LUDO
NARRATIVE
DISSIDENTS
a podcast about RPGs, how they’RE MADE AND HOW THEY’RE PLAYED
ABOUT
Ludonarrative Dissidents is about roleplaying games, their culture, design and play. Each episode deep-dives on one tabletop RPG, book, mechanic or style of game, taking it apart to see how it works, and putting it back together to understand how people play it.
It’s playful, insightful, informed, and thoroughly entertaining. New episodes drop every 2–3 weeks, plus we do a livestream once a month: check the Discord for dates.
Your hosts are Ross Payton, Greg Stolze and James Wallis.
SUPPORTING US
Ludonarrative Dissidents is funded by our generous Kickstarter backers, sales of merchandise, and affiliate fees.
If you want to support us – and get access to new episodes a month before they go public – then you can by clicking here to go to our Ko-Fi page.
SEASON 1
Our first season kicked off in August 2021. Across 16 episodes we cover:
- Apocalypse World
- Blades in the Dark
- Outlaws of the Water Margin
- Lancer
- Nights Black Agents
- Delta Green
- Continuum
- Bluebeard’s Bride
- Ars Magica
- The Quiet Year
- Thousand Year Old Vampire
- 13th Age
- Unknown Armies
- The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen
- Base Raiders
- Dueling Fops of Vindamere (actual play)
Click below for links to the episodes and our notes on them.
SEASON 2
The second season ran for 18 episodes. This time we also look at specific RPG mechanics and design tropes.
- Card mechanics in RPGs
- Coyote and Crow
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th edition
- Red Markets
- Metacurrencies in RPGs
- The Laundry RPG
- MÖRK BORG
- Eclipse Phase 2nd edition
- Initiative systems
- Call of Cthulhu 7th edition
- Planet Mercenary
- Dread
- Tales from the Loop
- Diceless RPGs
- Fiasco
- Experience points
- Mongoose Traveller
- Pendragon 6e
- Hole In The Sky for DCC (actual play)
Click below for links to the episodes, and notes on each one.
SEASON 3
Season 3 will be 27 mighty episodes, each one with its own page and extensive show notes.
Episode 0: DCC: Hole in the Sky
Episode 1: Heart The City Beneath
Episode 2: Delta Green: Convergence
Episode 3: Savage Worlds Adventure Edition
Episode 4: Night’s Black Agents: Double Tap
Episode 6: Alien: Chariot of the Gods
Episode 7: Vampire: the Masquerade 5th edition
Episode 9: Dogs in the Vineyard
Episode 10: Paranoia: The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues
Episode 12: Cyberpunk Red: Black Chrome
Episode 14: Unknown Armies: Jailbreak
It’s basically Murder She Wrote the RPG, but the players decide who the murderer is. Does it work? Hear what we think.
Episode 16: Trabajo for Red Markets
A base, characters and four linked adventures for the RPG of zombies and economic horror. Ross explains its origins and more.
THE AUDIO FOR THIS EPISODE IS CURRENTLY ONLY AVAILABLE TO OUR BACKERS. CHECK BACK SOON TO HEAR IT!
Click here to go to all Season 3 episodes, plus livestreams