Red Rooster's Gaming Coop

Welcome to the Saving Throes podcast! This is my Tabletop role-playing game podcast, part of the Red Rooster's Gaming Coop network where I talk gaming and gaming culture every week. Each episode will feature a topic or theme along with my take on current happenings in the world of tabletop role-playing games and semi regular updates on the games I am currently involved with, or new games or products I have come across.

This week I wanted to talk about some of my favourite retroclones. I am a big fan of old school TSR-era D&D and love the stuff that is always coming out of the OSR. The OSR began life with a very good D&D retroclone originally and grew out from there. Today, most editions of D&D have multiple retroclones, and many of them have started to branch out from the original rules and mutated into something more. I want to keep it focussed on the core retroclones though, as these games have made it possible for many players today to re-experience games from their youth with smart quality of life updates, or introduce the old school magic to a whole new audience that have found their way into the hobby through modern D&D. Tune in to hear what options are out there and what games you might like to try to capture the old school flavour of your preference. 

If you would like to reach out, you can reach me at [email protected] - I would love to hear from you! 

Follow me on X: @RedRoosterGC

Welcome to the Pining For Pixels podcast! This is my video game variety show podcast, part of the Red Rooster's Gaming Coop network where I talk gaming and gaming culture every week. Each episode will feature a subject or theme that interests me, and I will speak about what is on my mind in the world of video games!

With the impending release of the Ocarina of Time remake this week, I am revisiting one of the subjects of my earliest shows. I am presenting my present day ranking of the Legend of Zelda franchise. When last I did this, Tears of the Kingdom had just been released, but since that time we have had new entries in the series and I completed more Zelda titles that I hadn't yet completed back then as well. Beyond that, a whole new platform was also released. Tune in to hear what may have changed in my ranking, and see if you agree with me or not, while we wait for the Ocarina of Time remake to arrive.

If you would like to reach out, you can reach me at [email protected] - I would love to hear from you! 

Follow me on X: @RedRoosterGC

Welcome to the Saving Throes podcast! This is my Tabletop role-playing game podcast, part of the Red Rooster's Gaming Coop network where I talk gaming and gaming culture every week. Each episode will feature a topic or theme along with my take on current happenings in the world of tabletop role-playing games and semi regular updates on the games I am currently involved with, or new games or products I have come across.

For Halloween this year, I wanted to inject some real life horror into the show! I visited the RPG Horror stories reddit and searched online to find stories and examples of horrific TTPRG experiences! While not horror in the thematic sense, but instead horror in the sense of experience playing in terrible game situations. Some of (if not most of) these stories will likely remind you of your own experiences running or playing games. True tales of player and GM encounters that will boil your blood or make you feel vicariously exhausted! Tune in to hear these awful and horrific stories to see if you can relate to the author's experiences, or in some cases, is the author themself part of the problem?

If you would like to reach out, you can reach me at [email protected] - I would love to hear from you! 

Follow me on X: @RedRoosterGC

Welcome to the Pining For Pixels podcast! This is my video game variety show podcast, part of the Red Rooster's Gaming Coop network where I talk gaming and gaming culture every week. Each episode will feature a subject or theme that interests me, and I will speak about what is on my mind in the world of video games!

Now that Halloween is here, it is time to complete the 40th Anniversary of Castlevania special that I started last week. This week I am looking closer at the mainline franchise itself, to see how it evolved over the years, how it redefined itself, and ultimately what I consider to be the top 5 absolute best entries in this legendary series. Tune in to hear about how many games have been released in the Castlevania franchise, and to see if my top 5 matches up with yours. If you haven't played a Castlevania game before, then this should give you a good idea of the franchise and my top 5 acts as a list of recommendations on where you can start, although I am sure many will disagree with my picks. 

If you would like to reach out, you can reach me at [email protected] - I would love to hear from you! 

Follow me on X: @RedRoosterGC

Welcome to the Saving Throes podcast! This is my Tabletop role-playing game podcast, part of the Red Rooster's Gaming Coop network where I talk gaming and gaming culture every week. Each episode will feature a topic or theme along with my take on current happenings in the world of tabletop role-playing games and semi regular updates on the games I am currently involved with, or new games or products I have come across.

This week I wanted to tackle the subject of burnout in both GMs and Players. Due to the nature of the hobby, this is a very real phenomenon that can be experienced. No one is completely immune to it. I researched common ways that people in the community describe burnout and try to discuss how to mitigate. It is most common to hear about GM burnout since they typically have the most work and responsibility than anyone else at the table. However, Players can just as easily feel burned out too, for a whole host of reasons. Tune in to hear what I found to be the most common causes of burnout, and hopefully solutions to them, but also stay to hear my own brushes with burnout. 

If you would like to reach out, you can reach me at [email protected] - I would love to hear from you! 

Follow me on X: @RedRoosterGC

Welcome to the Pining For Pixels podcast! This is my video game variety show podcast, part of the Red Rooster's Gaming Coop network where I talk gaming and gaming culture every week. Each episode will feature a subject or theme that interests me, and I will speak about what is on my mind in the world of video games!

