* Sam’s around from The Way of the Game

* MMO Talk! Surprise Surprise!

* We have a pretty active Star Wars guild – join us! Mask of Nihilis, Republic, Stay Awhile and Listen

* We talk about the Star Wars MMO forever

* Then we move into a discussion of anime

* Finally, we talk about video game epochs and the evolution of games

* DG’s Star Wars Impressions, Football and 4e commentary – this may become a regular segment on the show

* Paul and Eric are snobs

* Dresden-esque, Spoilers for Dresden

* The 5th Edition discussion. My threat stands.

* Intuition and Learning Curves

* A Thousand Year Game Design Winners Talk
- Take Back Toe
- Numeria
- Jungle Speed
- Pictomania
- Quirkl

* What’s Next for Daniel
- Race to Adventure
- Then we talk Kickstarter forever, here is the stat sheet we reference

* Kickstarter, White Wolf, and some other random topics

* Star Wars MMO! Settle in for a long discussion about everything going on in the Star Wars MMO!

* Our guest Ryan Macklin: editor, blogger, game designer, and sexbot

* The Walking Eye Pledge Drive: Details Here!

* Don’t Hack This Game Submissions are open – for like 2 more days

* Game Hacking: What are we talking about? Why?

* Macklin hacks me something on the spot, and I love it

* Macklin makes a choice, and I cry myself to sleep

* I make fun of Eric, because he said he’d be here for the discussion and didn’t show up

* The Macklin Dubstep

* We are a little unfocused with the holidays looming

* Join the Star Wars: The Old Republic guild, Stay Awhile and Listen, on Mask of Nihilis, Republic side!

* Lisa is awesome!

* Dark Knight, innocent/corrupt heroes/villains and story arcs

* We start talking about movies

* I lost my show notes about half way through this

* WE SPOIL THE HELL OUT OF WALKING DEAD. SERIOUSLY. DO NOT LISTEN FURTHER IF YOU’RE NOT CURRENT ON THE SHOW AND ARE NOT CURRENT ON THE COMIC.

SERIOUSLY. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED

* Felicia Day is incredibly overrated

* Stay Awhile and Listen, our new Star Wars: The Old Republic guild, come play with us!

* TOR talk spawns a long discussion about the state of MMOs

* Smallville problems and playstyle discussion

* Then we start talking about forums, social media and staying in touch with the community

*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

* The Channel 11 lineup

* Congrats to The Walking Eye on their Golden Geek win!

* Luke doesn’t know how a schedule works

* We reflect on the Smallville game now that we’ve played it

* Luke brings up adverbs and it’s funny

* Then we talk about social media and the news

* Geoff’s Law Firm, Brick House Law Group

* The Patry Blog Geoff mentions

* Breaks and Productivity : http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/239054/why_employees_should_surf_the_web_at_work.html

http://www.webreep.com/blog/post/2011/11/10/Facebooking-at-Work-leads-to-Greater-Productivity.aspx

http://workawesome.com/productivity/productivity-path-short-hours-more-breaks/

* Top 10 McRib Facts

* More Dr Gamer and talk about Harold and Kumar

* Playing Iron Tyrants on a larger scale

* TF2 and games with open spending models

* Skyrim, Fallout and New Vegas

* We inadvertantly gave good Dynasty examples, and then started talking about horrible dynasty games

* Neil Gaiman’s ACX

* Thanks to Clyde, Jenn and Tim for their help teaching me how to interview – skills I do not put into practice this episode

* Review of the new Last Exile

* Breaking Bad, and how amazing it is

* Theme, in television and media in general

* We spoil the end of Angel and The Mist

* We discuss Rob Donaghue’s What We Want article

• “Idea.”  Why do you want to talk to someone.
• Questions – You have interesting questions. “How does the brain change during meditation.” “What is illusionism when referring to gamemastering?” “Who was involved in the very earliest part of the formation of OWS?”
• Who can answer your questions?
• Personality- This person is interesting. http://www.jennisodes.com/podcasts/memento-mori/
• Fame – This person is famous.
• Request – They’ve asked to be on the show.
• Witness – This person has a first hand account.
• Sales – they have something to sell like a book.
• More amendable to making appearances to get the word out.
• How to contact them – some people have publicists
• Writing an email, twitter, real life conversation – BE POLITE!
• I could use help here. I can’t break into anything outside of hobby gaming.
• Scheduling-
• All the above should help create one answer to this. Schedule when you can.
• Preference – You may have a preference due to personal convenience.
• Skype -
• Ease of use. The world is available to you.
• Convenient for a regular schedule.
• Less effective – lacks;
• Body Language
• Possibly volume cues. (Skype adjusts volume)
• Communication gets garbled.
• Lag time in communication.
• More difficult to create small talk.
• In person -
• Flip the pros and cons of Skype.
• What to equipment to use?
• Best surroundings to record in – smaller room/convention hall

