Role Playing Public Radio

News: Base Raiders: From the Underground is now available! It collects the first nine PDF supplements into one handy supplement. Get it in print and PDF or just PDF. Red Markets is in its last week. Back it now to get a full color hardcover book AND a ton of great PDF supplements! Synopsis: I’ve started a new Base Raiders campaign and I’m excited! The first session went pretty well, so Aaron, Bill, Caleb, and I got together to talk about getting campaigns started and what they like and what they don’t like. We hit on topics ranging from establishing the tone of the campaign, warning signs for bad campaigns, and dealing with character progression over the course of the campaign. We also have shout outs and anecdotes! Promo: Technical Difficulties Podcast Shout Outs Hot Art: A fascinating book on the world of art crime. Cthulhusattva: Anthology of Cthulhu mythos stories about cosmic enlightenment and horror. Defying Doomsday: Apocalyptic stories about disabled and chronically-ill protagonists. Blood and Wine: The last DLC for the Witcher 3, a high quality RPG. The Jerry Drive: An art project to celebrate VHS tapes and civilization. Dead by Daylight: Four survivors try to escape one slasher in this online video game. Backpack of Holding: High quality backpack on Thinkgeek. Easyrollerdice.com: Good place to buy dice and dice bags online. Voltron Legendary Defender: New Voltron on Netflix about robot lions or whatever. Steel Series Apex 350 keyboard: A good keyboard for gaming. Music: Sun by Home

News: The Red Markets Kickstarter is live! If you want to see the fruits of Caleb’s labors, be sure to back the Kickstarter. Synopsis: Structuring a Kickstarter is a difficult task. A game designer has to predict how much it will fund. Overshoot a goal and the Kickstarter will fail. Undershoot the goal may result in stretch goal hell, especially if the stretch goals aren’t planned properly. Caleb discusses his thoughts when he structured the Red Markets Kickstarter and what advice he got from other game designers. Remember that a wildly successful Kickstarter can bankrupt a company if it was not planned well enough. What has Caleb decided? Find out in this special episode! If you enjoy this podcast, backing the Red Markets Kickstarter is a great way of showing support. Thanks to everyone who has already backed it! Song: Zombies on my back by The Wild Zombies.

News: RPPR B-Sides Volume 3 is now available! Help support our podcast and get 20 actual play episodes, including Tom’s Pathfinder campaign and a Fiasco game with Thad. Thrilling Intent will have a livestream run of Tenra Bansho Zero on May 28 at 5 pm EST. Check out the details here. Synopsis: Player characters develop relationships with other during the course of a campaign. They can help or hinder the campaign itself. Faust, Shaun, Tom, and I discuss how to build them in games and what kind of complications arise as a result. Keeping the narrative focused while balancing screen time between all players can be difficult. We also have shout outs and anecdotes! Promo: The Redacted Files, an actual play podcast. Shout Outs Welcome to Night Vale: A novel based on the podcast, just as surreal and humorous. Vagante: An indie platforming rogue-lite now on Steam. Jeeves and Wooster: A hilarious Brit-sitcom based on the P.G. Woodehouse stories. Barkley Marathons: A documentary about the world’s most grueling ultra-marathon. The Big Short: A film about the people who predicted the 2008 financial crisis and profited from it. Song: MAMAIA_2084 – Side A – She Used to Be Mine/Fresh Start  by MAMAIA_2084 & ~senpai vaporwave

James D’Amato and Kat Kuhl from the One Shot Podcast developed a party card game to help gamers role play more. Noisy Person Cards can be thought of as a warm up exercise to a proper RPG. James and I talk about how NPC came to be and what he’s learned about Kickstarter so far. After the interview, there’s an actual play of the RPPR group trying the print and play version of NPC. Be sure to check out their Kickstarter, going on now!

