Trailer Drop!

By the time you read this, I will have recorded three episodes and a trailer of Into the Megadungeon, my new podcast exploring megadungeon games. I can now share with you the trailer for the podcast. 

You can listen to it here on Spotify

Or here on Apple Podcasts. 

The first episode will drop after Gen Con on Tuesday August 8th. After that, you can expect episodes to appear biweekly through the first season, which I expect to run 10 episodes. 

I thought I would say a little bit more about how the podcast has taken shape. The name of the first season is "Megadungeons as...", with the episode titles filling in the blanks. So here's the list of the first three episodes I have recorded.

Season 01: Megadungeons as...

1. Mysteries
2. Persistent Little Worlds
3. The Question of Space

In Episode 1 "Mysteries", I interview James Maliszewski about his Dwimmermount megadungeon campaign. We address, among other things, what a megadungeon is; how James' megadungeon grew organically from modest beginnings; how exploration of the megadungeon can be exploration mysteries of an entire setting; and his current project, The secrets of sha'Arthan, and the role of megadungeons in that setting. 

In Episode 2 "Persistent Little Worlds", I interview Nick Kuntz, the GM of The Twilight Age, the megadungeon campaign I'm playing in. We reminisce about the (still unfolding) campaign, and discuss the challenges and special rewards of megadungeons campaigns with large player rosters, and how megadungeons campaigns with a lot players can function as "persistent little worlds", where the stories that emerge are less about a band of protagonists and more about an abiding place. 

In Episode 3 "The Question of Space", I interview Gus about his HMS Apollyon campaign. We talk about the idea of placing your starting settlement inside a megadungeon, how to make treasure interesting, and about the centrality of space to dungeoneering. Along the way, you get to hear a lot of choice details about Gus' experience creating and running HMS Apollyon. 

I have a bunch of other interviews lined up, including with Luke Gearing, of Gradient Descent (etc) fame, and Josh McCrowell, author of a megadungeon ruleset called His Majesty the Worm. Things I am toying with for future episodes includes incorporating some player interviews alongside the GM interviews from the same campaign. (Luke suggested it, and I think it would be a lot of fun.) I'm also planning an episode called "The GMs Toolbox" that consists solely of GMing tips, tools, procedures, and house rules that facilitate GMing megadungeons. I'm also considering including an episode on sci-fi megadungeons, and another historical episode on the very early megadungeons of the hobby, since all of my interviews so far have referred in one way or another to the early megadungeon campaigns that gave rise to Dungeons & Dragons. 

I'm not promising any of these things, but you can see some of the direction my mind is moving as this project becomes a reality.

Return of the Google+ Mixtapes

In the meantime, I also have plans to pick up some old projects on the blog here. In the intervening weeks without a podcast, you can expect some tracks of the long delayed Google+ Mixtape to drop. The Google+ Mixtapes were intended to be a series of posts commemorating aspects of the OSR scene and play culture as it flowered on Google+. It's intended as one part historical memorialization, useful for those who were and weren't there, and one part reminiscence. I only ever published two tracks, one about FLAILSNAILS, and one about the "Superband" phenomena of G+ campaigns consisting mainly of very skilled GMs. 

The posts in the pipeline pick up where I left off, by providing retrospectives on some of the master campaigns of the Google+ era starting next week, including both well known campaigns like, The Hill Cantons, and some sleepers like Robert Parker's Savage World of Krül and Cole Long's Swords of the Inner Sea. You can expect some player testimony and game ephemera as well. I hope you enjoy it. I know I have enjoyed writing them. 

Also, I've started a newsletter, Missives from Beyond the Veil of Sleep, to which you can subscribe here. it packages my blog entries along with more ephemeral and in progress reflections. Check it out and consider subscribing!