2) Preparation
Preparation
What prep do you do?  What kind of preps are there? If you have an idea what the answers to this question are, you can be prepared for perhaps interesting follow up. After listening to their answer you might be able to ask something like, “Oh do you do X? Why or why not?”
Do you listen to other shows’ interviews with the person or do you freeform it?  I can see advantages/disadvantages to both of those Rather than state you see advantages/ disadvantages, ask the interview-ie what they think the disadvantages or advantages are.  If they don’t have anything, then state what you see. Perhaps bullet point the advantages/disadvantages you see.

• How much should you prepare
• What should you give your guests
• Topics/Questions
• I’ve got a story to tell you! It’s a great story
• When and why shouldn’t you give guest info.

3.) The Conversation

Clyde’s Interview Link

Here’s that unedited interview I mentioned on your show. http://bit.ly/tlUuS7

Here’s the transcript of the chopped up thing that went online. Notice

that most of his questions that question her and journalism get

chopped. http://bit.ly/uXGuS1 She has a hard time and drops everything

that exposes the problems with her editing and journalism in general.

• Guidance
• You need to let the person know what’s expected of them.
• You need to guide them through the process. Tell them you cut in laughter after your intro, that you will start after clapping your hands, whatever.
• This will help ease their anxiety, and build trust.

• Body Language
• Skype interview “language” – don’t look at the internet – concentrate
• In person can change the way an interview sounds.
• Interview Styles
• “Tell me about your life.” The kind where we get to know the person as a person.
• “Tell me about your ideas.” This is my style.
• “Journalism.” Let’s get to the bottom of something. Professional.
• This is really important. It can guide what you need to do with body language, questions, who to contact, etc.
• Active Listening.  Actually listening to a person is hard.
• Follow ups – most people are bad at this.
• If you don’t know what something is there is a good chance someone in the audience won’t know – so ask! “You just mentioned X, what is that all about?” Strongly seconded.
• Questions
• Written Questions – Most people do this.
• Topic lists – My style
• Research – What has been asked already.
• Does it need repeating
• Were important follow ups missed?
• Where to go for research
• Internet/podcasts
• Friends – people who have played the game if you haven’t

The Conversation
Breaking the ice: Jenn has a solid process for breaking the ice with the 5 questions she asks at the beginning of the show.  Since we’re not an interview show, is that weird and out of place for us to do when we record or do you have a solid ice breaker that you use when doing interviews?

• Chatting off the record helps to break the ice and gives you a sense of how the interviewee talks. Do they pause a lot before speaking? Are they comfortable chatting? Do you have to direct them with questions more so they don’t get side tracked. Are they really good at going on tangents and telling 5 minute stories?
• You may or may not want to ask five questions. Unless you are doing product coverage, shock-attack journalism, or humor (i.e. Daily show,  Colbert show, interviews,) you always want to warm the guest up.

Other examples: The Walking Eye.  They do solid interviews. We can talk about why they are better, now.

Selecting the Guest
When you book your guest, do you try and do it around an event, something they have to promote, or to encompass their body of work?

* Smallville’s Pathways System

* Indie influences

* Licensed systems as a toolbox, instead of a gateway to that property

* The Marvel RPG and its release plans

* Back to the Future – still awesome

* Fantasy Football – I ended up winning that match

* Congratulations to Jenn and Brant on their nuptuals!

* Con costumes and David’s mysogyny

* Video games!

* Smallville!

* Embodiment – sorta

* White Wolf Vampire 20th

* And back to embodiment for awhile

This episode is damn near 2 hours of review of the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition trilogy.

Enjoy!

* The RPG Podcaster Meet and Greet at Gencon – come out and join us next year!

* Luke has a video game corner where he talks about Gears of War and some other goodies

* “The Creative Play Project – is a non-profit organization that enriches youth across the United States through social interactive table-top games and gaming programs. We believe in youth programs, their mission to develop growing minds, and the ability of table-top games to support that mission. We provide youth clubs with the games, the materials, and the training to apply those games to that end.”

