Role Playing Public Radio

News: Transhuman, a sourcebook for players in Eclipse Phase is out! Caleb and I both wrote for it, so check it out. In other news, Base Raiders is rapidly nearing completion and in playtesting. More importantly, Gencon draws near! Tom, Aaron, Caleb and I will be there. The RPPR Meetup will be 6 pm on Friday the 16th at the Hyatt Lobby. See you there. Synopsis: Describing things is the primary job of the gamemaster, but many times, something gets lost. Players misunderstand what is being said or the gamemaster forgets an important detail. What do you do when players make a mistake? Whose fault is it? Tom, special guest Bill, and I talk about our approaches as gamemasters when it comes to describing scenes and dealing with player interpretations. Plus, Tom has a letter, shout outs and anecdotes! Shout Outs Slasher Flick: An indie horror RPG that emulates slasher films. Very fun and easy to learn. Listen to our Actual Play. To Be Or Not To Be: A Choose Your Own Adventure based on Hamlet. Written by Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics fame. Transhuman: If you play Eclipse Phase you should get this and I am not just saying this because I wrote it. It has all kinds of great stuff in it. For reals. Shadowrun Returns: The new computer game based on everyone’s favorite magic cyberpunk game, chummer. Welcome to Night Vale: You can stop emailing us about it. We know and we like it. Shadow Bound: An upcoming silent horror web series with Lovecraftian themes. Much Ado About Nothing: Wheddon directed a Shakespearean Comedy. Deal with it. Bundle of Holding: Like Humble Bundle but with tabletop RPG PDFs. Master of Magic: Turn based fantasy 4x game. Available on GoG.com. The Dionaea House: Creepypasta series about a haunted house. Music: Eliezer’s Waltz by Disparition Promo: The UnderDiscussion Podcast

News: Base Raiders is in layout! Hooray! Raillery is on hiatus until Base Raiders is complete. Boo! Synopsis: Tom and I once again dive into the “Pile of Broken Dreams“to look at two old modules, Zombietown USA for GURPS and All Fall Down for Cyberpunk. Adventure design was quite different back then. For example, a brutal dungeon crawl was apparently required for every scenario, regardless of genre. Railroading was very popular as well. Regardless, there are useful elements from each scenario. Also, Tom does not care for the needless inclusion of Autoduel stats for a horror scenario. Oh and Tom has a letter too. Plus, shout outs and anecdotes! Shout Outs Channel A: A truly fun game for anime fans AND haters. Listen to our special Actual Play! Fate Core: The new edition of the Fate RPG system and it comes in a handsome book. Boss Monster: A new 8-bit video game inspired card game. Kill the heroes before the other monsters do. Nazi Occult: A fictional recounting of the Nazi’s experiments with the occult. Werewolves and djinn, oh my! The Curse: A modern retelling of the Colour out of Space. VHS 2: The third segment is creepy as hell. I enjoyed the second segment. The first and fourth ones…eehhhhhhhh. Song: Zombietown by the Midnight Peacocks

News: Just to clarify something about RPPR B-Sides: each volume will be released for free after a 1 year delay. Volume 1 will be released to the public on August 14, 2014. If you want to listen to the 20 AP episodes contained in Volume 1, then you can donate $20 to RPPR. Simple as that! I also want to give a shout out to comic artist David Faught for his contributions to Base Raiders, which is now in layout. Also, Hebanon Games is now blogging about game design and RPGs on a regular basis. Synopsis: The Heroes of New Arcadia campaign is now concluded. In 29 episodes, a ragtag group of self-made superheroes saved the world and ultimately determined its fate. Find out how the concept came to be and what the players thought about it – highlights of the games, surprises, and more. No shout outs or anecdotes this episode because our discussion went long. Song: We Heroes by Within the Giants

News: Actual Play fans can rejoice! RPPR B-Sides provides early access to archived and unaired AP episodes that will NEVER make the AP podcast. Check out RPPR B-Sides to learn more. In other news, we’ve redesigned Role Playing Public Radio and will eventually get to RPPR Actual Play. The design is not 100% final, so there may be tweaks here and there. Also, Base Raiders is still in production. Finally, the Know Evil Fan Creation Contest ended, so check out this post on the RPPR forums to see who won! We would like to thank everyone who entered but we only had 5 posters to give away. Synopsis: Mixing genres in games (like fantasy and horror) can be fun but it can also turn your game into a mess. Tom and I discuss how we approach genre mashups and what kind of pitfalls we have learned to avoid. Tom provides examples of his own campaigns and I pontificate like the published author (and horrible monster) that I am. You know, the usual stuff we do for episodes. Instead of a letter, I give an extended review of Grimoires, an excellent history of books of magic and how real life books of magic can be great game fodder for many kinds of role playing games. As an example, check out the Sixth and Seventh Book of Moses. It’s a public domain grimoire so feel free to use parts of it as a handout for your next horror game or whatever. Finally we have shout outs and an anecdote, as always! Shout Outs: Grimoires: As stated above, it’s a great book. Cities XL: a computer game about building a city that actually works. Crazy, right? Attack on Titan: Horrific manga and anime series about man eating giants and crazy steampunk soldiers who fight them. Tomorrow’s Harvest: Like creepy ambient music? Boards of Canada has got your back with their new album. Check out the music video for Reach for the Dead. Let’s Play Deadly Premonition: A cult classic 360 video game covered by an excellent LP of a 100% run. Song: Creepy Doll by Jonathan Coulton

