Our guest this week is Stephen Radney-MacFarland as we continue our Gary Con 2024 series of 50 years of Dungeons and Dragons interviews. We talk about Delve RPG, his passion-project meditation on d20 fantasy games. How he doesn’t agree with 5E’s advantage/disadvantage rules.

Growing up in San Francisco, playing D&D as a kid, and using the Battleship board as a GM screen. Buying Tomb of Horrors, and learning a Gygaxian vocabulary. Working at Wizards of the Coast, combing through novels like Ed Greenwood’s Elminster: The Making of a Mage to work on The Forgotten Realms Encyclopedia. Working with Eric Mona on Polyhedron Magazine and the Living Greyhawk Journal. Then moving over to Paizo to work on the Advanced Player's Guide coming up with alternative class features that then turned into what became archetypes. Then tons more freelance writing with Paizo, Kobold Press and more.

Follow Stephen at: Website - X - LinkedIn

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

• PAX Unplugged: December 6th through 8th in Philadelphia. Come say hi to Tiger Wizard at the Exalted Funeral booth, and play some games with Dragon Warrior every morning at the Alexandria RPG Library room.
• Dungeon Cats: Tiger Wizard’s rules-lite TTRPG where you play feline adventures is now available at Exalted Funeral. Delve into lush carpeted dungeons to vanquish giant rats, demonic dog spawn and the half full food bowl. Fight with claws, purrs and amazing advanced reflexes for the treasures contained within. You only have 9 lives. Live them adventurously!
• THE MEGA DUNGEON MEN EP: Our new TTRPG fantasy meets hip hop album, The Mega Dungeon Men EP is now available on all streaming platforms. It's an intense dose of nostalgia and comedy for geek-minded connoisseurs of gaming & fun with features from nerdcore legends Mega Ran and MC Frontalot.

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST by clicking the newsletter button at epiclevelsrapgods.com

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Thanks for listening to Season Three of the Epic Levels Mad Dungeon podcast, where D&D hip hop group Epic Levels alternate between “Rise of the Vat Spawn,” an actual play using Mystic Punks RPG, and Side Quests where we interview other game creators.

You can support us via Patreon for early episode releases, bonus map content, extra art, access to our discord server, and lots of other exclusive goodies.

Get nerd merch and stay up to date with socials: HERE

Mad Dungeon is hosted by Andrew Bellury, Steve Albertson, Robin Bellury and produced by Zach Cowan.

Theme song by Epic Levels and beat by Jay Domingo.

© 2024 Epic Levels. All characters in our adventures–even those based on real people–are entirely fictional.

The Vat Spawn take out the final elite goblins. We meet Lotto, a 10-foot demon dog. Bat Alchemist sucks venom out of Warlock Roc. They explore further into the goblin museum, finding horrific paintings of former goblin kings, before discovering the current Goblin King’s chambers.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Gamehole Con: October 17th through 20th in Madison, Wisconsin. We’ll have a booth right up front in the Podcasters and Press section. Come say hi to Dragon Warrior and pick up some Dungeon Cats and Mad Dungeon season three Rise of the Vat Spawn swag!
• PAX Unplugged: December 6th through 8th in Philadelphia. Come say hi to Tiger Wizard at the Exalted Funeral booth, and play some games with Dragon Warrior every morning at the Alexandria RPG Library room.
• Dungeon Cats: Tiger Wizard’s rules-lite TTRPG where you play feline adventurers is now available at Exalted Funeral. Delve into lush carpeted dungeons to vanquish giant rats, demonic dog spawn and the half-full food bowl. Fight with claws, purrs and advanced reflexes for the treasures contained within. You only have 9 lives. Live them adventurously!
• THE MEGA DUNGEON MEN EP: Our new TTRPG fantasy meets hip hop album, The Mega Dungeon Men EP is now available on all streaming platforms. It's an intense dose of nostalgia and comedy for geek-minded connoisseurs of gaming & fun with features from nerdcore legends Mega Ran and MC Frontalot.

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST by clicking the newsletter button at epiclevelsrapgods.com

—

Thanks for listening to Season Three of the Epic Levels Mad Dungeon podcast, where D&D hip hop group Epic Levels alternate between “Rise of the Vat Spawn,” an actual play using Mystic Punks RPG, and Side Quests where we interview other game creators.

You can support us via Patreon for early episode releases, bonus map content, extra art, access to our discord server, and lots of other exclusive goodies.

Get nerd merch and stay up to date with socials: HERE

Mad Dungeon is hosted by Andrew Bellury, Steve Albertson, Robin Bellury and produced by Zach Cowan.

Theme song by Epic Levels and beat by Jay Domingo.

© 2024 Epic Levels. All characters in our adventures–even those based on real people–are entirely fictional.

Our guest this week is David “Zeb” Cook as we continue our Gary Con 2024 series of 50 years of Dungeons and Dragons interviews. We talk about his involvement in 49 of the 50 years of D&D’s existence and how satisfying it’s been for him to see his work impacting generations of people.

We discuss his late 1970s start at TSR by editing Queen of the Demonweb Pits (Q1), writing Slave Pits of the Undercity (A1) as the first project that he wrote at TSR, running tournaments at the very earliest Gen Cons and Origins, how Dwellers of the Forbidden City came from his writing sample to get the job at TSR. We talk about his love of Conan, writing the first Conan module Conan Unchained! (CB1) and writing the Conan Role-Playing Game.

TSR in the 1980s: growth from a staff of gamers and hobbyists to running a successful company. Dealing with the Satanic Panic. Being lead designer on the 2nd edition AD&D. Worked on D&D through 1994 with Planescape and some smaller projects before moving on to video games.

Follow Zeb at: Wikipedia - FB - Amazon

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Gamehole Con: October 17th through 20th in Madison, Wisconsin. We’ll have a booth right up front in the Podcasters and Press section. Come say hi to Dragon Warrior and pick up some Dungeon Cats and Mad Dungeon season three Rise of the Vat Spawn swag!
• PAX Unplugged: December 6th through 8th in Philadelphia. Come say hi to Tiger Wizard at the Exalted Funeral booth, and play some games with Dragon Warrior every morning at the Alexandria RPG Library room.
• Dungeon Cats: Tiger Wizard’s rules-lite TTRPG where you play feline adventures is now available at Exalted Funeral. Delve into lush carpeted dungeons to vanquish giant rats, demonic dog spawn and the half full food bowl. You only have 9 lives. Live them adventurously!
• THE MEGA DUNGEON MEN EP: Our new TTRPG fantasy meets hip hop album, The Mega Dungeon Men EP, with features from nerdcore legends Mega Ran and MC Frontalot, is now available on all streaming platforms.

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST by clicking the newsletter button at epiclevelsrapgods.com

—

Thanks for listening to Season Three of the Epic Levels Mad Dungeon podcast, where D&D hip hop group Epic Levels alternate between “Rise of the Vat Spawn,” an actual play using Mystic Punks RPG, and Side Quests where we interview other game creators.

You can support us via Patreon for early episode releases, bonus map content, extra art, access to our discord server, and lots of other exclusive goodies.

Get nerd merch and stay up to date with socials: HERE

Mad Dungeon is hosted by Andrew Bellury, Steve Albertson, Robin Bellury and produced by Zach Cowan.

Theme song by Epic Levels and beat by Jay Domingo.

© 2024 Epic Levels. All characters in our adventures–even those based on real people–are entirely fictional.