I am Stu Horvath, and I wrote a book about the wide, weird world of tabletop roleplaying games. Ask me anything!

What obscure TTRPG deserved to be much more popular than it was?

Sounds like I am joking, but I am totally serious: Literally all of them.

Even FATAL?

There are limits to every broad assertion, of course (also looking at that bad Lord of the Rings rip-off by that racist metal guy). But in general, I think the hobby as it stands is wonderfully vibrant, but niche (and mostly rests in the shadow of mainline D&D). I reckon that there is a perfect RPG for everybody, and getting all of them in front of the right players (especially the ones who have never played before) will make the hobby richer. Hence stuff like my book and the Instagram feed -- gotta spread the word!

So, first off, I've read your book, but haven't had a chance to listen to your podcast (didn't know it existed, so I may have to give it a try!)

What is your favorite Paranoia job and why is it Happiness Officer?

I mean, who in their right mind would want to be the Hygiene Officer? I kinda like Maintenance though. I mean, as a close second. Happiness is mandatory.

Is there a more odd character generation process in TTRPGs than old-school Traveller where you rolled up your character's long career before ever getting to play them?

When I was 16 I lamented, "Why is my new character already an old dude in his forties?"

Now I'm 56 so I'm like, "I get to play a young guy in his forties!"

Ha! I dunno, I think the weirdest part of Traveller was that you could conceivably create a character who died before seeing play. More so than the fact that yea, they tended to be older that your average D&D sword-orphan.

Sort of drawing a blank on specific character generation systems. I know there are a couple that cast you as a reincarnation and derive abilities from your past life, which advancement unlocking older memories. Folks were talking about a game in the Discord recently too where characters were quantum and defined on the fly -- the GM would like, keep asking the medical officer to respond, and the first player to answer became the medical officer. I didn't catch the name of the game though, unfortunately.

Is it weird to own several hundred roleplaying games that have been read but never played? Asking for a friend.

Not weird. Reading RPGs is a legitimate hobby in its own right!

I couldn’t agree more … just reading RPGs set my imagination afire with ideas and possibilities! The fact that I never got to realize most of those possibilities was a bit sad, sure, but it was kind of secondary. When you read a book, the author is telling you “Here’s what happened.” Read an RPG and it’s like “Here’s a hundred things that COULD happen.”

I find this super appealing with horror stuff in particular, like Delta Green, where the vast number of possibilities serves to heighten the tension like a typical horror story, but without anything like a traditional narrative.

This would give me incredible anxiety

Some of them are really good reads. Gurps: Goblins is a work of art.

GURPS: Horror is one of the best primers on the horror genre I've encountered.

Hey Stu, big fan of the podcast! My question is, broadly, what is the relation today between genre fiction and TTRPGs? I feel like a lot of old D&D could perhaps be summed up as "Have you read Conan and thought it was cool? Now you get to be it!" Chaosiums' Call of Cthulhu as, "Have you read Lovecraft and thought it was cool? Now you get to do it!"

Today, however, I doubt the average D&D player today knows what the hell a Grey Mauser is. I don't mean this in a negative or gatekeeping way; but I find it interesting that D&D seemingly has become its' own self-referential genre. Would you agree?

Official D&D is definitely becoming its own sub-genre, of sorts, similar to, like, the Marvel or DC comic universes. It's been on that course for a while, I think, and that's fine -- it still encourages a sort of meta exploration, just inside the canon instead of the way Appendix N shuffled folks into a wider world of fantasy.

I think pretty much everything outside official D&D is still, in some way or another, offering experiences tied to genre media. There is a zine for everything! The indies are still very much interested in the borg-like assimilation of culture at large into RPG terms -- I feel like there is a particularly methodical effort to translate sit-coms into increasingly absurd Troika backgrounds. But even obliquely, like how Mork Borg does it with transposing the whole vibe of doom metal into a playable game. s'cool.

Assuming your life is actually a TTRPG ,what would your IRL character sheet look like?

Despite my deeply held desire to be a skulky thief like Gray Mouser, I am built more like Fafhrd, except, like, I am desirous of spending all my time reading books rather than carousing or stealing fortunes and so on. So I am probably a collection of hyper-focused custom skills, a la Call of Cthulhu. "Write short form reviews of RPGs - 75%" "Enjoy coffee - 90%" "Really want to run this new RPG but can't get a group together - 95%"

PF 2e or DnD 5e,if you had to choose?

Which system would you consider to be good for a ttrpg centered around witch-hunting,cultists and the like,that is extremely gritty,rougly set in the 17th century?

