Episodes

[#41] In this horror story, Greg tell us how a real-world disability collides with the clumsily ablist way many RPGs handle character creation multiplied by some deeply insensitive GMing. The Dark Eye is a fantasy heartbreaker that originated in Germany. D&D 5e has its own well-discussed problems with disability representation. The Gauntlet Forums hosted an engaging short discussion about playing RPGs with a speech disorder. We tell horror stories every Friday! Check out our other episodes! ...

[#40] We get together to take a Buzzfeed-style D&D race quiz and see what happens. Essentialism aside, it's a fun exercise in exploring the assumptions the game makes about its core cultures, and we learned a little more about each other along the way. There's a million such quizzes, but we used this one. We didn't get around to the D&D Class Quiz, but we had one picked out. As with D&D caharcters, there are levels of passive aggression. Ancestry & Culture: An Alternative to Race in 5e from ...

[#39] Jim just played Odyssey Aquatica! It's a playest for the Paragon system by John Harper. In this session, we mee the explorers, build our boat, and descend into the darkest depths of the Pacific to resuce the crew of a Sealab in distress. The Paragon system debuted in the Agon RPG. Odyssey Aquatica is availabe via Old Dog Games. The game draws heavily from the Wes Anderson film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Did you know we have shirts? Check out the STORE • Theme Music: º Crunk ...

[#38] In Greg's personal horror story, a Pathfinder (shudder) campaign goes off the rails thanks to, among other things, a militant pacifist, a BBEG with plot immmunity, and a bell that can't be unrung. The hunchback has a long and storied history as a genre trope. You will definitely want Tome of Beasts 3 when it drops. Check out a few cool ideas for a pacifist cleric. We tell horror stories every Friday! Check out our other episodes! • Theme Music: º Crunk Knight by Kevin MacLeodLink: htt...

[#37] It's our first DM Advice episode with the new crew! We try not to lose our heads as we talk about players made paranoid by the Feign Death spell, dumb magic items, excessive sassiness and tippling at the table. There's an entire magazine devoted to sassiness if you need information on it. Enjoy a D&D-themed beer if you allow that sort of thing at your table. Join the conversation at the DMAcademy subreddit. Everything we love can be found at curmudgeonsanddragons.com • Theme Music: º ...

[#36] Jim just played Old School Essentials! We're using this popular D&D retro-clone as the backbone for our run through the classic AD&D A1-4 Slave Lord series of modules. Old School Essentials is in print and available from Necrotic Gnome. We organized this session via The Gauntlet Online Gaming Community. Follow along in the official PDF reprint of the originals. Check out AP video of our game on Mike's YouTube channel. Did you know we have shirts? Check out the STORE • Theme Music: º...

[#35] You'd think Planescape is a setting so cool you couldn't screw it up, but in this RPG Horror story from GenCon 1998, Jim (via his friend The Ferrett) impales that expectation on a wall full of razorvine. Jason, Josey, and Greg share in the horror. GenCon is still going strong, fortunately. Many veteran D&D players consider Planescape the finest setting ever released for D&D. Jim's pal Ferrett Steinmetz went on to become a published SF author. There's no official bariaur for 5e yet, whi...

[#34] Hello, adventurers! This week Jason, Josey, Jim, and Greg dive down the rabbit hole of generating player character ability scores in D&D 5e. For some reason, some folks get pretty salty about the Standard Array There are roughly as many ways to generate stats as there are DMs. Jason cites the Tic Tac Toe method. Jim is partial to the ability score draft. Everything we love can be found at curmudgeonsanddragons.com • Theme Music: º Crunk Knight by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompete...

[#33] Jim just played Night Witches! It's a pbta game by Fiasco designer Jason Morningtsar, and tells the story of Soviet airwomen in World War 2 who flew WWI-era byplanes in night-time bombing missions against the Nazis. Night Witches is in print and available from Bully Pulpit Games. We organized this session via The Gauntlet Online Gaming Community. Check out the History Channel overview of the 388th. Did you know we have shirts? Check out the STORE • Theme Music: º Crunk Knight by Kevi...

[#32] Jason tells the story about a group who killed a player off screen just because he got a girlfriend. Jason pines for high school, Josey and Greg agree, and Jim tries to remember high school. Read the story here. The classic Killed Offscreen Trope. We tell horror stories every Friday! Check out our other episodes. • Theme Music: º Crunk Knight by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3566-crunk-knight License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Hosted by Jason Po...

Hello, adventurers! This week Jason, Josey, Jim and Greg settle into the Character Creation Corner to build The Darknight Detective in D&D 5e. That's this guy, in case you were unfamiliar. This is the Revised Ranger Jim was pining over. It was never made official. Remember that time DC made Batman a Knight of the Round Table? Download the character sheet HERE Everything we love can be found at curmudgeonsanddragons.com • Theme Music: º Crunk Knight by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompet...

Jim just played Found! It's by David MK, and still in devleopment, so it's not yet available for general release. It's a playset for the Cortex Prime system about 'shared-consciousness clone conspiracy' in the spirit of Sense8 and Orphan Black. Cortex Prime rules are a vailabe in PDF or a really nice hardcover. We organized this session via The Gauntlet Online Gaming Community. After listening, indulge any unslaked Matt Ryan thirst. Did you know we have shirts? Check out the STORE • Theme ...

