RQ Birthday Stream, an update on Protocol and more!

Hi folks,

Wishing you the very best for the coming week from everyone at Rusty Towers!

It is the week of our 10th birthday stream! Join us this Saturday 28th June at 3pm BST to celebrate and raise money for two amazing charities: The Trevor Project and SpecialEffect.

Join guests from the last ten years of Rusty Quill, including cast and crew members from The Magnus Archives and The Magnus Protocol, Rusty Quill Gaming, Stellar Firma, Trice Forgotten and more as they play Rusty Quill-themed Quiplash, play RQ Jeopardy, cause chaos in in-character Among Us and play a TTRPG one-shot – a game of Cthulhu Dark – hosted by GM cuppycup from RQ Network show Ain’t Slayed Nobody, and more.

(Image description: A schedule for the live stream. At the bottom of the page are the logos for RQ’s tenth anniversary, and the two charities: SpecialEffect and The Trevor Project. The schedule is as follows: Saturday 28th June. 15:00 BST – RQ-themed Quiplash with the RQ Crew. 15:50 BST – RQ-inspired Jeopardy with the cast and crew from Stellar Firma, Trice Forgotten and The Magnus Protocol. 16:50 BST – TTRPG one-shot with Alexander J Newall, Helen Gould, Jon Gracey and cuppycup. 18:00 BST – DIG (the font for this word is larger than the rest of the schedule and distorted with a glitch effect). 19:00 BST – In-character Among Us with the cast of The Magnus Protocol. 20:00 BST – Signing off.)

The day is going to be so much fun, so join us in celebrating a decade of Rusty Quill and help us raise money for some very worthy causes.

The stream will be hosted on www.twitch.tv/rusty_quill - if you follow our page you will get notified as soon as we go live!

Next up, we are very pleased to say that the second act of The Magnus Protocol season 2 will officially launch on 3rd July! Of course, early access supporters will continue to get 48-hour early access and will be able to listen on Tuesday 1st July at the usual time of 16:00 BST.

We are so grateful to you all for your support during this break, which you may know has been built into our production schedules since we began to work on The Magnus Protocol.

The first six months of 2025 have already been exceptionally busy at Rusty Towers and the rest of the year has even more packed into it. This includes work on new series for Neon Inkwell, Protocol bonus content and extras that were unlocked during the Kickstarter, the evening with Alexander J Newall and Jonathan Sims at the Lowry in Manchester, and Magnus Live: The Hilltop.

The Hilltop, a fully staged two-act play that debuts in October, is being developed by many of the core members of the RQ team, including Alexander J Newall who will be directing it. It also features some key cast members from our productions. Additionally, there are several team members who will be involved behind the scenes, from stage management to sound.

After an initial table read that was held online earlier this year, the cast of the play met with Alex and producer April for an in-person read last week and preparations for full rehearsals have begun in earnest. We have also secured a professional videographer team to film and produce a recording of the play, which will be made available after the performance. Information on distribution for the recording will be available at a later date.

The Hilltop is shaping up to be something truly special but as we work to create a theatre production to this standard with the hopes to tour it in the future, we will need to temporarily slow down production on the third act of Protocol season 2. We have shifted our planned production timelines to account for this. Work will continue on the series, and we anticipate production will return to normal after The Hilltop performances have finished in November this year.

That said, we have some exciting things to share with you in the break between acts 2 and 3, including a 6-part spin-off of The Magnus Protocol: Sheeple Chase.

This fictional podcast, set prior to the events of The Magnus Protocol, is hosted by conspiracy enthusiast Georgie Barker and faux-sceptic Celia Ripley. In each episode, one of the hosts will present a conspiracy theory, before discussing the “evidence” for and against. However, will Celia’s ulterior motives and Georgie’s growing paranoia put the podcast in jeopardy?

Sheeple Chase, which is written by Sasha Sienna, was a stretch goal that was unlocked during our Kickstarter campaign – a massive thank you to everyone who donated for this! Sheeple Chase will be released on both the public and early access feeds later this year.

Finally, we are very pleased to say that the Magnus public feed is currently hosting a feed drop from RQ Network show, Ain’t Slayed Nobody, a TTRPG show hosted by cuppycup that + features a mix of long campaigns and shorter series featuring special guests. To celebrate the feed drop and his upcoming appearance in our anniversary live stream, we spoke to cuppycup to find out more about the show!

Why should everyone be excited about Ain't Slayed Nobody right now?

It’s a great time to jump into Ain’t Slayed Nobody. Our latest season, Bleeker Trails, is wrapping up later this summer. This Call of Cthulhu series mixes Old West weirdness with mind-bending cosmic horror. Think Rusty Quill's signature style but with cowboy hats! We're also branching out into exciting new systems like The Between for Penny Dreadful-inspired mysteries and Cosmic Dark for dystopian science fiction. Plus, we're running improv horror games featuring amazing GMs like Ross Bryant and Scott Dorward.

Tell us about your show.

Ain’t Slayed Nobody is a horror-comedy podcast blending tabletop roleplaying with audio drama. We started out with Call of Cthulhu adventures, and now we’re exploring other cool systems and formats. We're always bringing on terrific guests from the tabletop roleplaying scene, including talents like Becca Scott, Josephine McAdam, and Jared Logan. If you enjoy your horror served with laughs, come join us!

Tell us about yourself and the role you play in the show.

I’m cuppycup, the producer of Ain’t Slayed Nobody. My role involves everything from GMing and playing to editing and shaping each episode into a polished listening experience. Behind the scenes, I'm coordinating our amazing cast, writing adventures, and looking for new ways to push the boundaries of horror storytelling. And yes, the nickname’s real. It’s stuck since childhood, and now I'm professionally haunted by it.

If you started a podcast completely outside horror or tabletop gaming, what would it be?

I'd love to travel the country, or even the world, visiting local bowling alleys and chatting with the regulars. I practically grew up in a bowling alley, and the people there were stranger and more interesting than anything I could invent for a game. We’d bowl a casual game during each interview to keep things lively. Honestly, if someone hands me a budget, I might just do it someday!

You can listen to an episode of Ain’t Slayed Nobody now on the Magnus feed, or find the whole show wherever you find podcasts, on the Ain’t Slayed Nobody website and on the Rusty Quill website. If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving a rating a or a review!

Have a good week all!

The Rusty Quill team