The Vintage RPG Podcast

First up, we talk about Mixtape Massacre, a fun little independently produced horror board game that riffs on classic slasher movies and 80s pop culture. Our main course this week is the iconic Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set red box. We talk about its place in popular culture, where it sits in the larger history of D&D, touch on the other BECMI boxes, talk cartography, the importance of indexes and more. The Isle of Dread inevitably comes up, as does the Goodman Games reissue. Finally, Stu is excited about his great mail day and walks us through some of the cool stuff he picked up from Exalted Funeral. They sell very cool indie TTRPG stuff and occult books. Couple cool Kickstarters to hip you to, as well. The first, through Exalted Funeral, is The Ultraviolet Grasslands, a psychedelic road trip RPG. The second is Welcome to Tikor, the setting book for the Afropunk Sci-fi/Fantasy RPG Swordsfall. Both campaigns have crushed their goals and we're sure to be talking about them a lot in the future, so consider getting on board now. Couple cool Kickstarters to hip you to, as well. The first, through Exalted Funeral, is The Ultraviolet Grasslands, a psychedelic road trip RPG. The second is Welcome to Tikor, the setting book for the Afropunk Sci-fi/Fantasy RPG Swordsfall. Both campaigns have crushed their goals and we're sure to be talking about them a lot in the future, so consider getting on board now. * * * Join us on the Vintage RPG Patreon for more roleplaying fun and surprises! If you want to buy any of the stuff we mentioned on the show, there's a pretty good chance our sponsors at Noble Knight Games have it in stock! 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 two weeks from now for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!

Long episode for you this time around! We kick things off with a couple of unusual Beginning Readers books from Chaosium, R. J. Ivankovic Dr. Seuss-esque adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu and Dagon. We also discuss the new Call of Cthulhu Starter Set, a box set packed with short scenarios and an introductory version of the rule meant to be a gateway for beginning RPG players. Finally, we have a long chat with James Lowder (Ring of Winter, Prince of Lies) about his work at Chaosium, as well as his long history in the RPG industry as an author, fiction line editor and game designer. Interesting anecdotes abound! * * * Join us on the Vintage RPG Patreon for more roleplaying fun and surprises! If you want to buy any of the stuff we mentioned on the show, there's a pretty good chance our sponsors at Noble Knight Games have it in stock! 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 two weeks from now for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!

We start off discussing the tile placement/currency exchange game Alhambra, which is themed around the 14th century construction of the Alhambra palace in Granada. The main course this week is Spelljammer, the space fantasy setting for D&D released in 1989, in which players sail ships into space. It is exactly as weird and silly and bizarre and absolutely awesome as you imagine. We wrap up answering questions from our listeners!

We start off talking about Steve Jackson Games' Munchkin, specifically the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle variant. It features art by Kevin Eastman and some rules variants that may surprise you if you're a long time Munchkin players. In the main segment, we talk about Masks of Nyarlathotep. What's that you say? We've already covered Masks on a previous podcast? Well, yea, that is true, but Chaosium released a new, updated version of the campaign last year and they changed enough of it that we think it warrants a revisit. Finally, we talk to Ryan Verniere and Carmen Acosta, two of the folks behind the upcoming Auction of Many Things, a Los Angeles auction of D&D-inspired art benefiting the surviving creators of Dungeons & Dragons. If you're in LA, you can attend the auction on March 2. Follow @DnDArtshow on Instagram to see all the awesome art and to keep updated on future events!

This week, we're playing Heimlich & Co., a modern issue of a clever espionage-themed game originally from 1984 (you may know it as Top Secret Spies, Under Cover or Detective & Co.). Over on our Patreon, folks who back us at the $25 level get to call the shots for an episode. This week, Sara Clemens asked us to cover Mouse Guard, Burning Wheel's RPG adaptation of David Petersen's beautiful comic series. Over the holiday break, we made some characters and ran the game so we could give you our impressions. It is pretty cool! We wrap things up discussing Stu's recent experience setting up a Blades in the Dark game on Roll20.

