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Pure vintage RPPRNews: Actual Play fans can rejoice! RPPR B-Sides provides early access to archived and unaired AP episodes that will NEVER make the AP podcast. Check out RPPR B-Sides to learn more. In other news, we’ve redesigned Role Playing Public Radio and will eventually get to RPPR Actual Play. The design is not 100% final, so there may be tweaks here and there.

Also, Base Raiders is still in production.

Finally, the Know Evil Fan Creation Contest ended, so check out this post on the RPPR forums to see who won! We would like to thank everyone who entered but we only had 5 posters to give away.

Synopsis: Mixing genres in games (like fantasy and horror) can be fun but it can also turn your game into a mess. Tom and I discuss how we approach genre mashups and what kind of pitfalls we have learned to avoid. Tom provides examples of his own campaigns and I pontificate like the published author (and horrible monster) that I am. You know, the usual stuff we do for episodes.

Instead of a letter, I give an extended review of Grimoires, an excellent history of books of magic and how real life books of magic can be great game fodder for many kinds of role playing games. As an example, check out the Sixth and Seventh Book of Moses. It’s a public domain grimoire so feel free to use parts of it as a handout for your next horror game or whatever.

Finally we have shout outs and an anecdote, as always!

Shout Outs:

Song: Creepy Doll by Jonathan Coulton

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:28:10 — 60.6MB)

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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:

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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There is trouble in Bethlehem….

Thousands of crows have taken roost in the woods surrounding Bethlehem, NH, mercilessly attacking anyone who tries to enter the forest. The human population is outnumbered more than ten-to-one, and the birds are growing more bold every day. Can the investigators solve the mystery behind this unnatural infestation? Can they save the town of Bethlehem from a disaster of biblical proportions?

Murder of Crows contains everything a Call of Cthulhu group needs for an evening’s worth of Mythos-inspired fun, including pregenerated characters. It is the first in an innovative new series of Call of Cthulhu scenarios and supplements from Super Genius Games.

This scenario was recorded at ShaunCon, so it’s a bit noisy. Fortunately our Zoom H2 recorder managed to get most of the voices of the players fialry well.

Keeper: Jon Hook

Buy the scenario at RPG Now

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 4:12:40 — 144.6MB)

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