* Fuddle Cup – 10% of proceeds go to Creative Play – check it out!

* Creative Play Facebook

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/

Podgecast McGonigal Stuff Outline

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/

If you want to support the cause but can’t make Archon this year, take a look at the Indiegogo account!

* RPG Podcast Awards -

* Iron Tyrants Minis – our prototype is sent off!

* Cambria – Deceptively awesome game

* MWP and Marvel

* Derp of Dragons and how bad it is, which leads us to Wheel of Time

* Matt brings Pathfinder knowledge to the table and we talk about rumors about D&D being over taken by Pathfinder

* And Paul updates us on his Dresden Files

Some stuff Matt brought to the table we watched before we started recording:

*Grimm – Take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh3rFsv_WSE

*And since David hates steampunk: Victorian Rap – Fighting Trousers – http://youtu.be/0iRTB-FTMdk

*Knights of Badassdom – http://www.metatube.com/en/videos/67881/Knights-Of-Badassdom-Official-Trailer-2011-HD/

* This episode talks about movies in the context of superheroes, superhero movies and video games

* 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

* We’ll be at Gencon and have nothing prepared

* Three-Holin’ it

* The Dukes Boys

* Unintentional Racism

* Jamestown Mall and the terrible washers restaraunt

* More DGs

* The new They Might Giants

* Paul tries to make a gaming topic, but we don’t want to do that

* THIS EPISODE IS EXPLICIT

* David, Tony and Darrell discuss the end of Harry Potter

* Thanks for Jim, Dave and Paul for their Watto contest entries!

* Come meet us at the Podcaster Meet and Greet on Saturday at Gencon!

* Tony corrects David on dates and conventions

* Vignette goodness!

* Luke was late today, and we’re going to make fun of why. Thus begins the tale of the Gloryhole Adventures

* The 2011 ENnies and how awful they are

* Iron Tyrants demo! July 20th at 6pm at Game Night in South County Shopping Center!

* The Podge Cast is three years old!

* Comedic failures

*Kevin from The Walking Eye returns

*We are also joined by Shaun from This Modern Death and Red Number Games

*Revisiting the benefits and folly of “Gaming Academia”

*Bangs, Problems, Conflicts

*Self-Critical Hits

*Revelations

* RPG Podcast Listener Survey

* The Watto Contest! Send us your best, 1 minute or less Watto Voice. Will be judged on content and Watto-ness. Dedline is July 15th.

Also, let me know if you’ll be at Gencon on Thursday night

Prizes are one of three Terraria licenses and an invite (+ 1) to a Gencon invite-only party

* Expectations in media

* Take the RPG Podcast Listener Survey!

* Check out Duece’s book, The Boston Connexion

* This Just In IndieGoGo

* Academia in Gaming

* UnderDiscussion: The Undergopher Podcast

* Buy Iron Tyrants

* David had surgery the friday before this episode and he sounds TERRIBLE

* We struggle desperately to talk about Book 3 of the Dark Tower series, The Waste Lands but are distracted by every other book on the planet, which I’m not goign to list here

* Then we talk about It

*Game System: Burning Wheel

*Session 4: The Lost and the Damned, Part II

*Session 5: A Harsh Winter (Downtime)

*Session 6: Hunter Hunted

* Dragons Bay.co interview, which you can find here

* RPG Podcast Listener Survey

* Eric and Luke’s weird fanboyism

* Last week we talked about objectively rating a game, possibly on a scale, and this week we wanted to determine the set of criteria to judge a player at the table, inspired by this post from Rob Donaghue (http://rdonoghue.blogspot.com/2011/05/rating-unratable.html) on his blog

* Rating the player

* The conversation drifts into some side topics: Eric being mean, Lady Blackbird/Forge Midwest,

* Points that don’t stray too far into subjective:
Hygiene
Preparedness

* Points that stray into the subjective:
Attitude
“Teamwork” – I use the word teamwork to loosely describe their ability to interact positively with people at the table; they don’t have to work together, but they shouldn’t crap all over everyone else at the table.

How about creativity? Coming up with or contributing to ideas and problem solving.

Interactivity. Do they have their nose stuck in the PHB, or are actively participating?

* Buy Iron Tyrants!

* Take the RPG Podcast Listener Survey

* Mass Effect 2, Minecraft, Frozen Synapse

* Rob Donaghue’s blog can be found here.

