Podcasts about save against fear

This week Kyle and Riley talk about how they've prepared for Save Against Fear, a York, PA Boardgaming Convention by the Bodhana group! Have you ever been to a game convention?Interested in coming to SAF? Get your tickets here; https://tabletop.events/conventions/save-against-fear-2022/badgetypesYou can now buy After The Rain on Itch.io;https://desksanddorks.itch.io/after-the-rain-the-roleplaying-game

In order for one to rise, another must fall. Are Casey, Esther, and Glenn strong enough to do what's necessary, or will the Drowned God awaken?   Sincerest thank you to our villains and friends who were amazing enough to guest star on this episode: Mike from Multiclass Theater as the God of a Thousand Faces Seth Mahon as Jacob Jones We're going to be at Save Against Fear in York, PA on October 8th-9th! In person! With our actual skin suits! Come see us and support a great cause. Had questions along the way? Dying to know something specific about our lore? Bring your questions to our Discord server, and we'll be answering them in a live Q&A on our Twitch channel on October 20th at 7pm CDT.   CREDITS "Anticipation" by David Fesliyan at 0:37. "Pitch Black," "Trust Me," "Demon at the Door," "Ancien Ceremony," "The Story Behind Her Smile," and "Mourning Day" by Nicolas Jeudy at 4:59, 7:09, 09:05, 11:16, 18:32 and 35:07 (respectively). Dark Fantasy Studio, 2015. "Machina," "Goliath," and "The Restoration" by Scott Buckley at 21:18, 27:03, and 45:23 (respectively). Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

What lies beyond the ritual chamber doors? And are our heroes strong enough to not just see it, but to see it through to the end? Are you? Sincerest thank you to our villains and friends who were amazing enough to guest star on this episode: Matt Surges as Robert Judge Mike from Multiclass Theater as the God of a Thousand Faces Seth Mahon as Jacob Jones We're going to be at Save Against Fear in York, PA on October 8th-9th! In person! With our actual skin suits! Come see us and support a great cause. Had questions along the way? Dying to know something specific about our lore? Bring your questions to our Discord server, and we'll be answering them in a live Q&A on our Twitch channel once the finale is wrapped up.   CREDITS "Crinoline Dreams" and "Clash Defiant" by Kevin MacLeod at 0:01:47 and 0:51:57 (respectively). Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. "Basement" and "Out of Body" by by Nicolas Jeudy at 0:06:55 and 0:37:18 (respectively). Dark Fantasy Studio, 2015. "Executioner" by Alexander Nakarada at 0:13:44. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. "Goliath" by Scott Buckley at 23:14. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. "Good Day to Die" by Miguel Johnson at 0:30:24. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. "Hidden Gods" by Nick Froud at 0:40:17.  "Revenge" by Keosz at 0:44:24. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. "The Dusty Attic" by Erik Margolin at 0:46:29. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. "Anticipation" by David Fesliyan at 1:02:57.

Is it really a party if you're not squaring off with outer gods and doing a cheeky bit of murder? The Spooky Crew infiltrates The Judge Foundation's 130th anniversary party with the help of some truly amazing guests: Emma as Interdimensional Relations Agent Thelma Mattxdesign as our Foundation Security Agent Matt Surges as Robert Judge Mike from Multiclass Theater as the God of a Thousand Faces Taylor from ChasmQuest as Clay Harper We're going to be at Save Against Fear in York, PA on October 8th-9th! In person! With our actual skin suits! Come see us and support a great cause. Had questions along the way? Dying to know something specific about our lore? Bring your questions to our Discord server, and we'll be answering them in a live Q&A on our Twitch channel once the finale is wrapped up.   CREDITS "Crinoline Dreams," "Lobby Time," "Boss Antigua" and "Cool Vibes" by Kevin MacLeod at 0:01:33, 0:11:20, 0:30:21, and 0:41:20 (respectively). Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. "Sunday Smooth" by Scott Buckley at 25:11. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. "Anticipation" by David Fesliyan at 0:46:37. "The Attic" by Nicolas Jeudy at 1:00:47. Dark Fantasy Studio, 2015.

It's the party of the century, and what's a party without some crashers? The Spooky Crew infiltrates The Judge Foundation's 130th anniversary party with the help of some truly amazing guests: Seth Mahon as Jacob Jones Diana from Multiclass Theater as Field Agent Mina Murray Mike from Multiclass Theater as the Crawling Chaos themself Mattxdesign as our Foundation Security Agent Lucas from Ballad of the Seven Dice as forever intern Nelvin Bland Taylor from ChasmQuest as Clay Harper We're going to be at Save Against Fear in York, PA on October 6th-9th! In person! With our actual skin suits! Come see us and support a great cause. Had questions along the way? Dying to know something specific about our lore? Bring your questions to our Discord server, and we'll be answering them in a live Q&A on our Twitch channel once the finale is wrapped up.   CREDITS "Faster Does It," "Just Nasty," "Crinoline Dreams," "Come Play with Me," and "George Street Shuffle" by Kevin MacLeod at 0:01:50, 0:19:57, 0:38:57, 1:05:43, and 1:23:50 (respectively). Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. "Unknown Energy" by Dox at 0:09:21. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. "Tension" by Alexander Nakarada at 0:27. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. "Retro Wave" by Aries Beats at 1:14:14.

I had such a great time visiting DM Blair (Dungeon Master Blair) who taught me a little bit about the very collectible and vintage world of Dungeons and Dragons.  Blair not only has been gaming in D&D since it's inception, but makes his own cast houses and characters.  See Blair making his work on my tik tok links below.  Find all the links to the show below. BLAIR making his stuff:  https://www.tiktok.com/@retrochalet/video/7067999740075527471 Visit Blair at Relief Buddies LLC 3397 N. George Street Unit 2 Emigsville PA Visit Blair online at TheReliefBuddies.com use promo code DMBLAIR to save more!Blair's YouTube Channel:  (375) DMBLAIR - YouTubeGaming Conventions Blair Enjoys:  THE NOVA OPENand SAVE AGAINST FEAR Gaming Convention:  Save Against Fear event Oct 6 - Oct 10, 2022 | StartPlayingConnect with me:   TIkTok EtsyI also talk about my paranormal adventures at Paranormal Chalet!