Which one for a WWII/Cold War setting

I've not played Pathfinder 2e, so I'd have to default to D&D 5E.

I feel like 17th Century Minimalist would be a good answer for the witchhunting RPG.

WWII/Cold War is trickier, as it is kind of outside my wheel house. I am sure there is some clever, light, modern game that would work nicely, but I have a soft spot for the old Victory 007 system, so if I was being asked to run an espionage game, I'd probably start there,

Have you spent much time analyzing or researching the “early” confluence of RPGs and counter cultural content? Erol Otus, one of the illustrators whose work populated the early D&D book, made an RPG about high school that was extremely “adult” and was banned, IIRC. It seems there was a lot of crossover in the ‘80s between heavy metal, D&D, “light” pornography or gravure / fantasy imagery of women (think fantasy art by Boris Vallejo, et al.). Just wondering if you’ve got some commentary on that era and its cultural contribution.

Heck yea, I find this endlessly fascinating! It seems like it is always the artists who brought those elements into the hobby, Erol probably first, by way of Arduin, then with sneaking Dead Kennedys logos into Gamma World art, and Greg Irons second in the D&D coloring book. So much of the early art really resonates with early heavy metal art, but I think that is maybe accidental, like the way movies sometimes twin? The designers seem less engaged in the underground though, even into the '80s. I feel like it really takes off in '89 with Shadowrun then all of a sudden in the '90s there are subcultures everywhere.

Funny, I had no idea Greg Irons was involved with D&D art. He became an extremely influential tattoo artist whose work is still considered the gold-standard in the field.

Do yourself a favor and track down the 1979 coloring album from Troubador Press -- WotC released most if not all the plates in PDF form during the pandemic, so they should all be floating around the online ether. They're astounding. Irons was a real maestro, taken waaaaaaay too soon.

First, congrats on the Instagram content, it's great work there!

If you could point out one thing (ok, maybe a couple), what is the biggest difference between old school art and today's art (disregarding technology, modern printing, digital media etc)?

What has changed, from your point of view, to the "vibes" of today's art when compared to the 70s and 80s?

Hey, thanks!

Years ago, someone on Instagram (maybe Doug Kovacs?) pointed out that one of the biggest differences between old school D&D art and the modern era was that back in the day, you'd see player character types getting eaten and killed A LOT. I think that carries through to a lot of other games, too -- audiences were way more OK with seeing bad stuff happening to the POV characters in the art.

I think a lot of other factors are largely commercial -- the idea that color is necessary and black and white won't sell, or the consistency that professional art direction brings, and so on. I'm kinda neutral on those, but I do miss seeing adventurers getting chomped in large numbers.

What do you think is the most underrated game from a mechanics point of view, and what do you think it is from a concept/setting point of view?

What games do you feel have the best and worst matches between mechanics and setting/style?

I think Pendragon will never have enough love, especially on a mechanical level. They way it simulates a character's state of mind is super fascinating and has never been matched, in a lot of ways, by other games.

Underrated settings are legion, especially these days, since the market doesn't really welcome richly, incrementally developed settings they way it did in the '90s. A Thousand Thousand Islands, Spire, Rainy City all spring to mind as really excellent settings that more people should know about.

Other than Planescape, which game had the closest alignment of art, vibes and setting?

Tricky. And I probably will change my mind ten minutes from now, but I'm going to go with Spire right now. Strong aesthetic from Adrian Stone that simultaneously pushes the fantasy and the revolutionary thrust of the game. The setting follows through, pitting the subjugated drow against the ruling high elves within the confines of a vertical city. Its a powder keg of desperation and then the system is designed to wave open flames around everywhere. Really great!

Hey, Stu! I bought a copy of your book. It's in my "to read" stack right now. Do you have any advice for an adult who's curious about/fascinated by RPGs but has never really played them? What's a good one to start with?

Thank you! I hope you enjoy it! I think reading it is a good first step -- I tried to cram as many different sorts of games in there as I could. See what appeals to you. I think the Year Zero Engine games from Free League are really good entry points (Tales from the Loop, Alien) that straddle the old and the new schools of design. The Call of Cthulhu starter box is one of the best "starters" I've encountered, though that is a sort of older, heavier system. If you have kids (or even if you don't, honestly), check out some of the games designed for young players, like Amazing Adventures or No Thank You Evil, which are great primers for the fundamentals. And, if you're lucky, your local library system might have some RPGs in their network that you can check out for free!

