You can support this show on Patreon ! In this episode, I talk to Gabriel and Le, filmmakers and VFX artists based in Canada. They run the Youtube channel, Weird Place, which has a very cool series about games and game histories around the world as well as actual play, video essays, guides and more. They also make games: they funded and released Fluff n Fury last year, a cyberpunk rpg where you play chromed up teddy bears, and this year for Zinemonth, they're crowdfunding Residue , a solo scif...
Feb 27, 2026•40 min•Season 7Ep. 2
You can support this show on Patreon ! In this episode, I talk to Tim Denee, a Wellington-based graphic designer, illustrator, and game designer. His graphic design work has been recognised by the Best Awards, Tokyo Design Week and the International Society of Typographic Designers. He's also the co-author of We Are Here: An Atlas of Aotearoa, which was shortlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards. Through Old Dog Games, he's published free RPG products like a hack of Band of Blades for playing i...
Feb 03, 2026•54 min•Season 7Ep. 1
As per annual tradition, I'm once again joined by Quinns from QQuest to talk about the year and forge our bond in the fire of podcasting. Show Notes: Fastaval, the larp festival in Denmark Last year's 2024 year in review Games Mentioned The Tribunal The Straights Are Not Okay Tacklebox Mythic Bastionland Gradient Descent God’s Teeth / Delta Green D&D Draw Steel Daggerheart Magnus Archives Old Gods of Appalachia The Silt Verses Old School Essentials / Dolmenwood Cain Pirate Borg Fabula Ultima...
Dec 20, 2025•1 hr 21 min
You can support this show on Patreon ! In this episode, I talk to Aaron Lim, a game designer from Malaysia. His work includes sad village-building game An Altogether Different River , very sad journey game Itchaca on the Cards , and tragic mecha game Spectres of Brocken . He's also the organizer of Playtest Zero, a fortnightly RPG playtesting community that's been going on since 2021. Aaron Lim on bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ehronlime.bsky.social Aaron’s itch page: https://ehronlime.itch...
Nov 17, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 5Ep. 16
You can support this show on Patreon ! In this episode, I talk to Asa Donald is one-half of Backwards Tabletop, the publisher of the Backwards Universe of American horror games and Rust Never Sleeps, a solo mecha game. Their current project is Spine, a dark solo RPG about losing yourself in a book. Asa Donald on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/backwardsttrpg.bsky.social Spine (Digital): https://backwards-tabletop.itch.io/spine Spine (Physical): https://mixam.com/print-on-demand/68ec499e9e0b6...
Oct 31, 2025•52 min•Season 5Ep. 15
You can support this show on Patreon ! Today, I’m talking to Allen Varney, who runs the Bundle of Holding currently, which I think everyone listening to this had heard of. Before that, he worked as a freelance writer, editor, game designer for TSR, Steve Jackson Games, West End Games, FASA, and more. He was the lead designer for Paranoia XP, the 2004 edition of the game from Mongoose, and wrote a ton of articles for house magazines like Dragon. Bundle of Holding: https://bundleofholding.com Sh...
Oct 09, 2025•50 min•Season 5Ep. 14
You can support this show on Patreon ! Today, I’m talking to Josh Fox who was last on the podcast to talk about the second edition of his award-winning game, Lovecraftesque . We talked about Black Armada Games, the company he's been running for ten years with his partner, the game designer Becky Annison. This time, we’re talking about Ex Tenebris , a scifi gothic investigation game. Crowdfunding link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blackarmada/ex-tenebris Show Notes: Alien Black Armada ...
Sep 16, 2025•54 min•Season 5Ep. 13
You can support this show on Patreon ! Today, I’m talking to Elizabeth Little. She’s a UK-based science teacher, artist, and game designer. She co-founded Shrike Studio in 2015 and released games such as Blight Seas Fleet , a dark fantasy naval skirmish game, for which she developed a whole range of 3D printable miniatures. This year, she released a demo of You Will Die In This Place , an RPG described as "a nihilistic dungeoncrawler about art, death and identity". It’s weird, meta, layered, a...
Aug 22, 2025•1 hr 17 min•Season 5Ep. 12
You can support this show on Patreon ! In this episode, we talk to Hendrik ten Napel, a game designer from the Netherlands. He's self-published supplements for Brindlewood Bay, Bump in the Dark , and the Paragon system. His newsletter, Hendrik Biweekly , is a regular source of excellent game design thoughts. Today we're here to talk about his first crowdfunded game, The Girls of the Genziana Hotel , a gothic mystery PbtA game set in an isolated alpine hotel. You play chambermaids in the hotel ...
Aug 04, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 11
You can support this show on Patreon ! In this episode, we talk to Emily Allen, the game designer behind Dying Stylishly Games. She's best known for her two now classic OSR adventures, the Gardens of Ynn and the ennie-award winning Stygian Library, which popularized the depth-crawl format. Both of which are now republished in new editions from Soul Muppet Publishing. She’s also designed Dungeon Bitches, a violent sapphic PbtA game about trauma and survival and the Yellow Curtain, a weird meta-...
