Origins Special: Morgan's Fate Rant #1

Bill and I spend 45 minutes or so talking about Classic Traveller.  The focus of the episode is on how players make sense of clues and other information provided by the GM and how this contributes both to an adventure as well as adding detail to the imaginary world of the characters. 

Here is a look at the data file we were trying to make sense of:

Welcome to the next episode!  Bill and I have been playing some Classic Traveller on Roll 20 so this episode is an excerpt of play of two from a recent game.  We talk about Bill's penchant for mini-games inside the game as well as the balance between quick improvisation versus more detailed decisions.  The episode clocks in at approximately 25 minutes.  Thanks for listening!

At Total Con 35, which had an espionage focus, I ran a hack of TSR's Top Secret:  New World Order.  My goal was to run it in the style of TV's Mission: Impossible.  I wanted to include the briefing scene, a preview of the mission, and then the mission itself.  This meant the characters should start the mission knowing what is going on and what they have to do.  It was a bit rough but Bill and I discuss how to make it better.  The episode runs at approximately 40 minutes.  If you're interested, here is the mission the characters received at the start of the game (you'll have to imagine the accompanying images):

Greetings, Agent. 

This man is Orest Doroshenko, a physicist with the Ukrainian National Academy of Science.  Doroshenko’s wife and two children were killed in the accidental downing of Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752 by Iranian air defense forces. 

We have learned that through the black market, Doroshenko has acquired a radiological thermal generator formerly used to power automated lighthouses on the northern coast of the erstwhile Soviet Union.  If removed from its lead casing, the strontium 90 powering the generator poses a hazard to any exposed to its radiation.  Reliable sources indicate that Doroshenko has smuggled the generator into Iran and intends to use the strontium 90 material as a component in a radiation dispersion device, or dirty bomb.  In addition to immediate and long-term casualties, such an act would almost certainly lead to retaliatory acts and war in the region and beyond.  We cannot let that happen.  We also cannot let the radiological material fall into Iranian hands because the head of Iranian secret intelligence, General Jamshid Rostami, has strong links to known terrorist organizations acting against our interests in the region. Your mission is to prevent Doroshenko from carrying out his plan and ensuring that the radiological material does not fall into Iranian hands.  As always, should you be caught or killed, the Secretariat will disavow any knowledge of your actions.  Good luck. 

Welcome back to Virtual Play!  Bill and I take a close look at an encounter in a Dungeon Crawl Classics game.  It involves an encounter with undead in a bath house that has since become a tomb!  It's a game I ran but Bill has some great insights into how I could have ran it better!  The episode clocks in at approximately 55 minutes.  Enjoy the show! 

Happy New Year!  I hope you are all as well as can be.  Thanks for sticking around for more episodes.  In our inaugural podcast of 2021, Bill and I talk about gaming from the last year or so.  It has been a while!  But we plan to get back regularly with more excerpts from games, whether played online or face-to-face.  This show is approximately 30 minutes.  In a deviation from our normal format, there are no excerpts in this episode but we'll have some next time!  Enjoy the show!

Mel

Bill and I are in the last night of Metatopia 2018.  We're excited about the result of our playtest of Dying is Easy.  In many ways, the evolution of Dying is Easy over the past two Metatopias and particularly this weekend shows how Metatopia helps designers finish their games.  Have a listen!  

Mel

Bill and are continue our Metatopia special episodes with a discussion about and excerpt from a game Bill wrote called "the Indie Scene".  The game will be a chapter in Bill's book on the Forge, which was an online discussion forum for RPG design, publication and play.  
Mel

Bill and I are at Day 1 of Metatopia, the Game Design Festival in Morristown NJ.  We briefly discuss the games we are here to playtest, including an excerpt from a moment of play in a game that inspired our thinking about the design of one of those games.  The excerpt is from a game in development by E. Tage Larsen called "Roughhouse", featuring the voices of dutiful listener Jim Crocker and Eric's friend, Dave.

Mel

Welcome to Virtual Play!  Bill and I discuss a GM workshop we conducted at Gencon.  The format was the participants played characters in an adventuring party, with rotating GM duties.  The workshops were planned by Will Hindmarch at Demystics but when Will couldn't make it, we were privileged to fill in for a couple of sessions.  Here's the result.  The episode clocks in at just under one hour. 
Mel 

We talk about Bill running his adventure for Pelgrane Press's Trail of Cthulhu, "The Big Hoodoo," where 1950s sci-fi writers like Bob Heinlein and Isaac Asimov confront a Mythos mystery in sun-drenched California. We try to figure out why the players seemed so bemused by the plethora of clues at their disposal. We identify adventure design and game-running issues that may help other GMs run their mystery games. The episode is about 45 minutes long.