News: RPPR Tabletop Tales is up and running! Check our newest podcast of campaign actual play. Our first campaign, the Dresden Files, is currently on its first season. Also, be sure to check out Thrilling Intent on Youtube. Caleb and I will be guests on their livestream on April 30th at 5 pm EST when Faust runs Delta Green. Watch this video for more details. Synopsis: A lot of gamers get stuck in a routine of only ever playing a few of their favorite systems. Bill, Dan, Faust, and I talk about the joys and challenges of learning and running new RPGs. We talk about new systems that aren’t even out yet, like Upwind and Red Markets, and published systems like Feng Shui 2 and Dresden Files. We also have shout outs and anecdotes! Shout Outs Noisy Person Cards: A fun party card game put out by the fine folks at the One Shot Podcast. Curse of Strahd: A new 5E D&D adventure set in Ravenloft. An excellent book for any GM. Lithium Hosting: RPPR’s new web host. Great customer service! Hyper Light Drifter: A new indie Zelda-ish action RPG. Faust approved! Black Tapes: A horror story podcast worth checking out. Discovering Scarfolk: A book about a sinister and hidden village in England. Tanis Podcast: A weird fiction podcast by the same people behind Black Tapes. Duolingo: Want to learn a new language? Try this free app out. Art of Eating Through the Zombie Apocalypse: Part cook book, part survival guide. Worth it for the Red Markets idea fodder. Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide: A rehash of Forgotten Realms material from previous editions. Enter the Gungeon: An action game that combines dungeon crawling with GUNS. So many guns. Idea Channel and Game/Show Channel on Youtube from PBS. Great videos on a bunch of cool topics. Song: Interlude (Lost in the Freezer Section) by ???groceries

Caleb and I talked to Greg Stolze about his latest project, the third edition of Unknown Armies, a post-modern horror role playing game. Urban legends, obsessions, occult conspiracies, and the invisible clergy are all part of a compelling modern game. It is also a profoundly humanist game, where humanity is the center of the universe, not cosmic and unfeeling alien gods beyond our comprehension. Greg talks about changes to the setting, new mechanics for Unknown Armies and game design in general. If you are interested in checking out the game, I recommend backing the Kickstarter so you can read the latest draft of the game now. Unfortunately, we did have some recording errors, so some of the questions will have an echo. I tried to fix it in post but there’s only so much you can do.

Fun is obviously a byproduct of games, but that’s where the usefulness of the term ends. This seminar presents the case against fun as a design goal, method of criticism, and aesthetic in gaming. Caleb Stokes (No Soul Left Behind/No Security) and Ross Payton (Base Raiders/ Zombies of the World) discuss the negative and positive uses of the word of fun in gaming, along with other critical frameworks by which the word can be understood (such as the 8 types of fun). This panel was recorded at Gen Con 2015 and I forgot to post it until now! Better late than never, I guess.

News: The Brutalists campaign is well under way! Check out our actual play podcasts of the Red Markets beta. There’s also a subreddit for Red Markets and Caleb did an AMA on it. Don’t forget to check out Hebanon Game’s blog for more up to date news about Red Market’s development. Synopsis: Creating a game usually involves more than one person. If it’s your game, you need to learn the esoteric art of project management in order to effectively coordinate the efforts between your team. Good project management can enhance the quality of a game while bad project management can doom it. We talk about contracts, budgets, art direction, and many of the many other challenges a project manager faces in an RPG project. Caleb also mentions working with talented freelancers like Laura B. and Rollplay Studios. Song: Eastern Wind by Azgard  

We’re back online! This short update explains what happened to RPPR in the last few weeks and what will be changing soon. It seems our new web hosting service, Lithium Hosting, is a lot better than Bluehost, so our sites should be faster. Please let me know if you find any broken links though.

News: A new companion website for our Patreon, RPPR After Hours, is now live. Find all the podcasts and other content without digging through the Patreon archives. Speaking of the Patreon, we have a new milestone: a new weekly podcast featuring campaign actual play. If we get to $1800 a month, RPPR Tabletop Tales will become a weekly free podcast for everyone! Synopsis: Caleb, Dan, and I discuss scenario design as we workshop a scenario idea I developed after running a few different games for both the RPPR group and the Patreon. We focus on player engagement – the idea that the players have as much agency as possible in the game. We want to avoid ‘cut scenes’ and railroading, among other problems. Plus, there are shout outs and anecdotes. Shout Outs Delta Green: Need to Know – a free quick start PDF rulebook. Layers of Fear: An architecturally-themed horror video game. Beautiful and scary. Lisa: An indie video game RPG inspired by Earthbound. Populuxe: A history of the unique 1950s style we associate with the Fallout video game series. Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits: A sci-fi novel from the writer of John Dies at the End. Knee Deep: an adventure game about a murder mystery in Florida. Looks quite cool! Gurgamoth: A couch co-op game about various deities trying to kill each other. Song: Imperial Thought by aliceffekt