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Campaign Spotlight: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Folded Frequencies
This show explores the creativity and originality of home tabletop games. We interview GMs and players to hear about the unique worlds they build and the stories they tell.
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- 3 weeks ago1h 7m
The Rise of the Hag Hunters with DaShawn [S5E3]
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 ★
- 3 weeks ago42 min
The Anonymized Face of the Everyman: City Planning Department (Part 1) [S5F2]
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 ★
- Oct 1, 20261h 1m
Demons That Are Actually Bards with Raynee [S5E2]
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 ★
- Sep 24, 202644 min
Experiential Concept Dining: DNGN+DRGN [S5F1]
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 ★
- Sep 17, 20261h 20m
Playing Whimsical and Playing Salty with Paul and Cailon [S5E1]
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, <a href="https://tastefulnude.bandcamp.com/track/be-gentle-its-my-first-time?label=7
- Feb 19, 20261h 2m
Game Mechanics as a Poem Structure: Self-paced TTRPGs with Satah [S4E9]
In this week's episode, we chat with Satah about the distinction between games and writing exercises, the social expectations of GMing, and a table writing 150,000 words of fanfiction about their own campaign. We get into some of the themes that have been bubbling up through Campaign Spotlight since the beginning: the role of the GM in guiding the gameplay, player expectations around telling a cohesive story, and the way games changed in 2020 during the lockdown era. In the months since we recorded this interview, this conversation has changed how we've incorporated writing exercises in our own home games.Satah runs Folio, a very cool podcast about solo and epistolary games. Go check out their Itch for some very cool TTRPGs they've released. They also make music as People You Meet Outside of Bars (which Jake has been listening to for a decade now) and Piloting the Animal.We discuss a whole lot of TTRPG systems in this episode:Mothership, which we previously heard about in this onsite session at Vulpine TaproomGalactic, a Star Wars-inspired space opera gameMasks, which we discussed in this interview with Garrett and the Bucket BuddiesStrange Places and other AdventureByMail gamesFiasco, which we heard about our interview with Erika about using multiple systems to build the campaignFuryya, a solo survival journalling gameMonsterhearts, about the messy lives of teenage monstersDungeon World, which we discussed with Prim way back in our very first seasonAlone Among the Stars and all its hacks on ItchSatah was also kind enough to share with us the letters generated by playing the AdventureByMail game The Resistance of New Holloway, which you can read here.Thanks to Lavitts for providing the introduction to this week's episode! Beep boop.This episode also marks the end of Season 4. This has been our longest and most ambitious season yet, with some incredibly thoughtful guests and a very busy schedule of onsite recording sessions. Thank you to all the guests who's taken the time to share their games with us - and to all the listeners who keep tuning in, telling us what they think of the episodes, and supporting the production on Patreon. We're getting right back into the studio to record some more interviews and try some new episode types. Get ready to hear more of Jake and Reilly rolling big handfuls of dice in Season 5.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, <a href="https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fcampaign-spotlight%2Fid1724098373&t=YTJiZDkzM2EzOTdjMzljNGMzNTVlYTY1ZTFhM
- Feb 12, 202654 min
Onsite at OrcaCon [S4T9]
This week, we're on location at OrcaCon 2026! We hear about taste mechanics, Canadian orthography, and products for the sloppy player. Thanks to everyone who took the time to chat with us:[2:01] GameStorm is a very cool convention in Portland - and they offered listeners a promo code for discounted registration in this episode! You'll have to listen to find out what it is.[4:57] Aspiring Youth, which offers some very cool TTRPG programming for neurodivergent youth.[12:06] Brush Wielders Union, whose founder Simon has come on the podcast to talk about miniatures in combat. (Some very cool pictures of painted minis at that link.)[13:06] Found Family Adventurecrafts, whom we first met at Dragonflight GameCon a few months ago. (Go listen to our Dragonflight episode! And then come back to finish this one.)[15:36] RipCrypt, who've made a video directly addressing the game's whole raison d'être, which feels like something all indie TTRPG developers should think about.