Role Playing Public Radio

Game designers Luke Crane, Jack Graham, Tracy Hurley, Caleb Stokes, & Amanda Valentine solve your home campaign woes. Bring your questions; the Campaign Doctors will tell you the awful truth! This panel was recorded at Gen Con 2014.

News: The No Soul Left Behind and Horrors of War Kickstarters are both successful! Thanks to everyone who contributed. Synopsis: Gen Con 2014 has come and gone and we had a blast. More of the RPPR crew made it up there than previous years, and our meetup was a resounding success. We even had a war banner! So this episode is a full breakdown of what we did, what games we tried out, and what loot we secured. Thanks to everyone we met up there and we look forward to next year. Shout Outs: GroupMe: Very handy social media app for the geek on the go. Dead of Winter: Very cool zombie survival horror co-op board game. Shinobi Clans: New card game out from Posthuman Studios. Mythos Expeditions: a new collection of Trail of Cthulhu adventures centered around exploration in distant lands. The Void: Cthulhu meets space opera, in RPG format. Wield: A new fantasy RPG about sentient magic items and the humans they manipulate. Atlantis The Second Age: A swords and sorcery RPG from the creator of Hellas. Atomic Robo RPG: Not actually radioactive or made of robot parts. Emerald City: New Mutants and Masterminds setting book. Dinosaurs in Space: It’s written by Greg Stolze. Just get it already. Dr. Who RPG: It’s that story about the doctor who can’t remember his name so he’s homeless and lives in a telephone box. The Play’s the Thing: Yo dawg, I heard you like storytelling, so I put a RPG in your Shakespeare. The Legend of Drizzt: Ice-T is a masterful narrator. If only he had better material. Dresden Files Shield Bracelet: So pretty and +5 vs. uh, demons or something? Mad Quao: a great card game for large groups. Song: Hypersloth by Cuddly Psycho.

Panel description: Come join Paizo staffers to discuss how Pathfinder and Golarion can be more inclusive and fun for people of all shapes, genders, sexual preferences, ages, ethnicities, and more. Gamers are often characterized as straight white males, but we know our community is much broader than that! Come join Paizo staffers James L. Sutter, Judy Bauer, Wes Schneider, and more to discuss how Pathfinder and Golarion can be more inclusive and fun for people of all shapes, genders, sexual preferences, ages, ethnicities, and more–both in the books, and around your gaming table. Everyone is welcome! Thanks to David for recording the panel.

News:Gencon approaches! Check the RPPR thread for more info. Also, support Caleb with the No Soul Left Behind Kickstarter! It has what gamers crave! And speaking of Kickstarters, The Horrors of War Kickstarter is pretty awesome too! Synopsis: Training, learning, and education are important topics in games but we seldom examine the assumptions made in games. The gaming trope of leveling up (I learned a new language after I killed enough orcs!) is a poor model to represent learning but what should good experience/leveling up rules look like? Aside from educational rules in games, we also discuss academic themes for adventure ideas and using a game to teach it to other people.No letter from Tom, but we do have shout outs and an anecdote. Shout Outs: Rhesus Chart: The fifth book in the Laundry series. Vampire bankers meet an occult bureaucracy. Deadly Games: How To Play – A murder novel set at Gencon and features real game designers as characters. Girl with All The Gifts: a sci-fi novel about a girl in an unusual education system. Designers and Dragons: A book series about the history on RPGs. Now on Kickstarter! Banshee Chapter: a horror movie on Netflix loosely based on a HP Lovecraft story. Morph Recognition Guide: You want to know what the morpsh in Eclipse Phase look like? Here you go. Misquoting Jesus: A good primer on biblical textual criticism. Broforce Demo: The Expendabros are here to shoot dudes. Also, free! Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons: An interesting video game and worth playing through. Last Week Tonight: John Oliver’s new show on HBO. Very funny and insightful stuff. Music: Selected pieces from Computer Death by Infinite Frequencies. Check out more Vaporwave if you want to hear elevator music from Carcosa.

News: The No Soul Left Behind Kickstarter is HERE. Buy Caleb’s book! The Morph Recognition Guide is out, featuring some of my material from Transhuman. We’re coming to Gencon and we’ll our RPPR meetup on Thursday night. Details here. Raillery is still putting out silly Payday 2 videos (mostly). Synopsis: Tom was on vacation, so Caleb and I got together to record an episode. This time, we talk about the complexity of rules in RPGs, specifically at the point where they are too cumbersome to improve the quality of the game. Do we really need vehicle collision rules or grenade scatter tables? Of course, Phoenix Command, Synnibarr, and other…interesting games are discussed as well. We also have shout outs and an anecdote! Shout Outs Sword and Mythos: An excellent sword and sorcery and Cthulhu Mythos anthology Mice and Mystics:A co-op adventure board game about mice trying to save the king from a mystic evil. Pervert’s Guide to Ideology: Zizek discusses Marxism and critiques pop culture from a leftist perspective. On Netflix! Then go to the gym. Year Walk: A creepy and fascinating iOS and PC adventure game based on Scandinavian folklore. Delta Green: Tales from Failed Anatomies: An anthology of stories written by Dennis Detwiller set in the Delta Green setting. Highly recommended! Many Wars Ago: World War 1 was fucked. In Italy, it was more fucked than in other countries. Watch this movie to see why and then be depressed. The Rover: The apocalypse is bad, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to steal Guy Pierce’s car. Music: Future Club by Perturbator

Thanks to Laura for the art! Caleb’s Better Angels campaign, No Soul Left Behind (formerly known as The Spared and the Spoiled) is complete. We decided to take a look back, discussing the origins of the campaign, our favorite moments, and the dubious morality of the protagonists. The Kickstarter for the campaign should be up soon and we’ll let you know when it is! Promo: Mythcreants Song: Better Angels by Lesley Gore.

Caleb and I recently attended Fear the Con 7,(Thanks Fear the Boot!) running events, and promoting our work. It was a great con and we both had a blast there, but gaming conventions can be tricky for new game designers. For this episode, Caleb and I talk about our experiences at gaming cons and an aspiring professional should approach con work. Plus, we have an anecdote or two about the games we played and ran at FTC!

Synopsis: Our 100th episode was so long I had to break it up into two parts! In this half, I first talk to Adam Scott Glancy of Pagan Publishing for a sneak preview of the upcoming Gencon WW1 Call of Cthulhu games, among other topics. Then it’s back to the roundtable to answer more listener questions. Enjoy and thanks again for listening!

News: A new hero has been released for Base Raiders. Check out Elizabeth Solomon, a scholarly vampire! Synopsis: For some reason, we’ve kept up making podcast episodes since 2007. It’s taken us that long to get to 100 episodes of the main podcast, but here we are. Of course, we had to do something special, so we’re doing a roundtable discussion of our history and answering listener questions. We also have Shane Ivey from Arc Dream Publishing and Greg Stolze on as guests. Because of all our guests, this is a longer than usual episode. In fact, this episode went so long, I broke it up into two parts. I’ll release part two next week. Thanks for listening to us. RPPR has been a blast so far and I hope to continue it until the inevitable Cthulhu/zombie/meteor-based apocalypse

News: Caleb’s Eclipse Phase scenario, the Devotees, is now out. Check it out! Synopsis: Writing a new game is hard enough, but it’s only the beginning. Playtesting the game to see if it works is the second part. Seeing a group of players tear your precious game apart may be painful, but it is a necessary part of creating a better game. Caleb and I discuss our thoughts on Caleb’s recent playtesting of Red Markets.