Tycho's Tales
Tycho's Tales is an informal discussion podcast about tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) like Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder. Episodes are released every Tuesday at 5 pm GMT (or, for the Kiwis, every Wednesday at 6 am NZST). Find out more about us at https://tychostales.com/about. If you enjoy the pod, please rate or review us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Episodes
50 episodes
Intra-party conflict
We talk about some recent instances of intra-party conflict (when some of our player characters had... disagreements with one another), the benefits and potential drawbacks of that sort of roleplay, and how to navigate it so that everyone still...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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46:07
Sharize's Charm of Differential Etherealness
We make up a dumb spell-of-the-week: https://tychostales.com/articles/sharizes-charm-differential-etherealness/
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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22:36
Fantasy book club: The Wheel of Time
This episode contains a bunch of spoilers for The Wheel of Time. Obviously :)
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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58:24
Spiral campaign development
We talk about Michael E. Shea's excellent essay on spiral campaign development, from the Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding Volume 2 (Kobold Press).Michael also goes by Sly Flourish, and you can find a version of this essay on his website:
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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43:57
First impressions of D&D: Part 2
We continue our chat with Matt about his experience playing D&D for the first time; character sheet nostalgia; player preparation etiquette; and, for some reason, again, LARPing.
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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32:14
First impressions of D&D: Part 1
We're joined by special guest Matt to chat about his first time playing D&D. We talk about how difficult it is to get into roleplaying; discovering creativity; bad habits; and the possibly apocryphal Ocean Schlaggermine.
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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34:32
Serious characters
We talk about the horrific film Mazes and Monsters; one-shots; guest appearances; and roleplaying serious characters.
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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24:26
The sinking ship
We're back with new listener mail about The Lord of the Rings; we complain with no self-awareness or irony about negativity and clickbait from TTRPG content creators; and Walt gets some suspicious beads.
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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27:06
Healing in RPGs
We talk about metagaming, different types of encounters, healing in tabletop and video RPGs, and low-stakes combat.
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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25:13
New beginnings
We're about to make characters for a new campaign, so we talk about how we think about character motivations, alignment and backstories; how you should use your own personality; the relationship between min-maxing and roleplaying; and why it's ...
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Season 1
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Episode 41
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31:30
Magic in real life
We talk about spells we'd like to take in real life, and why The Lord of the Rings is still so damn good.
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Season 1
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Episode 40
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33:25
Modern fantasy
We talk about the relative value of a life; inherent evil in modern fantasy; and RPGs as vehicles for moral questions.
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Season 1
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Episode 39
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38:47
Tycho's Tale: Divine Intervention
The story of the first time I used the classic Cleric feature, Divine Intervention. Note that my interpretation of a d100 is inconsistent with rules as written; I've writ...
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Season 1
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Episode 38
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16:35
Granny Gumboot
We make a level two Fighter using the 2024 rules. It's recommended only to listen to this episode if you have a great disdain for your own time.
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Season 1
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Episode 37
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30:01
Fantasy book club: Discworld
We talk about audiobooks, Discworld, The Name of the Wind, Game of Thrones, the Stormlight Archive and Cosmere RPG, and other nerdy things.
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Season 1
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Episode 36
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31:59
The Hangover: Part 2
In which Stringybutt Lotsalegs has her special day.Music by Robert Mullis, Olivia Moore and Tabletop Audio.
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Season 1
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Episode 34
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1:42:26
The Hangover: Part 1
The gang goes to Fellbarrow...Music by Olivia Moore, Calum Robertson, and Aim to Head.
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Season 1
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Episode 33
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1:35:31
The Hangover preview
We talk about our upcoming actual-play homebrew one-shot, The Hangover.
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Season 1
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Episode 32
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24:06
Dungeon design
We talk about dungeons. (No dragons though.) And puzzles.
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Season 1
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Episode 31
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33:53
LLMs in tabletop RPGs
We talk about LLMs in tabletop RPGs, Wild Shapes, the danger of jumping to conclusions, and NPC personalities. The 'jumping to conclusions' chapter contains some minor spoilers for the Storm Lord's Wrath module.
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Season 1
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Episode 30
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34:28
GM support group 4
We're back with a GM support group, where we talk about directing player characters, low-prep campaigns, and preparing NPCs before environments.
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Season 1
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Episode 29
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26:07
The state of the tabletop
This week we talk about the state of the tabletop RPG scene, including recent WoTC drama, and competition among different systems.
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Season 1
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Episode 28
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22:02
Fantasy book club: Riftwar Saga
This episode contains minor spoilers for the Riftwar Saga book series by Raymond E. Feist. Welcome to our inaugural fantasy book club episode! Besides talking about a few fantasy books, we talk about an alternative mana system for manag...
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Season 1
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Episode 27
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29:12