So instead, I’m putting for 2012 Goals. These aren’t things I plan on doing better, these are things I plan on doing in 2012. I came up with 15, in no particular order, with varying time frames on them.

So, let’s see what we’re doing in 2012.

1.) Do not miss a week of releasing The Podge Cast.
2.) Get my masters.
3.) Redefine my job.
4.) Put out at least 12 blog posts (one a month).
5.) Drop to 200 lbs.
6.) Pay off all non-long-term debt.
7.) Get my novel to 50,000 words.
8.) Design, write, and playtest a game.
9.) Publish Spooky Outhouse Productions’ next product.
10.) Earn 4 new certifications.
11.) Finish the Iron Tyrants minis.
12.) Learn to play my guitar.
13.) Ride another marathon.
14.) Go to the Poconos.
15.) Plan and execute the Gencon Social.

Let’s get this going.

*Pardon the reduced sound quality. We all had to Skype in this episode.

*Welcome back Kevin from The Walking Eye. He’s here to occupy trad street

*Mythender’s charity drive

*Ghost Pirates Kickstarter

*Buy Iron Tyrants

*The Atlantasia article that started it all

*Atlantasia homepage

*Gaming community reactions

*Gaming community obligations

*Fantasy Heartbreakers

*Palladium Conversions and Adam Pinilla, Attorney at Law

*Dirty Thirties

*Discussions about this topic: Rob Donoghue, Judd Karlman, Cam Banks

Overview

1. Discussing using games, and specifically software-assisted games, as a core framework for doing work.
2. Discussion using what serious researchers have learned about games at work to understand how to make and keep our game time fun.

The McGonigal Thesis We Will Discuss (Tim’s Paraphrase)

Massively Multiplayer Online Computer games have refined an extremely successful set of tools and techniques for making people enjoy doing work.  Thus, it should be possible to use not only those same tools and techniques in the office, but to directly leverage the skills and expectations people have learned during thousands of hours of online gameplay.

An endemic MMO-like computer system that facilitates generating tasks, enabling teamwork, tracking results and allocating rewards on a task-by-task basis is the “magic bullet” to making this possible.

There is burgeoning belief that this should work for education as well (Khan Academy).

Pre-Discussion Questions (limited discussion, just quick starting thoughts from each panelist)

1. Do you believe the thesis above? If not, what parts don’t you agree with?
2. What about computer games do you think has convinced people that this might be true?
3. How would you feel if your workplace ran on a MMO-type platform for assigning tasks and rewarding them?
4. How would you feel if your education had consisted of watching short lecture/explanatory videos at home as homework (assuming tech existed to do so), with time in class focused on actually doing the work with the teacher there to help?

TIM’S SUB-THESIS

There is a crackling nexus between the MMO stuff, the business/sports disciplines of performance management, psychological theories of operant conditioning, and long-understood principles around how motivation is the most important, and hardest thing for businesses and schools to sustain in their employees and students.

What’s new here is the continuous, regular application of long-understood (but hard to apply) positive reinforcement, made possible by computer-managed tasks and rewards, and a massive, instantaneous reporting and feedback infrastructure to continuously adjust those tasks and rewards.

And all of this applies to the game table and game design as much as it does to the workplace.