* David points out the flaw in White Wolf games

* The Podge Cast Morning Zoo

* Objectively rating a role-playing game:

• The Die Mechanic – is it effective?
• The Feel of the Game
• Innovation in Implementation
• Ease of Learning

* The Godfather

* John Wick’s The War

* Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake

* Paul shows up and talks about White Wolf – forever

* 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

* Buy Iron Tyrants!

* I have zero interest in playing 4e – and we discuss that for a long time

* Indie games we’re excited about

* Superman!

* Osama Bin Laden and the science of apathy

* Brant and Tim have a development podcast. If you’re slightly interested in programming/development, it’s more than worth a listen: WTF are we doing?

* Turns into a discussion on twists, and storytelling

* We spoil Inception

* This episode was recorded in my car

* Luke snores through half the episode

* Forge Midwest people, Lady Blackbird and Apocolypse World

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

* Endings of stories, arcs and series

* Daniel’s Kickstarter for Do

* Do’s Kickstarter updates

* Kickstarter-ness

* Shout Outs:

- Matt S. Wilson http://www.dog-eared-designs.com/
- Fred Hicks
- Mur Lafferty
- Megan Raley
- Anders Smith
- Jenn Wong

* The Revolution Pantry

* Matt is Captain Planet

* The Jon Boat Contingency

* The Barrel Joke

* That freakin’ pamphlet

* Stupidity

http://opinionatedgamers.com/2011/03/23/jonathan-degann-the-frustration-factor/

* Paul moves on to Reddit RPG stories

* Sucker Punch is great – ignore the reviewers

* Random assorted clips from the recording

* The setup, and then we stop and talk about Fringe

* Eric regales us with Fear the Con stories

* Luke shows up to open his mystical gaming sack and breathe into the microphone – he adds very little else to the episode

* Paul talks about manipulating mechanics to hug the fiction, but it’s pretty much all Conflict and Burning Wheel

* Eric and Paul are talking about FATE and Dresden Files now

* Agricola and the Back to the Future card game mini reviews

* Things we hate about Burning Wheel:

* The Subsystems destroy the main rolling mechanic’s purpose and feel

* Conflict: For a mechanic that generates a narrative, a roll that leads to no results is not fun.

* Instincts try and cover too many broad things

* Die Grubbing creates a weird scenario at the table

* Fight/Conflict and their limitations within themselves

* And of course, every discussion of issues with Burning Wheel has to end appropriately with stories about Jackass

* Let’s make fun of Luke and politics!

* Big thanks to Tim/Kim and the Stingrays!

* Agricola is the greatest board game I’ve ever played in my life

* Die Con needs GMs (http://www.diecon.com/D11/)

* Puzzles, Limbo and failure

* Gamers as the minority, which spirals into victimization and claiming a victim

*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 Ice Cream Man

* Luke is the worst husband in history

* Kevin Smith’s Too Fat for 40

* John Wick

* Archer, Celebrities, and I say “Mark Grunberg” and I mean “Greg Grunberg” – Whoops. Steel trap indeed.

* OD&D and the conversion to 4E

* Interesting encounter design

* We complain about Eric because he’s not here HAHAHA

* The Wizard Sleeve

* TV talk time! We hit:

• Community
• The Walking Dead
• 30 Rock
• Parks and Rec
• Archer
• Fringe
• Leverage
• Hung
• Deadwood
• Sopranos
• Rome
• Dr. Who
• Coupling

* White Wolf

* Newbie DM, Daniel Perez and Dragon Age RPG

* A common language to discuss RPGs

* The value of GNS theory

* Pundritry, in all of its forms

* Master the Met is happening again link is here

*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

* Plinkett’s reviews are the best movie reviews on the planet

* Champions campaigns and feats

* Clear communication is absolutely key for gaming.

* Domain management

* The 1000 Year Game Design Challenge

* Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple and Happy Birthday, Robot!

* Kickstarter Projects

* A LOOONG review of our experience with Do

*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

* Join our WoW Guild: Zangarmarsh > Alliance > Stay Awhile and Listen

* What was awesome in 2010?

* Buy Iron Tyrants!

* Join our WoW guild > Alliance > Zangarmarsh > Stay Awhile and Listen

* The Burning Problems as a GM

* Buy Iron Tyrants!

* Join our Wow Guild! Zangarmarsh > Alliance > Stay Awhile and Listen

* IMMERSION!… and why that argument is ridiculous

* Buy Iron Tyrants!

