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This conversation was incredible. Our first guest is Riccardo "Rico" Sirignano, co-founder of the Italian studio Two Little Mice, whose games have incredibly good game design and incredibly engaging premises, or as JRR Tolkien would say, absorbing secondary worlds. He's one of the minds behind Household, and Outgunned, the last of which took home a Silver ENNIE for Best Game and was named a 2024 ENNIE Product of the Year. If your idea of a role-playing game involves car chases, impossible stunts, tiny people living inside an abandoned house, or just making the book itself gorgeous enough to put on your coffee table, Rico probably has something for you. Welcome to the show, Rico Sirignano! I generally arrange shows by contacting one designer and asking who they'd like to speak to, and Rico dropped the name of Amit Moshe. He is the founder and creative director of Son of Oak Game Studio and the designer behind City of Mist, and Legend in the Mist. LEGEND was sort of the product that stood out at Gen Con this year, winning not one not two not three not four not five but six, that's right, SIX Ennie awards this year! Welcome to the show, Amit Moshe! You can follow Two Little Mice here: https://www.facebook.com/2littlemice/ And buy Son of Oak products here: https://sonofoak.com/?srsltid=AU7gw4Uahe2yD90pO064GwDZMZSCyleqIvpVine61_sJuOa_p3AEt8Cb

Trench Crusade is the gorgeous minis skirmish game that is sweeping the nation. I talk with Mike Franchina the artist who conceived it, and Green Ronin publisher Chris Pramas. Back Chris's current Kickstarter where you can play undead samurai out to kill Oda Nobunaga here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nikchick/nobunagas-black-castle And try out Trench Crusade here: https://www.trenchcrusade.com/product/carcass-front/

Billy Wardlow was scheduled to be executed in just a few weeks. He decided to spend the little time he had left playing D&D.  But why?  This is a reading from the book I'm currently writing, tentatively titled, Critical Hit: How and Why D&D Conquered the World in the 21st Century. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

From Deadlands and Pinnacle in the 90s to the Marvel Multiverse RPG today, Matt Forbeck makes the adjective prolific look insufficient. He writes so much that there is a unit of writing named after him, the Forbeck, and exactly how many words long is a Forbeck Matt?  Steve Kenson has been designing RPGs professionally since 1993, and in 2002 he designed Mutants & Masterminds, a game that became one of the defining superhero RPGs of the 21st century. Reviews have been singing the praises of M&M for decades, some calling it the best superhero RPG in years and others describe it as a perfect RPG. Welcome Steve! Support Steve Kenson's Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/cw/stevekenson See what Matt Forbeck is up to here: https://www.forbeck.com/

This adventure won a silver ENNIE a few weeks ago at Gen Con. Imagine Renaissance Venice with all the art and politics and war we already know about, but now with flippin' MAGIC! Tyler Denison and Sarp Duyar both worked on this magnificent adventure, and we sit down to chat about it. You can find Historica Arcanum - Serenade for the Damned here: https://www.metismedia.net/product-page/hardcover-with-pdf-of-historica-arcanum-a-serenade-for-the-damned

Pawel Kicman's WHISPERS OF THE WOODS is oily with atmosphere and new takes on old monsters. (You won't believe what he did to the basilisk.) And it's so fantastic it won the Gold ENnie for Short Form Adventure this year! We discuss herein. See more of Pawel's work here: https://heltung-storytelling.itch.io/

Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and Josh McCrowell are both ridiculously talented designers and ridiculously frequent guests on this show. But they ain't never been on together! Hear their wisdom here and now! Back Gareth's current Merryshire crowdfunding campaign here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/pelgrane-press/merryshire-detective-club Buy Josh's brilliant work here: https://www.exaltedfuneral.com/pages/the-castle-automatic-preorder See Josh's Middle-earth hexcrawl here: https://riseupcomus.blogspot.com/2025/09/a-hexmap-for-middle-earth.html

This is the Wildest Magic System You've Ever Seen! THIEVES OF THE TOME is an ENnie-nominated game where you bring a book to the table and you use it to cast magic! Check out creator George Philbrick's other games here: https://dairykillsme.itch.io/

A chat with multiple ENnie-nominee Justin Sirois! Pickup his fantastic game, THE SICKEST WITCH here: https://www.severedbooks.com/ Back his most recent Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/justinsirois/sickest-wretch-for-sickest-witch-new-non-witch-class-book Find more Sick Witch stuff here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnhambonemcguire/under-the-shadow-of-the-noon-day-witch

