Terrible Warriors

Our next Session Zero takes us across the Known Universe to seek out a home among the countless worlds of the Imperium so that we may create a noble house worthy of claiming the planet Arrakis, also known as Dune. Yup, we’re examining Modiphius’ Dune: Adventures in the Imperium! Next week we’ll be back for Part Two of our Dune Session Zero where Brendan, Sean, and Justin will finally create their characters in Dune: Adventures in the Imperium. The sleeper will awaken! Special thanks to Modiphius for sending us a copy of Dune: Adventures in the Imperium. You can find more information at Modiphius.com or on their DriveThruRPG listing. Today's Terrible Warriors were Justin Ecock, Sean Horbatiuk, and Brendan Frye Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound Follow us on Twitter at @dicewarriors and you can support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/terriblewarriors where patreon supporters will receive copies of the character sheets created in this session!

Justin reconnects with Matthew Orr from Wet Ink Games as well as his business partner, and brother-in-law, Brandon Aten to learn more about Never Going Home, the amazing year they’ve had since GenCon2019, and the release of their new Campaign Dossiers. For everything Never Going Home and other games by Wet Ink Games visit wetinkgames.com You can also find their entire collection by visiting DriveThruRPG at: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/9148/Wet-Ink-Games Or at Indie Press Revolution at: https://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Never-Going-Home-Print-PDF.html Get connected with Wet Ink Games on Facebook at: facebook.com/WetInkGames And Matthew and Brandon invite you to join their discord channel by using this invitation: https://discord.gg/k3khpvb43Z Into the Wyrd and Wild: Second Edition is currently on Kickstarter and you can find out more by visiting: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jiangshi/into-the-wyrd-and-wild-revised-and-reprinted Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound Follow us

Justin connects with Mattias Lilja, co-creator and writer with Symbaroum to discuss bringing their award winning setting to 5e. New Rules, Same World Free League Games has just launched Symbaroum for 5e on kickstarter and have set to translate their work of the dark forest into the more familiar mainstream ruleset. In our discussion we talk about Mattias’ history with playing Dungeons & Dragons to forming a publishing company to make games of his own. We later go over the intricate challenges of converting such a fully formed and robust game into the 5e ruleset, and what changes needed to be done to the game while preserving the core intentions. We also use this conversation to open up about the importance of having a discussion with your players about the settings you play in and the intentions you have with your games. Check Out Symabroum 5e The Kickstarter is almost over but you can check out The Ruins of Symbaroum by visiting their kickstarter page at kickstarter.com/projects/1192053011/ru

There’s wolves in them there woods but it’s those very same woods you have to get through to reach the next town over if you want to try their new brew, but you better pay off your chicken race debts before you leave! Under Hill By Water, by Josh McCrowell, is a game all about playing halflings in a small village who just want to live their lives in quiet and peace. Well… not too much quiet. They’re peaceful but that doesn’t mean they’re boring. In our second episode we help Lana pay off her chicken race debts by helping Bodo with his howling wolves problem by helping Hugo spread ghost rumours in order to scare the local tax collectors guild so that the group can join Nibs on his visit to the neighbouring town to try a rival tavern’s new brew to confirm the rumours that they have a better drink than the local Dog & Pool are as reliable as the rumours that Hob Libgin found himself an honest job! Life in Under-Moot is many things, but it’s never boring. Check Out Under Hill, By Water If this game sounds li

For our first actual play adventure in over a year we've settled on playing a game that's all about having no adventures, thank you very much. Under Hill By Water, by Josh McCrowell, is a game all about playing halflings in a small village who just want to live their lives in quiet and peace. In our first episode we find out who our halfling characters will be, name the village and it's tavern, and populate the map with all manner of NPCs, meeting halls, and a guild. Welcome to Under-Moot. Check Out Under Hill, By Water If this game sounds like your cup of tea be sure to check out the itch.io page at riseupcomus.itch.io/under-hill-by-water Special thanks to Sean Horbatiuk, Velvet Duke, and Jo Drummond for joining Justin at the virtual table to explore this strangely endearing game. Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound Keep an eye out on our Patreon Page at patreon.com/terriblewarriors where supporters will be getting a copy of the three character sheets we made and a detailed list of the 20 locations of

