Even More Short Reviews of Delta Green Actual Plays

 Part 1, Part 2

This will likely be the last one of these for a while: got thoroughly burnt out on the whole thing as I was drafting it, and I’ve stopped listening to all of these in the months since I started compiling the post. At some point I’ll probably resume one or two, but who knows: my podcast listening has taken a hit across the board thanks to changes at work eating up my attention for much of the year so far.

Black Flare

I find this one complicated to recommend: It’s well-put together, the Handler knows their stuff, and the idea of having players new to Delta Green as an RPG playing characters new to Delta Green the organization is appealing. I don’t think it works in practice, though: the opening opera is too open-ended and slow-paced for players new to this sort of investigation (especially when they have a tendency to treat the investigation like D&D characters grilling a shopkeeper) and that makes for bad radio in spite of the generally high quality of all the individual components.

The anomaly in season 1 was too vague and hands-off to be an interesting threat. There’s an episode that’s nearly entirely devoted to the tedium of muddling through some difficult-to-visualize spatial fuckery effects, which never gelled together as something spooky. 

 (I think the spookum was a lloighor, so my bias is on active and on the field already) 

There’s a really good interstitial episode (the cell meets their handler on a freighter ship in the aftermath of a battle with Deep Ones) but then the first five and a half episodes of Season 2 are a red herring with enough feet dragging that it felt more of “oh fucking finally” when we finally got to the real hazard instead of a satisfying build up to it. The action was great when things finally started popping off, but the path to get there was frustrating.

Another issue, which is very much down to personal preference even more than the last, is that I really don’t like how Hollis’ player runs the character; Hollis acts as a sort of continual obstruction to the others, vaguely dancing around questions and being purposefully unhelpful with a blunt “It’s need to know and you don’t need to know”. I can’t tell how intentionally frustrating they’re supposed to be - it’s not an unreasonable part to play in the story - but I think it compounds the bad radio problem by impeding the other PCs from being active investigators and pushing them towards passivity, which doesn’t play well with the already slow pace. 

Hand on the Door

Not as goofy as PTBP, but probably the closest to it tone-wise out of everything I’ve listened to, and I think it does a decent job of threading the needle. It’s absurd, but not so absurd that it negates its own stakes with that absurdity. That said, it does have a tendency to meander and it’s another slow burn investigation despite the threat being something that should have everyone freaking the fuck out. There’s no reason for the PCs to know that the guy they’re investigating is messing with shoggoth biomatter, but the characters knew by the time I stopped listening that the perp has figured out how to refold proteins through unnatural means and the players should probably be leaning into the entirely reasonable panic of “Jesus Christ someone could make a transmissible prion disease with this shit”.

Chaos Springs Eternal

Civilian PCs in a weird little Louisiana town stumbling into the supernatural. More CoC than DG, to the point where I wouldn’t really call it a DG actual play. 10-15 minutes of non-game talk at the beginning of each episode, which is too much for me to sit through without skipping but might not be for other folks. It’s a slow burn and I was with it for a while, but fell off when they got to the helpful magical ghoul character. I like a helpful magical ghoul character from time to time but this one felt too Call of Cthulhu for me, if that makes sense. Not enough of the DG razzle and / or dazzle.

This Line Isn’t Secure

A dedicated Impossible Landscapes run. Very much on the audio drama side of the spectrum, and very good at it. Players and handler work together like a well-oiled machine. Editing / effects / sound quality are extremely good, deft balance of horror vs humor and how the absurd surreality of Carcosa lends itself to both. I feel better about the character arcs than in something like Redacted Reports because we know how this ends, there's not going to be any tail end that stretches out past the climax. Definitely want to return to this one, and I give it a very high recommendation.

Delta Pink

Someone affiliated with the show left a comment on one of my older roundup posts asking if I might do a review: Unfortunately, it didn’t really pan out.

