Campaign Spotlight – Détails, épisodes et analyse

In this week's Flashlight, we head to the OrcaCon tabletop games convention in Seattle! We hear about a bunch of cool projects, we spot a prominent state official, and Jake is flummoxed by the concept of 24-hour livestreams. This convention was honestly so much fun, and we're already scheming to get to more tabletop gaming events.

Here's everyone we spoke with in this episode. Some of these were booths at the con, and some were people who saw us with a mic and wanted to let our listeners know what they were working on. We're really grateful to everyone who took the time to speak with us!

• Rainbow Roll Network features actual plays by LGBTQIA+ creators and runs Rainbow Roll Fest, which is an online TTRPG festival
• Legends of Gadia is a fantasy card game with an active Kickstarter based on an upcoming fantasy novel series
• Game On Youth is a gaming group for neurodivergent youth in Seattle
• Extra Life is a peer-to-peer fundraising organization that supports Children's Miracle Network hospitals through gaming
• Brush Wielders Union is a community with a bunch of cool resources for miniatures gamers including a podcast
• Terminal City Tabletop Convention is coming up in Vancouver next month
• Chance Encounter Games offers TTRPG workshops, games, and accessories in Seattle
• Outsider Comics is a cozy and inclusive comic book store in Seattle
• Goblin Society Games is an independent developer and publisher of board, card, and tabletop roleplaying games
• Around the Table is a local game store, cafe, and pub in Lynnwood
• Green Ronin Publishing, a roleplaying game company that's producing a Fifth Season TTRPG we're really excited about
• Cay Fletcher is an independent author and artist in Portland

Also, thanks to everyone from the Oppegaard Meadery episode who recommended OrcaCon to us!

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music.

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. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.   

This week, we chat with Andrew from Legacies LARP about terrorizing the town as a fae abductor, depicting a demonic plague, and writing story for a long-running live-action role-playing game. This is a conversation about a very different type of storytelling experience in a game that's been running continuously for decades where each plot team only controls the narrative for six months at a time. (Also, if you're wondering, the town was called Fortnight long before the game Fortnite even existed.)

Thanks to Legacies LARP for making this interview possible! We're talking about Legacies LARP this week because we really enjoyed learning about Gothic LARP with Rex last season. In addition to Legacies and Gothic, Andrew also mentions Shadow Accord and Dystopia Rising. 

This week's intro comes from Kaji, who's a player in Legacies LARP! We hope the demonic plague didn't get him. Go check out his Twitch channel.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music.

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. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.   

In this finale Flashlight of Season 2, Jake is embarrasingly earnest, Reilly gives the listeners a lot of homework, and the sword makes a second ominous appearance. We plug our Patreon, repeatedly give different numbers for the PC intro hotline (it's 724 320 2020), and talk about our plans for Season 3. This is honestly an extremely silly conversation. We've had so much fun getting to make this podcast and we're sincerely grateful to our guests so far and we're really excited to share another season of interviews with you.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music.

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. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.   

In this week's episode, we chat with Lew about unsustainable character voices, mixing ABBA with Norse mythology, and the importance of buying in to the fantasy. Very minor spoiler alert for 500 Days of Summer. We do joke about Ikea being our sponsor, but they're not, and this episode probably guarantees that they never will be.

In this episode Lew mentions the Wayward Children series as well as the SCP Foundation. Lew also shared with us a ton of very cool pictures of the maps and minis from this campaign. Head on over to our website to check them out!

This week's PC intro comes from Kyros, whom you may remember from this conversation last season about Curse of Strahd. Thanks Kyros!

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music.

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. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.   

In this week's Flashlight, we talk about intellectual property, resolve to go to law school, and finally earn that explicit rating. You can tell that we record a few weeks in advance, because we joke about WotC's next bad decision but we don't know about the DNDBeyond debacle yet. Jake gets into economic theory. Reilly's mic might just be a cursed artifact. Spoiler warning for Fountainhead? Also, we're not actually sponsored by Microsoft.

Dennis mentioned the OGL controversy last week, so go listen to the interview if you'd like to hear another perspective on the whole situation. Also, here's a book by Reilly's professor that looks pretty cool.

Here are some links that we used in research for the episode. 

• Here’s a Wall Street Journal article on the Hasbro reorganization that refers to D&D as “old-school tabletop games”.
• Here’s the Hasbro press release about the WotC CEO becoming the overall Hasbro CEO.
• Here’s the interview with WotC’s VP of tabletop gaming about the rationale for the OGL.
• Here’s an academic journal article with statistics on TTRPG publications after the release of the OGL.
• Here’s a very early Gizmodo piece on the updated OGL.
• Here’s a blog post that lays out the biggest issues with the proposed updated OGL.
• Here’s Hasbro’s annual SEC report for 2022.
• Here’s an article about the plans to release new editions under a Creative Commons license. 
• Here’s a review of Paizo’s ORC license.
• Here’s a Reddit thread on Paizo’s ORC license and whether it’ll be applied to Pathfinder Infinite.
• Here’s Monte Cook’s guide to consent in gaming.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music.