As a Dungeons and Dragons vet of over 25+ years, I have to ask: for as long as you've been aware of the game, how do YOU feel about all of the changes that it has undergone throughout it's history?

I tend to think that for something like D&D, constant change is good, because ultimately we get more options that way. And we have the widest selection of options possible right now, between current D&D, past D&Ds and all the indie permutations of D&D. It all puts more tools in the drawer.

Do you find 'tech' a helpful thing to consider in the evolution of table top gaming? Or, is the addition of tools enough to transform it into a new and distinct platform? I don't have a horse in that race but I like to start conversations by creating boundaries and then stepping back and thinking about how to poke & prod inside the lines.

Depends on how you define tech, I guess. I think stuff like inexpensive digital printing and desktop publishing software have probably had a more profound transformative effect on the hobby than virtual tabletop and other stuff like that (so far, anyway), though I think everything we've got from '74 to present is still recognizably a TTRPG. I think it is conceivable that virtual tabletops could transform into their own distinct type of play (and we're probably going to see this tested next year with the next D&D?) but I don't think it has happened yet.

Were there any interesting realizations you had about RPGs that only got revealed to you once you laid out so many products in such a massive book?

I'm imagining some subtle stats or trends you hadn't thought about.

Love your podcast by the way!

There are a ton of little trends that are threaded through the narrative of RPG history that revealed themselves pretty much immediately once I put a bunch of stuff in chronological order and started writing about them. I think my favorite was the realization that DIY impulses and zine creation have pretty much not only been part of the hobby since the start, but have really always driven the creation of important new ideas (you see this immediately with Tunnels & Trolls, Judges Guild and Wee Warriors kind of making the D&D folks wanted, and which we really recognize, when TSR was slow to do so).

Thanks for listening!

ever play/talk about Time Wizards in any of your work? or any other strange little indie/homebrew/community created and driven projects that you think might be worth spotlighting?

also, what are your thoughts on polled 'Quest" style collective fiction and how it fits into the role playing community at large?

edit: i was beaten to Paranoia memeing by hours, rip

Hey, what matters is that we're all friends of the Computer.

Anyway, I'm unfamiliar with Time Wizards, but I am going to try to track it down now! I love this sort of game, I feel like there are great heaping piles of them that deserve more attention. I'm currently enamored with WHPA-13: Weird Heroes of Public Access, which is both a neat RPG and also a sort of meta-lore project that reminds me of like Rusty Lake and similar puzzle narratives.

Also, as yet, unfamiliar with Quest-style collective fiction. Point me in a direction to learn more!

fiction.live is the first place i can think of off the top of my head for quest fiction, but theres tons of other forums and boards dedicated to the concept

its sort of half a crowd sourced novel and half a cooperative role playing experience where a QM acts to facilitate a story as an author/dm hybrid and a group of people discuss and vote together to drive the actions of the main character/characters. its an RPG by committee, essentially.

Oh interesting! I have seen something like this play out on Twitter in the past. Super intriguing, I will definitely dig into this more, thank you!

I'm an old timer. Have you heard of a role-playing game from the late 80s called 'Dragon Master'? The cover art on the rules book had a Conan-type figher holding up a dragon head as a trophy. This game's fight resolution rules were very different from D&D. For example, every dice roll- was out of a range of 1-100. The initial damage was only to a defender's 'fatigue' score before going to real damage. There was also a chance of a 'critical hit', in which the attacker scores any number of extra damage- like impaling to the spine or something gory like that. Every round was called a 'pulse'- of about 6 seconds. I remember that game fondly. Its fighting system, some might say, was more realistic that D&Ds.

Do you mean DragonQuest? The only Dragonmaster I can think of is a trick-taking card game with gorgeous art by Bob Pepper. DragonQuest was a cool game from SSI that was early '80s I think? I don't know the system super well (though I remember the magic system being creepy and real-world-ish) but I do LOVE the adventure module The Enchanted Wood, which is by Jennell Jaquays and is just as good as Thracia, Dark Tower and Griffin Mountain.

Did you by any chance look into singleplayer "game books" like American Knights and The Last Battledroid, where the reader could go through a pre-built RPG scenario with a randomly-generated character? I'm looking into those myself but don't know where to start.

Also, does your hobby extend into tabletop wargaming like Warhammer 40k and BattleTech?

I've never heard of American Knights or The Last Battledroid -- are they much different from something like Fighting Fantasy or the Golden Dragon gamebooks?

Aside of a couple COIN games, and maybe a slight urge to find a lightweight skirmish game to justify this Grenadier orc army I am painting, I am not much of a wargamer. Yet, maybe? But probably not.