Welcome to our first attempt at going Behind the Screen, a more one-on-one conversation where Justin shares some tips and stories from his years running tabletop games. In our inaugural Behind the Screen, Justin shares the background story to his Sweetwater Bank campaign he created for 5th Edition D&D while he was hired to run games at Toronto’s Storm Crow Manor. The Challenge Justin had several challenges going into making this campaign. Primarily it needed to be able to pick-up-and-go with zero prep time and little chance to meet the players before their game. And since this game was designed for the DM&Dine Program it needed to be friendly to brand-new players as well as engaging for those who had been playing for years. The set up needed to be quick and it needed to be completed within four hours exactly, every time it was played. Finally Justin wanted to subvert some of the default assumptions of D&D and use this limited time to showcase all the different and varied ways a simple story like

Session Zero returns as we journey into the Dark Forest of Davokar and are introduced to the world of Symbaroum. “Twilight Falls, Davokar Darkens” Symbaroum is a game that has been on my short list since I came into contact with it at GenCon 2019. I had seen it being offered by Free League and new that it had origins originally as a game only available in Swedish but I foolishly set it aside at the time as yet-another-sword-and-sorcery-rpg. Then I got to meet Mattias Johnsson Haake, who I got to finally interview last month, and through him learned all about the long journey that Symbaroum and Mattias have taken together. I also looked a little closer at the game itself and what I found was an evocative world with incredibly immersive artwork, a long thought out and lived in history, and game mechanics that didn’t get in the way of it’s rich story about corruption, power, and nature. Three Corrupted Explorers To help guide us into Symbaroum we used their recently released Starter Kit to help describe the sett

Justin connects with Daniel Kwan from the ENnie award winning Asians Represent! to talk about his actual play, Dungeons & Da Asians, and his recent writing work for Candlekeep Mysteries Teacher Daniel started off using Dungeons & Dragons as a teaching tool a The ROM, a museum in Toronto, where he used the game as a platform to energize kids imaginations to educate them on the different subjects available at the museum. From there he was invited to conventions like Breakout, where he participated in his first panel, and then to Fan Expo where he came into contact with the larger tabletop community. Not long after that he was preparing to co-create the Asians Represent podcast, which at the time would be just a monthly podcast about elevating Asian representation in tabletop gaming. Presenter As the podcast grew so did their scope and eventually they launched Dungeons & Da Asians, an actual play podcast-within-a-podcast which would explore Asian characters and settings with a cast of Asian players.

Production Note: We ran into technical difficulties with the record of Justin’s voice and were only able to recover a backup recording of his voice taken from a different microphone. Thanks for understanding and we’ll return to sounding like polished gems next week. We take a departure from meeting those who make our games to those who make our gaming tools. Justin connects with Anthony Sabatino the co-creator and composer behind the immersive tabletop music app, Tabletop Tunes. Music For Your Games Anthony Sabatino is a graduate of the Berkeley School of Music and a lover of film and videogame scores. When he wanted to find a way to integrate music more fully into his tabletop games he found the tools available online to be lacking. Nothing really did all of the things he wanted and none of the music sounds the way he imagined they should. So he teamed up with his friend Jacob Johnson who could program the code he needed to make an app that can play immersive music creative specifically for tabletop games

Today in a special feature of Meet The Makers, Justin connects with Mattias Johnsson Haake, the the project manager, editor, and co-writer behind the critically acclaimed Symbaroum. We talk about this intriguing setting where nature fights back and the lines of good and evil are blurred into shades of grey. We also talk about the strange and wonderful journey that brought Mattias and his creation from a defunct publishing company to merging with Free League Games. Running The Marathon When Mattias founded the Swedish game studio Järnringen in the early 2000’s I don’t think he could ever have expected the journey he and his company would take. They were behind the first iterations of what would one day become Mutant: Year Zero and the creators of Coriolis, but when the company was closed they had to liquidate their properties and sell them off. Coriolis would be sold to a videogame developer who would later license it to Tomas Härenstam at then new and upstart publishing company called Fria Ligan. Fria Ligan,