After listening to Session 0 and most of episode 1 I feel like Delta Pink, like Get in the Trunk, is goofy in a way that doesn’t really land for me. The group behind this AP typically plays Shadowrun, and that influence shows like the proverbial and thematically appropriate pink mohawk. They’re still playing Shadowrun characters here in Delta Green; goofy stereotypes unmoored from reality. Factor that as you will into whether or not you want to check it out.

Stories and Lies: God’s Teeth

It’s unfair to compare anyone running God’s Teeth to the original AP, but it’s also unavoidable. 

Go Forth opens like a hammer to the face. Here’s the mission; do it now. You’re immediately in the shit and on the back foot, scrambling for purchase when all your options are bad and you have no time and no resources. I think it’s the most powerful opener in RPGs by a country mile, with Deep Carbon Observatory coming in second.

So I feel like Stories and Lies is doing a disservice to the module by portraying Clove as stable and put-together and having the agent who read the folder beat around the bush during the briefing. The urgency that makes the opening work has been lost and at that point I don’t know why the module was chosen.

 

RPPR: The Labor of Dogs

The only one of these I am actively listening to at time of writing: this one's an all-timer. Not just the name (which is an all-timee in and of itself), but in just how good the component missions are - I think we're done with 3/5 at this point, and each one has been a very distinctly 2020s flavor of awful and weird. Like I would almost call it cringe horror? It's leaning into the ripped-from-the-headlines reality of "sorry, the villains here are evil and stupid and their vapidity is matched only by their temporal power and they will combine the two into lethal danger for everyone around them in an attempt to squeeze a bit of profit they don't need from a source they don't understand." That's the good shit. The real danger isn't Cthulhu, it's some C-suite trying to exploit Cthulhu in stupid ways.

Final Notes

Most of this post is just a simple divergence between what I want to listen to and what people want to make. So it goes, no harm no foul. My perspective is skewed six ways to Sunday on this matter so everything I’ve said so far should be taken with a sizable grain of salt. I don’t know. I feel kinda bad about being down on nearly all of them. Ah well. There will always be more, and maybe I'll come around to one or two when I'm in a better state for what they're offering.
 

Further Short Reviews of Delta Green Actual Plays

Following up from the previous installment.

 

Redacted Reports (Amended)

Apparently the end of Season 6 was one of the scripted bits, which is very disappointing: I think it was a really lame way to end a certain character's arc, and knowing it was entirely avoidable is a major let down.

I was correct in predicting a move to King in Yellow content, but Season 7 is not Impossible Landscapes, and after listening to the two prelude episodes and the first two episodes of the season I don't think this podcast can handle the way Delta Green uses Carcosa. There's been a background trend, from Season 5 onward, of getting increasingly precious about the quirky NPCs and increasingly slow to actually get to the action, directly correlated with moving further away from the prewritten Delta Green adventures, and I don't feel like that's going to mesh well with the raw helpless nihilism that Carcosa necessitates. The characters are entirely too casual and jokey-jokey about it, and that sucks all the tension out of the affair.

Also, I swear I have listened to everything, but one of the agents keeps mentioning speaking to some doctor or another about the King and I am positive that has never happened on mic.
 

Sorry Honey, I Have to Take This (Amended)

AI art for thumbnails, fine, it's gross and surreal and feels like it fits for Delta Green. AI NPC voices I draw the line at, get those devil computers outta here.

Get in the Trunk

I dropped out very early in episode 0, when the hosts were beside themselves with laughter at the fact that a character got their degree from Johns Hopkins University. Not anything about Johns Hopkins in particular, just the existence of the college itself and the fact that an FBI agent studied there. That such a mundane fact was treated as hilarious was a very strong omen that I would not vibe with this podcast.

Recommended for: Those who find the existence of Johns Hopkins University the funniest thing on earth.

