Bob tells us about his various experiences with D&D and writing. Bob is the writer of the Jubal County Saga, a series of books about Howard Marsh, a meth addicted magician living in the American South. Bob has also designed and published a few dozen single page RPGs and a few longer ones. All of this in a joking collaboration with three partners who are definitely not octopi in trench coats.

Bob's campaign world of Aelriss is much like Earth only during the Medieval Age a Cthulhuian horror emerged along with monsters known as the Fathomless. These monsters transformed Aelriss into a waterworld with only a few islands where civilization has survived. After the initial catastrophe, an equilibrium was established. Ships could still travel and trade between islands, but only up to a certain size. Too big and the creatures of the deep would notice and swallow such a vessel. The disaster also birthed a new set of gods while the old faiths of Aelriss merged into a single religion of the old ways.

And we also got into a discussion about horror films and their connection to different cultural themes in American society.

Bob's website: https://talesbybob.com/

Bob's publishing front: https://beardedbardinkworks.com/

Bob's itch.io shop for all of his RPG games: https://beardedbardinkworks.itch.io/

Our website: https://gocorral.com/sts

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Peter tells us about Tales of Elsewhere, his own RPG system that he's using for his campaign. Characters are made with a Culture (where they're from), a Profession, and an Inciting Incident that sets them on their adventuring path. These different traits combine to decide your character's skills which are the only character number relevant to action resolution. In Tales from Elsewhere skills decide how many dice you roll for a challenge. The difficulty of the challenge decides the size of the dice you roll. Low rolls are better, so after a roll you look for the lowest die and that is your result. There are different levels of success all the way down to a critical success on a one.

Peter's first setting for Tales from Elsewhere is Clockworld, a mashup of Wild Wild West and a Lovecraftian apocalypse. With guns and Cthulhuian monsters the setting has a dangerous feel to it where combats quickly accelerate to a lethal end. Steampunk androids known as Clocks also make an appearance. Clocks are the same as you or me in their mental and moral capacity, just put together with metal instead of flesh. The world is threatened by monsters and demons on all sides as well as four vicious entities known as Wolves in Sheep's Clothing, creatures from outside reality that have taken on human form.

Tales from Elsewhere is available on Peter's website at https://www.talesfromelsewhere.com/ and to learn more about the game you can check out Peter's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@TalesFromElsewhereGames

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This marks the first of a couple episodes where I got the chance to interview different people/groups nominated for one of the 2024 CRIT Awards.

Kevin tells us about his campaign and actual play podcast, Wing Women. The campaign uses the Powered by the Apocalypse Night Witches rules system developed by Jason Morningstar of Bully Pulpit Games. Night Witches is inspired by the WW2 Russian 588th Night Bomber Regiment, a group of bomber pilots made up entirely of women. The bombers earned the nickname, Night Witches, due to the sweeping sound of their planes as they dropped bombs on the Germans at night. Kevin's game follows a fictionalized version of the Night Witches, starting with a crew just out of training and following their exploits at camp and in the sky. The game explores many themes of oppression, sexuality, and gender expression in the totalitarian and hierarchical structure of the wartime Soviet Union.

The Wing Women podcast is available on all major podcast apps. You can learn more about the Wing Women at all their links here (especially the Instagram page!): https://linktr.ee/wingwomenpod

The Night Witches game is available from Bully Pulpit Games. The print versions are out of stock at the moment, but the digital version is always in stock: https://bullypulpitgames.com/products/night-witches

Our website: https://gocorral.com/sts

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Jeph started playing D&D in school with a group of friends as most typically do. They played a couple different small campaigns, swapping between different DMs. One constant in their group was "Big Campaign," the world that Jeph ran that everyone always came back. Jeph has run Big Campaign for at least seven major campaigns and now hosts a podcast that covers the continuing adventures within the world. Heroes have defeated liches, dragons, robots, and worse as the campaign's lore continues to increase. Each campaign is separated in time from the others allowing large technological leaps to happen between campaigns. PCs started off with swords and shields but now have access to cybernetics, guns, and a plane of information that stands in for the Internet.

The current challenge for Big Campaign is that the Elemental Planes of Fire and Earth are locked away from the rest of the world. Fire and earth magic no longer work and water and air have become too powerful. The world is out of balance and someone must restore it before the world's oceans consume the land. Meanwhile modern corporations, militarized borders, and religious fanatics stand in the way of progress.

