This week on the Vintage RPG podcast, we’re looking at Casket of Souls (1987), a puzzlebook by Ian Livingstone that spins out of the success of the Fighting Fantasy series. You, too, can pore over Iain McCaig’s lush art work, looking for clues to solve the riddle and win the titular, gold-plated casket! Well, you could in 1987, anyway. The contest is long over, but half the fun is the journey right? Well, maybe not…this is one of the hardest puzzlebooks I’ve ever encountered…

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This week on the Vintage RPG podcast, we’re looking at Barony (1990), a game that sought to redefine RPGs with concepts that were decades before their time. Open-ended character progression, keyword-based health, a free-form magic system that anticipates Mage — how the heck does this exist? And why don’t more people know about it? And who the heck is Conrad?!

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Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it!

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This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out The Sorcerers’ Enclave, a cool narrative art book by Aaron Howdle that mixes the intricate maximalism of finding books and cut-aways with the aesthetics of early Warhammer and other dark fantasy staples. Is it an RPG book? It isn’t not an RPG book! More like this, please.

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Experience Points has been nominated for an Ennie Award! Vote for it here!

Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it!

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This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we talk to Isaac VanDuyn about his ambitious RPG that seeks to fulfill the promise of all those evangelicals from the ‘80s who were so worried about tame old D&D corrupting the souls of their children. The result (illustrated by Kim Diaz Holm and featuring the cartography of Lex Rocket) is a lush and grim game of occult secrets and blood-soaked horrors wrapped in an extremely play-friendly package. And folks who missed out on the sold out Ennie-nominated Kickstarter edition, rejoice: Exalted Funeral is about to release a trade edition to satisfy your dark desires!

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Learn more at the official Outcast Silver Raiders site!

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Experience Points has been nominated for an Ennie Award! Vote for it here!

Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it!

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Welcome to Dove’s Bay, the most horrible island in Maine (take that, Stephen King)! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we check out Grimrock Isle (1992), the second Call of Cthulhu product from Triad Entertainments. It’s both a solo and a group scenario, spread across several booklets contained in a snazzy folder. Just about every mythos threat imaginable lurks in Dove’s Bay, which is sort of the way with CoC solos, but the result is still charming and pretty effective. A big helping hand comes from the inkwork from Rodell D. Sandford Jr., which really ties the whole thing together.

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Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it!

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This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we're looking at CM4: Earthshaker (1985), the BECMI module that pits players against a 1,280-foot-tall robot run by an entire clan of gnomes. Well, not exactly, the gnomes run the robot as a tourist attraction, the players have to deal with the evil NPCs who try to hijack the robot. And they better win, because, well, the tarrasque is just 50 feet tall.

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Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it!

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This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we look back at Paul M. Sammon’s coverage of the making of Conan the Barbarian in the April 1982 issue of Cinefantastique. The double issue has three features by Sammon — a lengthy piece of reportage on the filming and interviews with designer Ron Cobb and director John Milius — and lots of behind-the-scenes photos. It’s a charming bit of work that contrasts in surprising ways with Sammon’s later coverage of Conan the Destroyer, which we also discuss.

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Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it!

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This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Tyler Vance, the fine artist behind Void: The Frontier. Tyler’s been exploring Void for a while now, having published three rules-agnostic setting zines that pair his enigmatic narratives with his equally mysterious paintings. Now he’s concocted a gorgeous card game, now on Kickstarter. We talk about the game, his process and his often unsettling art, and more!

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Check out Tyler's zines and things!

Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it!

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This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Megan Dawson Jaffe about the new Nerdy City RPG Holomatixx: A New Wave Order. Spinning out of their other Omni System games like the kid adventure Rememorex and the game of transforming robots, Commandroids, Holomatixx takes on pop star superheroes in the vein of Jem and Holograms and Barbie and the Rockers. On Kickstarter now!

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Check out Nerdy City's other rad games!

Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it!

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Stu was tied up with lots of crap this week, so have a re-run!

Original show notes: Make ours Marvel! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a look at TSR’s massive, 8-volume compendium of Marvel comics lore, The Gamer’s Handbook of the Marvel Universe (1988-1992). They’re like a monster manual of superheroes and villains, some awesome, some doofy, some downright perplexing. They also amount to being an interesting in-universe history for one of the most important transitional times in the comics industry

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Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it!

Patreon? Discord? Cool RPG things to buy? All the Vintage RPG links you need are right here in one place!

Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast!