Between
Sessions
The week in tabletop, argued out live. News, crowdfunding, print releases. No script, no sponsor read, and no pretending I've read everything.
Every system I’ve actually sat down with — no scores, no rankings, no tier list. GM means I’ve been behind the screen for it. Played means I’ve only been on the other side of it. If a game is on this list, I’ve put real table time into it; if it isn’t, I’ll say so rather than bluff.
Where a game is still in print, the title links to where you can buy it, and most of those are affiliate links — if you buy, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Nothing is on this list because it pays; the list came first and the links came after, which is why a good number of these link to nothing at all. Shadowdark goes straight to The Arcane Library and Lady Blackbird to its author, where I earn nothing, because that’s where those books actually live. The licensed games of the 80s and 90s — Star Wars, Marvel, James Bond, FASA’s Star Trek — have no legal digital edition at all, so those point at used print or nowhere, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
A list of everything I've played is only half the picture. So here's the other column. None of this is false modesty — it's the stuff you'd find out in session three anyway.
- I have never owned a single Fudge die. Decades in, and the entire Fate shelf is a blind spot I keep meaning to fix.
- I've run Call of Cthulhu exactly once, at a convention, and barely play it otherwise.
- My first podcast died after four episodes. The Grumbling Dwarf, killed by nothing more dramatic than me not making the fifth one.
- I like Savage Worlds, but I've only ever run it at a convention.
- I haven't read most of what I get asked about. There's more game published every month than any one person can keep up with, and I'd rather say so than bluff.
Between
Sessions
Saturday morning, 08:00 CT. The week's news and crowdfunding, worked out in real time with chat.
Go Bag
Espionage tabletop with Harrigan. Tradecraft, burn notices, and the paperwork nobody talks about.
Gaming
and BS
409 episodes with Brett over six and a half years. Still holds up, and still where most of you found me.
Produced under Litter Box Studio, the network these shows live on — including the ones I make with other people.
Every campaign
about to close.
Every tabletop RPG crowdfunding campaign closing in the next seven days, sorted by how little time you have left, with funding checked Friday morning.
No rankings, no hype — just the list.
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I quit for fifteen years because I decided it was nerdy.
Older kids handed me AD&D in junior high. First character was a human ranger, and the rotation was AD&D, FASA's Star Trek and TSR's Top Secret. My mom found out that grown adults played the same game her kid did and thought that was great — which, in those years, was not the standard parental response.
Then I moved, twice in high school, away from the guys I'd started with and into schools where I didn't know anyone who played. And somewhere in there I decided the whole thing was nerdy and quietly let it go. What followed was about fifteen years of not gaming: the Army, out and working, back in for a second hitch, out again, a job, school, and the girlfriend who became my wife. Both hitches were voluntary and both put me in Germany, which finally justified two years of high school German. Not one of those years involved a die.
What ended it was a going-away drink for a friend shipping out to the Army — old friends in one room for the first time in years. One of them pitched the idea of playing again; he was already running 3.0 for his nephew and his nephew's friends. That's why 3.5 is still on the table up there. In 2003 I walked into Gen Con's first year in Indianapolis and found thirty thousand people who had never needed convincing. Since then I've run a 39-session Delta Green campaign to a real ending, which is thirty-eight sessions more than most campaigns get.
I'm not a review channel and I'm not a rules lawyer. I'm one person who actually runs these games, telling you which ones are worth your prep time — and being honest about the ones I haven't run. Beyond 5e isn't snobbery, it's arithmetic. There are systems that give you a better night for a quarter of the work, and most people have never heard of them. D&D was my front door too. It just isn't the whole house.
I run at every length: three- and four-hour convention games, one-shots, vignettes, mini-arcs, and campaigns that run for months. They're different jobs with different prep, and the short ones are harder than people think.
Be a positive force in the tabletop RPG hobby.
- Play the person, not the build. If your character sheet is the most interesting thing about your character, we've both done something wrong.
- Nobody has to have read anything first. No badwrongfun. Ever.
- Don't yuck someone's yum. That game isn't for you? No problem. But you don't win people over to the games you love by bashing theirs. Keep it constructive.