Getting the Concept of Operant Conditioning

• See the work of BF Skinner for extreme detail. This is an armchair discussion of the topic, I’m sure our listeners with Psychology undergrad degrees could explain it better.
• Positive Reinforcement (PR, or R+)
• Clicker training for dogs.  You watch for/encourage a behavior, when you see it you click, and then reinforce that behavior with a treat & praise.  You also attach an antecedent to it (like a command word). Repeat a lot. Reinforce very consistently when training new behavior, and as consistently as you can thereafter.
• Only the highest-level trained dogs (police, military, search & rescue) can go for long periods without reinforcement, because they are very slowly trained to handle more intermittent reinforcement.
• The point of the click is to make the timing of the behavior that warranted positive reinforcement extremely clear.  You are reinforcing sitting when I say sit, not reinforcing licking my hand when I come to give you a treat.
• This precision of communication will become very important later when we talk about games.
• Tabletop RPGs – they are full of them – defeating monsters, getting treasure, gaining levels, gaining powers, getting status, getting a reputation, etc.
• Computer RPGs – JAM PACKED WITH PR
• Gold, guild status, badges, achievements, people interaction at any time of day or night, houses, equipment, pets/mounts/dress-up clothes, special quests
• Things that are less full of PR:
• Education – getting good grades, teacher attaboys, parent pride
• Workplace – raises, promotions, awards
• Negative Reinforcement (NR or R-) – something bad is happening, the avoidance of that is what gets reinforced
• Encouraging behavior you want by encouraging avoiding negative situations.
• Classic example is rat is dropped in a slightly electrified floor…pressing lever stops the shock for 10 seconds.  Rat will be pressing lever all the time very quickly.
• For games – this happens quickly, too. People get trained to ‘act out’ when an unpleasant situation arises, to try and avoid it.  For some people, this may be when a combat starts, or when certain people get the spotlight, or when a certain aspect of the rules (say “Fight”) come up.
• For education – students quickly learn to avoid classes with group projects. – The suckiness of group projects trains students to look for classes without them.
• Contrast to games, where people actively seek to be in groups, and the game is a lot more fun when you have a group
• Ponder fun of tabletop groups vs. online game groups
• Continuous, instantaneous reward and entry/exit of groups online
• Notoriously Picky Teachers negatively reinforce cheating in order to avoid capricious GPA hits
• For work – if you finishing your work early means you get to ‘help’ your coworkers finish their work, you will be reinforcing not finishing early.
• This concept is hard to understand…but it’s often undesirable anyway, compared to PR.
• Lots more concepts like Punishments & Penalties to learn, but we can cover those as we go. Basically, while Reinforcements strengthen a behavior, Punishments & Penalties weaken a behavior.

TRANSLATING MMO REWARDS

So with the ideas of positive and negative reinforcement in mind, what do MMOs do to reinforce “good” behavior that we could learn from for tabletop games, or the workplace?

• Positively Reinforcing Individual Tasks and Behaviors, as opposed to long-term reviews
• Lots of GMs do the post-game analysis, BW makes it part of the game, explicitly after, but implicitly all the way along (beliefs & instincts)
• Characters being awesome is rewarding, but if characters never get a chance to be awesome, that reward goes away
• What about non-character reinforcements?
• Robin Laws player types – make sure you know what a PR is for your players
• General social reinforcement of good behavior
• D&D does this intrinsically with combat, but relies on the players to reward it outside of combat (this is a more concrete definition of the “doesn’t stop you, doesn’t help you either)
• Continuous Feedback & Tuning
• Need to quickly understand when something isn’t working, and tune it
• Hard to do with adventures that aren’t played 100k times a day
• Look for *types* of activities to tune
• This is where the real skill lies…seems like a ripe area for exploration, in games and out

The Big Gap

Task generation and reward valuation.  How do you continuously generate new tasks and reward them appropriately when there are so many variables outside of the “game’s” control?
I believe that this is especially hard in R&D and creative professions/activities.

The Downside

Reading the “How to Land Your Kids in Therapy”, and “Why I’ll Never Pursue Cheating Again” articles makes it clear that kids raised with and endless stream of PR get withdrawal from it quickly, and that withdrawal leads to “Extinction Bursts” where they try to get it any way they can.

Since many companies are run by people from earlier generations who may or may not have kids, they don’t understand the need for consistent PR.

And the drive for perfection unquestionably pushes people into ethically grey territory.

So much like the top-end search & rescue/police dogs…one way or another we need to teach people to handle inconsistent, intermittent reinforcement…which may best be done by the very games we are talking about.

Post-Discussion Questions (limited discussion, just quick starting thoughts from each panelist)

1. Do you believe the thesis above? If not, what parts don’t you agree with?
2. What about computer games do you think has convinced people that this might be true?
3. How would you feel if your workplace ran on a MMO-type platform for assigning tasks and rewarding them?
4. How would you feel if your education had consisted of watching short lecture/explanatory videos at home as homework (assuming tech existed to do so), with time in class focused on actually doing the work with the teacher there to help?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

McGonigal, Jane (2011): Reality is Broken. Penguin.

