This year’s Gencon was so great, we will have to do two episodes to cover it all. In this episode, we bring RPPR regular Caleb to discuss his first impressions of the con and the games he ran and played in. We all talk about the newest games we picked up and Tom discusses the game he ran and other things he did.

I also interviewed George Strayton, creator of The Secret Fire, a new fantasy RPG. It’s a short interview but I added in place of Tom’s letter. He discusses the design philosophy behind the game, his background as a screenwriter and more.

Shout outs

Panopticon: The newest Eclipse Phase supplement.
Zombie Spaceship Wasteland: A hilarious book by Patton Oswalt.
Old School Hack: Awesome free rules-light RPG and gold Ennie winner.
Delta Green Gencon Panel: Listen to the informative Delta Green/Unspeakable Oath panel recorded at this Gencon.
Cthulhu Invictus: Cthulhu in ancient Rome. A winning combination!

Song: Zombie by Anssi 8000 and Maria Stereo

News: Vote for Monsters and Other Childish Things: Road Trip (Cubicle 7/Arc Dream Publishing) in the best adventure category. Be sure to vote it as #1!

Zombies of the World products now have free US shipping. Order your copy today. 🙂

Synopsis: THIS IS A NSFW EPISODE. Tom remembered a horribly boring dungeon crawl campaign he suffered from in his youth. He wanted to take the cliches he saw in that game and make them actually fun. So, we discuss how to take cliches like traps, prisoners and treasure in dungeons and make them new and exciting. Also, because we are horrible, horrible monsters we read another excerpt from the rpg.net FATAL review. Also, Tom was too busy to write a letter. Be sure to let him know that you like his letters. Maybe he’ll grace us with a letter again. Maybe.

Shout outs:

Song: Good Days and Cliches by Nevernoodz

 

Zombies of the World is now available in print, PDF and Kindle format!

My book, Road Trip, has been nominated for an Ennie!

Synopsis: Bildungsroman is a fancy way of describing the ‘youth to adulthood’ genre – stories like “to Kill a Mockingbird” where the character grows from a child to become an adult or closer to an adult. Role playing games are often like these stories – characters grow from being relatively weak and naive to eventually becoming epic badasses of destiny. However, many game systems do not encourage character growth – advancement is slow, ponderous and mechanically difficult. Furthermore, most campaigns are relatively short – interrupted or abandoned for myriad reasons. If you want players to grow at a faster pace, what should you do? How is mechanical growth different from role playing growth? Tom and I discuss these issues and more. Plus, instead of a letter, Tom and I read an excerpt from the infamous rpg.net review of FATAL. It’s definitely NSFW.

Shout outs

Promo: Explodey File podcast. 

Song: Growing up and Getting out by Adam Boucher.