Tavern Watch Podcast

Those kids from Tavern Watch are finishing up our run of the Kids on Bikes TTRPG, and pretty much everything is hitting the fan all at once. The town of New Novemberwood, and one of its founding patriarchs -- the famously-lucky Mr. Pineapple -- have had it too good for too long, and after a few unexpected spikes of good luck for a lucky few, it's time for the other shoe to drop. Repeatedly. Be careful what you wish for.

Our GM Joe Perez brings this story of kids in over their heads to a close today. Those kids, of course, are:

Liz Harper as Rhiandrea "Ree" Rains, an independent young Scout and local bookstore employee who doesn't like being told what to do by her parents -- or their ideas of how to run her life
Trish, aka AwkwardishPanda, as Ginny Jacobson, an extremely precious girl and fish out of water who got advanced to her junior year six years early
Matt Rossi as Jacob Jacobson, who's kind of a weird kid, but he looks out for his little sister and maybe believes in magic
Phil Ulrich as Randall Fletcher, who could really be something if he applied himself, but he doesn't see why it's worth trying so hard all the time, man

This is the finale of a three-part actual play series (the first part is here, and the second part is here!) of Kids on Bikes, a rules-light and very accessible system for achieving the kind of feel you'd expect from media like The Goonies, Stand By Me, or E.T. -- any of those kind of 80s and 90s coming-of-age media where maybe something supernatural happens. Watch for new episodes every Monday! If you think this game is rad, you can pick up your own copy from Hunters Entertainment or Renegade Game Studios.

The music in this episode is "Hiding Your Reality" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.
If you enjoy the show, please support us on Patreon, where you can get these episodes early and ad-free!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tavern Watch is back with another episode of Kids on Bikes, catching up with the kids of New Novemberwood as -- despite all the weird stuff happening to them lately, mostly related to astonishing feats of good luck -- they remember that they have a homework assignment due Monday. What starts as an ordinary trip to the retirement home to chat with residents about town history leads to tales that seem suspiciously connected to the present day... tales of derring-do, bad and good luck. (A-woohoo!)
Our friendly GM and stellar voice actor for this one is Joe Perez, and the Pineapple Honors class consists of:

Liz Harper as Rhiandrea "Ree" Rains, an independent young Scout and local bookstore employee who doesn't like being told what to do by her parents -- or their ideas of how to run her life
Trish, aka AwkwardishPanda, as Ginny Jacobson, an extremely precious girl and fish out of water who got advanced to her junior year six years early
Matt Rossi as Jacob Jacobson, who's kind of a weird kid, but he looks out for his little sister and maybe believes in magic
Phil Ulrich as Randall Fletcher, who could really be something if he applied himself, but he doesn't see why it's worth trying so hard all the time, man

This is the second of a three-part actual play series (the first part is here!) of Kids on Bikes, a rules-light and very accessible system for achieving the kind of feel you'd expect from media like The Goonies, Stand By Me, or E.T. -- any of those kind of 80s and 90s coming-of-age media where maybe something supernatural happens. Watch for new episodes every Monday! If you think this game is rad, you can pick up your own copy from Hunters Entertainment or Renegade Game Studios.

The music in this episode is "Hiding Your Reality" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.
If you enjoy the show, please support us on Patreon, where you can get these episodes early and ad-free!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's just another day in the sleepy little town of New Novemberwood, just a regular old day like any other. But this is Tavern Watch playing Kids on Bikes, so you know it can't be just any old day. For the students of Pineapple Honors, it sure seems ordinary -- right up until some outrageous (and unlikely) drama breaks out during lunch. Is luck taking a turn for some of their fellow students, or is something else afoot here?
Your guide to the mysteries is Joe Perez, and the titular kids on bikes are:

Liz Harper as Rhiandrea "Ree" Rains, an independent young Scout and local bookstore employee who doesn't like being told what to do by her parents -- or their ideas of how to run her life
Trish, aka AwkwardishPanda, as Ginny Jacobson, an extremely precious girl and fish out of water who got advanced to her junior year six years early
Matt Rossi as Jacob Jacobson, who's kind of a weird kid, but he looks out for his little sister and maybe believes in magic
Phil Ulrich as Randall Fletcher, who could really be something if he applied himself, but he doesn't see why it's worth trying so hard all the time, man

This is the first of a three-part actual play series of Kids on Bikes, a rules-light and very accessible system for achieving the kind of feel you'd expect from media like The Goonies, Stand By Me, or E.T. -- any of those kind of 80s and 90s coming-of-age media where maybe something supernatural happens. Watch for new episodes every Monday! If you think this game is rad, you can pick up your own copy from Hunters Entertainment or Renegade Game Studios.

