- 1 hour 15 minutesThe One Ring RPG and Microscope 2E: Live with Gareth Hanrahan and Ben Robbins
Special guests Gareth Hanrahan (The One Ring RPG and too many games to count) and Ben Robbins (Microscope) join us for another live episode of LND to discuss game design and history.
Back the LND Kickstarter today and join our book club on game design!
19 October 2026, 8:16 pm - 2 hours 41 minutesVincent and Meg Baker and Season 4 Kickstarter Launch!
We hosted a live episode to talk about the launch of our Season 4 Kickstarter. Join me, Greg Stolze, James Wallis and special guests Meg and Vincent Baker (Apocalypse World, Dogs in the Vineyard and many more) as we discuss the history of RPGs, possible games we may review for Season 4 and many other topics!
14 October 2026, 9:04 pm - 2 hours 48 minutesThe Quiet Year: An Actual Play featuring creator Avery Alder and Dr. Emily Friedman
The Season 4 LND Kickstarter pre-launch page is live! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rosspayton/ludonarrative-dissidents-podcast-season-4The Quiet Year is a map game. You define the struggles of a post-apocalyptic community, and attempt to build something good within their quiet year. Every decision and every action is set against a backdrop of dwindling time and rising concern.We were fortunate enough to have two very special guests for this episode.Avery Alder is the Quiet Year's creator and an award winning game designer. You can find her website at https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/ and she's on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/lackingceremony.bsky.socialOrder the Quiet Year https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-yearor from DrivethruRPG https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/110152/the-quiet-year?affiliate_id=465273Dr. Emily Friedman studies actual play and storytelling. She has an upcoming book on the history of Actual Play. You can find her on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/ecfriedman.comand on https://patreon.com/ecfriedman
5 October 2026, 4:00 pm - 1 hour 12 minutesLudonarrative Dissidents Season 4 Pre-Launch Live Episode 0 and Mothership: Wages of Sin Review
We recently completed season 3 and are going to launch a Kickstarter on October 13 to fund a fourth season!
Follow the Kickstarter campaign to be notified when the campaign goes live!
This live episode discusses what will be new for the fourth season. We plan to have shorter book reviews in our live episodes, along with special segments. To that end, I review the new Mothership bounty hunting supplement, Wages of Sin.
We're also hosting a book club on game design, where each host reads and discusses multiple books with backers.
28 September 2026, 7:26 pm - 3 hours 25 minutesSwords of the Serpentine Actual Play
IN OUR TRADITIONAL style, as we reach the end of the season we’re bringing you a couple of Actual Play sessions of games that we’ve covered in earlier episodes, putting some actual ludo-ing into the customary narrative.
This episode is the first part of the Ludonarrative Dissidents Season 3 finale and we are delighted that Kevin Kulp, co-designer of Swords of the Serpentine, volunteered to administer a one-off adventure for Greg, Ross and James. It was a splendid evening of entertainment, running the system through its paces as we hurtled through several of the setting’s notable locations, and finding every possible opportunity to fall in the water.
SWORDS OF THE SERPENTINE is a game of fantasy shenanigans in a labyrinthine sinking city populated by rogues, schemers, cultists, swashbucklers and your player characters, written by Kevin Kulp and Emily Dresner, and published by Pelgrane Press in 2022. It uses a variation of the Gumshoe system originally created by Robin D. Laws in 2007. The book has 396 pages.
No conventional show-notes this time, except to express our thanks to Kevin for giving up an evening to escort us through his co-creation, and to you for giving up your time to listen to it. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
Thank you for listening! The hosts of this episode were Ross Payton, Greg Stolze and James Wallis, with audio editing by Ross and show notes by James. We hope you enjoyed it. If anything in this podcast or these notes has spurred your interest then we invite you to come and chat about it on our friendly Discord.
If you click on any of the above links to DriveThruRPG and buy something, Ludonarrative Dissidents will receive a small affiliate fee. You will not be charged more, and the game’s publisher will not receive less, it’s a win-win-win. Thank you for supporting the podcast this way.
15 September 2026, 6:37 pm - 55 minutesDialect
DIALECT: A Game About Language And How It Dies is a 2018 single-session RPG by Hakan Seyalioglu and Kathryn Hymes, published by Thorny Games. It’s a game about a small community, isolated from larger groups, that first creates its own verbal forms to describe its situation, and then must adapt or lose them as the community reacts to external threats. It is critically acclaimed and a winner of multiple awards.
24 August 2026, 6:24 pm - 1 hour 5 minutesLudonarrative Dissidents Livestream for August 2026
Our livestream discussion for August!
17 August 2026, 10:27 pm - 1 hour 9 minutesSwords of the Serpentine
SWORDS OF THE SERPENTINE is a game of fantasy shenanigans in a labyrinthine sinking city populated by rogues, schemers, cultists, swashbucklers and your player characters, written by Kevin Kulp and Emily Dresner, and published by Pelgrane Press in 2022. It uses a variation of the Gumshoe system originally created by Robin D. Laws in 2007.
2 July 2026, 5:12 pm - 1 hour 2 minutesLudonarrative Dissidents Livestream for June 2026
Our livestream discussion for June!
23 June 2026, 5:18 pm - 57 minutes 24 secondsChicago by Night: Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition
CHICAGO BY NIGHT is a 2018 city sourcebook for Vampire the Masquerade 5th edition, written by Matthew Dawkins and a host of others, and published by Renegade Game Studios, who have the rights to do all this stuff these days. The most recent iteration of a sourcebook that first appeared in 1991, this edition is by far the longest at 357 pages. It describes the vampire culture, clans, people, locations, backstory and subterfuges of the eponymous city. (‘Eponymous’, because I always have to check, means ‘lending its name to’ a thing, not ‘taking its name from’). We talked about the latest edition of Vampire the Masquerade earlier this season and concluded that it did what it needs to in a suitable style, if you like that sort of thing. How does that fit with huge chunks of crunchy campaign-world detail like this? Don’t click that dial!
- Chicago by Night at DriveThruRPG (there’s more information here than at the publishers’ website)
- Vampire the Masquerade 5th edition at DriveThruRPG
- The original Chicago by Night from 1991 at DriveThruRPG
- Chicago by Night second edition (1993) at DriveThruRPG
29 May 2026, 5:40 pm - 1 hour 4 minutesLudonarrative Dissidents Livestream for May
Our livestream discussion for May, featuring special guest Jerry Grayson of Khepera Publishing. Check out the Godsend Agenda today.
25 May 2026, 10:23 pm - More Episodes? Get the App