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/

In which Producer Chris continues to mess with all our minds by leaving at least one obvious error in the show!

Today, I have two masters of their craft, two gaming greats whose work is capable of standing on its own two feet and maybe even punching other games in the face, or gutting them like fish, or blasting them out the airlock depending on your genre.

First up is Luke Gearing. He is one of the Mothership boys over at Tuesday Knight Games, and is known for Gradient Descent, Fever Swamp, and most relevant to my mind, WOLVES UPON THE COAST, which I am currently running. Welcome Luke!

Second in order but by no means in significance we have Kevin Crawford, the man with the mind behind the WITHOUT NUMBER line of games. STARS WITHOUT NUMBER is the dream campaign which I seem eternally unable to get my gaming group to play. His successful crowdfunding campaigns outnumber my ex-girlfriends, and his influence on game design in the 21st century has been remarkable. He is also tremendously hard to lure into an interview, so I will publicly brag that this is the second time I've managed to seduce him into a conversation. Welcome Kevin!

Support Kevin Crawford's current Kickstarter here!

You can find a free adventure by Luke Gearing for VIOLENCE here!

This week, in honor of crossing 100 episodes, we take a peek behind the curtain of the show to have a chat about the pod itself. Where we're going, and where we've been, are both chewed over. Enjoy!

Episode 100! And is this our best episode ever?

A thing Wizards of the Coast has said is that 2024 D&D was the fastest selling version of that game ever produced. I predict that Wizards sold 50,000 copies in the first couple weeks and then made that boast.

I would also predict that the other two people we have on the podcast beat that record, because we have Rowan Hall & Spenser Starke here. Starke and Hall are two of the cooks sweating over the stove and serving us Daggerheart from Darrington Press. Daggerheart sold out its initial print run in two weeks, even though it was supposed to last a year. All of which is prelude to say, Hall and Starke are bestselling game designers whose work has broken out of the nerd ghetto to run riot in the culture at large. ENWorld praised Daggerheart as a high fantasy mash up of D&D 4th Edition, the Genesys System, Blades in the Dark, and the Cypher System, producing high fantasy combat in a collaborative storytelling environment.

Also on the show, we have Ben Costa and James Parks! They are the ENnie-award winning creators of Land of Eem, a warm, funny, and charming fantasy RPG. Before that, they created the world of Eem in their graphic novel Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo, and I am delighted to have them on the show. Welcome Ben & James!

Check out LAND OF EEM here!

And of course, DAGGERHEART can be found almost everywhere, but here's a link anyway.

First up, we have the gamer's friend, Seth Skorkowsky! Seth is a novelist, YouTuber, multiple ENnie winner, and nerd about town. His YouTube channel is a smorgasbord of RPG goodness, with a tentacle in practically every foetid pool of our beloved hobby. As a historian, I thought his piece on the three waves of moral panics around RPGs was particularly excellent and if you're listening to me, you should check that video out. Welcome Seth!

Next up, we have not a game designer, no no but a foul necromancer. The early 21st century was a dark time for fans of the Call of Cthulhu RPG, my favorite RPG. Releases for the game were rare as hen's teeth. Then, ownership shifted, the start rolled right, and Call of Cthulhu 7th edition was unleashed upon the world. Paul, you and Mike Mason managed a feat akin to that of the D&D 5th edition team in bringing back a beloved game and making it relevant to a new era. Since then, it has been something of a Golden Age for CoC gaming, with your latest release being CAMPFIRE TALES: SCOUTS AGAINST CTHULHU! Welcome Paul!

Pick up SCOUTS AGAINST CTHULHU here!

Find Seth Skorkowsky's excellent fiction here, and you thrilling YouTube channel here!

Support this channel on Patreon here!

Today we are diving deep on the demonic, and imagine what if, instead of running away from demons and devils in Dungeons & Dragons, creators and companies ran towards it?

Recently, we had Gavin Norman of Old School Essentials fame to talk about the Demonic Grimoire which is funding on Backerkit as you hear this. But May is Old School Essentials month on Backerkit, and Gavin Norman and the other Necrotic Gnomes celebrating an Exalted Funeral have gathered an entire cult of creators to summon an entire Luciferean library. Hellish hardbacks! Possessed pamphlets! Satanic scrolls! Cthonic codices! Malevolent manuals of memes from Mephistopheles! The wicked works of Woland, the only demon brave enough to visit Stalin's Moscow!

Today we have two of the eldritch elders, monstrous masters whose manuscripts will be birthed unto this wicked world whether we would have them or no.

First up is Nicholas Montegriffo. His contribution to this macabre and malign month is HELLBLASTER: AGAINST THE CYBERFIENDS! The adventure's pitch reads thusly:

"Under a burning sky rent asunder by eldritch storms, a jagged wreck from an unknown world vomits corruption. Abominations of fiendish flesh and mirrored chrome spit hot plasma death from iron orifices. Amid howls for blood and cries of pain, priceless artifacts of alien technology sound a call to adventure.

Inspired by classic modules and early-90s dark industrial aesthetics, HELLBLASTER: Against the Cyberfiends is a location-based adventure for high-level characters, set in a crashed spaceship captured by the forces of hell."

Also joining us is Luciferean luminary and accursed augur, Allen Hall. Allen's works include UHF CONTACT, a series of adventures for LIMINAL HORROR, & THE MOUNTAIN OF POWER, an awesome pamphlet adventure for Old School Essentials.

His contribution to OSE Month is titled "Out of the Iron Labyrinth" and it's described thuslhy: "OUT OF THE IRON LABYRINTH is a hell escape adventure built for play with Old School Essentials. Whether they were kidnapped by a cult, traded to a demon by an evil wizard, or accidentally banished by an errant spell, your character must navigate the Court of Yllthrax, one corner of the infinite Iron Labyrinth, in order to find a way back to the Material Plane.

Designed for play by one player character, Out of the Iron Labyrinth can be played with a GM or as a solo adventure using the included solo tools. Perfect as a self-contained module or as a side adventure when the party in your campaign gets split up (or when only one player can make it to game night)."

Back HELLBLASTER here! https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/bloodstar-productions/hellblaster-against-the-cyberfiends

Back OUT OF THE IRON LABYRINTH here! https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/m-allen-hall/out-of-the-iron-labyrinth

We're trying something different this week.

I spend a lot of time talking to game designers and, of course, I'm a historian and history teacher watching the news every day. A thing I have personally become convinced of is that the United States is going to need a new constitution, and of course, I also spend a lot of time talking to game designers. Game designers, it would seem to me, have a lot to say about how one might want to structure a new government, but I didn't know of anyone having that conversation.

So I decided to try it out myself.

I managed to get 5E designer Mike Mearls together with Professor Christopher Robichaud of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government for a conversation on how a game designer might shape a new American government, and that's what you are going to hear today.

Now if you are a regular listener to this show, I hope you enjoy what you're about to hear, and I hope that the question of how a game designer would build a new government is far enough outside the left-right dichotomy that people across the political spectrum can listen.

Right now, I don't have any further plans to have more conversations like this, so if you want more, you'll have to let me hear about it. Comment to this video, share it around, and I'm attaching a link to a survey in the show notes. If you love this and want more, let us know. If you hate it, frankly, I want to know that too.

But now, here's Mike Mearls and Dr. Christopher Robichaud.

Tell us what you think about this episode here: https://forms.gle/Jipou4cfi4o5fitd9