So, in no particular order, here are a few thoughts I’ve had on The Podge Cast and where I am in life in general:

This is Why We’re Ending
Despite the fact that we’ve made a lot of jokes about “This is why we’re ending”, which we seemed to have attached to just about everything, those aren’t the reasons we actually ended.

If I had to pick a two word phase, it would be “It’s done.” At Gencon this year, I had the privilege of sitting (drunk) around a table with Mick Bradley (@mickbradley) and Rich Rogers (@orklordd) where we were talking about being done. I don’t think they were quite as maudlin about it as I was, but I likened it to a sculptor finally actualizing his vision of a work out of a hunk of stone. The work is finished. It’s done. The conversation felt really poetic to me.

I have no illusions that in reality, I was probably slurring and sounding like a loud moron.

At the Gencon Social, I had the opportunity to talk to Rob Hall (@grimgoroth) about the show and why we ended. While I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about what I was going to say when we (inevitably) were asked the question at Gencon, I don’t think I delivered my answer very well.

We ended because it was time. Johnny G. used to have a saying about gaming groups ending in fire or ice, which I actually think is pretty funny in context of Fear the Boot. But our show ending was neither. Sometimes the time is the time. This was our time.

If you attended the Gencon Social, then you got to hear me present two awards: Risk Legacy and The Jank Cast. If I had to peg the second, the absolute moment I knew The Podge Cast was ending, it was the recoding we did with Timo, Todd and Clyde at Forge Midwest this year which made me award The Jank their award. Their passion, drive and enthusiasm about games, gaming and the community was infectious. It made me feel things. Things I hadn’t felt after having done our show in a long time. I talked to Luke about it shortly afterwards and he told me “Hey man, I’m just doing this for you. If it was up to me, I’d have quit a while ago.”

I don’t mean to disparage the work that my co-hosts or I have done over the last year. I love the way our show evolved. I have fun with my co-hosts because they’re my friends. If you can’t have fun with your friends in any circumstance, then are they really your friends?

But, I think what I would want from the show now is different than what I’m getting from the show we were doing, more below.

I’m A Different Person Now
I’ve noticed this steadily over the last year or so: I’m changing as a person.

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m almost *gasp* 30 or not and feeling the inevitable creep of my own mortality knocking on the door or if this entire feeling came about from a bizarre alignment of poor scheduling choices on my part, but I want more.

Follow me on a trip for a moment, if you will. Take the 168 hours you have in a week, and start breaking down percentages on how you spend that time and what you get out of it.

56 ( 33% ) – Sleeping (health)
40 ( ~24% ) – Working (money)
72 ( ~57% ) – ??????? (?????)

Breaking it down, you have about 60% of your life to do what you want with it. I’ll claim that the podcast took up about 6 hours of my week, all told. A few for recording, a few for editing, posting, community management, etc. Bringing that to about 10% of my non-work, non-sleeping time was working on the podcast. That’s pretty minor, right?

No, that’s not entirely accurate. Anyone who works on any project understands that while you may spend X hours on any broad category item, you actually spend 20% of X thinking about it when you’re not doing it. (I call this the investment burden, by the way) So, take that 6 hours up to 7.5. So there’s a ~11% of my leisure time spent on the podcast.

Have you seen the flaw in this math yet? Ah yes, we’re forgetting a number! What about work investment burden? Yee, work just jumped to 48 ( ~29% ). Pushing sleep into the mix (though I won’t add it here, you certainly could add a sleep burden, too), the total allocated time jumps to 111.5 ( ~66% ).

I didn’t add school in here, since at the time I was still working on my masters (completed just after The Podge ended!) or that I’d been working a lot more than 48. You get the idea.

That’s a lot of numbers and percentages to get some base idea of what a life boils down to. I think part of aging, and I’m not sure if this is a shared experience or not, is a fuller realization of the scarcity of time. As a teenager I rarely wondered about the things I would accomplish. Esteem seminars everywhere convinced me that I could be anything, do anything I wanted.

That’s a lie. Choices I made earlier in life have closed roads to me. There are things that aren’t ever going to happen. I’m okay with that. I’ve made a lot of choices and I’d change very few of them, if any at all. But, I need to take advantage of the time I have left, I guess, and I need to evaluate what I want to do and what’s helping me achieve those goals and what’s keeping me from them.

I’ve heard people say “Oh, I’m using this community as a stepping stone to X.”, which is a fine position to take, assuming you’re also doing X in the meantime. For instance, “I’m using this community to market my fiction to.” Great. But you’re not writing because you’re building a community. That’s a failure, no matter how successful your community is. At that point, you have two options: change your goal to having an awesome community or stop community building and write.

That being said, I don’t have a specific X in mind that doing the show is keeping me from doing. I dig doing things that are awesome. I like being involved with projects that produce things that people enjoy. In those terms, The Podge Cast has always been an incredible success. We brought over an audience with us from Fear the Boot, which we managed to grow. Given our numbers and the regular feedback we’d gotten about the show, we were successful.

But we were successful without a specific goal, which I think in a lot of ways was a failure on my part. Short-term, ephemeral success (or production reinforcement, if you will) is a harder feeling to reproduce and the diminishing returns of it catch up with you eventually. (Like say, four years later).

This is The Podge Cast was the most satisfying thing we’ve done in a long time. It was fresh. It was new. And, if I don’t say so myself, it was well done. Clever, playful, and a knowing nod and half-smile to the fans that have stuck by the show for four years, I consider this the middle finger to the idea that we’re mediocre by ability and not by choice.

I’m not 100% where I’m going with this, so I guess I’m just going to leave it here. I guess my TLDR is: I’m different and want something different than the show has given me.

