Podcasts about rpging

Artificial Intelligence is a polarizing topic these days. From Skynet-style flights of fancy to the very real implications for content creators, it's an evolving technology that isn't going away anytime soon. But free from worrying about profiting off of others' work, using AI at the game table can help provide you with a set of tools and a pair of hands that can help lift the sometimes heavy and time-consuming duties of a DM. In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down to discuss how they've started implementing AI into their toolbox, mainly through getting into some good old-fashioned “lonely fun” in some solo-RPGing. For anyone who has thought how AI might effect your games or your DMing, this is the episode for you.3:00 DM Chris gives the background for turning ChatGPT into a DM for a solo campaign from his previous article, and then he and Tony discuss their solo campaigns they've been playing in.9:35 Just like any game, you know what your character has and does more than the DM – real or virtual.11:45 The concept of “Lonely Fun.”12:46 Our experiences with solo TTRPGs, like Mythic, and how tools like ChatGPT can enhance that experience.16:30 AI as a tool to craft something you need quickly – DM Tony's Inn.18:00 Using AI to assist in being another “DM” to bounce ideas off of and to test your prototypes: DM Dave's new campaign that mixes WEG Star Wars RPG and Firefly: The Board Game.24:40 Our tangent into the missing Ninja class.27:37 The difference between solo gaming and party gaming. In a solo campaign, you're the star of the show.32:00 Running a solo campaign is a great way to learn how a new system works.35:25 Final Thoughts.

The Tavern Watch crew are back with another TTRPG podcasting adventure. GM Matt Rossi has modified Rise of the Runelords to Pathfinder 2e rules and is ready for Joe, Nick, Phil, Anne, and Liz to begin their journey. But before the RPGing begins, we wanted to start with a podcast episode that lays the ground work for the upcoming adventure. We cover character creation, the world we will be exploring, and the type and tone of the game for those not familiar with Pathfinder 2e. Join us as we kick off our latest adventure!

Alright, 'Combies! Yes, it's another movie review, but it's going to be all that an more this week. With the release of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and considering how deep on RPGing we went on our D&D OGL episode, this was just the logical escalation. So, like with the TTRPGs we love, we brought in a couple of friends for the occasion. So with their guests Dr. El Reyes and Brodie hanging in the Hideout in with them, Joe and Christine are diving into the latest version of D&D to hit the big screen and going into their own experiences with roleplaying games and why it really is so much fun. So come on down and get comfy while we all get REAL nerdy up in here!

Hey now Cabalists! Today the Lords start off by discussing their recent Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition adventure and give their final verdict. Then AC talks to the group about taking a break from Roleplaying for a bit so he can recharge his batteries. Finally, the gang discusses homebrew campaign settings vs officially published settings.

     In this episode Saul and Jolene discuss the idea of "What Kind of Player Are You?".  This topic is from a Reddit post that Saul read in the RPG forums.   The original poster had put of a panel with a little bit of an explanation of each"type" of player.       Though it is a way for a player to figure out what they enjoy most about RPGing, Saul thought it would be useful information for a GM to mine.    Web Art by Jim Foster    Episode Art by Michael Shean-Jones       Music by Noel Griffin, song Player One, off the album Sentinent Life.   Available from Freemusicarchive.com

How would you change the way you started RPGing? Joining Kellie and I today is Justin Oldham creator of A.C.: AFTER COLLAPSE (sometimes referred to as A.C.) is a postapocalyptic role-playing game set years after worldwide civilization has come to a slow, bitter end. For more from Justin Oldham please check out Home (shadowfusionbooks.com)   The goal of RPGaDay is to get people positively talking, blogging, Vlogging and just doing what they do to share our collective love of tabletop Role playing games and gaming in general! I always look forward to this month every year and please check out all the great creatives posting for #RPGaDay202 Please support our shows at www.patreon.com/cppn and even join us in some games! Also keep an eye at the new things on our now affiliated Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/creativeplayandpodcast Also follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CreativePlayandPodcastNetwork Would you be interested if we hosted D&D and Edge of Empire games on Roll20 for you to join? Email us at Creativeplaypodcastnet@Gmail.com #RPGaDay2022

Why did you start RPGing? If you're interested in listening to our Android Cops groups newest case you can listen to the episode here https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1560388700   The goal of RPGaDay is to get people positively talking, blogging, Vlogging and just doing what they do to share our collective love of tabletop Role playing games and gaming in general! I always look forward to this month every year and please check out all the great creatives posting for #RPGaDay202 Please support our shows at www.patreon.com/cppn and even join us in some games! Also keep an eye at the new things on our now affiliated Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/creativeplayandpodcast Also follow us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CreativePlayandPodcastNetwork Would you be interested if we hosted D&D and Edge of Empire games on Roll20 for you to join? Email us at Creativeplaypodcastnet@Gmail.com #RPGaDay2022

Josh Wilson (Oncoming Storm Podcast), Alain Gaucher, and Matt Comegys watch a young Tom Hanks go nuts from too much tabletop RPGing.Do your homework, and have a squiz at the flick here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpcL-fQNPfQPlease subscribe, review, and rate us on all the podcatchers.  We are at @AuralHygienePod on Twitter and you can search the same on Facebook.  And if you're Scrooge McDuck, throw a bob to out Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/podcastiopodcastiusJosh has his podcasting pirate salt, because he talked about the Doctor (Who?) for years:https://theoncomingstorm.libsyn.com/Matt has a brand new album of psychedelic electro-rock.  Why not have a listen?  Ain't no charge:https://rovingsagemedia.bandcamp.com/album/cave-at-the-endComing Soon: June 5 - Operation HighjumpJune 7 - The Great Chastity ExperimentJune 11 - Future ShockJune 12 - The Wickedest Man in the World

Dad and Daughter take a break from RPGing to ask some questions and guess each others favorite things. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dadanddaughterrpg/support

This week, Matt, Jonjo, Laura, Pete, Mark and Danial talk Internet dating, Tik Tok and RPGing.

