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RPGs / I Podcast Magic Missile

« on: June 04, 2015, 09:53:06 PM »

I've recently been looking for other AP sites, so I have something to listen to between RPPR releases (yes, I have an AP problem, enough said).

I discovered a site called "I Podcast Magic Missile". Has anyone else ever heard of/listened to them?

The IPMM group has a stupid name and a website with really, really bad layout and organization. But the APs they've posted are unlike anything I've ever heard before. They play a lot of Apocalypse World and other games with the AW engine. Like RPPR, they are one of the few AP podcasts where the players actually sound like they're having fun, and where they're also telling an engaging story for the audience. They also play characters that make Bartleby look like a saint, and they deal with topics that would certainly make me and probably most people I've gamed with too uncomfortable to keep playing. I'd describe it more, but it might be better to listen and see for yourself. I've listened to Sunktown, a couple of their one-offs, and I'm halfway through their New Sodom campaign. New Sodom is the best one I've listened to so far, although I almost gave up around episode 2 or 3 because of just how dark it got (and, again, I've liked pretty much everything to come out of RPPR). I'd love to see what this group could do with anything written by Caleb - I guess No Security would be the obvious choice, but "A Perfect Murder" is much more their style.

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Role Playing Public Radio Podcast / Dying to know - is "Sunset of the King" one big Nabokov reference?

« on: November 26, 2014, 03:35:38 AM »

I've been wondering about this for awhile, and now I have to ask.

Even before the players decided to film the King's country in Russia, "Sunset of the King" felt like it might be getting to Carcosa by way of Nabokov, particularly his novel Pale Fire. By the end, I felt like it couldn't be a coincidence.

Consider this:

"Sunset" involves a strange old man hiring a crew to make a film about a king who lives in luxury and doesn't realize what a bad ruler he is until the revolution comes. Then he escapes the country and crosses the ocean, eventually finding personal truths in the new country that he can use as a weapon to reclaim the old. The old country has vague resemblances to many others, but is no country in particular. The strange old man uses enchanted mirrors as gateways, and the film even includes an assassin stalking the King, but killing someone else.

Pale Fire involves a strange middle-aged man explaining that he is the last king of a fictional country that has vague resemblances to many others. He once lived in luxury and didn't see the revolution coming. After the revolution, he escapes to America (an extended sequence, just like the strange old man asked the film crew to make, although not one with a car chase and machine guns), where he is hunted by an assassin who kills someone else instead. At the end of the novel, the king suggests that he may try to make a film that dramatizes his life and escape, to be called Escape from Zembla. Oh, and mirrors show up in significant places, but not nearly as much as in, say, Borges, who I know also influences Ross's architectural horror games. And the king is probably just a madman who thinks he's a king, Carcosa-style.

There are also a number of weird parallels that crop up which I know Ross can't have planned, so I'm not going to mention them.