Mage: The Podcast

Dungeon Master Diaries is a podcast about Shadowdark and other role-playing games where two GMs talk about their recent experiences at the table, and hopefully give you something useful that you can take to yours. Links dungeonmasterdiaries.libsyn.com - Podcast website youtube.com - Youtube channel spotify.com - Spotify feed discord.gg - Discord server

Threadfall is a campaign management platform built for live tabletop role-playing games. It records the session, transcribes speech in real time with speaker diarization, and turns the resulting transcript into a recap, a running campaign codex, and a live screen for the table, so the Game Master can stop taking notes and focus on running the game. The product was built by a Game Master frustrated with the gap between what happened at the table and what survived to the next session. Notebooks, spreadsheets, and post-session memory dumps consistently failed to keep up with multi-session campaigns where NPCs accumulate, loose threads multiply, and the party's choices weeks ago suddenly matter again. Threadfall treats the session itself as the source of truth: whatever was said at the table becomes structured, searchable, and remembered. /images/general-media/1779959619_6fDtbiNW.png Description What it does at the table During a live session, Threadfall captures audio, transcribes it in real time using state-of-the-art automatic speech recognition, and identifies who is speaking. A live screen, designed for a second monitor, a tablet at the table, or a shared display, shows the unfolding session in a clean, distraction-free view. The Game Master sees recent dialogue, current scene context, and tracked entities without breaking flow. What it does between sessions When the session ends, Threadfall produces a recap that captures what actually happened, character actions, key dialogue, decisions, and consequences: drawn from the transcript rather than from the GM's memory. It updates the Living Codex: a structured repository of characters, locations, factions, items, and plot threads that grows automatically as the campaign progresses. Entities are extracted, relationships are mapped, and the codex is searchable from the next session onward. Who it's for Game Masters running ongoing campaigns, particularly online or hybrid groups using voice chat, but equally useful for in-person tables with a recording device. It's system-agnostic: nothing in the product assumes Dungeons & Dragons or any specific rule set. It's been built and tested against D&D 5e and 5.24, but works equally well for Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, indie systems, and anything else where a group of people talks for hours and the GM has to remember it all. Free tier New users get two complete live sessions and recaps to try the product, with no credit card required. Founder rate Game Masters who subscribe during the launch window receive a Founder rate of $7.99/month for as long as they remain subscribed, including three campaigns, six AI sessions per month, the full Living Codex, and the live screen. /images/general-media/1779959641_ywkMFifG.png Technical foundation Threadfall is built on real-time speech-to-text with speaker diarization, large-language-model summarization and entity extraction, and a knowledge-graph backend for the campaign codex. The infrastructure is designed for the unusual demands of multi-hour, multi-speaker, jargon-dense sessions where the participants invent proper nouns on the fly. Independent and actively developed Threadfall is built by an independent developer who is also an active Game Master and player. The product is shipped iteratively, with bug fixes and features released as feedback comes in from the founding group of Game Masters using it weekly. Links thread-fall.com - Official website discord.gg - Discord server hello@thread-fall.com - Contact e-mail

Draw Steel is a tactical heroic fantasy tabletop roleplaying game designed by Matt Colville and the team at MCDM Productions. It is built to provide a modern, cinematic alternative to traditional d20 fantasy games. It focuses on high action, tactical depth, and ensuring that every player character feels like a legendary hero from the very first level. The system it is a spiritual successor to is Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Description In Draw Steel, players take on the roles of Heroes. Unlike other systems, the characters are heroes from the start. The characters are already capable of taking on the world and whatever threats may arise. The system encourages a highly tactical approach to combat encounters, promoting teamwork and clever use of abilities to control and affect any battlefield they might find themselves at. System Overview & Key Features The 2d10 Core Mechanic The game abandons the d20 focus and instead offers two ten-sided dice (2d10) instead. This creates a better mathematical average and becomes more predictable and reliable. No To Hit Rolls Draw Steel eliminates the traditional roll to hit. Instead, heroes automatically hit their targets with their primary abilities, but they roll to determine how much Power or impact the effect has. This keeps the game focused on making meaningful tactical choices rather than wasting turns on a miss. Heroic Resources Each class manages a unique resource, such as Focus or Valor, which builds up during a fight. These resources are spent to activate powerful Signature Moves and Heroic Abilities, ensuring that combat has a rising sense of drama and escalation as the heroes grow more powerful the longer a battle lasts. Tactical Movement and Forced Position Combat is designed for a grid. Many abilities do more than just deal damage; they allow players to slide, push, or pull enemies and allies across the battlefield. Positioning is vital, and the environment is intended to be a weapon that heroes can use to their advantage. Tiered Success Action resolution often uses three tiers of success. A low roll might provide a success with a cost, a middle roll is a standard success, and a high roll is a spectacular success that might trigger bonus effects or additional damage. This ensures that every roll contributes something to the ongoing narrative. Links mcdmproductions.com - Official MCDM Productions website mcdm.gg - MCDM community and developer portal