Running Off The Rails – Details, episodes & analysis

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Running Off The Rails

Raymond O'Connor and Ariel Rascoe

Leisure

Frequency: 1 episode/14d. Total Eps: 102

Ray and Ariel equip new and experienced tabletop RPG players with actionable tips and tricks to bring their game to the next level. We have been playing Dungeons and Dragons for years now and truly believe that tabletop RPGs offer a unique life experience that everyone should enjoy. Find out how you can adapt your game to your players and ensure a successful adventure at your table.

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Apple Podcasts

🇨🇦 Canada - games
26/06/2026
#57
🇩🇪 Germany - games
02/11/2025
#81
🇩🇪 Germany - games
01/11/2025
#57

Spotify

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https://www.instagram.com/runningofftherails
110 shares
https://www.instagram.com/grim_press
3 shares

https://runningofftherails.com
38 shares
https://runningofftherails.com/kickstarter
9 shares
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397328/Emerys-Log-of-Legendary-Eminences
4 shares

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RSS feed quality

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Score global : 53%

Publication history

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How to Introduce a New Setting | The final Armorsmith's Handbook episode

Season 3 · Episode 5

Saturday, September 28, 2024 • Duration 49:26

In this episode Ariel and Ray take one last look at the Armorsmith's Handbook, a massive endeavor from the Grim Press that has to introduce twenty unique places to your campaign setting. Ray and Ariel discuss how to read and prepare box text so that your players immediately know where they are and why they should care about it. Then they talk about how to expand on a setting idea once you've settled on where you want to go, so that the setting feels alive and your players feel engaged after the first impression.

Included in this this 175+ page sourcebook, we've created 20 drop-in merchants for your game of 5th Edition.

Accompanying each armorsmith is

A fully-illustrated portrait art piece
A detailed background and roleplaying guideline
A top-down map of their shop
and a full table of unique wares tailored to their shop specifically. On these tables you will find food, wonderous magic items, spell scrolls, potions, and of course, magical armor. In fact, Aaron Gentry and Ray created 10 new pieces of magical armor for each armorsmith and Sandy Lawson created art for every single piece. That's 200 brand new fully arted pieces of magical armor for your game of 5th edition.

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The Armorsmith's Handbook is Live! Ray Dives Into The Character Creation Process

Season 3 · Episode 4

Thursday, August 29, 2024 • Duration 01:10:02

Included in this this 175+ page sourcebook, we've created 20 drop-in merchants for your game of 5th Edition.

Accompanying each armorsmith is

A fully-illustrated portrait art piece
A detailed background and roleplaying guideline
A top-down map of their shop
and a full table of unique wares tailored to their shop specifically. On these tables you will find food, wonderous magic items, spell scrolls, potions, and of course, magical armor. In fact, Aaron Gentry and Ray created 10 new pieces of magical armor for each armorsmith and Sandy Lawson created art for every single piece. That's 200 brand new fully arted pieces of magical armor for your game of 5th edition.

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New Tradeoffs, Counters, Hands, and Throws For Your Game of DnD

Season 3 · Episode 8

Tuesday, August 1, 2023 • Duration 53:35

Ray and Ariel provide mechanics that address specific criticisms they made of 5e in the previous episode. Here are some short rules that will...

Prompt players to choose between a more diverse set of weapons
Inspire new rivalries between different types of spellcasters
Help you to present more varied loot and rewards to your players.

Three design tools modern games use to make interesting encounters: power budgets, counters, and hands/throws. Dungeons and Dragons falls short in implementing these design principles sometimes for the sake of simplicity. Let's fix it.

Show Notes: https://www.runningofftherails.com/en-us/articles/decisions-episode-notes

Website: https://runningofftherails.com

Emery’s Log of Legendary Eminences: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runningofftherails/emerys-log-of-legendary-eminences⁠

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runningofftherails

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RunningOffRails

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Travel In D&D | Should You Run It At All?

Season 1 · Episode 2

Thursday, January 7, 2021 • Duration 28:34

Ray and Ariel discuss running travel in D&D. They discuss the opportunity cost of running travel and what can be added to it to make it time well spent. They offer specific tools and examples of how you can make travel unique and something that players look forward to. We hope you enjoy.

If you liked the show today, please follow us on Instagram. It is the only means we have to spread the word and put our show in front of new listeners.

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Sandboxing Vs Railroading

Season 1 · Episode 1

Sunday, December 27, 2020 • Duration 30:35

Ray and Ariel discuss how to run 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. Should you use Sandboxing or Railroading as your foundational style? We offer some actionable tips and tricks to help Game Masters experiment with both styles. Though we use D&D as the vehicle to discuss these concepts they are applicable to other popular roleplaying games like Blades in The Dark, Star Wars Fantasy Flight, Fate Core, Call of Cthulhu, Monster of the Week, Cyberpunk Red, and Masks.

