Podcasts about TSR

In this episode of Epic Realms, we welcome veteran game designer, editor, and author Steven E. Schend. Steven's work helped shape the Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, and Planescape during the golden age of 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons. He's also the author of the novel Blackstaff and contributed to the Marvel Super Heroes RPG and Alternity. Our conversation explores Steven's journey from gamer to TSR editor, designer, and novelist, with behind-the-scenes stories from his years at TSR and Wizards of the Coast. We discuss the creative process behind iconic Realms sourcebooks like Sea of Fallen Stars and City of Splendors, the development of his beloved character Gamelon Idogyr, and how his work continues to influence roleplaying games today. Steven also shares his experiences in writing novels, his reflections on the evolving RPG industry, and his current projects including the Ouroboros RPG and Mythmakers/Realmsbound. If you're a fan of Forgotten Realms, classic D&D history, or the craft of RPG design and worldbuilding, this is an episode you won't want to miss. Don't forget to follow/subscribe to the podcast to get notified for all future episodes! Stevens Website https://steveneschend.com/ Check us out at -  http://www.EpicRealmsMedia.com  

Matt Forbeck is all that and so much more. He grew up in Wisconsin as what he describes as a wimpy kid, too short and not overly healthy. He took to gaming at a pretty early age and has grown to be a game creator, author and award-winning storyteller.   Matt has been designing games now for over 35 years. He tells us how he believes that many of the most successful games today have stories to tell, and he loves to create some of the most successful ones. What I find most intriguing about Matt is that he clearly is absolutely totally happy in his work. For most of Matt's career he has worked for himself and continues today to be an independent freelancer.   Matt and his wife have five children, including a set of quadruplets. The quadruplets are 23 and Matt's oldest son is 28 and is following in his father's footsteps.   During our conversation we touch on interesting topics such as trust and work ethics. I know you will find this episode stimulating and worth listening to more than once.     About the Guest:   Matt Forbeck is an award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author and game designer of over thirty-five novels and countless other books and games. His projects have won a Peabody Award, a Scribe Award, and numerous ENnies and Origins Awards. He is also the president of the Diana Jones Award Foundation, which celebrates excellence in gaming.    Matt has made a living full-time on games and fiction since 1989, when he graduated from the Residential College at the University of Michigan with a degree in Creative Writing. With the exception of a four-year stint as the president of Pinnacle Entertainment Group and a year and a half as the director of the adventure games division of Human Head Studios, he has spent his career as an independent freelancer.   Matt has designed collectible card games, roleplaying games, miniatures games, board games, interactive fiction, interactive audiobooks, games for museum installations, and logic systems for toys. He has directed voiceover work and written short fiction, comic books, novels, screenplays, and video game scripts and stories. His work has been translated into at least 15 languages.   His latest work includes the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game Core Rulebook, the Spider-Verse Expansion, Monster Academy (novels and board game), the Shotguns & Sorcery 5E Sourcebook based on his novels, and the Minecraft: Roll for Adventure game books. He is the father of five, including a set of quadruplets. He lives in Beloit, Wisconsin, with his wife and a rotating cast of college-age children. For more about him and his work, visit Forbeck.com.   Ways to connect with Matt:   Twitter: https://twitter.com/mforbeck Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/forbeck Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/forbeck.com Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mforbeck Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mforbeck/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/forbeck/ Website: https://www.forbeck.com/     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset today. We get to play games. Well, not really, but we'll try. Our guest is Matt Forbeck, who is an award winning author. He is a game designer and all sorts of other kinds of things that I'm sure he's going to tell us about, and we actually just before we started the the episode, we were talking about how one might explore making more games accessible for blind and persons with other disabilities. It's, it's a challenge, and there, there are a lot of tricks. But anyway, Matt, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.   Matt Forbeck ** 02:02 Well, thank you, Michael for inviting me and having me on. I appreciate it.   Speaker 1 ** 02:06 I think we're going to have a lot of fun, and I think it'll work out really well. I'm I am sure of that. So why don't we start just out of curiosity, why don't you tell us kind of about the early Matt, growing up?   Matt Forbeck ** 02:18 Uh, well, I grew up. I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I grew up in a little town called Beloit, Wisconsin, which actually live in now, despite having moved away for 13 years at one point, and I had terrible asthma, I was a sick and short kid, and with the advent of medication, I finally started to be healthy when I was around nine, and Part of that, I started getting into playing games, right? Because when you're sick, you do a lot of sitting around rather than running around. So I did a lot of reading and playing games and things like that. I happen to grow up in the part of the world where Dungeons and Dragons was invented, which is in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, about 30 miles from where I live. And because of that I was I started going to conventions and playing games and such, when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I started doing it when I was a little bit older. I started doing it professionally, and started doing it when I was in college. And amazingly enough, even to my own astonishment, I've made a career out of it.   Speaker 1 ** 03:17 Where did you go to college? I went to the University   Matt Forbeck ** 03:21 of Michigan over in Ann Arbor. I had a great time there. There's a wonderful little college, Beloit College, in my hometown here, and most of my family has gone to UW Milwaukee over the years. My parents met at Marquette in Milwaukee, but I wanted to get the heck out of the area, so I went to Michigan, and then found myself coming back as soon as we started having   Speaker 1 ** 03:42 kids well, and of course, I would presume that when you were at the University of Michigan, you rooted for them and against Ohio State. That was   Matt Forbeck ** 03:50 kind of, you know, if you did it the other way around, they back out of town. So, yeah, I was always kind of astonished, though, because having grown up in Wisconsin, where every sports team was a losing team when I was growing up, including the Packers, for decades. You know, we were just happy to be playing. They were more excuse to have beers than they were to cheer on teams. And I went to Michigan where they were, they were angry if the team wasn't up by two touchdowns. You know, at any point, I'm like, You guys are silly. This is we're here for fun.   Speaker 1 ** 04:17 But it is amazing how seriously some people take sports. I remember being in New Zealand helping the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind. Well now 22 years ago, it's 2003 and the America's Cup had just finished before we got there, and in America beat New Zealand, and the people in New Zealand were just irate. They were complaining that the government didn't put enough money into the design of the boat and helping with the with the yacht and all that. It was just amazing how seriously people take it, yeah,   Matt Forbeck ** 04:58 once, I mean, it becomes a part of your. Identity in a lot of ways, right for many people, and I've never had to worry about that too much. I've got other things on my mind, but there you go.   Speaker 1 ** 05:08 Well, I do like it when the Dodgers win, and my wife did her graduate work at USC, and so I like it when the Trojans win, but it's not the end of the world, and you do need to keep it in perspective. I I do wish more people would I know once I delivered a speech in brether County, Kentucky, and I was told that when I started the speech had to end no later than preferably exactly at 6:30pm not a minute later, because it was the night of the NCAA Basketball Championship, and the Kentucky Wildcats were in the championship, and at 630 everyone was going to get up and leave and go home to watch the game. So I ended at 630 and literally, by 631 I timed it. The gym was empty and it was full to start with.   Matt Forbeck ** 06:02 People were probably, you know, counting down on their watches, just to make sure, right?   Speaker 1 ** 06:06 Oh, I'm sure they were. What do you do? It's, it is kind of fun. Well, so why did you decide to get started in games? What? What? What attracted to you, to it as a young person, much less later on?   Matt Forbeck ** 06:21 Well, I was, yeah, I was an awkward kid, kind of nerdy and, you know, glasses and asthma and all that kind of stuff. And games were the kind of thing where, if you didn't know how to interact with people, you could sit down at a table across them and you could practice. You can say, okay, we're all here. We've got this kind of a magic circle around us where we've agreed to take this one silly activity seriously for a short period of time, right? And it may be that you're having fun during that activity, but you know, there's, there's no reason that rolling dice or moving things around on a table should be taken seriously. It's all just for fun, right? But for that moment, you actually just like Las Vegas Exactly, right? When there's money on the line, it's different, but if you're just doing it for grins. You know, it was a good way for me to learn how to interact with people of all sorts and of different ages. And I really enjoyed playing the games, and I really wanted to be a writer, too. And a lot of these things interacted with story at a very basic level. So breaking in as a writer is tough, but it turned out breaking as a game designer, wasn't nearly his stuff, so I started out over there instead, because it was a very young field at the time, right? D and D is now 50 years old, so I've been doing this 35 years, which means I started around professionally and even doing it before that, I started in the period when the game and that industry were only like 10 or 15 years old, so yeah, weren't quite as much competition in those   Speaker 1 ** 07:43 days. I remember some of the early games that I did play, that I could play, were DOS based games, adventure. You're familiar with adventure? Yeah, oh, yeah. Then later, Zork and all that. And I still think those are fun games. And I the reason I like a lot of those kinds of games is they really make you think, which I think most games do, even though the video even the video games and so on, they they help your or can help your reactions, but they're designed by people who do try to make you think,   Matt Forbeck ** 08:15 yeah. I mean, we basically are designing puzzles for people to solve, even if they're story puzzles or graphic puzzles or sound puzzles or whatever, you know, even spatial puzzles. There the idea is to give somebody something fun that is intriguing to play with, then you end up coming with story and after that, because after a while, even the most most exciting mechanics get dull, right? I mean, you start out shooting spaceships, but you can only shoot spaceships for so long, or you start out playing Tetris, and you only put shapes together for so long before it doesn't mean anything that then you start adding in story to give people a reason to keep playing right and a reason to keep going through these things. And I've written a lot of video games over the years, basically with that kind of a philosophy, is give people nuggets of story, give them a plot to work their way through, and reward them for getting through different stages, and they will pretty much follow you through anything. It's amazing.   Michael Hingson ** 09:09 Is that true Dungeons and Dragons too?   Matt Forbeck ** 09:13 It is. All of the stories are less structured there. If you're doing a video game, you know you the team has a lot of control over you. Give the player a limited amount of control to do things, but if you're playing around a table with people, it's more of a cooperative kind of experience, where we're all kind of coming up with a story, the narrator or the Game Master, the Dungeon Master, sets the stage for everything, but then the players have a lot of leeway doing that, and they will always screw things up for you, too. No matter what you think is going to happen, the players will do something different, because they're individuals, and they're all amazing people. That's actually to me, one of the fun things about doing tabletop games is that, you know, the computer can only react in a limited number of ways, whereas a human narrator and actually change things quite drastically and roll. With whatever people come up with, and that makes it tremendous fun.   Speaker 1 ** 10:04 Do you think AI is going to enter into all that and maybe improve some of the   Matt Forbeck ** 10:09 old stuff? It's going to add your end to it, whether it's an ad, it's going to approve it as a large question. Yeah. So I've been ranting about AI quite a bit lately with my friends and family. But, you know, I think the problem with AI, it can be very helpful a lot of ways, but I think it's being oversold. And I think it's especially when it's being oversold for thing, for ways for people to replace writers and creative thinking, Yeah, you know, you're taking the fun out of everything. I mean, the one thing I like to say is if, if you can't be bothered to write this thing that you want to communicate to me, I'm not sure why I should be bothered to read this thing well.   Speaker 1 ** 10:48 And I think that AI will will evolve in whatever way it does. But the fact of the matter is, So do people. And I think that, in fact, people are always going to be necessary to make the process really work? AI can only do and computers can only do so much. I mean, even Ray Kurzweil talks about the singularity when people and computer brains are married, but that still means that you're going to have the human element. So it's not all going to be the computer. And I'm not ready to totally buy into to what Ray says. And I used to work for Ray, so I mean, I know Ray Well, but, but the but the bottom line is, I think that, in fact, people are always going to be able to be kind of the, the mainstay of it, as long as we allow that, if we, if we give AI too much power, then over time, it'll take more power, and that's a problem, but that's up to us to deal with?   Matt Forbeck ** 11:41 No, I totally agree with that. I just think right now, there's a very large faction of people who it's in their economic interest to oversell these things. You know, people are making chips. They're building server farms. A lot of them are being transferred from people are doing blockchain just a few years ago, and they see it as the hot new thing. The difference is that AI actually has a lot of good uses. There's some amazing things will come out of llms and such. But I again, people are over the people are selling this to us. Are often over promising things, right?   Speaker 1 ** 12:11 Yeah, well, they're not only over promising but they're they're really misdirecting people. But the other side of it is that, that, in fact, AI as a concept and as a technology is here, and we have control over how we use it. I've said a couple times on this this podcast, and I've said to others, I remember when I first started hearing about AI, I heard about the the fact that teachers were bemoaning the pack, that kids were writing their papers just using AI and turning them in, and it wasn't always easy to tell whether it was something that was written by AI or was written by the student. And I come from a little bit different view than I think a lot of people do. And my view basically is, let the kids write it if with AI, if that's what they're going to do, but then what the teacher needs to do is to take one period, for example, and give every student in that class the opportunity to come up and defend whatever paper they have. And the real question is, can they defend the paper? Which means, have they really learned the subject, or are they just relying on AI,   Matt Forbeck ** 13:18 yeah, I agree with that. I think the trouble is, a lot of people, children, you know, who are developing their abilities and their morals about this stuff, they use it as just a way to complete the assignment, right? And many of them don't even read what they turn in, right, right? Just know that they've got something here that will so again, if you can't be bothered to read the thing that you manufactured, you're not learning anything about it,   Speaker 1 ** 13:39 which is why, if you are forced to defend it, it's going to become pretty obvious pretty fast, whether you really know it or not. Now, I've used AI on a number of occasions in various ways, but I use it to maybe give me ideas or prepare something that I then modify and shape. And I may even interact with AI a couple of times, but I'm definitely involved with the process all the way down the line, because it still has to be something that I'm responsible for.   Matt Forbeck ** 14:09 I agree. I mean, the whole point of doing these things is for people to connect with each other, right? I want to learn about the ideas you have in your head. I want to see how they jive with ones in my head. But if I'm just getting something that's being spit out by a machine and not you, and not being curated by you at any point, that doesn't seem very useful, right? So if you're the more involved people are in it, the more useful it is.   Speaker 1 ** 14:31 Well, I agree, and you know, I think again, it's a tool, and we have to decide how the tool is going to be used, which is always the way it ought to be. Right?   Matt Forbeck ** 14:42 Exactly, although sometimes it's large corporations deciding,   Speaker 1 ** 14:45 yeah, well, there's that too. Well, individuals,   Matt Forbeck ** 14:49 we get to make our own choices. Though you're right,   Speaker 1 ** 14:51 yes, and should Well, so, so when did you start bringing writing into what you. Did, and make that a really significant part of what you did?   Matt Forbeck ** 15:03 Well, pretty early on, I mean, I started doing one of the first things I did was a gaming zine, which was basically just a print magazine that was like, you know, 32 pages, black and white, about the different tabletop games. So we were writing those in the days, design and writing are very closely linked when it comes to tabletop games and even in video games. The trick of course is that designing a game and writing the rules are actually two separate sets of skills. So one of the first professional gig I ever had during writing was in games was some friends of mine had designed a game for a company called Mayfair games, which went on to do sellers of contain, which is a big, uh, entry level game, and but they needed somebody to write the rules, so they called me over, showed me how to play the game. I took notes and I I wrote it down in an easy to understand, clear way that people had just picked up the box. Could then pick it up and teach themselves how to play, right? So that was early on how I did it. But the neat thing about that is it also taught me to think about game design. I'm like, when I work on games, I think about, who is this game going to be for, and how are we going to teach it to them? Because if they can't learn the game, there's no point of the game at all, right?   