Black Project Gaming

• Very by the book
• Perhaps too by the book, because they run Reverberations by the book 
• Please do not run Reverberations by the book 
• Minimal editing, very table honest; not always a good thing 
• Episodes are long, pacing is slow, audio quality is low; semi-regular dead air. 
• Players have set up intra-party conflict beforehand, which I don't find that interesting personally, but is not a downside on the whole. 
• I did come back to this after a while away and might keep going.
  
• Recommended for: "Bastard's Hours are here and I have run out of everything else."
  

Stories and Lies

• Good, but not for me
• Episodes very long, pacing very slow. 
• Otherwise well put together. Good editing, good players, good Handler. 
• Not much else to say. 
• It's just too slow for me. 
• At least they didn't run Reverberations. 
• Recommended for: People who are fine with slow burns.
  

Mayday Plays "Doomed to Repeat"

• The one that leans into that special DG type of fucked; the players kill civilian witnesses by the end of the second episode.
• Pacing is extremely good, no dawdling. We are on the move and operating. 
• Does a good job at venting the tension with either something horrible or a bit of black humor. 
• Handler and players are very keyed in, work well together. 
• Frame narrative of "Program is attempting to do a major clean-up / compilation project" which I like, because the Program's canon dedication to having no actionable intelligence ever annoys me. 
• I hope Agent Merrit has a good chiropractor because he's going to throw out his back with how hard he is carrying this team (this isn't a knock against the other players or their characters, just that Merrit has thus far been 110% correct about everything) 
• Another one with intra-cell conflict, which I am more okay with because the players are very good at the role-playing. 
• Goes hard with the consequences to fuckups returning to bite the players in the blubber, which I appreciate. 
• They ran Reverberations. God damn it. Killed all my enthusiasm stone dead. At least they were clearly modifying it, though I didn't get around to seeing where it was going.
  
• Recommended for: People who aren't sick of Reverberations because they aren't maniacs like me who binge these shows simultaneously.

 

TLDR

I think Reverberations is a bad adventure, and not just for the racism. In the three times it has come up it is a plodding, wheel-spinning drag where the ideal solution is for the players to do nothing at all.

Four Short Reviews of Delta Green Actual Play Podcasts

 Role-Playing Public Radio

• It's RPPR, you've probably already listened to it.
• Veteran handler and players; Ross knows what he's doing.
• Probably the truest-to-table experience you'll find in actual plays.
• Usually one-shots, so not many home scenes or campaign features.
• The show to listen to if you want a good idea of how the game is run and played in practice.
• Not the show to listen to if you are looking for a story.
  
• Nowhere Lane and the current Impossible Landscapes AP are some of the best Delta Green content I have listened to, period. Impossible Landscapes bucks the RPPR trend by being a very character-focused campaign. Players are really into it and doing a fantastic job. Ross is spinning an absurd number of plates and none have crashed yet.
• Also that first run of Lover in the Ice, primo gross.
• Recommended for: I want Delta Green as it is played.
  

Pretending to Be People

• Absurdist & gross.
• Great soundtrack.
• Rules hybridized with Pulp Cthulhu.
• Basically no connection with the canon of Delta Green or the Mythos proper.
• Players have great report with each other.
• Players are good with character acting.
• Some truly pristine horror imagery.
• Lots of weird, memorable NPCs.
• Great sense of the heightened surreal-real. Things are fucking weird.
• Some occasionally aggravating obtuseness with the weird aspects.
  
• Players meander & spin their wheels sometimes; tabletalk rambling & bits sometimes go a bit long.
• I am under no illusions that the PCs are in any danger of dying in this game.
• The PCs are many things and 'competent investigators' is not among them.
• Recommended for: I want something very strange and very gross.
  

The Redacted Reports

• Most well-produced of the four.
• Least table-honest of the four.
  