As Halloween is almost upon us, and 2026 marks the 40th anniversary of the legendary Castlevania franchise, I wanted to focus on what makes this series so good and examine the tremendous impact it has had on the video game industry as a whole. There is so much to talk about with Castlevania, that I couldn't possibly keep it to just one episode. So for this week's entry, I wanted to look at all the games that have followed this franchise's lead and have paid homage from loving nods and eerie atmospheres, to straight up clones and spiritual follow ups. The DNA of Castlevania is so easily recognizable, and whenever a game tries to follow in its footsteps, it often leads to good things. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I think this can be seen directly with how the Castlevania franchise has inadvertently produced so many ill-begotten offspring! Tune in to hear some great game suggestions if you have already played everything in the Castlevania franchise and still want more! 

If you would like to reach out, you can reach me at [email protected] - I would love to hear from you! 

Follow me on X: @RedRoosterGC

Welcome to the Saving Throes podcast! This is my Tabletop role-playing game podcast, part of the Red Rooster's Gaming Coop network where I talk gaming and gaming culture every week. Each episode will feature a topic or theme along with my take on current happenings in the world of tabletop role-playing games and semi regular updates on the games I am currently involved with, or new games or products I have come across.

After thinking long and hard about it, I have opted to do an episode of Making a Character that covers all the versions of Basic D&D from the Holmes basic in 1977, the OSR iconic Moldvay B/X in 1981, to the Mentzer Basic red box in 1983, all in one episode. To set expectations, I opted not to actually create a character for each of these Basic editions, but instead compare how the generation of a level 1 character feels different between each expression of Basic. At the end of the day, these are all very similar systems mechanically speaking, using the wood grain/white box 0e as a starting point. I simply didn't want to move on to later editions without acknowledging the level 1 experience for these versions of Basic given their importance to so many D&D players all over. Tune in to hear my impressions and which version of Basic suits my preferences. 

If you would like to reach out, you can reach me at [email protected] - I would love to hear from you! 

Follow me on X: @RedRoosterGC

Welcome to the Pining For Pixels podcast! This is my video game variety show podcast, part of the Red Rooster's Gaming Coop network where I talk gaming and gaming culture every week. Each episode will feature a subject or theme that interests me, and I will speak about what is on my mind in the world of video games!

With another quarter safely behind us, it is now time to reflect on the prior 3 months and talk about what games were the best over that period of time. It started out rather quiet in July, as the Summer months tend to be quiet on that front. In August we a ramped up as the holiday release season approached, and of course September, the first month of holiday rush releases kept things busy as expected. It seems even busier this year since many developers and publishers are trying to avoid November due to GTA 6. I will say though that this year so far has produced some very good games, and Q3 just added more notable titles to the mix. Game of the Year for 2026 is going to be tough! For now though, tune in and let's just focus on the best of Q3 2026. 

If you would like to reach out, you can reach me at [email protected] - I would love to hear from you! 

Follow me on X: @RedRoosterGC

Welcome to the Saving Throes podcast! This is my Tabletop role-playing game podcast, part of the Red Rooster's Gaming Coop network where I talk gaming and gaming culture every week. Each episode will feature a topic or theme along with my take on current happenings in the world of tabletop role-playing games and semi regular updates on the games I am currently involved with, or new games or products I have come across.

This week I wanted to talk about one of the core components of running a long term D&D campaign - keeping track of all notes and records. At first it might seem easy enough, but after enough time, it quickly can become a herculean task. When I am talking about "long term" I am meaning multi-year. Some groups out there have been running their game world for over 40 years, almost as long as the hobby itself has existed! I envy those games. If you have ever read or seen anything about one of these legendary campaigns, it seems like it is all so magical, but behind all of that is someone, or a number of people putting in the hard work to maintain their living game world, which is no small task. Thankfully there is a lot of advice out there online and plenty of tools and resources you can use to better manage your world and even enjoy doing it. Tune in to hear what advice I discovered and some of the stuff to be mindful of if you are out there looking for something similar yourself. 

If you would like to reach out, you can reach me at [email protected] - I would love to hear from you! 

Follow me on X: @RedRoosterGC

Welcome to the Pining For Pixels podcast! This is my video game variety show podcast, part of the Red Rooster's Gaming Coop network where I talk gaming and gaming culture every week. Each episode will feature a subject or theme that interests me, and I will speak about what is on my mind in the world of video games!

Time to talk about my progress with the Trails series. I have recently completed the original Trails in the Sky Second Chapter, and started into Trails in the Sky the 3rd. What a ride this series has been so far, and this is only the first official story arc! I wanted to be sure to complete Sky SC before the remake came out, and I did. In this episode I go over all my thoughts on this monumental entry in the series as I have experienced it for the first time, as well as what my first steps in Trails the 3rd have been like. I will warn though, that this episode has lots of spoilers, and since there is a recent well received remake of Trails SC, be wary if you don't want to be spoiled. Tune in if you have already played these classics or if you don't mind getting spoiled and you want to hear my thoughts on what makes these games so great (so far)!

If you would like to reach out, you can reach me at [email protected] - I would love to hear from you! 

Follow me on X: @RedRoosterGC