Isaac/Setting the Stage podcast

Legend of the Five Rings 5th Edition RPG Review Game History Legend of the Five Rings (L5R) is a game with an interesting history. The name of the game derives from the philosophy and martial arts guide, The Book of Five Rings, written by the famous swordsman Miyamoto Musashi in the 1640s. The book uses a Buddhist five element system to describe swordsmanship and the world. The L5R game uses those elements and builds an alternate reality version of peaceful…

I took a look a the Legend of the Five Rings fifth edition TTRPG. Solid samurai drama game, but very little support for ronin like I would've wanted. Read the review here. #L5R #DnD #RPG

HarmonQuest would be a good fit I think.

Applying TTRPG Customer Profiles to the Setting the Stage Podcast How do I use the customer profiles that I wrote? I've got three main TTRPG products that I produce. The Setting the Stage podcast is the most prominent one at the moment. I've got my video content that I post on YouTube and TikTok. Finally, I have the gocorral.com blog, right here! I'll focus on just Setting the Stage for now.

Continuing to work with the TTRPG customer profiles I wrote by applying them to my podcast, Setting the Stage. Hopefully you can learn something from reading my process!
#DnD #RPG

BREAKING: Kristen Bell cast as Amy Rose in #SonicMovie4!

Via The Hollywood Reporter

Races of Cimmeria: Undead Part 2 Subraces There are dozens of types of undead, but they fall mainly into three groups. These are corporeal insentient undead with bodies but no minds, corporeal sentient undead with bodies and minds, and incorporeal undead with minds but no bodies. Corporeal Insentient: The most common type of undead have bodies, but no intelligence. Without commands from a necromancer, they seek only to destroy any living thing they can see.

Which Greek gods do Undead like besides Hades? And how are different types of undead created in Cimmeria? #DnD #rpg

TTRPG Customer Profiles – Revised These are a set of customer profiles I designed to help with creating marketing material for TTRPGs. The idea is that you pretend you're talking to one of these profiles instead of a faceless conglomerate audience. They should help you adjust your message based on which profile you're targeting with a particular piece of media. The customer profiles I've designed are somewhat modeled after player motivation types presented in different DMGs.

The revised TTRPG Customer Profiles are here! And just in time for Valentine's Day!
#DnD #RPG #marketing

Responses to TTRPG Customer Profiles I posted the RPG Customer Profiles I wrote in a RPG Discord server to see what people thought of them. I got a few responses that I'll break down here. New Customer Profile? One person recommended adding an additional profile called Bobby Beer and Pretzels. That would be someone who plays TTRPGs largely for the social interaction with their friends. This would be the…

I posted some TTRPG customer profiles a few weeks ago. They generated some interesting discussion. I got some feedback on them and made a few changes.
#DnD #RPG #marketing

Setting the Stage Episode 74 – Kylie and Fallout: Garden of Atom The Fallout TV show has ended, but you can still get more Fallout in your life with TTRPGs! Kylie talked with me about her actual play campaign, Fallout: The Garden of Atom. The show follows Pete and Reed as they leave their Vault in Florida. They travel towards Orlando in search of Pete's father who left Vault 71 a few years previously.

Want some more Fallout in your life? Listen to this show about Fallout: The Garden of Atom, then check out the actual play campaign for yourself!
#DnD #RPG #Fallout

Races of Cimmeria: Undead Part 1 Physical Description Undead are the animated corpses and spirits of the deceased. Their dead forms move as they did in life, but now as horrid monsters. Most undead are warped to think only of the consumption of living beings from their previous species. This obsession is further twisted by undead that retain some of their memories. They remember, but only act on their memories in negative ways.

A two parter on Undead in Cimmeria. Click to see how #DnD necromancy might've developed in Ancient Greece! #rpg

Outer Invasion (Chapter 12) Chapter 12 Finished! Well, not really finished because this is all a first draft. But ready to read! Chapter 12 - Guild Members The trio greeted Phoenix as the sun rose over the city. Their return journey took longer than the way to the Artemis shrine due to the extra weight they carried. Tereman took the statue of Artemis and the offering plate in his pack.

Huzzah! I've finished another chapter in my #NaNoWriMo book. Working slower now, but I should be done before next November. Check it out if you like fantasy stuff like R.A. Salvatore.

Races of Cimmeria: Giantkin Part 3 Location Giants live in the mountains, hills, and caves of Cimmeria. Their tendency towards violence makes them incompatible with the settled development of civilization. A giant is likely to accidentally destroy a building in anger, so the little folk have banded together to push giants away from buildings. There are slight variances between the different subraces in their home of choice.