• Very character-focused.
• Long narrative arcs with a lot of interconnected threads.
• Daisy-chains multiple published scenarios with original material.
• Handler can do some fantastic NPCs, scene-setting, and tension ramp-up
• The most 'canon' of the four.
• The 'nicest' of the four - you're not going to find that classic Delta Green panic spiral of bad people making increasingly bad choices here.
• A good deal is definitely planned beforehand; doesn't matter. it's well told, overall.
  
• Pacing can get painfully slow sometimes, especially in the most recent couple arcs which are more heavily-modified than the earlier ones.
• Not kidding we're talking like, 5-6 hour long episodes before weird shit starts happening in the last couple seasons. I hope you like Burning Man and subplots about California political lobbying.
• This combined with the nice factor leads to points where I, the listener, am going "get on with it" and/or "you are not panicking nearly as much as you should be in this scenario"
• Honestly this is a feather in the cap of DG as a game, how player metaknowledge translates into the "insanity" of the characters. I the listener know the tell-tale signs of an outbreak of the Yellow Sign, and my immediate gut reaction could only be described as insanity.
• They are definitely setting up a Carcosa season.
• Can't come too soon the current antagonist has an exaggerated vocal fry affectation and just because it's an act she's putting on in-fiction doesn't make it any more pleasant to listen to.
• Recommended for: I would like a Delta Green audio drama.
  

Sorry, Honey, I Have to Take This

• Generally feels pretty table-honest
• Feels like the players spin their wheels often
• Not as weird as PTBP, not as well-produced as RR, not as well-run as RPPR.
• Every episode has a minute-long music spot at the midway point and I don't know why it's so long.
• PCs are not immune to game-changing injury or death.
• Handler regularly makes choices I firmly disagree with (ex. Players did not realize that it was 3am instead of 3pm, Warden doesn't wind back the clock.) 
• I don't like the chosen scenarios all that much.
• I don't jive with the humor.
• Listened to three seasons, unlikely to return.
• Recommended for: I'm caught up on all the others and still want a DG AP.
  

Son of the Son of the Podcast Post

I can believe the last one was in 2019, I have listened to so many podcasts since then.

Except...honestly a lot of it is more of the same. If anything I've cut down on the number I listen to. Work from home for two years had a lot to do with it, what with being able to just have youtube running on my phone. Let's see...

Futility Closet is no longer running their podcast, great sadness is had. Apocrypals remains top of the charts. Pretending to Be People's second series is ongoing and pretty keen. I'll be leaving off most of the rest of the ones that I have mentioned before. Turnover is high, and I find myself often looking for new recs.

Midst

New weird space fantasy western and easily my favorite narrative podcast for its breakneck pace greek chorus narration style. Critical Role bought them out and they delayed the next season and took down the entire series to drip-feed it back out with ads and a paywall. I am saltier than the Dead Sea about it.

Uncanny Japan

Short episodes on Japanese folklore and ghost stories. Host has a very relaxed delivery, so it's good if you want something mellow to listen to.

The Redacted Reports

I am a picky bastard with actual plays, but I've binged over 100 episodes of RR in only a couple months so that certainly speaks for something. It's on the more serious side of the spectrum from PtbP, and on the well-produced axis across from RPPR's tabletop raws, which means it has a solid niche for itself.

Between Two Cairns

Yochai and Brad doing the good work of reviewing OSR / NSR / whatever-it's-called-now modules. Entertaining, good for recs, I vibrate with anticipation of any future Unicorn Meat episode.

Nobody Wake the Bugbear

Can't say anything about their D&D campaigns, but their Mothership APs are great fun and come highly recommended.

Conlangery

Niche content? Niche content! It's not particularly polished and I wouldn't necessarily call it a gem, but it can fill the niche and sometimes I get the itch.

(Aside: If you ever want a case study of how the internet has changed, listen to an amateur podcast that was running ten years ago and count how long it takes for casual r-slur drop. I am honestly quite glad that particular host left the show a very long time ago.)

