152 episodes listed below
Real play, reviews, and convention-room tabletop energy.
Creative Play and Podcast Network is a broad tabletop RPG feed built from real-play campaigns, reviews, one-shots, and convention recordings. Its recent run moves between Candela Obscura mystery, RPG book discussion, Wild Wild West Con panels, and practical creative talk.
PRESS PLAY
Creative Play and Podcast Network is a broad tabletop RPG feed with room for campaigns, reviews, one-shots, tabletop talk, and convention panels. Its center of gravity is play, but the feed does not stay in one lane. Recent entries spend substantial time with Circle of Veritas, a Candela Obscura real-play podcast from the network. That thread brings in Newfair, supernatural investigations, murder-scene aftermath, strange books, spirits, rolls, drive spends, gilded details, and the practical confusion of keeping character sheets current. The table chatter matters. Players negotiate who is stealthy, what skill applies, what a supernatural phenomenon might be, and when a scene has reached the perfect cliff edge. It is spooky, then suddenly very human. The same feed also makes space for RPG criticism. A Candela Obscura review talks through bleed detectors, mystical or steampunk character touches, GM experience, and the book’s smaller, pick-up-and-play feel. A Coriolis: The Great Dark discussion frames that game through its setting, Free League Publishing, and a darker, stranger, more mythic direction. Beyond real play and review, the network records convention material. Wild Wild West Con 14 episodes include an authors panel and a steampunk photography debate. Those panels move through writing feedback, short stories, fan enthusiasm, gear choices, camera limits, practice, creativity, and the emotional pull of a beloved con. The network’s texture is informal and community-minded. Intros, Patreon notes, inside references, and post-scene jokes sit beside real game mechanics and creative advice. It suits listeners who like the edges left on. This is tabletop audio as a working hobby space: part campaign table, part review desk, part convention hallway.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants tabletop RPG culture in a loose, community-recorded form: real play, rulebook reactions, creative panels, and convention-side conversations. It fits someone comfortable with table chatter and hobby detail.
What sets it apart: The feed’s range sets it apart: Candela Obscura real play can sit beside RPG reviews, author panels, and steampunk photography discussion. It feels less like one polished format and more like a network archive of people making, playing, reviewing, and celebrating games.
The Creative Play and Podcast Network is a Real play podcast and Blog group of people who enjoy Cosplay, RPG’s, Console Games, PC Games, CCG’s and MMO’s
A book whispers its pages aloud, and you get to hear the players puzzle over it.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A candid authors' panel on reader feedback, persistent ideas, and the point where writing finally reaches the page.
Wild Wild West Con's authors' panel settles into the practical life of making stories: testing short fiction, reading audience response, and deciding when an idea has earned a place on the page.
A grounded convention-room discussion that weighs photographic practice against equipment, with the coffee mug earning its place.
Photography gets a practical airing as Pete and the room work through a question with no tidy finish: can better gear make better photos? The conversation ranges across smartphones, point-and-click cameras, low light, concert photography, lenses, and the photographer's intent.
A murder-scene follow-up turns a window survey into a tense, untidy piece of tabletop investigation.
The investigators leave a murder scene and regroup on the way to an apartment, with Vic arriving in time for a quick catch-up. The search soon tightens around a house window: a police officer is moving inside, one investigator spends Drive, another reaches for a Survey roll, and…
A practical Candela Obscura review where character tools make the game's occult style playable.
The episode uses an unexpected Circle of Veritas gap as a clean way into Candela Obscura, first setting out what the game is and then spending more time on how players can make its supernatural world feel personal.
Pub trivia with the brakes cut.
Sharp RPG talk for working GMs.
Custom Magic cards, tested out loud.
Voyager and Deep Space Nine, in order, argued through
["David Lee Summers, Jeremy Reynolds, and George Barrett use the Wild Wild West Con 14 author panel to compare editing costs, AI writing, and how books get published.", "Summers says getting the word out is harder than writing, Reynolds says early indie books can be swallowed by editing and rights buybacks, and Barrett speaks as the newer panelist.", "The panel argues that AI only matches patterns, not syntax, context, inflection, or emotional purpose, and they tie that to KDP's AI disclosure question.", "The conversation closes with plotting-versus-pantsing advice, short-story-to-novel pathways, and plugs for `Sanguine Elf`, `Book of Kane`, `Vermillion Highways`, and `Museum of the Omniverse`."]
Wild Wild West Con 14's steampunk photography debate with Pete turns on one question: when does editing stop being photography?
The Circle of Veritas cast burns the corpse of a plant-infested victim, whose head breaks open into a basketball-sized tadpole of vines, using kerosene and a match.
Circle of Veritas builds its case around Boris Petrov, a dead man with a pink flower growing through his tongue, an Old Fair alchemy book, and an envelope addressed to Ivan Petrov.
Jim and Kelly review Darrington Press's Candela Obscura as a gothic horror RPG set in Newfair, comparing it to Peaky Blinders, Call of Cthulhu, Warehouse 13, and a magical secret society.
A review of the Candela Obscura sourcebook Horrors of the Fairelands, discussing its content and how it expands the core game.
In this episode of Circle of Veritas, investigators interrogate a disheveled guard about a telegraph in a tense back alley encounter.
An empty case file and a silk handkerchief scrap send Circle of Veritas investigators toward an address linked to Red Jack.
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A review and first look at the new edition of the Coriolis: The Great Dark RPG from Free League Publishing, described as a darker, stranger, more mythic reimagining of the original Arabian Nights-in-space setting.
A panel at Tucson Comic Con 2025 discusses how to create an original cosplay character within an established intellectual property.