Learn about giantkin. Where they live, who their friends are, what gods they worship. The gods is pretty easy, they like the Titans. #DnD #RPG

Setting the Stage Episode 73 – Duncan and Extraordinary Locations Duncan Rhodes comes on the show to talk about his new book, The Creative Game Master's Guide to Extraordinary Locations: & How to Design Them or just Extraordinary Locations. The book is filled with 30 adventure locations to drop into your campaign, modify, or use as a full adventure path! The locations are loosely stated out for D&D 5e but could easily be adapted for any fantasy system.

I talked with Duncan Rhodes from the Hipsters & Dragons blog about his new D&D book, Extraordinary Locations. Check it out for all sorts of quick locations you can drop into your campaign or use to build adventures from!
#DnD #RPG

Races of Cimmeria: Giantkin Part 2 Subraces Giantkin come in many varieties. All giants are descended from the first giants and cyclopes birthed from Gaia. While the different subraces have diverged over time, they all maintain the general humanoid shape, large size, and powerful musculature iconic of giants. Elemental Giants: Elemental giants are the most pure connection to the first giants of Gaia. There are five sub varieties of elemental giants, each with a different connection to an elemental force.

Read about the five subraces of giantkin, Elemental Giants, Cyclopes, Ettins, Ogres, and Trolls. And that's also roughly the order of how nice they are. #DnD #RPG

TTRPG Customer Profiles The Setting the Stage podcast had a really good year in 2025. My audience went from 6143 downloads to 9743. My listeners on Spotify multiplied by 5 according to the 2025 Wrapped feature so I'm guessing most of my reach came from there. Along with those numbers, I got approved for ad revenue and started a Patreon. Setting the Stage has moved from a small cost hobby to about revenue neutral!

There are public customer profiles for marketing Magic the Gathering and other cards games too. Why not TTRPGs as well? Read and tell me which one you are!
#DnD #RPG

Races of Cimmeria: Giantkin Part 1 Physical Description There are many kind of giants in Cimmeria but they are all huge, strong, and ferocious. The smallest giants stand at about eight feet tall while the largest are more than twenty feet tall. Weights are similarly variable with giants often being heavy for their relative height due to increased fat and muscle mass. The might of giants is legendary.

Giantkin in Cimmeria have an interesting history. Originally there were only two types of giantkin in Greek Mythology, giants and cyclopes. Interbreeding produced all the other varieties. #DnD #RPG

RPG Player Motivation Types Why do different people play D&D and other RPGs? You'll get different answers whenever you ask different people. The combat, the puzzles, the roleplay, the stories, the snacks, the people, and so on. What motivates them to play? The idea of player motivations wasn't well formulated when RPGs were getting started. And why bother? It's helpful to understand your players, but by no means a necessity.

As a GM are you using Player Motivation types to help design your adventures? You'd be surprised how useful they are!
#DnD #RPG #DM #Gamemaster #Dungeonmaster

Setting the Stage Episode 72.5 – CalicoVisions and Psychomortis (Part 2) This is the second of a two part interview with Calico. If you haven't listened to the first episode with him, you should go do that before listening to this one. The first episode was #72 and this is #72.5. Calico returns with additional info on the world of Psychomortis. We get to hear more information about the Ecclesia church that rules over the world above Pandora's Labyrinth.

Part 2 of my conversation with Calico about his philosophical exploration and dungeon crawler RPG, Psychomortis.
#DnD #RPG #philosophy

PSYCHOMORTIS: 0.999 ALPHA VISION by CALICOVISIONS A Dungeon Crawling Thriller about high-stakes tactical survival and Virtue in the face of Fear.

I've been hard at work writing and designing the GV copy of Psychomortis. So now's the perfect time to release the original.
I put it up on itch, alongside the release of @gocorral.bsky.social's new podcast episode featuring me!
calicovisions.itch.io/psychomortis...

#ttrpg #DnD #indiedev #tabletop

Tabletop Community Spotlight Jan-March 2026 I took on a new project a few months ago, but haven't announced it on my blog yet. I'm one of the two people in charge of the Tabletop Community Spotlight (TCS). TCS History The Tabletop Community Spotlight was originally started by Peter from Tales from Elsewhere and Zarek from Odin's Key Gaming. The intention was to give aspiring game designers a place to shine and show off parts of what they'd been working on.

