RTFM
Maxwell Lander is an educator and photographer in eastern Canada. Aaron King is an editor and collage artist in the Midwestern US. They're both game designers, and together, they read RPG books, find the good bits, and discuss them critically. Welcome to RTFM.
Episodes
Praise him like you should! We're talking about Praise the Hawkmoth King by Sage the Anagogue, a PbtA game about teenagers, demons, and messed up sex. So yeah, there are some trigger warnings. (Praise the Hawkmoth King is coming to Backerkit on October 31.)
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and st...
Welcome to the only RPG awards in the world: the Effies.
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that you don't have to.
If you want to chat about the episode, join our Discord. And check us out on Patreon for extra episodes!
Due to scheduling issues, we've been unable to record a traditional episode of RTFM. So Aaron decides to literally read a fucking manual out loud: The Tome of NeverWorld by Erin Laughlin and Craig Sheeley.
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that you don't have to.
We interview game designer Kali Lawrie of Gem Room Games, talking Letters to Sandra, fiber arts, and curation and archival work..
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that you don't have to.
If you want to chat about the episode, join our Discord. And ...
Box season is over, so now we must rank the games. Which boxes are best? Which are worst? (They're actually all pretty good.) Plus we announce next season's theme: no game only PDF.
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that you don't have to.
If you want to chat about the episode, join our Discord...
You have been selected to work at the Triangle Agency. Game designer Sam Leigh joins us to talk about this corporate horror RPG by Caleb Zane Huett. Is corporate horror for the youths? Does metafiction have a place in RPGs? And who is the yellow voice?!
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. T...
Prepare to enter The Zone by Raph D'Amico. We compare the gamefeel of cards versus tables. We talk mutations. And we talk shit about the Southern Reach Trilogy.
We're talking the Possible Worlds series by Tyler Crumrine, six discreet games boxed together. We have them fight to the death until only the best emerges victorious. Just kidding, we loved them all.
Max Lander and Aaron Kin...
The RTFM interview series continues. We talk to Austin Walker and Tyler Crumrine about Realis, the meaning of "ashcan," and Wawa versus Sheetz.
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that you don't have to.
If you want to chat about the episode, join our Discord...
We're talking the Possible Worlds series by Tyler Crumrine, six discreet games boxed together. We have them fight to the death until only the best emerges victorious. Just kidding, we loved them all.
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that you don't have to.
Fantasy soap opera in a box? That's what you get in Dragonlance: Fifth Age. We talk about Dragonlance in general, card-based RPG mechanics, and kender genitals.
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that you don't have to.
If you want to chat about the episode, ...
Box season continues with A Guide to Casting Phantoms In the Revolution by Adam Vass & Will Jobst. We're talking mechanical crunch in narrative structure, scene-based roleplaying, and breaking Kickstarter.
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that you don't have to.
It's a holiday miracle! This Christmas, we're covering Pendragon, the classic RPG of chivalric knighthood. Can the game split the difference between history and fantasy? What can you learn by staring at bees? And would you like to roll on the cuck table?
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucki...
Just Aaron today with a stopgap episode covering session planning and playing Traveller. Why run an incomplete game? Is the military bad? How can you get a horse with an exoskeleton?
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that you don't have to.
Today we're covering Mausritter: The Estate, a box set of adventures and setting materials for teeny tiny mice adventures. What makes for a good adventure? Are you a filler-inner or a chipper-awayer? How do you deal with an evil cat wizard?
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that ...
Today, we interview game designer and podcast Daniel Kwan. We talk games in museums, wuxia movies, and smelly Toronto.
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that you don't have to.
If you want to chat about the episode, join our Discord. And check us out on...
We're back with another box set. This time, it's the Swedish Drakar och Demoner, or as it's known in English, Dragonbane. Who is this game for? Why can't indie devs get a big box budget? And why am I now keeping track of every person who's ever harmed me?
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking ...
A guest had to reschedule, so Max and Aaron had to scramble and invent a whole new schema through which to observe RPG discourse.
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that you don't have to.
If you want to chat about the episode, join our Discord. And c...
Books are out, boxes are in. That's the philosophy behind this latest episode, covering the Green Knight starter set, direct from A24.
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that you don't have to.
If you want to chat about the episode, join our Discord. And ...
RTFM is back from hiatus! And this time, it's personal. We'll be alternating our regular book reviews with interviews, and to usher in this new era, we have Will Jobst, designer of Torq and the currently crowdfunding Plasmodics. We talk about game design, learning new skills, and mutants mutants mutants.
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechan...
Who even has time to read? Not us! So today, we're talking about our own game design. Then we get sidetracked into discussing immersive experiences.
Max Lander and Aaron King dig through RPGs of yore to bring you valuable nuggets of mechanics, lore, and strangeness. They read the fucking manual so that you don't have to.
If you want to chat about the episode, join our Discord...
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