Party of One Podcast | Creative Interviews Through Tabletop RPG Actual Play

Dr. Friedman is a professor of storytelling outside the rules of mass media, including never-published manuscripts from during the age of print (1750-1900), and more recently, the history and world of TTRPG Actual Play. Her next book, The Actual History of Actual Play, is being published by MIT.

I couldn't name a better guest to sit down with as we celebrate 11 great years of Party of One with a game of The Creation of Wonder by Eve Golden-Woods. We sat down for a wonderful discussion about stewardship, archiving, preservation, and a story about the compiling of the...

Caleb is one of my favorite designers AND podcasters (you have to check out Nightcrawler is My Boyfriend, it is a joy), and so I was thrilled when he reached out about the new game he's releasing, The House Edge. It is a mashup of Triangle Agency and FIST (two of my favorite RPGs), in which a squad of paranormal mercenary thieves team up to take down an otherworldly casino owner who wronged them... and end up infiltrating a twisted time loop facility as a result. It is EXTREMELY MY JAM.

Special thanks to satah, Tom Harrison...

Sasha is the creator of Spindlewheel, an interpretive tarot-like storytelling game where you weave together a story from card to card (and one of my favorite games of the past decade!). To wrap up our impromptu Spindlewheel trilogy on the show, we sat down with the special Spindlenoir deck to tell the story of a big-city dreamer cursed with deadly ambition in Adorned With Curses by Avalyn Ramsay.

SPINDLEWHEEL: https://www.teacabbage.com/spindlewheel

SPINDLENOIR: https://22to22.itch.io/spindlenoir

ADORNED WITH CURSES: https://austin-ramsay.itch.io/adorned-with-curses

SASHA RENEAU: https...

Vera Drew is a director, writer, editor, and actor, who won the 2024 Gotham Award for Breakthrough Director for her debut feature film The People's Joker, an unauthorized, autobiographical transgender coming of age story filtered through the language of Batman comics. (If you can't imagine why that sentence has me screaming, you don't know me very well.)

Because Vera is a huge Magic: The Gathering Commander fan, we played a game of The Fallen using one of her favorite Commander decks (including some fan-made cards!) to tell the story of a paladin, their god, and the long road...

Matt is the host and creator of Merely Roleplayers, a long-running actual play podcast focused on theatrical performers enjoying tabletop RPGs together. He's also the creator and writer of I Need A Miracle, an audio drama about a world purely through its people's prayers for miracles, some of which are granted in ways that cause problems for everyone. Season 1 was a NJ Web Fest selection and award finalist, and season 2 is currently crowdfunding.

We sat down for a creative interview and discussion over a game of The Mountain, a Spindlewheel Microgame about a god, locked in the...

To celebrate 500 episodes(!) of the show, I sat down with a bunch of my friends to play The Creation of Wonder by Eve Golden-Woods. We told the story of The Singularity Cycle, Phase I. The Blade of the Exarchs, a multimedia rock opera cinematic experience adapted from 20 years of TTRPG campaign notes.

Thank you to my guests on this episode: Noah Houlihan, Jonaya Kemper, Hazel Amber Goswick, Alex Pearlman (Pearlmania500), Audrey Ladytabletop, KeganEXE, Marn Lastname, Caleb Zane Huett, Christine Prevas, Dr. Emily Friedman, Sophia Ricciardi, His Name Was Dusk, Kendrick Smith, AJ Ray AKA Hooshakid, Meghan Cross...

Caldwell is an illustrator, storyboard artist, writer, director, producer, and voice actor. You know him from Not Another D&D Podcast, as one of the creators of Drawfee, and from his new game, Drawnsters, a DIY card game battle video game currently on Kickstarter.

We wanted something weird, and inventive, and funny, and surreal, and so Project ECCO by Elliot Davis felt like an absolutely perfect fit. So I cracked out my calendar and we broke down a story of a time agent chasing a temporal anomoly across time and space (causing untold havoc along the way).<...

Emily is one of the hosts of This Week in Fandom History, a podcast which breaks down different foundational moments that shaped and shook fandom culture over the years--from those you know like the back of your hand, to those you might never have heard of before.

We got deep in the paint with our shared love of superhero fandom in a game of In The Shadow Of Glory, a two-player letter writing game about a hero and villain so deeply intertwined, they have become the only people on earth who understand one another.