Whaddup fellow lockdown squad! Since Polish Paulo and The Business Goblin are doing there own little side podingtons over Discord Nate, Ager and Boardman Snr got together via the power of the interwebs and recorded a new episode! We touch on the merits of stockpiling banana bread, the power of the one shot and lockdown RPGing during social distancing, how our Shadowrun characters are actual pieces of shit, watching 20 year old TV shows for the first time, our first experiences with some OSR games, how weird our mate Bollie is and how he could actually be Merlin from Excalibur…. Nate gives us the lowdown on the next DxP release “South of Heaven” a new adventure set in the same universe as our last release “In the name of Suffering”. Ager touches on the work we did on The Black Dahlia Murders RPG module which came out with their latest album along with our homeslice Nerdgore! Look out for an extra episode coming next week where we go in on listeners questions!

It's a roundtable at the end of world! Everyone is stuck at home, so what do we want to do? Bloviate about RPGs! On the spur of the moment, we gathered Anthonii, Ty, Jason, Gersh, Backdoor, and Duck to talk about the resurgence of RPGing in the Cabal, and an in depth discussion on how we deal with the existing lore of a universe as a GM.

“Game Over Man!” gets a medieval makeover this time with Crusader Kings 2. This Paradox Interactive classic is a deeply intricate strategy game where you sound like a sociopath when describing gameplay. The Bings talk about their experiences, RPGing with no external input, and what defines “winning” with no clear goal. Endnotes: CKIII baby! (It says coming 2020 and no more date info… uh oh) - https://www.crusaderkings.com/Jacob mostly agrees with this guy about RPGing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNUlw_KG6BA

Carrie and K.W. pack a lot into this episode as they discuss Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions" and how they try to incorporate feminism into their writing. They also talk about their experience with role-playing games, and K.W. interviews Jeff Hessell, host of the upcoming RPG podcast The Cast Perilous.

Today we will take a few call-ins as well as discuss a little bit more in detail the Mythic Game Master Emulator.

Nerdy City's Sean Jaffe swings by to talk tabletop RPGing, the first-time TFcon experience, and a very relevant upcoming game system called Commandroids.

The RPGing continues as Bobby finishes Legend of Grimrock 2 and plays more Divinity: Original Sin 2 with Emilio. Chi plays some Divinity as well and Rey gets back into Apex Legends. ON THE RADAR Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered, Soul Fire, No Man’s Sky HIGHLIGHTS Legend of Grimrock 2, Silent Hill, Top Video Game...

Riverdale hits their milestone 50th episode with "American Dreams," the 15th show of season three, and Ka-Pow the Pop Cultured Podcast is here to celebrate.  But before we can figure out how many candles should really be on F.P.'s cake, we've got to visit a creepy comic shop and do a little bare knuckle RPGing to see if the Red Paladin is really king of the mountain.  All this, plus casting news for the upcoming spinoff Katy Keene, from your friends at KPP! Length - 00:49:42 Language - PG-13. (Contains mild adult language.)

Joshua and I have our triumphant return to podcasting this summer. Topics include all our new information and reactions on Fallout 76 (modding, griefing, micro transactions, offline servers, beta), my trip to E3 and how E3 could be much better, Assassins Creed Odyssey and the RPGing of modern games, Red Dead Redemption 2, and good old fashioned reliable Minecraft.

