Werewolf: The Apocalypse Retaliation // an RPG in a Box Our good friend Simon is the lead narrative designer for this new Tabletop RPG in a box, designed to work without a Game master, it tells a grim story of a werewolf sept who loses their home to The Defiler. What follows is a challenging adventure where the players, a sept of Garou, decide how …

PAX Unplugged High Shelf Gaming has another convention survival guide for you! The unique gaming experience at PAX is a joy and Philadelphia has a lot to offer. We cover housing, gaming, the dealer hall, food and Philly specific entertainment options and even a bit of the history you can take in while visiting. We also have a few warnings in here t…

Hunters of The Occult a Monster Hunting TTRPG Van Helsing inspired TTRPG where players make seasoned monster hunters with signature weapons that grow with the character throughout the campaign. The career progression influences the themes each player character brings to the game. One of the things we love hearing about is how games come together an…

Gen Con for the first time w/ Taylor Taylor joins Dave and Rich to talk all about her plans for Gen Con 2022, and we cover all the best pre-convention planning ideas. We had a lot of plans and desires this year for Gen Con Catch Taylor on HSC and many other live streaming channels and of course on twitter Taylor (twitter) Listen on: iTunes//Google/…

AGON // Evil Hat John Harper and Sean Nittner join us from Evil Hat Productions to talk to us all about AGON, the thinking behind some of the truly unique game mechanics that sets AGON apart from other games. AGON brings unique dice mechanics, story mechanics, and downtime rules supported by some remarkable assets on Roll20. The story behind why Ro…

Latin American RPG Market Hugo has unlocked the secrets of selling tabletop roleplaying games in Mexico and throughout Latin America and he joins us to share the lessons his publishing company, The Death Die Club, learned along the way. We've wanted to bring Hugo back forever and he's been on quite the journey in finding the path to profits in Lati…

7th Sea City of Five Sails David Lapp and Rob Croy from Pine Box Entertainment are very close to releasing a new card game into the world based in the rich world of the 7th Sea tabletop RPG! We get a sneak peak into some unique mechanics and story points. One thing you'll find is that David and Rob are gamers with a capital G. They play so many gam…

Gen Con 2022 Dave and Rich are goin to GEN CON 2022 along with tons of shelfies to run events and have a great time this year. We chat about what we're doing different this year and what we're looking forward to. We've learned a lot in going to other conventions since 'all this' began. The way Gen Con does it is just special compared to other shows…

Episode Notes Jason Cordova (@jasoncordova6) of Gauntlet Publishing (@GauntletRPG) fame (distributors of Trophy, and makers of The Between) are giving Brindelwood Bay (@BrindlewoodBay) a new life as a kickstarter project. Brindelwood Bay itself is a fantastic blend of Golden Girls and Cthulhu investigation using all the tropes of Murder She Wrote a…

Dave and Rich emerge from an ancient podcast slumber - we talk about the last couple years, what happened to us as people and as a podcast show. It feels good to be back if you'll have us! Listen on:iTunes//Google//Spotify//Stitcher HSC Links: Twitter - https://twitter.com/HighShelfCLTV Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/highshelfcltv/ Twitch - …

Dave and Rich along with the rest of the HSG community had a lot of fun at the first-ever Gen Con online. We go through some of the obvious differences with Gen Con being fully virtual and talk about some of the surprising aspects. Well, surprising to us. For instance, most of the players in our games were 1st time Gen Con attendees, they expected …

Rich and David are joined by Kratrina to talk all about player character death in tabletop RPGs. It can be fun, it can be devastating, and there are a few tips we've learned along the way to navigate those deep waters. Kratrina has been on the show in the past covering several topics and she plays in many of our streamed Actual Plays merchandise Li…

WE ARE BACK! Gen Con Online is fast approaching at the end of July 2020 and there's a lot of learning we all have to do. Effectively this is a First-Year online convention. To help us navigate these waters we brought on two folks from Gen Con. Derek is the Sr. Event and Program Manager at Gen Con and Dominic is the Event Coordinator for Gen Con. Th…

High Shelf Gaming has always been a remote gaming community. We have sprinkled information over the years about the tools we use for board games and roleplaying games but this episode puts it all into one place for your convenience during Covid-19 or novel coronavirus. This is unpresidented time. If you are sheltering in place or practicing social …

High Shelf Gaming brings on Zac and David to talk about their new Kickstarter 'Knights of the Shadow Realm' which is a gigantic D&D module bringing characters from 1st to 20th level with a big story all along the way. David ran this game for his friend group and is turning the adventure into this module for you and your friends to play. It comes wi…

We are so fortunate Randall Porter reached out asking to come on and dive deep into Gen Con's history. The stories he shares are mind-boggling. From remote-controlled robots poaching customers from other booths to folks sleeping in parking lots in early Gen Con days. We get a strong sense of how Gen Con worked under TSR, WOTC, and now as an indepen…

Scott has been a fixture in the high shelf gaming community for over a year now, and he runs the RPG Zone at Pax South! This year we had the opportunity to partner with him to get some signage up, boost the RPG turnout at Pax South and provide a ton of giveaways from R. Talsorian Games, and Hot Springs Island! RPGs at Pax South grew a ton this year…

Getting all the way back to our roots in RPG gaming with games that launch as zines (small magazines from people self-publishing) Rich and I welcome Patch on to the show who is making Terranary RPG and releasing it on Kickstarter as part of Zine Quest 2! This RPG sounds so interesting to us. It uses a dice system I don’t think either of us has hear…

Riley from Pactless Patrons is a seasoned PAX conventions attendee and volunteer. They have attended 15 PAXi over the years but have never been to any other conventions. Rich and Dave field questions and dish out advice to let Riley know what they're in for. We cover a lot of topics comparing the two styles of conventions: the scope of Gen Con, the…

We had the pleasure to bring on Bruce Voge from North Star Games to talk about their latest board game, Oceans which is expected to hit stores March 23rd, 2020! Oceans is a thematic update to their popular game, Evolution, and Evolution: Climate which we reviewed not too long ago. It's important to understand that Oceans is not an expansion but a s…

PAX Unplugged is a unique player in the tabletop convention scene, the way it works and assumptions it makes about attendees are different than the other conventions out there we break down those differences and what makes PAX special. David was able to attend with some friends of the show, get interviews with game designers and play lots of board …

Rich and David review the new location for Board Game Geek Con, in Downtown Dallas and 8 boardgames rich got to play at the show. Having left the DFW airport, BGG Con has followed in the footsteps of some incredible DFW based cons such as A-Kon and Anime-Fest which now see much larger attendance numbers. But with that growth came some growing pains…

Luke the Goon from the Dark Future podcast joins us to talk about his second gaming passion, OSR RPGs! or Old School Revival Role-Playing Games. Luke brings a ton of experience with these games and some great input on what games to will get you started. Come on and dive into the nostalgic reboots of D&D. Mentioned in this episode: basicfantasy.org …

HSG returns to Gen Con Food and Drink in and around the convention center. We add more tips and advice from our first attempt in 2017, and make sure to talk about places that are still open! 2017's guide was great but it mentions a few places that have since closed down. Rich and David walk you through the most likely places to find food, and some …