Lingthusiasm

Now this one I will definitely recommend to all and sundry. Gretchen and Lauren are incredibly entertaining and knowledgeable hosts, and are able to present complex topics in a fun and easily-approachable manner. Gold star.

372 Pages We'll Never Get Back

Two of the Rifftrax guys read weird, often bad books. It's loads of fun and bound to add some very peculiar entries to your lexicon ("I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant...")

Astronomy Cast

Short episodes, and whole lot of them. Good for a listen if you want some astronomy in your pod diet, I tend to drift in and out of listening to it as a palate cleanser or while doing lighter chores.

Monster Man

An entry-by-entry dive into the monster manuals of first and second edition D&D, with regular special episodes featuring monsters from further afield, collected by theme, topic, game, or source. A great resource both as a historical survey and useful advice.

Kill James Bond

Wherein the hosts watch all James Bond movies in chronological order and gradually lose their minds. Having caught up, they have expanded to other spy media such as the Bourne movies and a manic episode about Cars 2, a film that cannot be comprehended by mortal minds.

RTFM

I don't listen to it often, but they have good variety on the books they talk about and they tend to focus on the games themselves over adventures, and there are a whole lot of wonky games out there (if it tells you anything I saw there was an Eclipse Phase episode and immediately said "I will listen to this now.")

Tarnished Archaeologist

Cheating a bit and adding a youtube channel, but it's basically a podcast about Elden Ring lore through the lens of forensic archaeology and it is _fascinating_. Avoids the common pitfalls of the genre through brevity, integration of real-life historical analogs, and focus on material conditions as a major shaper of society and history. Was difficult going back to Vaati after this, honestly. Triple gold star.

Words for Granted

An NPR radio-show style podcast about language, fielding questions about odd pronunciations or the origins of figures of speech. Lots of callers sharing obscure figures of speech from their families. Not much structure or direction, but very good listening if you want to zone out while playing Zelda.

Son of the Podcast Post

My abnormal consumption rate of podcasts has only grown in the year and a third since the last version of this post. This shall be a review of everything I can remember.

My interest in any given podcast tends to wax and wane according to a great number of odd and obscured factors. This list is not exhaustive, it's just exhaustive of the ones I can both remember and generate an opinion about. I will attempt to organize them according to how much I would recommend them.

I am not even going to try to organize them. The only order is in my own memory.

Oh God I Listen To So Many

No Such Thing as a Fish - Four Brits share wacky facts. Great for a laugh, surprisingly educational.

Futility Closet - It's like the Dollop, but wholesome and uplifting. Husband-and-wife duo provide historical oddities and lateral-thinking puzzles.

Overdue - Talking about books! A whole lot of books. Books you haven't read but have probably heard of. Good hosts, good energy, talkin' bout books.

Literature and History - Hey would you like to explore the Western literary canon in chronological order? Would you like it in the format of an easy-going but very, very in-depth lecture series? (How in-depth? Beowulf isn't scheduled until episode 104) I've gotten a new appreciation for classical myth through the series, and familiarized myself with works I'd either never studied or never heard of. Love it.

Old Gods of Appalachia - Contains 1) old gods 2) the Appalachians 3) sassy Scotts-Irish witches. It might as well have been made to pander directly to me. Fantastic atmospheric writing.

The Legendarium - Fantasy book podcast. Had a series where one host read through LotR for the first time which was fun, but it ends up being rather tame by my going. Not in-depth or out-there enough to keep my interest. EDIT LONG AFTER THE FACT: These guys did an episode where they interviewed the guy behind Sad Puppies and I got no time for that.

Good Friends of Jackson Elias - Talking shop about Call of Cthulhu. Pretty low-key and relaxing. Fills time.

Expounded Universe - Would you like to know precisely how terrible some of the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels are? This has you covered. Absolute goof-fest. (Turns out you can fix 90% of the EU by just writing Leia as if she's an experienced and competent diplomat but, spoilers, no one does.)