Speaker 1 ** 16:18 And and so I'm right? I'm a firm believer that a lot of technical writers don't do a very good job of technical writing, and they write way over people's heads. I remember the first time I had to write, well, actually, I mentioned I worked for Kurzweil. I was involved with a project where Ray Kurzweil had developed his original omniprent optical character recognition system. And I and the National Federation of the Blind created with him a project to put machines around the country so that blind people could use them and give back to Ray by the time we were all done, recommendations as to what needed to go in the final first production model of the machine. So I had to write a training manual to teach people how to use it. And I wrote this manual, and I was always of the opinion that it had to be pretty readable and usable by people who didn't have a lot of technical knowledge. So I wrote the manual, gave it to somebody to read, and said, Follow the directions and and work with the machine and all that. And they did, and I was in another room, and they were playing with it for a couple of hours, and they came in and they said, I'm having a problem. I can't figure out how to turn off the machine. And it turns out that I had forgotten to put in the instruction to turn off the machine. And it wasn't totally trivial. There were steps you had to go through. It was a Data General Nova two computer, and you had to turn it off the right way and the whole system off the appropriate way, or you could, could mess everything up. So there was a process to doing it. So I wrote it in, and it was fine. But, you know, I've always been a believer that the textbooks are way too boring. Having a master's degree in physics, I am of the opinion that physics textbook writers, who are usually pretty famous and knowledgeable scientists, ought to include with all the text and the technical stuff they want to put in, they should put in stories about what they did in you bring people in, draw them into the whole thing, rather than just spewing out a bunch of technical facts.   Matt Forbeck ** 18:23 No, I agree. My my first calculus professor was a guy who actually explained how Newton and Leipzig actually came up with calculus, and then he would, you know, draw everything on the board and turn around say, and isn't that amazing? And you were, like, just absolutely enamored with the idea of how they had done these things, right? Yeah. And what you're doing there, when you, when you, when you give the instructions to somebody and say, try this out. That's a very big part of gaming, actually, because what we do this thing called play testing, where we take something before it's ready to be shown to the public, and we give it to other people and say, try this out. See how it works. Let me know when you're starting out of your first playing you play with like your family and friends and people will be brutal with you and give you hints about how you can improve things. But then, even when you get to the rules you're you send those out cold to people, or, you know, if you're a big company, you watch them through a two way mirror or one way mirror, and say, Hey, let's see how they react to everything. And then you take notes, and you try to make it better every time you go through. And when I'm teaching people to play games at conventions, for instance, I will often say to them, please ask questions if you don't understand anything, that doesn't mean you're dumb. Means I didn't explain it well enough, right? And my job as a person writing these rules is to explain it as well as I humanly can so it can't be misconstrued or misinterpreted. Now that doesn't mean you can correct everything. Somebody's always got like, Oh, I missed that sentence, you know, whatever. But you do that over and over so you can try to make it as clear and concise as possible, yeah.   Speaker 1 ** 19:52 Well, you have somewhat of a built in group of people to help if you let your kids get involved. Involved. So how old are your kids?   Matt Forbeck ** 20:03 My eldest is 26 he'll be 27 in January. Marty is a game designer, actually works with me on the marble tabletop role playing game, and we have a new book coming out, game book for Minecraft, called Minecraft role for adventure, that's coming out on July 7, I think, and the rest of the kids are 23 we have 423 year olds instead of quadruplets, one of whom is actually going into game design as well, and the other says two are still in college, and one has moved off to the work in the woods. He's a very woodsy boy. Likes to do environmental education with people.   Speaker 1 ** 20:39 Wow. Well, see, but you, but you still have a good group of potential game designers or game critics anyway.   Matt Forbeck ** 20:47 Oh, we all play games together. We have a great time. We do weekly game nights here. Sometimes they're movie nights, sometimes they're just pizza nights, but we shoot for game and pizza   Speaker 1 ** 20:56 if we get lucky and your wife goes along with all this too.   Matt Forbeck ** 21:00 She does. She doesn't go to the game conventions and stuff as much, and she's not as hardcore of a gamer, but she likes hanging out with the kids and doing everything with us. We have a great time.   Speaker 1 ** 21:10 That's that's pretty cool. Well, you, you've got, you've got to build an audience of some sorts, and that's neat that a couple of them are involved in it as well. So they really like what dad does, yeah,   Matt Forbeck ** 21:23 yeah. We, I started taking them each to conventions, which are, you know, large gatherings gamers in real life. The biggest one is Gen Con, which happens in Indianapolis in August. And last year, I think, we had 72,000 people show up. And I started taking the kids when they were 10 years old, and my wife would come up with them then. And, you know, 10 years old is a lot. 72,000 people is a lot for a 10 year old. So she can mention one day and then to a park the next day, you know, decompress a lot, and then come back on Saturday and then leave on Sunday or whatever, so that we didn't have them too over stimulated. But they really grown to love it. I mean, it's part of our annual family traditions in the summer, is to go do these conventions and play lots of games with each other and meet new people too well.   Speaker 1 ** 22:08 And I like the way you put it. The games are really puzzles, which they are, and it's and it's fun. If people would approach it that way, no matter what the game is, they're, they're aspects of puzzles involved in most everything that has to do with the game, and that's what makes it so fun.   Matt Forbeck ** 22:25 Exactly, no. The interesting thing is, when you're playing with other people, the other people are changing the puzzles from their end that you have to solve on your end. And sometimes the puzzle is, how do I beat this person, or how do I defeat their strategy, or how do I make an alliance with somebody else so we can win? And it's really always very intriguing. There's so many different types of games. There's nowadays, there's like something like 50 to 100 new board games that come out and tabletop games every month, right? It's just like a fire hose. It's almost like, when I was starting out as a novelist, I would go into Barnes and Noble or borders and go, Oh my gosh, look at all these books. And now I do the same thing about games. It's just, it's incredible. Nobody, no one person, could keep up with all of them.   Speaker 1 ** 23:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah, way too much. I would love to explore playing more video games, but I don't. I don't own a lot of the technology, although I'm sure that there are any number of them that can be played on a computer, but we'll have to really explore and see if we can find some. I know there are some that are accessible for like blind people with screen readers. I know that some people have written a few, which is kind of cool. Yeah.   Matt Forbeck ** 23:36 And Xbox has got a new controller out that's meant to be accessible to large amount of people. I'm not sure, all the different aspects of it, but that's done pretty well, too   Speaker 1 ** 23:44 well. And again, it comes down to making it a priority to put all of that stuff in. It's not like it's magic to do. It's just that people don't know how to do it. But I also think something else, which is, if you really make the products more usable, let's say by blind people with screen readers. You may be especially if it's well promoted, surprised. I'm not you necessarily, but people might well be surprised as to how many others might take advantage of it so that they don't necessarily have to look at the screen, or that you're forced to listen as well as look in order to figure out what's going on or take actions.   Matt Forbeck ** 24:29 No, definitely true. It's, you know, people audio books are a massive thing nowadays. Games tend to fall further behind that way, but it's become this incredible thing that obviously, blind people get a great use out of but my wife is addicted to audio books now. She actually does more of those than she does reading. I mean, I technically think they're both reading. It's just one's done with yours and one's done with your eyes.   Speaker 1 ** 24:51 Yeah, there's but there's some stuff, whether you're using your eyes or your fingers and reading braille, there's something about reading a book that way that's. Even so a little bit different than listening to it. Yeah, and there's you're drawn in in some ways, in terms of actually reading that you're not necessarily as drawn into when you're when you're listening to it, but still, really good audio book readers can help draw you in, which is important, too,   Matt Forbeck ** 25:19 very much. So yeah, I think the main difference for reading, whether it's, you know, again, through Braille or through traditional print, is that you can stop. You can do it at your own pace. You can go back and look at things very easily, or read or check things, read things very easily. That you know, if you're reading, if you're doing an audio book, it just goes on and it's straight on, boom, boom, boom, pace. You can say, Wait, I'm going to put this down here. What was that thing? I remember back there? It was like three pages back, but it's really important, let me go check that right.   Speaker 1 ** 25:50 There are some technologies that allow blind people and low vision people and others, like people with dyslexia to use an audio book and actually be able to navigate two different sections of it. But it's not something that is generally available to the whole world, at least to the level that it is for blind people. But I can, I can use readers that are made to be able to accept the different formats and go back and look at pages, go back and look at headings, and even create bookmarks to bookmark things like you would normally by using a pen or a pencil or something like that. So there are ways to do some of that. So again, the technology is making strides.   Matt Forbeck ** 26:37 That's fantastic. Actually, it's wonderful. Just, yeah, it's great. I actually, you know, I lost half the vision of my right eye during back through an autoimmune disease about 13 years ago, and I've always had poor vision. So I'm a big fan of any kind of way to make things easier,   Speaker 1 ** 26:54 like that. Well, there, there are things that that are available. It's pretty amazing. A guy named George curser. Curser created a lot of it years ago, and it's called the DAISY format. And the whole idea behind it is that you can actually create a book. In addition to the audio tracks, there are XML files that literally give you the ability to move and navigate around the book, depending on how it's created, as final level as you choose.   Matt Forbeck ** 27:25 Oh, that's That's amazing. That's fantastic. I'm actually really glad to hear that.   Speaker 1 ** 27:28 So, yeah, it is kind of fun. So there's a lot of technology that's that's doing a lot of different sorts of things and and it helps. But um, so for you, in terms of dealing with, with the games, you've, you've written games, but you've, you've actually written some novels as well, right?   Matt Forbeck ** 27:50 Yeah, I've got like 30, it depends on how you count a novel, right? Okay, like some of my books are to pick a path books, right? Choose Your Own Adventure type stuff. So, but I've got 35 traditional novels written or more, I guess, now, I lost track a while ago, and probably another dozen of these interactive fiction books as well. So, and I like doing those. I've also written things like Marvel encyclopedias and Avengers encyclopedias and all sorts of different pop culture books. And, you know, I like playing in different worlds. I like writing science fiction, fantasy, even modern stuff. And most of it, for me comes down to telling stories, right? If you like to tell stories, you can tell stories through a game or book or audio play or a TV show or a comic, or I've done, you know, interactive museum, games and displays, things like that. The main thing is really a story. I mean, if you're comfortable sitting down at a bar and having a drink with somebody, doesn't have to be alcohol, just sitting down and telling stories with each other for fun. That's where the core of it all is really   Speaker 1 ** 28:58 right. Tell me about interactive fiction book.   Matt Forbeck ** 29:01 Sure, a lot of these are basically just done, like flow charts, kind of like the original Zork and adventure that you were talking about where you I actually, I was just last year, I brought rose Estes, who's the inventor of the endless quest books, which were a cross between Dungeons and Dragons, and choose your own adventure books. She would write the whole thing out page by page on a typewriter, and then, in order to shuffle the pages around so that people wouldn't just read straight through them, she'd throw them all up in the air and then just put them back in whatever order they happen to be. But essentially, you read a section of a book, you get to the end, and it gives you a choice. Would you like to go this way or that way? Would you like to go beat up this goblin? Or would you like to make friends with this warrior over here? If you want to do one of these things, go do page xx, right? Got it. So then you turn to that page and you go, boom, some, actually, some of the endless quest books I know were turned into audio books, right? And I actually, I. Um, oddly, have written a couple Dungeons and Dragons, interactive books, audio books that have only been released in French, right? Because there's a company called Looney l, u n, i, i that has this little handheld device that's for children, that has an A and a B button and a volume button. And you, you know, you get to the point that says, if you want to do this, push a, if you want to do that, push B, and the kids can go through these interactive stories and and, you know, there's ones for clue and Dungeons and Dragons and all sorts of other licenses, and some original stories too. But that way there's usually, like, you know, it depends on the story, but sometimes there's, like, 10 to 20 different endings. A lot of them are like, Oh no, you've been killed. Go back to where you started, right? And if you're lucky, the longer ones are, the more fun ones. And you get to, you know, save the kingdom and rescue the people and make good friends and all that good stuff,   Michael Hingson ** 30:59 yeah, and maybe fall in love with the princess or Prince.   Matt Forbeck ** 31:02 Yeah, exactly right. It all depends on the genre and what you're working in. But the idea is to give people some some choices over how they want the story to go. You're like, Well, do you want to investigate this dark, cold closet over here, or would you rather go running outside and playing around? And some of them can seem like very innocent choices, and other ones are like, well, uh, 10 ton weight just fell on. You go back to the last thing.   Speaker 1 ** 31:23 So that dark hole closet can be a good thing or a bad thing,   Matt Forbeck ** 31:28 exactly. And the trick is to make the deaths the bad endings, actually just as entertaining as anything else, right? And then people go, Well, I got beat, and I gotta go back and try that again. So yeah, if they just get the good ending all the way through, they often won't go back and look at all the terrible ones. So it's fun to trick them sometimes and have them go into terrible spots. And I like to put this one page in books too that sometimes says, How did you get here? You've been cheating there. This book, this page, is actually not led to from any other part of the book. You're just flipping   Speaker 1 ** 31:59 through. Cheater, cheater book, do what you   Matt Forbeck ** 32:04 want, but if you want to play it the right way, go back.   Speaker 1 ** 32:07 Kid, if you want to play the game. Yeah, exactly. On the other hand, some people are nosy.   Matt Forbeck ** 32:15 You know, I was always a kid who would poke around and wanted to see how things were, so I'm sure I would have found that myself but absolutely related, you know,   Speaker 1 ** 32:23 yeah, I had a general science teacher who brought in a test one day, and he gave it to everyone. And so he came over to me because it was, it was a printed test. He said, Well, I'm not going to give you the test, because the first thing it says is, read all the instructions, read, read the test through before you pass it, before you take it. And he said, most people won't do that. And he said, I know you would. And the last question on the test is answer, only question one.   Matt Forbeck ** 32:55 That's great. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 32:57 that was cute. And he said, I know that. I that there's no way you would, would would fall for that, because you would say, Okay, let's read the instructions and then read the whole test. That's what it said. And the instruction were, just read the whole test before you start. And people won't do that.   Matt Forbeck ** 33:13 No, they'll go through, take the whole thing. They get there and go, oh, did I get there? Was a, there's a game publisher. I think it was Steve Jackson Games, when they were looking for people, write for them, or design stuff for them, or submit stuff to them, would have something toward the end of the instructions that would say, put like a the letter seven, or put seven a on page one right, and that way they would know if you had read the instructions, if you hadn't bothered to Read the instructions, they wouldn't bother reading anything else.   Speaker 1 ** 33:42 Yeah, which is fair, because the a little harsh, well, but, but, you know, we often don't learn enough to pay attention to details. I know that when I was taking physics in college, that was stressed so often it isn't enough to get the numbers right. If you don't get the units right as well. Then you're, you're not really paying attention to the details. And paying attention to the details is so important.   Matt Forbeck ** 34:07 That's how they crash from those Mars rovers, wasn't it? They somebody messed up the units, but going back and forth between metric and, yeah, and Imperial and, well, you know, it cost somebody a lot of money at one point. Yeah. Yeah. What do you   Speaker 1 ** 34:21 this is kind of the way it goes. Well, tell me, yeah. Well, they do matter, no matter what people think, sometimes they do matter. Well, tell me about the Diana Jones award. First of all, of course, the logical question for many people is, who is Diana Jones? Yeah, Diana Jones doesn't exist, right? That's There you go. She's part game somewhere? No, no, it doesn't be in a game somewhere.   Matt Forbeck ** 34:43 Then now there's actually an author named Diana Wynne Jones, who's written some amazing fantasy stories, including Howell's Moving Castle, which has turned into a wonderful anime movie, but it has nothing to do with her or any other person. Because originally, the Diana Jones award came about. Because a friend of mine, James Wallace, had somehow stumbled across a trophy that fell into his hands, and it was a pub trivia trophy that used to be used between two different gaming companies in the UK, and one of those was TSR, UK, the United Kingdom department. And at one point, the company had laid off everybody in that division just say, Okay, we're closing it all down. So the guys went and burned a lot of the stuff that they had, including a copy of the Indiana Jones role playing game, and the only part of the logo that was left said Diana Jones. And for some reason, they put this in a in a fiberglass or Plexiglas pyramid, put it on a base, a wooden base, and it said the Diana Jones award trophy, right? And this was the trophy that they used they passed back and forth as a joke for their pub trivia contest. Fell into James's hands, and he decided, You know what, we're going to give this out for the most excellent thing in gaming every year. And we've now done this. This will be 25 years this summer. We do it at the Wednesday night before Gen Con, which starts on Thursday, usually at the end of July or early August. And as part of that, actually, about five years ago, we started, one of the guys suggested we should do something called the emerging designers program. So we actually became a 501, c3, so we could take donations. And now we take four designers every year, fly them in from wherever they happen to be in the world, and put them up in a hotel, give them a badge the show, introduce them to everybody, give them an honorarium so they can afford to skip work for a week and try to help launch their careers. I mean, these are people that are in the first three years of their design careers, and we try to work mostly with marginalized or et cetera, people who need a little bit more representation in the industry too. Although we can select anybody, and it's been really well received, it's been amazing. And there's a group called the bundle of holding which sells tabletop role playing game PDFs, and they've donated 10s of 1000s of dollars every year for us to be able to do this. And it's kind of funny, because I never thought I'd be end up running a nonprofit, but here I'm just the guy who writes checks to the different to the emerging designer program. Folks are much more tied into that community that I am. But one of the real reasons I wanted to do something like that or be involved with it, because if you wander around with these conventions and you notice that it starts getting very gray after a while, right? It's you're like, oh, there's no new people coming in. It's all older people. I we didn't I didn't want us to all end up as like the Grandpa, grandpa doing the HO model railroad stuff in the basement, right? This dying hobby that only people in their 60s and 70s care about. So bringing in fresh people, fresh voices, I think, is very important, and hopefully we're doing some good with that. It's been a lot of fun either way.   