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. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.   

In this week's episode, we chat with Dennis about branching out from D&D, useful feedback on game design, and the tradeoff between generality and specificity. We're doing something a little bit different this week (talking to someone who's built a new game system) and so the conversation gets a little crunchy at times. Also, you get to hear about Jake and Reilly's whole process of backups on backups when we're recording these episodes.

Spoiler alert for Jane Eyre, which Jake embarrassingly confuses with Sense and Sensibility. Also, spoiler alert for Lord of the Rings. If you're listening to this podcast and you've somehow never read or watched Lord of the Rings, let us know.

If you're interested in downloading SAGAS for yourself, here's the Kickstarter and here's the DriveThruRPG page. Also, go check out Dennis's other projects!  

Here are some of the other game systems that we mention in this episode:

• ezd6, which has some excellently streamlined rules
• Tangled Blessings, which has an extremely strong aesthetic
• Contained, which is a very cute micro-TTRPG that Dennis built previously

This week's PC intro comes from Jordan. Thanks Jordan!

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music.

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. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.   

In this week's Flashlight, we talk the rise of actual plays, the incredible profitability of Wizards of the Coast, and the professionalization of a hobby. We get into both academic media theory and SEC filings. Reilly is astounded by how many movies Jake has never seen. Spoiler warnings for Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves as well as "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream" as well as maybe Rick and Morty? Also, we mention our Patreon on air for the first time.

Here are some links that we used in research for the episode. (It's a research-heavy episode.)

• Here’s a CNBC article about Wizards of the Coast’s financials, including its profitability. 
• Here’s a link to World’s Largest Dungeon Session 01, which is the oldest RPGMP3 episode still online.
• Here’s the host of RPGMP3 talking about actual play podcasts in 2008. 
• Here’s a Polygon article about the history and format of actual plays.
• Here’s an academic journal article on actual play production and monetization.
• Here’s a discussion of actual play shows trying to tell inclusive stories.
• Here’s an academic journal article that analyzes actual plays through a media studies lens. 
• Here’s another CNBC article (sorry) quoting WotC management on the importance of actual play to the business.
• Here’s Hasbro’s quarterly SEC filing from May 2024.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music.

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. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.   

In this week's episode, we chat with Wolfgang about the struggle of making it in showbusiness, the importance of embracing a system's genre conventions, and the deployment of feminine appeal. Spoiler warning for Jaws in this one? And, to a lesser extent, The Young and the Restless. Disclaimers that we're not actually sponsored by Adobe Acrobat and Jake is not actually 5'6. 

Here's the Beginning Idol system that Wolfgang is sharing with us. Here's Wolfgang's own Itch page. And, because we mention Eric a few times, here's Eric's actual real-life band.

We talk about the Dallas TTRPG a little bit, so here's the Flashlight where we try to play Dallas.

This week's PC intro comes from Sonne, who builds travel guides to the best (and worst) places in the multiverse. Thanks Sonne!

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music.

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. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.  

In this week's Flashlight, we talk about playtesting at scale, becoming a cult leader, and the development of D&D 3e and D&D 3.5e as well as Pathfinder. Reilly shares his philosophy on ability checks and roleplay. Jake really doesn't know anything about cinema.

We mention the games Swords of the Serpentine and Time Watch, both of which look extremely fun. Also, here are some links that we used in research for the episode: 

• Here’s a Department of Commerce study called “A Nation Online” that talks about who would be able to access the Internet in the era of the 3rd Edition playtest, complete with some very old-school Excel charts.
• Here’s a forum thread from Jonathan Tweet (the lead designer on D&D 3rd Edition) that talks about the changes in 3rd Edition.
• Here’s a contemporary Death Cookie review of 3rd Edition that discusses some of the changes from previous editions.
• Here’s a review of 3rd Edition play from 2000 that’s mostly positive.
• Here’s another forum thread with a retrospective on how players felt about D&D 3rd Edition.
• Here’s Monte Cook, one of the designers for 3rd Edition (but not 3.5) talking about the development of 3.5.
• Here’s a brief history of Paizo, the publisher of Pathfinder.
• Here’s the character generator we used in this episode.
• We didn’t really get into this, but Roll20’s Orr Report shows the relative popularity of different TTRPG systems. 

Head over to our website to see to the character sheet that Reilly builds in this episode.

 If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music.

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. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.  

In this week's episode, we chat with Rex about being a mean satyr, the role of persuasion and compulsion in TTRPGs and LARP, and how to step out of your players' ways and let them tell their own stories. This conversation might actually have convinced Jake and Reilly to start getting into LARP. Jake is very concerned about whether you still get to sleep on a comfortable mattress, though.

Rex is telling us about the Gothic LARP system. The two currently-active theatres are Luisant and Runeheim. For a picture of Rex's sword, check out our website.

This week’s PC intro comes from Jake - not host Jake, nor Season 1 guest Jake, but a completely separate Jake. We apologize for the confusion and commit to a moratorium on future Jakes on this podcast.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music.

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. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.