why we care about stories…
How do stories and systems intersect and influence each other?
Stories are engines for collaboration and meaning-making. In role-playing games, storytelling transforms into an active dialogue: rules prompt choices, table culture shapes and refines them, and myth emerges spontaneously.
At Modern Mythology, we delight in watching this alchemy unfold. We treat the idea of “game" loosely, yet never lightly — systems matter, but so does style, context, playful callbacks, adapted tropes, even the anachronistic movie references that help everyone quickly recognize the type of story we're building together.
We care because these small interactions reveal how people collectively construct meaning. Zoom out, and you'll see the same dynamics at play in marketing, propaganda, and folklore. The payoff of studying this isn’t some grand theory, it's practical craft. Identify the lever, test it at your next session, and feel the story pivot. This loop—observe, adapt and steal tropes, play—drives everything we do.
the modern mythology podcast
What can a collaborative approach teach us about building compelling characters?
Think of the show as friends with notebooks. Episodes run approximately 60–120 minutes and feature one or more of the following formats:
Topic Discussions: Round‑table discussions on TTRPG themes, mechanics, tropes, or table habits.
Actual‑Play One Shots: We demo systems in real time, sometimes on our own first play‑through, to see how the mechanics shape play. The goal is demonstration and exploration, not long‑running narratives.
Interviews: Conversations with designers, scholars, and culture nerds comparing notes.
We value exploration over pre-established doctrine. If you design, GM, or simply love watching story‑gears turn, pull up a chair.
Recent episodes
articles
Our blog lets us slow down, draw diagrams in the margins, and dig deeper. We’re just getting started, but our flagship series Rules in Practice maps the hobby’s evolution and dives into debates that date back to its origins. Upcoming installments will explore indie story games.
As we grow expect more:
Informed Reviews: New releases sifted for steal‑worthy moves.
Hands‑On Tips: Sometimes as an adjunt to a podcast episode, sometimes as a stand-alone. Discussion of pacing, downtime, consent, safety tools, tech at the table and lore.
Applied Media Theory: Broader discussions on mythology and play.
Read, argue, pillage for parts and tell us how it landed. Play feeds analysis, analysis feeds story, story feeds play. Jump in anywhere and pass the torch.
Featured articles
podcast network
The fallen cycle mythos fiction podcast
Forgotten, forgetful gods (of a sort) walk among us.
Listen to some of their stories…
The Fallen Cycle is created by James Curcio and a rotating team of collaborators over the years. This transmedia project spans illustrated novels, comics, audio fiction, and RPGs.
As independent wholes, they can be experienced in any order. However, the podcast is best listened to sequentially.
narrative machines theory podcast
A podcast on memetics, myth and propaganda: how our narratives define the limits of our political and personal identity, how any era of civilization may be consigned to myth just as it was defined by it.
Drawing on over a decade of interdisciplinary research, this podcast examines how ideas spread through the internet, shaping perceptions, reshaping societal norms, and constructing identities and politics—often without conscious awareness.