* Join our Wow Guild! Zangarmarsh > Alliance > Stay Awhile and Listen

* Meg joins us for the worst/best ice breaker ever

* Troubleshooting a Burning Wheel game from the perspective of a player

* Join our WoW guild: Zangarmarsh, Alliance, Stay Awhile and Listen

* v3 wrapup

* Sandbox GMing pitfalls and looming concerns

* Segregation, racism, and the composition of Missouri

* WoW Guild: Alliance, Zangarmarsh, Stay Awhile and Listen

* Burning Questions

* Buy Iron Tyrants!

* Scott Wachter’s Review: http://www.rpgamer.com/savingthrow/reviews/rev-IT.html

* Harry Potter is awesome

* Laying the foundation for the character you want to be, instead of the character you want to start as

*Game System: Burning Wheel

*You can find the original campaign recaps in this setting, Kingdom: The Next Generation starting here.

*Session 0: Premise and Characters

*Session 1: The Test at Tamren

* The League

* The Legend of Neil

* Stargate Universe

* His Dark Materials

* v3 is on December 4th at Game Nite in South County

* Daniel Solis’ hair is pretty awesome

* Blood Bowl League 4 has started! Join in here

* The exception as the rule

* The Walking Dead

* The Iron GM competition

* v3 is rocking on 12/4, not 12/11

* Playing One-Shots

* The Walking Eye and Actual People, Actual Play are awesome

* Pilgrims of the Flying Temple discussion

* We play Pilgrims of the Flying Temple!

* This episode is actual play; we were down some hosts and there was some weird scheduling business that kept us off our normal schedule. We’ll have a regular episode next week

* The McRib talk

* Steak Talk

* Paul misses Abel Lawman

* Go buy Iron Tyrants!

* v3 is plannned to be scheduled on December 11th at a local gaming store

* New Vegas rocks

* Starcraft II tournament is going to start soon – we’re running the trial tournament right now, check the forums for information

* Man, there is a lot of video gaming discussion in this episode, expect a light main topic discussion

* The Cos derails our topic discussion

* Ascension, the card desk building game is awesome

* Space Hulk Review

* We talk about Organiztional Behavior, fun as an explicit and implicit goal in games and generally how much Luke sucks

* 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

You can find the Broken Meme Studios website here.

You can find the pdf for sale at DriveThruRPG!

* Meg from the Brilliant Gameologists

* Tragically Trad Rich

* Viddy-viddy

* Sn00gans

* Andrew Webb – Iron Tyrants contributor

* Doctor-X

* Jim from the Great Debate

* Sam Tlustos

* Sir Guido

* Sideways Tower Podcast

Thanks for the thoughts, guys!

* Luke tells a joke, it’s bad

* The Personal Assistant

* Eric wants to bring the thunder

* Iron Tyrants is on sale, go pick it up at http://sopstore.com/

* Playtesting and game design

* Approaches to writing fiction, either for sale or play

* Removing One-Shots from the discussions

* Life is a One-Shot

* Some more Starcraft stories – are they better because they include Phil?

* The Starcraft story is interrupted because of my fantasy football scores

* Luke rebuts the Ladies Ep

* Iron Tyrants is available for pre-order right now! Go buy it here!

* Eric tells the longest story ever about the Dresden Files RPG. We let him tell it so we can heckle him, which we do the entire story

* Paul talks a little bit about the Adventure Burner – or the trad comependium

* Perception of the game as opposed to the real of the game

* Scott Pilgrim Avatar mashup

* Enjoyable vs. Good

* Fantasy Football rears its ugly head – again

5 People You Should Follow in the RPG-O-Sphere

• Rob Donaghue
• Fred Hicks
• John Wick
• Adam Jury

and the Eclipse Phase Creative Commons License

• Your Dungeon Is Suck

*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

*The first 47 minutes has Eric explaining Maneuvers and Scene Budget along with banter

*Play begins at 47 minutes

*Phase: Usurpation

*The world of Allera Imperia is a storm-wracked aquatic world whose toxic atmosphere forces is lethal to humans. Defying nature, humanity has settled there to capture a great prize. Algae, unique to this world, can be harvested and processed into a drug called Verdant, which halts the body’s aging process. For the few who can afford it, immortality is only a regular dose away. Obtaining this prize is difficult, but protecting it will prove even harder as nearly all living beings seek to escape death.

Especially the Vaylen.

