We sat down with Sacha Lightfoot of Slightly Reckless Games to talk all things Ronin—a brutal, beautiful RPG about masterless samurai and the weight of honor. We dig into where the game came from, what makes it sing, and why we think OSR games are SHITE (clickbait, we actually don't).

Sacha shares what’s next from SRG, and we get into how Ronin adapts and builds on Mörk Borg’s core concepts. There’s death, duty, and just enough darkness to feel real. As always, we talk theme, tone, and what we’re really chasing in an RPG.

Stick around for a preview of our Ronin Actual Play with the Late Night Marauders, and don’t miss the chance to back SRG’s upcoming expansion, Densetsu.

Also, check out Scott’s StartPlaying page for weekly Ronin sessions—featuring both original and published scenarios:
👉 https://startplaying.games/gm/myth-forged

Topics Discussed:

2:00 What are we working on

8:10 Slightly Reckless Games

17:20 Lets talk about Ronin

23:40 Death and Resurrection

32:30 Exploring OSR

40:10 Honor System

46:00 Densetsu Kickstarter on its final week https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/slightlyreckless/ronin-densetsu

53:00 Third Party Development for Ronin

58:00 Ronin Actual Play excerpt (1 hour) of module 13 Demons of Akuma Saizo by John Ossaway.

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Here is our inaugural conversation about story structure and the ways both system and choice shape our RPG sessions. In this episode, we focus on the classic three-act structure—how it translates into collaborative, improvised play over the course of an ongoing campaign, or within individual sessions.

We explore a few core questions:

Where does the responsibility for story lie in an RPG?

What games drive narrative through structure, and how do they do it?

How can we think differently about the formulas we bring to the table?

Our goal is to offer several ways to create story in nearly any type of game, including those without explicit narrative mechanics. This is the beginning of a longer conversation about how stories emerge in play, and the different tools we can use to shape them.

More to come on this topic, we’re sure.

Topics Discussed:

00:01:00 What we’re playing?

00:18:50 Narrative Structure

00:24:00 Site-based games

00:44:42 Sandbox games

01:01:00 Player facing

01:08:00 Story Driven Structures, ie Three Acts

01:10:00 The Inciting Incident

01:19:00 Act Two

01:27:00 Reluctant Heroes

01:29:00 Act Three

01:33:20 Wrapping Up

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This is an auxiliary episode highlighting an exciting new story game from Bully Pulpit Games, Zhenya's Wonder Tales, a GMless rpg driven by cards to tell grim slavic-inspired fairy tales. We do our first interview with the game designer, Jason Morningstar - prolific designer of Fiasco, Shab-al-hiri Roach, and Gray Ranks, among others.

Check out Zhenya's Wonder Tales on Backerkit - Campaign ends April 4th.

Topics Discussed:

00:00:45 Intro

00:07:30 Green and Narrow Bed

00:12:12 Zhenya's Wonder Tales

00:24:00 Art by Momatoes

00:32:20 Safer spaces in rpgs

00:37:25 Explicit stakes in *moves*

00:48:30 No dice?

00:54:00 Interview Wrap-Up

@jmstar on social media

Actual Play

00:56:20 Rules Read Aloud

We ran Zhenya's Wonder Tales in Roll20

01:04:00 Choose characters

01:10:10 Enjoy as we play Zhenya's Wonder Tales

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The crew have a conversation about how to convey information at the table. The GMs responsibility and the roles players have to bring the fiction to the game. This is a big topic but we chat about props, failing forward, NPCs and other tools we employ to bring depth and color to our worlds. As usual, our conversation ranges far and wide.

Topics Discussed:

00:01:00 Introducing the ideas

00:07:50 No One Cares About Your Lore (until it becomes part of the story)

Enter the Dungeon

00:10:50 Show, Don't Tell

Thomas Flight

GM Paizo GameMastery Cards I don't think they produce this anymore but you may be able to find aftermarket versions

00:22:10 Bringing It Into the Fiction

00:27:00 Character Backstory

00:39:30 World Lore

00:58:10 More Out of Character Info

01:04:00 The Perception Check

01:11:10 Handouts & Learn from Teachers

01:18:20 Power of “Meta Knowledge"

Games we talk about: Dungeon World, Invisible Sun, Trail of Cthulhu, Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World.

