Tonight on D&D Outloud, I'm joined by Joseph Laycock, a scholar of religion who explores what happens when belief, culture, and controversy collide. Joe is an associate professor of Religious Studies at Texas State University, and he's written some incredibly relevant work for anyone who remembers when D&D was treated like a portal to perdition, including Dangerous Games, his sharp look at the moral panic over role-playing games. He's also the editor of The Penguin Book of Exorcisms and the Penguin Book of Cults, because apparently he collects moral panics like some people collect dice.

Also joining me tonight is Daniel Harms, a librarian, researcher, and one of the great cartographers of the weird. Dan's work lives at that crossroads where folklore shakes hands with grimoires, and the footnotes start whispering back. He's written and edited a stack of essential occult reference works, including The Necronomicon Files, a deep dive into the "truth behind the legend," and he's spent years tracking the history of magical texts, ritual traditions, and the kind of lore that feels one inch away from becoming an adventure hook. He wrote the Encyclopedia Cthuliana, which is the indispensable source for Cthulhu mythos knowledge. If your idea of fun is "primary sources, but make it eldritch," you're in good company.

You can find Joe's book on cults here.

And Dan's amazing book on the Necronomicon here, and updates on Encyclopedia Cthuliana here.

Jim Lowder is a writer, an editor, a lore architect, and if we're being honest, a kind of Indiana Jones of shared worlds. From Ravenloft to Forgotten Realms to the trenches of TSR itself, Jim has chronicled the industry, shaped it, and occasionally had to wrestle it into coherence with nothing but a red pen and stubborn Massachusetts resolve. He brings history, insight, and the kind of war stories that remind us this hobby was built by humans, not dragons.

Our second guest is a man whose career arc reads like it was designed by a particularly chaotic bard. Pat Kilbane is an actor, comedian, documentarian, and now one of our most energetic chroniclers of Dungeons & Dragons history. You might know him from MADtv, but in the last few years he's become a relentless investigator of the game's past, digging through archives, tracking down lost media, and turning old TSR ephemera into modern revelations. Pat is equal parts entertainer and excavator; he's here not just to tell stories, but to figure out why they matter. Pat Kilbane, welcome to D&D Outloud.

Today, we converse with two firehoses of the human imagination: Mark Diaz Truman and Jay Dragon!

Some people play games. Some people publish games. And then there are the people who change how the whole industry works. Mark Diaz Truman is one of the architects of the modern tabletop renaissance; designer, publisher, organizer, and strategic mastermind behind Magpie Games, one of the forces that helped bring Powered by the Apocalypse roaring into the mainstream. From Masks to Avatar Legends, Mark doesn't just build games. He builds movements, communities, and launchpads for new voices. We are living in a future Mark helped to chart.

Jay Dragon is a creative force. I am over the moon to have her back on because our last conversation was one of my favorites. Jay's the mind behind Wanderhome, and Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast, games that blend gentle heartbreak with radical imagination. She is currently the head of design at Steve Jackson Games. Please welcome the pastoral prophet of indie RPGs, Jay Dragon!

You can find more of Mark's work here: https://magpiegames.com/

And more of Jay Dragon's work here: https://warehouse23.com/collections/possum-creek