TLDR: COVEN is a new, 𝖍𝖔𝖗𝖗𝖔𝖗 actual-play podcast, GMed and hosted by Noah, that will use multiple game systems over the course of the show to tell stories in an evolving, ongoing world.
Hey folks,
We’ve been quiet here for a long time. Matt is deep in his cartographic work these days, and I’ve been doing little things, like defending my dissertation and starting a new podcast…
COVEN is a new, actual-play horror podcast that I (Noah) have been putting together with three friends. At the moment we’re playing the classic indie RPG Sorcerer, by Ron Edwards, which I wrote about ages ago in my “5 RPGs in 5 Days” post. In that post, I noted how that session of Sorcerer was maybe the single best session of any game I’d ever had, and it still ranks, easily, in my top 5.
So, a little more about COVEN. The original premise I came to my players with was that they’d all be sorcerers–people who had bound demons to themselves–who worked in a jazz club together. I loved the idea of setting things around a jazz club, and it seemed like a good way to give the group something to mutually care about.
In our first four episodes, we played a classic worldbuilding game by Ben Robbins called Kingdom, and it went somewhere I didn’t expect: a small town outside of Houston, Texas. It’s meant playing in more emotional territory than I expected, too, as my family is also from a small town outside of Houston. (In the first episode, I name a convenience store after my grandmother.)
By episode 5 we’re playing Sorcerer, and that’s a great point to jump in if you don’t have any interest in Kingdom (which, really, you should).
I’ll admit that it’s been tough, balancing the podcast, teaching, my dissertation work, and the largely behind-the-scenes work I’ve been doing for Pelgrane Press (keep an eye out there for future Twitch content). But it’s also been super rewarding. I love the characters my players have created, and the story that we’re telling together, and, if you like the kinds of things we wrote here at Reckoning of the Dead, I think that you’ll like COVEN, too.
We’re up to eight episodes now, and we drop a new one every other Tuesday. Give us a listen, follow us on twitter, drop us a (favorable) review in your podcast app, and let us know what you think!
Much love,
Noah