Things I’m Proud Of
This is The Podge Cast is the top of my list. We went four years without missing a weekly release schedule, and that takes a lot of work. Once you get into a routine, however, and commit to releasing on that schedule, it’s really just spending the time to make it work.

I’m proud that we never sold out.

I’m proud that on several occasions we said we were wrong.

I’m proud that we announced we were working on a product, completed it, and delivered it to fans who wanted it.

I’m proud that we created a community of podcasters and fans who became friends. At conventions when I meet people from these communities, I’m proud that we can sit down and drink a beer and it isn’t weird.

I’m proud that we ended. I guess that’s the truest indication that I’ve grown considerably over the last four years. I don’t view ending (not quitting) as a failure, but as a success. We finished the race.

Thanks.
This section could go on forever with the various communities, internet peoples and whatnot we’ve interacted with over the years, so I’ll just let you assume that if your name isn’t on this list it’s because I ran out of time, not that I didn’t mean to thank you.

Melina
I think out of all of us, Melina put up with more shit than anyone to make the show happen. Not only did she write and direct This is The Podge Cast, but she also had us tramping through the house once a week for four years and breaking things. She put up with me editing at weird times and having to record on off nights the whole time.

In a lot of ways, the show never would have happened without her, so she gets first thanks since I never thanked her in the Iron Tyrants book, which she financed.

Go listen to Law of the Geek. Tell her I sent you.

Tony Mast
The T-Mast rescued me from a quagmire of inactivity four years ago and got me jazzed to start doing things again. He’s always been supportive of our projects (which you can see in This is The Podge Cast) and we gab about movies all the damn time, even off the mics.

The Podge Cast never would have happened without T-Mast. Believe it.

My Cohosts
These guys are my friends. That’s about what it is.

Our Fans
Your support was awesome. Thanks. Really.

If you love a creative endeavor and follow it, write in and tell the hosts or creators that. It keeps them going when things are terrible. Really, it does. Go do it now. Tell them I sent you.

The Brilliant Gameologists
For thinking of it a year ago.

The Accidental Survivors
For the sad walking away music.

And finally,

Robert Bohl
You may not know what you did. But thanks anyway.

And, we’re done! Mic Drop.

This is a bunch of listener submitted clips all answering one question: What would you say in farewell to The Podge Cast?

Thanks to everyone who submitted!

In honor of The Podge Cast’s 200th episode, Tony Mast of Back Seat Producers fame takes us behind the mics on a journey of sights, sounds and smells in the breakthrough Podgumentary, This is The Podge Cast.

Enjoy!

This is also the map that I turned into a vinyl banner in Episode 199.

Enjoy the results of the ATB Foot Race.

Tune back in tomorrow for more Podge Content!

While Kim is on the line as a player in this episode, she ultimately drops and is replaced by Shaun. So boo to that, but otherwise, enjoy the game!

* The drops are when people spoil what’s happening over the Jubilee this week, which starts after this episode

* The KTNG Map! Banners on the Cheap is the name of the company.

* Movies!

* This is a long one folks, strap in!

* The new Penny Arcade game, and item management in video games and all the sundry pieces that go with that

* Episode 200 will be live via Google Hangout! July 22nd at 2pm central! Details to come!

* The Podge Jubilee! Content releasing every day! Whoo!

* Luke is non-confrontational and goes on to demonstrate this throughout the episode…

* Luke, David, The Killing

* We spoil the finale Korra

* Storytelling for women versus men, in discussing Magic Mike

The week of July 16th, the Podge is doing it’s first ever Jubilee! In honor of episode 200, we’re going to have special content releasing ALL WEEK LONG.

EVERY DAY.

Monday (16): Regular episode
Tuesday (17): ?
Wednesday (18): ?
Thursday (19): ?
Friday (20): 200 in 200
Saturday (21): ?
Sunday (22): Live, On-Air Hangout for episode 200 with the hosts! (2pm Central – more details to follow)

Tell your friends to look out! This is going to be awesome!

* Gencon Social Tickets are on sale!

* The RPG Podcast Listener Survey! go take it if you haven’t!

* The 200 in 200! If you want to submit a clip, DO SO NOW!

* Jenn explains what the hell Project Ninja Panda Taco actually means

* Predictions on when Jenn will hit her target

* RPG Podcast Listener Survey

* Gencon Social

* 200 in 200

* Man, I’m editing this now and Eric and Luke have been talking about Warhammer for like 30 minutes solid

* Which turns into a discussion of games we’ve been playing recently

* Get your tickets to The Gencon 2012 Evening Social

* Take the RPG Podcast Listener Survey

* We talk Korra, and it is glorious

By now, we’ve all seen that Jenn got Wil Wheaton for her episode 100. She and I
had been talking about what to do for our 200 and now that she’s busted out that
gem I can’t justify not doing it because it’s going to take some work to pull
off.

So, here’s my proposition:

I want to do 200 interviews in 200 minutes. The logistics of doing that live
would be a nightmare, so we’d want to tone it back to pre-recorded interviews
with various pockets of people. 1 minute per person on the mic and all
answering the same question in a roundtable sort of way. So, if you’ve got 4
people roundtabling around the mics, you’ve got 4 minutes of audio.

The question to be discussed is this:

What would you say to The Podge Cast in farewell?

The clips should be structured in an introduction (promote yourself!) and then
answering the question format. Obviously, it’s pretty hard to start or stop on
the exact minute mark for each show, so I’ll leave it to your discretion on how
to get on or NEAR the minute mark for your number of hosts.

I’m going to have to do some pretty intense organization on this, so the earlier
you can let me know and get me the files, the better, obviously.

