Author Archives: foldedfrequencies

On Location at Vulpine Taproom (Part 2) [S4T1]

In this week’s Streetlight, we’re back on location at Vulpine Taproom in Seattle asking people about their characters and campaigns! We hear about liches with day jobs, wild magic druids, and the downsides of digital dice.

We’re very grateful to Vulpine Taproom for letting us record at their game night! We talked with so many people in one evening that we ended up breaking it up into two episodes. The first episode aired towards the end of last season – go give it a listen. 

Thanks to Margaret, Shawn, Brandon, Chris, and Andrew for featuring in this week’s episode! Margaret and Shawn mention a ton of TTRPG systems in our conversation:

Throughout our conversation, Margaret and Shawn were showing us pieces of physical art. All of these were extremely cool! Here’s some of Shawn’s art:

Thanks to Goblin Society Games for supporting this week’s episode! Go check out their website and take a look at Mukrag’s Compendium of Curios, the HELBINE setting, and all the other cool games and supplements they make. Through July 23, if you purchase Goblin Society Games products on DriveThruRPG, they’ll donate 10% of the proceeds to Partners in Health.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly’s music.

Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon or supporting us on Ko-Fi. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.     

Cats That Herd Themselves: Running a Campaign across Multiple Tables with Dante [S4E1]

Welcome to Season 4 of Campaign Spotlight! This week, we chat with Dante about running eleven weekly parallel tables in the same campaign, falling in to becoming a professional GM, and embracing the tropes of the fetch quest. Plus, Dante has some sage advice for GMs like Jake who love spreadsheets.

During the interview, Dante mentions that they’re opening a physical storefront for Chance Encounter Games in Seattle. In the time since we recorded this interview, we attended the grand opening and asked the customers about their campaigns, characters, and hot takes. Expect to hear all about it in an upcoming Flashlight.

Dante also mentions two useful mapmaking Patreons: 

Way back in March 2024, we chatted with Jesse about a very different approach to running the same campaign across multiple tables. Last season, we heard from RP about the experience of professional GMing.

Thanks to Bramble for introducing this week’s episode! Bramble is a player in Jake’s long-running home game.

Thanks to Goblin Society Games for supporting this week’s episode! Go check out their website and take a look at Mukrag’s Compendium of Curios, the HELBINE setting, and all the other cool games and supplements they make. Through July 23, if you purchase Goblin Society Games products on DriveThruRPG, they’ll donate 10% of the proceeds to Partners in Health.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly’s music.

Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon or supporting us on Ko-Fi. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.    

Season 3 Finale [S3F8]

In the very last Flashlight of Season 3, Jake describes Reilly’s rations, Reilly shows off some sound effect finesse, and we commit to a timeline for Season 4. Spoiler alerts for either Inspector Gadget or Mission Impossible, potentially. This was our first time recording one-on-one in the studio in a long time, and we’d really missed it.

Listen to the episode to hear what we have in store for Season 4! If you’re enjoying the show, and you’d like to support it, here are some ways you can make that hapen:

  1. Subscribing and leaving a review helps other people find Campaign Spotlight! When people find the show, they sometimes get in touch with us about cool campaigns, and we interview them on the next season, and that’s how we can keep making more episodes.
  2. If you’d like to introduce a Season 4 episode in-character as your PC, call that intro in to 724 320 2020. This has been a really fun part of the last couple seasons, and we’d like to keep it going.
  3. If you have a cool character or campaign you’d like to show off, feel free to call 724 320 2020 and tell us about it! If you’ve played it and it was fun and interesting, we’d love to hear about it and feature it in an episode.
  4. If you have something you’d like to promote on the show (an actual play, a new game, a work of fiction) that’s related to TTRPGs, get in touch with us at campaign.spotlight@gmail.com about advertising. 
  5. Subscribing to our Patreon helps us pay for production, hosting, and distribution, and also lets us record at more cons and other events.

Thanks so much to everyone who’s continued to listen to the show! This has been such a fun and rewarding project. We hope you enjoy what’s coming next.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly’s music.

Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website. 

Black Trenchcoats and Pink Mohawks with Ev [S3E8]

In our very last interview of Season 3, we chat with Ev about spontaneous goblinization, nanite infestation, and a future Seattle that’s even grimmer than the one we live in. Quite a bit of Seattle talk in this one, but also a lot of discussion of playing a TTRPG in a grounded and realistic world where actions have consequences. Also, spoilers for iZombie, Mr Robot, and possibly Oceans Eleven? Jake would like to sincerely apologize for making a Homestuck reference.

In addition to the Shadowrun system, Ev mentions a few other science fiction-themed TTRPG systems:

Jake mentions this Flashlight from last season where we tried out a system that uses a bunch of lookup tables for combat.

To get used to the rhythm and rules of Shadowrun, Ev recommends checking out the Shadowrun subreddit, the Complex Action YouTube channel, this massive PDF tome called Shadowrun Storytime, and the Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong CRPGs.

You can find more about Ev’s music and events here and you can find more about Impact Foundation events here. Maybe we’ll head to a future Impact Foundation event to interview people about their PCs? 

This week’s intro comes from Rex, who was a guest in Season 2! Go check out Rex’s writing projects.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly’s music.

Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.   

On Location at Vulpine Taproom [S3F7]

In this week’s Flashlight, we’re at Vulpine Taproom in Seattle! We hear about the appropriate attire for a fantasy cosplay wedding, the hazards of getting emotionally invested in a gimmick character, and the downsides of having a life outside of gaming. Thank you so much to Vulpine Taproom for letting us record at your game night.

