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Ah, just curious. Also, I really like six feat under and I'm wondering if anyone knows any other good roleplaying podcast out there.
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Dec 8, 2014 08:30
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One Shot is pretty good and has had Ironicus from 6FU on it a couple times.
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Dec 8, 2014 08:36
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If you're not just looking for actual plays, I've recently been enjoying my way through System Mastery.
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Dec 8, 2014 08:42
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Mr. Maltose posted:One Shot is pretty good and has had Ironicus from 6FU on it a couple times. Oh yeah, I listened to them before. Forgot about them. I listened to their pathfinder session it was pretty tight. They actually used the broken magic system to make the story more interesting with their best pal. Plague of Hats posted:If you're not just looking for actual plays, I've recently been enjoying my way through System Mastery. Oh yeah, I follow those guys too. They're pretty funny. Did you hear their one on Continuum?
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Dec 8, 2014 08:43
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Covok posted:Also, I really like six feat under and I'm wondering if anyone knows any other good roleplaying podcast out there. I was half-hoping you were talking about the old HBO TV show here until I finished reading this sentence.
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Dec 8, 2014 08:47
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Covok posted:Oh yeah, I follow those guys too. They're pretty funny. Did you hear their one on Continuum? Yep, that one and Haven...City of Violence are pretty great.
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Dec 8, 2014 08:49
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Gasperkun posted:I was half-hoping you were talking about the old HBO TV show here until I finished reading this sentence. That would have required me to be able to afford HBO. Plague of Hats posted:Yep, that one and Haven...City of Violence are pretty great. Yeah, it was pretty cool about hearing about little known systems. It's like F&F with less active involvement on my part.
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Dec 8, 2014 09:06
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Yo good timing because I was just going to come in and ask if anyone else listens to Friends At The Table. It's a pretty good Dungeon World game. Their audio is a little rough in the first couple episodes but it gets better.
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Dec 8, 2014 09:26
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Nobody has mentioned RPPR yet and that makes me sad. They are just dandy for Actual Plays, and it's run by local goon ClockworkJoe! Edit: "What do you do when the exterminator is late?"
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Dec 8, 2014 15:50
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SageNytell posted:Nobody has mentioned RPPR yet and that makes me sad. They are just dandy for Actual Plays, and it's run by local goon ClockworkJoe! I put that on during chargen for CthulhuTech. 
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Dec 8, 2014 16:37
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SageNytell posted:Nobody has mentioned RPPR yet and that makes me sad. They are just dandy for Actual Plays, and it's run by local goon ClockworkJoe! Seconding love for RPPR. I just finished their Iron Heroes campaign last month and it was incredible.
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Dec 8, 2014 16:40
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My favourite actual play podcast is Fandible. They mostly do more traditional RPGs with a focus on creating a story and memorable characters -- also lots of jokes, many of which are pretty funny. As a group they don't really seem to enjoy mechanics that try to engage directly with the narrative beyond like... "use a point to make something happen," though (I really don't recommend their one attempt at playing Dungeon World). Fandible updates with a new episode every Friday pretty much like clockwork. Their Shadowrun campaign is pretty great, and it's only on its third session, if you want something to sort of check them out.
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Dec 8, 2014 17:15
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Is there any other good RPG review / discussion podcasts other than System Mastery? I admit I usually don't have the patience for play podcasts, but I like hearing about games I may have missed.
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Dec 8, 2014 18:10
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I doubt it; as it is there's not a lot of real "reviewing" of RPGs outside of RPGNet or the stuff on DriveThru.
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Dec 8, 2014 18:34
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Not reviews, but I can confidently recommend Ken And Robin Talk About Stuff for your listening needs (and not just because I got name-checked on an episode a few weeks ago).
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Dec 8, 2014 18:37
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What's a good way to go about starting a blog and getting readers? A guy I know writes one but it's steadily getting shittier and shittier with him just posting ads for new games coming out to get free stuff. I'm about to hopefully graduate college and have free time again so I could potentially write things on my own. There's a good chance it's just going to end up a goon project and never happen but I'm not sure where to even begin.