I don’t expect the submissions to be very large, so you can probably shoot an mp3 (or equivalent audio type) over to adam@ podgecast.com (mind the spacing) and I’ll get them.

Voice Mail Instructions
Tony Mast has graciously offered to forward over any voice mails from his Google number. If you don’t have a clean way to record, you can call 618.207.4794 and leave us a voice mail!

If you don’t want the long distance charges, you can go to backseatproducers.com, click the “CALL ME” button on the left hand side, and Google Voice will call YOU and you can leave us a voice mail that way free of charge!

Thanks!

David and The Podge Cast

* Which starts a discussion on Marvel between Eric and Paul

* Gencon Social Tickets!

* Rob’s comments on D&D Next

* D&D Next

* Unsubstantiated Monte Cook claims

* We discuss the Paizo tech demo kickstarter

* Then we discuss McFarlane and the 38 Studios debacle

* We torture a LotR analogy for like 15 minutes

If you met the Podge at a convention, say Gencon, and we sat down to play a game or have a conversation, what would we play or talk about?

* MOAR GUESTS – Welcoming Zzarchov!

* Then we talk about Avengers, Diablo 3, Community, Korra, etc.

* Paizo’s logo is the goat man

* Who is the goat man?

* Aang Beard contest!

* NGR

* Note: Luke did not talk to the Atlantasia guy. That was me and Kevin, and we talked about the project, but we weren’t actually the guy.

* If you’re interested in getting a copy, hit up THIS link

* The RPG Podcast Listener Survey, go take it if you haven’t already!

* What is Farewell to Fear?

* Deconstructing Lord of the Rings as a template for a revolution

* Digging into Farewell to Fear – the whys and whats of the game

* The Final “Stretch” Reward

* Denim

* RPG Podcast Listener Survey

* James from Black Guard Press and Non-Essential Personnel

* That’s Wizards’ Chess, Harsh Digs Bra, That’s Racist

* Game of Thrones thing

* Dollar Shave Club

* Fact: Cobie Smulders is hotter than Scarlett Johannsen. Also, women were awkward in Avengers.

* Community jazz music: http://t.co/GpTBxGCZ

Last year we had 973 respondents (with some spam entries removed from the real survey) and this year we have 840 respondents, which means we’re about 86.3% of the way to matching our goal from last year, in less that 13% of the total time that we’re running the survey.

We made some changes to the survey this year, and having watched the responses trickle in over the last few days, I had some thoughts about some of the things I’m seeing in the survey already. I’ll avoid posting some specific thoughts I have (I can see the results already, you know) that I think might prompt people to skew results, but some general overview thoughts shouldn’t have too much impact, I wouldn’t think.

Number and Identity of Respondents
Last year, I barely snaked the completion of the software we use to track data under the wire. This year, I had a little more foresight and a little more motivation – my masters’ thesis is about RPG Podcasts and lo, this is a perfect avenue for firsthand research – so I was able to put some more time into building both an interface that’s pleasant to look at and has the functionality to deliver real-time analysis options.

While that may not sound exciting, I was thrilled to be able to really watch as the responses poured in and let me break down the responses without having to export the full list to Excel and do a bunch of manipulation every time. Having it inline has been a fascinating way to keep me obsessively checking the site every hour.

But, numbers without any sort of goal is somewhat useless. So, I made a prediction on the number of responses we would get per day. My suspicion was that we would get a large burst as the initial social media push started on a Tuesday (and I didn’t expect the RPG Podcasters list to have pre-dropped a promo in their episodes), that it would drop off, and then we would see a slight rise in the second week as non-social media listeners discovered the link through show notes or host recommendations.

In day 8 of the survey, I’m a little off, but I had to do a little digging to really find out where and how I was off.

You can see from the graph that the survey technically started on 4/30 when I released our episode and didn’t do the math right on the date. The first bunch of responses there was from the initial Podge release and subsequent social media burst. If I hadn’t messed that up, those would have appeared on 5/1, like they should have, as part of the larger hump.

After the two day blitz, there’s a pretty steep drop, which then jumps back up on 5/7. I assumed that I was right, and that was from shows having promoted it on their feeds and we were picking up listeners who didn’t interact with shows on social media. This wasn’t the case.

Yesterday, Jason who runs the Being a Geek group on Facebook, posted the link to that group. While Facebook doesn’t tell me how many people subscribe to that group, it does tell me that 34,000 some odd people are “talking about this”. That’s a lot of people.

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, my original intent with the survey (aside from proving Joe wrong) was to get something to measure just how far the average reach was in the RPG Podcasting community. At the time, I considered myself someone who had at least an average reach, and I was curious what that number was. While this puts that number a lot higher, it also brings in several people who are self-identifying as not being regular listeners to RPG Podcasts.

Is this a problem? I can come up with reasonable justifications for both, I suppose.

Other Thoughts
Next year I’m building a FAQ.

I took the pool of available, selectable podcasts from RPGPodcasts.com because there isn’t another way to reliably do it. As far as I’m concerned, RPGPodcasts.com is the authority when it comes to RPG Podcasts. If a show isn’t listed there, then I don’t think it’s unreasonable not to include the show on the survey.

I tried to make this clear to the RPG Podcasters group, but there’s a bit of a process problem there. I don’t control the access to that podcasting board, so new shows that sign up for RPG Podcasts have to manually request access from the Yahoo Group (which I can’t grant), and I’m not sure how often that gets done.

We also chopped out shows that haven’t released an episode in the last year. Hard dates from 4/30/2011 on. Also, we had a single show request to be removed from RPGPodcasts.com, so I have removed them from the survey.

Sourcing Information
I built sourcing information into the URLs that people use to jump to the website this year so that we can track the names and locations of where people are referred to the software. I’m looking forward to seeing just how much of the survey comes from social media links vs. show links.