Words To Your Mother: ACTUAL PRO talk show interview with mental health professional guest Jack Berkenstock - from November, 2019. We talked about working with at-risk kids, sexually problematic behaviors, co-occurring mental health disorders, tabletop gaming, The Bodhana Group and Save Against Fear! Video version --> https://youtu.be/YtQR-xAUaNQ Jack Berkenstock Jr. is a Master's Level therapist who has worked in the Human Services field for 25 years. He received his Master in Human Services in 2008 and has extensive history before that working as a Direct Support Professional. He has worked predominantly with at-risk children and adolescents in settings included inner city education, recreation, and in residential treatment facilities. He specializes in working with victims of and perpetrators of sexually problematic behaviors. His work has also including supporting adults with intellectual and developmental disability with sexually problematic behaviors. All these experiences also involved working with co-occurring mental health disorders. Jack is the Executive Director and one of the founders of The Bodhana Group, a 501c3 organization that utilizes tabletop gaming for education, skill building and therapy. Bodhana is based in York , PA. Originally aired LIVE on twitch - come join the community and tune in every M/W/F for new mental health talks and interviews on Mondays, well-being & wine Wednesdays featuring peer support, plus community Fridays with gaming and lots of laughs: https://www.twitch.tv/mommafoxfire mommafoxfire is a mental health advocate and variety gaming streamer on twitch! well-being, life advice, real talk, community --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mommafoxfire/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mommafoxfire/support

Emma and Gil welcome Sen-Foong Lim back to the show to discuss the differences—and similarities—between board games and roleplaying games. We go through the perspectives of playing them, designing them, and examining the culture of play between both. Sen originally appeared on Ludology 134: There's No "I" in Team with frequent co-designer Jay Cormier. SHOW NOTES 0m41s: Board games Sen has designed or co-designed: Junk Art, Belfort, D&D: Rock Paper Wizard. RPGs Sen has designed, co-designed, or written for: Jiang-Shi: Blood in the Banquet Hall, Kids on Bikes, The Curse of the House of Rookwood, North Sea Epilogues 3m39s: If the comparison between RPG and improv intrigues you, wait till you hear Ludology 237... 4m47s: An example of a crunchy old-school RPG: Traveller 5m10s: Chainmail was the game that D&D evolved from. 5m20s: While Gil agrees with Sen that encumbrance as implemented by a game like D&D tends to bog down gameplay, a nice counter-example is Torchbearer, a dungeon-crawling TTRPG in which encumbrance is a central mechanism. 7m44s: You can see one Emma's chats with Peter Adkison (who founded Wizards of the Coast and owns Gen Con) here. 11m34s: Sen is currently watching Black Sails. 12m31s: RPGs where your character is likely to die: Fiasco, Paranoia 17m55s: The RPG Masks: A New Generation. 19m14s: Gil and Sen's friend and beloved loudmouth Errol Elumir. 19m40s: This is literally Errol's first rule of escape room puzzle design. 20m36s: Critical Role (with GM Matt Mercer) is the most popular of the vibrant active play scene. 21m46s: The party game Cranium. 22m25s: Save Against Fear, a convention about gaming in therapy. 23m01s: Roll20 is an online platform for playing RPGs, as is Role. Tabletop Simulator can handle crunchy RPGs like D&D as well. 28m21s: Formula D (née Formula Dé) 30m00s: We had Mike Selinker on the show for Ludology 189: Missing Selinker. 31m13s: Sen's favorite D&D module, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks 31m30s: Star Frontiers 33m05s: You can hear more from Jiang-Shi co-designer Banana Chan on Ludology 228: The Roles We Play. 35m51s: Emma's storytelling games ...And Then We Died (...And Then We Held Hands is a different game) 45m02s: "Jay" is Jay Cormier, Sen's frequent collaborator. "Jesse" is game designer Jesse Wright. 45m30s: Jay and Sen's tabletop escape game Scooby Doo: Escape from the Haunted Mansion. 47m20s: The TV show Bob's Burgers. 48m50s: Itch is an online platform for digital games, but has a lot of downloadable PDFs for tabletop games. DriveThruRPG offers PDFs and PODs of many RPGs. 50m12s: RPGs that Emma mentions: Burning Wheel, Paranoia, FATE Core System, Ryuutama, Over the Edge. 51m58s: For more about safety tools in RPGs, check out Ludology 227: Respect the X. 53m04s: You can access all these tools via the TTRPG Safety Kit. 56m05s: Gil's board game safety tool Check-In Cards. 1h07m06s: Board games that allow for relaxed conversation: Sagrada, Lotus. 1h08m27s: More about the semiotic function. 1h09m57s: Sen mentions psychologist Lev Vygotsky. 1h10m30s: Emma is a Mythic-tier Magic player! 1h11m55s: More info about the D&D Adventurers League. 1h14m13s: Jay and Graeme's game In the Hall of the Mountain King. Jay also created the Fail Faster playtesting notebook. 1h19m31s: Sen's web series, the Meeple Syrup Show, with Jessey Wright and Erica Hayes-Bouyouris.  1h20m59s: Sen's licensed games: Batman: The Animated Series - Rogues Gallery, Legend of Korra: Pro-Bending Arena, and the Scooby Doo and D&D games mentioned above. 1h22m01s: The manga and anime My Hero Academia. 1h23m08s: Follow Sen on Twitter!

#271: Josué presented at The Bodhana Group’s annual Save Against Fear event with former co-host Brandon Saxton and GT newcomer Joe Serrano on the therapeutic aspects of DIY and maker culture. We discuss building at different scales, from 3D printed miniatures to Gundam models to cosplay. Support Geek Therapy on Patreon and get your welcome […] The post Make Your Own Miniatures, Mindfully appeared first on Geek Therapy.

