Setting the Stage, Campaigns for D&D and Other RPGs

Hem returns! Our previous guest from Episode 83 back with another BRP horror game. This time about zombies taking over Iceland. Three brave family members receive a special package that might put an end to the Endtimes. They just have to get the package off the island and into the hands of some researchers. Hem plans on releasing a new episode every day through October as part of the spooky season.

The title of the show is "VARÚ...

Avery presents her world of Traumwald which means Dream Forest. Traumwald was a peaceful, magical world inhabited by anthropomorphic animals of all kinds. Their peace was shattered by the attack of the Ichal, a biomechanical hive mind species similar to the Borg. The Ichal are led by the dark god Ulvakros who seeks to absorb all life into himself. The Ichal have spread across different dimensions and now they have come to Traumwald...

Our guests today are Jay and Sandra from the 3RPG podcast. Their podcast is a talk show, typically with three hosts. Unfortunately the third host Chris was unable to make it.

Jay and Sandra are working on a RPG product dubbed The Balance of Aksio. It's a new narrative fantasy TTRPG system with point buy character creation. The world within Balance of Aksio grew out of games that Jay and Sandra have been playing together since hi...

Flare talks with us about his campaign world, Akridon. Three continents dominate the world, Tyros for humanoid races and Dusklands for bestial races. The third continent is known as the Scourge, having being destroyed in a cataclysmic war centuries ago. The world draws a lot of inspiration from the World of Warcraft setup with duality featuring in the continents, the racial appearance, and the gods of the world. And just like in Wo...

I interviewed Daniel, my cohost of the Tabletop Community Spotlight! Daniel created his own setting called Ithasen with an in-progress wuxia TTRPG system called Metanoia to go along with it. Ithasen has a spiritual force known as Ren that pervades the world. Ren is a magical manifestation of the user's, or Rennim's, will upon the universe. Rennim that cultivate their will grow stronger and capable of more amazing feats as the conce...

Justin tells us about their new actual play show, Oops! All Healers. Justin is the GM side of the two person YouTube channel, So You Wanna Be A DM? (SYWBADM), that they host with Taylor. SYWBADM is a variety channel about different parts of TTRPGs. The main segment of their channel is a weekly talking head discussion on some RPG related topic. There are occasional guests or single segments with just Justin. There's also actual play...

Michael tells us about a D&D horseback riding experience at SaddleSnaps! The Chicago-based stable hosted a weekend camping, horseback riding, and D&D event. About 50 players came from across the country for this new experience. During the event, the players were split up into three groups. Each of the groups engaged in the "Exploration" and "Social Interaction" pillars of RPGs as a LARP. They used horses to go out on rides ...

Hem tells us about their actual play campaign, The Sprouting. Within the world of The Sprouting, Earth's history diverged during the 1800s when an eldritch horror was summoned into our reality. The horror lay in wait for centuries, building up a secret army of plant monsters. In 2020, the plant monsters struck, ruining infrastructure and attacking population centers across the world. One hundred years have passed and our heroes lea...

George tells us about his D&D actual play called Fears and Fortunes. The campaign follows the adventures of Sly, granddaughter of the Seer of Bearuport. Sly accidentally releases a bunch of ghosts from her late grandmother's tarot deck. She and her band of companions must find the fourteen ghosts that escaped and imprison them within the deck once more.

The campaign is sponsored by Forgotten Adventures, the battle map compan...

Seiya tells us about his TTRPG system and setting, Synesthesia Synthetica (SNS). SNS is a biopunk game adjacent to the cyberpunk and steampunk genres. After an asteroid induced climate disaster, Earth has rebuilt itself using bio-technology instead of the metal based tech that surrounds us in the real world. Genetically modified humans have split into distinct species and mutant horrors prowl the wastes outside civilization. The ri...

Travis tells us about his world of Tetara. Travis runs Tetara as a paid game on StartPlaying. Each group's campaign runs in a different region of Tetara. As the campaign progresses that group gets to shape their region through their actions. After a region has been molded through play, Travis tends to run a second campaign in that region to explore the consequences of the first campaign.

Here's a map of Tetara.

If Tetara soun...

Zoe tells us about her campaign in the world of Thedas from the Dragon Age video games. The campaign is an actual play on the Degenerates with Dice YouTube channel. Zoe uses the Dragon Age TTRPG published by Green Ronin. In the campaign, a pair of noble twins are cut out of their family's inheritance. They must go on adventure to make things right and earn their birthright. Lots of fun and definitely more of a beer and pretzels vib...

Ryan tells us about his new adventure, Serenity Springs! It's a cozy little suburb. Or at least it seems like it at first. Until you realize its in a dimension like Ravenloft and evil entities lurk around every corner to threaten the citizens and visitors with awful, gruesome death. Just don't bleed on Mrs. Dotty's petunias!

If you liked what your heard you can follow the Kickstarter for Serenity Springs.

If you'd like to know mo...

Dan talked with me about his Kickstarter campaign, Idols of the Neon Dark. It's a D&D 5e supplement that tries to bring the fun and atmosphere of K-pop to Dungeons and Dragons. The media frenzy around KPop Demon Hunters inspired Dan to create a product based on the musical genre that his young daughters could enjoy with him.

Idols of the Neon Dark contains an Idol character class to represent the teamwork and coordination of...

Alan tells us about his Daggerheart campaign setting, Fractus, that launched on Kickstarter recently. Fractus was a normal planet until it exploded and stopped halfway through. Now bunches of asteroids rotate a swirling magical maelstorm at the center of the planet. The people of Fractus survive on the asteroids which are large enough to support life. The land is now separated by air rather than oceans, resulting in a different pat...

Joel tells us about his actual play podcast, Critical Bits! The campaign was a teen super hero story using the Powered by the Apocalypse system Masks. The Masks system is great for teen drama and coming of age stories for superheroes that still live with their parents, have school, and don't know who they want to be yet. Joel and the players did a great job of capturing those feelings in a world where superpowered individuals are u...

The Fallout TV show has ended, but you can still get more Fallout in your life with TTRPGs!

Kylie talked with me about her actual play campaign, Fallout: The Garden of Atom. The show follows Pete and Reed as they leave their Vault in Florida. They travel towards Orlando in search of Pete's father who left Vault 71 a few years previously. Along the way they meet the wasteland survivor, Ruthie, and the Mrs. Nurse robot, Hawke. The...

Duncan Rhodes comes on the show to talk about his new book, The Creative Game Master's Guide to Extraordinary Locations: & How to Design Them or just Extraordinary Locations. The book is filled with 30 adventure locations to drop into your campaign, modify, or use as a full adventure path! The locations are loosely stated out for D&D 5e but could easily be adapted for any fantasy system. Additionally, the book has a step-wi...

This is the second of a two part interview with Calico. If you haven't listened to the first episode with him, you should go do that before listening to this one. The first episode was #72 and this is #72.5.

Calico returns with additional info on the world of Psychomortis. We get to hear more information about the Ecclesia church that rules over the world above Pandora's Labyrinth. More about the physical locations of the world....