Music: Can’t Judge a Book by Robin Sylar
Promos: Bearswarm Podcast, Nuketown Radio and the Game Traveler

Hosted by Ross Payton and Tom Church

New: RPPR Donations
We now accept donations to cover the cost of hosting and equipment for our podcast. If you’re a fan of RPPR, contribute. You can set up a $2 monthly subscription fee or donate a one time fee. Contact us if you’re interested in sponsoring an episode of RPPR.

Synopsis:
Gamers should broaden their horizons on occasion. To that end, we each picked five books or types of printed media that can do just that and we discuss how to implement each title’s content. These apply to both player and GM, as a clever player can get great character concept ideas or tactics for the game while GMs get a treasure trove of game material. ‘

Tom has updated the classic poem “Casey at Bat” with the Palladium RPG, Rifts, in mind. Plus, shout outs and an anecdote. Find out the conclusion of an 8 month WW2 GURPS campaign where I was a player for once!

My Top Five

1. Storyteller by Kate Wilhelm
2. Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker
3. Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales
4. Mythologies by Roland Barthes
5. How to Make War by James Dunnigan / Howdunit by Lee Lofland / Bulfinch’s Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch

Tom’s Top Five

1. Newspapers
2. Punisher Comics - current MAX run by Garth Ennis
3. City Tour Guides
4. Zoology Books
5. Janes Military Guides

Shout Outs
Mount & Blade: An excellent indie PC game of medieval combat and adventure. Players create an adventurer, raise an army of soldiers and rampage across the country side, battling whatever foes stand in your way. Virtually no plot, minimal RPG character development, but great action and it’s tremendously fun to run down dozens of peasants with a heavily armed knight on horseback.

Wrongside: A comic of politics, intrigue, genocide, and fashion right out of the Final Fantasy school of design. Also, furries.

Dwarf Fortress: An ASCII graphic strategy/simulation game that puts you in control of seven dwarves and a wagon in a randomly generated world. The object being of course, to build a fortress. Of course, dwarves are strange little creatures and subject to strange whims and bad luck. That and Dwarf Fortress is a staggeringly complex game that keeps track of every dwarf’s emotional state, fluid mechanics and erosion, among other things. It is in fact, INSANE. Play it…if you dare.

BOATMURDERED: The saga of a Dwarf Fortress run by a succession of emperors. Marvel at the cleverness of Project DOOM (it involves channeling magma), tremble at the exploits of murderous legendary elephants and weep at the sad fate that befalls the inhabitants of BOATMURDERED. BOATMURDERED is, was and ever shall be the most brutal of all fortresses in all of fantasy.

F-117 Flight Simulator: A DOS era flight simulator. Tom really really really hates Saddam era Iraq and likes to blow it up. So, uh, there you go.

Oh and Iron Man. The movie. I’m not going to link it. Fuck that noise. It’s a fun movie but come on. It’s got like a 50 million dollar advertising budget.

Read below the fold for Tom’s entire Casey at Bat
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 RPPR Episode 14: The Top Ten Books You Never Knew You Needed [77:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted by Ross at 6:03pm
Tags: advice, boatmurdered, books, casey at bat, dwarf fortress, gaming, mount and blade, palladium, rifts, top ten, wrongside
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Song: Just Like Bruce Campbell Did by Joe Hero
Promo: Sinister Adventures

Hosted by Ross Payton and Tom Church
Special Guest: Aaron Carsten

Check out our new Forums and Twitter Feed!

Synopsis:
After discussing some listener feedback, with a special defense of the Sluggy Freelance web comic by Aaron Carstein, we decided to challenge each other’s game design skills with a 24 hour contest, similar to Game Chef. Each of us came up with 7 game elements that the other host would have to come up with a game or scenario that would incorporate all seven elements. As our game ‘ingredients’ ranged from the Ural Mountains to pacifism, we both came up with some twisted stuff. Take a listen and voice your opinion on the superior creation with our brand new forums! No letter from Tom this week due to a hard drive failure but we got a good anecdote and of course, shout outs.

Shout Outs:

• Darken: A D&D web comic of a group of evil adventurers being, well, evil. Not stereotypical ‘I am going to tie this woman to the railroad tracks’ but more of a ‘I am a selfish bastard who really only cares about himself and I will do whatever it takes to survive.’ A breath of fresh air when compared to the typical goody-good heroic adventures that populate D&D themed works.
• Minus: A brilliant fantasy web comic of a little girl with godlike powers who uses them for her own amusement. A modern day Little Nemo in Wonderland with a touch of the Twilight Zone.
• Wonderella: Superhero themed comedy doesn’t get much better than Wonderella.
• The Secret Life of Elevators: A man gets stuck in an elevator for 41 hours. No, it’s not a joke. It’s an essay on elevators, life, and the existential dread that hangs over our heads. A great read.
• F-22 Raptor: A flight sim where you can drop a nuclear bomb on a city. This is a good thing.
• Lichcraft: An Oblivion mod adding new adventures and the ability to become a lich. If you play Oblivion on the PC, you should get it.
• Pyramid Head: Another Oblivion mod. Put Pyramid Head in the game. Because you know, those other demons and monsters in the game? Total pussies. You want Pyramid Head. You NEED Pyramid Head.