Speaker 1 ** 37:59 Well, I have you had some success with it? Yeah, we've   Matt Forbeck ** 38:02 had, well, let's see. I think we've got like 14 people. We've brought in some have already gone on to do some amazing things. I mean, it's only been a few years, so it's hard to tell if they're gonna be legends in their time, but again, having them as models for other people to look at and say, Oh, maybe I could do that. That's been a great thing. The other well, coincidentally, Dungeons and Dragons is having its best 10 year streak in its history right now, and probably is the best selling it's ever been. So coinciding with that, we've seen a lot more diversity and a lot more people showing up to these wonderful conventions and playing these kinds of games. There's also been an advent of this thing called actual play, which is the biggest one, is a group called Critical Role, which is a whole bunch of voice actors who do different cartoons and video games and such, and they play D and D with each other, and then they record the games, and they produce them on YouTube and for podcasts. And these guys are amazing. There's a couple of other ones too, like dimension 20 and glass cannon, the critical role guys actually sold out a live performance at Wembley Arena last summer. Wow. And dimension. Dimension 20 sold out Madison Square Garden. I'm like, if you'd have told me 20 years ago that you know you could sell out an entire rock stadium to have people watch you play Dungeons and Dragons, I would have laughed. I mean, there's no way it would have been possible. But now, you know, people are very much interested in this. It's kind of wild, and it's, it's fun to be a part of that. At some level,   Speaker 1 ** 39:31 how does the audience get drawn in to something like that? Because they are watching it, but there must be something that draws them in.   Matt Forbeck ** 39:39 Yeah, part of it is that you have some really skilled some actors are very funny, very traumatic and very skilled at improvisation, right? So the the dungeon master or Game Master will sit there and present them with an idea or whatever. They come up each with their own characters. They put them in wonderful, strong voices. They kind of inhabit the roles in a way that an actor. A really top level actor would, as opposed to just, you know, me sitting around a table with my friends. And because of that, they become compelling, right? My Marty and my his wife and I were actually at a convention in Columbus, Ohio last weekend, and this group called the McElroy family, actually, they do my brother, my brother and me, which is a hit podcast, but they also do an actual play podcast called The Adventure zone, where they just play different games. And they are so funny. These guys are just some of the best comedians you'll ever hear. And so them playing, they actually played our Marvel game for a five game session, or a five podcast session, or whatever, and it was just stunningly fun to listen to. People are really talented mess around with something that we built right it's very edifying to see people enjoying something that you worked on.   Speaker 1 ** 40:51 Do you find that the audiences get drawn in and they're actually sort of playing the game along, or as well? And may disagree with what some of the choices are that people make?   Matt Forbeck ** 41:02 Oh, sure. But I mean, if the choices are made from a point of the character that's been expressed, that people are following along and they they already like the character, they might go, Oh, those mean, you know that guy, there are some characters they love to hate. There are some people they're they're angry at whatever, but they always really appreciate the actors. I mean, the actors have become celebrities in their own right. They've they sell millions of dollars for the comic books and animated TV shows and all these amazing things affiliated with their actual play stuff. And it's, I think it, part of it is because, it's because it makes the games more accessible. Some people are intimidated by these games. So it's not really, you know, from a from a physical disability kind of point. It's more of a it makes it more accessible for people to be nervous, to try these things on their own, or don't really quite get how they work. They can just sit down and pop up YouTube or their podcast program and listen into people doing a really good job at it. The unfortunate problem is that the converse of that is, when you're watching somebody do that good of a job at it, it's actually hard to live up to that right. Most people who play these games are just having fun with their friends around a table. They're not performing for, you know, 10s of 1000s, if not hundreds of 1000s of people. So there's a different level of investments, really, at that point, and some people have been known to be cowed by that, by that, or daunted by that.   Speaker 1 ** 42:28 You work on a lot of different things. I gather at the same time. What do you what do you think about that? How do you like working on a lot of different projects? Or do you, do you more focus on one thing, but you've got several things going on, so you'll work on something for one day, then you'll work on something else. Or how do you how do you do it all?   Matt Forbeck ** 42:47 That's a good question. I would love to just focus on one thing at a time. Now, you know the trouble is, I'm a freelancer, right? I don't set my I don't always get to say what I want to work on. I haven't had to look for work for over a decade, though, which has been great. People just come to me with interesting things. The trouble is that when you're a freelancer, people come in and say, Hey, let's work on this. I'm like, Yeah, tell me when you're ready to start. And you do that with like, 10 different people, and they don't always line up in sequence properly, right? Yeah? Sometimes somebody comes up and says, I need this now. And I'm like, Yeah, but I'm in the middle of this other thing right now, so I need to not sleep for another week, and I need to try to figure out how I'm going to put this in between other things I'm working on. And I have noticed that after I finish a project, it takes me about a day or three to just jump track. So if I really need to, I can do little bits here and there, but to just fully get my brain wrapped around everything I'm doing for a very complex project, takes me a day or three to say, Okay, now I'm ready to start this next thing and really devote myself to it. Otherwise, it's more juggling right now, having had all those kids, probably has prepared me to juggle. So I'm used to having short attention span theater going on in my head at all times, because I have to jump back and forth between things. But it is. It's a challenge, and it's a skill that you develop over time where you're like, Okay, I can put this one away here and work on this one here for a little while. Like today, yeah, I knew I was going to talk to you, Michael. So I actually had lined up another podcast that a friend of mine wanted to do with me. I said, Let's do them on the same day. This way I'm not interrupting my workflow so much, right? Makes sense? You know, try to gang those all together and the other little fiddly bits I need to do for administration on a day. Then I'm like, Okay, this is not a day off. It's just a day off from that kind of work. It's a day I'm focusing on this aspect of what I do.   Speaker 1 ** 44:39 But that's a actually brings up an interesting point. Do you ever take a day off or do what do you do when you're when you deciding that you don't want to do gaming for a while?   Matt Forbeck ** 44:49 Yeah, I actually kind of terrible. But you know, you know, my wife will often drag me off to places and say we're going to go do this when. Yes, we have a family cabin up north in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that we go to. Although, you know, my habit there is, I'll work. I'll start work in the morning on a laptop or iPad until my battery runs out, and then I shut it down, put on a charger, and then I go out and swim with everybody for the rest of the day. So it depends if I'm on a deadline or not, and I'm almost always on a deadline, but there are times I could take weekends off there. One of the great things of being a freelancer, though, and especially being a stay at home father, which is part of what I was doing, is that when things come up during the middle of the week, I could say, oh, sure, I can be flexible, right? The trouble is that I have to pay for that time on my weekends, a lot of the time, so I don't really get a lot of weekends off. On the other hand, I'm not I'm not committed to having to work every day of the week either, right? I need to go do doctor appointments, or we want to run off to Great America and do a theme park or whatever. I can do that anytime I want to. It's just I have to make up the time at other points during the week. Does your wife work? She does. She was a school social worker for many years, and now as a recruiter at a local technical college here called Black Hawk tech. And she's amazing, right? She's fantastic. She has always liked working. The only time she stopped working was for about a year and a half after the quads were born, I guess, two years. And that was the only time I ever took a job working with anybody else, because we needed the health insurance, so I we always got it through her. And then when she said, Well, I'm gonna stay home with the kids, which made tons of sense, I went and took a job with a video game company up in Madison, Wisconsin called Human Head Studios for about 18 months, 20 months. And then the moment she told me she was thinking about going back to work, I'm like, Oh, good, I can we can Cobra for 18 months and pay for our own health insurance, and I'm giving notice this week, and, you know, we'll work. I left on good terms that everybody. I still talk to them and whatever, but I very much like being my own boss and not worrying about what other people are going to tell me to do. I work with a lot of clients, which means I have a lot of people telling me what to do. But you know, if it turns out bad, I can walk I can walk away. If it turns out good, hopefully we get to do things together, like the the gig I've been working out with Marvel, I guess, has been going on for like, four years now, with pretty continuous work with them, and I'm enjoying every bit of it. They're great people to work with.   Speaker 1 ** 47:19 Now, you were the president of Pinnacle entertainment for a little while. Tell me about that.   Matt Forbeck ** 47:24 I was, that was a small gaming company I started up with a guy named Shane Hensley, who was another tabletop game designer. Our big game was something called Dead Lands, which was a Western zombie cowboy kind of thing. Oh gosh, Western horror. So. And it was pretty much a, you know, nobody was doing Western horror back in those days. So we thought, Oh, this is safe. And to give you an example of parallel development, we were six months into development, and another company, White Wolf, which had done a game called Vampire the Masquerade, announced that they were doing Werewolf the Wild West. And we're like, you gotta be kidding me, right? Fortunately, we still released our game three months before there, so everybody thought we were copying them, rather than the other way around. But the fact is, we were. We both just came up with the idea independently. Right? When you work in creative fields, often, if somebody wants to show you something, you say, I'd like to look at you have to sign a waiver first that says, If I do something like this, you can't sue me. And it's not because people are trying to rip you off. It's because they may actually be working on something similar, right already. Because we're all, you know, swimming in the same cultural pool. We're all, you know, eating the same cultural soup. We're watching or watching movies, playing games, doing whatever, reading books. And so it's not unusual that some of us will come up with similar ideas   Speaker 1 ** 48:45 well, and it's not surprising that from time to time, two different people are going to come up with somewhat similar concepts. So that's not a big surprise, exactly, but   Matt Forbeck ** 48:56 you don't want people getting litigious over it, like no, you don't be accused of ripping anybody off, right? You just want to be as upfront with people. With people. And I don't think I've ever actually seen somebody, at least in gaming, in tabletop games, rip somebody off like that. Just say, Oh, that's a great idea. We're stealing that it's easier to pay somebody to just say, Yes, that's a great idea. We'll buy that from you, right? As opposed to trying to do something unseemly and criminal?   Speaker 1 ** 49:24 Yeah, there's, there's something to be said for having real honor in the whole process.   Matt Forbeck ** 49:30 Yeah, I agree, and I think that especially if you're trying to have a long term career in any field that follows you, if you get a reputation for being somebody who plays dirty, nobody wants to play with you in the future, and I've always found it to be best to be as straightforward with people and honest, especially professionally, just to make sure that they trust you. Before my quadruplets were born, you could have set your clock by me as a freelancer, I never missed a deadline ever, and since then, I've probably it's a. Rare earth thing to make a deadline, because, you know, family stuff happens, and you know, there's just no controlling it. But whenever something does happen, I just call people up and say, hey, look, it's going to be another week or two. This is what's going on. And because I have a good reputation for completing the job and finishing quality work, they don't mind. They're like, Oh, okay, I know you're going to get this to me. You're not just trying to dodge me. So they're willing to wait a couple weeks if they need to, to get to get what they need. And I'm very grateful to them for that. And I'm the worst thing somebody can do is what do, what I call turtling down, which is when it's like, Oh no, I'm late. And then, you know, they cut off all communication. They don't talk to anybody. They just kind of try to disappear as much as they can. And we all, all adults, understand that things happen in your life. It's okay. We can cut you some slack every now and then, but if you just try to vanish, that's not even possible.   Speaker 1 ** 50:54 No, there's a lot to be there's a lot to be said for trust and and it's so important, I think in most anything that we do, and I have found in so many ways, that there's nothing better than really earning someone's trust, and they earning your trust. And it's something I talk about in my books, like when live with a guide dog, live like a guide dog, which is my newest book, it talks a lot about trust, because when you're working with a guide dog, you're really building a team, and each member of the team has a specific job to do, and as the leader of the team, it's my job to also learn how to communicate with the other member of the team. But the reality is, it still comes down to ultimately, trust, because I and I do believe that dogs do love unconditionally, but they don't trust unconditionally. But the difference between dogs and people is that people that dogs are much more open to trust, for the most part, unless they've just been totally traumatized by something, but they're more open to trust. And there's a lesson to be learned there. No, I   Matt Forbeck ** 52:03 absolutely agree with that. I think, I think most people in general are trustworthy, but as you say, a lot of them have trauma in their past that makes it difficult for them to open themselves up to that. So that's actually a pretty wonderful way to think about things. I like that,   Speaker 1 ** 52:17 yeah, well, I think that trust is is so important. And I know when I worked in professional sales, it was all about trust. In fact, whenever I interviewed people for jobs, I always asked them what they were going to sell, and only one person ever answered me the way. I really hoped that everybody would answer when I said, So, tell me what you're going to be selling. He said, The only thing I have to really sell is myself and my word, and nothing else. It really matters. Everything else is stuff. What you have is stuff. It's me selling myself and my word, and you have to, and I would expect you to back me up. And my response was, as long as you're being trustworthy, then you're going to get my backing all the way. And he was my most successful salesperson for a lot of reasons, because he got it.   Matt Forbeck ** 53:08 Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, I mean, I've worked with people sourcing different things too, for sales, and if you can rely on somebody to, especially when things go wrong, to come through for you. And to be honest with you about, you know, there's really that's a hard thing to find. If you can't depend on your sources for what you're building, then you can't depend on anything. Everything else falls apart.   Speaker 1 ** 53:29 It does. You've got to start at the beginning. And if people can't earn your trust, and you earn theirs, there's a problem somewhere, and it's just not going to work.   Matt Forbeck ** 53:39 Yeah, I just generally think people are decent and want to help. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've had issues. Car breaks down the road in Wisconsin. Here, if somebody's car goes in the ditch, everybody stops and just hauls them out. It's what you do when the quads were born, my stepmother came up with a sign up sheet, a booklet that she actually had spiral bound, that people could sign up every three three hours to help come over and feed and bathe, diaper, whatever the kids and we had 30 to 35 volunteers coming in every week. Wow, to help us out with that was amazing, right? They just each pick slots, feeding slots, and come in and help us out. I had to take the 2am feeding, and my wife had to take the 5am feeding by ourselves. But the rest of the week we had lots and lots of help, and we were those kids became the surrogate grandchildren for, you know, 30 to 35 women and couples really, around the entire area, and it was fantastic. Probably couldn't have survived   Speaker 1 ** 54:38 without it. And the other part about it is that all those volunteers loved it, because you all appreciated each other, and it was always all about helping and assisting.   Matt Forbeck ** 54:48 No, we appreciate them greatly. But you know every most of them, like 99% of them, whatever were women, 95 women who are ready for grandchildren and didn't have them. Had grandchildren, and they weren't in the area, right? And they had that, that love they wanted to share, and they just loved the opportunity to do it. It was, I'm choking up here talking about such a great time for us in   Speaker 1 ** 55:11 that way. Now I'm assuming today, nobody has to do diaper duty with the quads, right?   Matt Forbeck ** 55:16 Not until they have their own kids. Just checking, just checking, thankfully, think we're that is long in our past,   Speaker 1 ** 55:23 is it? Is it coming fairly soon for anybody in the future?   Matt Forbeck ** 55:27 Oh, I don't know. That's really entirely up to them. We would love to have grandchildren, but you know, it all comes in its own time. They're not doing no well. I, one of my sons is married, so it's possible, right? And one of my other sons has a long term girlfriend, so that's possible, but, you know, who knows? Hopefully they're they have them when they're ready. I always say, if you have kids and you want them, that's great. If you have, if you don't have kids and you don't want them, that's great. It's when you cross the two things that,   Speaker 1 ** 55:57 yeah, trouble, yeah, that's that is, that is a problem. But you really like working with yourself. You love the entre

