We return to DCC and look at some of games that belong to the family
This time we return to the topic of Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) with Judge Blythy, our resident zealot.
Appendix G, our never-ending list of influences, expands with the wonderful Swords Series from Fritz Leiber nominated by Dave Paterson.
We talk about our preparation for a busy September of gaming.
Paul Fricker has released Gatsby and The Great Race for 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu.
Please support us on Patreon.
A personal appreciation of Bud and his contributions to the GROGNARD files
I dreamed I sailed to the mirrored edge
Of that murky world for an iron bell
That dragged me down to the ocean bed
And rang to mark where my shadow fell
Bud from Bud’s RPG Reviews, died suddenly on August 10th following a short illness. For many, Bud was best known for his hugely successful videos. That lilting, calming voice offering thoughtful commentary, accompanied by the distinctive sight of his hands leafing through the featured book or boxed set. His reviews were never first impressions; they were thorough, inspiring, and well-researched deep dives. If you haven’t experienced them, his back-catalogue is a treasure trove, from his explorations of the finer details of Glorantha lore and his reviews of Delta Green supplements, to his epic, five-hour study of Masks of Nyarlathotep.
We both started producing online content at around the same time and, crucially, we both began our RPG journey with RuneQuest, specifically the Games Workshop box set. He once told me, “I even had someone message me to say, I hold you and the GROGNARD files responsible for getting me back into it.”
That shared story always felt like a kinship, a common effort to celebrate playing role-playing games.
His own origin story was one he included on his the ‘First, Last and Everything’ feature, and it’s a perfect picture of how so many stumbled into this world. He described his first exposure being “in the place I grew up in in Liverpool, Norris Green’s Woolworths at the age of 12. I had a voucher for my birthday and while I was perusing the latest releases, a book cover caught my eye – The Seven Serpents from the Steve Jackson’s Sorcery series. I promptly bought it and dove head first into a world of fantastic creatures, deadly traps and a spellbook of three letter words.”
We chatted online for a while, but we didn’t meet in person until UK Games Expo 2018, when he played in the PSI World game I was running. It was, incredibly, the first convention game he had ever played, and I don’t think he ever recovered from the anarchy of it all. He joked, “we had a climatic plumbing roll, and I can honestly say it’s the first time I’ve ever heard that.”
After that, he became a regular fixture at GROGMEET. He would jokingly complain about some aspect of the organisation every year—there’s a list somewhere—and his grumbling became a affectionate ritual.
It was at GROGMEET that he ran a playtest of his best-selling Viral scenario for Call of Cthulhu, written with Alex Guillotte. Everyone who played gave one of those looks that revealed it was a unique and unsettling experience. Bud was an excellent GM, capable of creating a vivid, palpable mood and delivering explanations of horror unfolding with an unsettling precision. He GM’d the first game of Delta Green I played, and I still haven’t quite recovered.
He was justifiably proud of Viral, and when we featured it in one of our book clubs, he talked in detail about his creative process. His description of the entity at the heart of the horror was pure Bud: imaginative, grounded in a weird reality, and utterly chilling. “The idea is like, have you ever seen a viral bacteriophage? A real one. They look like something alien, horrific looking. Imagine one of them 50 foot tall, pulsing with cysts and have like a halo of flies around its head, and you’ve got yourself a kind of a mythos entity, haven’t you.” He found the uncanny in the everyday and translated it into unforgettable gameable material.
Beyond his creativity, Bud was generous. Both at the table and beyond. Now, I’ll always cherish the Crown Royal dice bag and dragon metal dice set he brought back for me from his first celebrated trip to Gen Con.
Bud was a valued contributor to the GROGNARD files in so many ways.
I’m going to miss his imaginative insights, his dry humour, and yes, even his grumbles about the chairs at GROGMEET.
Gone too soon. My thoughts and love are with his family and all who loved him.
Bud, out.
But never forgotten.
– Dirk the Dice
Join us as we jump every shark in the neighbourhood, we look back at 10 years of podcasting
It was 10 years ago today, that we first came out to play! In this episode we jump every shark in sight by reflecting on the past ten years of the podcast.
