The Vintage RPG Podcast

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out Chaosium’s new Call of Cthulhu sourcebook, Cults of Cthulhu. Despite the big squid being in the title of the game, the Great Old One is oddly absent in the majority of the RPG’s material, partly because he’s snoozing on the job, mostly because Nyarlathotep, that ham, steals the spotlight. This book aims to correct that by sketching the history and structure of a global Cthulhu cult that’s a worthy foil for investigators. Who cares if he’s asleep when his agents lurk in every shadow?

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 in the comics industry.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we travel down the darkened hedgerows of British folk magic traditions with a look at Of Shadows: One Hundred Objects from the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic (2016), from Strange Attractor Press. As the title says, this is a collection of objects selected by photographer Sara Hannant that present in all their shadowy glory a kind of whirlwind tour of occult and folk traditions of the British Isles. Beautiful in its own right, we talk about the ways it might resonate for folks who play RPGs.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat about Monstrous Arcana, a series of sourcebooks and adventures late in the D&D 2E days that explored three of the game’s most iconic monsters in alarming detail. The series is one of several crystal balls through which we can see some inkling of what 3E might be — in fact, the sourcebooks lead pretty directly to the excellent Lords of Madness sourcebook in a couple years.

Another week, another discovery of some weird ass bootleg D&D toys! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, Stu discovers Arco’s dime store line of little plastic monster dudes, Dragons n’ Monsters. This one is more bootleg than most! We also chat a bit about Arco’s weird tie-in toy line for the movie The Sword and the Sorcerer and the forthcoming “lost wave” of LJN Dungeons & Dragons toys from NECA.

Desert power! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look at the classic strategy game Dune (1979 from Avalon Hill, though Stu played the 2019 reprint from Gale Force Nine). There are a lot of cool things in Dune that have become staples of modern board game design, but it still manages to deliver a unique, spice-flavored experience.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a turn at being the villains in Reverse Dungeon. An adventure from very late in the 2E D&D line, it is very much the D&D-ification of the classic videogame Dungeon Keeper, but with some unexpected twists and turns.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we do some urban exploration and investigate Dead Mall, a neat Tunnel Goons hack about the ruined temples of capitalism. We also discuss Nate Treme’s Tunnel Goons and  Satanic Panic at Crowley Place Mall, a zine scenario for Dead Mall.

If you like tables, we’ve got some books for you! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out Jennell Jaquays’ series of Central Casting books, for use creating both player and non-player characters of alarming depth and, sometimes, bizarre circumstances. There are three flavors: Heroes of Legend (1988), our focus, which tackles fantasy backgrounds; Heroes for Tomorrow (1989), for science fiction characters; and Heroes Now! (1991), for characters from worlds not unlike our own. 

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we run to the border…lands. OK, never mind, I’ll leave the jokes to Hambone. For real: this week we’re talking about the RuneQuest box set Borderlands (1982), an excellent campaign about getting a job and doing it well. There’s no real narrative arc, no cackling villain, no dark plot. Stuff happens and the players take care of it, but the real point of Borderlands is to build and maintain a home in a strange land, a pretty unusual concept, then and now!