#I guess I'm rec'ing podcasts on this blog instead.

[sexiestpodcastcharacter]

I know another reason people stick with D&D even when they want to play something new is that they have trouble learning rules from a book, and no one else in their group wants to take the initiative* to learn a new game even if they might be open to playing one.

So if you like podcasts,** here are a few anthology podcasts that try a bunch of different games and put the title of said game right in the episode name!

Party of One Podcast: One GM and one player. Games are only one episode long. (The episodes I have bookmarked include the creators of the game of the episode, but I don't know if that's typical for this podcast.)

One Shot: New games, new players, new stories every month. While each story is a single, self-contained arc, they usually take a couple of episodes. (My gaming group also takes multiple sessions for most of our "one shots".)

My First Dungeon: Specifically geared towards teaching game masters new games! Newer than the other two so has less of a backlog.

Follow the Leader: The specialty here is on GM-less games. GM-less games aren't inherently less work than GM-ed games, rather they spread those duties out to all players. This podcast includes the titles of the game in the episode descriptions rather than the episode names.

*no pun intended

**No shame if podcasts aren't your thing. Even though I run this blog I have a really hard time paying attention to most actual play podcasts. I could count on one hand the number of episodes I've listened to from the above podcasts, but I do think they're cool resources.

I've briefly touched upon this topic before but here goes; I know you can play D&D for pretty much free because it's extremely easy to pirate, but I think we've settled by now that piracy doesn't actually hurt companies as much as they want us to think, meaning that pirating D&D isn't as big of a "stick it to WotC" move as it's often presented as. Of course if you absolutely have to play D&D (but, like, why?) you won't get any moralizing from me about piracy, like, ever.

But the point is: supporting another game either monetarily or with your valuable time is a much more direct and tangible way to stick it to the cultural monopoly of D&D than playing D&D and not paying WotC. I mean if it's another big-ish publisher I don't have a lot of faith in their working conditions being much better than WotC's, but in some cases it probably is so. As it often happens, the market leader can often afford to pay its employees worse simply due to those positions being more desirable.

But anyway who cares, there's lots of games out there where you can actually get a full game sometimes for less than the cost of a single D&D book and since those games are often built as more focused experiences than the D&D "forever game" formula you're actually more likely to get to experience all of the game instead of a lot of the content existing just as shadows on the cave wall.