Thanks to Josh, Chris, Abraham, Shoe, Brandon, Sean, and another Chris for taking the time to talk with us! (And, once again, serious gratitude to Vulpine Taproom.) As usual, we have some notes on our conversations:

  • Abraham mentioned the Mothership system as well as the original Dragonlance setting which starts with Dragons of Despair. We talked about why TSR had to release so many sourcebooks back in this Season 2 Flashlight about the history of D&D.
  • We discuss the right system for running a cyberpunk-themed game with Shoe. Neither of us remembers the year for Cyberpunk Red – it’s 2045. Sorry about this. We also discuss the Shadowrun system, which you’ll be hearing about in next week’s interview! Also, if anyone has any suggestions for running a cyberpunk-themed game, send them our way and we’ll pass them along to Shoe.
  • When we talk with Chris (the second Chris) we discuss Cortex and also mention Lancer. You might remember Lancer from last episode’s s interview with Tyler. 

We ended up talking with way more people than we can fit in a single episode. Given that we’re getting close to the end of Season 3, the second half of our evening at Vulpine Taproom will likely end up in Season 4. You’ll hear more from some of these people in that episode.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly’s music.

Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.   

PC Customization with Tyler [S3E7]

In this week’s episode, we chat with Tyler about big beefy robots smashing into each other, character specialization and specificity, and playing with a whole party of GMs. This interview started out as being about the Lancer system in particular, but we ended up talking about building and levelling PCs more generally.

Tyler tells us about Lancer and its free COMP/CON character-building website and also mentions a few other games:

He also plugs going to Itch.IO and downloading a free TTRPG and getting back into Tumblr. Both of these sound like excellent suggestions to us.

This isn’t our first interview about giant robots! We also heard from Erika (who GM’d a campaign in Beam Saber) last season. For that matter, we spoke with Austin (who wrote Beam Saber) earlier this season.

This week’s intro comes from Bobby!

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly’s music.

Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.   

On Location at OrcaCon (Part 2) [S3F6]

In this week’s Flashlight, we’re still at the OrcaCon tabletop games convention in Seattle! We see a lot of excellent wizard hats, we hear about a lot of cool projects, and Jake reveals the deep lore of Campaign Spotlight. We can’t wait to get back to the con next year!

Here’s everyone we spoke with in this episode. Some of these were booths at the con, and some were people who saw us with a mic and wanted to let our listeners know what they were working on. We’re really grateful to everyone who took the time to speak with us!

We mention it on the episode – but if you’d like to introduce an episode in-character as your PC, or if you’d just like to tell the world about your character or your campaign, get in touch! The hotline is 724 320 2020 if you have anything you’d like to call in. So far, we don’t have way to send Reilly cute things, but we’re working on it.

Also, thanks again to everyone from the Oppegaard Meadery episode who recommended OrcaCon to us!

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly’s music.

Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.   

Professional GMing with RP [S3E6]

In this week’s episode, we chat with RP about the expectations of the hero’s journey, mysterious celebrity clients, and getting paid to DM. Spoilers for Beowulf, I think? We tank our chances for a Neuralink sponsorship in this one, just like we tanked our chances for a Tesla sponsorship earlier this season. (Also, just in case it wasn’t clear, we recorded both this interview and the interview with Austin before the election, when joking about Elon Musk’s failing companies felt different somehow.)


RP plugs Order of the Stick in this episode, and the fact that this webcomic has been running for more than two decades has made Jake feel intensely mortal. They also plug Demon: A Memoirand The Silmarillion. Head on over to RP’s Instagram to see what they’re working on, send them an email to ask about playing in one of their professionally DM’d games, or support them on Patreon or Ko-fi.

In this episode we also refer back to a couple previous conversations, including our interview about OSR-style gameplay with Max and our Flashlight on recent decisions at Wizards of the Coast. 

This week’s PC intro comes from Hali, who plays in one of RP’s home games with friends, and who’s also been a player in one of Jake’s campaigns.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly’s music.

Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.   

On Location at OrcaCon (Part 1) [S3F5]

In this week’s Flashlight, we head to the OrcaCon tabletop games convention in Seattle! We hear about a bunch of cool projects, we spot a prominent state official, and Jake is flummoxed by the concept of 24-hour livestreams. This convention was honestly so much fun, and we’re already scheming to get to more tabletop gaming events.

Here’s everyone we spoke with in this episode. Some of these were booths at the con, and some were people who saw us with a mic and wanted to let our listeners know what they were working on. We’re really grateful to everyone who took the time to speak with us!

Also, thanks to everyone from the Oppegaard Meadery episode who recommended OrcaCon to us!

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly’s music.

Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.   

Writing Story for LARP with Andrew [S3E5]

This week, we chat with Andrew from Legacies LARP about terrorizing the town as a fae abductor, depicting a demonic plague, and writing story for a long-running live-action role-playing game. This is a conversation about a very different type of storytelling experience in a game that’s been running continuously for decades where each plot team only controls the narrative for six months at a time. (Also, if you’re wondering, lthe town was called Fortnight long before the game Fortnite even existed.)

Thanks to Legacies LARP for making this interview possible! We’re talking about Legacies LARP this week because we really enjoyed learning about Gothic LARP with Rex last season. In addition to Legacies and Gothic, Andrew also mentions Shadow Accord and Dystopia Rising. 

This week’s intro comes from Kaji, who’s a player in Legacies LARP! We hope the demonic plague didn’t get him. Go check out his Twitch channel.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly’s music.

Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.