with WOTC trying to break the OGL 1.0 as close as anyone. What's Justin's outlook for the future of Open Gaming and Atlas Games? Read The Alexandrian blog Follow Justin on YouTube Vi...
Jan 19, 2023•59 min
Word has leaked that WOTC aims to terminate the OGL license used for 3rd-party D&D-compatible products for the last 20+ over years. Can they do it? Are all existing 3rd-party products about to be made illegal? What can it mean for the hobby and industry going forward? In August 2022, Wizards of the Coast launched a public playtest of the next version of Dungeons & Dragons under the One D&D initiative. In November 2022, there was reported speculation that the OGL would be discontinued...
Jan 09, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Dan & Paul look back at the state of D&D in this past year of 2022, and the 4th season of Wandering DMs. What were your favorites, what were the critical fumbles for the year? What themes were unfolding for the D&D community? We'll share our top memories, and some announcements for what we have in store next! Watch the Wandering DMs Season 4 Playlist Watch Games from the Elder Times Season 1 Watch Book of War Season 3 Wandering DMs Paul Siegel and Dan “Delta” Collins host thoughtful ...
Dec 12, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Paul & Dan chat with D&D historian extraordinaire Jon Peterson about his latest book, Game Wizards, on the history of TSR, the makers of D&D, and the turbulent waters of changing creators and editions. When Dungeons & Dragons was first released to a small hobby community, it hardly seemed destined for mainstream success—and yet this arcane tabletop role-playing game became an unlikely pop culture phenomenon. In Game Wizards, Jon Peterson chronicles the rise of Dungeons & Drag...
Dec 05, 2022•1 hr 4 min
Dan & Paul exchange thoughts on the use of prepared Boxed Text descriptions in D&D adventures. Are they hostile, or benign in your games? DM Shawn Merwin wrote on D&D Beyond: "If you’ve DMed, read, written, or even played D&D adventures at any point in the game’s existence, you are familiar with boxed text, which is also sometimes referred to as read-aloud text. It got its name from the thin boxed-line that sometimes surrounds the text in an adventure, denoting that it should be ...
Nov 28, 2022•1 hr 4 min
Paul & Dan chat with Keith Ammann ("The Monsters Know What They're Doing") on his newest book of dungeon design principles, "How to Defend Your Lair"! In How to Defend Your Lair, gamemaster Keith Ammann pulls back the curtain on an underrated but crucial part of any tabletop roleplaying game: the theater of battle. Say goodbye to encounters in randomly generated dungeons and hello to a game in which where the fight takes place is just as important as who is doing the fighting. This book teac...
Nov 21, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Dan & Paul reflect on their long history of playing RPGs in a wide variety of sometimes unusual locations, and how that can affect the play of your D&D games for better & worse! Feng shui has found many uses. Landscape ecologists often find traditional feng shui an interesting study. In many cases, the only remaining patches of Asian old forest are "feng shui woods", associated with cultural heritage, historical continuity, and the preservation of various flora and fauna species. Som...
Nov 16, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Paul & Dan look back at their favorite "Haunted House" adventures for D&D games. From Tegel Manor to Saltmarsh to Castle Amber and Ravenloft, we'll assess what works best and what doesn't for a truly terrifying D&D game! Legends about haunted houses have long appeared in literature. The earliest surviving report of a haunted house comes from a letter written by Pliny the Younger (61 – c. 112 CE) to his patron Lucias Sura, in which he describes a haunted villa in Athens.[50] Nobody wo...
Nov 01, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Dan & Paul chat with Jim Davis, the wizard of Web DM, and get his thoughts on the rules drops so far for One D&D, the playtest for the upcoming next-edition of Dungeons & Dragons! Jim Davis, the Web DM, creates RPG advice and actual play content on YouTube, Patreon, and Twitch. Through professionally produced, carefully researched conversations about all aspects of tabletop gaming, deep topic podcast dives, and heartfelt actual play streaming, Web DM has become one of the most popula...
