GamingPerspectives

Episode 299: Stealing the Spotlight, Gaming Perspectives with Saul and Jolene

     There have been times that a certain player at your table took charge of the table or maybe was the leader at the table.  Heck back in the ole Days, there was a player who was, "the Caller".  It was their job to talk to the GM and tell the GM what the players were doing.  It was a way to speed up game play.  Saul once played in a game where they took this idea to heart and only The Caller would talk to the GM. The Caller could even countermand what the player had told the Caller what they wanted to do.  Needless to say Saul never went back to the game club.        Games these days have become more collaborative, there is more player agency.  There is also the idea of making sure all players get in on the fun.  Making sure all players have input in the game at your table.  This has been called sharing the Spotlight.  Where every player and their character gets a chance to shine.  But what if a player is taking more than their share of the Spotlight.       Saul and Jolene discussed why this happens and what can be done about it after reading a reddit post by a new GM having this problem.  After a lengthy discussion, Saul and Jolene decided to do an episode on Stealing the Spotlight.       
    Thank you all for Listening     Web Art by Jim Foster     Episode Art by Michael Shean-Jones
    Music by Tanay Jackson, song In the SpotLight,  off the album Tanay    Available from Tribeofnoise.com    Used Under the Creative Commons License 3.0    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Episode 298: Time Travel RPGs, Gaming Perspectives with Saul and Jolene

        Saul and Jolene recieved an email from a listener Morgan who had some suggestion for episode topics.  Thanks Morgan!  One of the topics was Time Travel RPGs.  Saul and Jolene thought it was a good topic and discussed several TV shows that had time travel episodes or where about time travel.   They came up with way too many shows to discuss, so Saul picked his top 4 shows.        Then the discussion began about what if any RPGs were about time travel.  Saul looked on RPG.net and was surprised at the number of RPGs published in this genre.  Saul played in one time travel game called Time Watch by Kevin Kulp.  Saul and Jolene had to discuss Jolene's favorite shows, Star Trek and Dr. Who both of which have RPGs.    Thank you all for Listening     Web Art by Jim Foster     Episode Art by Michael Shean-Jones
    Music by Julian Child's Band, song Time Machine,  off the album Opus    Available from Tribeofnoise.com   Used Under the Creative Commons License 3.0   https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Bonus Episode: Interview with David G from Kublacon, Gaming Perspectives with Saul and Jolene

     In this episode Saul and Jolene interview David Gabriel of Producer of Kublacon Conventions.  Kublacon is the SF Bay Area Largest gaming convention that takes place over Memorial Weekend.  But this year they are putting on Kublacon Fall Veteran's Weekend.  It will be the first year this event is happening.  So if you want to ease your way into a Kublacon, this is the way to do it.  The following prices have a Tabletop events fees of a couple dollars.  A Weekend Pass is 40 bucks for the whole Friday to Monday convention.  GMs only have to run a four hour game and they get a GM pass for 16 dollars and those in the Military and Veterans get for basically free plus the service feel for Tabletop Events website.       Saul and Jolene have been attending  Kublacon since 2001 the first year they put it on and it has only grown and grown from a few hundred attendees to over 3,600 attendees post Covid.  Those are some impressive numbers.  Saul and Jolene talked to David about his gaming roots and how he became involved in putting on one of the best game cons around.  With the amount of work that it takes to put on a show is this caliber and size, why put on another show?       If at all interested in attending or helping put on Kublacon Fall follow the following link to get all the information you need to volunteer or attend the show.   https://kublacon.com/     
    Thank you all for Listening   
     Web Art by Jim Foster     Episode Art by Michael Shean-Jones

Episode 297: Confused Players, Gaming Perspectives with Saul and Jolene

          Saul and Jolene were discussing mystery shows and came across a reddit post.  The post was from a GM complaining about how his players are not getting all his clues that would point the PCs toward the Big Bad Guy.  The GM was lamenting how much work he had been doing on the campaign.  The GM had made maps, developed numerous NPCs, many of which had informaton that they could give the PCs only if they questions those NPCs.      Many others posted some advice about what may be going on but most of the advice feel on deaf ears as the posting GM insisted that the players were the confused ones.     Jolene and Saul started talking about his post and the GM who was really perturbed at the players who were not "figuring out" the plot of the campaign.   Saul knew exactly what was going on since he had been in the shoes of that GM.  Saul and Jolene discuss what could be done to prevent from becoming that type of GM.
    Thank you all for Listening     Web Art by Jim Foster     Episode Art by Michael Shean-Jones
    Music by Solxis, song Confused Life,  off the album Dance, Dance, Dance.    Available from Tribeofnoise.com  Used Under the Creative Commons License 4.0  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Episode 296: Generational RPGs, Gaming Perspectives with Saul and Jolene