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Dec 8, 2014 18:54
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Be prepared to stick with it for a gently caress of a long time. You will start with barely any readers, no matter how you advertise, and it will take ages to build them up. Despite this, post good content regularly, preferably even on a schedule. Don't get lazy and go 'eh well I've only got a couple readers I can skip a week' or else you'll get into a vicious circle of bad habits. Also, it's kind of sad, but in today's internet be prepared for most of your traffic to be people who look at it, reblog it, and move on. I used to keep some blogs going on a couple different topics but what killed my enjoyment was seeing fewer and fewer people ready to actually discuss things. e: This sounds kind of dire and I really didn't mean to be such a downer. Sorry! Just keep the content coming and don't expect to be an immediate internet star, that's the important part.
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Dec 8, 2014 19:04
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Len posted:What's a good way to go about starting a blog and getting readers? A guy I know writes one but it's steadily getting shittier and shittier with him just posting ads for new games coming out to get free stuff. I'm about to hopefully graduate college and have free time again so I could potentially write things on my own. There's a good chance it's just going to end up a goon project and never happen but I'm not sure where to even begin. I think the best bets for making a good, modestly popular blog (apart from writing well, obviously) are: 1) Consistency. Update regularly, probably at least once a week. 2) Team up with someone. Mix up content both to improve audience draw and lighten the load.
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Dec 8, 2014 19:07
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I think the best way to build a blog audience is to be zen and don't worry about your audience. Write for yourself, write everyday, link to other blogs like a good blog citizen, and don't worry about your traffic numbers. If you're good, and consistent, you stand a good chance of finding an audience. In short: write a blog because you feel the need to express your thoughts, not because you need to reach a big audience. If the audience shows up, hey, bonus.
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Dec 8, 2014 19:12
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Thanks for the advice. Me and a couple friends have been kicking around the idea for awhile. If it happens we'll definitely be teaming up since we all have different preferred fields. Would you guys suggest jumping in with cheap hosting or would just using blogspot be okay?
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Dec 8, 2014 19:27
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this is incredibly badass in the nerdiest possible way
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Dec 8, 2014 19:30
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Len posted:Would you guys suggest jumping in with cheap hosting or would just using blogspot be okay? At the very least, get a domain and redirect it to the blog. It'll make your URL look nicer.
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Dec 8, 2014 20:03
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My favorite RPG podcast is the The Walking Eye. They play one game for around four sessions and then have a review. They also discuss gaming issues and some bits of game design. Unfortunately, they seem to be on a bit of a hiatus but the back catalog is worth looking into. The In A Wicked Age or the first Dungeon World stuff would be a good place to start.
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Dec 8, 2014 20:24
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BrainParasite posted:My favorite RPG podcast is the The Walking Eye. They play one game for around four sessions and then have a review. They also discuss gaming issues and some bits of game design. Unfortunately, they seem to be on a bit of a hiatus but the back catalog is worth looking into. The In A Wicked Age or the first Dungeon World stuff would be a good place to start. I thought their review of Numenera was really honest, and they had a couple of good generic discussions like Gaming Commandments and Geek Social Fallacies, and they were even willing to revisit and revise their review of Dungeon World, but I had to turn off their DnD Next episode something like 5 minutes in because it was just 4E-was-a-videogame grog right off the bat.
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Dec 8, 2014 20:34
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Covok posted:Ah, just curious. We really like you too.