Jul 01, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 5Ep. 10
You can support this show on Patreon ! In this episode, we talk to Luke Jordan aka Wildwood Games, a queer non-binary game designer, writer, editor, performer, and professional GM. Their own games often combine a poetic sensibility, spooky themes, high emotion, and light mechanics. They've contributed to games like Girl by Moonlight published by Evil Hat and Koriko and The Slow Knife by Mouse House Press. Today, we're talking about two of their games that were crowdfunded in a double-barrel ca...
Jun 14, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Season 5Ep. 9
You can support this show on Patreon ! Spoilers for Andor S2 from 04:30 to 10:30 Spoilers for Rogue One all through the episode In this episode, I speak to Jess Levine. She is a teacher, organizer, writer and game designer. She publishes RPGs under the label, Jumpgate Games. Her work includes I Have the High Ground —a game of "banter, posturing, and capes"—and her satirical military scifi game PLANET FIST . Today we'll be talking about going rogue 2e, an award-winning game of war, rebellion, a...
May 24, 2025•1 hr 19 min•Season 5Ep. 8
You can support this show on Patreon ! In this episode, I speak to Navaar Seik-Jackson who is a game designer, writer, and the host of the Secret Nerd and other podcasts. Navaar makes action drama games — his The Last of Us inspired survival game, The Corrupted, is published by Plus One Exp through their Zine Club programme . You can listen to a lovingly produced actual play of the game called The Ties That Bind run by Navaar on the Secret Nerd podcast. He's currently working on Soothwardens ,...
Apr 30, 2025•51 min•Season 5Ep. 7
You can support this show on Patreon ! In this episode, I speak to Paul Czege, a game designer with a deep catalogue that is hard to pin down. An article on RPG.net from 2009 reads "Paul himself defies any sort of easy classification" . It continues, "Depending on your viewpoint, Paul is either one of the most prolific of the Gaming Outpost/Forge designers or one of the least. Also, depending on you how look at it, his best contribution lies in a single game (the still popular My Life With Mas...
Apr 09, 2025•59 min•Season 5Ep. 6
You can support this show on Patreon ! In this episode, I’m talking to Viditya Voleti, a game designer and interactive artist. He's a visiting instructor at the Pratt Institute in NYC. He's freelanced for Paizo, Possum Creek Games, Evil Hat, and RRD. His own tabletop designs include vampire cowboy game, Bloodbeam Badlands, GMless optimistic scifi game, Space Between Stars (forthcoming from Possible Worlds Games), and A Land Once Magic , a post fantasy worldbuilding game currently crowdfunding ...
Mar 15, 2025•58 min
You can support this show on Patreon ! In this episode, I’m talking to Gabriel Robinson, a writer and game designer. He's the lead writer on the Silt Verses , an RPG published by the Gauntlet press adapted from the hit audio series. He's contributed to a number of other Gauntlet publications like Trophy, Brindlewood Bay, and more. Through his own imprint Glowing Roots press, he's published Token , a two-player tragic fantasy game, and Candlelight , a GM-less game of lost spirits revisiting the...
Mar 02, 2025•43 min•Season 5Ep. 4
You can support this show on Patreon ! In this episode, I’m joined by Caro Asercion , who is an interdisciplinary artist, game designer, and theatre person. They do a lot of work in theatre as a dramaturg and producer of various kinds. In games, they're best known for im sorry did you say street magic , a game of cities and their secrets, based on the classic world building game, Microscope . They've also co-designed supplemental material for Beam Saber with Rufus Roswell, coining the mantra, ...
Feb 17, 2025•59 min•Season 5Ep. 3
You can support this show on Patreon ! On this episode, I’m joined by Levi Kornelsen, previously known as Amagi Games. He is a Canadian designer who's been part of the scene for a long time. He's designed a bunch of games like the Schema framework and the recent Saints of the Empty Throne but is probably best known for his RPG theory, such as the essential Manyfold Glossary. He's a big open source advocate and most of his work is distributed for free under a creative commons license. Everythin...
Feb 05, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 5Ep. 2
You can support this show on Patreon ! On this episode, I’m joined by Meguey Baker. She's the designer of PsiRun and 1001 Nights, published under her label, Night Sky Games. She's also the co-designer of Apocalypse World, which started the fundamental Powered by the Apocalypse design movement. She wrote the influential Fair Games blog with Emily Care Boss for many years. She's a textile conservation specialist who works with museums, a quilter, a trained sex ed teacher, and a breast cancer sur...
Jan 16, 2025•59 min
Bonus episode, where guests from across the year chime in with games they've played that they loved and want to talk about. Games mentioned: Hannah Shaeffer recommends T he Beast Evan Rowland recommends Usagi Yojimbo Quinns recommends World Wide Wrestling Aaron King recommends Saga of the Icelanders Max Lander recommends Blood Feud Graham Walmsley recommends Lumberjills Sidney Icarus recommends Bump in the Dark jay dragon recommends Last Train to Bremen Tom McGrenery recommends Wolves Upon the C...