     Saul and Jolene were talking about long campaigns.  The discussion lead to games were character played gernerations of a character.   I was thinking how many generations one could play and what RPGs make it part of their system or setting.     The first game that came to mind was Pendragon.  A friend of mine ran the Great Pendragon Campaign for some fellow gamers.  That GM runs games where "Death is On the Table" according to him.  Which to me means he is a no holds barred GM and if the dice goes against the players he does not pull any punches.  He even posted the games online.  I also talked to a player in that game that was on his 5th character due to his very heroic play style.         Jolene asked if D&D could be a generational game and I thought well I am sure it could be.  Other games had rules to play generations of a character.  Some games neither Saul or Jolene had ever heard of them but sounded interesting.  Thus this episode was born.            Thank you all for Listening     Web Art by Jim Foster     Episode Art by Michael Shean-Jones
    Music Burn Down the Charade, song Lost Generation, off the album              Revelations  and Revolutions    Available from Tribeofnoise.com    Used Under the Creative Commons License 3.0    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Interview of Dave and Matt of the Effekt Podcast, Gaming Perspectives with Saul and Jolene

     Bonus Episode, an interview of Dave and Matthew from the Effekt of podcast.  Saul and Jolene interview the very likeable chaps from the UK.  Not only do they have a very successful podcast called the Effekt podcast which mainly deals with Swedish RPGs but they discuss all kinds of RPG topics.   They also have been working on a gritty, Western RPG called Tales of the Old West using a version of Free League's Year Zero system.  Their Kickstarter will launch in early September.
    They have a very well done quickstart guide they call their Quick Draw guide.  You can find it here:
    https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/480951/tales-of-the-old-west-quickdraw
    Please check out their KS pre-launch page to sign up to get notified as soon as the Kickstarter launches in early September.
    Here is the Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/effekt/tales-of-the-old-west
     If you want to check out the Actual Play of Tales of the Old West:
https://www.effektap.org/
      For the regular Effekt podcast here is the link:
https://www.effektpodcast.org/
 
   As Always Thanks for Listening
    Thank you all for Listening     Web Art by Jim Foster     Episode Art by Michael Shean-Jones
 

Episode 295: Sanity in RPGs, Gaming Perspectives with Saul and Jolene

         Saul and Jolene were discussing the Sanity stat in CoC and if any other RPGs used some sort of Sanity stat in games.      That lead to Saul and Jolene to think of other games where the mental conditon of the character was kept track.    What seemed like would be a short list of games became longer and longer.  It seemed that quite a few games    included a way of determining the mental state of the character.         This surprised both Saul and Jolene.  They game used many different ways of decribing and dealing with the    mental state of the character but depending on the genre and emphasis of game.  Saul and Jolene decided to    devote an episode to the subject.      Thank you all for Listening     Web Art by Jim Foster     Episode Art by Michael Shean-Jones
    Music by Nick Andrew, song Sanity    Available from Tribeofnoise.com Used Under the Creative Commons License 3.0  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Episode 294: Mechanics Vs Setting, Gaming Perspectives with Saul and Jolene

     This episode came about when Saul was reading Reddit Posts and came across the question of what was more important in a RPG, Mechanics or Setting.  Saul noticed many posts that sided with the idea that it was "mechanics" that was more important one of the two.  A few chose setting but they were largely outnumbered by those that thought mechanics were  more important in RPGs.     Saul brought this up with Jolene and after a lengthy discussion they decided to do an episode on this subject.          Thank you all for Listening     
     Web Art by Jim Foster     Episode Art by Michael Shean-Jones
   
      Music by Reno Project,  song System.      Available from Tribeofnoise.com
      Used Under the Creative Commons License 3.0      https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Episode 293: Non Violent Encounters, Gaming Perspectives with Saul and Jolene

Jolene read a post from a father of three young daughters who he wanted to run a roleplaying game for but one daughter was very adverse to combat and violence.  Jolene talked to Saul about the post and they discussed the various games they had run for very young and new RPGers.   When their son was young, Saul regularly ran games at local con for kids.  From D&D to Gamma World,  Saul ran "kids" games at con for several years.  Jolene has run games for her son and his friends at home.  She also has run games at local Northern California game cons.         Though Saul ran more traditional RPGs for Kids at local Cons he has toned down the violence and used alternatives to combat in many of his kids and adult games.  From their discussion of how they ran games for kids and the Reddit Posting dad's predicament they decided to do an episode on the subject.
    Thank you all for Listening     Web Art by Jim Foster     Episode Art by Michael Shean-Jones
    Music by Roland Zimmerman, song  Peacable Milieu    Available from Tribeofnoise.com    Used Under the Creative Commons License 3.0    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Episode 292: Planning in RPGs, Gaming Perspectives with Saul and Jolene

     Saul and Jolene have run and been in various RPGs where planning took place from the simple to the complex.   Saul and Jolene were talking about why certain RPG games, adventures and players tend make plans to deal with situations in RPGs.
     From games like Shandowrun and Cyberpunk to good ole D&D gamers make plans.  Some games players are just inclined to make complex plans such as Shadowrun, Twilight 2000 and others.  These games where players plan also tend to be very lethal.  After their discussion Saul and Jolene decided to do this episode.         Thank you all for Listening     Web Art by Jim Foster     Episode Art by Michael Shean-Jones
 
    Music by Max Miecchi, song Plan B, off the album Album d Max    Available from Tribeofnoise.com    Used Under the Creative Commons License 4.0    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/