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Dec 9, 2014 00:50
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My Brother, My Brother, and Me did a one-off episode where they played D&D with their dad a while ago and they just spun it off into a bimonthly podcast called The Adventure Zone. The first episode is a bit rough because there's a lot of rule checking, but the second episode is smoother. Waffleman_ fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 02:44
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Since FMguru beat me to the Ken & Robin mention (and really, listen to Ken & Robin Talk About Stuff, it's great), I'll throw The Jank Cast in for consideration. Their topic-of-the-week episodes tend to be weightier material handled thoughtfully and in depth, like the old Sons of Kryos or The Walking Eye, but it's their Actual Plays that really shine. They're good roleplayers in general, and the Jank Cast seems almost unique in that they take their games seriously without joking around too much at the table, so when they play games like Monsterhearts and Dream Askew they don't come off as a bunch of giggling teenagers. Their two-part Apocalypse World campaign, Leviathan / Black Diamond, is incredible. Also, Joe sounds dreamy and I want him to GM all the things 
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Dec 9, 2014 03:42
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ravenkult posted:It's always been boring as hell. Nobody really wants to play themselves in an RPG because most people are either boring or don't want to reveal their darkest secrets at the table. So while playing a vampire hunter or something, you can come up with an alcoholic dude who killed both his kids in a car accident and is also a detective, but ''John, the GameStop guy'' isn't really that interesting in play. Lichtenstein posted:I'm not sure whether it involved statting oneselves or not in the end (sadly I couldn't attend that particular game), but a fellow goon did a hilarious campy take on "Escape from New York" based on an infamous district of a city we live in. The argument about how playing yourself is sad/stupid has certainly come up before when I relentlessly pushed this topic, and like, I certainly understand it in theory. Real people are not pulp heroes, wizards, starship pilots, what have you. But even the people in our gaming group who struggle with clinical depression can get behind the absurd power fantasy of starting with "a realistic you" and blasting off in absurd directions from there. It is not that hard to handwave something even vaguely verisimilitudinous to get the campaign going, either--when I ran a supposed-to-be-one-shot play-yourselves game that the players ended up begging to turn into a campaign, I narrated a break where they were throw in prison for the better part of a year in-game, gave them a few sessions' worth of experience, and said "OK, now go!" But Kai Tave's point is well-taken; about half of my usual gaming group was one of the following: gun nut/survivalist, real-life-jack-of-all-trades, or actually-charismatic local quasi-celebrity, so it was never implausible that a group including some of these people could help the others get up to speed in a poo poo-hit-the-fan scenario. DocBubonic posted:Could someone explain why roleplaying yourself would be fun? I spend most of my week being myself and when I game I want to be something else.  Davin Valkri posted:Is there any sort of setting where "play as yourself!" could work well? I mean, zombies and aliens are probably bad at it, but would something like Golden Sky Stories or Do: Monks of the Flying Temple adapt well to that sort of play? Games where you could ask something like "here's a fantastic problem, how would you use what you yourself know to solve it," I mean. ProfessorCirno posted:The real trick is to go full escapist fantasy. Stat some cool hero types. At the start of the game, you play yourselves. Then A Thing Happens and you become those cool hero types (while still also being yourselves). The thing that I feel people overlook for the appeal of crossover games is the instant character backstory interconnectedness--you do not have to force a reason for your characters to know each other, or try to figure out why you would work as a team, or be annoyed that someone else is obviously playing the "huge secret background" character. You start from a position of truly knowing and appreciating the other "characters" in the group, and it is fascinating how many directions that can go depending on the feel of the campaign. The same two guys who were basically the inseparable compatible superhero team in Villains & Vigilantes were basically at each other's throats all the time in Call of Cthulhu, all because one of them played up his natural disdain for technology and the other one played up his natural obsession with technology and it became a beautiful battle of hyperparaoia versus normal paranoia. nobody is reading this dude stop Dr. Quarex fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 05:07
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Quarex posted:I JUST DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE HATE AHHHHHHH but I still love all of you Well, another point is that some of us make have physical conditions that make, say, surviving through an apocalypse difficult or untenable. Not "oh, I'm out of shape and don't have firing calluses", but more "well, without modern medicine aiding my condition, my timer starts... now." Obviously that can be ignored or worked around to an extent, and that may be the least of one's issues in a disaster, but there are problems with self-play that can be unique to playing oneself, or that might hit too close to home. Then, does one self-idealize to ignore that issue or remain true? I don't have an answer, and obviously the situation would be different if everybody becomes psychics or the like, but it's something to consider regarding self-play games, especially if they're being published.