How We Roll - Huge Call of Cthulhu campaign stringing together a bunch of noteworthy scenarios. Only got to the second scenario due to poor audio quality and a general "eh 's whatever' quality to the whole thing.

The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe -  It was 1950 so yes, Archie's attitudes towards women and his means of talking about them are not particularly forward thinking and in one case are directed towards the corpse du jour. That aside, this is a wonderful series with great character dynamics and acting. Having now read one of the books, I can say it nails it.

Film Reroll -The best use GURPS has yet seen. Famous movies go off the rails, hilarity ensues. Alien and Adventure Time are great places to check out.

Pretending to Be People - A Delta Green actual play, featuring three bumbling cops from the middle-of-fucking-nowhere, Missouri. My favorite long-form actual play by a gigantic margin.  It's legitimately horrifying in a lot of places and goofy bullshit right where it needs to be. Double extra supreme bonus points for running a mythos game and never once using a proper name. Not once. Not even once. Infinite unbelievable extreme bonus points for running a Delta Green game where ROT13 gur cynlref ner nyy ba gur znetvaf bs gur npghny QT bcrengvba tbvat ba va gur onpxtebhaq.

Magnus Archives - My opinion on this series is well-established. Season 5 starts in April you have time to catch up what are you doing go listen to it.

The Foreign Beggars / Dirt Boy Blues - DCC (and then Cyber Sprawl Classics) AP. Two players, good chemistry, good effects and editing.

Romance of the 3 Kingdoms - An approachable abridged retelling of the Romance of the 3 Kingdoms. Rot3k is still super-complex, but the main site has a load of supplementary material to go along with it.

Ologies - Obscure (and sometimes not too obscure) fields of study, straight from the people doing the studying. Great if you want to learn a whole lot about this one very specific field you never considered anyone making a profession out of.

Revisionist History - Take something normally overlooked: golf clubs and property taxes. Jesuit problem solving. The speed of LSAT testing. Poke it and prod it until it opens up like a puzzle box. Thoughtful, thorough, and insightful.

Heaven's Gate - An empathetic documentary of the cult from beginning to end. Highly recommended.

Bad Books for Bad People - Sometimes it's so bad it's good, sometimes it's so bad it's bad, sometimes it's just grotty and weird and dark and bad in that slang way that means it's good. Your being a bad person is non-negotiable. Embrace that shit.

The FPlus - Terrible things read with enthusiasm.

Castle Superbeast - My listening has peetered out over time (these are very long podcasts with very, very long digressions, and after a while the arguments they can find themselves in get really tiresome), but I still dip in from time to time for video game fun times with a pair of very idiosyncratic fellows.

Not Another D&D Podcast - A fun 5e AP. Silly. Lasted much longer than the other 5e APs I tried listening to, which do not appear here because I have forgotten even their names.

The Green Box Podcast - Some guys from r/NightAtTheOpera talk shop about Delta Green.  Mellonbread is abrasive but the others are laid back.

The Dollop - Two comedians discuss stories from American (and sometimes Australian or Icelandic) history. Always absurd, hilarious, often terrible. I had to stop listening a while back, as new episodes were just too depressing to continue with - you could really feel the psychic toll the Trump era has had on the hosts, Dave in particular.

Sequelisers - Fixing the bad sequels to good movies. I have to admit I like the first three seasons with their 2v2 competitive format more than the no-teams fourth season - more variety in prompts, more good jokes and more creative proposals.

Role Playing Public Radio - Longrunning AP podcast. Mostly one shots and occasional campaigns. Their Delta Green and Call of Cthulhu stuff is usually top notch, Eclipse Phase is generally solid. Some are hit or miss, but you'll figure out if it's a bust early on. I super-recommend "The Dreamer Below" and "Somewhere Lane"


The White Vault - Multinational team goes to check in on a research station on Ny-Alesund experiencing technical difficulties. The various threads haven't yet pulled together, and it can sometimes really stretch the found footage aspect of things, but it's overall enjoyable.

