Setting the Stage Episode 50 – Emma & Maia and Yeldplay

Published by

Isaac

February 26, 2025

Somewhere there is a door.

Today’s guests are Emma and Maia, the creators of the Yeldplay actual play podcast which was nominated for a 2024 CRIT award. Yeldplay is the official podcast of the Yeld RPG to showcase the system’s unique mechanics and style of play. The Yeld RPG lets your roleplay as children that find a door to the Magical Land of Yeld. The children can explore Yeld and return home, but eventually the door locks behind them on one of their journeys. Now they are trapped and must find seven keys to unlock the door. If they don’t escape before they turn thirteen they will turn into one of the monsters of Yeld and be forever trapped.

Yeld is a heavily structured RPG with seven boss dungeons (plus a bonus final dungeon) that already exist within the rule book. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of space to make up adventures of your own outside of the boss dungeons. Combat takes place on an 8×8 grid like a chessboard. Combat actions are fairly simple, stack as many dice on an action as possible, roll all the dice and add them up. The GM does the same thing for the enemies and whoever has the highest total succeeds. The game discourages killing enemies though as their ghosts will haunt you in the next adventure you and your friends embark on.

Yeld has a rotating GM structure. Everybody that is playing has a PC and each adventure is designed by one of the players for all the PCs to go through. At the end of that adventure a new player is encouraged to come forward to GM the next adventure. The whole experience can be as collaborative or as singular as desired by a group. You could potentially have a single GM without a PC if you wanted. Or you could have everyone working together on all the adventures if that was a process you enjoyed. The important thing is that Yeld works with collaboration or with individual creation of adventures, but in the assumed design there is a rotation of responsibility.

If you’d like to give Yeld a try you can check it out on Yeld’s website. The 1st edition of the game is free!
The Yeldplay podcast can be found on your favorite podcast app.
The Modest Medusa webcomic that has developed alongside Yeld and Yeld’s art is available online.

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One response to “Setting the Stage Episode 50 – Emma & Maia and Yeldplay”

Applying TTRPG Customer Profiles to the Setting the Stage Podcast – GoCorral

February 20, 2026

[…] others. 34 – Maura and Spire, 40 – Kevin and Wing Women, 48 – Udy and Pendragon, 50 – Emma & Maia and Yeld, 53 – Maia and Pinehurst Academy, and 70 – Sensei Suplex and Project Aurora might be […]

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I’m Isaac

Welcome to the GoCorral website! I’m Isaac Shaker and this is a place for me to write about D&D and occasionally other topics. I host a podcast called Setting the Stage that interviews different DMs about their campaigns. I’m currently focused on completing the Cimmeria campaign setting and turning it into a book.

Setting the Stage Podcast

83 – Call of Cthulhu's Garden (Hem and The Sprouting) – Setting the Stage, Campaigns for D&D and Other RPGs

Hem tells us about their actual play campaign, The Sprouting. Within the world of The Sprouting, Earth's history diverged during the 1800s when an eldritch horror was summoned into our reality. The horror lay in wait for centuries, building up a secret army of plant monsters. In 2020, the plant monsters struck, ruining infrastructure and attacking population centers across the world. One hundred years have passed and our heroes learn that the next stage of the plant apocalypse has begun…We also discussed some of the difficulties and pleasures of actual play podcasts and how the RPG community varies internationally (Hem is in Iceland).If you want to try listening to The Sprouting its available on all major podcast platforms. You can learn more on The Sprouting's website.For other shows produced by Hem check out Blighthouse Studio's website.Hem mentioned The Lucky Die actual play show of theirs several times which used D&D 5e.And the broader network of Fable and Folly has their website too.Check out the Setting the Stage website!Want to be on the show? Fill out this survey.Join our Discord!Support Setting the Stageon Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.