Introduction Oh hi. You must be here to learn about our world of Niisii. Awesome. Unlike many campaign settings who’s history and design were created by a small group of designers, Niisii is a shared world where the future, and the past, is constantly being created by those that play in it. So when I say our world I do mean our world. Whether you were directed here because you play in one of the many games that are run in this campaign setting, you are listening to this on the Dave & Gary podcast, or you have stumbled across this some other way, consider this a primer to the lands of Niisii. This will not be an exhaustive overview of the world and its history but it will hopefully get you comfortable enough with the world so that you can play with us or follow along with the podcast games. In this short introduction I will try to cover: The origins of the campaign setting Games Played In The World What the average character would know about the world including The Ages, or history, of Niisii And finally, for those interested, some of the design choices made for the world (but don’t worry, I’ll give you a bit of warning before we get to the dry stuff). That’s a lot to cover so let’s get started. Origins The world of Niisii is one of constant growth and change. It was first designed around the end of 2011 by Randy at the request from a group of friends that wanted to start a campaign. Many had not played RPGs for years, and a few were novices to this style of gaming. So we talked a little about what kind of game and world they wanted. They all wanted to play a fantasy, D&D like game but didn’t want something very heavy or expensive to get into. So I came up with a very light and simple system to use. Furthermore, they wanted was a world were their lifestyle choices were the norm and not the exception. Many of these players were members of sexual minorities and participated in alternative relationship models. Finally, there was some discussion about some of the players being able to tell their own stories if they got brave enough. With those three requests Niisii was designed (originally called Niise). The world was designed from the ground up to support multiple storytellers and to be one with a bent towards more mature and developed themes. Sadly that group didn’t last long. So Niisii got put on the shelf to be forgotten. Flashforward a few years. In the fall of 2014 my wife started to try her hand at DMing. D&D 5e had just been released and we were involved with a local game shop running adventure league games. We met some awesome new people and soon a new gaming group was formed. We all quickly found that we wanted to play games that weren’t so … scripted. Adventure League is great for some people, but not us. We all wanted to play homebrew. As the most experienced DM I stupidly opened my mouth and said I would run the game. They said great, how about that Friday? Two days to come up with a game and a world… sure, no problem. So I did what every DM does; I stole. I went to the last world I had worked on, Niisii, and pulled it off the shelf. These were different players with different styles so I toned down some of the mature themes. There were also mostly players in their 20’s who hadn’t been around in the early days of D&D so I reached way back in my early days of RPGing and pulled a touch of Sci-Fi into the world. That choice would be, and continues to be, the primary catalyst for change in the world of Niisii to this day. That was 2014 and Niisii has grown from a small world with a single DM to a massive world with almost a dozen different DMs and several times that number of players. We each add our own spin on the world. The history of the world reflects the desires, demands or passions of different people to have the world reflect their own vision. With so many voices and colors in the mix, Niisii could have been… it should have been… just an unwieldy mess, but it isn’t. It should have collapsed a dozen times, but it didn’t. It works! And it works because no one person owns this world. Not the first DM nor the latest DM. We all share, we all work to make room for each other’s voices and we all do it because we love this game and we love the people we play it with. With that being said there needs to be a warning here. This homebrew world isn’t for everyone. Our style of play isn’t for everyone. For every person who has found a home in Niisii, there are two that didn’t. Role-playing games, as a hobby, represent a huge range of styles, interests and options. No one can tell you that are playing them wrong or that what you want to see in your stories has ‘no place’ in gaming. If the group you are playing in doesn’t fit your style, that’s cool. Don’t knock one group for playing different than you do; just find, or even make, a different group. Niisii can be dark one game, light hearted another, slapstick the next. It can get confusing, mistakes will happen (and they’ll have to be ret-con’d), rules are bent (or broken), change will always happen and the story always comes first. Furthermore, our group isn’t one for the shy, quiet, unassuming or easily offended. The bold and daring thrive here. If these things aren’t for you then no problem. We actually see that as a positive. Honestly. Because we have been able to help someone find the game they want to play in. We love seeing people play the games they want to play. So enough of reality and warnings, let’s get into the make-believe. The Games People Play Our primary game system, for the primary stories, is Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. But it isn’t the only system in use by our gaming group. Aside from the standard fantasy game that we play, there is also the story of a world hidden to most humans and elves and dwarves. A world of sentient mice. That story is being told using the Savage Worlds system and the Burrows & Badgers system. And tomorrow we may find another system we want to try, and then it may be incorporated as well. The styles of games played in the world vary by location and DM. From the combat focused to the intrigue driven to morality plays, from light-hearted and positive to the dark and mature, the games run in Niisii span a wide range. What The Average Character Knows About The World… In No Particular Order. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Gravity is just slightly greater than the Earth standard. There is a single moon. The days are 24 hours long. There is 360 days in a year. There are four months, Plant, Tend, Harvest and Rest, of 120 days each. Cows and horses are rare. But there are more gods than you can shake a stick at (and do they like mettle). The current year is 2172. The greatest Empire on the planet is the Hythain Empire in the north. It is bound by the lands of Xora and the Shimmering Shores in the north, the Sister Islands in the west, the Rud Coast in the South and the Gateway Islands in the East. The largest city in the world, Bondment, is its capital but that city, and its empire, has seen better days. Most of the common gods are from the Hythain Pantheon. And the most commonly used calendar is the Hythain Reckoning Calendar (HRC). The next greatest empire was the Stone Empire, centered around the Tiber Isles in the south, but it too has seen better days. Magic is not as common today as it was in the past because of an event called the Upheaval. From 1459 to 2166 HRC the vast majority of gods were banished from the world. In their absence, magic, as it was known, became highly unstable. It took decades of research during the early part of the Upheaval to find new forms of magic that were not so chaotic. But by that time the damage had been done, arcane magic had developed a superstition to it that last to this day in smaller parts of the world. Religion had a similar superstition during the Upheaval but is now experiencing a revival. When the gods were banished they took all clerical powers with them. For over 700 years the healing powers of the gods that people had relied on for Ages had abandoned them. So much knowledge was lost during the wars and strife of the Upheaval that most believed gods granting powers to their followers were just a myth. In 2166 we first saw the trickster god Wit returned in Xora, and then a follower of Uxie in the Gateway Islands began to show divine ability. Soon gods, old gods, new gods and some that had changed, began to make themselves known throughout the world. This has sparked a golden age of belief. But enough about that, let’s talk about the people of the world. By and far humans are the most common race in Niisii. They are on every landmass and have a great diversity of cultures. Elves, dwarves and orcs are the next most common races. And within these people there are multiple species. Some of these are familiar to role-players as they are found in D&D 5e’s player’s handbook and some are custom to the world of Niisii. Those that are custom are original creations or borrowed from other worlds. In each case they tend to be rare. Examples include the River Elves in the Land of the Keats, the Gully dwarves of the Gateway Islands, and the Scro lords of the Orc. There are many races in the world known collectively as The Little