This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk to the Benjamin Marra, artist extraordinaire! We’re supposed to talk about INTERMEDIARY MUND, his new RPG zine from Exalted Funeral, and we do, and it makes good on the promise of a lot of those pesky Satanic Panic fears from the ‘80s! But the real meat of the chat winds up musing on the central appeal of old school fantasy art, and how it has informed Ben’s own work over the years. That, and much more, on this week’s episode! * * * Unwinnable...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy, the most straight-down-to-it art book I’ve ever encountered. Absolutely jam packed with amazing art from across all four decades of the gamebook series. Do you dig black-and-white fantasy art, particularly from the UK in the '80s? Then buy this book, you won’t be disappointed. * * * Instagram? Old news. Join the Vintage RPG Newsletter! That's where all the cool kids are now! Stu’s book, Monsters,...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk to our very own editor, R. Alex Murray about a little off-Broadway show he's in called Dungeons & Dragons The Twenty-Sided Tavern. Part actual play, part interactive theater, all rowdy-as-heck adventure, Alex and his colleagues are trailblazing a whole new (boozy) way to play with 499 friends. * * * Instagram? Old news. Join the Vintage RPG Newsletter! That's where all the cool kids are now! Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the...

What RPG allows you to travel to the future to team up with the ghost of John Brown to violently overthrow corporate taskmasters? This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at Lords of Creation, my pick for the weirdest RPG ever made. Maybe. Designed by Tom “B/X” Moldvay, it’s one of the first multi-genre RPGs and it marked Avalon Hill’s (failed) first foray into RPGs. And, best of all, it is full of decisions that are just absolutely perplexing. A real testament to how easy it is from...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at Eat the Reich, a beautiful game about reveling in the messiest annihilation of nazis imaginable. Become an anti-fascist vampire. Get air-dropped into Paris. Drink all the nazi blood. A one-shot(ish) of fun for adults of all ages, tuned to variable levels of experience, gorgeously illustrated. A glorious, utterly uncontroversial piece of gaming. * * * Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it! Patreon?...

Flip the switch to the UHF dial! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with the one, the only, Joey Royale about Weird Heroes of Public Access, coming soon in hardcover to BackerKit. Unearth strange mysteries, save your community and get it done in time to tape the next episode of your show. This is your chance to get into one of the best, coolest, most heartfelt RPGs of the decade! * * * Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it! Patreon?...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we drag out West End Games’ weird universal system, MasterBook, and its bizarre licenses. Why would you refurbish the shuttered RPG Torg into your universal game when the D6 system was right there? Why would you think the movie Species was ripe for RPG adaptation? Or Tales from the Crypt? Mysteries abound. * * * Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it! Patreon? Discord? Cool RPG things to buy? All the Vintage RPG...

You’re in love with this city. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Jacob Mooney, co-creator of Machine: Impossible, a game about cyborg superspies protecting their home and making it a better place for everyone to live. One of the many cool things about the game is how players collaborate to make the game world, so while it may default to a cyberpunk near-future, it can really be as strange as you like. Eco-punks hacking the mycorrhizal network of their forest city? Why not? *...

The only place to go is down! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Josh McCrowell, the evil mastermind behind His Majesty the Worm. Grab your tarot deck and prepare yourself and your kit bag for the endless dungeon underneath the city. Venture deep enough and survive the darkness long enough and you might come across the Worm himself! * * * Physical copies of His Majesty the Worm will be back in stock soon at Exalted Funeral. In the meantime, grab the PDF! For more from...

Enter: the Neon Lord himself! This week on the Vintage RPG podcast, we talk with Brian Shutter, the radioactive brain behind Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland. He’s got a pair of massive goodies coming to a BackerKit: Deities & Demi-Bros, a guide to the gods of the squared circle, and Deadly Dudez/Toxic Creeps, a massive monster manual! Plus some more surprises. Listen up, or Lord Randy will drop an elbow on you that your descendants will never forget! * * * Hey, come here, we got a...

This week on the Vintage RPG podcast, we check out Brindlewood Bay. It’s a little bit Murder, She Wrote, a little bit Golden Girls and a little bit "The Call of Cthulhu," wrapped up in a Powered by the Apocalypse package. Can you meddle your way to the solutions of these TV-style mysteries? * * * Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it! Patreon? Discord? Cool RPG things to buy? All the Vintage RPG links you need are right here in one place! Like,...

Two weeks later and Stu is still tired. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, Stu regales us of his adventures at GenCon 2024. The crowds. The vast convention space. The games! The revelation that the hobby at large is so very clearly a union of many smaller, constituent hobbies. It was a lot. * * * Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it! Patreon? Discord? Cool RPG things to buy? All the Vintage RPG links you need are right here in one place! Like,...