I guess I should have included some links:

• The Last Battledroid
• American Knights (this is part of the "Endless Quest" series of gamebooks)

A shame that gamebooks and old game-style book series like Choose Your Own Adventure fell by the wayside once video gaming became mainstream.

You could give BattleTech a try, because that's a game that's miniature-agnostic (you don't actually need miniatures to play the game, just a bunch of counters with a marking showing which of its sides is forwards).

Also, what do you think of the new changes to the background that D&D brought, such as the reluctance to make traditional fantasy monsters "born evil"?

OK, yea, gamebooks are really important! The second ever RPG, Tunnels & Trolls, basically invented the form (solo adventure, RPG-style attributes, dice used for combat and skill challenges, randomized entries). The Fighting Fantasy series pretty much standardized it and it became the UK-style of gamebook (as opposed to the US style, which tend to not have mechanics, like Endless Quest or CYOA). I generally enjoy FF, GrailQuest, Lone Wolf, Fabled Lands, they all have their charms. The form isn't entirely dead, either, some folks are still producing new ones, and they inform a lot of solitaire RPG designs that have emerged in recent years (you might be interested in the stuff Blackoath Entertainment has been doing).

edit: Sorry, didn't see the "born evil" part. I find the idea of a D&D canon somewhat perplexing at the baseline, but fixed alignment is a weird abstraction and I welcome the tinkering.

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I haven't a clue! I mostly just make stuff up as I go and hope they make a reasonable amount of money. I would look to get that into the hands of people who can play it as soon as possible, through online communities on Reddit and Discords, and build that word of mouth. But again, I'm not sure I am the best person to ask on this one.

What's your favorite RPG property with dinosaurs?

Ha, oh man, so many to choose from! I am probably ultimately partial to RuneQuest, because they have magisaurs, which is as good a concept as the name implies.

Questions about the book:

What's your favorite piece of art that Kyle drew up for the book?

Favorite entry that you wrote vs the one that you think is the...most important.

What lessons have you learned from this book that you're applying to the next one (and the one after that)?

Any low-key thing in the book that might go overlooked that you want folks to slow down and catch?

Hm, favorite Kyle Patterson art in the book is probably an underwhelming answer because it is definitely the little ruined tower in the marsh that is at the end of the Introduction. It's just got the totally right vibe of "if I had a tower in a marsh." All Kyle's illustration work in the book is monstrously good tho.

Favorite entry I wrote...maybe the Ravenloft one, weirdly? Because it goes off the rails into a long musing on Dracula and vampires generally? The Harlem Unbound chapter felt important, so did the Thousand Thousand Islands (RIP) chapter. Importance isn't really for me to gauge though.

I dunno about lessons learned. I internalized A LOT of RPG stuff, all of it seems important, it is hard to single out, let alone employ as a tool and particular bit of education. That feels like a dodge, but it's true.

And definitely don't skip the appendices. A. because they are fun, but also B. because the one on Dungeons leads right into the next book!

Is there a long gone game you still carry a torch for? Mine is Alternity.

I don't really carry a torch for it, because I never really played it, but I will never not be kind of mad about never getting volume 2 of Zebulon's Guide so we could properly evaluate the overhauled Star Frontiers. Alternity is neat too. This question is tough for me because I love all these old dead games. OH! Thieves' Guild, the thief-centric early 80s hack of D&D is probably my real answers. I love those books and the city setting. Would have liked more Sunken Lands stuff from Midkemia too. So much good stuff out there!

What do you think are the real life impacts that playing role games have? Has any research or writing being done on how it affect personal development?

I'm not an academic or a researcher, nor do I know of any particular studies on this topic, so grain of salt.

That said, from my personal experience, supported by a lot of anecdotal evidence, playing RPGs seems to have positive effects on language and communication skills, critical thinking, organization. Kept me out of trouble as a kid (and, I guess, as an adult, too). I'd bet they are generally good for mental health, too.

I am a massive fan of Meta tabletop narratives like Knights of the Dinner Table, almost everything from Kenzerco, and X-Crawl from Green Ronin. Is there any... I don't want to call them satire RPGs because they are so much more than that, but anything in the X-Crawl vein that you would recommend that maybe I have not tried?

X-Crawl from Green Ronin

You did see there was a recent Kickstarter for a new X-Crawl from Goodman Games, I hope? Grant Howitt's Dead Channel might fit the bill (though, briefly, as it is a 1-page RPG). DIE, too, maybe? Tales from the Floating Vagabond and Toon also have a lot of meta stuff, but I am not sure they fit the bill.