Send us a textIn 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped into the sandals of one of pulp's most celebrated heroes and, what was likely the most on point casting in the history of cinema, became legend. Conan the Barbarian.There is a common quote from that film, bandied about by fans, but it's not my favorite. My favorite quote from the film and my favorite scene come at the end of the picture.“Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, Crom... so grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, then to HELL with you!”To me, that was ConanOver the years the Conan archetype has been shoehorned into many games, Of course I'm looking at the very poor attempt in D&D called the Barbarian class. You might like the class, but it's not Conan, and make no mistake it was supposed to be Conan when it was introduced.In 1985 TSR tried to cash in with its own Conan RPG. In 1989 Steve Jackson Games came out with a Conan supplement for GURPS. In 2004 Mongoose Publishing launched their Conan: The Roleplaying Game which was a d20 variant. And in 2017 Modiphius released a 2d20 version called Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of.All of these games had various levels of success. I mean it's Conan, it doesn't take much for people to pick up the book and several of them were held in high regard. Personally I never found one that really clicked for me. I gave the GURPS version a try, but it just felt a little flat.Then Monolith Board Games Kickstarted Conan the Hyborian Age. This rules light system approached the barbarian and Robert E. Howards tales differently then the other versions. In Conan the Hyborian Age the story mattered. The rules were simple and left the door open for narrative to push the story. Or at least that's what the Kickstarter said.So I backed it and when I downloaded a copy of the core rulebook something special happened.I got excited. I don't know what it was, maybe it was the fantastic art, maybe it was a focus on Robert E. Howard's stories, maybe it was the very simplistic combat system, maybe it was the magic system that pulled your own life to fuel the spells, or maybe they just found the perfect combination.I had to play this thing. So I hit up the Thursday night group and said “What do you guys think about playing a Conan game?”The rest as they say is history.On this episode Mike, Christina and I are going to talk about the new Conan: They Hyborian Age TTRPG. We will talk about the core rules, the book itself and the good, the great, and the bad we've come across after playing it for a couple of months.And just to give you a little heads up for the episode.I absolutely love this game.Christina, let's start with you. What's your history with Conan and what did you initially think when I suggested playing it?[Kick to Christina]Mike, same question, what did you think about Conan going into the game?[Kick to Mike]

