Episode 52 of The Gauntlet Podcast is out today! Here is the breakdown:

Episode 52 of The Gauntlet Podcast is out today! Here is the breakdown:

Episode 52 of The Gauntlet Podcast is out today! Here is the breakdown:

Play List

Various flavors of Pandemic talk (00:50)

2nd session of Scott Owen’s Mass Effect Worlds playtest (06:39)

Michael Prescott’s Circle of Wolves (11:57)

Star Wars Risk (16:24)

Feeling better about Monster of the Week (21:17)

Further exploring the lack of an Interfere move in Monster of the Week (24:46)

clash bowley’s High Strung (28:09)

Marc Majcher’s Fluffy Bunny Tea Party (33:36)

Masks RPG (38:47)

Community Feedback

Inspirations for role playing in other mediums (a follow-up discussion from Jason’s The White Ribbon post) (43:58)

Using the lingo of comic books (45:32)

Picnic at Hanging Rock (48:26)

Victorian novels, Disney characters, and other ways of informing characterization (52:35)

Our Play Aids folder (54:54)

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByS4_7KbXro_UjhDSEtNbm0zRUU&usp=sharing

Quick mention of Tor’s posts about playing games with his kid (56:13)

http://gauntletpodcast.libsyn.com/episode-52-big-ups

26 thoughts on “Episode 52 of The Gauntlet Podcast is out today! Here is the breakdown:”

  9. Sorry for all the laughter this week everyone; you can’t see my co-hosts’ facial expressions, but I assure you those guys are cut ups :)

  10. Sorry for all the laughter this week everyone; you can’t see my co-hosts’ facial expressions, but I assure you those guys are cut ups :)

  11. Mole Princess is the best!

    I would not put Dread in the same category as say Primetime Adventures when it comes to needing to know the medium. You need an understanding of how a TV series works to really enjoy PTA and a shared language of comic ideas helps with Masks. But Dread provides the tension by the mechanics and it can serve to tell a scary story without the need to communicate it in terms of the genre. I know a few players who enjoy horror rpg but do not enjoy watching horror films. From what they told me by being part of telling the story and it just staying in their imagination they can keep it all at an enjoyable level, while horror films often are too much for them or provide the wrong kind of scares. I think the willingness to go in for a scary or creepy story is enough to play most horror rpgs, without the need of genre language available to all players. I think it might even work better in some cases if you do not rely on shared references in descriptions.

    The difference I think is that some rpgs want to emulate a specific genre or even transfer a different medium to the table. A lot of pbta games go for genre emulation, which is something the system does really well. PTA does it for sure. But other games are more about bringing a certain mood or kind of story to the roleplaying medium and telling within that framework. I would put Dread closer into that camp.

    I think it can result in different stance too. In PTA you think about your character as a character in a show and often make descisions that are as much about what would make them work in that context than how they would act out of the situation.

  12. Mole Princess is the best!

    I would not put Dread in the same category as say Primetime Adventures when it comes to needing to know the medium. You need an understanding of how a TV series works to really enjoy PTA and a shared language of comic ideas helps with Masks. But Dread provides the tension by the mechanics and it can serve to tell a scary story without the need to communicate it in terms of the genre. I know a few players who enjoy horror rpg but do not enjoy watching horror films. From what they told me by being part of telling the story and it just staying in their imagination they can keep it all at an enjoyable level, while horror films often are too much for them or provide the wrong kind of scares. I think the willingness to go in for a scary or creepy story is enough to play most horror rpgs, without the need of genre language available to all players. I think it might even work better in some cases if you do not rely on shared references in descriptions.

    The difference I think is that some rpgs want to emulate a specific genre or even transfer a different medium to the table. A lot of pbta games go for genre emulation, which is something the system does really well. PTA does it for sure. But other games are more about bringing a certain mood or kind of story to the roleplaying medium and telling within that framework. I would put Dread closer into that camp.

    I think it can result in different stance too. In PTA you think about your character as a character in a show and often make descisions that are as much about what would make them work in that context than how they would act out of the situation.

  13. As a Melbournian I can vouch for Hanging Rock as a genuinely beautiful yet somehow odd place (an easy place to get lost), and Picnic at Hanging Rock as an alright film.

  14. As a Melbournian I can vouch for Hanging Rock as a genuinely beautiful yet somehow odd place (an easy place to get lost), and Picnic at Hanging Rock as an alright film.

  15. FYI, I thought the “what’s fun about it?” question re: High Strung was slightly unfair, though maybe it was a planned interview question posed to give Richard Rogers an opportunity to advocate for the game. After all, we roll dice instead of actually swinging swords too. Why should rolling dice to rock out on a guitar or sing lead vocals be any less fun or more abstracted? I think one thing that could have been emphasized more is the dream-crushing cycle inherent in the game, and that clash bowley is probably more qualified, as a one time rocker, to write this game than any other he has penned. The contrast between your hopes as a character/band and the potential to miss the mark, mechanically, has a very cool, almost Lovecraftian sanity mechanic, vibe to it. 🙂

  16. FYI, I thought the “what’s fun about it?” question re: High Strung was slightly unfair, though maybe it was a planned interview question posed to give Richard Rogers an opportunity to advocate for the game. After all, we roll dice instead of actually swinging swords too. Why should rolling dice to rock out on a guitar or sing lead vocals be any less fun or more abstracted? I think one thing that could have been emphasized more is the dream-crushing cycle inherent in the game, and that clash bowley is probably more qualified, as a one time rocker, to write this game than any other he has penned. The contrast between your hopes as a character/band and the potential to miss the mark, mechanically, has a very cool, almost Lovecraftian sanity mechanic, vibe to it. 🙂

  21. We played a second session of it last night, tried out the Song Creation mechanics. 

    The two-shot of High Strung ended really well. I had lots of fun running it, and I feel like I could do better with the system next time around.

  22. We played a second session of it last night, tried out the Song Creation mechanics. 

    The two-shot of High Strung ended really well. I had lots of fun running it, and I feel like I could do better with the system next time around.

  23. Ray Otus I suppose I don’t think of the “fairness” of a question if it comes from honest inquiry. The question wasn’t staged; I knew nothing about the game other than what Rich had just said.  While some people enjoy the mechanical aspects of games, that’s not a particular area of interest for me and after hearing about the “statistics” I was honestly wondering where the fun was.  Just as it was an honest question, it was also an unloaded one; I really wanted to hear more about the game to understand what made people like it 🙂  Hearing about losing “hope” and other aspects of the game that Rich then expanded on gave me a better picture of why people enjoy it.

  24. Ray Otus I suppose I don’t think of the “fairness” of a question if it comes from honest inquiry. The question wasn’t staged; I knew nothing about the game other than what Rich had just said.  While some people enjoy the mechanical aspects of games, that’s not a particular area of interest for me and after hearing about the “statistics” I was honestly wondering where the fun was.  Just as it was an honest question, it was also an unloaded one; I really wanted to hear more about the game to understand what made people like it 🙂  Hearing about losing “hope” and other aspects of the game that Rich then expanded on gave me a better picture of why people enjoy it.

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