Email from Mark Tasaka

Hi Sean,

I would like to wish you a respectful and honourable Memorial Day.  I would also like to thank you and all of the veterans for your service to your country (I believe you served overseas in Germany as part of an Army artillery unit).

As well, I just want to let you know I recently wrote a new Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure and have mentioned the Gaming and BS podcast in the acknowledgments.  I have sent some copies for you and Brett (plus some extras for your friends).  The DriveThruRPG order was dispatched last week, and I am hoping that you will receive it sometime this week.

Please let me know if you do not receive the books in the next couple of weeks.  I’ll follow up with DriveThruRPG.

Please keep up the excellent work you are doing with your podcast!

Sincerely,

Mark

Ray Otus comments on his topic Expecting Too Much from RPG’s

First of all, I laughed pretty loud when @Sean jokingly told me to fuck off. I loved that. I certainly don’t want to be the sad sack that makes everyone depressed about their RPG love!

I think you all did a good job with the topic and hit a lot of perspectives. Certainly, when I wrote that post I needed balance and it had nothing to do with not having fun. I AM having fun with RPGs. Maybe too much fun. I discovered that I was using them to escape other things in life that needed my attention and when I felt down about RPGs it was more about guilt – the guilt of disappearing too much into the RPG hole and not spending a proper amount of time working hard, taking care of my physical health, relating to friends and family, and so on. So … the point. Sometimes you need balance EVEN WHEN you are having a good time with RPGs.

I play three times a week and love my groups, but for a well-rounded life (for me at least) I need to put my energy into other things too. I know @Fafhrd hunts. And I know – now – how much @Sean loves making risotto. So I know you guys know what I’m talking about! :smiley:

Blake Ryan on streaming and recording rpg’s

I’ve ran about 50 sessions online, most available on youtoobz

One thing I like to do is I can screen share location pictures, large scale maps and npc portraits (usually famous people in sepia) to give fuel to the theatre of the mind, condiments to shared meal you might say.

Most of my games have been with The Gauntlet, where rule questions are generally typed into chat so verbal is mostly in-character. Everybody mutes themselves unless they are talking to remove excess audio clutter. Spotlight is shifted often to keep people engaged, and bio-breaks every 60-90 minutes is standard.

I am massively in favor of recording games and I shall tell you why – during the 90s i played and ran hundreds of games, like 2-4 a week. Some of them were great fun, some of them were a goddamned trainwreck, but they are really starting to blur thanks to the distance of time.

But with youtube etc, you can go back and watch the stories you created, learn from the lessons, and laugh at the bizarre situations that evolved. Even stuff that happened 2 years ago I can rewatch and go wow i’d forgotten that, that game was a cracker!