In which Dixie, Eddy, Neall, and Rich (at Save Against Fear) talk on a panel with other creators about worldbuilding. Eddy forgets someone's podcast (Editing Note: Huge thanks to Josh Heath, for providing the audio. Because this was recorded with one mic, we've edited the audio to amplify when the speakers are quiet.) Panelists: James Kirk (moderator), Calvin Johns, Dixie Cochran, Neall Raemonn Price, Eddy Webb, Richard Thomas, and Doug Levandowski How important are world settings in a game? What are the most important parts of a world? What are your favorite aspects of worldbuilding? What motivates the creation of a world? Do worldbuilders feel responsibility to remove bias in their worldbuilding? What advice would you give to future worldbuilders? Community pruning Save Against Fear PDX Con Rich's D&D game Matthew sneaks backstage at PDX Con LINKS:Save Against Fear: https://www.thebodhanagroup.org/about-the-convention High Level Games Podcast: https://www.highlevelgames.ca/podcastingnetwork Anthropos Games (Early Dark, Fantaji, Centennial Gothic): http://anthroposgames.com/ Kids on Bikes: https://www.renegadegamestudios.com/kids-on-bikes PDXCon: https://pdxcon.paradoxplaza.com/ Parsely: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/248491/Parsely Crusader Kings III: https://www.crusaderkings.com/ 

In which Dixie and Eddy interview Maria Cambone, one of our editors, about editing, how she got started, and sticky babies. * Eddy doesn't support my bit* Interview Song!* What Maria has done for work* We're all nerds!* How she got started with us.* We're all support classes.* Eddy is a Methuselah* Maria helped on Pugmire* Maria is working on Vampire!* Ugly, sticky babies* Companies whose values align with yours* Feedback* We're not perfect!* Outros are sad* Deviant Kickstarter!* Creeping at cons Links:Pugmire: https://www.realmsofpugmire.com/Onyx Path Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/theonyxpathPDXCon: https://pdxcon.paradoxplaza.com/SAVE Against Fear: https://pdxcon.paradoxplaza.com/Onyx Path Discord: https://discord.gg/5uckcBkDeviant: The Renegades Kickstarter: http://kck.st/2Av3ZNV

Episode 69: Convention RamblingIn which Matthew, Dixie, and Eddy discuss conventions they've recently attended, the kinds of conventions they enjoy, and sponsorships! * Buggered up introductions!* Sponsorship potential* What is a "bio break"?* Dixie's adventures at Dragon Con* Arcades, gaming rooms, cosplay, parades, and so much more* Convention TV (Gen Con, take note of this)* Eddy's adventures at PAX West* Formal conventions, blackbox meetings and seminars, quiet spaces* Video games on display* Matthew's adventures at Tabletop Scotland* Meeting new gamers, the heat inside hangars, and running They Came from Beneath the Sea!* Upcoming conventions: Save Against Fear, PAX Unplugged, PDX Con, Dragonmeet, Midwinter* Back to sponsorships* Dixie ruins our airline sponsorship deal Links:Dragon Con: https://www.dragoncon.org/PAX West: https://west.paxsite.com/Tabletop Scotland: https://tabletopscotland.co.uk/Save Against Fear: https://www.thebodhanagroup.org/about-the-conventionPAX Unplugged: https://unplugged.paxsite.com/PDX Con: https://pdxcon.paradoxplaza.com/Dragonmeet: https://www.dragonmeet.co.uk/Midwinter: https://tabletop.events/conventions/midwinter-gaming-convention-2020They Came from Beneath the Sea! Backerkit: https://www.backerkit.com/projects/200664283/they-came-from-beneath-the-sea-a-tabletop-roleplayDixie's promised Dragon Con videos: https://youtu.be/tr6BxjrFBoE https://youtu.be/ifaKmpgUylk      

Sam and Brian talk with Jack Berkenstock, Executive Director of the Bodhana Group, a nonprofit organization that advocates the use of tabletop gaming as a directed therapeutic and clinical practice. While the group doesn't get overtly theological in the episode, using table top gaming in therapy makes some really beautiful connections to loving our neighbor. To find out more about the Bodhana Group, visit them at the following: Website: www.TheBodhanaGroup.org Facebook: The Bodhana Group Twitter: @theBodhanaGroupInstagram: TheBodhanaGroupConnect with us on Twitter @GeekChurch and on Facebook at Church of the Geek. Theme song by @RickRackYouTube -- he is currently taking commissions,

In which Eddy, Dixie, and Matthew throw together an emergency extra-long episode using listener questions and a game design panel from Save Against Fear! * EMERGENCY EPISODE* Introductions from the panel* What's the process when you start to design a game?* When do you reinvent the wheel or reskin something else?* The X-Card and other safety mechanisms* How do you merge theme and mechanics?* Handling feedback* Favorite mechanics* How would you design a game for players new to tabletop RPGs?* One thing that starting game designers should know* Imposter syndrome: "Shut up Stamford!"* Designing for disability and impairment* Instead of outro banter, we do an ad-hoc Q&A!* Questions from iceblade44: Sothic turns, relationship with vampires, and the Spilled Blood book * Apollo is unhelpful* Question from George Lemke: Can we get a Storypath deep dive?* Eddy has seen a lot of pictures of birds with arms* Question from Yoidan: What are our dream games?* Leave us your questions on the blog at theonyxpath.com! Links:* Save Against Fear: https://www.thebodhanagroup.org/about-the-convention * Retrostar: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/168254/Retrostar-Rulebook * Kids on Bikes: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/231938/Kids-on-Bikes-Core-Rulebook * Pugmire: https://realmsofpugmire.com * Project Biomodus: http://www.projectbiomodus.com/ * Onyx Pathcast blog: http://theonyxpath.com/category/projects/onyxpathcast/ 

In which we discuss what we as individuals have gotten out of RPGs, and what other people can get from them. * We now have a lost episode! * Dixie was an awkward child/teen/adult* RPGs helped her find "her people," her aesthetic, and confidence* Eddy was a similarly awkward kid, and RPGs helped him, too* On being "not enough" for certain subcultures/communities* Surprise, Matthew was also awkward!* Another surprise, RPGs helped his confidence, too!* Speech therapy for all (three of us)* Vampire/character voices* Two digressions in quick succession* RPGs as therapy tools* The Wraith: The Oblivion curse* How RPGs can affect players and GMs* RPGs and trauma rules/The X-Card* Which Onyx Path games are the most emotionally heavy?* What does "fun" mean?* Learning real-world things via RPGs* We all love Britain* Eddy and Dixie are going to conventions* Stay tuned after the music for your new favorite ringtone Links:* Windows 10 bug: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/10/06/microsoft-confirms-windows-10-update-mistake-was-your-data-lost/#472b15a9665b* Anthrax & Public Enemy - Bring the Noise: https://youtu.be/kl1hgXfX5-U* Nicholas Briggs Interview: https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/doctor-who-voice-of-the-daleks-nicholas-briggs-interview/* iThrive: http://ithrivegames.org/* Bodhana Group: https://www.thebodhanagroup.org/* A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster: https://www.theoryoffun.com/ * Save Against Fear: https://www.thebodhanagroup.org/about-the-convention* High Level Games Con: https://hlgcon.com/