<p>If you liked the show today, please <a href="https://www.instagram.com/runningofftherails/">follow us on Instagram</a>. It is the only means we have to spread the word and put our show in front of new listeners.</p>

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D&D Decisions are Dull | Using Video Games to Create Fun Choices

Season 3 · Episode 7

Tuesday, July 4, 2023 • Duration 40:42

Ray and Ariel discuss the three design tools modern games use to make interesting encounters: power budgets, counters, and hands/throws. Dungeons and Dragons falls short in implementing these design principles sometimes for the sake of simplicity, but often because it is catering to a different experience than a video game with instantaneous game-matching and player feedback. Ray and Ariel dig deeper though, and look for the specific places where Dungeon and Dragons could implement these concepts and improve on players' decision-making experience

Amazing video by Game Designer's Toolkit that discusses Trade-offs, Counters, Hands and Throws and how video games get balanced:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXQzdXPTb2A&ab_channel=GameMaker%27sToolkit

Website: https://runningofftherails.com

Emery’s Log of Legendary Eminences: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runningofftherails/emerys-log-of-legendary-eminences⁠

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runningofftherails

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RunningOffRails

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Finding Fantastic Familiars ft. The Fox from Worlds Beyond Number

Season 3 · Episode 6

Thursday, June 1, 2023 • Duration 35:24

Ray and Ariel discuss how to spice up the Find Familiar spell in dungeons and dragons. Familiars can often feel like a spell effect in our campaigns rather than fully fledged characters. Ray and Ariel were both inspired the hilarious fox familiar in Worlds Beyond Number to think up different ways DMs can create memorable familiars for their players.

Ray and Ariel present mechanics for familiar progression, discuss how to treat familiars as NPCs in your world, and come up with a few modifications to the find familiar ritual.

Website: https://runningofftherails.com

Emery’s Log of Legendary Eminences: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runningofftherails/emerys-log-of-legendary-eminences⁠

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runningofftherails

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RunningOffRails

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Prestige Classes, Paragons And Other Discovered Character Paths in D&D

Season 3 · Episode 5

Monday, May 1, 2023 • Duration 35:47

Ray and Ariel discuss achieving prestige fantasies in D&D 5e. Why did the 5e Prestige Classes unearthed arcana miss the mark?

Then Ray and Ariel present mechanics for how they think that discovered and unexpected character paths can be successful in D&D 5e.

Website: https://runningofftherails.com

Emery’s Log of Legendary Eminences: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runningofftherails/emerys-log-of-legendary-eminences⁠

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runningofftherails

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RunningOffRails

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Worlds Beyond Number

Season 3 · Episode 3

Saturday, April 1, 2023 • Duration 30:05

Link to Worlds Beyond Number: https://worldsbeyondnumber.com/

Ray and Ariel discuss their newest source of D&D inspiration, Worlds Beyond Number. Their first project, The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One is a captivating coming of age story. The story told by Brennan Lee Mulligan, Erika Ishii, Aabria Iyengar, and Lou Wilson invokes the wonder of Hayao Miyazaki movies and inspires us to bring a more curated experience to our games of D&D.

Website: https://runningofftherails.com

Emery's Log of Legendary Eminences: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runningofftherails/emerys-log-of-legendary-eminences

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runningofftherails/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RunningOffRails

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Perfect Puzzles Cont | This time with examples!

Season 3 · Episode 2

Wednesday, March 1, 2023 • Duration 54:16

Ray and Ariel continue their discussion on how to create puzzles ingrained in the setting of your world that your players will enjoy. They have each prepared puzzles to add some concrete examples for how to run puzzles effectively and published them in the RotR blog here https://www.runningofftherails.com/en-us/articles. In this episode, Ray and Ariel work through six points that helped guide their puzzle design. They use these checkpoints to make sure that the puzzles are a meaningful part of their campaign setting, and their players have total agency in how they tackle them.

If you enjoyed the show today, please follow us on Instagram and Twitter for updates about giveaways, blog posts, new Youtube content, and new DM's guild content.

Website: https://runningofftherails.com

Emery's Log of Legendary Eminences: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runningofftherails/emerys-log-of-legendary-eminences

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/runningofftherails/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RunningOffRails

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Running Off The Rails – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Running Off The Rails – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Instagram2

Other24

Twitter2

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Instagram2

Other24

Twitter2