The music in this episode is "Hiding Your Reality" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.
If you enjoy the show, please support us on Patreon, where you can get these episodes early and ad-free!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this special Gen Con edition of the Tavern Watch Podcast, we're looking at a mountain of new product announcements for our favorite games, some coming soon and others stretched out over the next few years, but all of them exciting. Mostly. Wizards of the Coast rented out out a whole theater for its big reveal, with a bunch of new upcoming releases for D&D -- including, yes, that World of Warcraft crossover that turned out to be real, one of their two announced "Universes Beyond" products (yes, D&D is now getting the Magic: the Gathering treatment). The D&D team also had plenty to say about their own internal projects, but a lot of them appeared to be backward-looking -- rather than something new and innovative, we're returning to old settings like Greyhawk and Dark Sun. There are also improvements to D&D Beyond in the works, including a new "LFG" feature in partnership with StartPlaying; anything that gets more players to tabletop games, we're here for. We also discuss whether Wizards and Hasbro, as corporate stewards of D&D, can actually do a satisfying job reviving what we like about Dark Sun, or if it's just going to be a nonstop blood-guts-and-gore fest like the teaser trailer led us to believe (content warnings for extreme gore and violence on that link).

But we may be more excited about the non-D&D stuff, where a whole lot of new ideas are brewing. We discuss Daggerheart and its three-year roadmap, Paizo dipping its toes into horror with an entirely new game system in 13 Omens, the upcoming sixth edition of Vampire: The Masquerade (now in alpha playtesting!), and the open license for the upcoming Cypher System 2E. And of course, what would a Gen Con show be without discussing the ENNIE Awards? Be prepared to grip your wallets in fear when Joe tells you what the price for The Crooked Moon's Ultimate Edition, which won the Gold ENNIE for Product of the Year, actually costs. It makes the thirty pound, $300 Invisible Sun Black Cube look quaint.

Music from this episode is “Midnight Tale” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.
If you enjoy the show, please support us on Patreon, where you can get these episodes early and ad-free!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on the Tavern Watch Podcast, we wander very naturally into one of the most age-old discussions among tabletop players and GMs alike: do you have a preference for crunchy systems or streamlined ones? Do you get giddy at the idea of Shadowrun's forty pages of equipment and entirely separate game-within-a-game for Technomancers? Is D&Dabout as heavyweight a game as you like to get, or is even that too much and you'd rather have something like Kids on Bikes? Opinions on this always vary wildly, and it's a fun discussion to have every so often -- especially because sometimes playing games will either reinforce or flip an opinion.

On the news front, beloved Seattle-area cryptid Jimothy has stats in D&D now, Paizo reaches a new agreement with Archives of Nethys (great news given the incredible service the Archives offer the community), Daggerheart is testing a Summoner class as part of the new Blood domain (shared with Critical Role favorite the Blood Hunter), and Matt's perennial favorite Godzilla is coming to the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game later this year. Will we see the storyline return where Reed Richards shrinks Godzilla and sends her back in time? Were you at all surprised to learn that that was a Reed Richards plan? Of course you weren't. The crowdfunding roundup this time includes Dungeons and Daddies (not a BDSM sourcebook), cozy Hobbit murder-mystery solving game Merryshire Detective Club, and the beginning of developer logs on the Masks 2E Kickstarter ahead of its eventual launch, starting with: why a new edition of Masks?

Music from this episode is “Midnight Tale” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License.
If you enjoy the show, please support us on Patreon, where you can get these episodes early and ad-free!
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.