The GM
193 episodes listed below
Dark fantasy actual play, loudly off the rails.
The Eternal Cycle: Origins: Complete follows a fantasy roleplaying campaign through Hellbound, Underrealm, New Alexandria, and other dangerous corners of its mythology. Combat math, wild player choices, soul-binding, and absurd discoveries sit side by side.
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The Eternal Cycle: Origins: Complete is a fantasy actual-play campaign with the brakes off. Its episodes sound like a table deep into its own mythology, where everyone already knows the weight of a mark, a castle, or a dangerous name. The recent arc moves into Hellbound. It brings portals, oaths, soul-binding pain, and a time jump that leaves old lives behind. The show is not tidy. That is part of its character. Scenes can open with a dramatic image of snow, shadows, runes, and forbidden knowledge, then pivot into dice rulings, side comments, or a player testing the limits of a rule. Combat gets serious attention. Initiative rolls, d20 swings, will contests, shock procs, guard totals, stat points, and army reputation are not background details; they are the machinery that creates suspense. A fight can hinge on a spear being pulled from an arm. Another can turn on a failed roll from a terrifying enemy. The world keeps expanding around those rolls: Underrealm is a zombie city built into a mountain, New Alexandria has strange figures and stranger discoveries, Castle Lotus needs rebuilding, and gods and pantheons hover as larger forces. The tone is blunt, chaotic, and often irreverent. It likes dark fantasy stakes, but it also likes the table laughing at bad decisions. Characters such as Alusian, Arkel, Ilmaya, AoA, Namid, Black Rose, and the Mad King appear as part of an ongoing continuity that rewards listeners comfortable entering a dense campaign midstream. The show works best for actual-play fans who enjoy hearing the game being played as much as the story being told. Rules talk stays in the room. So do mistakes, arguments, quick jokes, and sudden victories. The result is a rough, energetic campaign chronicle where bloody fantasy, absurd detours, and dice volatility all matter.
Made for: Best for fantasy roleplaying fans who like combat-heavy sessions, chaotic table banter, and dense ongoing campaign lore. It suits listeners comfortable with rough audio energy and blunt adult humor.
What sets it apart: The show keeps the mechanics visible, letting rolls, procs, stat choices, and table debate shape the fiction in real time. Its dark mythology is constantly interrupted by irreverent group chemistry, giving the campaign a raw session-room feel.
The begining of it all, where the cycle came from and all those involved with its creation. Please enjoy we are actually playing the Game and using the book as we go. This is the Origins of how the Cycle began.
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A rowdy day in Underrealm that ends with a clean combat collapse.
This cut follows a day in Underrealm, a zombie city built into a mountain, and keeps the momentum moving from army training to a search for a master tamer and then into a fight that keeps tightening.
Grim fantasy at mud level.
Fantasy rereads with jokes sharpened into arguments.
Hospital nights, vampire debts, impossible choices.
Rosgris turns glass shards into corrosive magic while Skyflash counters with a divine attack.
A bronze shimmer precedes a giant were-animal kidnapping Nieda and Black Rose.
Fire Spell's explosion hits everyone nearby, deals eight guard damage, and knocks Esau out of Graveyard Blues.
Underrealm, a zombie city built into a mountain, becomes the setting for two major skill checks: alpha understanding with a 95-to-100-year-old wyvern trainer named Monica, and arena combat with bets set at one-in-17 and one-in-3 odds.
This episode features a role-playing game session where players receive orders, discuss game mechanics like dice rolls and stat allocation, and prepare for an upcoming adventure involving a character named Arkel.
This episode follows characters in a fantasy roleplaying scenario as they take oaths, get marked, and prepare for a combat encounter in a castle setting.
This episode follows a role-playing game session where characters investigate mysterious events involving a portal, an orc, and strange sandy midgets in a fantasy setting.
The hosts of the Eternal Cycle podcast return for Season 4, Hellbound, with chaotic banter and setting up a fantasy narrative involving murder hobo vampires and demons after a 500-year time jump.
A shadowy figure enters a dark office in a snowstorm, uses a rune stone to activate a computer, and searches for forbidden knowledge.
A group plays a tabletop RPG, continuing their campaign after a siege, with dice rolls and character interactions.
A group plays a tabletop RPG, continuing their fantasy campaign with combat and character interactions.
A group plays a tabletop RPG, resolving a combat turn with dice rolls and character actions.
A group plays a fantasy role-playing game, continuing their campaign with a battle in the Citadel Keep.
A group plays a tabletop RPG, continuing a battle with a deity appearing on the field.
A group plays a tabletop RPG, narrating a fantasy battle scene with character actions and dice rolls.
A group plays a tabletop RPG, with the game master describing actions and dice rolls as characters seal a wall and attempt to pass through underground.
The Eternal Cycle: Origins: Season 3: Episode 22 follows a party trapped behind a flooded wall while a hive approaches from below.
A tabletop RPG actual play episode where the players continue a battle for Atlantis, rolling initiative and engaging entities called the Black Jack.
A group plays a tabletop role-playing game, with players rolling dice and describing actions in a fantasy combat scene.
A group plays a fantasy role-playing game, continuing their campaign to complete a wall while facing a threat called Blackjack.
A group plays a fantasy role-playing game, recapping previous events and continuing their adventure.
A group plays a tabletop RPG, with the game master narrating a dragon attack and the players reacting in character.
This episode features a chaotic fantasy role-playing scene involving a dragon, an elf, and a dramatic escape during a battle.
The hosts discuss a battle scenario where characters face Atlanteans with accurate archers and domesticated thorn hoppers on walls, with humorous confusion over creature names.
A tabletop RPG actual play where the group begins a new session, dealing with character splits and a mysterious divine event.
This episode follows characters in a fantasy roleplaying scenario where they are transported to hell after a battle, dealing with supernatural events and strange environments.