Reeves, Byron (2009): Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete. Harvard Business School Press.

Daniels, Aubrey & Daniels, James (2004): Performance Management: Changing Behavior that Drives Organizational Effectiveness. Performance Management Publications.

Wired Magazine: How Khan Academy is Changing the Rules of Education:http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_khan/all/1

Imperiotis, Panos: Why I Will Never Pursue Cheating Again: http://behind-the-enemy-lines.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-i-will-never-pursue-cheating-again.html

Sutton, Robert I (2007): The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t. Business Plus.

Gottlieb, Lori: How to Land Your Kids in Therapy:  http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/8555/

* This episode is explicit

* I don’t have good show notes, but if you want to send me fan shownotes, I’ll use them

- Thanks Justin!

* Paul’s list
* Unexplained chain definition joke and “Eric’ing”
* Eric apologizes
* Sagefight… is it cool?
* The Daniel Solis Experience
* Gencon comparisons and hanging out with designers
* Gencon Logistics
* Kurt Ramrod is the new Bill Brasky
* Adam suppresses the humble farmer in the form of Agricola
* Ascension
* Lady Blackbird, Sky Squid, and Con games
* Returning to your adolescence of interest in D&D
* Eric loses True Dungeon for everyone
* The One Ring – You shall not play a wizard
* A Taste of Gold… Burning Wheel Gold
* Luke requests 10 years of Gencon weekends off
* Parting shots at Stargate

* Nature vs Will, inspired by the Dresden Files

* Science and Technology as the unknown

* We start talking about change in the world

* Paul has a real hard on for skill challenges

* Advice for running Dresden Files from Eric

* This episode talks about a lot of media (but there are few spoilers).

* Endings of stories, arcs and series

*The Roundtable

*Content

*The State of RPG Podcasting

*Fear the Boot

*Brilliant Gameologists

*Ideology of Madness

*Theory from the Closet

*The Walking Eye

*Apologies to Red Letter Media

-Adam is Captain Kirk

-Eric’s cold heart and other depths plumbed

-Luke is still a doctor (of wretched television)

-Luke’s tragic past

-We finally get to the topic: Emotions While Gaming

-Comedy & Horror

-Anticipation

-Eric’s still a creeper

*The Caped Crusader

*The Prostate Cancer Foundation

*Different Matt

*The Enterprise Challenge

*Farther Down the Anime Hole

*Newer and “intermediate” anime mentioned this episode: Bakemonogatari, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, Showa Story, Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, FLCL

*The Culture Gap

*East & West

*Game System: Burning Wheel

*Session 2: Mysterium Ways (I)

*Session 3: The Lost and the Damned, Part I

*SPOILERS for The Drawing of the Three

*Buy Iron Tyrants!

*Comprehensive Iron Tyrants review at Ideology of Madness

*Part 2 in our Dark Tower review series

*Summary and analysis of The Drawing of the Three

*Black House

*IT

*A Lesson Taught

*Sound quality is a bit wonky this episode due to Skype going crazy

*Buy Iron Tyrants!

*New comprehensive Iron Tyrants review over at Ideology of Madness.

*Welcome back special guest Robert Bohl!

*Whatever happened to “Oo Let’s Make a Game!”

*Joshua A.C. Newman and Shock: Social Science Fiction

*Check out Misspent Youth!

*Marketing your small press game

*That indie stigma

*Award shows

* Aron Head is doind Supers Sandobx Actual Play: here

* Virtual Sausagefest for breast cancer, link is here

* Back to the Future is a great f’n movie

* Matt tells the worst, most misleading story about a threesome at D*C

* 10 things we learned by playing Burning Empires (Topic starts around 18minutes in)

For the GM:
1. Get together and play a one-shot of the subsystems or lead in with simple, tutorial subsystem situations as an introduction; ease into it
2. Be aggressive as the GM; press the PCs without hesitation
3. BE is hardcore GM improv training; develop that skill
4. The GM needs to fill the world and give the players something to interact with
5. Make your players read the book

For the Player:
1. Write good beliefs (this is generic to any burning system, really)
2. Understand how color works.
3. Follow the1,2,3 rule
- in every 1 session, use your two important scenes (color, building) and include all 3 beliefs.
4. Look at the maneuver skill list in both character creation and maneuver selection each session – PLAN
5. Prepare to be disappointed with the disconnect between the meta game and the game at the table

*Joe returns!