Oct 26, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Dan & Paul chat with Matt Finch, creator of Swords & Wizardry, about his Revised Tome of Adventure Design! Tome of Adventure Design is a comprehensive, start-to-finish resource for designing fantasy adventures for your favorite tabletop role-playing game. It is system neutral, and can be used with virtually any fantasy game. This book includes random generation tables for almost every step of the design process: locations, villainous plots, designing new monsters, and bizarre environment...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr
Paul & Dan chat about bases for player characters in D&D -- strongholds, ships, taverns, houses, and more! European-style castles originated in the 9th and 10th centuries, after the fall of the Carolingian Empire resulted in its territory being divided among individual lords and princes. These nobles built castles to control the area immediately surrounding them and the castles were both offensive and defensive structures; they provided a base from which raids could be launched as well a...
Oct 11, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Dan & Paul turn a critical eye to the new One D&D (6E) rules draft on the Expert Class group: Rogues, Rangers, and Bards! In August 2022, Wizards announced that the next phase of major changes for Dungeons & Dragons would occur under the One D&D initiative which includes a public playtest of the next version of Dungeons & Dragons. Revised editions of the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide are scheduled to be released in 2024. The first public playte...
Oct 04, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Dan & Paul chat with Griffith Morgan about the new upcoming Kickstarter for the Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg! In 1971, Greg Svenson and his friends took part in the very first dungeon adventure game, Blackmoor, created by their friend, Dave Arneson. Then, in the summer of 1973, as Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax worked to complete the manuscript for Dungeons & Dragons, Greg was given a play-test copy of this novel new game. He used these rules to create his own adventure dungeon, The Dungeons ...
Oct 01, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Dan chats with Alyssa Faden, mapmaker extraordinaire, about her projects mapping the worlds of Greyhawk and the rest of the D&D cosmos! Alyssa has been a professional cartographer and GenCon panelist since 2012. Her clientele includes Monte Cook Games, Kobold Press, Profantasy Software, Gygax Magazine, Golden Goblin Press, and Frog God Games. Her style is unique and self-taught, with influences from the lovely ink work of such greats as Jeff Laubenstein and Jeff Easley. And she's a long time...
Sep 20, 2022•1 hr 3 min
Paul & Dan chat about slimes, molds, oozes, and deadly gelatinous horrors in D&D. Gross! Slime mold or slime mould is an informal name given to several kinds of unrelated eukaryotic organisms with a life cycle that includes a free-living single-celled stage and the formation of spores. Spores are often produced in macroscopic multicellular or multinucleate fruiting bodies which may be formed through aggregation or fusion. Slime molds were formerly classified as fungi but are no longer co...
Sep 14, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Dan & Paul chat about the state of languages in D&D and other fantasy RPGs. Tolkien was of the opinion that the invention of an artistic language in order to be convincing and pleasing must include not only the language's historical development, but also the history of its speakers, and especially the mythology associated with both the language and the speakers. It was this idea that an "Elvish language" must be associated with a complex history and mythology of the Elves that was at the...
Sep 09, 2022•1 hr 6 min
Paul & Dan assess the information so far on the next edition of D&D after 5E. In August 2022, Wizards announced that the next phase of major changes for Dungeons & Dragons would occur under the One D&D initiative which includes a public playtest of the next version of Dungeons & Dragons. Revised editions of the Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide are scheduled to be released in 2024. The first public playtest, Unearthed Arcana: Character Origins, was...
Sep 07, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Dan & Paul survey the different options across the years for D&D PC ability score generation. Which is best for your D&D game? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Dan & Paul get into the nitty-gritty in this episode. In original D&D, ability scores were determined by "roll[ing] three six-sided dice in order to rate each [character] as to various abilities". This had a significant impact on later character creations as "certain classes could only be taken up by ...
Sep 05, 2022•1 hr
Paul & Dan chat with Jason Morningstar, creator of Fiasco, Desperation, and other great RPGs. Jason Morningstar is an American indie role-playing game designer, publishing mostly through Bully Pulpit Games. Morningstar's games often lack a Game Master and are often set in situations that quickly go unfortunately for the player characters. Grey Ranks (2007), for example, is about doomed child soldiers in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and Fiasco (2009) is about impulsive crooks pulling heists that...
Aug 22, 2022•1 hr 3 min
