691 - Collaborative Storytelling and RPGs
Scriptnotes Podcast
John August
4.8 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John and Craig welcome author Stu Horvath to look at the rich history of tabletop role playing games. From Stu’s collection of over 2300 RPGs, they look at the evolution of collaborative storytelling, interactive narrative design, and the communities of players they inspire.
We also discuss the complicated influences of J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft on the world of D&D, and how the need to escape their derivative influences pushed RPGs to new heights of world-building and storytelling.
In our bonus segment for premium members, Stu leads us down down down to discuss a surprisingly recent narrative staple: dungeons.
Links:
- Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground by Stu Horvath
- VintageRPG.com by Stu Horvath
- D&D 5th Edition
- Amateur press association (APA)
- Little Wars by H.G. Wells
- Peter Cushing painting his minifigs
- Chainmail by Gary Gygax & Jeff Perren
- Chaosium
- Tunnels & Trolls
- Dread RPG
- Fiasco
- Scriptnotes episode 142: The Angeles Crest Fiasco
- Critical Role
- Alien: The Roleplaying Game
- Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game
- Traveller
- 2024 D&D Player’s Handbook
- Blackoath Entertainment
- Thousand Year Old Vampire
- Tales From the Loop RPG
- Honey Heist
- WWDC live translation
- She Used to Be Mine performance and vocal coach reaction
- Kolchak: The Night Stalker
- Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
- Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
- Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
- Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
- Craig Mazin on Instagram
- John August on Bluesky and Instagram
- Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
- Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode here.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome. My name is John August. Oh, my name is Craig Mason. |
| 0:06.6 | And you're listening to Episode 691 of ScriptNet. It's a podcast about screenwriting and things |
| 0:10.6 | that are interesting to screenwriters. Most weeks, we discuss storytelling, design to entertain an audience, |
| 0:16.4 | watching something in a movie theater or at home on their couches. It's your passive viewers, |
| 0:20.7 | consumers, numbering in the hundreds, thousands, or millions. |
| 0:23.8 | But Craig, what if your goal is just to entertain a few friends around a table? |
| 0:27.2 | Well, in that case, I think we know exactly what we do. |
| 0:29.9 | Today on the show, we'll discuss role-playing games, their history, their narrative of design. |
| 0:33.6 | We'll talk about Dungeons and Dragons, sure, but also a host of games that have pushed the form to new areas of collaborative storytelling and world building. |
| 0:40.8 | Tell us to do this. |
| 0:41.6 | We welcome a man who literally wrote the book on it. |
| 0:44.2 | Stu Horvath. |
| 0:45.1 | Welcome, Stu. |
| 0:45.8 | Hello, thank you for having me on. |
| 0:47.3 | Hey, Stu. |
| 0:47.8 | All right, the book in question is Monsters, aliens, and Holes in the Ground, a guide to tabletop role-playing games. |
| 0:53.3 | It's out from MIT Press. |
| 0:54.6 | It was a former one cool thing of mine. |
| 0:56.6 | It is glorious. |
| 0:57.5 | Congratulations on this book, Stu. |
| 0:58.9 | Thank you. |
| 0:59.3 | It's very large. |
... |
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