Novamente é chegada a hora de religar os motores da nossa coluna de A História do Mudo de D&D, uma série onde apresentamos o cenário de Mystara, a história da empresa TSR em cada uma dessas etapas e os módulos de aventura passando pelo Basic, Expert e agora adentrando em Companion. Nos reunimos desta vez com os sábios Átila Pires e Tiago Marinho para viver aventuras ainda mais desafiadoras encarando combates massivos, geopolítica em escala continental, inimigos de extremo poder e Gestão de Domínios. Delicie-se conosco nessa nova fase. Boa Viagem!

Uachtarán Aontas na Mac Léinn in Ollscoil na Gaillimhe ón tSráidbhaile ag súil lena bliain in oifig agus na dúshláin atá os a chomhair amach.

Nuacht Mhall. Príomhscéalta na seachtaine, léite go mall.*Inniu an tríochadú lá de mhí Lúnasa. Is mise Niall Ó Siadhail.Tá ambasadóir na hÉireann i ndiaidh dul i dteagmháil leis na húdaráis i mBeirlín faoi ionsaí ar agóideoir Éireannach i bpríomhchathair na Gearmáine Déardaoin. Rinneadh físeáin agus pictiúir de Kitty O'Brien go forleathan ar na meáin shóisialta agus í mbun agóide le Irish Bloc Berlin, grúpa a sheasann i gcoinne an chinedhíothaithe sa Phalaistín. Sna físeáin, tá póilíní Gearmánacha le feiceáil agus iad ag cur brú ar an lucht agóide. Léirítear gur bhuail póilín amháin dorn sa tsrón ar an bhean Éireannach aríst agus aríst eile. Fágadh í le lámh bhriste agus aghaidh lán fola. Ní hé seo an chéad choimhlint idir póilíní agus agóideoirí síochánta i mBeirlín. Cuireadh cosc ar theangacha cé is moite den Ghearmáinis agus den Bhéarla ag agóidí anuraidh, agus gabhadh fear amháin i mí Aibreáin a bhí ag labhairt Gaeilge.Tá an truailliú i Loch nEathach níos measa ná riamh. Tá blás algach le feiceáil ar dhromchla an locha, sloda glas a dhéanann dochar do bheathra uisceach. Tá cosc ar iascaireacht le haghaidh eascann, tionscal traidisiúnta an cheantair, agus chonacthas eascanna amuigh as an uisce agus iad ag sleamhnú ar bharr an bhláis algaigh. Tarlaíonn an truailliú seo mar gheall ar an leibhéal ard fosfair agus nítrigine sa loch, a ritheann isteach ó fheirmeacha timpeall an locha. Tá grinneall agus bruacha Loch nEathach i seilbh Iarla Shaftesbury, Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, ach níl mórán déanta aigesean ná ag polaiteoirí Thuaisceart Éireann in ainneoin éilimh mhuintir na háite.Tá an fhéile cheoil is mó in Éirinn, an Electric Picnic, ar siúl an deireadh seachtaine seo. Tá thart fá 80,000 duine ag freastal ar an fhéile sa tSráidbhaile i gContae Laoise, ina bhfuil roinnt stáitsí ceoil agus puball grinn. I measc na gceoltóirí mór le rá tá Hozier, Chappell Roan, Fatboy Slim, Kneecap agus Kings of Leon. Anuas air sin, tá níos mó Gaeilge ná riamh ag an fhéile i mbliana, lena n-áirítear dhá stáitse Gaeilge, an Puball Gaeilge agus an Chollchoill, agus láthair speisialta Gaeltachta sa láthair champála. Ar an drochuair, tháinig deireadh leis an aimsir thirim inné agus beidh lucht na féile fliuch go leor. Tá an fhéile díolta amach le tamall.*Léirithe ag Conradh na Gaeilge i Londain. Tá an script ar fáil i d'aip phodchraolta.*GLUAISagóideoir - protestorblás algach - algal bloombeathra uisceach - aquatic lifeeascann - eelpuball grinn - comedy tentan Chollchoill - the Hazelwood

We review three RPG source books: Tarlkin's Landing from Judge's Guild, Earthshaker from TSR, and The Nightlife RPG by Stellar Games. We also discuss the gradual merging of bad movies like Samurai Cop and the Room into a schlock singularity and the future of bad-good movies. If you enjoy this

CASEY'S GENERAL STORES, INC.At last year's annual meeting in August, shareholders were asked YES or NO on CEO Darren Robelez's pay plan. To help them make a decision on the pay practices they had information like the ratio of the annual total compensation of Casey's General Stores CEO to that of its median employee for the 2024 fiscal year, commonly known as the CEO Pay Ratio. Let's begin the quiz there:According to the company's SEC filing, at what point in the fiscal year 2024 did CEO Darren earn the compensation of his company's median employee?12:35:33 PM on January 1st, the first day of the work year, meaning his pay CEO pay ratio was 579:1Additionally, the CEO's target equity award was $6.7M. In the worst case scenario where every single peer company outperformed Casey's General Stores in terms of total shareholder return, how much equity could the CEO receive?$5,025,000, reflecting a TSR Modifier of -25%.Accordingly, based in part on the information you have just learned, what percentage of Casey's shareholders voted against his pay practices?2%Bonus question: According to the company's 2025 SEC filing, at what point in the fiscal year 2025 did CEO Darren earn the compensation of his company's median employee? Remember, it was 12:35:33 PM on January 1st, the first day of the work year.12:32:05 PM on January 1st, the first day of the work year: 3 minutes and 28 seconds earlier. AGM: 9/3/2025589:1 CEO pay ratio CEO Darren Robelez 98% YESPay committee: *Former BJ's Restaurants CEO Gregory Trojan, Oobli CEO Allison Wing2024 AGM99.1% YES average33% Influence CEO/Chair: 20% YES SHP independent board chair policy-13% gender influence gap: Darren M. Rebelez (33%) & Gregory A. Trojan (14%)CROWDSTRIKE HOLDINGS, INC.A recent Fortune article called Laying off workers because of AI is more of a fashionable excuse than a real business imperative cites CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz linking 5% job cuts to the cybersecurity company's need to double down on AI investments to “accelerate execution and efficiency.” Kurtz said: “AI flattens our hiring curve, and helps us innovate from idea to product faster.”First question, are CrowdStrike shareholders also given the privilege to “accelerate execution and efficiency”? How many total years does it take for a CrowdStrike investor to vote on all nine board members?3 years, classified board.This is important because clearly shareholders were not completely pleased this year: 34% said NO Pay Committee Chair Cary Davis while 38% said NO to Nomination Committee chair Laura Schumacher2% NO CEO KurtzConsidering the board influence of Founder/CEO/Director and third largest shareholder George Kurtz, investors would typically be best served with a board provides an effective counterbalance to his control. Of the board's eight independent directors, what percentage has served for at least a decade alongside Kurtz?Four directors, or half.Again, to counteract his control, investors should expect regular board refreshment. How many new directors have joined the board in the last 5 years?One, Johanna Flower, the only director who sits on zero board committees. She joined the board in January 2023Kurtz already owns $2.7B of Crowdstrike shares. What percentage of his annual pay consists of equity?90%, with a target equity award of $35M.Finally, CrowdStrike's infamous 2024 software update is commonly described as what?The largest outage in the history of information technology.In 2024, CrowdStrike released a software update that disrupted millions of Microsoft Windows systems around the worldA faulty update to its Falcon sensor platform led to the "Blue Screen of Death" on millions of machines, bringing critical operations to a standstill across numerous sectors.The immediate and most visible impact was the widespread and severe disruption to the global economy. The financial toll is estimated to be in the billions of dollars. Key sectors affected include:Aviation: Major airlines like Delta, United, and American Airlines grounded thousands of flights, disrupting travel for millions and costing airlines hundreds of millions of dollars.Healthcare: Access to electronic health records was hindered, leading to the cancellation of surgeries and appointments. This disruption posed a direct risk to patient care and safety.Financial Services: Banks and financial institutions faced outages that affected everything from ATM services to online banking and stock trading. This not only resulted in financial losses but also eroded consumer confidence.Government and Emergency Services: The outage impacted various government agencies and even emergency services in some areas, highlighting a significant threat to public safety and national security.For Mr. Kurtz, the amount for fiscal 2025 also includes approximately (i) $104,279 for costs related to personal security for Mr. Kurtz and his family at his residences and (ii) $898,426 for costs related to personal usage of private aircraft.As part of our sales and marketing activities, we sponsor a CrowdStrike-branded professional racing car, which Mr. Kurtz drives in some races at no incremental cost to us and in lieu of us hiring a professional driver. As we do not pay any amounts to Mr. Kurtz under these arrangements, it is not reflected in the above table.No vote on payTARGET CORPORATIONTarget foot traffic is still suffering 6 months post-boycott. An industry veteran says the retailer's problems are bigger than curtailing DEITarget Boycott Leader Jamal Bryant Is Arriving on CEOs' Radar ScreensInside Target, Frustrated Employees and Search for New CEOThis article from the WSJ says:Many Target shoppers are frustrated with the retailer. Many Target employees are too.In early June, a companywide survey showed that roughly half of Target's employees didn't think the company was making the changes necessary to compete effectively. About 40% of the roughly 260,000 staffers who replied said they didn't have confidence in the company's future. The scores—which declined from a year ago—were even lower for those staffers at Target's headquarters in Minneapolis.The worker sentiment data reflects the challenges ahead for the company as it prepares to navigate a leadership change and turn around 10 quarters of flat or falling sales in an increasingly complex consumer environment.Based on what I just told you, TRUE or FALSE on this next headline from Fortune? Is this real or am I making it up? Target's CEO succession tilts toward an insider and company liferTrue. The leading contender appears to be: Michael Fiddelke is executive vice president and chief operating officer for Target and a member of its leadership team.Since joining Target in 2003 as an intern, Michael has held a variety of leadership positions across the organization, including finance, merchandising, human resources and operations. He most recently served as Target's chief financial officer. In addition to his Target responsibilities, Michael serves on the board of Shipt, Target's wholly-owned subsidiary.Compensation & Human Capital Management Committee: “Management development and succession planning. Senior management development, evaluation, and succession planning, including CEO succession planning.”Ms. Lozano (Chair)Mr. BakerMr. BarrettMr. KnaussMs. LeahyCORECIVIC, INC.-17% gender influence gap:Robert J. Dennis 17%: retiringCEO Damon T. Hininger 17% (2009-)On February 15, 2024, in recognition of the substantial contributions made by our Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Hininger, to the Company, and to encourage retention of Mr. Hininger for a multi-year period, our Compensation Committee, determined to provide a Special One-Time Award to Mr. Hininger. This award consisted of 70,225 performance-based RSUs at a fair market value of $14.24 per share, the approximate equivalent of $1,000,000 at the time of award. The Compensation Committee believes this Special One-Time Award is designed to incentivize Mr. Hininger's performance and retain him for a multi-year period.On August 18, 2025, CoreCivic, Inc., a Maryland corporation (the “Company”) announced that Damon T. Hininger, the Company's Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”), will step down as CEO and resign from his position on the Company's Board of Directors (the “Board”), effective as of January 1, 2026 (the “Transition Date”). Patrick Swindle, who currently serves as the Company's President and Chief Operating Officer, will assume the role of CEO of the Company, effective as of the Transition Date, and will continue serving as the President of the Company. Additionally, the Board will appoint Mr. Swindle to the Board to fill the vacancy created by Mr. Hininger's resignation as of the Transition Date.Chair Mark A. Emkes 17% (2014-)John R. Prann 13% (2000-)Thurgood Marshall 12% (2002-)Devin I Murphy 9%2025 AGM: 99% YES director average; 97% YES PAYShort-term pay: if NONE of four strategic goals achieved CEO still receives 80% of bonusLong-term: If Lowest quartile TSR results is only 20% reduction of long-term awards: “If the Company's absolute TSR for the performance period is less than zero, the rTSR modifier shall not exceed 1.0x for the performance period”WHO DO YOU BLAME FOR PAYING A MULTI YEAR “RETENTION BONUS” WHO QUITS AFTER ONE YEAR?Pay committee included Dennis*, Emkes (17%, 11 yrs), Prann (13%, 25 yrs)Donald Trump - after donating to Trump, his immigration orders have swelled the amount of work Hininger has to do and he burnt out with excitementThe zero female board leadership - there was no mom to say it was a bad ideaThe amount of the award - $1m in 2025?? The stock is up 45% thanks to our prison state, and even with the massive stock bump, the award is still worth less than $2m… it's an insult, not an awardThe prisoners who keep claiming the prisons are dangerous - there have been more than 120 reports and exposes in the last 10 years alone that found Corecivic were complicit in family separations, deaths, cancelled contracts due to conditions in the prisons, and other human rights violationsO'Reilly Automotive, Inc.Vote discount for wearing the uniform:First appearance in the proxy of the uniform shirts were actually ORANGE shirts in 2021, blue shirt introduced in 2024 proxySince 2021, directors who wear the uniform average 92.9% votes for, while directors not wearing shirts average 96.8% forWHO DO WE BLAME FOR THE UNIFORM DISCOUNT?Old timers - average start year for a uniform wearer is 1998, and for a non-exec 2006. Average start year for a non-uniform wearer is 2021.The color orange - the orange shirt wearers average 90.4% votes for, while blue got 92.6% forHaving a third of the board be executives - O'Reilly is a single class stock where the O'Reilly family owns less than 5% (all execs own less than 3% collectively), and yet somehow investors think there should be no less than 3 executive directors at any time - who are entirely responsible for wearing uniforms in proxy photosThe shirts themselves - we have TWO case studies of directors who switched from no shirt to shirt - Maria Sastre (2023 to 2024 forward) and Andrea Weiss (2023 to 2024 before she quit, probably in protest of being forced to wear a shirt). In BOTH cases, votes for dropped by an average of 2%Lead “Independent” Director Tom Hendrickson who has been on the board for 15 years, was CFO at a number of sports retail store companies, and lists “technology” as one his core skills (because all 70 year old retired CPAs advising auto parts companies for $347,836 in summary comp have tech experience) Bonus prediction: In 2025, ALL DIRECTORS have been forced to wear the shirt, but now they have a variety of O'Reilly shirts - which director will get the lowest votes now?Blue shirtPink shirtPlaid shirtGreen shirtCream shirtPALANTIR TECHNOLOGIES INC.Palantir CEO Alex Karp takes a shot at elite colleges and says the company offers 'a new credential independent of class'Palantir CEO says working at his $430 billion software company is better than a degree from Harvard or Yale: ‘No one cares about the other stuff'WHICH ELITE IS TO BLAME FOR KARP'S HATE FOR ELITES:Board member and VC bro Alex Moore, who got his BA in Econ from StanfordBoard member and journalist Alexandra Schiff who get her BA in English from DukeBoard member and co founder Stephen Cohen who got his BS in CompSci from StanfordBoard member, troll, and insecure VC Peter Thiel who got his BA in Philosophy from Stanford and a JD from Stanford LawBoard member and consultant Lauren Stat who got a dual degree in Science and Math from StanfordBoard member and VC bro Eric Woersching who got a BS and Masters in Electrical Engineering from StanfordStanfordVISA INC.Mark Cuban calls for higher tax on companies buying back their own sharesVisa bought back $13.4bn from Oct 2024 to June 2025$4.0bn from Oct to Dec (Sep 30 close: 274.95)$4.8bn from Jan to March (Dec 31 close: 316.04)$4.6bn from April to June (March 31 close: 350.46)June 30 close: 355.05WHO'S TO BLAME:As of Dec proxy, CEO Ryan McInerney owns 822,155 shares worth $259,833,866 - if buyback boost the investor return, and McInerney made a cool $28m in part by boosting the stock.Board Chair John Lundgren, been on the board 7 years and took over as chair after Executive Chair Al Kelly stepped down (but Kelly left with 589,890 shares)Francisco Fernandez-Carbajal, the director with the most shares at 31,599 who's been on the board for 17 years and is on the Comp and Finance committees

