If you are a fan of our Actual Play episodes, head over to the brand new RPPR Actual Play Podcast. It will feature a new AP episode every single week! We’ve already got over 11 hours of Call of Cthulhu ready for download. Don’t forget to comment on the episodes or post about them in our forums if you enjoy them.
As you might have realized, it’s been a while since we’ve done an episode. I’ve had to move, get the Goblin Hulk PDF out and set up the new podcast feed. Fortunately, the Goblin Hulk has already gotten some good reviews, so if you haven’t, be sure to check it out. But all is now well so we can go back to the basics: gaming advice, shout outs and Tom bitching about the announcer voice. In this episode, we focus on improving a game by talking about NPCs who aren’t enemies or quest-givers. Many GMs forget to include this type of NPC, thinking of only the bare essentials in their game, but a great game needs NPCs who just do their own thing. I also go over some game design advice as described by Jordan Mechner which relates to the discussion. We also have several anecdotes, a rant about the POS movie 2012 and more!
Shout outs:
- Creature Feature: The Greatest Show Unearthed – horror rock music that Tom approves of.
- Eisenhorn: A Warhammer 40k sci-fi action pulp novel trilogy. Very slick, bad-ass fiction.
- E-collapse: A new superhero RPG put out by Greg Stolze. Postmodern ideologies and super-science.
- Hobocon: If you are curious about Gencon, check this documentary about it. Interesting but flawed.
- Time Travel T-shirt: A very useful t-shirt.
- L4D2: The bestest vidya game ever. My Xbox Live gamertag is Clockworkjoe13
- The Room: The bestest movie ever. WATCH IT.
- Black Dynamite: The most super-bad outta sight movie ever.
Music: The Quest by David Cyr
Promo: Swing and A Miss Podcast.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:22:01 — 75.1MB)
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Good show, gave me alot of ideas for a DnD game and on some changes that I make to current games.
Tell me Ross: how heavily did you drink before this episode? The belching, the petty muttering occationally, the rambling, you are hilarious.
So Ross do you play L4D2 on the computer or the xbox?
Oops didn’t notice the shownotes. Xbox it is then.
I wouldn’t worry about your announcer voice – you should England’s real ones. Big Brother has some Gordie twonk who sounds like he’s had a stroke from too much newkie brown.
I love the proper episodes. The actual plays are good, but I’m all AP’d out from listening to the RPGMP3.com stuff.
You really need to drop the ‘announcer voice’ gimmick. It comes up nearly every episode, and it stopped being funny or amusing after take #3. But it’s an unnecessary 3 minutes tacked on to 60+ minutes of episode, and you guys go off on tangents fairly often anyway, so I guess it doesn’t detract too much.
It’s still overdone though.
I love the announcer voice “gimmick.” During the intro of the APs this voice is absent, which draws attention to the times when you introduce the episodes.
It is nostalgic and funny, it doesn’t detract from the content of the episodes and it does a good job of setting the tone. I hate the voice itself but each time Tom tells Ross. to STFU I grin and feel blessed because I know that the episode is sure to be full of insight and humor.
Keep it up guys.
A helpful listener would shut the fuck up and not rock the boat. Ross and Tom can do whatever they want because it is their fucking show.
Somebody’s a little touchy about criticism directed at their favorite podcast, I see. Look man, you’re right that Tom and Ross can do whatever they want – it’s pretty obvious and goes without saying. What I’m presenting here is a valid criticism to what is still an enjoyable show. If people didn’t “rock the boat” every now and then, we’d have a lot more complacency and less progress in our world. Get over yourself and let the hosts of the show make decisions for themselves, eh chief?
Arthur: I’m with you on the ‘setting the tone’ point, but I think there are better ways to do it. Announce Voice comic relief has worked in earlier episodes, but you can do that same without, once again, repeating the same gimmick. Know what I mean?
Creature Feature is a great find. They remind me of MSI with a horror twist. Thanks Tom. Keep up the music suggestions if you can!