Hello and welcome to The RPG Academy podcast website. If this is your first time here, we want to give you a brief tour of the Academy to help you get acclimated to the wide variety of content we provide and our extensive back catalog.
Primarily, we are a podcast. We strive to hit a combination of 3 pillars with our shows. We hope to educate listeners on how to play RPGs and/or how to be better at playing RPGs. We hope to inspire our listeners to pick up the mantel of being a DM/GM for the first time. And we hope to entertain while we do it.
These pillars, Education, Inspiration and Entertainment, are the foundation of our effort and can be fairly well summed up in our show’s motto: If you’re having fun, you’re doing it right!
From the Podcast stand point, we have multiple different show types that you can listen to depending on your preference or need. Almost all of these now have their own podcast feed so you can selectively subscribe to the shows you want or you can subscribe to our main feed and get it all.
Faculty Meetings:
These are general advice and discussion shows. Here you will find shows dedicated to large ideas about running games; how to create worlds and re-skin monsters to make them new and exciting as well as discussions about minute and individuals rules; how spell slots work in D&D 5e or how to properly set a DC for a skill check. These shows were originally called Dungeon Talks but the content is the same no matter how far back you go.
Show & Tell:
These are interview shows featuring special guests. We’ve had some amazing guests including other podcasters, movie directors and game designers. With the game scene what it is today, most of the Show & Tell episodes feature Kickstarter projects in various stages.
Movie Day: (discontinued)
We, at The RPG Academy, pride ourselves on focusing on positivity and inclusivity. If there is a game or system or setting that we don’t like, we just don’t talk about it. We focus our time, effort and energy talking about what we love. Movie Days are the exception to that rule. We have a few episodes where we watch and then discuss an RPG themed or related movie. Sadly, most of these are awful and we are not kind, but we hope that we fall on the Entertainment side of things.
Detention
Detention episodes are recorded live on Wednesday nights at 9:00 PM Eastern on our twitch channel Twitch.tv/TheRpgAcademy and feature special guests from the RPG Academy Network and include the segments Extra Curricular, Used Books, and Cryptozoology as well as the improv games 10 things and Where have my fingers been? and end with an audience Q&A. These episodes are a little more rough around the edges and a more conversational tone. They also include more of the tangents, bad jokes, and adult language that we tend to use when we’re hanging out and having fun. The episodes are archived on our YouTube Page (YouTube.Com/TheRpgAcademy) and an audio only version is released a few days after the live show.
GM Master Class
The GM Master Class is our newest show type and quickly becoming a fan favorite. In this series Michael invites the GM of an actual play podcast and conducts a Director’s Commentary of sorts from one of their series. We listen to the audio (which you the audience can also hear) and then stop to comment or deep dive into the techniques the GM was using at that moment. It allows for the audience to hear GMing advice outside of theory or speculation on what you could do or might do, but actually hear it being used and how it worked (or didn’t as it may be). Our first series focused on the Legend of the 5 Rings game that aired on the One Shot Podcast Network. The GM was Jim McClure (@GMJimMcClure). We hope to have more complete series soon.
Actual Play Shows:
Of all the show types, our actual play shows make up the majority of our content. I have saved it for last because there are 3 different types of our actual play shows and I want to keep them separate:
The Campaigns:
The Campaigns are long-form storytelling actual play games. These feature a consistent GM/DM and constant players/characters in an on-going story. Life being what it is, we’ve had some difficulty with keeping these going but we’ve also had some amazing game play that we are very proud of. Made Men is our first ever The Campaigns and despite some growing pains and learning which lead to some sub-standard audio, I think it’s still one of our best. Wrought Iron is our newest and features The Caleb G as our GM and is a great place to start if you are newer. If you are interested in something besides D&D, our 13th Age series Secrets, Lies & the Undead may be for you.
Field Trips:
Field Trips are one-shot RPG sessions of various systems with a focus on fun/silly gameplay. The Legend of the Five Rings being the notable exception. These are often 3-5 episodes from a single session. For outrageous silliness I suggest you try G.I. Joshu, Tearable 80’s Action Flick or Savage Ghostbusters and if you are a fan of Scooby Doo, try our Scooby Halloween Special
The Trials:
The Trials are also one-shot RPG Sessions of various systems. The difference (in regards to Field Trips) is that we are more focused on explaining the rules and highlighting the system. We want these episodes to be a way for listeners to get a sense of what a session in these systems would be like in order for them to decide if they want to try the game for themselves and/or help them learn the rules of a new system. Some of my favorites include
GM Advice/ Theory Posts
Here you will find articles/posts written by various members of our faculty (both past and present) that are rule deep dives, alt theories, suggestions and the like.
Product Reviews
Here you will find product reviews of games we have played. If you use the links provided to purchase your own copy, we receive a small percentage of your purchase to help support our show.
Hopefully this will help you find your way around. If you’d like to explore our site on your own, you can hover over the Podcast menu along the top (in the black bar) and it will reveal the drop down boxes for Table Topics, Show & Tell, Movie Day and Actual Play (which will drop down to the three types: Campaigns, Field Trips, Trials),
If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know.
Michael & Caleb