I personally have never played a TTRPG but know about D&D through pop media. What kind of people would you say play these games? I wish I played this with friends in high school but it was way out of my radar

I think the hobby cuts across all demographics. Which makes sense, the game is rooted in storytelling and playing pretend, which are pretty universal human activities. And it is never too late to start! My book is maybe a good starting point and guide, but there are so, so many more types of games out there now than when you were in high school, so there is a much greater chance you'll find one you really vibe with. AND because of virtual tabletops and solo-play options, it's way easier for find people to play with!

Do you find a problem arises when a setting is just so alien that you don’t quite know what to do with it? I’m thinking specifically of Skyrealms of Jorune - such a great setting, but I had a very hard time getting a campaign going and eventually gave up. (In contrast, the most fun I ever had was with a TMNT campaign that ended up with the players spending a lot of time in a fictional version of our hometown.)

Ha, I didn't get to the end of your first sentence and I was already thinking of Skyrealms of Jorune. Fascinating setting, possibly impossible to actually play right out of the box. I think it is often difficult to handle elaborately detailed settings, the lore is always going to amount to some barrier to entry when compared to things we have more firsthand touchstones for. Harn is easier than Jorune. Manhattan in 1985 is easier than Harn.

What was the widest element of RPGs you encountered?

DragonRaid (1984) and Metascape (1993?) both have box sets that are 3" deep, which was probably the widest available at their respective times. Nowadays, a little harder to say -- the Invisible Sun black cube is 12" or so on a side, so that is probably the widest game in my collection.

I kid, I kid. I am going to assume that is an autocorrect of wildest or weirdest. Noumenon (2006) is certainly up there: players take the role of dead people who have been reincarnated as humanoid insects that are part of a sort of symbotic hive mind (all player characters share hit points from a collective pool, which sure encourages teamwork) and have to navigate their way through a sort of metaphysical labyrinth for obscure reasons.

Do any combat systems stand out in your mind as especially good, or exceptionally bad? I have heard that both Harnmaster and GURPS Martial Arts have the most detailed systems, but whether that’s good or bad might be up to the tastes of the GM and players.

Exceptionally bad is easy: Phoenix Command's ridiculous small arms system is probably my favorite trainwreck of a combat system. Most of the games put out by Fantasy Games Unlimited have combat systems that will make most folks' eye water as well.

I really love the absurdity of Troika's combat system, which often leaves characters out of a given combat round and allows damage to be delivered whether a character is on the offense or the defense. That's not to everyone's taste, though. I mostly want combat to be fast and smooth, rather than "realistic" or even "sensible" and there are a lot of games that tick that box for me without feeling remarkable, if that makes sense?

When are you and Ed going to finish Maiden Voyage? You still have about 30 years of studio albums to go...

We recorded the rest of the episodes, its just a matter of Ed finishing the editing. He mentioned the other night that he was hoping to maybe get them dropping at the end of the year? Fingers crossed!

What is tabletop roleplaying?(explain it cause i never heard of it before)

Tabletop roleplaying is a type of game in which a player (or group of players) navigates a story (often, but not always, controlled by a game-runner). Players making decisions for a fictional character. That character often has a number of attributes that can be used, along with dice or some other randomizer, to see if the character succeeds in actions where the result of an action is variable or unknown. The most well-known TTRPG is Dungeons & Dragons, but there are literally hundreds of others that use various settings and themes and complexities.

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Oh gosh, there are similar numbers of Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels. Those were totally worth reading when I was in high school, I don't know if they hold up now. The whole World of Darkness universe has massive amounts of lorebooks with no game mechanics detailing the endless conspiracies of vampires and werewolves and such. I enjoy a little bit of that every once in a while. I truly enjoyed reading all the Glorantha lore I can find (for Chaosium's RuneQuest) but man, Delta Green is my real catnip. I've read that entire line as if they were novels. I drop everything when a new book comes out. There's fiction, too!

What's the most cones-of-dunshire-esqe game that you've found, where the rules make the game so long that just starting takes forever?

Hahaha I love this question. I feel like, once again, there are so many possible answers, all of which will upset somebody. Aria is probably the worst offender I have encountered -- that game is like 800 pages of set-up with very little actual game. World Action and Adventure is another contender. Invisible Sun! It might be Invisible Sun. I have the black cube and I think it is like 10 pounds of cards I don't know how to properly use?

if i die again tonight what should i reroll? planescape low lvl maybe 2

Tiefling Rogue Doomguard