The Hyacinth Disaster - An off-the-books asteroid mining mission goes horribly, horribly wrong. Probably my favorite of the sci-fi on this list - it's contained, it's got chutzpah, it is probably the hardest science of the sci-fi lot.

Blogs on Tape - Nick Whelan of Papers and Pencils + guest voices read good OSR blogposts.

Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur - Actual rocket scientists talks about science and futurism. Has been a massive influence in a lot of my Mothership stuff (all those O'Neill cylinders!)

Tides - Exploring biologist is stranded on a planet with incredible tides and bizarre life. Good stuff.

Mission to Zyxx - Goofy sci-fi improv. Delivers on that premise. Does not add additional premises.

Limetown - Creepy modern horror by way of NPR. The second season isn't as good as the first and I wonder if they got too big for their britches with that TV show, but the first season is sterling stuff.

S-Town - The story of a clock repairman in a shitty little town in the south.  I actually thought this was fictional for over half of the runtime - it was so idiosyncratic that it just had to be fiction, or so claimed my mind.

Knifepoint Horror - The one horror anthology that is actually an anthology, as I don't think there's an actual throughline on any of these episodes. This is probably part of why i recall enjoying them, but can't remember the contents.

Sayer - Menacing, smooth-voiced AI runs rampant in a decaying R&D arcology tower on Earth's second moon. i stopped listening because the audio mixing was really weird - this 'cast was very quiet compared to everything else, or was it the other way around? Either way, it is pretty fun.

Apocrypals - So how much do you know about Biblical apocrypha? Not enough. Get you some fire-breathing Mary and Solomon meeting the butt-stuff dragon and Thecla the lightning-mage. Contains all the dunking on Paul you want and need in your life.

Nightmare Magazine Podcast - I am a huge coward so "Dan stopped listening midway through the episode because spooky" is not particularly shocking, but consider the number of horror podcasts on this list that I listen to and am just fine with. This is the good shit.

LeVar Burton Reads - It's Reading Rainbow for adults. As one might expect, Burton pulls from an wonderful and diverse pool of authors and features some great sci-fi and fantasy picks.

The Signal - A good hook (alien transmission that drives people mad! It's leaking!) that goes nowhere fast and devolves into nothing at the end.

99% Invisible - Another oddity podcast. Not as funny as Fish or as charming as Closet, but good stuff all the same.

Gastropod - Food science! Food history! Food fun! Learn what a pawpaw is!

The Allusionist -  Words are weird, come on and learn how weird they are.

nosleep - It's stories from r/nosleep. It'll work if you are desperate and need to brute-force pass some time, but every single other horror podcast I list here will be better. 

Alzabo Soup - Devoted entirely to the works of Gene Wolfe. Absolutely indispensable as a reading aid if you are tackling the Book of the New Sun.

VAST Horizon - Five hours of a woman sobbing, with intermittent untranslated Chinese. Suffers from flashbacks more interesting than the survival scenario at hand, really handwavy science, and a main character who has the audacity to throw a pity-party despite being a war criminal.

--

Stay tuned for the inevitable Son of the Son of the Podcast Post, releasing 20XX.

The Podcast Post

I listen to a lot of podcasts. A LOT of podcasts. So, taking a page out of Connor W's book, here's a selection of what I've been listening to. Podcasts with an extra recommendation will be marked with a [GOLD STAR].

Several of these show up on Connor's list too (that's where I was introduced to them in the first place), and they're well worth mentioning again.

Podcasts

 

The Dollop

David Anthony and Gareth Reynolds

Two comedians discuss obscure and absurd American (and sometimes Icelandic or Australian) history. Lots of interesting and gameable things here, and a certain amount of zen that comes with the acceptance of the perpetual insanity of the world. [GOLD STAR]

Sequelisers

Jack Chambers, Stuart Ashen, Alec Plowman, Matthew Stogdon, Tim Maytom

Four British men propose re-writes of bad sequels to good movies. Played as two teams competing against each other for the completely arbitrary favor of the judge. The end results are always interesting, with plenty of left field curveballs to go along with the more true-to-the-original pitches.