House Zente, led by the immortal Forge Lord Kriati, has long held control of the planet.  Recently, operations have been disrupted by the introduction of a street-level version of Verdant called Green. Green won’t stop you from aging, but this highly-addictive form of the drug will make you feel physically and mentally in your prime.  Through several different factions, the Vaylen are poised to strike as the Forge Lord struggles to maintain control. Her reign will be challenged by both a mercenary force new to the planet and The Cult of Transition who directly oppose the anti-aging drug.

*Cast

Forge Lord Kriati Zente – Sarah

Hammer Pilot Jayce Bronze – Adam

Minister of Information and Education, Psychologist Xanthus Dorne- Luke

Bastard Smuggling Noblewoman – Katie

Anvil Lord – Paul

Green-addicted Hammer Lord Gepard Frost (NPC) – Eric

Vaylen Cult of Transition Leader Sharaya Va’non (NPC) – Eric

Vaylen Mercenary Leader Diamades Shah (NPC) – Eric

Vaylen Mercenary Chief Surgeon Garoda (NPC) – Eric

Sharaya’s Mule Bodyguard Brutus (NPC) – Eric

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

Deal with it.

* 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.

* A v3 recap

* MS150 bike ride Donation Link

* Luke wanks about Transformers a lot

* White Wolf discussion. Eddy Webb, feel free to come on and correct us.

* A listener call to action

* Prince of Persia

* More 360 talk

* Metagaming, Burning Empires and Mouse Guard

* 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

*Season 3 of Blood Bowl is kicking off. The sign-up thread is here.

* Eric’s back so he can…

* Eric learns us about the Dresden Files RPG by Evil Hat Productions

* 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

*My pal, Rob, shows up to teach us about the Nomadic lifestyle

*Cat strollers

*Magic logistics

*I’m probably wrong about Dumbledore’s wandless casting

*The plight of a blacksmith

Intermission

*Madness Lies Beyond…oh, yea, and Tony Mast stops by

* RPG Podcast Listener Survey is happening again at http://rpgpolls.com/

* Dresden Files next week? Probably not.

* Rob’s blog post about the drunk thing

* Slice of Life in games – and then we go somewhere bizarre

* Why Luke sucks as a GM, and the trials of an average gaming group

* Back to slice of life?

* 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.

*This is the recap of our first two session of our Dark Tower game powered by Diaspora along with our thoughts on the game.

*Session One: This Little Light Pt 1

*Session Two: This Little Light Pt 2

* The TED talk we talk about here.

* Chris can’t find anything wrong with 4e – he’s such a fanboi

* 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.

* After marathon-ing Cowboy Bebop for 8 hours, Paul, Eric, Matt and David review it

* What makes Cowboy Bebop transcend ‘good anime’ into ‘this is a great piece of art’?

*EXPLICIT!

*Session 1 of our Diaspora game – The Dark Tower: Dissonance

*Our Obsidian Portal campaign hub is here. The worlds we generated are there in detail.

*Diaspora’s SRD can be found here.

*This is a bit of an experiment. We get a lot of calls for Actual Play. Some love it. Some hate it. Let us know what you think.

*We will also be doing our Campaign Recaps, like with KTNG, in the future.

*Sound quality is a bit lower than normal because Adam’s usual recording device was gone. We made do.

*The occasional rhythmic banging? Those are the cats trying to escape. Can’t be helped.

*Anchorplate IP

*New Wave IP Litigation

*Commemorative Plates

*Barrage-O-Bama was a placeholder name never an actual consideration. Jerks.

*Matt has an official Mardi Gras policy

*Black Pigeon Press

*HERCULANEUM!

*Eric and the Adams

*Paul likes cooler indie underground non-sampled rap than you do.

*The old mailing a screenplay to yourself trick.

* 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

*BSG: The Plan sucks

*Ron Swanson is the man

*Matt lives a year behind in TMBG releases

*Discussing breaking up with your gaming group as inspired by this post.

* 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

*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

* Brant from the Trap Cast joins us.

* How would you survive the zombie apocalypse?

* Survivalist games and a discussion about horror

* Narrativism in traditional games, and our thoughts on the story game movement in general

* Houses Domain Management, our thoughts and expectations for the upcoming game

* Travel in games, most specifically Venice, Italy, which Matt has recently traveled to.

* There are some great television shows that do some good research for your games, The Colony and Surviving Disaster.

* Locations of gaming – what feel are you projecting in your gaming space?

* Are you gaming or are you dating?