 

 RPPR Episode 13: The Awesome Action Packed Alliterative Adventure [58:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted by Ross at 1:14am
Tags: contest, game chef, game design, iron DM, mutants and masterminds, oblivion, web comics, writing
1 Comment »

Guests:
Jaime Paglia - Creator/Executive Producers of Eureka
Bruce Miller - Co-Executive Producer of Eureka
Eric Wallace - Staff writer
Nick Wauters - Staff writer

Hosted and moderated by Diana Botsford

Synopsis:
I was lucky enough to attend a special voice chat interview with several of the minds behind the sci-fi TV show Eureka. My screenwriting professor, Diana Botsford moderated the interview but many of her students asked questions about the show, screenwriting and the creative process, breaking into the entertainment industry and new media, among other things. The audio quality isn’t perfect, but everyone is audible. If you’re interested in how a television show is written or how writers get their start, find out here.

Read more about the guests below the fold.

there’s more to this entry »

 

 Interview with the Eureka writers [63:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted by Ross at 11:30pm
Tags: advice, Eureka, Interview, media, sci-fi, screenwriting, television, tv, writing
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Opening music: I’m Dungeons You’re Dragons by the Alligators

Hosted by Ross Payton and Tom Church

Promos: Rpgpodcasts.com and The Tome Podcast

Brand new: Join the RPPR Facebook group!

Synopsis:
Sooner or later, your favorite game is going to become old and tired. The players will read every sourcebook, the GM will run every written adventure for it and what was once new and exciting becomes cliched and tired. How do you make an old game that everyone knows new? We discuss several ways to freshen things up and what to avoid when remixing the game.

Shout Outs:
Viking Fighting: A viking martial arts school. Tactical warhammer classes, anyone?
The Abominable Charles Christopher: A brilliantly drawn and written web comic following the adventures of a simple minded yeti and the other inhabitants of the forest. A must read.
Sluggy Freelance: A mediocre web comic with generic art, below average writing, static characters that haven’t changed in over 10 years and an overly convoluted plot that requires reading the entire 10 year backstory to make sense.

Click below to see Tom meeting Henry Rollins
there’s more to this entry »

 

 RPPR Episode 12: Everything Old is New Again [54:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted by Ross at 5:56pm
Tags: advice, D&D, henry rollins, viking, web comic
6 Comments »

We now have an official email address for people to contact us. If you want to talk to us directly, send an email to rpprpodcast@gmail.com and let us know what you think. Please send all anecdotes to this address, although we will keep reading any messages received on our myspace account.

Posted by Ross at 12:51am
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Hosted by Ross Payton and Tom Church
Music: A tribute to Mozart by Steffe Coonan
Promo: The Escapist Podcast

Synopsis:
Gary Gygax passed away on March 4 2008. His legacy is the foundation of role playing games as we know them. While we are not old school players who were there in the golden age of D&D, we both felt Mr. Gygax’s hand in our games. The adversarial competition between DM and the players, the ‘kick the doors down and slit their throats’ style of dungeon crawling. We talk about the generational differences in gamers and Gary’s many contributions to popular culture. You can see his influence in video games, new media and much more. This is not a solemn tribute as we both thought that Gary would want a lively upbeat discussion.

Shout outs:
Neverwinter Nights 2: An excellent 3rd edition D&D computer game with more features and gameplay than you can shake a dead orc at.


Dieselboy’s Dungeon Master Guide: An incredible drum & bass album, perfect for fast paced battles when running your own D&D game.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: A sadistic computer game. Described perfectly in this thread:

there’s more to this entry »

 

 RPPR Episode 11: Dungeon crawl from Here to Eternity [39:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted by Ross at 1:23am
10 Comments »

Sean Jaffe
Interview by Ross Payton

Synopsis: Back in Episode 4, we gave a shout out to Blood Dimmed Tides, an excellent Old World of Darkness sourcebook for the oceans. One of the book’s writers, Sean Jaffe, popped in to thank us. From there, I contacted him to find out more about the creation of the book and Sean’s other adventures in the gaming industry. This is our first Interview and my audio is too low but Sean is clearly audible. Enjoy.

 

 RPPR Interview with Sean Jaffe [60:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Posted by Ross at 5:06pm
5 Comments »