Jenny and her mother Shannon (of STG 10 fame!) deliver an after-action report on Save Against Fear 2017, held Oct. 13-15 in Harrisburg, PA! Everyone had a great time, and the con was exceptionally well-run and definitely worth attending next year. Some specific shoutouts: First, to our former co-host Branden, who was in attendance and ran a fantastic Mistborn game! Also to the Harrisburg Mall for providing an excellent con space; Harrisburg University's game design program; and of course to The Bodhana Group for putting on a great con and continuing to be wonderful people doing good for hurting people. Games mentioned in this episode: Dreamchaser by Imagining Games; We Didn't Playtest This At All by Asmadi Games; Starfall by Pandasaurus Games; Spirit Island by Greater Than Games; Clank by Renegade Game Studios; Smallworld by Days of Wonder; Castle Dice and Epic PvP by Fun To 11; Cthulhu Invictus by Chaosium; Mistborn by Crafty Games; Kingmaker by Avalon Hill; Mysterium by Asmodee; and "Into the Dragon's Maw" by Dragonix.

We're delighted to welcome Jack Berkenstock Jr. of The Bodhana Group back onto the mics this week! Jack previously joined us on STG 25, when he introduced us to the idea of roleplaying games as an adjunct therapeutic tool for children who were victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse, among others. This time, he's here to talk more about RPGs in treatment for social skills, grief, loss, and more. After catching up with our old friend a bit, we let him plug Save Against Fear 2017 (Oct. 13-15 in Harrisburg, PA)—which we can confirm Jenny will attend this year, so catch up with her there too if you see her! We also plug the /r/ChristianDnD subreddit, especially for anyone looking to find other folks to game online with. That done, we chat briefly about the 2017 total solar eclipse and answer (another) question from Patreon backer Fernando about Saturday morning cartoons we'd want to turn into games. Naturally, this gave us a chance to plug our podcasting friends over at the Gameable Saturday Morning Podcast, and Peter's episodes on Batman: The Animated Series there. Our other choices: E.X.O. Squad, Reboot, Star Blazers, and Toad Patrol! (And yes, please nominate your own cartoons to game in the comments.) Finally, we settle in and let Jack talk about his introduction to gaming, how he found out he wanted to do therapy for kids who were hurting badly, and how he figured out that those two loves might work together. In particular, we discuss methodologies, what kind of metrics work and don't work in these sorts of situations, Olivia's House, and how the therapeutic sessions Bodhana runs differ from your average tabletop game. Games mentioned this episode: Unknown Armies; Cartoon Action Hour; Blades in the Dark; No Thank You, Evil!; Pugmire; Retrostar. Also mentioned: Face Value Comics; The Anglican Church's "Prayer for Reconciliation". Scripture: Psalm 16:7-10, Psalm 91:2-6, John 8:2-11, Galatians 6:1-2

Ep. 88: Jack Berkenstock comes on the show to talk to us about the Bodhana Group, Save Against Fear, and using tabletop gaming as a directed therapeutic and clinical practice. Please fill out our quick audience survey! http://bit.ly/2mU9KQB Notes: The Bodhana Group – http://www.thebodhanagroup.org/ Game to Grow on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC27sJEo6QLVyiyuKKFiKreQ — Come chat with […] The post The Bodhana Group and Save Against Fear w/ Jack Berkenstock appeared first on Geek Therapy.