You can learn more and listen to Big Campaign at https://www.bigcampaign.com/ or you can join Big Campaign's Discord server at https://discord.gg/kn8XbxqQ4n

During the episode I mentioned a nature "documentary" on dragons. It's titled The Last Dragon or Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real and you can check it out on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYY5ksNCjCY

Our website: https://gocorral.com/sts

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Gallo tells us about his D&D campaign that was designed for a girlfriend's teenage daughter. Her one request, "I want Bob Ross to be in it." Gallo ran with the idea and created a world where Bob Ross's evil alter ego, Rob Boss, is the villain. He used his paint brush to create a painted forest full of painted monsters. The physics and tone of the world are heavily inspired by Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Cool World. The monsters are two-dimensional cartoons making battle positioning key to their defeat. Eventually the PCs succeeded and broke the paint brush of Rob Boss, freeing the world from his evil spell.

Also a prescient commentary on DnD Beyond Licensing in the later half of the episode. We were discussing the OGL debacle, but Wizards of the Coast recently went for round 2.

Today's thumbnail was made by JP Ahonen for his comic, Belzebubs. Check it out at his website: https://jpahonen.com/belzebubs

Our website: https://gocorral.com/sts

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Adam is the main DM for the Majestic Goose Network, a collection of actual play podcasts that grew out of Adam's home games with his family. The network started with One Shot Onslaught, a series of one shot D&D adventures from DM's Guild. It grew from there to around a dozen shows on various TTRPG topics. This episode focuses on Adam's homebrew campaign dubbed Halfway to Heroes. The campaign was conceived of as a subversion of the typical "kids in school" story for young adults by instead focusing on the characters' lives after school.

Halfway to Heroes takes place in Modras, a world that previously saw many attacks by mindflayers. The PCs start off taking their final practical exam for graduating as the last class from Scrimore Academy, a school dedicated to training mindflayer hunters. The school is closing down as the threat of mindflayer invasion has passed. After the exam the PCs are tasked with recovering four weather controlling orbs that have gone missing from Scrimore's magical item vault. The adventures feature lots of puzzles and comedy banter alongside old-fashioned D&D combat.

You can check out all the Majestic Goose podcasts on their website: https://www.majesticgoose.com/

And you can talk to Adam and the rest of the cast on the Majestic Goose Discord server: https://discord.com/invite/BQyEbaS

Adam talked about a world creating game he'd used for his second Halfway to Heroes campaign called The Quiet Year. You can check it out here: https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year

I mentioned a similar game called Dawn of Worlds. You can check out the PDF for that game for free from the creator's website here: http://www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf

And of course a link to Nathan's Kickstarter for The Amethyst Dragon's Hoard of Everything - a 5e Supplement: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theamethystdragon/the-amethyst-dragons-hoard-of-everything-a-5e-supplement

Our website: https://gocorral.com/sts

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Edric tells us about his campaign that takes place during the American Revolutionary War where all myths and folktales are real. Magic exists but spellcasters must keep their powers a secret or be burned as a witch. Eldritch horrors and evil spirits threaten North America while historical events proceed along a parallel path to our own reality.

Edric modeled the campaign events around the PCs' backstories and goals. They chose to be people of the frontier and American natives, initially fighting for independence from the British and the Colonists. As play proceeded the players caused the Great New Orleans Fire by unleashing the Raven trickster demon, stole treasure from Spanish galleons, and started a slave revolt. Along the way the PCs interact with numerous historical figures including Joseph Brant, Cornplanter, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Handsome Lake, John Sullivan, John Brown, and Bernardo de Gálvez.

Our website: https://gocorral.com/sts

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Josh tells us about his world, The Collide. Josh is a new DM and player, providing a unique perspective on what D&D is like from that fresh point of view.

The Collide is a combination of two worlds that smashed together in a cataclysmic event several hundred years ago. Collide is single continent split in half by a large mountain range. The western half is the original half with green plants. The original eastern half was replaced during the collision event with land from a world with red plants. The western half has been ruled by an immortal king since the cataclysm. The eastern half has a null-magic desert in the south inspired by the Bang! card game. Guns are used as magical weapon replacements and cowboys roam.

Outside of the Collide's reality, gods are at war to control the surface of Collide. This conflict is bubbling up into a threat to redo the apocalypse. Alongside the initial phases of this disaster a series of time travelers are wrecking havoc and the PCs of Josh's campaign have to stop it.

Josh has also been cataloging his experiences as a newbie DM on his own podcast called Crash Course DM: https://www.anythingyoucando.co/crash-course-dm

During the interview we also discussed a couple games that you might be interested in.

Bang! - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang!_(card_game)

Cash And Guns - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/155362/ca-dollar-h-n-guns-second-edition

TimeWatch - https://pelgranepress.com/product-category/gumshoe/timewatch/

Honor of the Samurai - https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/607/honor-of-the-samurai

Our website: https://gocorral.com/sts

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