The Slovenly Trulls

Shardae and Alyssa are masterful in their performance as co-hosts, and often bring to light issues within the TTRPG world, especially some of the mainstream games. They do so in a fun and charismatic way. I’d absolutely recommend them to anyone!

You know Shardae and Lyssa are going to bring well-researched, thought-provoking content to the table. That sounds intimidating, right? And yet, it’s engaging, funny, and a lot of fun. A must listen for anyone interested in TTRPG history and feminism

The Slovenly Trulls podcast is a fantastic way to dive into the world of D&D from a more sociological standpoint. Well-researched and cited, the highly entertaining hosts walk listeners through some of the more problematic aspects of D&D throughout its history while providing context and giving its creators the benefit of the doubt. I’d sum the podcast up as funny, fair, and fascinating. They also discuss how to make your table more inclusive and welcoming. All in all a fun, unique podcast that’s definitely worth a listen!

The Slovenly Trulls bill themselves as a feminist Dungeons and Dragons podcast. Their name is taken from the advanced dungeons and dragons "harlot" table published in 1979 (which is hilarious) However, I'd say they're just a great feminist podcast in general. They do their research and really put the time into analyzing things in a healthy way. There's no "man hate" here, other than a healthy disdain for the patriarchy, which we should all have, in my opinion as a 30 something cis male gamer. Lyssa - a cis female Finnish gamer and graphic designer, and Shardae, - a cis female North American gamer and freelance writer host the show, and provide entertaining and educational takes on interesting topics in today's entertainment. Every episode, they pick an entertainment topic from D&D, but then go into the broader context of it, where that idea came from historically, where the original D&D writers would have come across that thing to begin with, and what the state of that thing was at the time. Then they analyze that thing in a D&D context, and lastly put forth their conclusions on the topic. They're obviously not used to being recorded yet, and you might be put off by their awkward pauses and difficulty getting started at times, even in their most recent episodes. But the topics they analyze are genuinely interesting, even if you don't play D&D. Some of my favorite episodes are the Amazon conspiracy, ep 26, and One matriarchy to rule them all, ep 8. (It really goes into defining a matriarchy, and what that really means. They're very sensitive to triggering topics, and are great at putting trigger warnings at the beginning of every episode, in case a listener doesn't want to hear about a thing. Even so, they treat each triggering topic with care and sensitivity, and I'd recommend listening to those topics even if you're leery of them. They even have a patreon, where Shardae posts re-writes of problematic things in D&D lore, like gods and monsters to use in your own D&D games, which is a great sig of commitment to improving the gaming space, and not just criticizing it.