The Vintage RPG Podcast

Steal your strength and guard your soul: this week, the Vintage RPG Podcast looks at Chaosium's Stormbringer RPG. Designed by Ken St. Andre, Stormbringer is a high power and high risk RPG set in the world of Michael Moorcock's Elric stories (for our money, perhaps the greatest fantasy series ever written). One of the more straightforward of the games using Chaosium's Basic Role Playing system, it has piles of fatalistic atmosphere and dark themes, perhaps most notably the magic system that relies on mind altering substances and is entirely arranged around summoning and binding demons and other supernatural entities. Most Stormbringer games end in death or corruption – the fun is in figuring out which is the better fate.

This week, the Vintage RPG Podcast travels back in time to the 80s that never were with Tales From the Loop, an RPG where extraordinary science fiction mysteries crash into the dreariness of everyday life. Based on the mesmerizing artwork of Simon Stålenhag, this Year Zero engine game from Fria Ligan is one of our favorites – easy to pick up and play (especially for beginners), gorgeous to look at and full of enigmas. Check it out if you were ever a kid.

This week, the Vintage RPG Podcast cracks open The Green Knight: A Quest for Honor. Don't let the fake scuff marks fool you: this is a brand new box set from @A24, a marketing tie-in for their forthcoming film The Green Knight. We talk a bit about the original 14th century poem (and how perplexing its intricate commentary on the dueling systems of knightly and chivalric honor might be to modern audiences). Then we dig into the surprisingly novel game system presented in the box, which is arranged around a sliding honor/dishonor scale that focuses on the motives and morals behind player action rather than combat. An easy knock-off of Dungeons & Dragons this is not!

Welcome to the Megaverse, folks. This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a look at Palladium's Rifts. Introduced in 1990, Rifts is like all of 90s nerd culture smooshed into one gonzo RPG. Mixing genres with wild abandon it is perhaps the ultimate form of the age old comic shop game "Who Would Win in a Fight?" Sorcerers and aliens and superheroes and biomechanical aliens and interdimensional beings and mutants and knights and the four horsemen of the apocalypse and mechs and more all rub shoulders with each other here, pushing each new sourcebook further over the top, so don your Glitterboy armor, pray to your gods and dive in. I hope you like explosions. * * * Through September 7, use the code ROLLDICE to get $6 off any purchase $25 or more at Noble Knight! Hang out with us on the Vintage RPG Discord! If you dig what we do, join us on the Vintage RPG Patreon for more roleplaying fun and surprises! Patrons keep us going! Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast! Available on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube and your favorite podcast clients. Send questions, comments or corrections to info@vintagerpg.com. Follow Vintage RPG on Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook. Learn more at the Vintage RPG FAQ. Follow Stu Horvath, John McGuire, VintageRPG and Unwinnable on Twitter. Intro music by George Collazo. The Vintage RPG illustration is by Shafer Brown. Follow him on Twitter. Tune in next week for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we return to Appendix N and check out Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions. Even though it starts off in World War II and features lots of scientific theories to explain magical effects, this 1961 novel is a formative text for Dungeons & Dragons. It establishes many of the feels of a D&D adventure, with its travel and towns and non player characters and random encounters. Perhaps most importantly, it introduces a terrifying take on the troll that Gygax would essentially Xerox for the game. Interesting stuff!

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we crack open David Hargrave's Arduin Grimoire! The eight book series, started in 1977, is a treasure trove of house rules and hacks for the original Dungeons & Dragons. There's insect people and laser guns and the dragon from Neverending Story in here – if Hargrave had a design ethos, it was probably "IDGAF," for better or worse. One of the earliest gonzo RPGs and an important block in the foundation of the OSR.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look back that the Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan films, Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984). They're great fantasy films (OK, one of them is great) that certainly influenced RPGs, but there are some indications that Dungeons & Dragons might have had a little bit of influence on Destroyer. We discuss the high points of both films, nearly forget to talk about the amazing Basil Poledouris soundtracks and totally forget to talk about that King Conan teaser that's been tormenting folks for nearly forty years. Oops!

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out the infamous White Plume Mountain, by Lawrence Schick, one of the greatest fun house dungeons of all time, featuring a strangely seafood-centric assortment of foes, now that I am thinking about it. Anyway! We chat about how the module came to be, revel in its glorious ridiculousness and drop an interesting factoid about what Schick has been up to lately.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, instead of focusing on a particular game or book, we're looking at a specific villain, the demon prince Orcus, lord of the undead. The big guy has some interesting real world history and folklore to delve into regarding monsters in general. Then we check out how his story unfolded across the first three editions of Dungeons & Dragons, primarily in the Bloodstone modules and Monte Cook's two massive Planescape campaign books, The Great Modron March and Dead Gods. * * * Before we get to all the delicious links, we mentioned a couple things in the episode that warrant the sharing of images. First, of course, is the Todd Lockwood illustration of Orcus from Dragon Magazine 42 (October, 1980). Second, Stu couldn't quite fish the name of this engraving out of his brain in the episode, but "Satan Presiding at the Infernal Council," by John Martin (circa 1823) is the piece whose vibe reminds him of Lockwood's Orcus. Finally, here is the "Orcus Mouth" in the Gardens of Bomarzo, or the Park of Monsters. * * *

This week, we talk to game designer Banana Chan about their latest tabletop RPG, Jiangshi: Blood in the Banquet Hall (co-written by Sen-Foong Lim and developed in collaboration between Wet Ink Games and A Game and a Curry). Players take the roles of members of a Chinese immigrant family in the 1920s. By day, you collaborate to run the family restaurant. By night, you fend off attacks by hopping vampires. Boasting an enormous number of collaborators, Jiangshi hits Kickstarter tomorrow, July 14. Get on that!