Any thoughts on the survey thus far from anyone else? The comments on this site are little more suited for long form, public feedback or you can use this thread.

* A Forge Midwest Recording! Hosts are Clyde from Theory from the Closet and Yellow Menace, Todd and Timo from The Jank Cast, and Paul and David from The Podge Cast

* Apocolypse World opener, relationships, game intent, and Time Cellists

* Does the RPG sphere need a common language?

* The RPG Central Authority, or lack thereof

* The Gaming Community

* Dan Maruschak – Come at me, bro

* The RPG Podcast Listener Survey! It’s up and take it!

* Tone on the internet. Slap a smiley face on it.

* The Brown Game

Enjoy and get out there and Kickstart Mecha Combiners!

* Introducing Chris Perrin! The Mecha Role-Playing game, talking about his new project Mecha Combiners, which you can currently Kickstart

* Beards. Playoffs and Beards.

* Bollywood Mecha

* Mecha and Mecha Combiners!

Answer to come next week!

* What indie games really are, and you can hear that Luke was in the house in the background, just chose not to come upstairs while we were recording stuff.

* An Analysis of Feedback Fridays, which launches to a larger discussion of podcast listening habits

* The RPG Podcast Listener Survey is coming! Tell your friends! Gird your loins!

* Dinocolypse ended, so you can’t Kickstart it anymore

* We’re heading up to Forge Midwest again! If you’re in the area or thinking about going, meet up with us!

* A brief bit of Marvel talk

* Batman vs Watto

* Wu-Tang Clan name discussion

* Die-Con needs GMs!

* A bit of Hunger Games

* Player Agency and Games

What’s your favorite recurring joke on The Podge?

* A little peek behind the mics – what we do right before we start recording

* David continues bitching about The Walking Dead

* Luke uses the word “Menses” and everyone hates him for it

* Feedback Fridays! This was a while ago, so the announcement is somewhat old. You can see the current list here

* Old cartoons – grow up, Eric

* TMNT and old stuff

* Brief Dungeon World talk, which turns into a longer discussion

* We talk about how our group is dicks, which is hilarious

* Marvel

We don’t know if we’re going to continue doing this, so let us know if you loved it or hated it!

(I didn’t have time to come up with something insightful this week)

* Bully Pulpit’s Durance, Eric is sad that he can’t Kickstart it already

* Kickstarter and Dinocalypse!

* Chuck Wendig over at Terrible Minds! (Profanity Warning!)

* Podge extended-host Daniel Solis’ Happy Birthday, Robot

* Book and Board Game production talk

* Bits and Mortar and the PDF with a physical copy program

* Origins, transparency, social media, Kickstarter, Marvel Heroic Role-Playing and Amber MUSH

This week’s question:

What is your favorite TYPE of show and why? What’s your least favorite and why?

Examples would be: Regular Episodes, Campaign Recaps, Interviews, or something else!

* Buy Marvel Heroic Roleplaying!

* Luke and David argue about Mass Effect. Forever.

* This turns into a discussion on Dungeon World.

* Which turns into a discussion on weird, quirks to valuing pieces of a game.

* That’s Wizards’ Chess

So, to that end, we’ve decided to implement Feedback Fridays!, your chance to give direct and honest feedback for us to draw some conclusions from.

So, without further ado:

What was your favorite TPC episode and why?

* Master the Met Thank Yous!
- Undergopher!
- @tresi!
- Eric!
- Becca, Evan and The Peanut!
- Josh Thompson!
- Kinkelaar!
- Chris, from Wapcaplets!
- Francis, Chris and their whole clan!
- Eric and Ericka!

* Baba Yetu is probably the greatest song ever recorded

* David at the top of the met: http://www.runphotos.com/packages.cfm?file_name=1/853-1_0879.JPG

* David recounts a harrowing tale from the Beggar’s Carnivale

* Paul discusses Twilight and Eric pretends like he’s never seen it. He’s unconvincing. We spoil Twilight.

* Thor/John Carter/Doctor Who/etc

* Mike Mearls’ Baffling Tweet: – “What level do you need your character to reach to feel like you’ve had a satisfying campaign? How many weeks of play should that take? #dnd”

* Eric and Matt go apeshit on this topic. (37:20, if you want to skip to the gaming stuff)

*David talks a lot this episode.

* Which turns into Risk Legacy, which is owning our faces right now

* If you’re in the Des Moines area, and are going to be free the weekend of the 23rd, look us up! The Podge will be at Walking Eye Con!

* Solidarity to Cam because that guy is awesome.

* Eyes go bad in string

* Luke starts talking about gender roles in a game he’s designing

* Fight sequences – how CGI is ruining them

* Master the Met is happening again, so if you’ve got some spare cash to donate to the Law of the Geek team, we’d really appreciate it!

* Josh Mannon is in the studio tonight!

* At the Table Games

* Dungeon World a mod/hack/product of Apocolypse World

* What makes Apocolypse World work, and how that translates to Dungeon World

* Dungeon World and Apocolypse World take a back seat to us talking about the Twilight novels. Seriously.

* Then we talk about Within Devil’s Reach, Josh’s Kickstarter Dungeon World adventures. The project ends on March 24, so if you like what you hear, head on out there and back it!

* Eric wants to remind you that the Marvel Heroic Role-Playing Game system is out! We get a thank you!

* David talks about Supernatural, and character’s falls done well

* Dungeon World!

* Paul has conspiracy theories about Fifth Ed that he shares

David had like 3 hours of sleep, drove three hours, then recorded this, and then gamed for four hours. At the end of the day when it came time to edit, a very light touch was used. VERY LIGHT.