RPG Gamers and Game Designers! Check out the next Tabletop Community Spotlight! The theme is Necromancer and all entries must be in by March 6th. Read the post for more details!
#DnD #RPG #TCS #tabletopcommunityspotlight #necromancer

Jadepunk FATE RPG Review Continuing on my Chinese RPG reading quest, I got the FATE game, Jadepunk, recommended to me. I already reviewed the more official FATE China game, Do: Fate of the Flying Temple. Jadepunk uses the FATE system as well, so mechanically it is very similar to Do. The main differences are the Approaches and Stunts. Approaches in Jadepunk…

The Jadepunk campaign setting is fascinating. Magic Jade powered technology! Opium War style colonization! Freedom fighters taking their city back from wealth and corruption. Give it a look
#DnD #RPG #FATE

What’s Next for the GoCorral Blog? I've crossed another accomplishment threshold for the GoCorral Blog! The Races of Cimmeria section is complete! As the Cimmeria stuff has migrated and expanded here I've added other sections. It started as an online repository for information about the Cities of Cimmeria. That was for the players in my campaign to have easy access to extra setting info (that they barely used).

Races of Cimmeria posts are done being written. They'll be published over the next year. What's next for the GoCorral Blog?
#DnD #RPG #blog

I went on someone else’s podcast! I went on someone else's podcast! Not for TTRPG stuff, but still for RPGs as video games. I appeared on the 40 Something Gamer podcast last month to talk about retro games and the changes in various genres over the last few years. You can check it out on YouTube or anywhere else you get podcasts.

I went on someone else's podcast! Not for TTRPG stuff, but still for RPGs as video games.

I appeared on the 40 Something Gamer podcast last month to talk about retro games and the changes in various genres over the last few years. You can check it out on YouTube or anywhere else you get podcasts.

AI Plays Pokemon This is a fascinating video about how AI can be used for more complex tasks. Not the LLM AI like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or Apple's Siri. The AI used for this project is more like the models used by Boston Dynamics to build walking task-focused robots. Something similar to what you see here, . This video is also strikingly similar to how humans learn to walk.

About two years ago there was an amazing video posted on YouTube about how to build an AI to play Pokemon Red. Check it out for yourself! #Pokemon

Setting the Stage Episode 72 – CalicoVisions and Psychomortis CalicoVisions tells us about his game system and setting Psychomortis. The game is constructed to challenge players and characters to look inside themselves to find what's really important to them. In the far future the Earth has suffered from the arrival of the Iris which caused vast changes across the world. PCs are trapped beneath the Earth in a vast maze known as Pandora's Labyrinth.

Do you like philosophy and introspection? This episode of Setting the Stage explores how Calico used philosophical ideas to build a campaign setting and TTRPG
#DnD #RPG

No. I'd had it on my radar from before then. Good game! But not quite what I'm looking for.

Do: Fate of the Flying Temple RPG Review China: the RPG frontier. These are the voyages of the Isaac Shaker. His continuing mission: to explore strange new TTRPGs; to seek out new systems and new supplements; to boldly go where many have gone before! I read through Do: Fate of the Flying Temple while on vacation. It uses the Fate system to simulate a Chinese story and setting.

Read my review of the "Chinese themed" Fate TTRPG, Do: Fate of the Flying Temple. (It's not actually Chinese themed) #DnD #RPG #FATE

Races of Cimmeria: Lizardfolk Part 3 Location Lizardfolk live in and around the waterways of Cimmeria. The most popular locations are Danar's Swamp, Demeter’s Garden, and the Aractrashan Jungle due to the high number of crisscrossing tributaries in those regions. Lizardfolk live around all of the many rivers in Cimmeria, but there are higher concentrations around the Black River and the Long River. Troglodyte populations roughly mirror their aboveground cousins with tribal communities located below these same spots in the Underdark.

Finishing off my posts on Lizardfolk with some info on location, race relations (and recipes), gods, and how Lizardfolk can actually make great adventurers instead of just XP fodder. #DnD #RPG

Setting the Stage Episode 71 – Aaron Ryan and Dissonance/The End I talked with Aaron Ryan about two of his book series, Dissonance and The End. Dissonance is a near future world where aliens have attacked, killing most humans and animals on Earth and driving humans into hiding underground. Humans finally develop technology to fight back and the war enters a new stage while the characters also struggle to determine the motivation for the alien invasion and nefarious actions of the government.

I had the pleasure of talking with Aaron Ryan about Dissonance and The End and how they'd fit as settings for RPG campaigns. Check out the interview! And check out Aaron's latest series, Talisman!
#DnD #RPG

Races of Cimmeria: Lizardfolk Part 2 History Lizardfolk existed in Cimmeria long before the Conclave races arrived. Goblin oral histories make no mention of when lizardfolk arrived, indicating they were always present. Lizardfolk have no extant written records of their own to indicate their history. It seems as if they were always in Cimmeria since the creation of the Earth. Lizardfolk rarely feature prominently in modern Cimmerian history.

I got the various different subraces of lizardfolk from the 4e D&D monster manual, but also threw in troglodytes because they're not really different. A trogolodyte is just a stinky underground lizardfolk. #DnD #RPG