Follow up on the exciting events of “A Rite Most Foul” with this new adventure, “Microcosm”! We played “Microcosm” on January 17, 2009, and we’ll present the adventure in six installments. The PCs have rescued Jacques from becoming a human sacrifice, but what new dangers await? To find out, please listen now or subscribe via iTunes. This episode features the following segments:

• The Staging Area: I recap the campaign from the very beginning. Following a suggestion from the Tome Show’s Jeff Greiner, every episode will now feature player introductions to help listeners recognize the players’ voices and keep the roster straight. You can always find an up-to-date roster on the Stormhaven Campaign information page as well.
• The Weather Report: The PCs get little time to rest as the pile of cultists’ corpses attracts the attention of some creepy crawlies.
• The Prop Shop: Starting with this episode, each “Microcosm” installment will feature a review of one chapter of Dungeon Master’s Guide 2. You can also get more special release-week converage of DMG2 from the Tome Show, Fist Full of Comics and Games, Critical Hits, Dungeon Mastering, Geek Dad, the Chatty DM, and At-Will.

Long-time listeners will notice a few changes beginning with this episode. The average length of an episode of Icosahedrophilia is rising by about twenty minutes. I hope this doesn’t impede anyone from listening to the ’cast; increasing the length of the play segment from 50 minutes to 70 minutes will cut down on the number of episodes required to present each adventure, but without going too far into really long episodes. Also, I’ve decided to forego the preview snippets for upcoming episodes. Those were fun to include, but clipping them from the next hour of play was the most time-consuming part of the entire post-production process. By abandoning those snippets, I free up more time to push out episodes in the marathon, and after that, to enhance the Prop Shop segment. Finally, I’ve remastered all of the standard bits that don’t change from episode to episode, so everything should have more consistent sound quality.

For those of you tracking the marathon’s progress, here’s what I have for you in the coming weeks:

• Microcosm (6 episodes)
• The Doom of Sarnath (6 episodes)
• City of the Pirate Kings (4–5 episodes)
• Clash of the Pirate Kings (6–7 episodes)
• Escape from the Pirate Kings (4–5 episodes)
• The Sands of Time (4–5 episodes)

And then, of course, there’s our adventure on 9/26, plus any Special Editions coming out of Worldwide D&D Game Day: Dungeon Maser’s Guide 2.

I hope that you enjoy(ed) listening to “Microcosm, Part 1,” and I look forward to sharing “Microcosm, Part 2″ with you in the very near future!