Folk.These include Gnomes, Halflings and Kenders. They are most commonly found in the western half of the world but they can be found in coastal cities anywhere. Kenders are a special race in Niisii and they require a bit more explanation. They are a race of people without a homeland. As a people, they believe in an extreme form of sharing which for other races borders on thievery. They are the smallest race of people and are seen as a nuisance. They are frequently mocked, beat or even enslaved. As such, the Kender have learned cultural ways to defend themselves. They are extremely hard workers, talk very fast and tend to play the clown out of necessity. They are also the only race that cannot bred with other races; there are no half-Kenders. There is a lot more about Kenders but that will get you started. Next are those that come from a mix of racial backgrounds. Half-Orcs, Dragonborn, Half-Elves, and others. These people are much more rare in Niisii than perhaps in other fantasy worlds. And in many parts of the world these people are viewed with open hostility. Finally there are the rarest of the rare. Races that make up far less than one percent of the PCs and NPCs. These include the Drow, Gnolls, Tabaxi, Tieflings and Aasimar. The sizing of the races tend to run: Orcs a head taller than humans, Humans a head taller than elves, Elves are a head taller than dwarves, Dwarves a head taller than Gnomes and Halflings, Gnomes and Halflings a head taller than Kender. These are of course general guidelines. Of all the races, tieflings and aasimar might be the most important to the story of Niisii. They are the rarest of all PC races and we have homebrew rules in place to determine if a player can even play one! Aasimar and tiefling never give birth (they are sterile) and are born from other races (which can be a huge surprise to the parents). They are driven with two main passions; a hatred for the other and an insatiable wanderlust to find ‘home’. No tiefling or aasimar has ever been recorded to find this ‘home’ but many have been lost as they tried. But to understand all of this you need to know some world history. What The Average Person Knows About The History Of Niisii “Those religious types tell us that the world is old. A hundred thousand years or more.” “My mentor once said that we were living ‘the Broken Age’ but now that the gods are listening to us I’m sure they will fix everything.” “I heard a cleric once say that long ago there were only Tieflings and Aasimar but I don’t know much about that. I know that I’m not descended from any freaks.” What A Scholar Knows Of The History Of Niisii Our world operates according to a plan. From the smallest mouse to the greatest beast, all things follow the plan of the Creator, the Ohm, the One that is many, the God of the Gods. This plan is beyond the understanding of everyone. Even the mysterious order known as the Keepers have just the beginning of an idea about the plan (although they may say otherwise). What we do know is that the world must go through a number of Ages for this Divine plan to come to fruition. History starts before the first age. During this ‘Zeroth Age’, the Wild Time, it is said that the Ohm created two siblings, Nii and Sii. Nii, the brother, shaped the lands while Sii, the sister, shaped the waters. Once their works was done they asked the Ohm to allow them to people the world. The Ohm said it was of the Plan and the siblings did as the Plan dictated. Two peoples, the Tiefling and the Aasimar were birthed from the siblings. While no one can ever know the exact times, most scholars agree that this happen about -150 000 HRC. For 50 000 years the two people lived and loved as one. They learned to tame the great Hoora, they learned to write and they learned the secrets of agriculture. Things changed with the First Age. The Keepers call this the Age of Ancient Rule. It was a time of the greatest empires the world has ever, or may ever, know. Every landmass, every waterway, every city was under one of these two great governments. It was a time of learning and development. But while this growth was happening, something else was going on that no one noticed. The divine siblings, Nii and Sii were growing apart. And as they grew apart, so too did their children. They grew cold and distant from each other. Sometime around -40 000 HRC the separation went from cold to hot. With magic and technology not since seen in the world, the two Empires waged terrible war. When the two peoples finally agreed to a cease-fire, for no peace was ever signed, less than a thousand people inhabited the planet. Those survivors were driven out of the homeland of the Sibling gods and that land was buried under the Great Western Desert. The Ohm called the Siblings from the planet, broke the survivors into new tribes with new ways and new forms. These tribes, or races, the Ohm sent to forge across the face of a broken world. From -40 000 HRC to -15 000 HRC, the Great Change, or the Second Age, each of these new races continued to change and evolve. The Tall Folk left via the land, the Small Folk took to the oceans. For tens of thousands of years the races spread, changed, evolved and began to re-people the plant. Around -15 000 HRC, the progress of people across the planet began to slow. This age is known as the Birth of Divinity. From what little is known from that time, it seems to be at the request of a handful of new beings; gods. For it seemed the Ohm had felt that the mortals had been punished enough and were in need of guidance. For the Ohm created a family of gods to guide the peoples of the world. This was time of slow, inner growth. Each people developed a sense of identity. This age end when one people began to form a new Empire, the Hythainian Empire. In -15 000 HRC a human who would come to be known as Emperor Hythain the First founded the empire that bares his name still. The Age of Man started when this new, Second Empire, began. The Hythain Calendar was put into place by a later ruler, Empress Treish The Builder, who left her mark on history by creating and adopting her calendar to commemorate a war victory. This was also during the Second Empire. This Second Empire ended in 1459 with the beginning of the great dark age known as the Upheaval. Records became confusing, facts broke down, and much knowledge from this time and before has become lost. The Keepers calculate the Second Age should have lasted for centuries beyond the current year but something happened to spark the Upheaval. That spark broke the plan of the Ohm and put the world on a path it never should have gone. Today we live in a non-Age; The Uncertainty. This Age started in 2166 and no scholar knows why it began and what its ramifications are. What’s Really Going On There are two types of people in gaming. Those that love to know what is going on behind the scenes and those that want to learn the mysteries for themselves via games or stories. If you are the later, a person who hates spoilers, then stop here. Oh, and this is also the warning that dry stuff lies ahead. You’ve been warned. Are you still here? Good. Let’s clue you into the full story. For the most part the Ages of Niisii occured as the Keepers believe. They are wrong on the dates, they are missing major parts of the history and they have drawn all the wrong conclusions but for they most part they have general gist of things right enough. But what they can’t know, and the Ohm never expected, was other life in the universe. The Ohm made Niisii to fit their plans. The Ohm put it far from others in the Prime Material Plane. The Ohm seeded it with the best ideas from other worlds and they sheltered it. But while the Ohm were hard at work, other worlds were advancing in ways they could not have predicted. In the late part of the 29th century on Earth a great disease sweep over the various worlds that the humans had populated. All people were wiped out except those still resided on Earth. The best technology raced to keep this seed population stable. What was discovered was that the disease was genetic; a fault in the most fundamental structure of our genetic code. No medicine could stop the mutations and death it caused, no technology could edit the fault out of the species. Hundreds of ideas were tried; nothing was too crazy. A group of three companies developed a plan to save the species. They would guide the breeding and development of a select population of individuals through a process that would, at its conclusion, result with a new species of human. This species would have the genetic fault worked out of them. The process was very risky and the slightest interference could ruin the result of thousands of year experiment. But the A.I. in charge said it would work, the bio-mathematics checked, and it was the only hope people had. So the population was screened and those the A.I. thought that would be the best candidates to recreate the better human were sent to the isolation zone: the whole of Australia. And thus the experiment began. But there was a complication. The owners of the three companies who discovered the technology also learned that neither they, nor their families, fit the required genetic profiles to be