News: If you’re a fan of Eclipse Phase, check out the Kickstarter for the next Eclipse Phase book, Transhuman. Don’t forget about the Know Evil Fan Creation Contest. The deadline for entries is May 10. Synopsis: After the conclusion of Caleb’s epic Know Evil campaign, Tom and I wanted to hash out how the campaign came to be, what changed during play, and what lessons were learned from it. It’s not often a role playing campaign ends with such a satisfying conclusion, so we wanted to make sure you would have a ‘director’s commentary’ for Know Evil. We also have shout outs and anecdotes. Shout Outs Spaceteam: hilariously fun iOS game – command a spaceship with randomly generated controls and yell at your friends! A winning combination. Elder Sign: New Cthulhu Mythos based dice and iOS game – like Arkham Horror but with more randomness and quicker pace. Gloom – Edward Gorey meets card game strategy – the most miserable and dead family wins. Rot and Ruin: YA horror novel series. It turns out life after the zombie apocalypse is not all that fun. Prophet: Crazy ass science fiction comic. MEATPUNK. Glory: Even Rob Liefeld original characters can be redeemed. The Apple: A 1980 sci-fi musical biblical allegory. Hooray for Rifftrax! Music: Eclipse by Perturbator

News: Check out Caleb and I shooting up (space) zombies in Dead Space 3! Be sure to subscribe to Raillery’s Youtube channel for all the latest from us. Base Raiders is progressing nicely but it was slowed down a bit so I could contribute to Eclipse Phase’s newest book – Transhuman. There’s an open playtest for some of the material right now – read it and give them your feedback. And of course, the Know Evil Fan Creation Contest is still ongoing! Synopsis: Tom, special guest Caleb, and I each came up with 3 ideas for standalone RPGs and pitch them to each other. From mythos warlords and gods the weird west and beyond, we talk about games about making movies, fighting magic with technology, and life inside video games. If you like the ideas or hate them, let us know in the comments! Shout Outs Idle Red Hands Podcast: podcast about gaming and Japan by expat gamers in Japan. Haste Podcast: Silver Ennie award winning gaming podcast. Graphic Canon Volume 1: The classics of world literature told in comix format. The Night Lands, A Story Retold: the weird fiction classic rewritten so mortals may understand what the hell is going on in it. The Corridor: What happens when humans brush up against the unknown? Bad things. Itras By: Surreal tabletop RPG inspired by Dali and the other surrealists. Fascinating setting too! Breaker, Breaker: 1970s trucker Chuck Norris doesn’t have time for your shit. Watch the goddamn truck-o-pocalypse already. Lizards of Skyrim mod: Yo dawg I heard you like Argonians Tomb of Horrors D&D comic: Death Traps have never been so hilarious Steve Rogers’ American Captain: Captain America totes has the feels you guys. Srsly though, this is pretty good. Nick Fury MAX – My Wars Gone By: Garth Ennis wrote this shit. Read it already. Song: Behemoth by Godspeed You Black Emperor!

Obsidian Portal, the campaign tracking website, has launched a Kickstarter to pay for site upgrades. I talked to the programmer behind Obsidian Portal, Micah Wedemeyer, who is also co-host of the Haste podcast. In this interview, we talk about Obsidian Portal, Kickstarter, and crowdfunding in the RPG industry. Be sure to take a look at Greg Stolze’s Kickstarter: Mask of the Other!  