Enjoy.

* Star Wars MMO! Mask of Nihilis, Republic side, Stay Awhile and Listen

* Character Driven vs Not a Character Driven game

* Skyrim Macho Man

* Eric bores everyone with his Warhammer talk

* This episode was recorded forever ago – shortly after Gencon

* The results of the RPG Podcasts Listener Survey can be found here!

And the survey’s appendix can be found here!

* And then the analysis!

* 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

The announcement came as somewhat of a shock to the community – and not because WotC is working on a new edition. We’ve all expected the new release with the lifecycle of Dungeons and Dragons becoming shorter and shorter. OD&D was released in 1974, AD&D was released around 1977, AD&D 2E in 1989, Rules Cyclopedia 91, 3E in 2000, 3.5 in 2003, 4th edition in 2008 and Essentials in 2010. Or…

So, looking at it this way, you can see the A/B release schedule that D&D has been on since the beginning. A major “A” release is released with a minor, clarifying “B” releasing following after 2-3 years afterwards. Interestingly, the time between major or “A” releases is decreasing. This could be do to shorter release schedules in the digital age, which would imply that “B” releases are a function of community refinement, not publication schedules.

Sussing that out is research for another article.

No, the surprise was the awkward “open playtest” plan they’ve announced.

For that reason, we want your participation. The goals we have set for ourselves are by no means trivial or easy. By involving you in this process, we can build a set of D&D rules that incorporate the wants and desires of D&D gamers around the world. We want to create a flexible game, rich with options for players and DMs to embrace or reject as they see fit, a game that brings D&D fans together rather than serves as one more category to splinter us apart. 1

At first blush, this is exactly the type of sentiment I like to see in the gaming community: inclusion. But, as I thought about it, the more this approach really seems to fall apart, for two major reasons.

1.) Creative investment works both ways

Investment is a powerful tool. Arguably, Wizards of the Coast has the strongest product on the market because it has the largest user base invested in their product. In fact, if you look at the edition wars, the central tenant to each argument hotly debated on an internet forum is investment (which, for our purposes is practically equivalent to nostalgia).

Investment is a double-edged sword.

One of the biggest complaints when WotC released 4th Edition was that it “wasn’t D&D” or “changed the game into a minis game”. Long time gamers felt a sense of ‘betrayal’, since the changes to the game implied one of two things: either they’d been playing the game wrong all this time or the company that published the game didn’t care about their preferred game style.

Soliciting invested feedback in the development of DND Next fractures the community.

The Misconception: You celebrate diversity and respect others’ points of view.

The Truth: You are driven to create and form groups and then believe others are wrong just because they are others. 3

By soliciting feedback in this manner, WotC has artificially created groups that are divided over issues. Given the “detail-oriented” nature of the geek community and how personally a lot of its members take rejection, how can this improve the development process of the game?

So, as gamers who have been exposed to this, we’re left with one of three possible outcomes on any community-input-driven scenario:

1.) We’ll get our way and be happy about it.
2.) We won’t get our way and we won’t be happy about it.
3.) It won’t be up for discussion and we’ll feel left out of a process we were supposed to be involved with.

Two of the three outcomes are negative experiences for the user, though option three requires some exploration. Is it reasonable to expect to be involved with all facets of the design of the product? Absolutely not. And setting the expectations of that with the release announcement would be a nice step in cutting away some of the problems that would arise with that situation.

2.) Committees don’t make decisions

Let’s take an example of a proposed change for D&D Next (which I’m going to start calling 5e, because the D&D Next name is really stupid). Let’s take one I saw from a discussion between @Boymonster and @SarahDarkMagic about races, racial bonuses and character creation a few days ago. The specifics of the issue concern racial bonuses being static and if those could change in the next edition to change the way that character creation creates the “best path” of choices down the line.

Okay, that’s pretty reasonable. D&D isn’t famed for having cool character decisions like that or flavor at that level nor is that something it really tries to tackle. But surely this change is minor enough that the benefit, cool character fluff attached to the character at creation and immediate investment in the character, offsets the potential issues that would arise. Right?

Well, maybe. If you remove tied stat bonuses to races then essentially all of the races are the same. Well crap, we can’t have that for two reasons: differences in races has been a staple of D&D since the beginning and you’ve just removed player choices by making the options indistinguishable from each other.

I realize that the fluff will make them different, but that is an oft-ignored portion of 4th edition. If you want to challenge me on that, perform a simple test. Take a 4E character you’ve been playing for a while. List me the names of all of their at-will powers. Can you get them all? How much of the flavor text can you give me? The more you can fill in without looking at your sheet, the more your characters fluff matters to you.

Okay, so we have racially indistinguishable characters now. How do we differentiate them a little bit to make everything not so samey? Race specific powers! Surely there’s the solution. Yes, elves get Elven Accuracy, which lets them reroll a failed roll. Yes.

But… well, we make the stat bonuses open across the board. So, does specific racial powers make sense anymore? I mean, Elven Accuracy is fine in the context of a bonus to dexterity – elves are SUPER accurate! But, if I’m taking the constitution bonus, what sense does rerolling a failed attack make? Well, it really doesn’t.

Okay, so, before we get too deep down the rabbit hole of that example, let’s stop right there since the point isn’t to make an argument either way (though, it really seems like I did). How do we decide if this is a change to put in the game? Vote? That’s horrible. There’s a reason that not everyone is a game designer and that reason is that some people are terrible at it. Also, since the community can never seem to disagree on just what exactly Dungeons and Dragons is anyway.

So… how does that work, exactly?