[22:08] Legends of Gadia, whom we first encountered at OrcaCon last year and who've released a full-fledged card game in the year since then! Here's an example of how the gameplay works.[32:47] The Game Shelf, an old-school local game store in Kent.[33:45] Studio Hexe, who set Jake straight on some questions about dice balance.[38:55] Inclusive Imagination, who make some very thoughtfully designed games.[41:01] Nailon Realm, whom we also first met back at Dragonflight a few months ago.[43:25] Mice of Legend (by Alchemical Press), whom we also first met back at Dragonflight, and who currently have Kickstarters going for a new OSR adventure and a Shadowdark version of Mice of Legend. We talk quite a bit about the Shadowdark system in this conversation. We also talk about OSR, which we previously talked about with Max - and then again with Max, focusing on exploration in OSR games in particular. At the beginning of the episode, we talk about our experience at OrcaCon 2025. Here's the first part and here's the second part of our time at OrcaCon last year! Last year's OrcaCon is also where we met Dante of Chance Encounter Games - and then later we interviewed Dante and attended the grand opening of the Chance Encounter Games storefront (part 1 and part 2).Go check out our website for some pictures from OrcaCon! We're trying to figure out some opportunities to get out to more cons in 2026. We're definitely getting to NorWesCon 2026 in April - but let us know if there's anywhere else in the PNW we should check out.If you like the music on the show, <a href="https://tastefulnude
- Dec 31, 20251h 14m
Game Engines and Grunk Pits: Running Green Ronin Publishing with Chris [S4E7]
In this week's episode, we chat with Chris Pramas of Green Ronin Publishing! We hear about adapting a series of novels as a TTRPG, implementing spaceship combat without writing a physics textbook, and the importance of considering what a fantasy city would smell like. Our conversation goes deep into the lifecycle of a tabletop game, the economics of the publishing industry, and the complications of crowdfunding. Spoilers abound for The Expanse and Broken Earth novel series. Thanks to Reilly for editing out the part where Jake tried to say "Fifth Season" but accidentally said "Fifth Element".Chris Pramas is the founder and co-owner of Green Ronin Publishing. They're the publisher behind Mutants and Masterminds and Fantasy Age as well as some very in-depth adaptations. We talk about the adaptations for The Fifth Season as well as The Expanse in quite a bit of detail, but their original content like Lost Island of the Pirate Queen is also extremely fun and flavourful. This year has been their 25th anniversary, so they've been doing some cool monthly specials. Also, the bankruptcy of their physical books distributor has had them in a bit of a bind over the past few months, so possibly consider helping them out?Green Ronin Publishing also has some community sites for people interested in building their own game supplements:AGE Creators Alliance is for Adventure Game Engine supplements.Chronicle System Guild is for Sword Chronicle supplements, which is the genericized version of the A Song of Ice and Fire system.Atomic Think Tank is a forum for Green Ronin TTRPGs more broadly.Chris has some great recommendations for nonfiction history:SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary BeardThe Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe by Matthew Gabriele and David M PerryReturn of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42 by William DalrympleWilliam Dalrymple and Anita Anand's podcast EmpireFinally, while we were putting these show notes together, we found the program for GenCon 2000, and it's an excellent examples of turn-of-the-century TTRPG graphic design. Head on over to our website to check it out. If you've enjoyed this interview, maybe go check out the first time we met Chris way back at OrcaCon 2025!For more conversations about publishing TTRPGs, go listen to our interview with David about self-publishing TTRPGs, our interview with Simon about minis (where we talk a lot about indie TTRPG publishing in the 90s), and our interview with Selius about publishing a third-party D&D supplement. For a discussion about TTRPG adaptations of sprawling fictional universes from the point of view of a GM, go listen to this episode with Jesse about playing a campaign in the Dune system.For some Flashlights where we talk about the history of Wizards of the Coast, here's the one where we talk about magazines and the birth of Paizo and here's the one where we talk about Chris Cox's tenure as Hasbro CEO. Thanks to Emmett for providing this week's intro! Emmett is one of the writers of <a href="htt
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