THIS...

V is one of the hosts of This Week in Fandom History, a podcast about notable events across fan culture, from the very recent to the pioneering moments of fandom. We sat down to play Un-Navigateable by K Ramstack, a solo tabletop RPG about the experience of cataloging an old blog off before taking ti down from the internet. It's a great opportunity to examine our own history of fandom, and the particular ways we came of age on the Internet.

THIS WEEK IN FANDOM HISTORY: https://www.thisweekinfandomhistory.com/

UN-NAVIGATEABLE: https://k-ramstack.itch.io...

Avery is the designer of some of the most influential games in TTRPGs, including Monsterhearts, The Quiet Year, Dream Askew, Ribbon Drive, and more. We sat down for a beautiful and intimate story of queer romance told in the margins in Together We Write Private Cathedrals by Weaver Walker.

AVERY ALDER: https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/

TOGETHER WE WRITE PRIVATE CATHEDRALS: https://roswellian.itch.io/together-we-write-private-cathedrals

ALL MY FANTASY CHILDREN: https://moonshotpods.com/all-my-fantasy-children/

PARTY OF ONE DISCORD: https://discordapp.com/invite/SxpQKmK

SUPPORT JEFF ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com...

Shing is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work ranges from film and puppetry to comics and graphic novels and incredible keepsake games such as A Mending and their newest, January. January is a postcard writing game for two about distant but persistent friendships in an alternate universe filled with kaiju--AKA, the most "Me" pitch I've ever heard in my life.

Appropriate to the topic of January, we sat down to play HOME, a mapmaking RPG of Kaiju vs. Mecha, in which pilots step into the shoes of colossal war machines to do battle with invading monsters. Can they...

Adam is a cast member on The Disappearances of Lydia Fountayne, an award-nominated new audio drama about books, birds, and life beneath the all-seeing electronic eye of the internet. He also GMs Feddie Scum, a Gundam fanfiction actual play podcast set during the events of the Universal Century.

In the spirit of big robots, bigger drama, and even bigger feelings, we sat down for an epic battle in Last Shooting by dear friend of the show Grant. Get ready for spies vs. soldiers in the battle before the war!

THE DISAPPEARANCES OF LYDIA FOUNTAYNE: https...

Justin C. Key is a speculative fiction and horror author whose new book, The Hospital At The End Of The World, is available in stores now. It's a murder mystery set in the last human-run hospital in a world overrun by a seemingly (but not quite) perfect AI algorithm overseen by a sinister corporation. Talk about an unfortunately timely premise.

We sat down to play Tether, a two-player journaling game about people decades apart staring down the same supernatural curse, with only a journal spread across time to help them stop it.

JUSTIN C. KEY...

BONUS EPISODE! In honor of Tacklebox winning a Judge's Spotlight award at the ENnies, please enjoy our latest Party of One Says Go Birds live recording, and join us 7/11 when we sit down with Dan and Marty from Breaking Mayberry for a game of Characters Welcome!

Emma is host of Unnatural Selection on the Moonshot Podcast Network, about film adaptations of books, the weird choices Hollywood makes, and what actually constitutes a “good” adaptation. He's also a cast member on Interstitial Infinity (an Actual Play podcast about troubled pop culture teens on the Infinity Train) and Dead Teen...

Johnny is a professional athlete, professional nerd, and ambassador for all things D&D and tabletop RPGs. You can catch him right now on the Almost Friday TV D&D series on YouTube, running the cast through their first-ever Dungeons & Dragons game.

We sat down for an indulgent celebration of all things trope-y tabletop fantasy in a game of Elf With a 10-page Backstory, in which over-the-top TTRPG characters unleash their overwritten origins to stop apocalyptic threats.

JOHNNY STANTON IV: https://www.stantoniv.com/

ALMOST FRIDAY TV PLAYS D&D: https://www.youtube...

Andrew is not only one of my favorite people in the world, but he is also the host of some of my favorite podcasts, including ARGonauts, The Podcast Mines, and Mild Manor'd. We're also sitting down THIS WEEKEND (at the release of this episode) at Moonshot.mov for MOONTROPOLIS, a three-day charity stream raising money for Advocates for Trans Equality

We sat down to play The Long Shift by fellow Moonshot homie Caro Asercion to tell a slice-of-life story about aliens in a galactic diner.