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast   What can I say, 2016 was a tumultuous year for many. As this latest trip around the sun drew to a close there were many memes and references that 2016 was a year where people would make sure to stay up to midnight just to watch to it die, while looking forward to 2017 being an entirely different, perhaps brighter, year. I don't put much stock in a year being good or bad, as even with all my own ups and downs, a divorce, two moves, and some health issues, I'm quite pleased with what happened over the last 12 months: time spent with my children, dozens of interviews recorded, hundreds of phone calls and emails responded to, people met, and projects launched. Already this new year, 2017 is shaping up to be beautiful. But, there was some big news this year. Out of everything that happened around the globe, perhaps the biggest news for our community as a whole was the loss of two important figures to the movement: one of the founders and one of our best communicators. I speak of course of Bill Mollison and Toby Hemenway. I never knew Bruce Charles “Bill” Mollison, who passed away on September 24, 2016 at the age of 88, but I wouldn't be here without his efforts to popularize the ideas he developed with David Holmgren. Slow to build in the early years, seeing the number of trained practitioners grow from dozens to hundreds throughout the 1980s, and the books rise from a handful to perhaps a dozen, we are now seeing a flourish of activity building upon what Bill started with David more than 40 years ago. When I first came to permaculture nearly two decades ago, Mollinson's The Designers' Manual, the big black book of Permaculture,  was about all we had to go on in the West. Starting in the early 2000s with Gaia's Garden, the number one selling book on permaculture thus far, the roots of this discipline took hold and allowed the rest to flourish. It is with a still heavy heart that I hold the loss of Toby Hemenway, who passed away on December 20, 2016. I had the good fortune to get to know him through correspondence and our interview together . Though Gaia's Garden touched many, it was his second book, The Permaculture City, that continues to hold my thoughts because of the critiques he offered on running away to the countryside, as opposed to being where people are: in our cities. He also throughout those pages encouraged us to focus on our talents and to create systems that account for them, rather than pushing to embrace someone else's example of what to do. To truly design our systems around ourselves. I was looking forward to a follow-up to that book, and was outlining a second interview with Toby when word of his illness reached me. Not long after, he passed. Both Toby and Bill will be missed and I'm thankful for the time they did have to share their thoughts through their writing, interviews, and, thanks to the good fortune of the internet, videos. With the big news from our community, there is the smaller news of this show, which entered it's seventh year in October, 2016. Between guest host David Bilbrey and myself, we produced forty-seven episodes this year. If you are new to the show, or want to check out some highlights, some shows that I recommend include: Mary Reynolds, the Irish author of The Garden Awakening, shared with us a way to reconnect with the stories of a place and to become a guardian of Earth. To listen to the myths and legends of the people and the land to reconnect with what we've lost culturally. Whatever our backgrounds, we come from somewhere and should get to know that where. Steven Martyn, The Sacred Gardener from Canada, reminded me, in a similar way to Mary, for the need to reconnect, by creating a relationship with the land that we are on. For those of us who can look to our ancestors and know that their stories are not those of the land we are on, we can reach back to those who called the ground we walk on home and learn about and from them the wisdoms of the first people, while also being allies to their cause, as continues to happen with the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock. I also think, from Steven's examples, about how many of us are displaced from the places where our stories come from and how we were once all indigenous. Those traditions, stories, and folkways often still exist, we just call them myths, legends, and old wives tales, and can rediscover them by connecting to our families or the land they come from. Moving from the land to our social and economic structures, both of the conversations with Shaun Chamberlin bring his work with David Fleming, and David's legacy, to life. Surviving the Future and Lean Logic, both books on my Best Of for this year, create a connection between the long standing work of permaculture to build in the landscape, and take it a step closer towards meeting the needs of our social and economic systems by addressing the tension we feel between our always on, just-in-time economy, and the slower traditions of community. David's vision, continued by Shaun, is not rooted in some sense of nostalgia, but on the prospect of what the world will be like when energy and employment cease to exist as we know them today. We can slow down and react through an outreach of our gifts throughout our community, which is what Eric Chisler, my dear brother, joined David Bilbrey to share his thoughts on. This subject dear to my heart as the boundaries of permaculture continue to push beyond the roots in the landscape, and Eric shared his own experiences and current efforts with The Emergence Network to create the opportunities the future will require. The interview with Eric meant a lot for me personally because it was recorded just as he and I were preparing to leave Seppi's Place, as that project came to a close. I give thanks for my time with Eric and how our conversations drove me deeper into exploring community and alternative structures as we spent late nights in the kitchen cleaning and preparing food, wrapt in conversations, while listening to heavy metal in the background. A colleauge of Shaun's, whose work he extended in The Transition Timeline, is Rob Hopkins, originator of the of Transition Town movement, joined me shortly after the Brexit vote, while we American's were reaching the zenith of the United States presidential election, to talk about the current state of Transition. During that conversation we also look at some of the critiques of permaculture to accomplish the work that is necessary to create not only permanent human agriculture, but also permanent human culture that can survive the climate crisis that is already upon us, and the looming thread of energy descent. Though we may not talk about these two motives for permaculture, especially as oil prices drop and we adjust to the “new normal” of weather weirding, but the dangers are not going away and soon will come to call. Dr. Talia Fletcher and her family visited me while still living at Seppi's Place. There we got to know one another and discuss a holistic approach to veterinary medicine, which we then turned into a later interview. For those of us practicing permaculture, we have allies among all disciplines, we just need to find them, as demonstrated in the conversation with Dr. Fletcher Just as we can find allies around us, we can also be allies in our communities, as I found from interviewing Robyn Mello, the program director of The Philadelphia Orchard project. After provided an introduction to that project,  Robyn shared her own story about the community choices she's made by living in the inner city of Philadelphia. Having known Robyn a long time, she remains someone whose work I follow to remember what is possible in the urban environment. While others are still formulating and collecting their thoughts, she is actively doing the work through POP and her own life choices, all while living in the fifth largest city in the United States. Ending the retrospective on interveiws a conversation that started the year: Taj Scicluna, the Perma Pixie. In this continuation of the conversation we had at the end of 2015, Taj shared her experiences as a small business permaculture practitioner and what it means to straddle economics and earth care. I'm often reminded that 80 % of business fail in the first year and a half, so it's clear that being an entrepreneur isn't a straight shot at success, and still if we are going to continue to practice permaculture in the world that we find ourselves in, with liberal economic policies focused around market capitalism, there are structures that we can play with in by owning our own labor, or looking to work outside of those systems through structures like the gift economy, and by making changes in our own lives to live with less financial capital, while we build the social and otherwise. Myself, Taj, Shaun Chamberlin, and many others are choosing to live differently. I won't say that it is easy, but each day we can make the shifts that get us closer to where we want to be. It is a long game we are participating in. Industry, capital, and environmental degradation didn't begin overnight and we're not going to solve these problems either. As a mentor of mine used to say, “fast, cheap, or easy: pick two.” Let's make it cheap and easy by going slow. One day, one small act at a time. With these conversations that were all recorded via wire, also check out the group conversations from my trips to Clear Creek , Kentucky; Philadelphia , Pennsylvania; and Baltimore, Maryland. In those you can hear a multitude of voices come together in conversations about community, fellowship, and creating in urban and rural spaces. Live events like these are always fun, and I like going out to meet and speak with folks in person. If you would like to host an in-person recording of The Permaculture Podcast, and are somewhere near the East Coast, let me know. While recapping this best of from the show, I'd like to give a shoutout to Jason Godesky for creating The Fifth World role-playing game. Though it's been awhile since Jason was on the show as a guest, I got to hang out with him and Giuli at the convention Save Against Fear in October of 2016. During our time together I got a chance to play The Fifth World for the first time and in that process they evoked an Animist experience for me within the game when, for a few moments, I had to face the personification of my character's disconnect from  family. It left me shaken for a few moments thanks to the power of the storytelling moment. Whatever your background, be it gamer, storyteller, or an interest in myth, check out TheFifthWorld.com. If you are looking for new books to read, some releases from 2016 I recommend picking up are Lean Logic and Surviving the Future, both edited by Shaun Chamberlin. Rewild or Die by Urban Scout, a persona of Peter Michael Bauer from Rewild Portland, and The New Wildcrafted Cuisine by Pascal Baudar. Lean Logic and Surviving the Future , as mentioned in my interviews with the editor Shaun Chamberlin, fill the gulf between Permaculture and Transition, bridging the landscape and the new culture needed for a bountiful future that acknowledges scarcity and embraces it. Rewild or Die , though a snapshot of a particular moment in time for the rewilding community, is one of the earliest books on Rewilding. I recommend this for everyone interesting in permaculture, rewilding, and the modern primitive skills movement. As someone knowledgeable of permaculture, Peter is able to provide insights on the intersection between the world that arose from agriculture, and what we have to learn from indigenous traditions, all delivered with a bit of snark and sarcasm. On the other side of the spectrum is Pascal Baudar's The New Wildcrafted Cuisine , which takes wild foods and turns them into high culinary fare in a way I've not found elsewhere. Yes, many field books will teach you what to eat and how to make it edible, but Pascal is creating foods that one would want to eat, or even see served in a Michelin rated restaurant. As part of the interview with Pascal, I also appreciate hearing about how many classes and workshops he took in order to learn all that he did to create the book. This is a valuable lesson for all of us to slow down and take our time collecting our experience and understanding our chosen discipline. Looking forward for 2017 and the 7th year of the show, I'm continuing to step into what it means to slow down and take a sabbatical where I reinvest in myself and the podcast. I'll continue to produce new long form interviews, as you're used to, while leaning on friends like David Bilbrey to have other conversations and add unexpected voices to the conversation. Behind the scenes, I've asked by friends at Liminal Collective to take on more of the work that happens when the microphone is off, like social media and the newsletter, so that I can focus on those interviews and The Possibility Handbook . After a long year processing over 1,000 pictures, hours and hours of audio, and generating hundreds of pages of notes, everything is compiled in a way that I can begin writing the book itself. There are, of course, other projects and things we have in the wings for you, but I'm in a place where I'm trusting the process of it all, and will make some announcements as they come together. Throughout everything, my door remains open if you have any questions or would like to talk about anything you heard here, from an episode in the archives, or on a future episode of the show. . Email: or send me a letter: The Permaculture Podcast The Permaculture Podcast Until the next time, create the world you want to live in by taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.

