Ego Check with The Id DM

Dr. Ryan Kelly joins me this week to talk about his work on how to be use geek passions to grow. He is a psychologist and speaks about his work with a variety of clients including those that use videogames in problematic ways. We discuss the potential be...

Greg Leatherman, founder of VRECast, joins me to talk about his life as a gay man and what it's been like for him playing tabletop RPGs since the 1980s. He details the origins of the Very Random Encounters podcast, which randomizes as much as possible fo...

Adam Johns and Adam Davis from Game to Grow join the pod to talk about their years of experience running games for children on the autism spectrum and how their experience was funneled into the Critical Core tabletop roleplaying game. Critical Core is de...

Enrique "NewbieDM" Bertran joins Ego Check once again to talk about his new Patreon campaign. I wanted to talk with Enrique to discuss the success of Critical Role and how other intellectual properties might capitalize on that formula. We ponder how Star...

François Alliot, designer of the Reigns series of games, discusses his Tinder-inspired approach to probabilistic narrative game design. He talks about his quest to find a great "flow" for his games and how he wants to surprise players. We delve into the ...

I'm joined by Jana Flesher, a professional nurse midwife who also happens to be both a player and DM in various RPG campaigns I've been involved with over the past three years. She talks about her 10+ years of experience running various RPG systems inclu...

James Haeck, Lead Writer for D&D Beyond and Coauthor of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Critical Role's Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting joins the pod to educate me about how Critical Role overlaps with elements of the RPG and D&D landscape - and how it also has c...

Marc Allie joins me to talk about his history of "being geeky when geeky wasn't cool." He talks about his early memories of playing Dungeons & Dragons and how he jumped into the online community with his blog, The Learning DM, during the 4th Edition era....

Ed Grabianowski (aka, "The Grabster") joins me on the show to talk about his career as a freelance writer for outlets over the years including io9 and How Stuff Works. He speaks to his start as a writer for a local newspaper in Buffalo and how that led t...

I'm joined this week by Jase Nolan, also known as CinderAscendant on Twitter and Twitch. Jase talks about his style of preparing and running Dungeons & Dragons sessions. He shares how he got started casting Hearthstone matches, and how the skills learned...