News: The Know Evil Fan Creation contest is well underway and the deadline for entries has been extended. Tom has started a Pathfinder campaign, which will be recorded. I have a short story in The Unspeakable Oath 22 – read “Message in a Bottle.” Also, I want to thank every RPPR donor who helps keep this site up and going! Synopsis: Murphy’s Rules were a long standing comic in Pyramid magazine that pointed out the quirks of various RPG systems. Recently, I found a hilarious thread on the SA forums carrying on that tradition by explaining how jumping really high in D&D 3.5E can make you really popular or how a priest wouldn’t be able to recognize his own god in the flesh. This episode deals with this disconnection between reality, game rules, and genre conventions and how to deal with them in games. Is this even a problem? What do you do when a player finds a way to break the game or its genre? After the main discussion, Tom has a letter for us and shout outs and anecdotes. Shout outs The Quiet Year: Post apocalyptic map making and story telling game. Great stuff! Crackerjack: a Die Hard ripoff that is the most 1990s of movies. Cam Scanner: Scan documents with your smartphone! Great for keeping track of character sheets. Cool as Ice Rifftrax: Oh yeah. We went there. Deal with it. Nexus 7 Tablet: It’s neat! Please don’t start a iOS/Droid flame war. Reel Physics: Web series about physics in movies. Knights of Pen and Paper: Fun RPG for iOS and droid with pixel art and a tabletop RPG theme. Army of Darkness Defense: Free game for iOS/droid based on the movie. Zombie Run! Jogging app that uses zombies to motivate you to keep moving. How Did This Get Made? Funny podcast about bad movies. Entertaining guest stars like Patton Oswalt and Kevin Smith pop in on occasion. Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land – WW1 turn based strategy game – fight the Mythos during the Great War Song: I am the night by Perturbator

News: Fallout Without End, a new scenario of the No Security ransom pack from Hebanon Games is now available! We’re still cranking out videos at Raillery. The map is part of the Zombie Factory, a chapter in the upcoming Base Raiders RPG. Synopsis: Travel and exploration is adventurous in real life but not in role playing games. Someone like Marco Polo is a major figure in history, yet in Dungeons and Dragons, his accomplishments would be minor compared to the average 10th level fighter. Tom and I try to tackle why exploration in games fails to capture the sense of adventure it does in reality and how it can be made to do so. We even tackle random encounter tables, sense of place, and other tangentially connected topics. Instead of a letter, Tom discusses his trip to Seattle and of course shout outs and an anecdote or two. Shout outs Ship Breaker: Good YA dystopian sci-fi novel about a kid living as a salvager of old oil tankers – bleak but well written. Great setting too. Nemesis: A totally insane cyberpunk action film with more gunfire than the Matrix. For reals. Also, check out this gif. Great White Space: An interesting if flawed Lovecraftian horror novel about a doomed expedition. Apocalypse World: An indie post-apocalyptic RPG that’s all the rage with the Seattle scene apparently. The Upper Berth: A ghost story with the best framing device ever. More cigars and champagne! The Devil’s Rock: A New Zealand made WW2 horror film. I did Nazi that coming. Okay I’ll go now. Speed Tribes: A book about the different subcultures of the younger generations in Tokyo. A bit dated, but still a great read. McBain: A Rifftrax where Christopher Walken sleepwalks through an action film that makes literally no sense. Highly entertaining! Aaron recommends it. Todd and The Book of Pure Evil: A 2 season comedy horror TV show on Netflix about high school, cults, and heavy metal. What’s not to love? Music: Ghost Maps by The Minor Leagues.

News: I’ve redesigned Raillery as a Video Game Actual Play podcast/Youtube channel. Check out our new videos! In Base Raiders news, the Pariah ebook has been released to Kickstarter backers. It will be made available on Amazon and Smashwords in the near future for people that missed the Kickstarter. RPPR is pleased to announce a Know Evil Fan Creation Contest! Between now and the end of the Know Evil Eclipse Phase campaign on RPPR Actual Play, any fan that submits a bit of fan art or fan fiction will be entered into a contest to win a Know Evil poster, signed by Caleb, Ross and other RPPR regulars!  Read this thread on the RPPR forums for more details. Synopsis: Player character back stories and motivations are a tricky subject in RPGs. Meta gaming motivations or creating inappropriate or useless back stories an hinder a game.  Tom is out of town, so Caleb, Aaron, and I discuss our thoughts on player motivations vs PC motivations and back stories in general. We also have shout outs and Caleb shares a special anecdote about the ‘Fun Factory’. Shout outs The Phantom of Wilson Creek: A RPPR listener, Max Writer on our forums, published this monograph through Chaosium. Congratulations! Synnibarr Kickstarter: Yes, I backed it. I am a horrible monster. Danger Club: Watch out olds, the sidekicks are kicking ass and taking names. A good comic. FATE Core Kickstarter: FATE is a neat RPG system and the Kickstarter for it offers crazy good rewards. Check it out! Hellboy in Hell: Pretty much what you would expect. Saga: An epic fantasy comic about a young couple, their baby, and some crazy fantasy bullshit. Read it. It’s great! Neocolonialism: Kickstarter for a new video game about global economics. The tagline says it all – Ruin Everything. Title Builder: From the Doug Benson podcast. Wrath of the Lamb: DLC for the Binding of Isaac. AMV Hell 6: Animu is funny with silly music. Rifftrax shorts: Find out what is more dangerous than dynamite. Music: Looking at Black Clouds by Serphonic