included in the experiment. So while the official experiment was starting on Earth, they siphoned resources from the project to fund a secret, secondary project. This project would use a similar A.I. but would not be based on Earth. This A.I. would guide the adaption of the test subjects’ genetic code while aboard an interstellar craft. The A.I. would find a suitable planet in deep space, far from the Terran Systems, for the new group of humans to rule. The families of the three corporations would become like gods. At this point in human history, the species had the ability travel vast distance but the human form was still limited. Fortunately, other technologies existed that allowed for the storage of person as information. This information could later be reconstituted into a physical form using material found in-situ. A small collection of people would be kept awake during the journey to assist the A.I. These generational workers lived their lives in service to a plan they would never see come to an end. They lived, bred and died according to the plan of the A.I. For you see, the A.I. was constantly looking for a world for the humans to inhabit. There was incredible technology aboard the ship that could reshape a world as needed, but it was resource intensive to make use of them. The A.I. was designed to be very patient and frugal with its resources, but the lives of the human servants were cheap to it, very cheap. Furthermore, this physical crew was never designed to take part in the new world. The humans that were to be part of the plan, were stored digitally and were constantly being modified to make them suitable to candidate worlds as this worlds were discovered by the AI. And if a world didn’t pan out, or would require too many resources to modify, then the digital changes would be rolled back and the process would start again with the next world. These changes included new memories, new forms and new knowledge. If a world was found that already had intelligent life on it, the A.I. was designed to make sure its flock would not only adapt, but thrive in that environment. This worked surprisingly well until two accidents happened at the same time. The first, was that the A.I. encountered something that caused a glitch; the second, was that one human servant was there to see it happen. The glitch in the A.I. came when the probes the ship had been sending out encountered something they could not understand. On one world, in a distant system that the ship almost didn’t probe, it received data that didn’t make sense. It had seen worlds with strange technology. Worlds with unusual cultures. But this world broke the laws of physics. The A.I. was designed to handle such oddities. It would study it remotely, learn what it could and move on. But this world was so odd that the guiding intelligence needed time to reprogram itself. During that time, one man saw what was happening and instantly knew how to use it to his advantage. On a ship completely automated and scheduled, right down to when the human servants ate or mated, one had plenty of time to read and consume media. This man knew magic when he saw it. So while the A.I. was in a vulnerable state, he reprogrammed a change of plans; the ship slowly turned towards this new system. It would take hundreds of years to reach, but during that time the machine would learn all it could about this strange place, begin to put in place the mechanisms it needed to modify the planet, and get the passageners ready for their new life. And the rogue human servant? Well… if the technology existed to turn a digital human into a physical one, made from found raw materials, it could easily work the other way around. Minutes before his physical death, the rogue human was digitized to start the special modifications he had programmed all of his life. He would rule in this new world. He learned from the A.I. probing of the world that it was called Niisii. The first major campaign of Niisii was the story of a group of adventures that were, unknown to them, from this interstellar ship. The human rogue, who became known simply as the Merchant, broke not only the ship’s A.I beyond recovery, he also broke the careful and loving plans of the Ohm. The world is now suffering for it. There are satellites in orbit of Niisii that the inhabitants will never know about. The A.I. orbits the system trying to follow its last, poorly written program. Whenever one of the original, digitized passengers dies on Niisii, it begins the process of interfering with the world to see that, through genetic selection and physical modification of the resources on Niisii, that person is reborn. The process tries to help them retain memories of their most recent life but it usually just causes confusion at best. Most players in Niisii do not play a character that has its origins in these digitized interlopers, but there are a few recurring characters that you might notice campaign to campaign. To make matters worse, these enhanced visitors to Niisii were modified by the A.I. to have unusual powers. The most surprising one is the ability to kill the Gods that the Ohm created. After this was discovered, the Ohm removed the gods from the world for their own reasons and returned them likewise. So there you have it. History, the smallest taste of back story, and hopefully enough information to feel like you can follow along with a podcast or sit in as a new player. Welcome to our world. Welcome to Niisii. A Couple Of Notes About The Tools We Use And Our Style Of Gaming This section is for those of you who are coming to play with us. We are a rather large gaming group. Our ‘main game’ can have over a dozen players and a couple of DMs going simultaneously during our bi-weekly group games. But this is not the only way we play. Our gaming group is a network of players and DMs. There are many campaigns going on at the same time. Some meet weekly, some bi-weekly, some less frequently. Some of these campaigns have a large number of players, others only have three or four players. There’s many different styles and sizes of games that have formed from our primary group. Over the years we have build beautiful maps and elaborately designed scenario documents. But we don’t do that anymore. We use simple, easily accessible tools and wikis. As DMs we love a beautiful map, and as players they make us feel special. But not everyone can afford software that can cost hundreds of dollars or the countless hours it takes to first develop the skill, and then to actual produce, lovely hand drawn maps. We would rather make it cheap and easy for people to tell the story they want to tell. To us, the story is the most important thing. And this spawns another ‘feature’ of our games. For the sake of the story we make we make frequent use of ‘Rule Zero’. Some players don’t like this. They like to ‘win’ a scenario, or they enjoy the process of maximizing the potential of their characters. And we understand this and try to cater to those desires. But at the end of the day, the story comes first. Rules are important but nowhere near as important as getting together with friends and making an interesting story. And THAT spawns another aspect of our gaming style. We believe in making stories together. For thousands of years humans have gathered in a circle and told stories. For us, this game is one way we connect to that tradition. So while the DM will often have notes about things that might come in a session, our games are more improv than plan. This means that those who are more active in a game tend to have more influence in the way the story unfolds. For better or worse, the careful, slow planner and the quiet audience member style of player can often get upset in large group play. To combat these we strongly promote running spin-off groups where a slower style of play is possible. We have run games with more than a dozen players at the table. It is a chaotic madhouse that moves at a thousand miles an hour and is a massive amounts of fun… as long as no one gets hurt that the moment they wanted to give a big speech passed by ten minutes ago while they were thinking on it. There is nothing wrong with that style of play; it just simply doesn’t normally work in one of our large group sessions. And finally we are an adult group. We have zero problems with open sexuality, alcohol and deep, complex storylines that are not explained to death Hollywood style. We have had players get upset by a beer at the table, a magical item used as sexual device in a slapstick manner (don’t worry, only on themselves, not on another player) and over the fact that others in the party got the clues given but they missed. Again, nothing is wrong with preferring PG rated games that are straightforward and geared to the lowest common denominator. Hollywood makes billions doing that. From Adventure League to published modules to other homebrew systems, there are many ways to indulge that style of play. This group is usually not a group for that. Sure we have our exceptions (the above mentioned sentient mice game is an example… a game that’s run by the DM who is also known for the darkest, complex morality play style) but for the most part that isn’t for us.

