17 Sept 2026
Paul and Cailon [S5E1]
Welcome back to a brand new season of Campaign Spotlight! This week, we're chatting with Paul from Alchemical Press (https://alchemicalpress.io/) and Cailon from the Nailon Realm (https://www.nailonrealm.com/) about solving problems without getting your swords out, playing a character with values very different from your own, and building out a vibrant world of rodents and mustelids on OSR-style TTRPG adventures. Minor spoilers for Ladyhawke, Redwall, and maybe also Adventure Time.
We first met Paul and Cailon at Dragonflight GameCon back in 2025 (https://foldedfrequencies.com/2025/09/24/onsite-at-dragonflight-s4t8/). When we invited them onto the show, we planned to talk about the Mice of Legend (https://miceoflegend.com/) adventures that Paul writes, and about their collaboration to design physical minis for this specific tabletop universe. But our conversation went way beyond Mice of Legend, and we ended up talking about in-game and out-of-game information, resource scarcity in OSR-flavoured games like Shadowdark (https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/pages/shadowdark), and the separation between players and characters. Thanks Paul and Cailon for the thoughtful discussion!
Head on over to our website for pictures of the minis we're discussing in this episode (https://foldedfrequencies.com/?p=505). Note that these are the minis we're discussing in the episode! You can see the rat tail, the snail familiar, and the spell scroll. The designs really do nail the balance between cartoonish whimsy and grounded crunchiness.
A few Mice of Legend (https://miceoflegend.com/) projects are coming out over the next few months:
One-shot micro-adventures written as an introduction to Mice of Legend are dropping every month, published in both OSRIC and Shadowdark.
Eagles, Anchors, and Outlaws (Module 7 of the campaign) is in playtesting now and will release this year. As of this episode's release, Paul is looking for beta testers, so get in touch if that seems interesting to you!
The module M4: Part-Time Professional Mine Janitors, which is currently available in the OSRIC system, will be ported to Shadowdark later this year.
The skirmish game that Cailon is developing and Paul is writing modules for is still under development. At the moment, it looks like the best way to get access to the rules is through the Nailon Realm Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/thenailonrealm).
In this conversation, we mention Simon and the Brush Wielders Union - and for more context, you can go listen to our interview with Simon from last season (https://foldedfrequencies.com/2025/07/09/tactical-immersive-experience-miniatures-combat-with-simon-s4e2/). We also reference Sam's incredible three-dimensional battle sets (https://foldedfrequencies.com/2024/02/14/episode-4-combat-encounters-with-sam/). If you want to hear more about OSR games, check out our interview with Max (https://foldedfrequencies.com/2024/07/03/old-school-with-max-s2e3/) and our follow-up conversation about OSR exploration in particular (https://foldedfrequencies.com/2025/08/27/six-mile-hex-grids-with-seventeen-locations-exploration-in-osr-games-with-max-s4l1/). If you want to hear more about a very different TTRPG setting all about anthropomorphic animals, you can listen to our interview with Selius about developing The Delver's Guide to Beast World (https://foldedfrequencies.com/2025/10/11/a-delvers-guide-to-third-party-supplements-building-the-beast-world-with-selius-s4e6/).
Paul mentions the webcomic Beyond the Western Deep (https://westerndeep.net/) in this episode, and I read a little of it in preparing these show notes, and it's such a charming old-school webcomic.
Thanks to Gameswell (https://gameswell.shop/) for sponsoring this week's episode. And go check out their website - their books are really beautiful and elegant, and their commitment to developing games for a standard 52-card deck keeps the barrier to entry low. They've also posted draft playest material for their upcoming TTRPG Wyrd Mist (https://gameswell.shop/pages/wyrd-mist), which looks really fun and flavourful.
Thanks to Emmett for providing the PC intro at the beginning of the episode! Emmett also provided the intro to our Chris Pramas interview last season (https://foldedfrequencies.com/2025/12/31/game-engines-and-grunk-pits-running-green-ronin-games-with-chris-s4e7/). Go check out Emmett's game project Shields Up (https://www.patreon.com/squishypixels) as well.
If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music (https://tastefulnude.bandcamp.com/track/be-gentle-its-my-first-time?label=72167637&tab=artists). You can also listen to Reilly's DJ sets on Mixcloud. (https://www.mixcloud.com/tastefulnude/) I'm listening to one of Reilly's DJ sets while I write these show notes.
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