*Joe update

*Publishing

*Indie Games

*Stargate Universe

*Archer (OH YEAH)

*Rob Justice, Harrowed

*Harrowed Outro

*Questionable Characterization

*Oh Yeah

*Adventure Burner Impressions

*Investment

*Open Secrets vs. Reveals

Topics Covered:
* Gencon
* True Dungeon
* The Gateway Game
* Houses of the Blooded

10 Things I Learned At Gencon – Luke Edition
1) James will take pics of you when you sleep and post them on the net – though I may have deserved that.
2) Stingray will lick all the community alcohol.

Things I Learned While You Guys Were At Gencon
1. You are alcoholics, probably. Seriously, goddammit, what’s with the drunk outline editing?
2. I thought more about our 4e game than I have thought about a game in which I’m a player, during downtime, since KTNG.
-I think we have a world that will persist for this group beyond this campaign.
-D&D is simple and I love it. Very little about BE is simple (looking at you, Firefight) and it’s just okay.
-Still not wild about playing at level 2, so I hope we story-level quickly.

3. Adam is gay for dudes. No judgment, just sayin’. HE KISSED TWO DUDES
4. The Walking Eye’s video of things seen at Gencon really made me appreciate it as a community more than just a convention. I think this is the kind of thing that will keep me from skipping in the future.
5. Robert Bohl likes Social Distortion. AND HATES LUKE
7. The St. Louis craft brewery scene is about to explode. So getting drunk alone, in the dark, without going to another state under the guise of rolling dice, is still in vogue.
Six Row opened in December and they’re going to bottling soon.
Urban Chestnut opens this fall.
Perennial Artisan Ales intends to begin building by year’s end.
The Civil Life Brewing Co. next year – spring opening.

* MS 150, if you’re interested, donate!

* Starcraft 2 talk

* Intrigue in games

* Villians

* Smallville RPG

* Harry Dresden is a dick, but that’s really what makes him a great character

* Chibi talks about his contributions to Iron Tyrants

* Eric hates Scott Dunphy, from Story Shtick

* Luke is bad McBreatherton

* MS 150 donations are still more than welcome, feel free to donate

* Voltron and Monsterpocolypse

* Avatar: The Last Airbender TV Show discussion, which is more of a wank than anything. We do media deconstruction.

* MS 150 donations are still more than welcome, feel free to donate

* Phil bailed on us because he’s a jerk

* Gencon Oz was cancelled

* Big thanks to Jonas who fueled the topics for this episode

* Gencon planning, as we wander off from the topic

* Piracy

* Fear the Boot, the ENnies

* Blizzard

* Advancement, flaws and character structure

* MS 150 donations are still more than welcome, feel free to donate

* Jonas and Neosect are awesome

* Thanking our mystery patron

* GMs NPC?

* Would the Podge Cast hosts ever write an RPG?

Guest Hosts:
* Clyde (Theory From the Closet)
* Jonathan “Stingray” ( Way of the Game)
* Sam (Neosect)

* E3

* Our new business venture

* Themes that do and don’t work in games

And, a ton of wargame links from Clyde:

Hey guys,

Figured I could remove a step if I included Luke. Luke we talked about
you, and War Games last night. I promised links to David / Adam (Gmail
has confused me about which one it is that you prefer. I swear I used
to know… like yesterday.) Anyway… links:

————————————–
Carry: A Game about War.

http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/product.php?productid=16181&cat=0&page=1

I forgot it isn’t intended for long term play. Seems this will not
help Luke. It’s also a really tight Indie ruleset, for some reason I
have the impression that this is something Luke might dislike.