Grant and Peter are back with a whole host of things to talk about! We start with a bit about the Pugmire campaign Grant just started playing in. Then we answer a surprisingly tricky question from Patreon backer Jim Nanban, who asks us for our "elevator pitch" for RPGs as a hobby. We remind everyone that Save Against Fear 2016 is coming up very quickly (and that you should go if at all possible!) And finally, we reach our main topic: Epic monsters. What do we mean by an "epic monster"? What role can and should they play in your campaign? Why do they sometimes fall flat? And what little tricks and additional details can you add in to really make them stand out to your players? And most importantly, what's the best story about an epic monster from your own gaming career? Mentioned in this episode: Save Against Fear 2016 (so nice we linked it twice!) GURPS Horror Magic: The Gathering's Eldrazi titans Scripture: Job 3:8, Revelation 13:1

Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast Enjoy this episode? Become a Patron. In 2015 I released 55 episodes. Followers to the show on Facebook and Twitter more than doubled, and listenership is now at over 15,000 per episode, also doubling since the start of the year. This episode is a best of and overview of the preceding twelve months. In preparing the list of what to include, it became a survey of what was popular on the podcast, and in our particular slice of the permaculture community represented by where things have gone, and your interests in reaching out to have certain guests on the air. If you're new to permaculture or this podcast, the various interviews reviewed here and listed in the Resource section at the bottom of the show notes page provide a beginning to explore the archives, which contain hundreds of hours of interviews with a broad cross section of permaculture practitioners, authors, scientists, and others who are all dedicated to creating a better world. Every time I sit down to look over the year that came before, I always toss around different ideas of what to include and how to best represent the trends and ideas, without giving a blow by blow of every topic and conversation. I really enjoy every interview and episode that gets released, so would just list them in order if I had my druthers, but that's not that interesting. Instead, I have to use some kind of metric or decision making process to decide what to share. That might be something like total listens to a given episode, but that gives preference to something that was released earlier in the year. Comments are great, but vary widely, and the more polarizing a guest is leads to more feedback. Even with that feedback, what source to judge from? Though some replies are left on the website, most of the responses continue to come directly to me via email, but some interviews, like that with Jason Godesky, generate a lot of interest on Facebook. So for this year I'm going to look at the topics that trended as the most popular subjects on the show, include a few of my personal favorites, and close with the guest who continues to be the most popular on the show. By far the topic that got the most attention was foraging and rewilding. Every time this subject came up new suggestions poured in for people to reach out to for interviews, other books and articles to read, or different angles to address this idea of primal reconnection to ourselves and the land. The two conversations with Peter Michael Bauer were some of the most downloaded and commented on interviews of the year. Peter's first conversation in March, providing an introduction to human rewilding and the intersection with permaculture, was so well received that he returned in November to explore the difference between rewilding the land and how that differs from un-domesticating ourselves. Dina Falconi, author of Foraging and Feasting, was the other guest garnered a lot of attention. Her discussion of food as medicine, the idea of developing and using master recipes, and the distinction between a plant as food or a culinary addition resonated with many people. From the landscape and the self we move to human society and our cultural stories, which played a big part this year in the discussions about social permaculture. Where these most connected were when many voices came together as one in the round table recordings. Repeatedly I've heard from you that you listened to those over and over again, including the two conversations with Ben Weiss and Dave Jacke, one of which included Charles Eisenstein; the journey to the Riverside Project in West Virginia where Nicole Luttrell, Jesse Wyner, Ashley Davis, and Diane Blust joined me for another two pieces that started talking about permaculture, but settled into a what it means to call a place home; and then the largest round table yet, with the Clear Creek community outside of Berea, Kentucky. Though each one touched on very different ideas the space created by coming together felt like you were invited to be a part of the circle to sit, ask questions, and listen. In some case we were able to do that by including your questions as you tweeted or posted comments to Facebook while the interviews were recorded. Along with those, the social and cultural side were pushed to the edge in the discussion of with Jason Godesky. Though on the surface we talked about narrative, mythmaking, and how we can accomplish that through games such as his own The Fifth World, there was a deeper exploration of push-pull experienced between waking up and turning on lights and having on demand hot water and how to live a life that isn't just a reduced consumption that is still damaging, but something more regenerative. I'm thankful for the voice Jason brought to the table that day, after we'd already had a long weekend at Save Against Fear, and were still able to look at the difference between the modern versus the traditional; holistic compared to reductionist; and personal responsibility versus systemic hegemony. Moving outside of the topics of interest, there are three episodes I feel deserve mentioned here as ones you should listen to if you haven't heard them, or listen to them again if you have. The first is Joshua Peaceseeker Hughes and our overview of modern permaculture that resulted in the first episode explicitly looking at the need for Transitional Ethics during this time of transformation. His personal story created an acknowledgement that we can do more, but that doing so involves making an active choice. To embody permaculture and live it intentionally, but not to abuse ourselves for being citizens of the world we find ourselves in. The second was when I returned to the Faith and Earth Care series through the interview with Dillon Cruz. I was initially a little hesitant about releasing the conversation because this series as a whole usually generates a lot of feedback, often negatively. Dillon's time on the air did bring a number of replies, often private via email, but in a different way. His raw voice and self awareness lead to responses that stretched across a variety of religious traditions, and gave form to an expression of faith as a way to tend the world we are given that is a personal pursuit compatible with designing the world we want to live in. There was no hatemail this time around for covering spirituality within permaculture, but, then again, this wasn't that kind of conversation. The final of the stand-alone, stand-out episodes, comes from time spent with Eric and Victoria of Charm City Farms, in Baltimore, Maryland. In particular it was Victoria's personal journey that opened a space to hear a voice that sounded similar to our own. She came from a place where she could make any of a number of choices towards the life she lived, and worked through the struggles of what path lead to a sense of self and right livelihood. Every time I sit down with a microphone I never know what will wind up being recorded or where the interview will go. That day in Baltimore lead to something special and I'm grateful to Victoria for allowing me to share that with you. Now that I've covered the episodes I heard from you about, there are two that were some of my personal favorites. Those were with Holly Brown of Island Creek Farm, and talking with Toby Hemenway about The Permaculture City. Holly means so much to my own journey as a permaculture practitioner not only for the content of the conversation you can listen to, but also because of the way that we spent our the time together the day we met. She was the last stop on my journey through Virginia visiting with permaculture farmers and homesteaders, that started with Lee and Dave O'Neill of Radical Roots several days earlier. That morning, as I drove out to her farm, I found myself a little road weary and ready to start the trek back up North on Interstate 81 to