The Vintage RPG Podcast

Polish up your chrome, chummer: this week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk about Shadowrun, FASA beloved cyberpunk fantasy RPG. Within, you'll find much love for the world building and art, awe for how the game predicts a lot of modern internet stuff, lukewarm reactions to the system and inevitable comparisons to Vampire: The Masquerade, Rifts, Torg and Cyberpunk 2020. A pivotal game in the history of RPGs!

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we visit Greyhawk, one of the earliest RPG campaign settings. Despite being Gary Gygax's own homebrew world, Greyhawk struggled to capture the public's imagination. We talk through the various attempts by TSR to tweak the setting, some dull, some interesting, all weirdly in the shadow of other D&D campaign settings.

If we had a crazy budget, we'd probably have licensed Iron Maiden's song "Killers" to open this episode of the Vintage RPG podcast. We don't, so we didn't, so go ahead and just listen to it on Spotify before you hit play on this. Get in the mood, you know? Anyway, this week, we're talking about Killer, the Steve Jackson Games codification of the live action college campus RPG Assassin, in which you stalk around a public space "murdering" your friends with water pistols. Sounds like a totally fun game that wouldn't scare innocent bystanders or get you arrested at all, right?

Remember the Lord of the Rings Adventure Game from Iron Crown Enterprises? I bet you don't! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a look at the short lived gateway game for Iron Crown's Middle Earth Role Playing. Published from 1991 to 1993, it is an odd little game that perhaps has more in common with pick-your-path gamebooks than it does a tabletop RPG of the period. At the very least, it has some sick cover art by Angus McBride.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, in celebration of a weird made-up holiday, we take a look at a fun little one-on-one Star Wars game from West End Games: the Lightsaber Dueling Pack. Relive the duel between Luke and Vader on Cloud City or in the throne room of the Death Star (depending on who wins) over and over again, from the comfort of you own home, without breaking a sweat! No lightsaber toy necessary!

You'd think now that the world is stuck at home, there'd be more time to play tabletop RPGs, right? True enough for Hambone, not so much for Stu. We talk about what we've been up to during the pandemic, the games we've played and run and written, and how we've been playing. * * * We're All Gonna Die is out now. You can download the issue of The New-York Ghost here. Sign up to The New-York Ghost while you're at it! Some indie love: check out Casket Land!

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we flip through the 1979 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album, written by Gary Gygax and illustrated by underground comic artist Greg Irons. Not only is this a gorgeous coloring book (with some content of questionable suitability for kids) but it also comes with a rules lite dungeon crawl game baked in, penned by Gygax himself. We hadn't ever heard of this until a few months ago, but it instantly became one of our favorite Dungeons & Dragons books of all time.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Gavin Norman, the creator of Old-School Essentials and the forthcoming Dolmenwood campaign setting. Witness his dark mastery of usability! Learn whether he personally prefers the tome or the modular books! Wonder at the intricate and contradictory minutiae of the original B/X Dungeons & Dragons! Tremble at cryptic hints of what is in store for us in the wilds of Dolmenwood!

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a look at HeroQuest, the Milton Bradley/Games Workshop board game that proved to be one of the prime gateways in to tabletop RPGs for throngs of kids in the early 90s. In no small part because of the gorgeous miniatures. And the furniture. We kid you not.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we travel to the furthest reaches of known space to explore TSR's space opera RPG Star Frontiers! We give you an overview of the game, the setting, the intriguing alien races and the game's surprising connection to the Dungeons & Dragons Spelljammer campaign setting. And more, including how TSR inevitably messed it all up! * * * After we recorded this episode, I read Bill Slavicsek's memoir about developing the West End Games Star Wars RPG, Defining a Galaxy. Slavicsek's recounting of the bidding war around the Star Wars license leads me to believe that TSR shuttered the Star Frontiers line in anticipation of developing a Star Wars RPG. That's a gut feeling, though. You should read his book (which is EXCELLENT) and decide for yourself!