————————————–
Black Cadillacs

http://achtung-spiel.com/black_cadillacs.html

This guy (Darcy Burgess) was at the Ashcan Front with me in 2008. This
is a much looser war game, that can be used to play war from stick and
stone days until now… maybe the future. I can’t remember if it dealt
with command structures. I think it’s still in Ashcan form… if it
looks interesting I could lend you mine, but it’s signed so I’d want
it back.

————————————–

I’m waiting to hear back from Ogre if his war game is in a playable
place. I had some interesting thoughts about how to create a game with
command structure as part of it’s center. Anyway… The rest of this
has nothing to do with Lukes need for War, just figured I’d point at
some of the other Indies we mentioned in case you wanted to link those
also.

Non-War Games
————————————–

Breaking the Ice

http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/product.php?productid=16173&cat=0&page=1

Shooting the Moon

http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/product.php?productid=16189&cat=0&page=1

Both of these are by Emily Care Boss.

* Prince of Persia

* More 360 talk

* Metagaming, Burning Empires and Mouse Guard

In the spirit of creativity under time-constraint such as many other media have flourished (NaNoWriMo, 24-Hour Comicbooks, 24-Hour Plays, Game Chef, and countless others), Dice, Food, Lodging is proud to present Adventure Week!

Participants have one week to write and produce a complete story arc for an RPG of their choice. Complete means that the adventure should be ready to hand off and be playable by another gaming group. Production values count, especially since part of the goal is is to make these available to others. One aspect of Adventure Week that differs from other such creative endeavors, is that this event encourages team-ups! Writers, Artists, Graphic Designers, anyone you can find to group with and make a more exciting product.

The time-period for this is slated for June 27th through July 3rd, this is less than three weeks away, so I hope you’ll help me get the forums buzzing and the creativity flying!

Please see the attached flyer and visit my website for more details.

Thanks for your interest!

* Legal Troubles

* Archer continues to be awesome

* The new Doctor is terrible – deal with it

* We talk Iron Tyrants. Luke’s baby is almost done.

* Random Racism

* Drawven Conquistadors

* Burning Wheel’s Emotional Attributes

* Character creation

* Some Burning Empire’s Talk

* In which we both do and do not talk about immersion

* James’ t-shirt survery can be found here

* Eric continues his mammoth Dresden Files RPG Review

* Gencon Oz event registration can be found here

* v3 is making a comeback on the last half of June! Details here

* GMs as authority figures

* A Gen Con controversy?

* Ideology of Madness Podge Cast article.

* A double standard in our culture

* We answer all of your burning questions – for realz

*This has more snark (all in the name of good fun) than all of our other episodes combined.

* The TED talk we talk about here.

* The obligatory Blood Bowl talk. Congrats to Brad for winning last season!

* Zones and abstraction in games

*The Ideology of Madness thread in question

* Social Mechanics

* Blood Bowl Season 2 kicks off!

* Podcast criticism discussion

* The blog Paul is talking about is here.

* RPG Podcast Listener Survey can be found here.

* Luke poops in soup

* A bunch of game design philosophy and criticism

* Why is your favorite game your favorite game?

* Rob and Mike from the Bear Swarm are here; and boy do they sound excited

* Good players, which gets derailed by what is a party

* Matt and Limp Bizkit

* Rob’s here, so we have to talk about Houses of the Blooded

* Group dynamics

* The Best They Might Be Giants Album

* Blood Bowl Season 2 is starting soon!

* Repo the Genetic Opera apparently sucks

* It’s been a full year since Watchmen came out

* Homebreweing? Why are we doing less of it

* Chatroulette redux

* Starcraft Night of Carnage? We should plan one.

* Quest for Glory has a place in our hearts

* Luke will be at Fear the Con 3 runnnig Iron Tyrants!

* Small Press publishing – a case study in Spooky Outhouse Production’s journey with Iron Tyrants.

* Black Pidgeon Press and Hacktastic

* Print options: Studio 2

David is joined by:
* Brant (TrapCast)
* Meg (Brilliant Gameologists)
* Tim (Return to Northmoor)

We do a live episode, joined by various peoples and shoot the bull for an hour.

Team Trek: Climb Long and Prosper will attempt to “Master the Met,” ascending Saint Louis’s tallest building, on March 6, 2010.