Pennsylvania. I love to drive, it's something instilled in me by my father at a young age as I sat in the back of classic American muscle, and later Swedish GT cars, and then my own life as a gear-head behind the wheel of Japanese sports cars and GT cars of my own, but I despise getting on I-81 for more than an hour or so, and the thought of four hours from Virginia back home that day felt like a stretch of my own personal hell laid out in asphalt. While winding my way through back roads, already running late after sitting in traffic while trying to leave Roanoke, I began to question this last stop of the day, and whether to reschedule with Holly for another time. The closer I got to the farm the roads got narrower and the speed limits much lower, and I still didn't know what I would find, or how this last conversation would close out a whirlwind journey, my first time taking the podcast on the road to visit, talk, and document in person. Finally, after nearly two hours in the car for what should have taken less than an hour, I rounded  the last turn and came to the Island Creek. After backing up a bit because I missed the lane, for the first time I saw why Holly and her farm were recommended as a place to visit. The site was gorgeous, and there, out in the fields, were a pair of souls working the land with their hands, skin deeply tanned from time spent out of doors. Shortly they would be revealed as Holly and one of her farm interns. Within moments of meeting, after Holly and her intern finished the harvesting and business for the day, Holly and I stepped into the small home she shares with her husband and children, a home built by their hands on land donated to their family as a wedding gift, and ate a lunch of vegetable curry, topped with yogurt she made from raw milk sourced from another nearby farm, and paired with a salad of her own variety of mixed greens. Before the interview, we sat and talked about children, family, and life. Afterwards, while touring the farm where I got to eat my first fresh fig right, pulled right off the tree, we discussed the politics of being a permaculture farmer in an area with a conservative view of farming that views modern, industrial drive agriculture as the only way; and how to make the choices required to have a successful permaculture farm that runs counter to those ideas that others see as norms, reinforced by our society we live in. Though that all happened outside of the conversation you can listen to on the show, many of the tenets and tone you'll find there. Holly is someone I look forward to visiting again to sit down and continue to push the edges of what it means to embody permaculture as a small-scale farmer working the land, fueled by calories not fossil fuels. The impact of that day is also why you'll see the picture of Holly's farm as the cover image of this episode. On the other side of that, looking at living in a rural setting, was Toby Hemenway. Well known and carrying high regarded within our community, I'd chased him off and on through the years for an interview, but we never quite connected. I'll admit to never being a fan of Gaia's Garden, but The Permaculture City was like talking with an old friend, which was what the resulting interview felt like. Warm and gracious, but a bit heretical because Toby did the math and raised questions about the practicality and sustainability of the permaculture dream of going off-grid, returning to the land, and seeking self-sufficiency. As he says in the book, he's done subsistence farming, and it isn't a joy by any sense of the imagination, it's hard work that many of us are not realistically ready for, so what can we do to do us and what we are ready for and good at? This latest work also took permaculture a step further out of the landscape, to areas where there may be no soil to grow in, or if we're not suited to it, may honestly be a waste of our time and energy. What then? What do we do to still live in a regenerative manner, during this period of transition, to lessen our consumption and impacts, when the answer is counter to so many years of conversation and literature on what we're told permaculture is supposed to be, and what it is supposed to look like? Deep down we've known the truth, the answers, we've heard it before through people like Bob Theis imploring that we don't go out and inflict ourselves on a piece of land that doesn't need us, or Dave Jacke addressing that what we called Invisible Structures for so long need to be framed for what they are, social and economic systems. And here in his book and conversation with me,  was the number one selling author on the subject of permaculture calling all of that into question, and asking us to examine our own choices. Here were some of my doubts about the permaculture narrative given a voice. Was my mind blown? Yeah, just a little, and it's what has taken me a road to continue to stand in two worlds and create a place, through the podcast, to look at these bigger pictures and questions so we can build permanent culture, rather than just insuring we achieve permanent agriculture. With all those voices and conversations and the others in the archives, can you guess who the number one guest of all time on the show is out of the last five years, and so receives an honorable mention? Are you shocked at all if I say Ethan Hughes? His insight and thoughts continue to connect with so many people, including to my surprise, a number of folks from Australia and New Zealand. The work of his, to embrace and embody permaculture in a way that is personally fulfilling, but non-proselytizing, shows a different way forward. I might not ever to live the way he does, because as Eric Toensmeier and I have talked about I like electricity and the ability to communicate worldwide instantaneously via the internet,  his actions help me get a little bit closer to where I want to be every time we talk or I listen back over the public interviews. It's why I picked up the phone and called him to talk about my desire here in Pennsylvania to create an urban demonstration site and semi-intentional community. As that phone call drew to a close, and he'd shared a number of insights in how to start a project like that, the conversation lead to us talking about writing, in particular a book about his personal journey, but with the practical insights necessary so anyone can create change where they are, as conventionally or radically as they like. Even more to my surprise, Ethan asked me to be his partner on the project, which resulted in what we're calling The Possibility Handbook. As a new year dawns, so does a new project, and I leave for The Possibility Alliance on January 15, 2016 to sit down, off-grid, and record with Ethan. If you would like to learn more about The Possibility Handbook in particular, visit the thepermaculturepodcast.com/book. There you can listen to a short interview with Mr. Hughes discussing the contents we'll cover, and what he hopes to accomplish by bringing this into the world. You'll also find information and links on how to take part in a listener-only crowdfunding campaign where you'll  receive early access to the book materials as they become available, and exclusive content that will not be offered anywhere but there. If you'd like to contribute to the show in general visit https://thepermaculturepodcast.com and click on the support tab to find out how you can help. In drawing this to a close, I want to say thank you to everyone who has been a part of the the show over the years by donating, sharing links, and reaching out to me via email or phone, or by taking the time to put a letter in the mail. All of it has made this podcast a success in ways that I never imagined in October of 2010 when I  first sat down with an inexpensive USB headset and an old Linux laptop to start talking about Permaculture.   Thank you.   [caption width="960" align="aligncenter"] Photo Source: Rewild Portland[/caption] Resources: Episode 1506: Island Creek Farm with Holly Brown Episode 1513: Rewilding Permaculture with Peter Michael Bauer Episode 1516: Foraging and Feasting with Dina Falconi Episode 1524: Right Livelihood with Ben Weiss, Dave Jacke, and Charles Eisenstein Episode 1526: Getting right with ourselves & building community featuring Ben Weiss & Dave Jacke Episode 1530: Urban Permaculture in Baltimore, Maryland (Charm City Farms) Episode 1532: The Permaculture City with Toby Hemenway Episode 1538: Community Building (Clear Creek Round Table) Episode 1540: Myth Making and Storytelling with Jason Godesky Episode 1541: The Riverside Project Round Table (Part 1) Episode 1543: Transitional Ethics with Joshua Peaceseeker Hughes Episode 1544: Home (The Riverside Project Round Table Part 2) Episode 1546: Human vs. Conservation Rewilding Episode 1548: The Greatest Commandment with Dillon Cruz