This week on the Vintage RPG podcast, we check out The Court of Ardor in Southern Middle-earth (1983), a sourcebook for MERP that predates MERP and significantly expands Tolkien’s world. It mainly introduces a cabal of elves in the service of Morgoth who, well, they act a lot more like the royal family of Roger Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles than anything in Tolkien. But it is still pretty cool! * * * Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it! Patreon?...

This week on the Vintage RPG podcast, we’re looking at Casket of Souls (1987), a puzzlebook by Ian Livingstone that spins out of the success of the Fighting Fantasy series. You, too, can pore over Iain McCaig’s lush art work, looking for clues to solve the riddle and win the titular, gold-plated casket! Well, you could in 1987, anyway. The contest is long over, but half the fun is the journey right? Well, maybe not…this is one of the hardest puzzlebooks I’ve ever encountered… * * * Stu’s...

This week on the Vintage RPG podcast, we’re looking at Barony (1990), a game that sought to redefine RPGs with concepts that were decades before their time. Open-ended character progression, keyword-based health, a free-form magic system that anticipates Mage — how the heck does this exist? And why don’t more people know about it? And who the heck is Conrad?! * * * Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it! Patreon? Discord? Cool RPG things to buy? All...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out The Sorcerers’ Enclave, a cool narrative art book by Aaron Howdle that mixes the intricate maximalism of finding books and cut-aways with the aesthetics of early Warhammer and other dark fantasy staples. Is it an RPG book? It isn’t not an RPG book! More like this, please. * * * Experience Points has been nominated for an Ennie Award! Vote for it here! Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it! ...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk to Isaac VanDuyn about his ambitious RPG that seeks to fulfill the promise of all those evangelicals from the ‘80s who were so worried about tame old D&D corrupting the souls of their children. The result (illustrated by Kim Diaz Holm and featuring the cartography of Lex Rocket) is a lush and grim game of occult secrets and blood-soaked horrors wrapped in an extremely play-friendly package. And folks who missed out on the sold out...

Welcome to Dove’s Bay, the most horrible island in Maine (take that, Stephen King)! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out Grimrock Isle (1992), the second Call of Cthulhu product from Triad Entertainments. It’s both a solo and a group scenario, spread across several booklets contained in a snazzy folder. Just about every mythos threat imaginable lurks in Dove’s Bay, which is sort of the way with CoC solos, but the result is still charming and pretty effective. A big helping hand...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we're looking at CM4: Earthshaker (1985), the BECMI module that pits players against a 1,280-foot-tall robot run by an entire clan of gnomes. Well, not exactly, the gnomes run the robot as a tourist attraction, the players have to deal with the evil NPCs who try to hijack the robot. And they better win, because, well, the tarrasque is just 50 feet tall. * * * Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it! Patreon?...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look back at Paul M. Sammon’s coverage of the making of Conan the Barbarian in the April 1982 issue of Cinefantastique. The double issue has three features by Sammon — a lengthy piece of reportage on the filming and interviews with designer Ron Cobb and director John Milius — and lots of behind-the-scenes photos. It’s a charming bit of work that contrasts in surprising ways with Sammon’s later coverage of Conan the Destroyer, which we also discuss. *...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Tyler Vance, the fine artist behind Void: The Frontier. Tyler’s been exploring Void for a while now, having published three rules-agnostic setting zines that pair his enigmatic narratives with his equally mysterious paintings. Now he’s concocted a gorgeous card game, now on Kickstarter. We talk about the game, his process and his often unsettling art, and more! * * * Check out Tyler's zines and things! Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and...

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Megan Dawson Jaffe about the new Nerdy City RPG Holomatixx: A New Wave Order. Spinning out of their other Omni System games like the kid adventure Rememorex and the game of transforming robots, Commandroids, Holomatixx takes on pop star superheroes in the vein of Jem and Holograms and Barbie and the Rockers. On Kickstarter now! * * * Check out Nerdy City's other rad games! Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale...

Stu was tied up with lots of crap this week, so have a re-run! Original show notes: Make ours Marvel! 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...

Stu’s ongoing West Marches-style Old-School Essentials campaign is a year old, so this week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we thought we’d see how things are going (and how many characters have died). And since you can’t really trust the Dungeon Master, we invited two of the players — Justin Wigard and Clay Fleischer — on to share their impressions of the 34-session “mystery crawl.” * * * Wanna play? We've got ten spots open. Sign up at the D10 tier on the Vintage RPG Patreon! * * * Check...