In this episode of Epic Realms, we sit down with legendary game designer and author Jeff Grubb to explore his incredible career in tabletop and video games. Jeff shares how his early passion for wargaming grew into a role at TSR, then Wizards of the Coast, shaping iconic campaign settings like Forgotten Realms, Spelljammer, and Planescape. We dig into behind-the-scenes stories, from developing the Karameikos box set and its lasting impact on the D&D world, to creating games based on classic '80s TV shows like Dallas and All My Children. Jeff also reflects on the shift from designing RPG material to writing novels — spanning from the beloved Azure Bonds to his final novel, Star Wars: Scourge. The conversation wraps with a look at his current work on Elder Scrolls Online and the lessons learned across decades of storytelling and game design.

Stoking the FireA weekend recapDonny Schatz and TSR split. The guys discuss...Other mid-season shake-upsCade Dillard and Garrett Alberson incident High Limit Racing announces new cash prize for most races won. Starting in 2026.On deck for the week/weekend. Social media of the week."The Draft"Feature FinishWoO sprint cars @ Ogilvie & Jackson MotorplexHigh Limit @ Tulare & PlacervilleWoO late models @ Highland, Spoon River, MaquoketaTopless 100 @ Batesville Motor SpeedwayUSAC Silver Crown @ the Springfield Mile for the Bettenhausen 100ASCoC @ Bloomington & ParagonHoosier Sprint Nationals @ Tri-State Speedway "The Class Track"OH, CA, PA weekly showsPOWRi 410 winged sprints x3SUPER DIRTcar big blocks Summer FAST round #1The Smoke Charlie gets the wallet out for a pizzaWendy'sNisbet Inn on Friday night!Wayback Burger

The guys cover a few headlines including Donny Schatz out at TSR, Kyle Berk getting inducted into the NDLMHoF, Victory Lane rules, and much more plus they discuss the points battle with 2 races to go in the regular season for the Cup Series

Send us a textThe shoulder is the most mobile and most complex joint in the human body, which also makes it vulnerable to injury and arthritis. Each year, nearly 60,000 Americans undergo shoulder replacement surgery, also known as total shoulder arthroplasty (TSA).In this episode of MedStar Health DocTalk, host Debra Schindler sits down with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Ryan Hoffman, a shoulder and elbow specialist at MedStar Health, to explore:·       What shoulder arthroplasty is and when it's needed·       The difference between total vs. reverse shoulder replacements·       How advances like robotic planning, 3D templating, and stemless implants are changing outcomes·       What recovery looks like and how patients regain mobility·       What to ask when choosing a shoulder surgeonIf you've ever wondered about shoulder pain, rotator cuff tears, or when it's time to consider replacement surgery, this conversation breaks it all down.Watch and learn how modern shoulder surgery is helping patients get back to the life they love.For an appointment with Dr. Hoffman call 410-554-2272. If you would like to share feedback on this podcast or suggest a topic for another episode of MedStar Health Doc talk, send an email: debra.schindler@medstar.net. For more episodes of MedStar Health DocTalk, go to medstarhealth.org/doctalk.

Start your very own Credit Repair business - Learn how by joining our FREE 5-day challenge: http://startrepairingcredit.com/By now, we all know that we can't call leads anymore…But what if I told you that's the best thing that's ever happened to your business?In today's episode, we're joined by Christopher Stirgus, credit repair entrepreneur and founder of Stirgus Credit Repair. He's built a fully automated, TSR-compliant credit business that signs up new clients without making a single phone call. And today, he's pulling back the curtain.This special live session, hosted by our very own Troy Hitt, Head of Customer Success, dives deep into how Christopher eliminated cold calling, automated his onboarding, and used tools like CRC Billing and Credit Hero Score to streamline his entire operation.You'll see exactly how his website converts leads without contact, how his 50-question FAQ page builds instant trust, and how self-service signups helped him scale faster than ever, all while staying 100% compliant.Plus, you'll learn how to handle objections around trust, when (and how) to get on the phone with clients, and why you should fire bad leads before they even join.If you've been stressed about the TSR, this episode is your blueprint to not just survive, but grow.Tune in!Key Takeaways:00:00 Intro 01:27 What Is the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR)? 02:52 How the TSR Impacted Christopher's Business07:30 Christopher's Website, Self-Service Signup, and CRC Billing14:11 Cool Credit Hero Score Features 15:20 Advice for Aspiring Credit Heroes18:36 Affiliate Partnerships 21:34 Dealing with Stall Letters24:48 OutroAdditional Resources:Stirgus Credit Repair: https://stirguscreditrepair.com/index.htmlGet a free trial to Credit Repair CloudGet my free credit repair training  TSR Could End Your Credit Repair Business Overnight, Here's What You Can DoMake sure to subscribe so you stay up to date with our latest episodes.

Wait... Part 2? This is a crossover episode where Karl Rodriguez and I discuss some of the classic modules from the TSR era of D&D. You can find Part 1 of the conversation at The GMologist Presents. Send me a message!​Email me at arcane.alienist@gmail.com​Leave a voicemail at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Speakpipe⁠

Episode 8 – Tracing the Kingdom Through the Scriptures (Part 2)Facilitator: Daniel AddoWe conclude TSR 5.0 with a comprehensive overview of the Bible, tying together the major themes and promises that point to the rule and reign of Christ. This session reminds us that our hope is anchored in the unshakable Kingdom that is already here and yet to come.In this Episode, we wrap up the concluding part in a Podcast style with Daniel Addo, Jesse & Eva Dan-Yusuf.—Stay connected:

Start your very own Credit Repair business - Learn how by joining our FREE 5-day challenge: http://startrepairingcredit.com/I've helped thousands of Credit Heroes scale from the ground up, and one of the biggest roadblocks they all hit? Payments.From figuring out which billing model to use, to avoiding banned platforms like Stripe and PayPal, to understanding the Telemarketing Sales Rule—this stuff can get tricky fast. But I'll make it simple.You'll learn why PayPal might freeze your funds, what a merchant account really is, how to automate billing with CRC Billing, and how a simple money-back guarantee could save your business.Most people start their credit repair business without ever figuring out how to get paid. Don't be one of them!Tune in.Key Takeaways:00:00 Intro 00:53 Challenges of Setting Up Payment Processing 02:50 Why You Should Never Use PayPal or Stripe 03:59 Following the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) 05:06 Different Billing Models for Credit Repair Businesses 06:47 Setting Up a Merchant Account and Recurring Payments Platform08:35 CRC Billing and Its Benefits10:18 Offering a Money Back Guarantee 12:13 Handling Declined Credit Cards13:17 My Final Point 13:59 OutroAdditional Resources:Get a Merchant Account: http://www.creditrepaircloud.com/merchant Get Our TSR Compliance Checklist: https://www.creditrepaircloud.com/training-and-resources/tsr-compliance-checklistGet a free trial to Credit Repair CloudGet my free credit repair training  Starting a Credit Repair Business? Don't Make These 8 Fatal Mistakes!Make sure to subscribe so you stay up to date with our latest episodes.

