Jason Cordova – Page 138 – The Gauntlet G+ Archives

If you enjoy the podcast, it would be really terrific if you wrote a five-star review on iTunes.

If you enjoy the podcast, it would be really terrific if you wrote a five-star review on iTunes. BONUS: Any five-star reviews received by March 30th will be read on that week’s episode in the accent of the author’s choice. However, you must creatively work the name of the country/region whose accent you want us to do into the body of the review.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gauntlet-podcast/id951113347?mt=2

A reminder for all the Houston children: Wednesday One-Shots makes its glorious return tonight at Jax, from 7pm to…

A reminder for all the Houston children: Wednesday One-Shots makes its glorious return tonight at Jax, from 7pm to 10pm. The main table will be Grant Howitt’s Havoc Brigade. The spillover table will be Marshall Miller’s Nanoworld: A Game of Clones.

There is no RSVP cap. Everyone is welcome!

http://www.meetup.com/gauntlet-rpg/events/221083156/

This has been a pretty excellent week of gaming.

This has been a pretty excellent week of gaming. Today we played Matt Snyder’s 44: A Game of Automatic Fear. This is the second time The Gauntlet has played this one, and it does not disappoint. I suspect we’ll discuss it on Friday’s podcast, but for now just know 44 is basically Invasion of the Body Snatchers RPG.

Thanks to David LaFreniere Ferrell Riley and Steve Mains for letting me turn them into robots!

Do yourself a favor and play The Society of Dreamers by candlelight.

Do yourself a favor and play The Society of Dreamers by candlelight. Last night, Friday the 13th, was the second time The Gauntlet has done so (the first time was last Halloween), and it was incredible. The game already does a terrific job of making you feel like you are investigating a creepy, Lovecraftian mystery (about a hundred times better than CoC does), and the effect is magnified when you’re playing in the dark.

Thanks to Daniel Lewis Ferrell Riley and Steve Mains for joining the strange, unsettling journey last night.

Episode 11 of the podcast landed this morning.

Episode 11 of the podcast landed this morning. I have to imagine some listeners will disagree with our point of view on this week’s topic, which is secrets at the table. That’s great! Post your feedback here. We can’t wait to hear it.

http://gauntletpodcast.libsyn.com/size/2

If the Oculus Rift’s first game isn’t just a beautifully-rendered Troy Baker whispering dirty things to me in…

If the Oculus Rift’s first game isn’t just a beautifully-rendered Troy Baker whispering dirty things to me in different character voices, I’m definitely not going to purchase it.

http://www.polygon.com/features/2015/3/12/8193433/troy-baker-shadow-of-mordor-the-last-of-us

An update on the Meetup calendar…I’m not very happy with how Wednesdays are going since I transitioned it to…

An update on the Meetup calendar…I’m not very happy with how Wednesdays are going since I transitioned it to campaign-length games. It turns out Wednesday is a very tough day to get a consistent group of people on a week-to-week basis. Also, I kind of miss the flexibility and spontaneity of our old Wednesday One-shots format. We’ll be switching back to that.

As a result of this podcast project we’ve been doing these last few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about criticism…

As a result of this podcast project we’ve been doing these last few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about criticism and its role in the hobby.

Something we struggle with a lot on the podcast is this question of “Who the fuck are we to say what is good and what is bad?” None of us have designed a role playing game, much less published one. Very few of us participate in gaming communities outside of The Gauntlet. And Dan and I are almost stridently opposed to gaming at conventions, meaning we have very few opportunities to interact with the gaming community outside of our little tower.

This may strike many of you as odd, but I don’t even consider myself a gamer.

And yet our community plays lots of different games. Is that enough to justify a critical approach to the hobby? Maybe. It would certainly be easier if we were playing trad games, because those are products that have hundreds of paws on them, and are published by huge, faceless companies. But indie games are different. They are often the work of a single person, and therefore a little closer to something like art. Are we being unfair when we level criticism at something that someone labored over for a lot of hours, and that probably doesn’t stand to make the author much money? Should our perspective change when we consider the games of people like Jason Morningstar or Fred Hicks, who have found a lot of success in the indie game scene?

Yesterday, after Black Stars Rise, we were pondering the podcast and its role in the hobby. We kind of landed on “Who the fuck are we?” and that’s a little depressing.