Reading D&D Aloud

Tonight I'm joined by W.F. Smith, the mind behind Prismatic Wasteland, one of the sharpest OSR blogs in the game. And if you've heard of Barkeep on the Borderlands, that's him too: the barhopping, pubcrawl-fantasy fever dream that took home a Gold ENNIE. Warren writes like a man with a notebook full of bad ideas he's somehow made playable. W.F. Smith, welcome to Reading D&D Aloud.

Our other guest tonight is Tim Denee, a designer with a gift for taking sharp ideas, stylish worlds, soldering them to systems under pressure. He's the mind behind Deathmatch Island, which is Battle Royale or The Hunger Games the RPG, and he has pushed forward the timeline of John Harper's magnum opus Blades in the Dark forward a hundred years with Blades '68, creating a retrofuturist new age of crime, glamour, and trouble. Welcome Tim!

If you want to catch up with WF Smith, check out his blog here: https://www.prismaticwasteland.com/

To buy Tim's latest work, click here: https://evilhat.com/product/blades-68/

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