Blogs on Tape

Nick Whelan

Fun, interesting, and useful blogposts from the OSR / DIY RPG community for your listening pleasure.

Bad Books for Bad People 

Tenebrous Kate and Jack Guignol

Do you like people talking about horror-gothic-weird-sex-stuff books, and occasional other books? Good, they do that. It's fun.

The Magnus Archives

Rusty Quill

A god-damn excellent horror serial series. Spooky stories, intricate metaplot, excellent acting, a mythos ripe for exploration, and a plan to see through things to the end at episode 200. Top marks, an absolute must-listen. This will not be the last time I talk about them. [MANY GOLD STARS]

Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur

Isaac Arthur

An actual rocket scientist talks about big picture concepts in space exploration, colonization, the Fermi Paradox, and more. Absolutely worth a listen if you're in the mood for some more optimistic ideas of future technology, or really feel like some mind-bending huge scale. It takes a little bit to get used to Isaac's speech impediment at first, but you get used to it soon. [GOLD STAR]

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber, Nicola Twiley

Fun food history and science. Always puts you in a good mood, if a hungry one.

TFS Bento: Anime FMK

Kirran Somerlade, Scott Frerichs, and Ben Creighton

Three guys watch a bunch of anime that no one has time for, and sort out the chaff from the good stuff. Actually works decently well as entertainment with no context at all for the shows in question, but I might be an outlier on that.

Heaven's Gate

Glenn Washington

A detailed and empathetic look at the Heaven's Gate cult, from inception to end. A fantastic documentary. Don't take the lack of words here as lack of content, it is fantastic [TWO GOLD STARS]

Mission to Zyxx 

Audioboom

Improv sci-fi comedy, right in the Star Wars / Star Trek / Hitchhikers'. Great for a laugh. Season 2 is underway! [GOLD STAR]

LeVar Burton Reads 

LeVar Burton

The man himself reads his favorite short stories. Loads of great sci-fi and fantasy here. Further explanation unnecessary. Start with "The Second Bakery Attack" if you want a blind jump-in point [GOLD STAR]

The Diecast

Shamus Young and Paul Spooner

A laid back show about games and programming. Lots of letter-bag segments, occasional themed episodes. Easy listening, good if you like programmer dads being chill.

Actual Plays

The Foreign Beggars

Tabletop Twats

An excellently edited and acted two-man DCC adventure. Hilarious and great listening, irregular uploads but lots of care given to presentation. [GOLD STAR]

Role Playing Public Radio

Ross Payton et al.

High-quality APs of a variety of games. Lots of Eclipse Phase, Base Raiders, Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green, Red Markets, and one-offs. The recent Zweihander episode and "Somewhere Lane" are some of the best APs I've ever listened to.

Film Reroll 

Paulo Quiros and many other people

Famous movies are played through using GURPS. Shenanigans ensue as scripts are thrown right out the window and movie logic is overturned.

Orpheus Protocol

Rob, Staci, Dan, Jhan 

Long-running AP of the game by the same name. Lots of weird magical-horrific conspiracy stuff going on (this appears to be a theme in my picks). The GM knows what he's doing when it comes to slow burns, unsettling imagery, and cranking up the nightmare fuel

Not Actually Podcasts

Down the Rabbit Hole

Fredrick Knudsen 

A look into bizarre and forgotten corners of the internet and unsettling stories that have slipped through the cracks of memory. Deep well of gameable material.

Game Maker's Toolkit

Mark Brown

In-depth, but approachable, discussions on specific mechanics in video games and how they work. [GOLD STAR]

Like I said: A LOT of podcasts...