Josey tells the tale of Jason (not that Jason), a Game Master (yes they were playing Pathfinder) who created an impossible scenario for our hero Tristian. Read along with us HERE We tell horror stories every Friday! Check out our other episodes at curmudgeonsanddragons.com/episodes • Theme Music: º Crunk Knight by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3566-crunk-knight License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license • Story Music: º Crusade Heavy Industry by Kevin MacLeod ...

Hello adventurers! We’re back! Jason and Josey along with new hosts Greg and Jim got into metagaming. Surprisingly no one got hurt... What exactly is "meta gaming"? How does metagming can hurt your game? How can we use metagaming to help our games? Why does Strahd be kinda sexy tho? Everything we love can be found at curmudgeonsanddragons.com • Theme Music: º Crunk Knight by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3566-crunk-knight • Transition Music: º Thatched Villag...

[#27] The party is taking a short rest over the holidays to take care of life stuff. We have some fun things planned for next year when we start up again and we can't wait to share it all with you! Thanks for a great first year

[#26] Jason and Josey chatted from an entire continent away to tell some stories they heard this past month: How 2 players over-roleplayed into ruining a new DM’s first one-shot The DMPC who wouldn’t go away The player who learned she was the problem We have new shirts! Check out http://www.curmudgeonsanddragons.com/store Hosted by Jason Portizo and Josey Diaz Produced and Edited by Jason Portizo Curmudgeons and Dragons is a JTP Audio production • Theme Music: º Crunk Knight by Kevin Ma...

[#25] Jack and Jason browse the top posts from r/DMAcademy and start handing out advice. Users asked: How to deal with players hiding their death saves Is this DM’s “IRL Timer” an ok thing to do? How to stop players from torturing every npc Check out the all new www.curmudgeonsanddragons.com and leave us a review and voicemail! Shirts are now available at www.curmudgeonsanddragons.com/store Hosted by Jason Portizo and Jack O’Connell Produced and Edited by Jason Portizo Curmudgeons and Dr...

[#24] The round table was getting all worked up over those Horror Stories so we thought it was time to get wholesome! We tell the tales of: The party who staged a burglary to play cupid The flirty Orc and his lovely lute A story that started out not-so-wholesome Follow us on your favorite social media! All the links can be found at http://curmudgeonsanddragons.com Leave us a review, and send the screen shot to curmudgeonsanddragonspod@gmail.com to get yourself some free swag! Hosted by Jas...

[#23] THE PARTY REUNITES! After a month of wingin’ it solo we rejoin with Jason, Josey and Jack to tell some RPG horror stories! Is a LOTR “ripoff” boring or is it just you? Are the dice the actual BBEG? Is an amnesiac just an excuse to not write a backstory? Follow us on your favorite social media! All the links can be found at http://curmudgeonsanddragons.com Leave us a review, and send the screen shot to curmudgeonsanddragonspod@gmail.com to get yourself some free swag! Hosted by Jason ...

[#22] The last (very short) entry in our solo-’sodes month (also we kinda forgot there were 5 Fridays this month and had to hastily record one more). Jason visits a Halloween-themed RPG horror story about a possessed child. Follow us on your favorite social media! All the links can be found at http://curmudgeonsanddragons.com Leave us a review, and send the screen shot to curmudgeonsanddragonspod@gmail.com to get yourself some free swag! Hosted by Jason Portizo Produced and Edited by Jason Po...

[#21] The month of solo-’sodes continues with Josey finally stepping up to the plate. Her first semester as a Creative Writing major just started so she stepped back to see how her time playing Dungeons and Dragons has helped her in her writing and how you can use the collaborative storytelling game to help write your next story. Follow us on your favorite social media! All the links can be found at http://curmudgeonsanddragons.com Leave us a review, and send the screen shot to curmudgeonsanddr...

[#20] Continuing our run of solo adventures, Jason is back with an RPG horror story that left him asking “is anyone here the good guy?”. Take a listen because this story gets wild. Follow us on your favorite social media! All the links can be found at http://curmudgeonsanddragons.com Leave us a review, and send the screen shot to curmudgeonsanddragonspod@gmail.com to get yourself some free swag! Hosted by Jason Portizo Produced and Edited by Jason Portizo Curmudgeons and Dragons is a JTP Au...

[#19] Jack took the reins today to give Jason a much needed week off - and while Josey is still learning how to drive on the left side of the road in her new home. With a beer in hand he goes into detail about all the things there are to love about being a DM. Did he inspire you to finally give it a try? Follow us on your favorite social media! All the links can be found at http://curmudgeonsanddragons.com Leave us a review, and send the screen shot to curmudgeonsanddragonspod@gmail.com to get ...

[#18] Jason's all alone this week with no cohosts to podcast with and no players to play dnd with. Here's a few ways you can make good use of your downtime and be a good player even when there's no roleplaying to be had. Follow us on your favorite social media! All the links can be found at http://curmudgeonsanddragons.com Leave us a review, and send the screen shot to curmudgeonsanddragonspod@gmail.com to get yourself some free swag! Hosted by Jason Portizo, Jack O’Connell, and Josey Diaz Pr...