Conclusion

I understand what WotC is trying to do with the announcements. Paul brought up fantastic points in TPC 176 about the marketing aspect of the presentation: it creates the feeling that every gamer, no matter how small their gaming style niche is being fought for in the new edition. That if the game isn’t what you want out of it, that you should become more active and fight for what you want.

In reality, there’s no way that this will really bring us all back into the fold. In the best case scenario, WotC already has the game developed and will solicit feedback on minor points only, so that the community impact on the game is minimal at most. In the worst case scenario, they open up too much of the core mechanic of the game, lose the momentum they gained with the 4e release and the new crop of gamers and create an indecipherable mess of a game that’s unplayable until the “B” release fixes a lot of the problems.

So, now that the initial marketing breeze is over, here’s what you can look for:

1.) Edition Wars – yep, these aren’t going away
2.) Arguments about aspects of D&D you don’t care about
3.) Arguments about changing the core game of Dungeons and Dragons – “Can we make this a character driven story?”, “I need political intrigue in my game”
4.) Every subset of D&D player – OSRPGs, Power Gamers, Story Gamers and Minis Players all arguing about mechanics they will largely have no impact on
5.) People making stupid jokes about what is going in the next version of D&D

So, glad to be looking forward to that.

And give me my God damned Virtual Table already. Seriously.

1 http://wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120109
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons#Edition_history
3 http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of-asymmetric-insight/

* 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

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.

* 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

After a bit of talking, Richard turned the conversation to an interview about the history and transition of the site. So, if you’re at all interested in that bit of gaming podcasting history, the interview is an interesting read.

He also talks about a “Hot Pods” segment that he’s going to start, taking the most popular shows on RPG Podcasts for the week and listing them off Top 40 style.

You can read the full interview here.

If you’ve listened to the show at all, it’s no secret that Luke has pulled me into the mystical cube-world of Minecraft. Lately, I’ve been trying to look at my life more objectively and deconstruct the elements of things and understand the relationships between them and me. I’ve also been wanting to write more blog posts, which this seems to be a quaint intersection of all three of these things.

The elevator pitch of Minecraft didn’t (and still doesn’t) hook me. I can clearly remember an excited, lispy Luke telling me about it after he’d been sucked in. “You can build anything. And destroy everything. It’s like a giant playground.”

That description still doesn’t hook me, honestly. But, to jump on the bandwagon (and to satisfy that nagging curiosity) I bought and started playing. It didn’t take long for it to happen – the game clicked for me. It had sunk its roots into me and wasn’t letting go.

The mechanic of its attraction eluded me for the longest time, though. At first glance, the obvious culprit to finger for attraction is the ability to infinitely customize your space. That’s a cool element to the game, but not an attractor for me.

I have a utilitarian disdain for art and personalization. My desktop at work and home is the default Windows 7 theme. My car/desk/office is mostly unadorned with knick-knacks and other symbols of a living room. Even the structures I build inside the game are utilitarian: rough stone, no color with doors.

Ruling out that as a motivator eliminated my primary suspect. It forced me to dig deeper. What is it about this game that other games don’t offer? Something that I get in smaller doses that this game provides in spades?

Construction. In many games, you construct things: a narrative, a character, an item or something along those lines. Construction by itself isn’t the reward mechanic that these games rely on. Progress indicators are a clear indication that yes you are creating something and look at what progress you’ve made on it.

Some common indicators of progress:

• The experience progress bar in most MMOs (World of Warcraft’s is probably the most iconic)
• The construction of a rare item, usually from some equally rare materials
• A percentage complete when on the save menu (Symphony of the Night, I’m looking at you)

But, there are also some other common, less obvious indicators of progress on these things:

• Your character sheet, with skills/abilities that advance (with experience or without)
• The plot – do a little work, get a little story as a progress reward
• Scale – As the scale of what you do increases (from street gang conflict to saving the world) you can see a visible progress in the power level of your game

In Minecraft none of these things exist. You could make the argument that item creation exists. As any Minecraft player will tell you, creating most items in the game doesn’t instill a sense of progress, but one of loss of resources.

No, the progress reward cycle produced by Minecraft comes from the construction itself. Buildings, monuments and the like. With every block placed in their construction, you have an instant, visible indicator of your progress and you get an incredible sense of just what else needs to be done to finish the job.

Even mining through the earth is a subtle indicator of progress – the run back through mineshafts that continually grow longer forces you to recognize the ‘accomplishment’ of having dug that far through the earth.

So what lesson is learned from this? Simple: progress is a motivator.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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

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

*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.

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

*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

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.

Virtues
Strength 2
Cunning 5
Courage 2
Beauty 3
Wisdom 3
Prowess 0

Parentage
Father: Marquis Theodore Steele, House of the Elk (dominant)
Mother: Baroness Evelyn Burghe, House of the Bear
Birth Order
Sister
Me
Sister
Brother

Married to Alma Burghe

Contact: Travis Thorne

Aspects
I am Hateful
Invoke: To harm others
Tag: When I must be kind
Compel: To be cruel

Chance-Taker
Invoke: When taking a risky action with a high probability of failure
Tag: When I must take time to make decisions
Compel: Feels compelled to always take dangerous risks

Description:
Medium height and build. Short brown hair, clean-shaven. Dresses simply, mostly with earth tones and/or season-appropriate colors. Commonly in traditional Scottish garb, including kilts and a wide collection of sgian dubh. Also known to dress even simpler, frequently in overcoats and decorative riding boots.

Background:
Raised competitively in outdoorsmanship, hunting, strategy, and debate with the children of his father’s vassals.
Swore to Vrain as an alternative to his father in order to prove his independence and distance himself from some weak members of his family he felt were unnecessarily familiar with the strong members.
Met and rescued his wife, Alma, from a winter storm while trekking in Vrain’s legendary hunting grounds.