This show is entirely dedicated to the works of the late, great Greg Stafford, who we dearly miss. Stu takes the helm and starts us down Stafford's tabletop RPG history with the wargame White Bear & Red Moon (also known as Dragon Pass). From there, he touches on RuneQuest, the Ghostbusters RPG, the entire world of Glorantha, HeroQuest and Pendragon, all the while trying to convey how widely Stafford's work influenced the hobby. We'll be covering most of these games in more depth on the Instagram feed this week, so look for that.

Happy new year! For starters this episode, we check out the seance-themed board game Mysterium. It is sort of like Clue meets Dixit, but spooky. The main event is TSR's Marvel Super Heroes RPG. We revel in some 80s-era nostalgia, discuss the weirdness of the game and somehow wind up on the 1987 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Marvel float. Seriously, go watch that video. We also talk about Blades in the Dark, a dark fantasy heist RPG that Stu is preparing to run online for members of the Unwinnable staff.

Happy holidays, folks! We're breaking from format this episode to dig deep into the nostalgia and look at the Sears Wish Book, an important part of our childhood Christmas experiences. Specifically, we're looking at the catalogs from 1982, 1983 and 1984, which contained, you guessed it, Dungeons & Dragons stuff. They are so much more than that, though, as you'll discover when you listen! And, while we have you, let us offer our tremendous thanks for following Vintage RPG on Instagram, listening to the podcast and making this whole project fun and rewarding on a daily basis. All the best this holiday season!

It is Stu's Birthday! We lead things off with Chaosium's Khan of Khans (01:30), a fast-paced boom and bust board game about cattle thievery in Glorantha, by Reiner Knizia. The main event: Dragon Magazine (05:38). Stu gives a brief history of the publication (06:00). Hambone remembers seeing it in book stores in the mall (07:45). Stu reveals how Dragon Magazine gave him the collecting bug (09:41) and how his large run functions as a sort of history of the tabletop RPG hobby (11:00). Stu talks about how editor Tim Kask worked to keep Dragon semi-independent from TSR (13:00). Editor Roger E. Moore's tenure comes up (13:54) along with Dungeon Magazine. While Dragon slowly became an advertorial publication, Stu doesn't mind because it allows us to see D&D evolving on a month to month basis (15:00) and Hambone segues into the Dragon+. Stu gets into Dragon's experimental tendencies (17:30) and explains how Forgotten Realms was (kinda sorta) born in the magazine (19:22). Preservation comes up (21:00). A brief encouragement to subscribe to Unwinnable Monthly during our Holiday Subscription Drive (24:25). Stu gets excited about completing his Planescape collection (25:00). See you in two weeks! * Clarification: Stu meant Rubbermaid, not Tupperware Correction: Despite his whip-fast certainty, Stu was wrong. Pong came out in 1972.

In this episode, we break format to give you some gifts suggestions of the holidays – whether you give them to your favorite tabletop playing pal or add them to your Christmas lists is entirely up to you. First up, the Dragon Heist platinum edition (02:15). We chat about dice (07:00). Artisan makes very nice dice. We talk about Wormwood dice vaults and accessories (09.00). Stu laments that he didn't own the Masks of Nyarlathotep prop set from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. It comes in two flavors, regular and holy crap that is expensive (09:45). Art & Arcana inevitably comes up (13:50). Both the regular edition and the limited edition are on sale on Amazon. You can read more of Stu's thoughts on the regular edition and the limited edition on the Insta. Hambone suggests the D&D 5E conversion of X1-The Isle of Dread from Goodman Games (17:38). We thought this one would be out in time for the holidays, but alas, it's hitting shelves in January. You can pre-order it now, though and put a picture of the cover in a card or something. Or you could nab them Into the Borderlands. We wanted to plug the webstores of World Champ Game Co. and Bodie, but both their webstores are closed right now. Instead, why don't you throw them a couple bucks on their Patreons: you'll get some cool stuff every month (19:20). Hambone hits a couple quick gift suggestions (19:50) like Ghost Fightin' Treasure Hunters and SRG Super Show Finally, every year, Hambone's mom buys his a pound-o-dice from Chessex for Christmas, and that is pretty cool. See you in two weeks! * Correction: The singular of dice is die.