hjrp2203 Your hosts: Stu, Kimi, Tappy, Aabria In this Episode: Steve from SoCal writes in with some thoughts on porportional RPGing, or intra-party balance. We discuss. Daniel from Texas sends us a horror story. Ayslyn sends us a horror story … gone right? Only about a week left to support Tsunamicon in Wichita, Kansas. www.tsunamicon.org/kickstarter

This week on RPG Lessons Learned: Dusty, Brian, and Mike talk about a recent game Dusty played with his daughter. RPGing with your kids, or young family members, can be a lot of fun! Pick an appropriate game system based on their age, and get to playing! For this game, Dusty used World of Dungeons.... The post RPG Lessons Learned 041 – Playing RPGs with Kids (World of Dungeons) appeared first on Radio Free Cybertron.

Jeremy starts the show with yet more Rock Band talk, Craig checks out Never Alone, Jeremy starts in on Superbrothers; Sword & Sworcery EP, Craig gives Shardlight a run through, Jeremy gets sucked into Pony Island, and Craig feels the rhythm of Thumper. Sean gets close to finishing Gears of War 4 (he thinks), Craig crafts in Captain Forever Remix, Jeremy and Craig have some thoughts on Undertale, Craig looks at Reigns, Jeremy takes a look at the brand new Rise & Shine, and Craig does some more RPGing with Unrest. E-mail us at comments@signedinpodcast.com!  Visit us online at SignedInPodcast.com!   Games discussed on this episode! 0:00:00 – Intro 0:05:45 – Rock Band 4 0:17:02 – Never Alone 0:24:16 – Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP 0:29:38 – Shardlight 0:34:49 – Pony Island 0:40:01 – Firewatch 0:49:15 – Gears of War 4 0:58:20 – Captain Forever Remix 1:06:54 – Undertale 1:19:09 – Reigns 1:27:00 – Rise & Shine 1:39:52 – Unrest 1:53:59 – End

Richard is joined by Tracey from Chaos Cards, an online retailer that has seen a massive boom in business over the last couple of years due to the popularity of boardgaming, RPGing and Cards. But we want to find out more about Tracey's involvement in the hobby, her LARPing, White Wolfing, Shadowrunning, Call of Cthulhuhuhthuhtulu, and her obsession with getting hold of Arkham Horror.... We then talk about Chaos Cards itself, including the Drawer of Treasure and the opening of their bricks and mortar shop/cafe that Tracey will be the manager of.  And we add some special messages, just for Tony, the Owner.  Tracey was a great guest and we hope you enjoy the episode as much as we did.   Links of note Chaos Cards Website https://www.chaoscards.co.uk/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ChaosCards/ Twitter Page https://twitter.com/Chaos_Cards Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv4T57SsilGN-dJ4QYp2wAw Like what you hear? Then please support us. Facebook -     http://www.facebook.com/werenotwizards Twitter.com -  http://www.twitter.com/werenotwizards     If you like what you have heard, please take some time to Rate, Subscribe and Review us on iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/were-not-wizards/id1084198405    Get us on Stitcher -    http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/were-not-wizards   Get us through acast - http://www.acast.com/werenotwizards Check out our pictures -www.instagram.com/werenotwizards   Music is owned entirely by We're Not Wizards and thanks to DouglasVB Email us    magic@werenotwizards.com     Remember, we are many things but We're Not Wizards.