Today in a special feature of Meet The Makers, Justin connects with Francesco Nepitello, the co-creator of The One Ring, to talk about the ongoing kickstarter success for it’s second edition, partnering with Free League Games, and the unique foundations of the Lord of the Rings mythology in crafting their game. From Wargames to Boardgames to Role Playing Games Francesco shares with us his past and how he came to fall in love with role playing games. From early days in Venice playing wargames with his brother to the lucky happenstance of getting to meet a legendary game designer and coming to recognize the joy in developing games himself. Francesco is also one of the three creators behind the War of the Ring strategy boardgame and in 2011 co-created the first edition of The One Ring. There And Back Again, A Game Designers Tale For years fans of The One Ring have been waiting on a second edition, a new book that would streamline the old rules and provide a more cohesive experience and iron out what Francesco hi

Today in a Terrible Warriors Podcast Spotlight, Justin connects with Zack and James from The Light & Tragic Company to talk about their upcoming launch of the Realms of Peril & Glory podcast. From Audio Drama to Tabletop Adventure Zack Fortais-Gomm and James Barbarossa are no strangers to podcasts having produced the critically acclaimed sci-fi drama The Orphans and their bringing the contacts they’ve made while producing that show to invite some of Britain’s biggest voice acting stars to join them around the table to play RPGs on RPG. An Anthology of Games With A Rotating Cast Of Players Realms of Peril & Glory is not going to be just one setting or one group of players. They’ve already planned out the first three series starting with Zack as GM playing 13th Age, continuing with a D&D 5e setting with James as DM, and later a planned game exploring the world of Nibiru (which we very recently happened to cover in one of our Session Zero episodes). With each new GM or DM running the show the ton

Today in a Terrible Warriors Podcast Spotlight, Justin connects with Ryan Boelter from the Character Creation Cast. Does What It Says On The Tin The Character Creation Cast is just what you think it’s gonna be but then goes to be much more than that. Designed to inspect and explore the character creation phase of TTRPGs it’s no surprise that we wanted to sit down with Ryan to talk about his show after we’ve just dipped our toe into this topic with our own Session Zero series. They break each game examination into three parts, creating character and learning the world and it’s rules, interviewing the creators of the game, and then writing fan fiction about the characters they have created but which they’ll never get a chance to actually play a game with. Character Creation Cast has been ongoing since 2018 and they’ve already explored more than 36 different games and along that way Ryan has picked up some common themes and best examples of what makes character creation in tabletop RPGS so interesting and unique

Life In A Skyless World Session Zero returns with a dive into the unique world of Nibiru. A colossal space station home to millions of humans and the player characters who have no memory about where they came from. “From The Core We Hail” Nibiru first came onto our radar a few years ago when our friends at Modiphius sent us a press release about a game where your characters have no memories and your character sheet, mostly blank at the start of the game, will be filled in over time as you remember your past. What a neat concept! And when we finally decided to explore this game this series we found out very quickly that this game was much more and very different than what we suspected. Nibiru is home to millions of humans who have lived in this artificial environment for as long as their recorded history. The exact length of time is kept vague but it’s alluded to be in the thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of years. Nibiru provides all the air, water, food, and gravity that humans need to survive and clus

Today in a Terrible Warriors Podcast Spotlight, Justin connects with Russ Moore from Dumb Dragons Productions Good Old Fashioned D&D Russ started the Dumbgeons & Dragons podcast as a way to keep his gaming group together and to keep his own productions skills fresh and up to date after he accepted a job oversees. The result was an 80+ episode sprawling adventure set in the Rise of Tiamat module from Dungeons & Dragons. As the show grew in size so did their aspirations, bringing in better production and a more focused approach to their story telling. But, now well into their second season, they haven’t forgotten their humble beginnings and try to stay true to the spirit of the game and enjoyment around their table. Tempting Fate Of course it’s hard to do an Actual Play podcast and not be tempted to try other systems, which is where the Facing Fate podcast comes in. As Dumbgeons began to grow so did their appetite for other settings and rule sets. So, in addition to continuing Dumbgeons & Dragon

