Reading D&D Aloud

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

Two games enter! One game leaves! And the YouTube algorithm dances in the blood!

But seriously, this is a great conversation with Gavin Norman of Old School Essentials and Mike Mearls of 5E D&D. Gavin is the mind behind Old-School Essentials and Dolmenwood. Fellow Ben, Ben Milton at Questing Beast, praised Dolmenwood as the best release of 2025. Gavin's work is famous for taking the wild, dangerous spirit of classic fantasy roleplaying and presenting it with modern clarity: clean, usable, and elegant at the table, while Dolmenwood brings that eerie fairy-tale vibe: moss, mushrooms, and the kind of folklore that smiles at you right before it bites. Next up is Mike Mearls. Meals will likely be able to eat out on the fact that he was the co-lead of D&D 5E for the rest of his life. For my money, it was the best version of the game ever published by Wizards. The quality of 5th edition was one of the factors leading to the RPG golden age of the 21st century, making Mike into something like a D&D Michaelangelo or Leonarodo Da Vinci. Welcome Mike!

Get ready for Gavin's crowdfunding campaign for DEMONIC GRIMOIRE here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/exalted-funeral/old-school-essentials-demonic-grimoire/launch_party The OSE adventure Mearls talked about is here: https://necroticgnome.com/products/adventure-anthology-1

This week we talk to two cartoonists who are making a name for themselves in the TTRPG space, Jason Lutes and JP Coovert! Jason Lutes is the designer of The Perilous Void, which Ben "Questing Beast" Milton named one of his best products of 2025. The Perilous Void is on Bundle of Holding right now for dirt cheap! JP Coovert is a brilliant designer and cartoonist whose STAR BORG takes the slammin' layout and simple mechanics of MORK BORG and sends it to a galaxy far, far away. Check out Jason's work on Bundle of Holding here: https://bundleofholding.com/presents/PerilousVoid Or his SERVANTS OF THE CINDER QUEEN here: https://lampblack-brimstone.itch.io/servants-of-the-cinder-queen Or STONETOP here: https://plusoneexp.com/collections/stonetop STAR BORG! Nothing but STAR BORG can be found here! https://jpcoovert.com/products/star-borg JP's Patreon is here: https://www.patreon.com/jpcoovert

Today, we pick the brain of the creator of the Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood!

Ed is a man who needs no introduction, but who will be subjected to one anyway, a man who's bibliography is longer than his already lengthy beard. Ed is the original creator of the Forgotten Realms, which has been translated into hundreds of novels and one pretty good movie.

Joining him is Jon Hage. Jon is the designer behind Sleeping Giant Gaming, creator of the Woven Worlds of Allera, and author of Hamel's House of Oddities, a 2025 ENNIE-nominated adventure.

You can find Ed's majestic work for Fate of the Norns here: https://www.fateofthenorns.com/store/product/ath-cliath-boxed-set/

Buy Hamel's House of Oddities here: https://www.sleepinggiantgaming.com/explore/hamels-house-of-oddities/

Today, we have two remarkable designers here to share with us their insights and thoughts. Alex Roberts is the winner of the Diana Jones Award, and the designer of STAR CROSSED and FOR THE QUEEN. Joining her is Graham Walmsley, creator of CTHULHU DARK and a TRAIL OF CTHULHU designer with many credits to his name.

Back Graham's current Kickstarter for PLAY UNSAFE here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grahamwalmsley/play-unsafe

You can pick up Alex's award-winning STAR CROSSED here: https://bullypulpitgames.com/products/star-crossed

Tonight's first guest is a hunter of hunters, a designer who seized upon the monster-of-the-week TV formula and used it as the bones of a horrifying gaming monstrosity of freakish limbs, a brutish head, a harsh brow, a criminal brain, and yes, it's alive!! Michael Sands is the creator of Monster of the Week, the game that turned supernatural investigation, bad decisions, and glorious improvisation into one of the great engines of modern tabletop roleplaying. From Wellington to game tables all over the world, he's built not just a hit game but a whole haunted ecosystem around it, with books like Tome of Mysteries, Codex of Worlds, and the newly released Hunter's Journal and Slayer's Survival Kit. It's also what I'm running for my group at the moment. Welcome Michael!

