Bastionland Podcast - Tabletop Roleplaying Game Design · Chris McDowall

Brad Kerr's Rule of Three

·49 min·3 clips

The Quiet Year forbids other players from commenting while you play.

1. Bastionland Podcast frames Brad Kerr’s episode around the “rule of three” and three games that matter to him. 2. Chris McDowell hosts, Brad Kerr is the guest, and Brad is important because he connects the games to his own design work. 3. The episode asks what three games Brad would choose when one is inspirational, one is nostalgic, and one is current. 4. Brad names The Quiet Year by Avery Alder as the first game and says he first played it about eight years earlier with coworkers in an “avant-garde RPG club.” 5. He describes The Quiet Year as a GM-less RPG about collaboratively narrating a settlement or community over a year. 6. Brad says the game’s communication rules are central because other players cannot comment during your turn and can only react later. 7. He singles out the contempt token as a silent act that carries more meaning than it seems to on paper. 8. Brad says The Quiet Year influenced how he thinks about resources by making players choose what is in abundance and what is in scarcity. 9. He connects that idea directly to his own adventures, including Hideous Daylight and Temple of a Thousand Swords. 10. Brad then switches to Tunnels and Trolls and says he came to it after years with Palladium, Heroes Unlimited, Marvel Super Heroes, and third edition Dungeons & Dragons. 11. He tells a story about a schoolteacher, Mr. Michalko, whose long-running Tunnels and Trolls games became legendary among students. 12. Brad says those sessions ran for 12 hours and sometimes stretched into campaigns that lasted for years. 13. He contrasts that experience with the game’s simple-looking spells, including “Go Away” and “A Beard.” 14. Brad says Tunnels and Trolls changed who he thought could play role-playing games, including a memory of playing with his sister and later with her friends. 15. He points to the game’s looseness around silliness, including Leprechauns as a playable race, as something that helped him accept “legalized silliness.” 16. Brad then chooses Liminal Horror, which he describes as an Into the Odd-based game set in a modern horror world. 17. He says its control stat and fallout mechanics can create lasting effects such as phobias, mental illness, or strange bodily changes like vomiting a snake. 18. Brad says the game works because modern injuries feel visceral, so a baseball bat or two-by-four can land harder than fantasy weapon damage. 19. The conversation is informal and playful, with frequent asides, jokes, and shared references between Chris and Brad. 20. Listeners who like indie RPG design, horror mechanics, and old-school game history will get the most from it, while people wanting only quick product news may skip it.

As heard by us

A loose, affectionate RPG conversation that lands hardest on Tunnels & Trolls.

Brad Kerr's segment works best when it settles into Tunnels & Trolls. The opening moves fast, but the real pull is the way he keeps returning to why certain games stay with him.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Brad Kerr, Tunnels & Trolls, and the appeal of sticking with one game.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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