We invited listeners to ask us anything, as long as it was looking back over the past 10 years, so we could lean back in our armchairs and reflect on what we have done.
Also, joining the fun is @dailydwarf, who looks back on Small Ads and letters in White Dwarf, in an adapted essay that first appeared in the GROGZINE.
We head to the shed at the end of the garden to see Eddy the Armchair Collector in Chief, who hasn’t appeared for a while.
Meanwhile in the Room of Role-Playing Rambling Judge Blythy works through the Thunderphase questions at a medium-fire pace.
Thanks to everyone who has supported us over the years. Especially anyone who has contributed to the Patreon, or commented, given us a review and passed it on.
The GROGPOD looks at Dungeon Crawl Classics and reflects on our play experience
In this GROGPOD, Judge Blythy talks about his initiation into the cult of DCC. We look at what makes it work.
Goodman Games, the publisher of DCC, is hosting DCC Day on 19th July 2025.
We are joined by Brendan LaSalle who talks about DCC and his futuristic variant, XCrawl Classics where you can have a spectator sport in the dungeon.
Next time we will look at some more settings.
You can support the GROGNARD Files on Patreon.
We are about to record a 10th Anniversary special, ask us anything.
July 2025 marks 10 years since the beginning of this bobbins. I know, it feels much, much longer doesn’t it?
To mark the occasion, Dirk and Blythy are recording an episode looking back over the past 10 years and we need your help. In the comments below, please ask us anything. Give us your pithy questions about your favourite episodes, games that you are interested in hearing more about, and other features of the 10 years of podcasting.
You can ask more than one, so please fire away, and we’ll pick some apparently at random, to answer during the show.
We’ll be reviving some classic segments during the episode, including the triumphantly indifferent return of ‘Bargains from Ed in The Shed’ and a not heard before essay from The Daily Dwarf.
Ask away!
We’re still talking and not talking about magic at the same time. Ars Magica seems a fascinating game, but how do we fit it in?
In this episode, we continue our examination of magic in Role-Playing Games with a look at Ars Magica with Science Fiction author Adrian Tchaikovsky. He talks to us about the setting, the rules and the way that magic works in the game.
We haven’t had chance to play it yet, so Dirk and Blythy meet in the Lass O Gowrie pub in Manchester and discuss the difficulties of ‘fitting it all in’.
We have been to UK Games Expo so we give our initial views of attending the event this year.
Dirk has been on Orlanth Rexes Gaming Vexes and What Would the Smart Party Do? recently.
Patreon has been refreshed – annual contribution at discount and ‘it’s your birthday’ award for the top level of support. Thanks for all who listen and contribute.
White Dwarf in the RPG world was the sun which our gaming lives revolved around, the dream was to actually appear in it. Many GROGSQUAD members did appear, but what about those that got away? Daily Dwarf has written about his ‘lost monster’. Enjoy!
Where did our idea of magic come from back in the day? We look at witchcraft and folk horror of the 70’s and 80s.
Returning guest Stephen Brotherstone, co-author of the Scarred for Life series of books and shows, joins us in the zoom of Role Playing Rambling to examine the witchcraft and horrors that haunted our childhood years.
You can see Ste as his show is on the road during 2025 and the latest volume of the series is now available. Highly recommended as it is packed with gaming nostalgia content.
Also in this episode, Dirk and Blythy watch The Hammer House of Horror (1980) together and consider what impact it had on them at the time and how it can inform our games now.
We also reflect on the games that we played at virtual GROGMEET, including Liminal, Mutant Year Zero, The Dee Sanction and Savage Worlds.
You can see Tim Olsen interviewed by Toni Arthur.
If you want to support the podcast and get access to additional podcast content, then please consider supporting us at Patreon.
The first GROGVINE book is revealed after its journey around the world.
Remember the GROGVINE project? We sent out five books into the world, passing from one member of the GROGSQUAD to the next, slowly building a unique collaborative creation.
They’re starting to make their way back to the den. On this video, you will see the content of the first GROGVINE. If you want to find out more, follow this page.
