We here at Role Playing Public Radio are fortunate to play a lot of role playing games. A LOT. Because we’ve posted so many games, you may have missed our very best episodes. Whether you’re a new listener or an old one who just hasn’t gone through the entire archives, we have a lot of great episodes you may not have heard.

Top Ten One Shot Episodes of RPPR Actual Play (as arbitrarily decided by me and in no particular order)

  1. Candle Cove: Based on the creepypasta story of the same name, Candle Cove pits investigators against a cult and a demon in a 3 way battle.
  2. Lady GaGa 2.0: A cyberpunk adventure set in the 1980s version of cyberpunk. Lady GaGa and her band take on mercenary jobs for poorly explained reasons.
  3. Bryson Springs: Horrors lurk in a Hooverville in 1935. What is the Fisher of Men?
  4. Sucrose Park: A playtest for my book, Road Trip. A group of kids and their monster pals fight a crazed giant rat and brain!
  5. Lover in the Ice: A monster preys on a town isolated in a snowstorm. Only a team of Delta Green agents can stop it before it escapes.
  6. The Legacy of NIMH: Remember the Secret of NIMH? We added things to it. Dark things. πŸ˜€
  7. The Dangers of Fraternization: Berlin after World War 2 was a hotbed of crime and political intrigue.
  8. A Glorious Fall: An introduction to Eclipse Phase, a transhuman sci-fi horror RPG.
  9. Call of Cthulhu: Shanghaied: Shark fighting, cave cows, and Deep Ones, oh my!
  10. Preemptive Revenge: Time travel is terrifying in the hands of the callous.

Hilarious Episodes

  • The Jet Fuel Formula: There is a Rocky and Bullwinkle RPG and we played it. Turns out it’s actually pretty good at emulating the show!
  • A Rough Night at Three Feathers: Weary travelers stop at an inn. Then the murders start. Run in Zweihander but set in Warhammer Fantasy.
  • Macbeth: The Play’s the Thing turns Shakespeare into a RPG. Our take on Macbeth is…unique.
  • The Eliminators: Rifts is not the most mechanically balanced game system. We still played it, much to Caleb’s chagrin.
  • The Haunting: The Best-Worst game EVER. The real horror comes from the actions of the players.
  • Slasher Flick: Synthopia: A 1980s action film, only the players are bad guys trying to survive the relentless assault of the hero Jack Shade.
  • Revelations: It starts our as a creepy horror scenario and then we realized we were playing Cthulhu Dark.
  • Night Vale Traditional Games Club: Set in the small town of Night Vale, a group of players get together to play a board game.
  • Fiasco: News Channel Six: Man Rooster fights are the least of Ramble Turducken’s problems in this dark comedic one shot.
  • Dungeon Crawl Classics: Sailors on the Starless Sea: Sixteen peasants enter a dungeon – will any get out?

Scary and/or Creepy Episodes

Adam Scott Glancy’s (Pagan Publishing) Contributions to RPPR Actual PlayΒ 

  • Dig to Victory: Horrors lurk in the trenches of Europe during World War 1
  • U-Boote Heraus Part 1 and U-Boote Heraus Part 2: Even submariners are not safe from the Cthulhu Mythos
  • The Night Mission: An aerial WW1 Call of Cthulhu adventure – Bigglesworth away!
  • Divine Fire at PAX 2011: Mr. Glancy took Tom’s original concept and revamped it for the modern era.
  • Shadows of Leuven: a murder mystery set in a small town caught in the chaos of WW1.
  • The Iron Devil: American soldiers travel by train in Siberia and confront horrors beyond their imagining.
  • Call of Cthulhu: Lord of the Peaks: Italian soldiers in the Alpine Mountains battle the elements and monsters.
  • Iconoclasts: A group of terrorists find more than they bargain for when they try to loot an old man’s house.
  • The Wounded: Crippled soldiers in a WW1 era British hospital find an unnatural path to recovery. Dare they take it?
  • The Uncorrupted: Greek soldiers trapped on a remote island find things more deadly than the frontlines.
  • New Rome: A Hollow Earth Expedition game about ape men who rule a Roman style city state.

Notable Episodes of RPPR Actual Play for Various Reasons Which I Shall Briefly Explain

  • Moon Drenched Streets: Our first recorded game of Shadowrun and it was a DOOZY.
  • Deep Shit: A Blue Planet scenario run by the game’s creator, Jeff Barber.
  • They Served Brandyolyn Red: Truly a love story for the ages. A Dungeon Crawl Classic adventure that features a wedding and giant ants.
  • Blessings Unheralded: Our first game of Warhammer 40k: Wrath and Glory is an insightful critique of the setting. Book on a stick!
  • Think Before Asking: Sci-fi one shot based on the dangers of building incredibly powerful artificial intelligences. To summarize: they’re really scary.
  • Andrew’s Fortune Part 1 and Part 2: Caleb’s first game as GM using A Dirty World for the system. A dark noir tale of greed and desperation.
  • Coronet: People washed their clothes with gasoline once upon a time. It was common they had to make educational films to tell people to stop doing it. I based a game on the horror of old educational films like that.
  • Dungeon World: The Ghost Library: We introduce a new player to tabletop gaming with hilarious results.

Notable AP episodes from the main Role Playing Public Radio website

 

3 Comments

  1. What about Call of Cthulhu: The Horrible Lonely House in the Woods? That Actual play was great. It was the first RPPR Actual Play I ever listened to and my introduction to the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Up until that point I didn’t know that the players could lose! In my few years of playing AD&D and Star Wars RPG, the heroes always won. That episode blew my mind and I’ve been listening to you guys ever since.

  2. I would like to nominate Delta Green – Gods Eye for Notable Episode. Reason being the revelation is so damn worth it. The mandala just delightfully complex and merges current tech with the cosmic horror of lovecraftian horror.

    Gods Teeth was the series that finally made me /get/ lovecraftian horror, and Gods Eye was the best of the bunch.

  3. As an egomaniac I like July Park. Other things I’d put here are “The White Stairs” for a good contained Cthulhu story. “Wages of Sin” as a good also contained Dirty World game.

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