Today in a Terrible Warriors Podcast Spotlight, Justin connects with Sean Howard from The End of Time & Other Bothers! You may remember Sean as our uncontrollable stripping scoundrel in the Root: The RPG kickstarter special we hosted in 2019. When he's not turning his clothing into improvised weaponry he's hosting a LOT of really cool podcasts. In particular he's the GM and mastermind behind The End of Time & Other Bothers, an Actual Play podcast using Dungeon World and set in the fictional world of one of Sean's other podcasts, the radio drama Alba Salix. Along with End of Time he's also responsible for other long form improvised dramas and actual-play shows and in this interview we break down what we love and what we don't love in the intersection of improv and tabletop storytelling. Like most of the conversations I have with Sean this went all over the place and I hope you get something out of it that will inspire and motivate you towards your next game. You can follow Sean on Twitter at @passita

"Life Locked and Failing in a DARK FORT" We crash back into another Session Zero flailing for our lives in the madness of MÖRK BORG. "Name Your Character If You Wish. It Will Not Save You" MÖRK BORG dominated at the 2020 Ennies winning awards in Product of the Year, Best Writing, and Best Layout and Design, along with walking away with silver in Best Game. And once you hold the book in your hand you know exactly why it won in all those categories. MÖRK BORG screams off of every page and draws you into the pitch-black heavy metal world of the apocalypse where your characters’ lives are fleeting and pointless and the stakes are so high no one will triumph for long. Rather than make a single character each, Justin and Jo made three characters. You see, in MÖRK BORG your characters might not last very long so it’s a good thing that character creation takes literally seconds to complete. Four dice rolls and a very lean equipment management system and you’re back in the game. You can mourn the loss of your previous

Today in a Terrible Warriors Podcast Spotlight, Justin connects with Rev from The Critshow!  The Critshow is in their 3rd season of playing Monster of the Week but that wasn't what they had originally intended to do. Days before they had planned to launch their pathfinder actual play podcast they sat down and recorded a dummy session using Monster of the Week as a stand-in game. After recording the tech demo they realized they had stumbled up the real show they wanted to make.  The Critshow has since expanded to include Tales from the Omniverse, a series travelling between multiple words and game rules, and have invited developers of the games they're playing to join them on the show. Currently their working closely with the creator of Rapscallion as they play through a Patreon exclusive campaign called Perilous Tides.  Rev has put a lot of thought into the show he's producing and the intentions behind that show and I'm sure you're going to love listening to The Critshow as much as I have.  You can follow

In our next Session Zero we plug into Night City and create our crew playing Cyberpunk RED in one of the most iconic RPG settings of all time. Special thanks to R. Talsorian Games for sending us a copy of Cyberpunk RED to try out and you can get your own copy now on talsorianstore.com Today's Terrible Warriors were Justin Ecock, Brendan Frye, and Velvet Duke Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound Follow us on Twitter at @dicewarriors and you can support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/terriblewarriors where today's patrons will receive copies of all our character sheets from today's episode. Corrections The audio has since been corrected but an original release of this episode made the mistake of saying that CD Projekt Red purchased R. Talsorian Games. This is not true and R. Talsorian remains independently owned by the Pondsmith family.

Today in a Terrible Warriors: Spotlight, Justin connects with Kieran Bennett to talk about this own actual play podcast, For Crits and Giggles Kieran Bennett started Crits & Giggles five years ago with his real world best friends and gaming group. Together they decided to not only play a game of D&D that Kieran would write up for them but that they would also record those games and transform it into a podcast. Inspired by such shows as Geekly Inc's Greetings Adventurers (formerly Drunks&Dragons) they set out to explore the world that Kieran had created and uncover the mystery that surrounded it. You can follow Kieran on twitter @mrk_bennett You can follow For Crits & Giggles @forcngpodcast or by visiting forcritsandgiggles.com Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound Follow us on Twitter at @dicewarriors and you can support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/terriblewarriors