THE LONG SHIFT: https://seaexcursion.itch.io/the-long-shift

...

Sarah is a Hugo Award Winning and Bestselling author of speculative fiction, short stories, essays, comics, and more. Their 2025 novel Spread Me, a darkly seductive tale of an otherworldly intruder at an arctic research station, was named one of the Best Horror Books of 2025 by Vulture, and their new book, Make Me Better, just dropped in stores this week.

We sat down to play We Did Start the Fire, an RPG of the people who ended the world, and how they live with themselves after the fact.

🐸 ALL HAIL MARIGOLD. 🐸

SARAH GAILEY: https://sarahg...

Jadzia is a three-time guest on the show(!), as well as the creator of the smash-hit graphic novel Galaxy: The Prettiest Star, and its brand-new sequel, Galaxy: As the World Falls Down. We sit down to talk superhero comics, "Go Birds," and more as we tell a Galaxy fanfiction story using a bespoke Powered by the Apocalypse system!

JADZIA AXELROD: https://www.twitter.com/planetx

GALAXY: AS THE WORLD FALLS DOWN: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/799756/galaxy-2-as-the-world-falls-down-by-jadzia-axelrod/

GALAXY: THE PRETTIEST STAR: https://www.dc.com/graphic-novels/galaxy-the-prettiest-star

HAWKGIRL: ONCE UPON A...

Isabel is a speculative fiction writer and podcast host (Wow If True), whose debut novel, Sublimation, a story of Doppelgängers, corporate intrigue, heartbreak, betrayal, and the harsh permanence of the border, hits stores on June 2, 2026. We dig deep into the well of metafiction in a game of superhero vs. author in a game of Death of the Author by Blinking Birch Games.

ISABEL J. KIM: https://www.isabel.kim/

SUBLIMATION: https://torpublishinggroup.com/sublimation

WOW IF TRUE: https://www.wowiftrue.com/

DEATH OF THE AUTHOR: https://blinkingbirchgames.itch.io/death-of-the-author

John is a prolific comics writer and artist, and the creator of Scary Go Round, Bad Machinery, Giant Days, and Solver. We sat down to play Not a Tabloid, an interview game about an overworked, underqualified tabloid writer trying to guess why they're interviewing their peculiar suspect. It goes places.

JOHN ALLISON: https://scarygoround.com/index.html

NOT A TABLOID: https://psychhound.itch.io/not-a-tabloid

ALL MY FANTASY CHILDREN: https://moonshotpods.com/all-my-fantasy-children/

PARTY OF ONE DISCORD: https://discordapp.com/invite/SxpQKmK

SUPPORT JEFF ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com...

Jax is a freelance game designer, writer, sensitivity reader, editor, and one of the organizers of NotACon: Revenge of the Con!, a three-day summit of games, feelings, and hot-tubbing happening in Millerstown, PA from October 22-25, 2026 (which I'll be attending as a special guest!). We sat down live at Unity Java in Philadelphia, PA, for a weird, intimate, horrific but beautiful game of Insatiable Cravings by friend of the show j strautman!

NOTACON: https://sites.google.com/view/revenge-of-the-con/

JACQUELINE BRYK: https://www.jacquelinebryk.design/

INSATIABLE CRAVINGS: https://strautmaskreplica.itch.io/insatiablecravings

Tom Harrison is one of the brain geniuses behind Anime Sickos, my actual favorite podcast in the world. The show is a dissection of the four pillars of modern misery (Anime, Gaming, Posting, and Jobs), and is honestly everything you could possibly want in a podcast. It's funny, insightful, occasionally righteously angry, and genuinely makes me want to make podcasts.

We sat down to play Don't Kill a Bird With a Baseball, an RPG where Randys Johnson from across the multiverse gather to stop our world's Randy Johnson from killing a bird with a baseball.

...

Ellen is an actor, writer, visual artist, baseball analyst, and lifelong fan of the Philadelphia Phillies (whom I am watching on TV right now... it's good to be back). You can catch them right now in The Housemaid, as a regular contributor to MLB Network's "Off Base," on a number of award-winning festival features, and on their baseball media podcast Take Me In To Ballgame.

We talk sports, art, community, and catharsis as we imagine worlds of what could be in a game of In This World by Ben Robbins.

ELLEN ADAIR: https://www.ellenadair...