* Dating advice

* Luke’s funhouse story, followed by Matt’s funhouse story

*Geist: The Sin-Eaters

*Werewolf: The Forsaken

*Changeling: The Lost

*One Geek To Another

-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

* Valhalla’s Gate in Columbia, MO, is only the greatest general game store ever. Myriad Games in Salem, NH, is the best board game store ever.

* Melcrest’s D*C Wrap-Up: James Marsters is awesome, Stargate Atlantis stuff was awesome, TAPS interview was awesome. She also danced the 903 person large, Guiness Book record breaking Thriller Dance. A video can be found here.

* Congratulations to the BGs who won the Parsec at D*C!

* To skip all the D*C stories, you can go ahead and skip to 22:30ish.

* Before we start talking the episode topic, we talk a lot about Iron Tyrants, which Eric is the lead playtester (badass) for.

* Religion and Philosophy in games: its place, how we handle it, and how it can enrich your games

* The Great Debate podcast – go check it out

* Kevin Smith, hardcore fans, validation for creative works. I’m editing it now, and can’t figure out how we started talking about this, The Watchmen Review Podcast with Kevin Smith

* Long episode is long

With David, Luke, Joe, Eric and Melcrest

*Check out the Bounty Head Bebop prizes from Heroic Journey Publishing for the Easiest Contest Ever!

*Check out Shadow Complex for XBLA.

*Licensed RPGs:  Are they worthwhile or just generic systems with pretty pictures?

*Emulation of source material

*Buffy, Angel, Army of Darkness, Mouse Guard, Burning Wheel, Star Wars, A Game of Thrones, Serenity, Battlestar Galactica

* Joe’s zipline video

* XKCD is fantastic.

* Doctor X has some questions; How to make players make decisions that are in line with their characters, and not necessarily mechanically beneficial

* When will we see a Renaissance in gaming?

* Supernatural doormats from Bear Swarm Matt’s dad! LINK

Game: Neuroshima Hex
Publisher: Z-Man Games
Price: $34.99 (USD)
Type: Board, Combat, Life Points, Tile Game
Players: Tom Carrier, Jason Quintal, Joe Selby
Snacks: Baked Wheat Thins (garden vegetable), Baked Ruffles, Helluva Good Dip (sour cream and onion)
Theme Music: “Zantlop 786″ by Gasserpe from Podsafe Music Network

Click on the image to open a slide show in a new tab of pictures taken from play.

* Neuroshima Hex Overview

* The Rules

* An Example of Play (Actual Play)

* In-Action Slideshow/Photo Album

* Addendum

* Jake joins us from various forums and communities

* How fun is Gencon going to be? Especially since we all just got back from it

* We begin talking about vices

* Rob from Accidental Survivors joins us for the remainder of the episode

* Drinking, smoking, cell phones, racism and personal hygiene

* This interview was conducted in the room, therefore the sound quality is lower, but still very easily listenable

* Brant and Jenn from the Trap Cast join David at Gencon ’09

* What have you been up to, what have you done?

* What are your goals for the convention?

* Meeting RPG podcasters

* If you’re interested in playing Drinkokalypse at Gencon with David and Jenn, hunt for ‘em at the convention. They’re playing Thursday night and will have tickets to get into the event.

* Luke will be running Project MG games during the weekend. If you’re interested in that let him know.

* Role-playing depth preferences, how far do you take it?

* Life Events, how do you let them impact your games?

* Shark Week.

* This episode is VERY explicit. You have been warned.

* The nature of ‘explicit’

* The ENnies, why bother entering?

* Why actively try and get listeners, and why do you even bother podcasting?

* The ENnies, can it be improved?

* Who do you think will win best podcast this year?

* Thanks to Andrew, who got the St. Louis guys an ice-cream cookie cake!

* Congratulations to Asylos, winner of the D&D minis contest!

* We kick off the Pro-Tip Proving for all of The Podge’s released material. Listen to the episode for details, and then send adam@podgecast.com an e-mail with all of your answers!

* Big thanks to the Trap Cast for all of their hard work on episode 50. Go listen to their show, because they’re pretty awesome.

* The Sultan. Enough said.

* Auto-Tune The News

* A new segment: Getting to know your hosts

* Role-Playing Games

* In the Hodge (live), Joe talks about bagels

* Topic

* Hodge (if there is one)

To whet your appetite, here is a sample of episode 50 (as well as a retrospective of the previous 49).

We hope you enjoy.