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Dec 9, 2014 05:28
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Well, another point is that some of us make have physical conditions that make, say, surviving through an apocalypse difficult or untenable. Not "oh, I'm out of shape and don't have firing calluses", but more "well, without modern medicine aiding my condition, my timer starts... now." Obviously that can be ignored or worked around to an extent, and that may be the least of one's issues in a disaster, but there are problems with self-play that can be unique to playing oneself, or that might hit too close to home. Then, does one self-idealize to ignore that issue or remain true? The only role-playing supplement I ever planned to actually write was sort of inbetween Fantasy Flight Games' "Zombie Apocalypse" and "Wrath of the Gods" releases, as I had great success running games with "turns out many of your friends and acquaintances have been sleeper agents of a cult for years" as a hook, but obviously even if it needed to be written before it certainly does not need to be now.
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Dec 9, 2014 05:39
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The thing where you RP yourselves and <thing goes down> can be fun as hell if the person running the game starts asking questions like "Dave, when <thing went down>, which of your latent magical powers did it activate?" and "Shelly, what's the secret thing you've been building in your shed and how is it going to help?" Roleplaying as myself in a party of my friends in an apocalypse scenario would be boring (and short). Roleplaying myself with mutant powers in a party of my friends who are now wizards and robots in an apocalypse scenario sounds like a fun (if stupid) game.
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Dec 9, 2014 05:39
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Quarex posted:Pretty much this. My group has played crossovers in these systems that I can recall: Champions, Villains & Vigilantes, Homebrew System Based On Heroclix(!), 3rd Edition, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds, and uhh I think they played a brief Rotted Capes crossover since I moved (edit: I was reminded to add Jumpers and Fuzzy Hero). I am not going to say that there is a system in there that would necessarily change any of the doubters' minds about the concept, but surely either a superhero system or Call of Cthulhu, depending, would appeal--where you can instantly stop being yourself and be Mythical Yourself or where you are going to die no matter what kind of character you are, so why not be you? Okay, but at this point I'm not really "playing myself," I'm playing an idealized version of myself. And not even an actual idealized version of myself either, because my ideal self doesn't have superpowers or a zombie-killing katana, my ideal self is me but independently wealthy and maybe with a better work ethic. So right away the entire concept falls apart for me because I'm playing a fictionalized version of myself that isn't even all that germane to the sorts of things I daydream about being. I don't have a zombie survival plan, I don't imagine what it would be like to have superpowers...maybe I'm the most boring nerd ever or maybe I simply possess an overabundance of self-consciousness, but the whole thing is a bit too "self-insert fanfiction" for me to completely get over.
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Dec 9, 2014 06:28
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AlphaDog posted:The thing where you RP yourselves and <thing goes down> can be fun as hell if the person running the game starts asking questions like "Dave, when <thing went down>, which of your latent magical powers did it activate?" and "Shelly, what's the secret thing you've been building in your shed and how is it going to help?" Yeah, a few guys at my FLGS were playing a supers game like that and it really sounded like the way to do it.
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Dec 9, 2014 06:54
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I think it's another way to approach the trope of "characters start off as weak shitfarmers, but then graduate to being epic heroes by the end of the campaign", as contrasted to "characters are already capable and competent heroes, but become even more powerful as you go on" A play-as-yourself game seems like it'd be fairly discouraging if you just stayed yourself, but if you defined yourself as a, say, 50 or 75-point GURPS character and gained another 20-30 points per session you could definitely go somewhere with it by the end.
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Dec 9, 2014 06:55
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I don't understand what part of "playing as an idealized version of yourself" is not "playing as yourself." I mean, B⊆A. Seriously.
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Dec 9, 2014 08:09
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Zurui posted:I don't understand what part of "playing as an idealized version of yourself" is not "playing as yourself." I mean, B⊆A. Seriously. Because I don't have superpowers and even by the most generous stretching of the imagination I don't possess a fraction of the sorts of skills and affinities that your typical RPG protagonist is assumed to have on hand. Adding those things to an expy of myself is perfectly possible, but at that point what is it I'm gaining by pretending that the superpowered, adventure-capable character that bears increasingly little resemblance to the person sitting at the table is actually me? Let alone the fact that my first reaction to "you're sitting around the gaming table when suddenly you hear an explosion nearby! What do you do?" would, in all likelihood, be "look outside the window to see what's going on, maybe call 911," not "band together with my gaming group and form a mystery solving team," and I'm pretty sure that holds true for the people I've gamed with over the years as well. Which means even sans superpowers the premise of these scenarios seems to hinge on you playing "yourself," but a "yourself" that responds to things in Default RPG Protagonist mode instead of, y'know, how you'd actually react to horrifying disasters and apocalypse scenarios. I'm not trying to knock anyone who has fun playing games that way, more power to'em seriously, but to me it highlights how unsuited most actual people are for insertion into your typical RPG framework when the apparently ideal way to make it work is "give everybody superpowers and do the opposite of what you'd normally do."