TSR and Wizards of the Coast veteran Steve Winter (Steve achieved one of the longest tenures across both companies). Steve plays guitar. Steve likes Shadowdark RPG, and is also interested in Knave, Savage Worlds, and Cthulhu / horror games. Steve has a definite favorite version of D&D (he finds it elegant and intuitive). Deep character backstory doesn't equal plot armor. Sometimes we get too used to magic in games and think of it as technology… magic should be a bit fearsome and untame. Noteworthy moments of going insane in a Cthulhu game. Skyrim and Baldur's Gate 3 discussion. Steve co-wrote the scenario for the Gold Box Pool of Radiance game. Some words about Jim Ward. Early versus later days at TSR. The job that was Steve's best year at TSR. How was the work divided at TSR? Steve offers some perspective on Lorraine Williams's leadership, given that he was right there. What was it like to be at TSR and watch Magic: The Gathering explode onto the scene? Steve worked on Spellfire, TSR's response to MtG. What was it like transitioning from TSR to WotC? Star Frontiers: how it went from hard sci-fi to “D&D in space” and how employees' desire for royalties led to its creation (and ultimately to the departure of Lawrence Schick from TSR). Marvel Super Heroes RPG discussion (MSH is HUGE for Shane personally). Shane Plays Geek Talk Episode #284 - 7/28/2025 Like what you hear? Support Shane Plays Geek Talk on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/shaneplays Listen to the Shane Plays Geek Talk podcast on YouTube, SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Play Music, Amazon Music, Podbean and Stitcher (and other fine, fine podcast directories). Hey, you! Yeah, you! Buy cool stuff, support Shane Plays Geek Talk with these affiliate links! Humble Bundle https://www.humblebundle.com?partner=shaneplays DriveThruRPG.com https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?affiliate_id=488512 SHOW NOTES Steve Winter's Wikipedia Entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Winter  Steve Winter's Board Game Geek Entry https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/562/steve-winter Howling Tower (Steve's Blog) https://koboldpress.com/category/howling-tower/ Shadowdark RPG https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/pages/shadowdark?srsltid=AfmBOopWlsfgC-WPHShVkD1E9lDfbJKyN5umULKokrH6cbo8tdn-f2QL Knave RPG https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/484910/knave-second-edition Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games 2nd Edition Shane's book! Co-authored with Matt Barton of Matt Chat https://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Desktops-History-Computer-Role-Playing/dp/1138574643/

Start your very own Credit Repair business - Learn how by joining our FREE 5-day challenge: http://startrepairingcredit.com/What if I told you that you could build a thriving credit repair business, even if you're brand new, not tech-savvy, or juggling multiple jobs? Well, that's exactly what Patrick Sotello, also known as The Credit Sniper, did, and today he's here to share all his insider tips. But this isn't your typical interview. This is a behind-the-scenes conversation from our private Facebook community, where our Head of Customer Success, Troy Hitt, sat down with Patrick to discuss how he got started, how he stays compliant, and how he's rapidly scaling his business with automation and affiliate partnerships.We've cut the conversation down to just the most powerful moments, so you can soak up all the valuable insights without any filler. If you want to see what it really looks like to scale a compliant credit repair business in today's world, you won't want to miss this!Key Takeaways:00:00 Intro 01:30 The Impact of Credit Repair Cloud 03:55 Navigating the TSR and Staying Compliant 07:43 Our Self-Service Sign Up 11:28 Building Trust and Client Relationships 16:39 Credit Hero Score and Affiliates 23:37 Removing Charge Offs and Late Payments 24:46 Hiring and Scaling a Team27:01 Final Piece of Advice 28:57 OutroAdditional Resources:Get a Merchant Account: http://www.creditrepaircloud.com/merchant Get Our TSR Compliance Checklist: https://www.creditrepaircloud.com/training-and-resources/tsr-compliance-checklistGet a free trial to Credit Repair CloudGet my free credit repair training  10 Steps to Build a Successful Credit Repair BusinessMake sure to subscribe so you stay up to date with our latest episodes.

You won't believe it, dungeonneers!  We have the one and only Allen Hammack -yes, THAT Allen Hammack- on to talk about his seminal creation, "The Ghost Tower of Inverness." We learn about Allen's introduction to gaming, his experiences playing in and writing tournament games. We get a bit of a peek into the early days of TSR and his job there. And of course there's the listener mail segment—where we talk about "monster of the week" type adventures—and  the "This Ol' Dungeon" segment—where we learn the reasons behind some of the designs of the Ghost Tower and talk about a few of the things we might change up. Please give the episode a listen. If you have feedback, stories about your experiences with the Ghost Tower or tournament play, or questions you would like to hear our input on, write to: thisoldungeon@gmail.com. We are also excited to (soon) be getting back to the Geek Credit quiz show at the end of the episodes and have created thisoldungeonquiz@gmail.com where you can send your RPG and geek-related quiz questions and answers. Those questions will be selected to be used by one of us to test the others. All contributors to that segment's questions will be put in a drawing for fabulous RPG prizes!  Thanks for your support, everybody!

Join me as I review Fistandantilus Reborn by Douglas Niles, live! Share your thoughts on this second volume of three in the Lost Legends series, released by TSR, INC. in 1997.

Story of the Week (DR):NEO turnover week MMApple CFO and COO resign, raising questions about CEO Tim Cook's futureApple CEO succession plan blown open as most obvious candidate to step downChief Operating Officer (COO) Jeff Williams, 62, will retire at the end of this year. Following the retirement of former Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Luca Maestri, 61, last year, the departure of these 'key figures in growth' seems to signal a significant generational shift within Apple.Meet Apple's next COO Sahib Khan, a 30-year veteran who will oversee the iPhone maker's supply chain amid the ‘Trump tariff black cloud'Twitter/X CEO Linda Yaccarino quits after Grok AI praises HitlerWendy's CEO Kirk Tanner Leaving Burger Giant for HersheyIs this another Peltz failure? Tanner has been CEO of Wendy's since only February 2024Trian Fund Management controls two board seats:Peter May (29%): director since 1993; former Wendy's executive; Founding Partner of Trian; chair of Capital and Investment committee, chair of Technology Committee, member of Compensation Committee, member of Corporate Social Responsibility committee, and member of Executive committee.Matthew Peltz (31%): son of Nelson; Partner of Trian; chair of Corporate Social Responsibility committee, member of Capital and Investment committee, member of Technology Committee, and member of Executive committee.Matthew resigned in same 8-k mentioning the CEO's departure and will be replaced by his brother Bradley Peltz; drafted by the Ottawa Senators and played in the Senators' organization from September 2012 to January 2013.Always my favorite line: “There are no arrangements or understandings between Mr. B. Peltz and any other persons pursuant to which Mr. B. Peltz was selected as a director.”His photo on website:leaving Tanner (8%) with a small voiceGolden hello at Hershey: (i) $7M RSU Award (ii) $4M PSU Award, (iii) an additional $1.2M Pro-Rata 2025 RSU Award, and (iv) an additional $2.2M Pro-Rata 2025 RSU AwardWendy's: salary $1M; 175% annual target; $6M annual equity targetHershey: $1.25M/180%/$9MAlso Kristin Dolan, James Dolan wifeHershey not much different: controlled by Hershey Trust and several Hershey Trust directorsInterim CEO is CFO Ken Cook, who started in December 2024Tesla announces Nov. annual meeting under pressure from shareholders, but may still be skirting lawElon Musk's Tesla finally sets a shareholder meeting date amid doubts about his long-denied $56 billion pay packageThe exciting Item 5.08 (which I never see): “The board of directors (the “Board”) of Tesla, Inc. (“Tesla”) has designated November 6, 2025 as the date of Tesla's 2025 annual meeting of shareholders (the “2025 Annual Meeting”).”T-Mobile follows orders from Trump FCC, ends DEI to get two mergers approved"As T-Mobile indicated earlier this year, we recognize that the legal and policy landscape surrounding DEI under federal law has changed and we remain fully committed to ensuring that T-Mobile does not have any policies or practices that enable invidious discrimination, whether in fulfillment of DEI or any other purpose," T-Mobile General Counsel Mark Nelson wrote in a July 8 letter that was posted to the Federal Communications Commission's filings website yesterday. "We have conducted a comprehensive review of T-Mobile's policies, programs, and activities, and pursuant to this review, T-Mobile is ending its DEI-related policies as described below, not just in name, but in substance."CEO Mike Sievert: CNN Business recognized Mike as “CEO of the Year” in 2022, and Yale honored him in 2024 with its “Legend in Leadership Award,” in part due to the impact of these initiatives.UPS Drivers Are Battling Deadly Heat—Without A.C. in Their TrucksWhy is the company dragging its heels on updating the vehicles, as the new union contract requires?As part of the contract the union negotiated with UPS in 2023, the company is now required to provide workers with several protections against the kind of extreme heat many of them are facing across the U.S. right now. Those include readily available clean water and ice, as well as access to “cool zones” and the right to take and extend breaks when they feel overheated. The contract further mandated UPS to install fans in the largely non-air-conditioned warehouses where packages are sorted and loaded, and in the front of vehicles. Delivery trucks have also been outfitted with heat exhaust shields and vents. UPS Teamsters, though, are still waiting on some of these historic protections. UPS is required to equip its fleet with at least 28,000 new air-conditioned delivery trucks by the time the current contract expires in 2028; toward that end, all new vans UPS purchases after January 1, 2024, are supposed to have air conditioning. As of last summer, CNN reported, it hadn't bought any. UPS Brand Management Representative Becca Hunnicut did not directly answer my questions about whether UPS has purchased any new delivery vehicles equipped with air conditioning since the beginning of 2024 and if any of its delivery trucks currently have air conditioning. She wrote over email that the company is “installing air conditioning in all new delivery vehicles we buy and adding them as quickly as possible,” adding that UPS does not “publicly share the number of vehicles we purchase” and that it is “prioritizing deployment in the hottest regions.”Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):DR: ‘Prevention is better than remedy': majority of investors say governance gaps attract activists, research shows MM DR84 percent of investors polled, who hail from North America, Europe (including the UK) and Asia, said that poor governance was the main driver of activist investor attention.Investors also largely (71 percent) favor activism targeting the board on governance and management change versus operational (10 percent), balance sheet (3 percent) or M&A activism (3 percent)MM: Tesla announces Nov. annual meeting under pressure from shareholders, but may still be skirting lawAssholiest of the Week (MM):Democracy73% of votes cast in alternative democracy were for directors in the US0.01% of directors up for a vote were voted out - incumbency rulesWe know governance in corporations isn't working, and it's the primary driver of activism: ‘Prevention is better than remedy': majority of investors say governance gaps attract activists, research showsGovernance proponents were the only winners in the shareholder proposal space with an 18% win rateWe know money doesn't care nearly as much about performance as it cares about power status quo:Vote Gap - directors batting .333 or lower on TSR vs. average vote at the companyAverage vote gap was actually +1.3% - bottom directors outperformed average vote at the companiesWe know that only 22% of US directors have “merit”, but we know that more than 1 in 4 directors are connected to each other through other boards and non profits - including the CEOSo we should all fucking lose our minds when…New York's Financial Crowd Rushes to Build Anti-Mamdani War Chest - no more buying electionsJamie Dimon criticizes Zohran Mamdani as 'Marxist,' blasts Democrats' DEI push: 'Big hearts and little brain' - shut your fat mouthAdvertisersYour ads are now next to AI for middle school boysGrok praises Hitler, gives credit to Musk for removing “woke filters”Grok's harmful outputs come at a time when advertisers have just begun returning to X, after X first sued advocacy groups publishing reports of hate speech on the platform, then sued advertiser groups who boycotted the platform allegedly partly due to those reports. Most recently, X's plan to sue firms that don't buy ads has seemed to pay off, while the Federal Trade Commission has moved to stop advertising boycotts, which may help X avoid losing revenue no matter what Grok is trained to say.Musk says Grok chatbot was 'manipulated' into praising HitlerGrok 4 appears to seek Elon Musk's views when answering controversial questionsNo more hedging “well, he is a brilliant businessman and innovator” - Elon Musk is a fucking nightmare, antisemite, misogynist pig baby.We don't say “Well, Hitler was a brilliant dictator, but you know, Holocaust.” Musk is pure shitbird. Dollar Tree DRNEW RULE: if your CEO pay ratio is more than 5:1, the Aristotle rule, no fucking share buybacksShare Buyback Program Declared by Dollar Tree (NASDAQ:DLTR) Board of Directorsour median employee in fiscal 2024 was a parttime hourly store associate located in the United States.Out of a total population of 209,517 employees, 140,001 were part-time employees and 5,892 were either temporary or seasonal workers.Mr. Creedon's total annual compensation for purposes of the pay ratio was $9,246,835The median employee's total annual compensation for fiscal 2024 was $15,602, resulting in an estimated pay ratio of 592:1.Creedon effectively made is median employee's salary 14 hours into his first 24 hours of the yearThe board approved a buyback of $2.5 billion, with a “B”, equal to roughly 11.5% of outstanding sharesThe annual total paid to part time employees is $2.18 billion - they took a full year of 140,000 people's pay and bought their own stock with it to grease investorsAccording to the internet, a Dollar Tree cashier makes on average $10/hour - you could easy give them $15 and pay for it for TWO YEARS without needing to make a dollar if you can afford these buybacksAnd Bill Ackman is busy complaining why a labor focused socialist democrat won NYC mayor… Headliniest of the WeekDR: TVA board set to be all-male, all-whiteOn Tuesday, President Donald Trump nominated four white men to join the three white men he left on the board after firing the only two female directors.MM: Barbie Launches Doll With Type 1 DiabetesMM: How Starbucks' Founder Uses the ‘Two Chairs Rule' to Guide Every Leadership Decision“Every decision that we tried to make with two chairs metaphorically sitting in the room was designed to ask ourselves during the debate, is this decision going to exceed the expectations of our people and our customers and make them proud?” Schultz said. “And if the answer was no, we shouldn't do it.”Not mentioned were the chairs of “CEO” and “Chair of Board” a total of three timesWho Won the Week?DR: Kirk Tanner, more chocolate, less disgusting grease, less Peltz, more diversity in leadership, and zero nepotism (LD is woman; 3 Hershey Trust board members are Asian woman and two lack men)MM: Tennis, the great billionaire equalizer. ‘Biggest joke I've ever watched in professional tennis': Swift backlash after billionaire Bill Ackman's pro debutPredictionsDR: New Wendy's director Brad Peltz gets caught watching hockey during board meetings, still gets the support of 99.3% of shareholdersMM: Elon Musk Obtains Permit to Spew Pollution - isn't this the greatest future money maker for the Trump administration? Pay for a permit to do heinous shit? PREDICTION: Trump begins issuing permits, with starting cost of $1m, for oil spills, pollution, hate speech, deforestation, and using forced labor (kids or immigrants are both covered, obviously).