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The gang has a discussion on structure in TTRPGs. How does structure make a good horror game? How does setting inform players what they can and can’t do? Some examples of story structure in World of Darkness, Invisible Sun, and Dogs in the Vineyard. Then the crew plays a short session of Whispering Vault, Mike Nystul’s 1993 story game inspired by the likes of Hellraiser and Nightbreed. We play it fast and loose but hope we hit in the key elements of play and this intriguing game’s explicit ritualistic structure.

Topics:

1:45 Weird forward games

2:25 Is Mark a god?

3:30 Where is the Weird in WoD, Invisible Sun, and Lovecraft Country

6:50 Where is the horror?

11:25 Setting Expectations as Structure: Implicit vs Explicit Structure

23:15 The Illusory World tropes

36:00 Whispering Vault Actual Play

36:30 Character Creation

48:40 System overview

51:10 The Call (game begins)

57:20 Navigation to the Realm

Of Flesh

60:00 Dismissing the Guardian

67:57 Creating Your Vessel

72:45 Healing the Enigma

115:38 Binding the Unbidden

116:15 Wrapping Up

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In episode 4, Jamie and Scott have a lot to say about agency at the table. Who controls what? Who drives the story? Who narrates die outcomes? Traditionally the GM handles a lot of this but we challenge groups to explore situations where you can hand over a lot of that responsibility. And we discuss over a dozen games that change how we think about agency.

Topics:

1:00 Seriousness

3:35 Ginni Di - https://youtu.be/DXUnEk4cuYI?si=M_5Dr4dv_b_E-1vH

4:50 Monte Cook - https://www.montecookgames.com

10:35 Characterization Agency

13:30 Combat

16:24 Losing control of PC

19:00 Blades in the Dark

22:30 metagame

23:40 Invisible Sun

28:00 "Action" Agency

35:00 Torchbearer

37:00 die rolling

42:30 Apocalypse World

44:35 Cypher System

45:35 Plot Agency

52:10 Proactive Roleplaying

How To Be a Great GM - https://youtube.com/@howtobeagreatgm?si=Fze0DEXg5gbr456E

54:20 Novel characterization

63:43 John Harper

65:15 Setting canon

66:18 Shock

70:00 Hero Wars & RuneQuest

75:40 Burning Wheel

79:35 "Push-Pull" Agency

90:00 Community & IT Crowd

92:29 Dice adjudicating conversations

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In Episode 3 of Modern Mythology, we continue our exploration of horror RPG systems with Chronicles of Darkness, the successor to White Wolf’s World of Darkness and the “new” World of Darkness. While the editions’ lineage may be complex, the system’s core mechanics remain intuitive and accessible. To demonstrate how it plays, we dive into an Actual Play with a simple yet evocative premise: “Your characters work at a 1990s convenience store.” From character creation to the gradual escalation of tension, the scenario unfolds, transforming the ordinary into something unsettlingly extraordinary. At the end we talk a bit about what we learned and the pros and cons of "traditional" RPGs.

5:20 Virtue and vice

7:25 Aspirations

16:00 Story begins

49:35 CoD Breaking Point

61:45 Wrap up the game

63:00 One Shots

64:22 Discussion about cultural appropriation

67:00 Where’s the horror?

69:00 The Big Lie

74:25 Health and recovery

76:00 System driving player behavior

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Welcome to modern mythology, a podcast that explores the many intersections of story and system in every episode. We will discuss some facet of how RPGs function as modern myths, providing a shared canvas for creativity and the collaborative discovery of new worlds.

Episode 2 Collective Stories. Getting on the same page with Session 0 by the end, and we begin our exploration of RPGs with Blades in the dark actual play.

Collision of Myth and roleplaying 0:26

Some of our favorite RPG moments 3:35

Film and media 6:25

Growing up gamers 9:05

What kinds of characters do you play? 11:40

Social Contract and games 15:08

Safety tools 18:30

Break 29:15

We’re back talking about horror games 29:40

Blades in the Dark Actual Play 30:00

Wrap up 1:40:00

Visit ModernMythology.net for more episodes, content, and links to our other podcasts.