Three things:
Reputation as a great hunter
Generous to allies
Known to be capable of despicable things

Trivialities:
-Jasmine hosted in Vrain’s absence. She was not pleased by my gift.
-I juried a dispute between Niassa’s husband, Gregor, and Victor Steele over an indiscretion between Gregor and Delia, Victor’s fiancée and Niassa’s sister.
Fellow jurors: Krueger, Kether (intoxicated), Verdict: Duel to the Blood on the third day of the party.

Personal:
My wife, Alma, continues to surprise. Her organization, kind demeanor, and admirable preparation have become a force in my life. While I do not envision her warmth becoming one of my qualities, it may be vital in the growth of our home. I am confident her strength will serve both of us well while I am away with Donovan.
Alma and Donovan, two Blooded of the Bear to whom I am bound. The theatre of Ven deceit and illness has always aroused my enmity, but perhaps my stage will yet prove it is best shared.

Lord Vrain Adrente, Count of Sandrose

-Hates Travis

-Is wearing the black

-Morgana Mwrr’s mother was his mistress

-Niassa protects his lands with her Roadmen

-Has a great game reserve

-Niassa was betrothed to his son, Victor, but broke it off for a better match

-Niassa is one of the few who know why he’s wearing the black

-Nisassa’s apothecary leanred from his

-He’s wearing the black to cover something Nisssa did.

Facts about Paevra K’mar (The Sea of Cutting Hatred)

-The lands are cursed

-Excellent road system

-Plagued by pirates at sea

-Caravans travel overland with ease

-Vrain helped settle the area

-Lot of Ruins

Spring Gala at The Verdant Palace

Jasmine Steele is throwing the annual spring gala even though her husband is ostracized because her son, Victor Steele, is announcing his betrothal.  Victor was betrothed once before, to Niassa Yvarai, but that was broken off.  Turns out his new finacee is one of Niassa’s many sisters, Delia, though his mother doesn’t think it’s a good match.  She would prefer he got together with Niassa, which is complicated by Niassa’s marriage to Gregor.

The night began with the presentation of gifts of Lady Jasmine.  Notably, Travis and Niassa’s gifts impressed while Ambrose and Morgana earned nothing but scorn.  Travis’s gift of a gorgeous red dress drew a coy smile from the Lady.  Morgana, embarrassed because of her Lady’s displeasure apologized profusely.  Lady Jasmine told her that she could make it up to her by helping get Niassa and Victor back together by breaking up Niassa’s marriage.  Morgana quickly began plotting.

After gifts were presented everyone retired to the banquet hall and proceeded to mingle.  A small scandal broke out when Travis inadvertantly ripped a large gash in Jasmine’s dress as he pulled out her seat.  As the Lady retired to change outfits, her son Victor was obviously insulted by Travis’s action.  A quick Game of Insults later left Victor with the reputation of being negligent with his father’s lands, as he was the steward.  Several of Victor’s cronies, including Goodren Steele came to ease him back from doing something rash afterward.

Many facts were declared during these exchanges:

Lord Victor Steele, Baron of Drummond

-Widely known to have beauty as a weakness

-Mama’s Boy

-Duels at the slightest insult

-Taking care of his father’s estate

-Hates Travis for the same reason as his father

-Holds no anger towards Niassa…

-…Though he was greatly hurt by the ending of their betrothal

-Expert swordsman

-Loyal followers

-Planning to marry one of Niassa’s sisters

Lady Delia Yvarai, Baroness of Valtross

-Younger sister to Niassa

-betrothed to Victor Steele

-Better match for Victor than Niassa

-Lady Jasmine is displeased with this match

-Lord Vrain was pleased with the match

-Thinks Victor overreacts to most insults

While the guests await the return of their hostess to eat, foxwine is brought out and mingling begins in earnest.  Ambrose gets to know Stacia Silja and learns she is in need of both support and vassals since her husband has passed. He has promised to help.  Morgana begins her search for a way to split up Niassa and Gregor by talking to Lady Peacock, the court’s most famous gossip who is also already drunk. Morgana learns that Gregor, Niassa’s husband, is already looking for a way out of the marriage and is just looking for an excuse.  It’s also rumored that he has been seen flirting heavily  with all of Niassa’s sisters. Word of Lady Peacock’s loose lips finds its way back to Niassa when she starts chattering with all her sisters.

Niassa also spends time speaking with Lady Azra Ru, whom Niassa allows to borrow her apothecary for two season in exchange for his being trained and a cask of wine. She also speaks at length, uncomfortably, with Count Vyzir Mwrr whom she gives he son Ivan as an apprentice in exchange for aid in discovering the potential of one of her artifacts.

Lady Jasmine eventually comes back out, attired in the dress that Travis gave her as a gift. She publicly scolds Victor for his temper over the accident.

After dinner the annual Chase for The Rose and The Thorn began.  The Rose is an expertly crafted silver rose encrusted in jewels and its always hidden somewhere in the flower-strewn lands of The Verdant Palace. Whoever finds it becomes The Verdant Lord (or Lady), an Aspect that aids in beginning romances. That person also becomes the “belle of the ball” so to speak, only second in importance to the hostess herself.  The Thorn is a black iron rose covered in thorns. Whoever find it may give it to anyone they choose.  Once given, the bearer becomes shunned for the season as bad luck tends to follow them around.

Ambrose quickly finds The Rose which he gives to Stacia, who was desperately looking for it.  Jasmine sees him hand it off to her and is a bit upset he did so secretly.  Niassa finds The Thorn.  Morgana disovers a journal while looking around.  Soon after discovering it, she and a multitude of other stumble upon Gregor and Delia locked in a passionate kiss in a secluded corner of the garden.  Niassa  gives Gregor The Thorn while Victor goes straight to the jury to ask for a duel.

