Tabletop RPG

On this episode of the Tavern Watch Podcast, we're talking about the return to Strixhaven (where their undergraduates can now prepare spells like D&D Wizards), some of our upcoming favorite crowdfunding projects -- among them the multiplayer expansion to Ion Heart, Austin Walker's debut game Realis, and the genre-straddling Cypher System megadungeon Jewel in the Sky -- and also how when you leave fans alone with high-quality free products they'll do things like convert the core rules of Ars Magica into the easy to read and use Markdown format.

It's just another average day in Ternion City: four agents of the Triangle Agency, paragons of order keeping reality safe from anomalous activity that wants to rend it asunder, find themselves confronted with the job of what to do with the remains of a Wuhan-Baxter corporate killsquad, while their final member comes face-to-face with her biggest challenge so far: an extremely well-presented business pitch slide deck.

Welcome back to serene Ternion City, where things are heating up in the case of the missing-then-returned-but-boneless Zbarro renovators.

Welcome back to beautiful Ternion City, where the agents of the Triangle Agency are looking out not just for your best interests, but all of reality.

On this episode of the Tavern Watch Podcast, the team gets a win -- a win in naming things, it turns out, as Wizards of the Coast (in addition to finally announcing some products for 2026) also has started referring to the 2024 revision of D&D as "D&D 5.5e." Considering it ended up being more a balance update than the massive revolution in tabletop gaming that we were originally sold, we're all of the opinion this is for the better (and is easier to say, to boot).

The team of adventurers-turned-detectives in our playthrough of Starfinder's Murder in Metal City has the body of Tier-99-Professor on their hands and the assumed murderer hot in their trail for getting too close -- but does anyone think they're really going to stop before they get answers about what happened?

With a lead in their hot little hands freshly pried from the storage of a hijacked murder-drone, our crew of Starfinder adventurers -- brought together first to meet their friend Tier-99-Professor, then by happenstance to investigate his murder -- dive into the back alleys and data storage centers of Striving to see if they can pin down any clues as to why someone would want the good Professor dead.

A group of strangers gather in a dimly lit bar in the mechanical megalopolis of Striving at the behest of one Tier-99-Professor, who promised them some incredible news.

Every February, publishers both accomplished and new take to their favorite crowdfunding platforms to release their newest zines as part of (the event formerly known just as) Zine Quest.

Keeping things tense and exciting in tabletop games without just resorting to throwing the players into a fight is a central part of our discussion today on Tavern Watch -- we're talking torches burning down in Shadowdark or Crows, using the spotlight like a TV show director to keep things tense in Monster of the Week, or the Chaos mechanic in Triangle Agency that makes every roll a balancing act.