We will be attempting this competitive stair climb of 42 flights of stairs (that’s 1,018 stairs!) in full Starfleet uniforms, representing our fellow Sci Fi Geeks everywhere. Our team must raise $300 to participate before March 6th! The entire amount goes to a great cause – the American Lung Association.

If you make a donation in any amount (even just $5!): We will add your name, the name of your podcast, business, or organization to a giant poster we will be carrying with us right up until we cross the start line!

So give to a good cause, get your podcast’s or organization’s name out there, and help us Master The Met!!

Thanks for your support!!

Which you can do here.

* A Beginner’s Guide to Anime

Show Outline (what we worked from):
Episode 76: THAC0 – To Hit Anime Comprehension Zero

Pimp Way of the Game

Banter

What do you like/dislike about anime?
Misconceptions about anime
Sub vs. Dub

A nugget of genre discussion
Possibly? best to steer clear of shounen, shoujo, josei, seinen, etc.
-But still inform people that there is a LOT of anime out there of all different types
Possibly? better to stick with shit like sci-fi/mech, fantasy, comedy, dramedy, romance, blah blah blah

Good anime for the uninitiated
-> Trigun

Paul’s List of series
Fantasy: Full Metal Alchemist, Escaflowne, Last Exile, Mushishi (mystery), Kamichu! (slice of life)
Sci fi: Fantastic Children, Cowboy Bebop, GITS: Stand Alone Complex
Comedy: Azumanga Daioh? (I’ve shown this to newbies who have dug it, but I’m not sure if it’s a good general recommendation)
Drama/Romance: Haibane Renmei (fantasy), Honey & Clover (comedy), Nodame Cantabile (comedy), Beck (music, comedy, coming of age)
Other: Hidamari Sketch (cute girls going to art school), Windy Tales (slice of life), Michiko e Hatchin (blaxploitation), Samurai Champloo (historic/action)

Eric says, can’t forget Mecha if we’re talking about Anime 101. Probably best just to buck up and go with the original Mobile Suit Gundam, and then maybe Macross Plus.
Under no circumstances inflict Evangelion on a innocent mind.
Paul’s response: I’ve known more people to be driven away by mech, but it’s a distinct and popular area, so go for it.

Movies
Whisper of the Heart
Porco Rosso
My Neighbor Totoro
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Popular anime that is not recommended for anime newbies
FLCL
Serial Experiments: Lain
Long shit like Naruto and Bleach
Inuyasha seems to turn a lot of people off of anime

Tentacle Porn – Why do bad things happen to Japanese schoolgirls?
Because they deserve it, oh, god, they’re gonna get what’s coming to them, uuunnnnnggghhh

* Blood Bowl Leage

* Luke is old, the Miner’s Daughter and Curling a Grumpy with the Dusty Muffin

* Fable 2 and Chaoseater

* Double Meat Podcast

* Pillars of the Earth audiobook

* Matt Kills It: Pitching Established Settings

*Rat Tails and Trad Gaming

* Cliches we *like* in media

* Chris and David mention everything under the sun. Hopefully, they’ll get together some highlight links:

Boobs
Romantic Comedies
Battlestar Galactica
The Wire
Mad Men
Weeds
A-Team
Prophecies
The Lightning Thief
The Spiderwick Chronicles and Young-Adult Films
His Dark Materials Trilogy
Rufies
The Dresden Files
Harry Potter
Audiobooks, including the two former and the two latter.
Fables
Star Wars
Batman, The Animated Series
The Guyver
Metal Gear
Preposterous Plots
Deus Ex
Evangelion
Warren Ellis
Transmetropolitan
Grant Morrison
All-Star Superman
Clever Reinvisioning of Things
Sherlock Holmes
Back to Battlestar
Katie Sackhoff
BBC’s Merlin and Robin Hood
V (“Jaunty Adventure”?)
Pacing
Resistance Movements
Disaster Movies
White Man Guilt Movies
Avatar
Michelle Rodriguez
Jim Cameron Casts
Alien 4
Firefly
and The Connection Between Them,
Joss Whedon
Dollhouse
Redemption
Back to Battlestar AGAIN!
Gaeta
New Dr. Who
Protestant Dick-Waivery
The Doctor
Rose
Bad Choices
Babylon 5
Londo Milari
The Watchability of Season 1
Mitchell and Webb Look

*Dickle

*Contest Winner

*The Internet Age

*The d20 boom and bust

*Small publishers and indie explosion

*What’s next?