Dirk
This week, I recorded and issued the second Dirk’s Dossier —another loose-leaf page that’s fallen out of the GROGNARD Files folder and fluttered to the floor of the den. I’ve scooped it up, dusted off the biscuit crumbs, and put out as exclusive Patreon content.
It’s rambling and a bit more relaxed than the usual podcast, if you can imagine such a thing, but it does give me a chance to reflect on ideas that won’t normally fit into the GROGNARD files, and a place to stick the off-cuts that are taken out because they’re too long, and a bit boring. Don’t let that put you off.
In the latest episode I chat about organising GROGMEET, the face-to-face gaming event that we host in Manchester. It has moved again to January (9th-11th), probably as a permanent fixture, because it worked out so much better for us than November, when it is busier in the city. Don’t worry, we are putting in another online GROGMEETish on 7th-9th November. The best way of keeping up to date is to follow the page.
GROGMEETing like this …
Organising GROGMEET isn’t rocket science—it’s event-bodging, powered by hob nobs, Post-It notes, and a group of very tolerant participants. It started as a simple meet-up in 2016: a room, a date, and a few people off Twitter. Since then, it’s grown beyond recognition, but at heart, it’s still the same thing—a gathering of like-minded folk who want to play and chat and roll some dice.
Let’s start with a question I’ve been asking myself since the first GROGMEET back in 2016: what even is a convention?
In the UK, we’re spoiled for choice. You’ve got the headliners like UK Games Expo, Dragonmeet, and a raft of local cons popping up in pubs, scout huts, and community centres across the land. But where does a con stop being a con and start being something else entirely? If it’s just a game that happens once a year in the back room of a pub, is that a con—or just an annual club night?
In my mind, I conflate the idea of conferences with conventions: there’s trade stalls, seminars, panels, maybe even a keynote speech from someone who once playtested Talisman in 1985. The gaming’s often on the side-lines.
GROGMEET keeps the gaming front and centre. It’s not quite a club—too big. But it’s not quite a convention—too small. It’s a weird hybrid. A con-club. A clunvention? A convlub? Or just a simple “meet-up” of the GROGNARD files listeners.
What grounds it—and gives its flavour—is the venue and the city. Manchester is perfectly imperfect. Compact, connected, and packed with character. Everything’s within walking distance. We’ve used venues from the plush to the peculiar (ask anyone about “The Year of the Shed”). But the challenge grows as we grow. Over 100 people came last year, which makes it harder to keep that casual, cosy feel, and have the appropriate level of lavatory provision.
It all started with one decision: Book a place. Find people. Roll dice. The rest is GROGMEET.
A BONE TO PICK
Also featuring in the Dossier is an ‘I’ll Get Mi Coat’ segment that didn’t make it to the final cut of the Rivers of London GROGPOD . I was away on holiday when that one came out, so didn’t have enough time to cut it down to size. It’s included here in its raw rambling.
Judge Blythy—our resident rules lawyer— dug out The Secret of Bone Hill and declared it “an experiment ahead of its time.” Back in the day, it landed with a bit of a thud because it didn’t spoon-feed you a story. It just put you in a region and said, “There you go, figure it out.” Blythy sees it as a prototype for sandbox play.
I had been running Rivers of London RPG, a couple of convention games. It doesn’t always end in a climactic scrap. Sometimes the satisfaction comes from solving something, talking your way through it, and feeling like you’ve stepped into the world of the books.
But is that enough for a convention game? Do people want fireworks at the end or is a neatly tied bow of narrative satisfaction okay?
WHERE WERE YOU IN 2020?
During 2020, the Year of the Apocalypse, as I declared a the start of the year (a title that proved a little too prophetic), I adapted Famine in Far-go for a short online campaign. Gamma World is gloriously bonkers, and Famine is a road trip through a mutant-infested wilderness, ending in a showdown with humanoid chicken-men in a derelict food plant. Yes, I made them talk like Colonel Sanders. Yes, they wore gingham.
There you have it. From toilets to Bone Hill to radioactive poultry. If you want to listen to it, then please head to Patreon to throw some coins in the beret, to keep this show on the road. It’s cheaper than a pound of “Processed Chick-O-Tron.”
—Dirk the Dice
