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”

  1. Applying TTRPG Customer Profiles to the Setting the Stage Podcast – GoCorral Avatar

    […] 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

81 – Biopunk 2287 RPG (Seiya and Synesthesia Synthetica) Setting the Stage, Campaigns for D&D and Other RPGs

Seiya tells us about his TTRPG system and setting, Synesthesia Synthetica (SNS). SNS is a biopunk game adjacent to the cyberpunk and steampunk genres. After an asteroid induced climate disaster, Earth has rebuilt itself using bio-technology instead of the metal based tech that surrounds us in the real world. Genetically modified humans have split into distinct species and mutant horrors prowl the wastes outside civilization. The rich rule from their space stations up above but resistance is growing in the streets below.During the episode we discussed a piece of art that Seiya had made for the game. A picture of that bio-tank is available for you to look at.At the moment, Synesthesia Synthetica is available for free as an early access game on itch.io and DriveThruRPG.If you want to learn more or find a group to play with, you can do that on the Synesthesia Synthetica Discord.Remember to nominate your favorite TTRPG shows/creators/things for the 2026 CRIT Awards!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.
  1. 81 – Biopunk 2287 RPG (Seiya and Synesthesia Synthetica)
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