Dec 23, 2024•41 min
You can support this show on Patreon ! On this episode, I’m joined by Quinns from Quinns Quest as we look back on the last year together. Show Notes: Rascal News Indie RPG Newsletter Quinns mentioned Mythic Bastionland , Good Society , Public Access , The Siltverses , Blood Borg Thomas mentioned Hearts of Wulin and its expansion, Numberless Secrets Also : Draw Steel , Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast , Triangle Agency Jubensha video on People Make Games Street Fighter RPG from White Wolf Mothership ...
Dec 09, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Season 4Ep. 20
On this episode, I talk to Marsh Davies and Jim Rossignol . Jim was the co-founder of videogaming website Rock Paper Shotgun, where he worked for many years. He's also the author of This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities. Now, he does things like write the Ludocrats with Kieron Gillen and develop indie games through his company, Big Robot. Marsh is a writer and illustrator who has written about video games at RPS and PCGamer and was former head of creative writing at Minecraft developer Mojan...
Nov 30, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 4Ep. 19
On this episode, I speak to Elliot Davis , an artist, podcaster and, game designer. He's one of the co-founders of Many Sided Media, a podcast production company behind shows like My First Dungeon, Bitcherton and Talk of the Table. His games include Rom Com Drama Bomb and solo timetravel game, Project Ecco. He's currently crowdfunding his latest game, The Time We Have , a tragic game about two brothers, one of whom is slowly but inevitably turning into a zombie. Show Notes: 03:09 - The Time We H...
Nov 15, 2024•47 min•Season 4Ep. 18
You can support this podcast on patreon! On this episode, I talk to MV Soumithri and Zoheb Mashiur who are cast members of Desperate Attune , a Blades in the Dark actual play set in Uduasha, a Middle Eastern/South Asian inspired alternative to Duskwall. They've now released a free supplement called Sunmirror , which brings a re-imagined city of gods and magic to the table....
Nov 01, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Season 4Ep. 17
You can support this podcast on patreon! On this episode, we talk to J Strautman and B Marsollier. J Strautman is a bass player, composer, sound designer, game designer, and podcaster. B Marsollier is an illustrator, voice over artist, game designer, podcaster and former antique rug salesperson. They are the co-DMs of the D&D actual play podcast, Planet Arcana. The podcast is fully sound designed and scored with original music by J. Last year, 2023, Planet Arcana received 9 nominations at th...
Oct 15, 2024•59 min•Season 4Ep. 16
Support this show! On this episode, I talk to Ara Winter, who has spent the last few years playing old and out of print tabletop games. What did he learn from this? Let's find out! Show Notes: 05:03 - Ara's antique gaming 19:14 - Discussing Bifrost (1977) 33:55 - Discussing Shadowrun 2nd Edition (1992) 48:58 - Infectious Enthusiasm: Fantasy Medieval Campaigns 50:14 - Tyranny of Numbers 52:08 - RePlay 54:18 - All advice is advice for myself The Indie RPG Newsletter...
Sep 30, 2024•1 hr•Season 4Ep. 15
Support this show! Aaron Voigt is a writer, game designer, podcaster and critic. You can find his video essays about tabletop games like They Took Our War, Heart, & Spire on his YouTube channel AA Voigt. He has two podcasts: one discussing Christian media called Bible Boys and one discussing sometimes-bad media called Mortified: The Friendship Quest. He's a first reader for Khoreo Magazine, an ignyte winning and Hugo nominated magazine for speculative fiction from immigrant and disap...
Sep 17, 2024•38 min•Season 4Ep. 14
Support this show! Huffa is a game designer and art historian. You can find her work at: https://huffa.itch.io/ Between the Skies @ Exalted Funeral Show Notes: 03:06 - Introducing Between the Skies 11:50 - Working with Exalted Funeral 15:45 - The joys of playing without systems 40:00 - How does this relate to old school d&d? 48:63 - Art history and RPGs 54:42 - Infectious Enthusiasm: Wanderhome, here there be monsters 57:41 - Tyranny of Numbers 59:28 - RePlay 1:03:18 - All advice is a...
Aug 30, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 4Ep. 13
Support this show! Joshua McCrowell is the designer of new tarot-based dungeoncrawler His Majesty The Worm , published by Exalted Funeral. He's also the current editor of Knock Magazine, the OSR focused anthology zine that has quickly became a fan favourite, and a blogger at riseupcomus.blogspot.com where he talks about everything from how to adapt tolkien in games to what makes a good social encounter. Show Notes: 02:22 - Running a game for 8 years 05:39 - Dungeoncrawling in 2024 16:46 - T...
Aug 15, 2024•47 min•Season 4Ep. 12
Support this show! Mint is an rpg designer and blogger from New Foundland, Canada. She runs There's a TTRPG For That , an rpg recommendation blog on tumblr, which has lists for all kinds from the general to the very specific, "games that are grunge" to "two player games" to "games where you don't need to write anything down". She's currently working on a game called Protect the Child, a game of monster babysitters, that is equal parts comedy and queer found family. You can find the Protect t...
Jul 31, 2024•49 min•Season 4Ep. 11
