Campaign Notes Podcast

Campaign Notes Podcast is an actual play of Pathfinder 2nd Edition, built around a long-running campaign with a nautical backdrop. Its episodes work in two registers, and the gap between them is the draw. Most recent episodes begin with a passage of narrated prose, written and read like a short story rather than a recap. One pictures a jester named Bill, bloodied and bound, being pressed about where he found a polished stone. Another sits with a figure beside a weathered, annotated map who refuses to underestimate the adventurers his companions laugh off. A third follows a man stuck in a high tower, dreading what is about to come through the halls. The openings are not always grim. One is framed as an in-world magazine exposé, 'Wizards and Wayfarers, Volume 276', profiling Pundergrasp, the Comedy Mage, whose inventions include something called Normal Missile. Then the table takes over, and the polish drops away. Play is loud, crowded and mechanical, with damage totals called out, healing rolls measured against maximum hit points, and persistent poison ticking down on an enemy. In one session a character takes triceratops form and reads out horn damage, a stomp attack and temporary hit points. The same stretch includes a small hunt for the right triceratops picture for the token on the board. Tangents come out of nowhere. The talk drifts to the movie Ghost Ship, to Bloodborne as a reference for a newly revealed enemy, and to a server that may be down again. One player talks through abandoning a joke novella and concedes bragging rights to Sam, and Andrew ends up the target of a crude gag. The language is frequently strong. Fights are played turn by turn and regularly carry over from one episode to the next. Several episodes stop with an enemy's turn still pending, one of them on an inquisitor about to quaff a blue elixir. The GM is open about those choices, noting in one fight that none of the NPCs have healing spells so the battle will not be dragged out artificially. Another episode stops where it does so Holt can finish his turn rather than have it forgotten, even though a more dramatic place to stop was available. Episode titles lean playful, from 'Hold This' and 'Durianosaur' to 'I've Got Soul But I'm Not A Soul Crystal'. Coming in this late means arriving mid-story, but each prose opening works as a small scene of its own.