The Vintage RPG Podcast

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we journey deep under the earth to read the novel The Shadow People, by Margaret St. Clair. The bonkers 1969 sci-fi/fantasy novel was included in Appendix N of the Dungeon Masters Guide, a list of literature Gary Gygax cited as being particularly inspirational to the creation of Dungeons & Dragons. It is a clear source for the drow, the duergar and the game's preoccupation with vast underground labyrinths, but that's just scratching the surface…

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat about a game about playing rabbits: Bunnies & Burrows! This 1976 RPG is surprising for the time period and offered up a ton of innovation for RPG design, including the first skill system and first martial arts system. Bunnies are surprising critters!

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, author Jim Zub is back on the show. He tells us all about Wizards & Spells, the fourth volume of the Young Adventurer's Guides for Dungeons & Dragons. He might also (definitely) spill the beans about volume five!

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a train ride into terror in Horror on the Orient Express. We do an overview of what's in the massive Call of Cthulhu box set, discuss the scope of the campaign, Chaosium's famous attention to detail, Hercule Poirot and do a fair bit of compare-and-contrast with that other massive Call of Cthulhu campaign, Masks of Nyarlathotep. We also make several painful jokes. Hop on board!

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we brave the unknown to explore the legendary Dungeons & Dragons hexcrawl, X1 – The Isle of Dread. We discuss the allure of empty maps, dinosaurs, volcanoes, King Kong and more. We also touch on some parallels between X1 and Chaosium's Griffin Mountain for RuneQuest and the 5e D&D campaign book Tomb of Annihilation. Best pack a lunch, no telling how long this trip will be. (20 minutes, give or take, actually)

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we crack the cover of Bruce Galloway's Fantasy Wargaming (1981), one of several games of the period attempting to make a more realistic (and therefore more complicated) version of Dungeons & Dragons. We chat about the mysterious, never released Leigh Cliffs adventure scenario for Fantasy Wargaming and we puzzle over the provided statistics for Moses, the Virgin Mary and the big cheese, God Himself.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a look at Gavin Norman and Necrotic Gnome's Old-School Essentials, a modular restatement of the 1981 Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons rules. This is about as perfect a set of old school rules as we've encountered – light, fast, streamlined, concise and polished to gleaming. After reading it, we're not sure we need any more retro clones or hacks.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out the super weird, super niche RPG sourcebook from the Melsonian Arts Council, Fungi of the Far Realms, by Alex Clements and illustrated by Shuyi Zhang. This gorgeously illustrated guide to over 200 types of strange and magical fungi is 100% delightful and might be, if we're lucky, a hint at the future of the indie RPG scene.

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we enter a neo-noir world of conspiracies and horror thanks to the forthcoming storytelling RPG Cobwebs, from World Champ Game Co. We chat with designer Adam Vass and illustrator Sally Cantirino about the game, how it works, the inspiration behind the game and how well-suited North Jersey is as a setting for stories about dark doings.

This week, we take a look at the famed Dungeons & Dragons module B2 – The Keep on the Borderlands. We discuss how easy it is to find the module, even forty years later, the importance of beginner modules, the weird fact that it isn't an AD&D module and its inclusion in the 5E playtest packet. We also draw some comparisons to RuneQuest's Snake Pipe Hollow and make a surprising number of references to the 1979 cult classic film The Warriors before ruminating on human creativity. A little bit of everything, as ever. * * * Stu owns three separate copies of The Keep on the Borderlands. Corrections: Keep is for levels one through three. Bill Willingham does not have art in it – just Roslof, Otus and Diesel.