RPG Ramblings

Two years' worth of inventory, gone in six months. A sixty-thousand-dollar zine that will never happen again. A hundred bucks of black-and-white flyers, hand-folded on a kitchen table, that might be the best business card in the hall.Zac Goins joins me to argue about scale. He's running a big Limithron Kickstarter and shepherding SideQuest — a pile of tiny projects from a dozen creators — at the same time, and the whiplash gave him something to say. We get into where the real margins live, why complexity is the tax you pay for going big, and what my years at Caterpillar taught me about print runs: you are going to be wrong, and the only question is which direction.We also talk about the ticking clock that starts the moment your Kickstarter funds, why a group of writers demands you know your page count before you know your words, and the two SideQuest projects Zac thinks deserve your attention.If you've ever wondered whether your next project should be a zine or a doorstop, this is the conversation that answers it honestly.https://updates.kickstarter.com/meet-sidequest-a-community-effort-to-bring-tabletop-crowdfunding-back-to-basics/

Frank Tedeschi of Deadbox Games joins the show to talk Raptor Ruckus, the Mörk Borg-powered dinosaur survival-horror RPG he co-designs — including the featherless-dinosaur controversy and the "tenacity" system built to make predators behave like real predators. Then it's the Deadbox Games origin story (hand-sewn Ale Stone boards, the leap into risograph printing with Bleak Sprout), and a deep dive into Dark Mythos — bringing genuine Lovecraftian dread into a fantasy setting where victory still costs you something.

Matt Gullett has been building Eldritch Wastelands for ten years, and he’s finally letting the world in. An arcane apocalypse has torn a hole in reality, civilization has collapsed, and a hundred years later, psychopathic warlords and voodoo mamas rule the ruins of the Weird South. It’s Gamma World’s DNA filtered through Thundarr the Barbarian and seasoned with a Southern drawl — and it runs on ShadowDark.
In this episode, Matt talks about why he ditched Savage Worlds mid-project, how a friend’s off-the-cuff recommendation changed everything, and why the stripped-down ShadowDark engine finally let his world breathe the way it always should have. He covers his Kickstarter’s blazing fast funding, his long-game vision for quarterly zines and new content, and why running games at Texas conventions has been his single best marketing tool.
Along the way we get into the elegance of purpose-built game systems versus universal ones, the OSR community’s genuine warmth, RPGs as a tool for social development — Matt credits the hobby with curing a childhood stutter severe enough to make ordering ketchup at McDonald’s a crisis — and the stories behind some of the hobby’s most generous people.
This one is for anybody who wants their apocalypse with a drawl.

This week Nick Baran of Breaker Press joins me. We talk about his project Rabid Dogs v.3 on Kickstarter. Utilizing the DCC ruleset, Nick has created a setting the emphasizes the difficulties of living in a medieval time period made more difficult by corrupting force that insinuates into their lives and even ruins their food. 

We also talk about a lot of groovy things, including writing adventures based on song titles, professional GM’ing and expanding one’s gaming experiences. Sisters and brothers, I think you will love this episode
.Link to Nick’s Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/breakerpressgames/rabid-dogs-vol-3-zine-with-collectors-box
Link to Nick’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@breakerpressgames

Getting older changes my perspective on things, especially when it comes to employment. I am not offering any life-coaching advice but am leading a discussion with Zac and Brian on the subject of vocation as it relates to the core of who we are and what we want out of life. I hope you find this discussion helpful and lead you too consider what you want out of life and how to pursue it.
Alas, this is an RPG Ramblings episode, so expect some rambling.

Brian Colin - https://briancolin.com
Zac Goins - https://www.zacgoins.com