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.

Peter and Branden are back to talk about trustworthiness! First, a reminder about our upcoming LIVE recording of Episode 50, and an account of Save Against Fear 2014 from Branden. Then, we get down to the business of trust. We talk about why players don't trust NPCs; how to convince players that their characters should trust a given NPC; how to indicate that a character isn't trustworthy; and what to do when a player character can't be trusted. Enjoy! Scripture:

BIG NEWS: Branden will be a Save Against Fear 2014! If you're not familiar with SAFe and The Bodhana Group, take a listen to Episode 25, "Therapeutic Roleplaying (with Jack Berkenstock)". This should be our last bonus episode for a bit—Grant will be back next episode—but Peter and Branden wanted to take some of the work we've done in our Science of Storytelling series and apply it to a real campaign pitch, with multiple demands from virtual players (all played by Peter) and Branden as the GM. Enjoy! Scripture: Proverbs 4:13, Luke 6:40

Peter and Branden take a break from the usual episode sequence to talk about their story and game ideas that haven't made it to the table yet! We also plug Save Against Fear 2014, in Lancaster, PA, September 12-14. (Branden might actually be able to go!) Scripture: Ecclesiastes 1:9

HJRP1016 Your hosts: Stu, CADave, Kimi, Tyler Show Notes! We discussed trouble PCs and balancing the fun of playing a broken character with the grief it can cause the rest of the party. Mathew writes in to lament the fact that many games don't use the exploding dice mechanic, and how fun it is.  Jarred writes in about the Bodhana Group, using RPGs as therapeutic tools and running a game at an upcoming charity con, Save Against Fear. Karsten updates us on a convention game he ran (Ghostbusters LA), tells us about Mutants and Masterminds, and treats us to a gaming nightmare. And N Eric relays a game nightmare as well.

It's our distinct pleasure to welcome Jack Berkenstock of The Bodhana Group as a guest host for this episode! We give Jack plenty of time to talk about his group and their mission to help young victims and perpetrators of sexual trauma—a mission they're carrying out with tabletop roleplaying games as a crucial therapeutic tool. We also discuss the science and goals of therapeutic roleplaying and trauma therapy in general. Plus, we do our best to plug Save Against Fear, a three-day convention in Lancaster, PA from Oct. 11th-13th hosted by and fundraising for The Bodhana Group. A big list of everything Jack mentioned is below the fold, too. We don't usually ask this, but please share this episode around. We want to get the word out about Save Against Fear in time for people to decide to go, and we want people to know about and support The Bodhana Group as well! Bodhana has a Facebook page and Twitter feed too, if that's your thing. Scripture: Psalm 103:2-5, Luke 7:20-23, John 8:3-11, and Philippians 4:8 ----more---- -- Rich Thomas from White Wolf Games (whose comment got this therapeutic roleplaying thing going,00:04:00) (@rich_thomas_ww) -- Drama therapy -- Everything Bad Is Good for You, by Steven Johnson -- CAR-PGa -- The Functions of Role Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems, and Explore Identity, by Sarah Lynne Bowman -- Meddling Kids by Pandahead Productions -- The Trouble with Rose by Todd Zircher -- rpgresearch.com

Two major announcements: This is the first episode in our new "Science of Storytelling" series; and Save Against Fear, a remarkable gaming convention and fundraiser for sexually traumatized kids, is the weekend of October 11th-13th. You're going to be hearing much more about Save Against Fear in the future! In this episode, Grant, Peter, and Branden (but mostly Branden) explain the continuous plot structure used in almost all movie scripts. (See our full show notes for a copy of that outline!) Then, Branden walks us through creating an actual plot for a game using the outline he laid out in the first half of the episode. Scripture for this episode: Psalms 19:14, Philippians 4:8 ----more---- The full outline we used in this episode: Opening ImageThe Set-up/Theme StatedThe CatalystChanges the world irrevocably; no going backThe DebateSometimes the refusal of the call; provide choices and alternative actionsBreak into 2B StoryIn movies, usually romantic; in a game, perhaps one per PCFun and GamesThe promise of the premiseMid pointEither a “false defeat” or a “false victory”Bad guys close inAll is lostEither “false victory” or “false defeat” (The opposite of what ever the midpoint was, but it should be related to the midpoint twist)The ‘whiff of death’Dark Night of the SoulBreak into 3B-story should pay off here to provide hopeFinaleFinal Image