Lachlan is an actor who you can see right now in Y2K, Chucky, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and more. We knew we wanted to explore some weird, messy horror, so I couldn't think of a better game than 1978: The Night They Came Home by World Champ Game Co.

It's Halloween night. Time for a showdown between survivor and killer.

LACHLAN WATSON: https://www.instagram.com/lachrwatson/

1978: THE NIGHT THEY CAME HOME: https://worldchampgameco.itch.io/1978

Y2K: https://play.hbomax.com/movie/86e68d18-7e60-438b-b1b3...

Pat is one of the hosts of Fool of a Took, a Lord of the Rings podcast taking the books one chapter at a time. He is also, coincidentally, one of my oldest and dearest friends.

Naturally, we got deep in the Tolkien sauce in a game of Ring Goons, an Tunnel Goons hack about traversing Middle-Earth on grand and epic quests.

Recorded live at Unity Java in Philadelphia, PA!

FOOL OF A TOOK: https://www.youtube.com/@FoolofaTookPodcast

RING GOONS: https://bob-bibleman.itch.io/ring-goons

ALL MY FANTASY...

Jeffrey is a director, audio artist, and sound designer with Audacious Machine Creative, creators of such incredible podcasts as Unwell: A Midwestern Gothic Mystery, World Gone Wrong, and their newest show, The Harbingers. We sat down to explore a cursed monument and witness the death of a group of explorers in Chiron's Doom by Nick Bate.

AUDACIOUS MACHINE CREATIVE: https://www.audaciousmachinecreative.com/

WORLD GONE WRONG: https://www.audaciousmachinecreative.com/world-gone-wrong

THE HARBINGER: https://www.audaciousmachinecreative.com/the-harbingers

CHIRON'S DOOM: https://ickbat.itch.io/chirons-doom

ALL MY FANTASY CHILDREN: h...

Shenuque is a Queer Sri Lankan actor, writer, comedian, and co-owner of Many Sided Media. You can catch them on tour right now for their new stand-up special Wait, What's Sri Lanka?, as well as on the new Perils & Princesses season of My First Dungeon.

We sat down to play Starlight Riders by friend of the show Cesar Capacle, a card-based RPG of heists in outer space. A group of galactic outlaws have been screwed over. It's time to take back what's owed to them.

SHENUQUE TISSERA: https://www.shenuquetissera.com/

MANY SIDED...

Brian is one of the minds behind Many Sided Media, an award-winning podcast production company that specializes in improvised storytelling and immersive audio fiction. You can hear him as the GM on My First Dungeon, especially on its current Perils & Princesses season, as well as one of the interviewers on Talk of the Table.

We sat down to play Into the Odd, a rules-light, flavour-heavy roleplaying game of industrial horror and cosmic strangeness. We dug into the adventure To Put Away a Sword, a sci-fi fantasy adventure in a post climate change world.

MY FIRST...

Luke is a podcaster and Twitch streamer who hosts Fortnite Talk Show, in which he jumps into random Fortnite channels and chats with his fellow players like a talk show. He also hosts the show STORES, a podcast about the universal experience of going to stores.

We sat down for a science-fantasy adventure in Troika!, a science-fantasy roleplaying game where you and your cosmopolitan group of fellow travellers explore the ends of the multiverse.

A skeleton buys a house. It goes badly from there.

THELUKEMAN: https://linktr.ee/thelukeman

STORES: https...

Emily is one of the creators of Metra: A Climate Revolution With Songs, an original musical fiction podcast about how we change the world. The podcast weaves ancient myth, transformative magic, and memorable music to tell the story of a dangerous climate future, and the fight for the world we deserve.

In that same vein, we sat down to play Hardcore Ecologist, a game of wandering the weird Wastes, Wilderness and Ruins of the future world, making an inventory of the new life that has developed here in the centuries after a massive climate change cataclysm, surveying...

John is the creator of Leverage and Leverage: Redemption, as well as The Librarians, Jackie Chan Adventures and more. We sat down to play MERGER, a solo RPG about trying to survive in a world of living predatory corporations (which, in addition to being an apt way to describe living in 2026, is literal in this case--massive, soul-consuming eldritch horrors given flesh).

LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION: https://www.instagram.com/leverageredemption/?hl=en

JOHN'S NEWSLETTER: https://buttondown.com/kungfumonkey

FOLLOW JOHN ON SOCIAL: https://bsky.app/profile/johnrogers.bsky.social

ALL MY FANTASY CHILDREN: h...

Myq is a standup comedian of over 20 years, who has appeared on the Tonight Show, Conan, Letterman, James Corden, Seth Meyers, Comedy Central, Last Comic Standing, and America’s Got Talent. He's also the host of Broccoli and Ice Cream and The Faucet, and his latest special, Rini, developed with his partner of over a decade, is available on YouTube right now.

We sat down to build a superhero world and celebrate our mutual love of comic books and big ideas in a game of Zoetrope, a superhero worldbuilding game about creating a comic book universe.

MYQ...

Hey Party People! A little holiday treat for you: A feed drop of one of my favorite shows, about a topic that is extremely important to me: Comic books.

Enjoy this episode of Comic Sans, and then check out the show wherever you get your podcasts!

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Earlier today, the R.S.S. Comic Sans returned safely to Earth after its slingshot voyage around the sun, making Yan and Nat the first — and last — podcast hosts to go to space. As the details of their mission are top secret, they'll instead spend today's pres...

Moonlight On Roseville Beach is a game of 70s queer disco horror, in which residents of the queerest little town on Rose Island get wrapped up in the increasingly arcane and disturbing mysteries happening just past the edges of perception.

The game's designer, Richard Ruane, joined me live at Unity Java - Umbria to meet the island's newest resident, and discover what nightmares were waiting for them.

MOONLIGHT ON ROSEVILLE BEACH: https://r-rook.itch.io/moonlight-on-roseville-beach

ALL MY FANTASY CHILDREN: https://moonshotpods.com/all-my-fantasy-children/

PARTY OF ONE DISCORD: https://discordapp.com/invite...

Frankie is an actor and voice actor whose work you can hear right now as one of the main characters in Silent Hill F, as well as in the upcoming film The VelociPastor 2. We sat down to tell a post-apocalyptic fantasy horror adventure in Songs and Sagas, an axes & runes RPG about exploring the world after Ragnarok and carving out a home in the desolate wastes.

FRANKIE KEVICH: https://www.frankiekevich.com/

SILENT HILL F: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2947440/SILENT_HILL_f/

SONGS AND SAGAS: https://songsandsagas.farirpgs.com/

ALL...

Ty is the host of Side Character Quest, a 2-player actual play podcast in which every adventure follows the unique story of a single character in a larger, interconnected fantasy world.

We sat down to play Dead Belt, an RPG of space cowboys digging into derelict spaceships. Can our heroes collect their payload and get home safely before the terrors of space kill them before they can cash their check?

SIDE CHARACTER QUEST: https://www.sidecharacterquest.com/

DEAD BELT: https://acoupleofdrakes.itch.io/deadbelt

ALL MY FANTASY CHILDREN: https://moonshotpods.com/a...

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the podcast, Jeff sat down with friend of the show Audrey (from Alone At the Table) to answer YOUR listener questions... and to shit-talk the movie Twisters. Just a little.

Emma is host of Unnatural Selection on the Moonshot Podcast Network, about film adaptations of books, the weird choices Hollywood makes, and what actually constitutes a “good” adaptation. He's also a cast member on Interstitial Infinity (an Actual Play podcast about troubled pop culture teens on the Infinity Train) and Dead Teen House Party, a rewatch podcast of MTV's Scream series.

We geared up, gathered our crew, and pulled the job of the century in fellow Moonshot podcast bestie Marn Lastname's Time to Drop, a time loop heist game about a group of thieves forced to pull off...

Elliot is the designer of some of my favorite games, including Project ECCO, which we played on the 400th episode of the show. We sat down for a truly heartbreaking game of The Time We Have, a TTRPG about two brothers on opposite sides of a door, staring down the inevitable amidst a zombie apocalypse.

CW: Grief, trauma, familial terminal illness, body horror

THE TIME WE HAVE: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/moreblueberries/the-time-we-have?ref=Po1

ELLIOT DAVIS: https://www.moreblueberries.com/

ALL MY FANTASY CHILDREN: https://moonshotpods.com/all-my-fantasy-children/

As part of our 10th anniversary celebration week, my dear friend Alex Flanigan sits down with me to chat about the journey of making a podcast for ten years, and what makes Party of One the show that it is.