Campaign Spotlight

In this week's Spotlight, we're talking with DaShawn about a fun home campaign. We hear about nine-hag backstories, Midwestern carnival games, and giant writing in red paint on the side of a barn. Spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, I guess, and maybe also Community? This campaign uses the Strixhaven module, which is an official Wizards of the Coast product. We end up discussing the benefits and limitations of running a module-based campaign, which might be helpful for anyone thinking of adapting a module themselves. For previous perspectives on WotC modules, check out our interview with Perry about Tomb of Annihilation or our interview with Kyros about Curse of Strahd. Jake also refers to our recent interview with Raynee in the context of improv in TTRPGs. During the interview, we promised we'd link to Pathfinder. It doesn't look like the occult salon game under development by members of DaShawn's table is ready for release yet. When it is, though, we'll try to get them on the podcast. Thanks to Found Family Adventurecrafts for sponsoring this episode! Their designs really do capture the joy and whimsy of a good TTRPG campaign. Go check out their website, pick up some minis and accessories, and tell your friends to do the same. Thanks to Briar for the intro to this week's episode! We previously heard Briar in the intro to our interview with Wesley last season. There's an assist in there from Emmett, who also provided the intro for our interview with Paul and Cailon earlier this season. We first met these two way back in our onsite interviews at Furlandia! If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music. You can also listen to Reilly's DJ sets on Mixcloud. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon or supporting us on Ko-Fi. A special thanks to Maureen H, Jake K, Perry C, Elvin Prince, Jason K, and Smokie Derg for supporting us on Patreon! Your support really does help us maintain this podcast as an independent project untethered from the tyranny of the algorithm. If you're interested in advertising on the show, you can also get in touch with us via Tumblr, BSky, or good old-fashioned email. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

In this week's Flashlight, we're trying out City Planning Department! Along the way, we hear about Reilly's love of a strong leader, we discover prophecies on the side of a crumbling ancient tower, and we play a game about hidden agendas, decisions by committee, and municipal infrastructure. Thank you very much to Peregrine Acolyte Jason for rounding out our three-member council! You can head on over to our website to see how the map looked at the end of our game. We lost track of time during recording and ended up playing for way longer than expected, so we split the gameplay into two episodes. The second half is coming in a couple weeks. We originally heard about City Planning Department in our interview with Garrett whose table used it in their campaign worldbuilding. We're also following the recommendation from our interview with David to try more games we find on itch.io. For a table that used a really different set of systems for campaign worldbuilding, go listen to our interview with Erika. For that matter, if you want to hear us trying out a very different worldbuilding system, go listen to our very first Flashlight where we tried out Microscope. Thanks to Spritz for providing the intro this week! If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music. You can also listen to Reilly's DJ sets on Mixcloud. I'm trying to get Reilly to upload more DJ sets because I want to listen to them too. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon or supporting us on Ko-Fi. A special thanks to Maureen H, Jake K, Perry C, Elvin Prince, Jason K, and Smokie Derg for supporting us on Patreon! Your support really does help us maintain this podcast as an independent project untethered from the tyranny of the algorithm. If you're interested in advertising on the show, you can also get in touch with us via Tumblr, BSky, or good old-fashioned email. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

In this week's episode, we're joined by Raynee of Jet City Improv's DNDProv! We talk about telling a story in ninety minutes, surprise D&D bachelor parties, and helping an owl throw a villain off a cliff. This was a really thoughtful conversation about storytelling, characters, and the intersection between improv and TTRPGs. Potential spoiler alert for Baldur's Gate 3, I guess? Hopefully this video gives you some sense of why it's worth taking an improv class to improve your TTRPG skills. Raynee mentions the Daggerheart system. We also talk about TTRPG systems that mechanize in-game interpersonal bonds. One such system is Beam Saber. If you want to learn more about Beam Saber and hear some different perspectives on relationship mechanization, check out our interview with Avalyn Ramsay (who created the system) as well as our interview with Erika (who ran a campaign in the system). Towards the end of our conversation, Jake uses an analogy about how recounting the narrative of an improv show feels like a fever dream. This is actually just Jake repeating back something Raynee said off mic a couple minutes previously. We really don't want to take credit for a guest's excellent analogy. If you're in Seattle, go check out Raynee's upcoming performances! On October 18 at 7:30 and 9:30, she'll be in Zoinkies!, an improvised Scooby-Doo themed show at the Seattle Comedy Theatre. And every Saturday in October at 9:30, she's in Last Call, an improvised haunted speakeasy musical at West of Lenin Theatre. Thanks to Found Family Adventurecrafts for sponsoring this episode! Their designs really do capture the joy and whimsy of a good TTRPG campaign. Go check out their website, pick up some minis and accessories, and tell your friends to do the same. Thanks to Elsie for providing the the intro for this episode! Go find Elsie in various places on the Internet. If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music. You can also listen to Reilly's DJ sets on Mixcloud. Reilly's DJ sets are perfect background music for an afternoon of handling podcast-related correspondence. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon or supporting us on Ko-Fi. A special thanks to Hannah W, Jake K, Perry C, Elvin Prince, Jason K, and Smokie Derg for supporting us on Patreon! Your support really does help us maintain this podcast as an independent project untethered from the tyranny of the algorithm. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