162 – Heroes Eclipse RPG   Ricky goes back to where his Heroes love really started to take shape, at his old RPG forum Heroes Eclipse. Ricky talks with one of the admin of the site Beeg – discussion includes discovering Heroes for the first time, starting out on the 9th Wonders RPG and moving to Eclipse, favourite Volume, favourite Character, her thoughts on Heroes Reborn, how Eclipse first started, Canon characters, Canon Characters vs Original Characters, where Eclipse diverged from Heroes Prime Canon, RPGing using proboards, Open Posts vs Planned Posts, Site Wide Storylines vs User Driven Storylines, Factions within Eclipse, User Input, the different Volumes of Eclipse, and whether or not they can integrate Heroes Reborn into their site.   You can find Heroes Eclipse at http://eclipse913.proboards.com/   If you want to read the full summaries of the Volumes you can go to http://eclipse913.proboards.com/thread/19669/detailed-summary-eclipses-history   Follow Primatech Files on their social media – just search “Primtech Files” on facebook, tumblr, youtube, twitter or clammr. You can also email primatechfiles@gmail.com or find them on their individual twitters @rickyjdiaz or @lilithhellfire   NB There may be spoilers in this review    

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Enjoy this episode? Become a Patron. This episode is a conversation with Jason Godesky, creator of The Fifth World Role Playing Game, recorded in-person several weeks ago at the Save Against Fear convention, but I start our conversation with an introduction to all this, so go ahead and give it a listen. You can find out more about Jason and the game at TheFifthWorld.com. If you would like to know more about Save Against Fear, the gaming convention where this was recorded, the website is SaveAgainstFear.com. The Bodhana Group, which organized the event and uses the funds raised each year to assist the children and families impacted by childhood trauma, is at thebodhanagroup.org. As you may have noticed in our closing we ran out of time in our session, and did not get to address all the listener questions. I emailed those to Jason, who kindly responded. Q1: "Composting toilets?” Jason: “Do you mean to ask if I have one? No. I think that reusing what's already built usually beats building something new; that, combined with my bioregional commitments, led me to go in with my brother to buy the house that we grew up in. It's a fairly traditional suburban setting, and I haven't made much headway with repurposing much of it yet. Or do you mean to ask what I think of composting toilets? My opinion on them is the same as herb spirals, hugelkultur, and just about all of the other “cool” permaculture techniques: they're great — in the right context. There's several kinds of design that figure prominently in my life, especially web design, game design, and permaculture design. Across them all, I've become convinced that design itself comes down to really thinking through what you want to accomplish here, in this specific context, and picking the principles and techniques that focus on those goals. In each of those fields, I see people who look for the short-cut of just picking from the pre-approved list of “best practices,” but no matter how many other people have employed a thing successfully elsewhere, no one has ever applied it in your specific circumstances before. So, to bring all of that back down to earth for a moment, I love composting toilets, and they'll probably fit in well with most permaculture designs, but the world has never seen a truly one-size-fits-all solution, and probably never will. Not even composting toilets.” Q2: "Wow! I love RPGing. It looks like a magic free world? Is there any technology above stone age? What mechanic is used (D20, 3d6, fate)? Will it be available on drive thru RPG? Will it ever be print? Is it in beta and can my group help test?” Jason:“The Fifth World takes place in our world, four hundred years from now, so it has all of the magic that our world has. I take that to mean a great deal of magic, though none of the Vancian fireballs that a wizard from Dungeons & Dragons would recognize. In “Becoming Animal,” David Abram writes of his apprenticeship to a Nepalese magician who taught him how to shapeshift — a long regimen of training his awareness that involved nothing supernatural, and yet ended in astonishing magic. I wonder about the ways that magicians could use altered states of consciousness to heighten “thin-slicing” (as Malcolm Gladwell called it) to go through mystical experiences that synthesize vast amounts of data, allowing them to make better decisions, which they would experience as mystical journeys and encounters (and really, what makes my neurological explanation any more real than their first-hand experience?). Hunter-gatherers learn the calls of different animals well enough to mimic them and to understand the responses they get in return, so that we can really only deny the conclusion that they speak with animals out of spite. It seems less false to me to call such things “magic” than to call them anything else. I think that an interruption to our industrial infrastructure would not leave much room for re-starting it. The first time around, we could find sources of metal near the surface. We used those up as we made tools to dig deeper for more. Similarly, we used fuel that we could find easily to build machines that could dig deeper to get more. We've used up the sources of metal and fuel that we can obtain easily from the surface. We dig deeper for them because we can no longer find them more easily. So if we interrupt that process, we won't find the metals or fuels we need to get to the depths where now find metals and fuels. It will take geological ages to push them back up to the surface. That restriction definitely limits the kinds of technology available in the Fifth World. I wouldn't call it stone age, exactly. For example, you can't find much flint easily now, either, but you can find plenty of broken glass, and you can knap that into knives, spearheads, and arrowheads quite effectively, so rather that stone, they use colored glass from discarded bottles. Mostly, though, I prefer to focus on their priorities. As a society, we generally believe that technology improves our lives and will ultimately save us from our problems, so we have become excellent at producing technology, and have neglected the techniques for building social bonds and deep relationships. In the Fifth World, people generally believe that social bonds and deep relationships will improve their lives and ultimately save them from their