* Tony Mast records with us, but the episode still comes out the next week

* You want to win D&D minis! We want to give them to you! Enter now!

* Literary devices that can be applied to role-playing games

* Fish out of water and system bias

* Matt wants to role-play the Gilmore Girls

* The prologue

* GMs breaking their own rules

* Misdirection

* In the Hodge (live), Joe talks about Taking Chance

* The debut of Shawn Gaston’s Clockworks

* If you like Lovecraft pulp, check out Lovecraft is Missing

* For the hattrick, go read A Girl and her Fed

* Last part of our D&D Minis. Email your answers to joe@podgecast.com

* Harry Potter – the books

* Harry Potter – the movies

* Book 7, how it should have been

* The Last Airbender live action movie

* In the Hodge (live), White Wolf’s new podcast and blog

Podcast shows are nominated by fans, and finalists are chosen by a yearly steering committee. Those finalists are then voted on by an independent panel of judges from outside of podcasting. As part of the process, we had to submit a sample of our show during the eligible period (for us, that was episodes 1 through 39). If you’d like to hear more about the Parsecs, you can listen to their promo.

We hope you can join us at Dragon*Con when we claim our Best Podcast trophy (either from the Parsec people or the chump who wins when his back is turned—we could use the extra muscle). Wish us luck!

* After the hilarity of getting everything together, we finally get underway to try and determine which is the funniest television series of all time. The winner will surprise you… or probably won’t.

* The video is forthcoming. I was seriously going to have it available early, but ran out of time. Maybe I’ll get to it tomorrow.

* I marked the episode as explicit, since David drops the F*bomb a few times. What an ass.

* Go listen to the TrapCast. They’re funny.

* James is listing his gaming books here. Mention that you heard about it from the Podge (before paying, obviously) and get 10-25% off!

* V3 was a huge success

* Intra-Party Conflict (which is different than inter-player conflict)

* Mechanic-based conflict resolution systems

* Organic vs. Synthetic Conflict

* Dangers of Intra-Party Conflict

* Follow the discussion with a handy outline on Plus 1

* LIVE Tuesday, June 16th at 8:30 pm Eastern.

* http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-podge-cast

* Audio and video

* Audience participation! Choose your own nominees. Eject others. Play a critical part in the BATTLE!

* Rules for the BATTLE can be found on our forums

* James is listing his gaming books here. Mention that you heard about it from the Podge (before paying, obviously) and get 10-25% off!

* Tope Dome is touring in your city soon!

* Winners of the Top Down and Bottom Up campaign contests, Dan Henson and Dan Marlett (Double Dan)

* We stop talking about Mike’s mom…no we don’t.

* David vs. Joe: THUNDERDOME! (Worst vs. Lesser)

* Group Design

* Goals, party pitches, and conflict

* Role maximization

* Follow the discussion with a handy outline on Plus 1

* Mr. T is a Night Elf Mohawk, Ted Talks, and Imagining the Tenth Dimension

* CONTEST! Win D&D Minis

* Hodge (live): The Tome Show celebrates 4e’s first birthday

* Thank you to our armed service members past and present

* Five Guys hamburgers is sexworthy

* Luke has closed his business and is now a hobo

* James is listing his gaming books here. Mention that you heard about it from the Podge (before paying, obviously) and get 10-25% off!

* Buy Storm Cloud, David and Luke’s (et al.) anthology

* Different methods of character generation

* Pre-flighting your character

* Character-Focused (Who-What-Why?)

* Mechanics-Focused (What-Why?)

* Character Optimization and the Brilliant Gameologists

* Character-Study Approach

* Joe’s char-gen notes are available in Plus 1 (really, we promise!)

Game: El Grande
Publisher: Rio Grande Games
Price: $40-$55 (USD)
Type: Board, Region Control, Settlement, Strategy, Victory Points
Players: Tom Carrier, Mark Corsey, Jason Quintal, Joe Selby
Snacks: Goldfish, M&Ms (plain and peanut), TJ’s Hemp Tortilla Chips
Theme Music: “Zantlop 786″ by Gasserpe from Podsafe Music Network

* An introduction of A Boarding Party

* El Grande Overview

* The Rules (Pre-Actual Play)

* An Example of Play (Actual Play)

* Our Thoughts (Post-Actual Play)

* Living Forgotten Realms and it’s global regional design

* Adventures, how they can be acquired and played

* Story and the regional adventure style

* 4th edition’s impact on the RPGA

* Why should someone play an RPGA adventure?