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, which recently funded, creating a retrofuturist new age of crime, glamour, and trouble. Welcome Tim!

You can find Tim's BLADES 68 here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/evil-hat/blades-68

MONSTER OF THE WEEK can be found here: https://evilhat.com/product/monster-of-the-week/

Yesterday, I interviewed 1st edition D&D artist Erol Otus an 2nd edition D&D artist Jeff Easley in the Hugh Hefner suite in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Sometime soon, it will be up on our Patreon page. Join here for a mere $3 a month!

My first guest tonight is one of the great mad scientists of tabletop gaming. Epidiah Ravachol helped create Dread, the game that made a horror RPG out of a Jenga tower. It's brilliant, cruel, elegant game design that makes players sweat before anything terrible has even happened. He's just launched a sword & sorcery RPG called Swords Without Master. Please welcome Epidiah Ravachol!

My next guest is Quinn Murphy, the creator of COMMUNITY RADIO, an improv-driven RPG about a weird town, dark humor, supernatural trouble, and the public radio station trying to narrate its way through the madness, which, frankly, is an incredible pitch. He's also the founder of Thoughtcrime Games, which is a ten-out-of-ten company name. An editor and contributor and layout designer of the GRIOT ANTHOLOGY of African-American game designers. Please welcome Quinn Murphy!

Support Epidiah's SWORDS WITHOUT MASTER here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unwrittenearths/swords-without-master

Pickup COMMUNITY RADIO here!

Enjoy the GRIOT ANTHOLOGY here!

5E + dragon mounts = :)

Chris Lindsay is the godfather of the DM's Guild, and that institution brought us titanic names in the world of game design, such as Kelsey Dionne & MT Black, to name just a few. He is now at Goodman Games, and is crowdfunding THE DRAGONRIDER'S PRIMER, a 5E supplement for winged mounts, everything from dragons to dung beetles.

Click here to see more!

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. W.F. writes like a man with a notebook full of bad ideas he's somehow made playable. We're going to talk about design, tables, taste, and why the tavern should be an engine of chaos, not a loading screen. W.F. Smith, welcome!

Also on the show: Brad Kerr, writer at Necrotic Gnome and co-host of Between Two Cairns, the podcast that reviews modules with the seriousness of scholars and the emotional stability of goblins. Brad's the author of Hideous Daylight, and Temple of 1000 Swords. and he's also the guy who, along with Skullfungus, created The Dream Shrine, which won Gold at the 2025 ENNIEs for Best Adventure, Short Form.

If you want to see WF's Pokemon parody game, click here!

Brad recommends you check out his adventure anthology, Wyvern Songs.

On Patreon, I posted my Gamehole Con seminar where I went over 18 years of leaked D&D sales data. You can enjoy it posthaste if you subscribe to my Patreon! It's only $3 a month! Click here!

Apparently, snakes have something called "hemepenes," something I only know because of Emily Allen.

Emily is a designer, writer, and the mind behind The Gardens of Ynn, one of those RPG books that feels less like a "setting" and more like a living dream you accidentally walked into and now can't stop exploring. Emily's work has that rare combination of elegance and danger: it's imaginative, it's playable, and it demands to be brought to a table and enjoyed. I am sorely tempted to start running her Stygian Library ASAP. If you like your fantasy uncanny, like wonder with teeth, Emily is your person.

And today we welcome back Josh McCrowell, designer of His Majesty the Worm, a book that basically looks at the classic dungeon crawl and hits it with a Tarot deck. With this appearance, Josh may be the most-frequently appearing guest in the history of the pod. The Worm won ENnies for best rules and best game this year.

If you want to to explore the full panoply of Emily's work, from Ynn to the Library, click here!

Preorder The Worm's first expansion, The Castle Automatic, here!

On Patreon, I posted my Gamehole Con seminar where I went over 18 years of leaked D&D sales data. You can enjoy it posthaste if you subscribe to my Patreon! It's only $3 a month! Click here!