004 ‘Role’ Play It Again Sam

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GMs overusing the same concepts, schticks and being predictable in rpgs. Players playing the same character. How did you get in hobby? – vote! Gumshoe, 5E, and NewGameapalooza. Check out Darktheatre.net/llc.

Episode 4 Show Outline

Announcements

Darktheatre will be pushing out an update to their Character Folio app at the end of the year (Dec) www.darktheatre.net/llc/

Random Encounter

Poll Results!  We asked folks how they got into gaming and this is what an untold number of people reported:

  • A friend of mine – 5/33.5%
  • Found on my own – 5/33.5
  • Relative other than sibling (mom, dad, uncle cousin) – 4/27
  • Sibling introduced me to them – 1/7

Sean & Brett talk about how they got into RPG’s.

Topic of Discussion – Overused Tropes, Images, Concepts, etc

  • What have we used one too many times that we can no longer use with our regular gaming groups?
    • Brett – dead babies, evil cults, NPCs who start as friends who turn on the players, crushing any PCs loved ones to make them squirm, “You all meet in a tavern”
    • Sean – gain pc’s trust, turn on them
  • Is it really bad to be “that predictable” sometimes? Does anything good come of it?
    • How do players start to react to what they know is coming?
  • How do you make the old and overused new again?
    • New twists to the old such as:
      • Change setting and/or genre
      • Get the players in on the action
  • What about players and not changing it up?
    • Same cake, different frosting
    • Allow players play what they want

Die Roll 

Brett

  1. Gumshoe – the best Investigation system out there (http://www.pelgranepress.com/)
  2. Held my kick off game with my group – brief bit on how it went.
  3. D&D 5e – I think I can hold out until the DMG hits and then I’ll cave.

Sean

  1. Northeast Wisconsin Gameapalooza (aka Oshcon) Oct 10-12 at UW-O http://newgameapalooza.com/
  2. Movie – Fury, opens Oct 14. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2713180/
  3. Our opinions of gaming in this podcast – reply to the ‘you’re doing it wrong’ crowd
  4. Kicking off a new game on 10/10

003 Player Character Death in Roleplaying Games

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Player character death in rpgs! How do you handle it? Doesn’t it contribute to the story? Leave us review on iTunes. Our first listener email – Thanks Zave! Brett would make a bad dwarf, buys a sword, and preps for new game. Ben Gerber games 24 hrs straight for charity, sponsor his effort. Shout outs to Michael Althauser for spreading the word on G+ and David Reichgeld for helping with our logo. Many thanks!

Thanks for downloading and supporting the podcast. We appreciate the social interacting, because that’s the root of gaming.

Read more003 Player Character Death in Roleplaying Games

002 Metagaming in RPGs

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Metagaming in rpgs! We talk about posting on Google+ and how some people seem to spam their info all over the place. Once the banter is over, we get to metagaming, which was originally spurred from our first episode. We define it in our own terms – essentially player knowledge and manipulating the game through your character within the roleplaying game. Some players will even stipulate that they are talking OOC or ‘out of character’. However, you may allow metagaming to some degree in your game. One example is if there is a scene with a single player character and there are multiple players making suggestions on what to do. This could be the inner voices speaking to the character and mimicking inner turmoil.

What are your thoughts on ‘metagaming’?

Announcements

Email address: gamingandbs@gmail.com send us your comments, questions, suggestions, feedback.

Poll on the website. Meant to mention that last episode, mentioned poll but not what it was.

Monster Manual – released to FLGS’s just this past Friday, Sept 19th.

DMG – Delayed 3 weeks with release date being Dec 9th. Quote Mike Mearls “We added an entire additional cycle of design and editing to ensure that the books were as close to perfect as humanly possible. The layout and visual design was the result of hours spent carefully handcrafting the books. That extra time proved to be a huge boon, as the designers had the chance to go through each book page by page to make sure everything fit perfectly.”

Random Encounter

Brett bitches about G+ posts that link to a blog post that is just as long as the G+ post

What are we playing or planning?

  • Brett – My world of Avalon using OSRIC  as the base system with DCC mighty deeds, Rolemaster crit charts, and Gumshoe investigation
  • Sean – Playing FFG Star Wars Edge of the Empire – he’s a diplomat who’s the “talky talk” guy of the party, if the SW GM doesn’t show he runs 5e

Die Roll

Brett

  1. Bow hunting tonight – owls and moving silently in the woods
  2. Need one last motorcycle ride before the snow hit
  3. Camping and gaming – next weekend with my boys

Sean

  1. Google+ for gaming!
  2. Roll20  – reaches 600000 users
  3. Frank Mentzer – was guest of honor at Paizo con

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Next Episode

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