The Vintage RPG Podcast

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!

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.