The jury consists of a completely drunk Count Kether, Ambrose, and the always eccentric Lord Krueger. After a brief discussion they decided that it shall be a duel to the blood. The duel is then scheduled for the final day of the party.  Travis is chosen as Victor’s second, something his mother insisted.  Tabitha, Travis’s wife, is chosen as Gregor’s second as she was late in arriving and Gregor asked her before she knew he had The Thorn.

As the guests all retired to their beds that night, Morgana stumbled across a body in a corridor.

End of session.

* 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

Once again, it seems your arrival heralds an escalation in The Great Game. I’m not sure what prompted you to leave Alleria, but your presence at the parties is always… a welcome sight. You know how I feel about swimming alone with these sharks.

The entrance and mingling was frightfully dull this year, which was a welcome change from last year’s reception when our noble Count Vrein embarrassed me publicly upon our entrance. Do you remember?

The Countess was most impressed with ‘our’ gift of the dress. The other vassals, Ambrose and Morgana didn’t present anything worth noting. Niassa, however, presented a gift I can’t remember but the Countess was enthralled with it. The rest of the gift presentation was uneventful and droll, though Countess Jasmin did invite me to sit at her side on the main table.

There was a bit of an incident before dinner. I pulled her chair, as is custom, for her to sit and it caught on her dress, ripping it from her body. As the servants escorted her from the dais, her son Victor (do you remember him? He was betrothed to Lady Niassa before it was broken off for whatever reason) accused me of embarrassing his mother. I taught the dullard a lesson in insults, though, so no dishonor came to me.

The remainder of dinner passed without incident, though I did hear some interesting gossip about Lady Niassa’s sister and Lord Victor being intimately involved (more on this to come!). Lady Niassa is a barbed rose. Watch your step around that one.

After dinner, the annual rose ceremony commenced. I thought I was a major contender for the Red Rose, the ultimate symbol of romance at the spring party, but Lord Ambrose found it first (and under the chair that ruined Lady Jasmin’s dress, no less!) and gave it to the young Marquess Stacia.

I thought for sure Lady Niassa, who found The Thorn would give me that prize (do you remember the oaf that won The Thorn last year? Nobody spoke to that oaf for the rest of the party!), but during my hunt I spotted Lord Gregor, Lady Niassa’s husband intimately engaged with Lady Delia (Lady Niassa’s sister and Lord Victor’s betrothed!). After Lord Victor told Lord Gregor he was taking him to Jury over the matter, Lady Niassa gave him The Black Thorn. What an exciting first couple hours!

It was at this point that you showed up, dear. Lord Victor has chosen me as his second, and Lord Gregor, shunned pariah of the party asked the only person at the party who did not yet know of his shame: you.

Your Devoted Husband,
Travis

* Brant from the Trap Cast joins us.

* How would you survive the zombie apocalypse?

* Survivalist games and a discussion about horror

Core Players refer to the group that makes the vast majority of games.  Cameo Players refer to those who only make the occasional game.

Given the nature of the game, I’m also laying down some requirements and encouragements of how we’ll be playing.  Here’s the list.

1. Read the book. Part of the fun of the game is emulating Ven culture and to do that you’ve got to know the basics.  Since the game allows you to basically define culture and rules as you like, it helps if we all start on the same page. Plus the PDF is only five bucks and is awesome in so many ways.

2. Maturity.  I think we’re all aware of just how goofy things get when we get going (ERIC NO!).  This game gives you enough narrative control to really make the game a goof-fest.  While that’s all well and good, I’d like to tone of this to be relatively serious.  As such, using wagers or Style to do things like making tons of people gay or graphically dictating the arousal state of others is going to be considered Bad Form.  Really, this falls under the “Don’t Be A Wanker” rule in the book, but I thought I’d be explicit.

3. We’ll be using the full rules from the book so you’re going to need to manage your Domain.  We’ll be handling most of that via email, I imagine.  Cameo Players will not be expected to maintain their Domains, but may certainly do so if they wish.  Each player must keep an Action Log that documents how each Season Action was spent.

4. Character Backgrounds are required by the third game a player attends.  Backgrounds should be a few paragraphs long, at most.  Remember to just hit the high points and leave a lot of room to be filled in during play.  Both you and other players are going to be able to dictate facts about your character, so keep that in mind. These will be posted on the blog.

5. Every character will need to have their Three Things done at character creation so they can share with everyone. These will also be posted on the blog.

6. Core Players are required to submit an in-character post to this blog at least once between each game session. This should take the form of a letter, diary entry, poem, song, or anything else that the group would deem cool.  The post should at least make reference to the events of the most recent session.  Additional posts are also encouraged to let the player explore their characters lives not covered during gaming sessions, like exploring their Domain and the like.  Proper maintenance of the blog earns Style. Really impressive use of the blog may earn greater rewards.

7. Additional player contributions are highly encouraged. Art, music, maps, etc. will all earn Style.

8. This is a Friendly Game.  That means all secrets and plotting is out in the open.  Remember, your character is there to be messed with. Revel in it.  All players know all other player’s compels at the start of the game.  Invokes and Tags must be learned through Cunning risks, as usual.

9.  Cameo Player Quick-Start.  If you’re jumping into your first game you don’t need to do full character creation if you don’t have time. We’ll likely have a few characters ready to be played.

10. NPCs.  Whenver you turn a vassal into an NPC, the GM will create the NPC.  The player may state the Three Things about the NPC for free.  Any additional details will cost Style.

* 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

* 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

* 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