Delta Green is the RPG of modern existential horror. Events from the game appear to have been bleeding into our reality. We discuss with the following luminaries: Ross Payton is the man with the golden throat. He has been podcasting continuously since George W. Bush was president and YouTube was still good. He has won more ENnies than I have nipples, he created his own RPG, Base Raiders, but my favorite piece of his is The Night Clerk, a system free horror scenario which reminds me of a piece from Delta Green, actually, but that's a separate piece of our discussion. Audience, please welcome a slumming Ross Payton! Next up is a man whom I am somewhat afraid to attempt to summarize. His career has been both broad and deep, and his work was really formative to the shape of myself growing up. Delta Green took the Cthulhu Mythos and made it modern. It imagined a war of shadowy and hyper-competent conspiracies within the bloated bureaucracy of the United States government, which is something that is becoming somewhat more and more difficult to imagine with each passing week, but that is neither here nor there. Additionally, Cthulhu is real and he is coming for us all. Eldritch and hoary members of the audience, please welcome the rector magnificus, the shadow that haunts us in the shape of a man that wears the name Dennis Detwiller. Dennis, thanks for taking the time to come on the show! You are not cleared to click this link: https://www.delta-green.com/ Support Ross Payton's work here: https://www.patreon.com/cw/RPPR

MUSHIE MISSIONS is the ENnie-nominated game of mushrooms and their parties! Catch up on what the game's creators are doing here: https://brightbardgames.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoo1Ubpl1xozAFe5w9xmzI_j065xA3c2Xet-BCrJRIFaB7Mz2SSM

Wanna know about the products nominated for an ENnie? Start here! We talk to Samuel Gregor-Stewart about TERRA ANTARCTICA, a pulpy adventure of Lovecraftian horror! Buy it here: https://store.asmodee.com/products/arkham-horror-rpg-terra-antarctica-eng Vote here: https://vote.ennie-awards.com/vote/2026/ Check out the Scarring Party here, especially track 10: https://open.spotify.com/album/1UfaEfrl0tcsaZwqUOhgYJ?si=xd7ZN3I5TQmtztAYGx5JlA

Today, we have three of the most brilliant and prolific game designers of our time on the show, and my buddy Brent.  First up is Owen KC Stephens. Owen has more ENnies than I can count, and was part of the design team for STARFINDER 1st edition, and of course STAR WARS SAGA EDITION, and he's the owner and publisher of Rogue Genius Games. Next up is Rodney Thompson. Rodney worked on the 4th edition DARK SUN CAMPAIGN SETTING, and the creation of 5th edition, and is notable today because he was also co-designer of STAR WARS SAGA EDITION Thirdly, we have one of the most nerd-famous people I know, Chris Perkins. Chris's career stretches back to Dungeon Magazine at TSR, and goes all the way up to the release of the 5.5 rules for D&D in 2024. In a career so long and varied, it is hard to pick out highlights, but I would point to CURSE OF STRAHD, which is an excellent expansion and translation of RAVENLOFT into 5th edition, and of course, he is also one of the co-designers of STAR WARS SAGA EDITION. Lastly, and I promise not least, we have my buddy Brent. Brent is here because I have heard from him and others that the best campaign they ever played in was a STAR WARS SAGA EDITION campaign run by him. The concept of the game was simple: "What if a small cadre of fledgling Jedi got mixed up in the early days of the Rebel Alliance and changed the course of events in the Galaxy?"

Happy Canada Day & July 4th! In honor of the holidays, we are dropping one of our greatest hits from the past. Enjoy! Kevin Kulp & Jeff Grubb have, between them, created entire cosmologies and entire timelines. Kulp is the award-winning creator of Timewatch and the investigative fantasy game, Swords of the Serpentine. Grubb, a legend in his own time, is the engineer of the Forgotten Realms, creator of Spelljammer, and writer of Manual of the Planes. Hear the pair discuss the secrets of creating new worlds with Ben Riggs.

First up, we have fellow D&D historian Michael Calleia. For years, Dave Arneson & Gary Gygax hinted that they could not speak freely about the creation of D&D for legal reasons. Michael followed up this hints, searching archives and court documents all across the United States until he found a gem in Chicago. The July 1973 draft of Dungeons & Dragons. He is a master researcher and has been kind enough to share some of his gems with me. Michael, welcome to the show! Next up, we have game designer Amabel Holland. Her linkedin describes her as I design weird angry board games for a living and am extremely trash online . She is also arguably the game designer with the greatest clippings in America since The New Yorker did a 4,000 word profile of her and her work three years ago. She works at Holland Spiele where her title is, and I quote, GAMES WEIRDO. Her linkedin reads, "I design weird angry board games for a living and am extremely trash online." She is also the second former librarian turned game designer from Michigan I have had on in the past two weeks. She is here because Michael was quite taken by one of her more recent games... Check out Michael's deep dive into the National Archives here: https://chanceand.com/2024/02/27/a-journey-through-the-july-1973-draft-and-dds-foundational-saga/ Pick up Amabel's numerous amazing games at Holland Spiele: https://hollandspiele.com/ Michael was hanging out here when we recorded: http://www.nycwargames.com/