problems, so they spend as much time and energy focused on that as we spend focused on technology. The game has its own rules. I firmly believe that good game design means focusing on a game's specific purpose. Rolling dice, for instance, works really well in a game that keeps revolving around the question, “Can I do it?” When you have the dice in your hand, you wonder what will come up, if you can roll high enough to overcome the obstacle. For an animist game like the Fifth World, though, this doesn't help, because whether or not you can overcome someone (and generally someone, rather than something) doesn't usually matter nearly as much as whether or not you can connect with that person. That led me to using a deck of cards. Each time you draw a card, you don't ask, “Can I do it?” but “What will I discover?” This, I think, makes cards a great way to focus on exploration. In this case, I tried to use that to focus on exploring both physical space and social space. The Fifth World doesn't have a game master (GM), like many other RPGs do. Instead, the players share the roles that a GM would normally fill. Each player ha a number of awareness points, which they use to ask questions. They choose one of the other players to answer the question, and as we answer these questions, we begin to discover the Fifth World together. This has an interesting side effect: NPC's can seem to have personalities and minds all their own. We all build off of what we've already established together, but we might have different ideas of what follows naturally from any given point, so the same NPC can potentially surprise everyone at the table at one point or another. The Fifth World presents an open source game with an open source setting. That means that the most canonical version will always exist online at thefifthworld.com/rpg. That said, I recognize how much it can help to have a book in your hand. That also gets into my business plan, and how I hope to sustain this so I can afford to put more time into it. I want to present a free PDF packet with everything in it. I'm also hoping to produce a scout book [https://www.scoutbooks.com/], aiming at a price point of $10 or less, and possibly expansions published in the same manner. Since it uses cards, I'm working on putting a custom card set on DriveThruCards. I'd like to create a better set with custom artwork for each card, but I don't have enough art for that yet. I'd also like to make a more elaborate art book, in the style of Dinotopia by James Gurney or Gnomes by Will Huygen and Rien Poortvliet. Both of those, however, will require a great deal more art. I have a Patreon set up if you'd like to help me with that at https://patreon.com/jefgodesky. The game still sits in a public beta phase, so I'd love it if you could playtest it and send me your thoughts. You can find the full rules and the link to the feedback form at https://thefifthworld.com/wiki/rpg” If you have more questions for Jason about the game, feel free to let me know because I look forward to recording another interview with him in the future, as well as a live-play of The Fifth World so you can hear what the experience of collaborative storytelling is like. If you have any questions for me, or there is a way I can assist you on your path, let me know. Email: The Permaculture Podcast After having this conversation with Jason, as well as many others off-the-record throughout the weekend, I left with a lot to process about what it means to have culture, to live in community, to tell stories, to create myths that last generations. So I'd like to play with this idea and have created a game of creative storytelling and invite everyone listening to participate. Head over to Facebook.com/thepermaculturepodcast and, since I don't know when you listen to this, look for a post from September 30, 2015 that begins, “A game for us to play together...” and read through the comments so that your reply adds a new sentence to the story. Just one. Then let someone else respond before adding another. We'll see where this goes and what a community of permaculture practitioners can create. Though my idea of myth making comes from the tabletop and games, Jen Mendez, a show sponsor, and her collaborative partner Dr. David Blumenkrantz examine how to apply this idea of myth making to children and communities so that together we can change the story and transform the future. Join them for their virtual campfire sessions by going to permiekids.com/oursharedstory. From here, next week is the first of the round table conversations recorded at The Riverside Project outside of Charles Town, West Virginia. My next interview is with Dillon Cruz on Monday, October 5 to continue the series on Faith and Earth Care. Tuesday, October 6 Sandor Katz joins me to discuss fermentation. Email or call me if you have any questions for either of them. Until the next time spend each day creating the world you want to live through your stories and your actions by taking care of Earth, your self and each other.

It's been a fun month doing the #RPGaDay2015 challenge! 

Behold, the long lost Beta of the Aurors. Finally you get to see what RPGing is all about as the B-Team takes command. Notice they keep their pants on, don’t trip the waitress and actually manage to have a coherent … Continue reading →

This "week" I look at the game Duel in the Dark.  This is a two player game with a solo variant build in.  It is set in WWII Europe.  British bombers are attacking your German cities and you need to defend them from the onslaught.  In this weird game, victory points are gained when other side moves into your space.I also cover a few other topics including a bit more look at solo RPGing and also GenCon solo friendly games.Duel in the DarkTravel games covered in episode 15The travel games list from episode 15, on BGGGarruk, the challenge cardGenCon solo friendly games geeklistSolo roleplaying guildThe Lone Cabbage RPG blog and mailing list

Ken has returned from the Chicago Film Festival to regale the Cinema Hut with demonic pacts, ghost possession, a Kurdish western, and an unusually sympathetic take on the new Dario Argento flick. As prompted by George Pletz, Ask Ken and Robin considers the picaresque and floats various techniques for strictly episodic RPGing. In the Genre […]

Greetings Fanboys, Fangirls, EU Fans, and returning Beyonders! And welcome to Star Wars Beyond the Films! This week true believers, your EU Guru; Nathan P. Butler, and The Defender of the EU; Mark Hurliman, take you on a flight of a lifetime as they dogfight their way through the gauntlet of RPGing, miniatures, card games, […]