Modern

Stories set in our world, or worlds adjacent to our own.

27
Oct
2025

473 – The Cryptid Show with Mike Schubert

Mike is a longtime podcaster, and host of the show The Newest Olympian, which seeks to answer the question, “Has society been sleeping on the Percy Jackson series?”. His new show, Professional Talkers, is a comedic advice podcast all about navigating life’s awkward conversations with Sequoia Simone.

We wanted to talk about working in audio, and coming to the artform of podcasting, and so we sat down for a delightful game of The Cryptid Show, a two-player conversational RPG about a call-in radio show host answering a caller’s questions about their recent supernatural experience. It was a DELIGHT.

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Posted by Admin in Actual Play
13
Oct
2025

471 – Tapestry with Kaitlin Bruder

Kaitlin is one of the producers behind Thin Places Radio, an award-winning short-form fiction podcast in the shape of a radio show from nowhere, in which the mysterious Host comes responds to real voicemails from actual callers with supernaturally sentimental anecdotes and advice. She’s also a streamer, actual play performer, artist, and designer–a fellow wearer of many creative hats.

We sat down for a session of Kaitlin’s favorite game, Tapestry, an interpretive card-based RPG of weaving character’s stories together, and coming to witness the tanged, densely interconnected threads and patterns that result.

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Posted by Admin in Actual Play
07
Oct
2025

470 – Hunt(er/ed) with Cate Osborn

Cate is an author, podcaster, ADHD educator & advocate, kinkster and Shakespeare nerd. She hosts Sorry I Missed This, an everything guide to ADHD and relationships, and her new book, The ADHD Field Guide For Adults, drops in March. She’s also running vampire games at literal Castle Dracula as one of the GMs of Danube of the Damned, which is one of the coolest sentences I’ve ever gotten to write.

We got deep in the weeds on backyard concerts, monsters, lost identities, and tense showdowns between hunter and hunted in HUNTER(ER/ED) by Dillin Apelyan and Meghan Cross.

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Posted by Admin in Actual Play
24
Aug
2025

466 – Shadow / Giant with Rahrah

Rahrah is the creator and GM of The Heart is a Dungeon, an actual play TTRPG podcast focused on sad, emotional storytelling with a primarily BIPOC and fem presenting cast. We tapped into that deep, vulnerable spirit in a game of Shadow / Giant, an asymmetrical RPG about a gruff loner forced to take care of a mysteriously magically powerful child. Can they support one another as they race against the odds towards some kind of safety?

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Posted by Admin in Actual Play
10
Aug
2025

464 – Lights Out with Marty Schneider

Marty is one of the hosts of Breaking Mayberry, an anti-nostalgia podcast focused on watching old TV (starting with, as the title suggests, The Andy Griffith Show) and assessing what holds up and what caused permanent damage to the psyche of an entire generation.

We wanted to talk TV, and storytelling, and the weird politics of creating collaborative art, and so we sat down with Lights Out, a game about the last day on set of a long running TV show.

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Posted by Admin in Actual Play
03
Aug
2025

463 – CLASH! with Sabrina Hawthorne

CLASH! Shonen Battle Roleplay is a Tabletop Roleplaying Game love letter to shonen anime such as Bleach, One Piece, and Naruto in which big, bombastic characters grapple with dramatic fights and the dramatic emotions those fights represent.

I sat down with the game’s designer, Sabrina Hawthorne, to see the game in action.

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Posted by Admin in Actual Play
11
Jul
2025

460 – Mirror Match with Jackson Adams

Mirror Match is a role-playing game love letter to fighting games. Players create warriors based on shared themes and origins before facing off in arena combat. Inspired by two-player fighting games, sessions see new characters constantly enter the fray and the game provides scaffolding to create your own universe of mad ninja, shotgun-toting wizards, dragon-gods, and more. All of those characters will face off in the viscera-soaked court of Bloody Mary and only you can decide how they’ll fare in her wicked gaze.

I sat down with the game’s designer, Jackson Adams, to see the game in action.

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Posted by Admin in Actual Play
21
Feb
2025

442 – An Altogether Different River with Nala J. Wu

Nala is an art director, award-winning illustrator, voice actor, sensitivity consultant, and Actual Play performer; you can hear them on the award-winning AP Itaewon By Night (one of my all-time faves!), as well as a million other shows across the Internet.

We sat down to explore a town, those that left and came back, and those that returned in one of my all-time favorite RPGs, An Altogether Different River.

Episode art by Nala J. Wu

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Posted by Admin in Actual Play