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Dec 9, 2014 08:37
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The only time I've played a "stat up yourselves" game, the premise was "you have to kill everyone else in the room right now" and it was a blast. I think I got one kill and one grievous, life-threatening wounding before being gutted with broken window glass.
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Dec 9, 2014 09:05
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I could see playing myself in an RPG being fun. If it was run in a system where there were lots of applications for knowledge skills it'd also allow me to fulfill my wildest fantasy: actually getting some use out of my English degree.
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Dec 9, 2014 09:21
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Kai Tave posted:Because I don't have superpowers and even by the most generous stretching of the imagination I don't possess a fraction of the sorts of skills and affinities that your typical RPG protagonist is assumed to have on hand. Adding those things to an expy of myself is perfectly possible, but at that point what is it I'm gaining by pretending that the superpowered, adventure-capable character that bears increasingly little resemblance to the person sitting at the table is actually me? You guys keep throwing the term "typical RPG protagonist" around and I'm confused. Do you mean that you can't see yourself as the protagonist in a story, or that you can't see yourself donning a costume of some sort and facing villains/monsters/existential threats to humanity? I just don't see how you can pigeonhole yourself as "not an RPG character" when there are as many sorts of RPG player characters as there are stars in the sky. Really, it's about accepting genre conventions. If you're playing a noir game and a beautiful woman walks into your life and needs someone to solve a mystery, you don't just go "well, I don't have the requisite ranks in Mystery Solving for that." You go and try to solve the loving mystery. If it's the zombie apocalypse then you grab a shotgun and an axe and fight your way out of the city. If you're bitten by a radioactive duck and gain immunity to water and flight, then you go save people.
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Dec 9, 2014 09:24
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Zurui posted:You guys keep throwing the term "typical RPG protagonist" around and I'm confused. 99.99% of all roleplaying games out there broadly assume a certain type of character, generally rootless adventurers with skillsets that the average tabletop gamer, in all likelihood, doesn't possess, often including (but not limited to) extreme violence, skullduggery, criminal activity of all sorts, military training, professional medical training, vehicle handling, highly unrealistic computer hacking, extreme athletics, demolitions, social engineering, investigation, and/or spycraft, and that's not getting into really weird poo poo like magic. How many wildly successful RPGs are there about out of shape IT guys, unemployed college students, and office drones? I mean you can easily do that poo poo in a number of games but how often do people actually do that, as a rule, as opposed to essentially your typical D&D party? How many games robustly support those sorts of characters as opposed to murderhobos? I could see myself as the protagonist in a story, just not the story that the majority of RPGs are set up to tell. "The story of a guy in his 30s considering maybe going back to college" is absolutely a story that could be told and maybe even be interesting but it's not one most RPGs are interested in facilitating the telling of and it's not, if I'm honest, one I'm especially interested in playing because I'm already living it. All this "play yourself in a game" stuff just seems to be a way to layer the typical RPG "adventures and violence" play over a character that superficially resembles you after that layering is done. If genre conventions rule all and the idea is that these self-characters should just fall into line and go through the motions hitting all the tropes along the way then, again, what's the fundamental point of "playing yourself?" Because that's, to me at least, very clearly not "yourself" at that point, it's "you as some kind of self-aware RPG protagonist" and the whole exercise seems kind of weird having to constantly be thinking "okay what would I do, only not me exactly but, like, a fictional character version of me that behaves like an RPG character?"
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Dec 9, 2014 09:56
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