*Intro products and pricing

Follow this link and do what you can.  We know you fans of the Podge Cast are the best people out there.  Now’s your time to shine!

*Media that’s so bad it’s good

*Finding the sweet spot in gaming philosophies

*Names

Other stuff:

Serial Homicide Unit by Kat and Michael Miller
Dirty Secrets by Seth Ben Ezra
The Drifter’s Escape by Ben Lehman
Burning Wheel Revised and by Luke Crane and the Burning Wheel Headquarters

My stuff:

Misspent Youth, my first game
The Independent Insurgency, my first podcast
Oo! Let’s Make a Game!, my other podcast

* Geek trauma, which turns into: geek inspirations

* Paul doesn’t do a very good job of getting us on to settings

*GM vs. Players

*Player vs. Player

*Hodge: Chris Engler, World Vision 2009 Charity

More details:

I’m sending you this message in the hopes that you’ll partner with myself and World Vision again this year for my third annual Christmas fundraiser. This year I’m going to depart from the “cow” theme of the prior two years and ask for your help raising money for the rehabilitation and restoration of child soldiers and sexually exploited children. For $75 World Vision can provide many resources to children who have been virtually destroyed. I’d like us to help 20 such children. Based on the number of people I’m inviting to participate, if everyone I invite donates an average of $20 this goal will be met but donations of any size are welcome.

Below is a link to a four-minute video on YouTube that was put together by a friend of mine (Paul Bettings) who has travelled extensively and documented first-hand some of the worst circumstances children are in. The video tells the story of an 11 year-old girl named Elise who was once a sex-worker but is in the process of getting her life back thanks to World Vision’s efforts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SoxWq0e9yg

Here is a link to my World Vision Gift Catalogue page. Please forward this e-mail or any of the links contained to anyon that you think may be interested in participating:

Full Link
Shortened Link (suitable for Twitter)

Thank you in advance, and Merry Christmas!

* This episode is largely unedited

* We attempt to determine the best geek media of 2000 – 2009

*Hodge: Chris Engler, World Vision 2009 Charity

More details:

I’m sending you this message in the hopes that you’ll partner with myself and World Vision again this year for my third annual Christmas fundraiser. This year I’m going to depart from the “cow” theme of the prior two years and ask for your help raising money for the rehabilitation and restoration of child soldiers and sexually exploited children. For $75 World Vision can provide many resources to children who have been virtually destroyed. I’d like us to help 20 such children. Based on the number of people I’m inviting to participate, if everyone I invite donates an average of $20 this goal will be met but donations of any size are welcome.

Below is a link to a four-minute video on YouTube that was put together by a friend of mine (Paul Bettings) who has travelled extensively and documented first-hand some of the worst circumstances children are in. The video tells the story of an 11 year-old girl named Elise who was once a sex-worker but is in the process of getting her life back thanks to World Vision’s efforts.

Here is a link to my World Vision Gift Catalogue page. Please forward this e-mail or any of the links contained to anyon that you think may be interested in participating:

Full Link
Shortened Link (suitable for Twitter)

Thank you in advance, and Merry Christmas!

* Luke is a teenage girl and liked New Moon

* The “Name That Contest” contest. Just go ahead and e-mail your submissions to adam@podgecast.com

* Handling downtime in games

* Can elements of board/video games translate to the tabletop to handle downtime?

Hodge: Chris Engler, World Vision 2009 Charity

More details:

I’m sending you this message in the hopes that you’ll partner with myself and World Vision again this year for my third annual Christmas fundraiser. This year I’m going to depart from the “cow” theme of the prior two years and ask for your help raising money for the rehabilitation and restoration of child soldiers and sexually exploited children. For $75 World Vision can provide many resources to children who have been virtually destroyed. I’d like us to help 20 such children. Based on the number of people I’m inviting to participate, if everyone I invite donates an average of $20 this goal will be met but donations of any size are welcome.