In this week's Flashlight, we're trying out DNGN+DRGN! Along the way, we end up talking about long-closed Vancouver bars, walk-in coolers, and vampire grandmothers. This ends up being a fun system - a combination of rules-light and dice-heavy, which appeals to how we like to play games. We still don't know how to pronounce "DNGN+DRGN", though. Potential spoiler alerts for Twin Peaks and Office Space. Head on over to our website to see how Reilly's character sheet looked at the end of the episode. We talk a lot about OSR games in this episode. If you want to hear more the concept, check out this conversation with Max or last week's conversation with Paul and Cailon. Thanks to Mike for providing the PC intro at the beginning of the episode! We interviewed Mike about special guest stars a couple seasons ago. If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music. You can also listen to Reilly's DJ sets on Mixcloud. Or, you can go watch Reilly live at the Pony this Saturday night. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon or supporting us on Ko-Fi. A special thanks to Hannah W, Jake K, Perry C, Elvin Prince, Jason K, and Smokie Derg for supporting us on Patreon! Your support really does help us maintain this podcast as an independent project untethered from the tyranny of the algorithm. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Welcome back to a brand new season of Campaign Spotlight! This week, we're chatting with Paul from Alchemical Press and Cailon from the Nailon Realm about solving problems without getting your swords out, playing a character with values very different from your own, and building out a vibrant world of rodents and mustelids on OSR-style TTRPG adventures. Minor spoilers for Ladyhawke, Redwall, and maybe also Adventure Time. We first met Paul and Cailon at Dragonflight GameCon back in 2025. When we invited them onto the show, we planned to talk about the Mice of Legend adventures that Paul writes, and about their collaboration to design physical minis for this specific tabletop universe. But our conversation went way beyond Mice of Legend, and we ended up talking about in-game and out-of-game information, resource scarcity in OSR-flavoured games like Shadowdark, and the separation between players and characters. Thanks Paul and Cailon for the thoughtful discussion! Head on over to our website for pictures of the minis we're discussing in this episode. Note that these are the minis we're discussing in the episode! You can see the rat tail, the snail familiar, and the spell scroll. The designs really do nail the balance between cartoonish whimsy and grounded crunchiness. A few Mice of Legend projects are coming out over the next few months: One-shot micro-adventures written as an introduction to Mice of Legend are dropping every month, published in both OSRIC and Shadowdark. Eagles, Anchors, and Outlaws (Module 7 of the campaign) is in playtesting now and will release this year. As of this episode's release, Paul is looking for beta testers, so get in touch if that seems interesting to you! The module M4: Part-Time Professional Mine Janitors, which is currently available in the OSRIC system, will be ported to Shadowdark later this year. The skirmish game that Cailon is developing and Paul is writing modules for is still under development. At the moment, it looks like the best way to get access to the rules is through the Nailon Realm Patreon. In this conversation, we mention Simon and the Brush Wielders Union - and for more context, you can go listen to our interview with Simon from last season. We also reference Sam's incredible three-dimensional battle sets. If you want to hear more about OSR games, check out our interview with Max and our follow-up conversation about OSR exploration in particular. If you want to hear more about a very different TTRPG setting all about anthropomorphic animals, you can listen to our interview with Selius about developing The Delver's Guide to Beast World. Paul mentions the webcomic Beyond the Western Deep in this episode, and I read a little of it in preparing these show notes, and it's such a charming old-school webcomic. Thanks to Gameswell for sponsoring this week's episode. And go check out their website - their books are really beautiful and elegant, and their commitment to developing games for a standard 52-card deck keeps the barrier to entry low. They've also posted draft playest material for their upcoming TTRPG Wyrd Mist, which looks really fun and flavourful. Thanks to Emmett for providing the PC intro at the beginning of the episode! Emmett also provided the intro to our Chris Pramas interview last season. Go check out Emmett's game project Shields Up as well. If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music. You can also listen to Reilly's DJ sets on Mixcloud. I'm listening to one of Reilly's DJ sets while I write these show notes. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon or supporting us on Ko-Fi. A special thanks to Hannah W, Jake K, Perry C, Elvin Prince, Jason K, and Smokie Derg for supporting us on Patreon! Your support really does help us maintain this podcast as an independent project untethered from the tyranny of the algorithm. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★