Below is a link to a four-minute video on YouTube that was put together by a friend of mine (Paul Bettings) who has travelled extensively and documented first-hand some of the worst circumstances children are in. The video tells the story of an 11 year-old girl named Elise who was once a sex-worker but is in the process of getting her life back thanks to World Vision’s efforts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SoxWq0e9yg

Here is a link to my World Vision Gift Catalogue page. Please forward this e-mail or any of the links contained to anyon that you think may be interested in participating:

Full Link
Shortened Link (suitable for Twitter)

Thank you in advance, and Merry Christmas!

* Stuff Kevin mentions:

His Majesty’s Dragon

In A Wicked Age

Dirty Secrets

Zombie Cinema

Polaris

Drifter’s Escape

*Houses of the Blooded – Aria of Ill Fortune

*Session I: The Rose and the Thorn Part I

*Session II: Unquiet Repose

* Google Wave

* Master Plan

*Luke is a guest on this week’s Kicked in the Dicebags. If you don’t already know, it’s super-explicit. Also, super-awesome.

* Do us a favor, tell a friend or leave an iTunes review.

* The TrapCast‘s bad iTunes review contest was hilarious and awesome, we’re not doing that.

* Project Donut: http://projectdonut.com

* Kevin, The Walking Eye

* What is art?

Favorite Art from this Year:

- David – Glee
- Eric – Battletech
- Matt – The Brothers Bloom
- Paul -Sphongle’s New Album

Twisted Records (Shpongle samples on the front page player)

- Luke – Iron Tyrants

- Hodge: Fraser from Accidental Survivors is here to talk about Mondus Novit being released by Swords Edge Publshing

* Antagonism and Villains, something we know nothing about at the Podge

That Mitchell and Webb Look sketches referenced:

* Horrible Man

* Librarian

* Angel Summoner

* Clarinet Secrets

*Sir Digby Chicken Caeser

* Diaspora

* Designing and playing epic fantasy campaigns.

*Like, y’know, over 9000.

* Starblazer Adventures: http://www.cubicle-7.com/starblazer.htm

* Diaspora: http://www.vsca.ca/Diaspora/

Thanks, Xoph, for reminding me about the links.

* Luke recaps his experience at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado

* NaNoWriMo discussion – is this a good thing or a bad thing?

* Twilight, the gateway drug

* Luke hates That Guy.

* Guest Hodge – Aron Head, Matt Sturges Interview

* Bounty Head Bebop contest winners are announced!

* Luke gushes some more about The Dresden Files

* Paul’s metagaming quandry

* Paul’s a new host?

* Eddy Webb’s White Chapel Project

-Easiest Contest Ever! Win a plethora of Bounty Head Bebop prizes!

-A Farewell to Joe – Make sure to let him know how much you appreciate all he’s done on the message boards.

-Matt’s recording in an airport this week.  He has to scoot early on. No worries, folks. We know what happened to him, unlike last time.

-The Origins of Clockworks

-Worst Cosplays

-Shawn’s GMing Pro-Tips

-The Voltron Interlude

-Splitting the Party and Psuedo-troupe play

-Persistent worlds across multiple GMs and campaigns as exemplified by Clockworks

-Chainmail Bikini revisited

-Shawn’s other works: Doors and Windows, Children’s Choir, True Tales of South City

-Clockworks Savage Worlds Adventures  and Sourcebook

-Sandwich Taco

Hosts: Adam, Matt, Luke, Shawn

* DP Challenges Adam to Latin Subtext

* Company of Heroes, Win a copy!

* Dr. Horrible, Jeff’s Awesomeness, Lost, JJ Abrams, George R.R. Martin, Adam as Dark Tower Expert, Ideology of Madness, and Luke shakes his butt

* Fundamentals of the Game: Logistics

* Maintaining Your Game: Campaign Pro Tips

* The Campaign Pyramid

* Paint-by-Numbers Campaign Construction

* More, More, Less

* Campaign Fade

* Birth of the Third World