This week the Buddies discuss the benefits and drawbacks of art on society, what qualifies as an artist, the history of the original D&D company TSR, and how to handle friends making misogynistic comments. Share with a friend! Contact us: Facebook Instagram Email Youtube Recommendations: The Jackal (Italian comedy group), Central Park (show), Slaying the Dragon (audio book)

In this week's episode, we chat with Simon about using soda cans and pizza boxes as terrain, the shift away from miniatures in TTRPGs, and the incompatibility of the Seattle real estate market with large-scale miniatures combat. Plus, Jake gets grumpy about indie TTRPG marketing. Simon (whom we met at OrcaCon) owns Strix Publishing and runs the Brush Wielders Union and the associated podcast as well as a Horus Heresy fan podcast. He has a ton of experience in TTRPG publishing, including work on Warmachine, Hordes, Iron Kingdoms 2e, Eclipse Phase, The Hammer and the Stake, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium and Unhallowed Metropolis. As a result, this conversation goes very far afield of our original plan to talk about minis, because Simon really has such a depth of experience. We wound up chatting about folk knowledge and traditions in popular games, the history of D&D's status as a cultural juggernaut, and the extremely nineties television show Kindred: the Embraced. Here are those stats on the most common systems played on Roll20, in case you were wondering. Some previous Campaign Spotlight episodes come up in this conversation:Sam talked about some very cool 3D combat terrainJesse used the Dune: Adventures in the Imperium system for his campaignIn this Dungeon Lore episode we talked about Chainmail and the miniatures combat systems that led to D&DIn this Dungeon Lore episode we talked about some of the business practices that ultimately sank TSR.In this Dungeon Lore episode we talked about the rise of actual plays and their impact on home TTRPG campaigns.Simon also discusses some fun rulesets:Dungeon Crawl Classics (not a minis combat system, but a fun OSR TTRPG)Necromunda (a very miniatures-intensive Warhammer system)Strength and Honour (a wargame system for battles in the ancient world)Test of Honour (a miniatures system focusing on samurai skirmish combat)After we recorded this interview, Simon sent us some pictures of the incredible minis he's painted! Head on over to our website to check them out.Thanks to Delta for introducing this week's episode! Delta is a player in Jake's long-running home game.Thanks to Goblin Society Games for supporting this week's episode! Go check out their website and take a look at Mukrag's Compendium of Curios, the HELBINE setting, and all the other cool games and supplements they make. Through July 23, if you purchase Goblin Society Games products on DriveThruRPG, they'll donate 10% of the proceeds to Partners in Health.If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music. You can also listen to Reilly's DJ sets on Mixcloud.Follow us wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. You can also get episodes right from the source at our RSS feed. If you enjoy Campaign Spotlight, consider subscribing to our Patreon or supporting us on Ko-Fi. For more on the show, including links to all our social media, visit our website.     ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Join me as I review Vinas Solamnus by J. Robert King, live! Share your thoughts on this first volume of three in the Lost Legends series, released by TSR, INC. on January 1, 1997.

The endcap to Season 2 is an exclusive interview w/ former TSR designer, and current Elder Scrolls Online Senior Writer, Jeff Grubb. Jeff Grubb is an award-winning author, game designer, and world-builder. His extensive credits include AD&D's Monster Manual II, Marvel Super Heroes game system, Unearthed Arcana, Manual of the Planes (1st ed.), Spelljammer, Al-Qadim, Tempest Feud, Urban Arcana, and has contributed and assisted on many more. He is the author of numerous short stories for the Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, and Thieves World settings. He is the author of Azure Bonds, The Wyvern's Spur, and the Song of the Saurials. He was also written novels set in the Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Warcraft, Starcraft, and Magic: the Gathering worlds. We were immensely grateful that he took the time out of his busy schedule to sit down and talk to us a bit about the early days of TSR, the creation of Dragonlance, his contributions to Dungeons & Dragons and more. About ⅔ of the way through the interview Jeff's cat, Kia, shows up and demands some attention. We have attempted to remove as much of their meows as possible, but you may hear some in the background. The megadungeon Jeff and his friends are currently going through in their own DnD game is The Forbidden Caverns of Archaia. More information on that here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/399432/the-forbidden-caverns-of-archaia Content warning - N/A You can find us at: Jonathon - https://bsky.app/profile/falselogic.bsky.social Shivam - https://bsky.app/profile/shivambhatt.bsky.social Casual Magic w/ Shivam Bhatt - https://casualmagic.libsyn.com/ Shivam & Wheeler Love Magic - https://sites.libsyn.com/460224 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1147877956611082 Discord - https://discord.gg/MM7nEwgmZv You can find Jeff Grubb at: https://grubbstreet.blogspot.com/ We now have a Patreon for those who want to support the podcast! Benefits include seeing the show notes and getting a shout out. Details @ https://www.patreon.com/ChroniclesofDragonlancePodcast Intro/Outro music: Winter Night by Alexander Nakarada

Your Supreme Resort friends are continuing their June hiatus with some help from The Harrison Comparison who are also on a hiatus. Do you like the Country Bear Jamboree? Of course you do. So do we. We did a whole episode about it and had so much to say, we're telling you again. Enjoy regardless. TSR will return. ------ For rocking intro themes for your podcast like all of these, https://trimpe.org. For a podcast comparing Disney parks, go to The Supreme Resort. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, my guest is Brian Seidensticker. Brian Seidensticker, he founded Tax Sale Resources, TSR in 2010 and in 2017 Brian partnered with software developer SDA solutions, a comprehensive workflow management system. And in 2020 Brian launched mount North Capital, a 506 C fund, providing capital to tax deed investors. And in just a minute, we're going to speak with Brian Seidensticker about Delinquent Tax Investing.   https://www.taxsaleresources.com/  

Your Supreme Resort friends are continuing their June hiatus with some help from The Harrison Comparison who are also on a hiatus. I guess there's an episode here about the Carousel of Progress. If you're fans of The Dollywood Reporter, you may have heard this one, but our download numbers say you haven't. Enjoy regardless. TSR will return. ------ For rocking intro themes for your podcast like all of these, https://trimpe.org. For a podcast comparing Disney parks, go to The Supreme Resort. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's here at last! And we spared no expense, or cut no corner, to deliver the bedazzling finale of our playthrough of the classic TSR giants module, "The Steading of the Hill Giant Chief" by Gary Gygax. There's fire! Explosions! Giants! Expansve, painstakingly detailed sets that would rival "Ben Hur"! Orcs! Dancing! Fire! Fire! Fire! Audio only, so you'll have to take our word for it. But take our word for it.

Episode 1 – What Is the Kingdom of God?Facilitator: Eva Dan-YusufWelcome to The Study Room — a community of women pursuing God through His Word. This podcast series features teaching sessions from TSR 5.0, themed "Thy Kingdom Come," in which we explore what it truly means to live as Kingdom citizens on earth.In this opening episode, Eva Dan-Yusuf introduces us to the foundational truths about God's Kingdom. What did Jesus mean when He said, “Your Kingdom come”? Why is the Kingdom central to the life of a believer? This session sets the stage for a life of intentional discipleship.—Stay connected:

Join me as I review The Wayward Knights by Roland Green, live! Share your thoughts on this seventh volume of seven in the Dragonlance Warriors series, released by TSR, INC. on January 1, 1997.

A classic episode released with new content, you say? Why yes! That's what this is. Thrill as friends of TSR, The Harrison Comparison, help us out for the next few episodes. We asked for a favor for a few weeks and they decided to unlock some episodes from other shows. Anyway, here's some great content from the BoysenBoyz about Knott's Berry Farm. Erik from TSR is still here to make sure that he is frustrated at the tomfoolery. If you like food podcasts and interviews with Old West guys, you're in luck. This episode was originally posted by the BoysenBoyz in 2022. ------ The Harrison Comparison only uses the finest music from J.R. Trimpe. Find his stuff @ https://trimpe.org The Supreme Resort also uses https://trimpe.org The BoysenBoyz totally exist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Top Secret: New World Order. That's right, for DM Dave's Birthday Game (of which we are quickly becoming well-versed), DM Chris ran our gaming group through the update to the TSR classic espionage RPG, Top Secret from TSR, Inc. by Merle Rasmussen.In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down to review the system, and discuss what they liked and didn't about playing as Agents of ICON. For anyone wanting to dip their toes into playing in worlds like James Bond and Mission: Impossible, this is the episode for you.2:06 DM Tony's quick overview of the system.3:50 DM Chris' high overview of how he approached running Top Secret.6:05 DM Dave's intro thoughts.9:15 The realism inherent in playing ordinary people in extraordinary situations.10:40 How DM Chris approached learning and then running and teaching the game in real time.12:26 Even for experienced DMs and GMs, it can be confusing when running a brand new system.15:54 A discussion on the intro adventure, The White Queen, that was included in Top Secret: New World Order.19:25 The right system for the right game.22:40 How the game fosters roleplaying that moves the story and mission forward.28:00 Would DM Chris have done anything differently having now run the game?32:08 Being Agents of ICON is the easiest way to hook the players into the adventure.34:32 Final Thoughts.

Start your very own Credit Repair business - Learn how by joining our FREE 5-day challenge: http://startrepairingcredit.com/He was working at a Louisiana car dealership, struggling to close deals because clients couldn't get approved for financing. Then one day, he had an idea: what if he could help fix their credit instead?Meet Christopher Stirgus. Christopher turned his frustration into a fully automated, TSR-compliant credit repair business that skyrocketed from 5 clients to over 100 in just three months. And he did it all without cold calling, without breaking the rules, and without losing sleep over compliance.In today's episode, you'll hear how he used a $20K credit card to fund his launch, why affiliate partnerships became his top lead source, and how he built a system so smooth that even the credit bureaus now send letters straight to his office.Tune in!Key Takeaways:00:00 Intro 01:29 Getting Into Credit Repair 04:45 From Zero to 100 Clients in 3 Months 08:06 Digital Marketing Tactics 09:53 Staying Compliant with TSR 11:43 Credit Repair Cloud Tools13:22 Creating a Full Self-Service Credit Repair Business 16:53 Christopher's Best Credit Repair Tactics 21:58 Getting Reviews & Testimonials 23:20 Credit Building Products 25:17 One Piece of Advice for Aspiring Credit Heroes 25:44 Rapid Fire Questions27:47 OutroAdditional Resources:Christopher's Website: https://stirguscreditrepair.com/Get a free trial to Credit Repair CloudGet my free credit repair training  Generate Leads 24/7 with a 100% TSR-Compliant Credit Repair WebsiteMake sure to subscribe so you stay up to date with our latest episodes.

Join me as I review Knights of the Rose by Roland Green, live! Share your thoughts on this fifth volume of seven in the Dragonlance Warriors series, released by TSR, INC. on June 1, 1996.

Quick apology to those that already downloaded this episode once. There was apparently some corrupt parts of the original file. This version has the entire show on it. Thanks for your patience!  The planets must be ready to align, because in a moment of shocking This Ol' Dungeon history, all three hosts get fired up about this episode's focus, 'Nepal Nightmare." This adventure for the infamous Indiana Jones RPG by TSR has a lot to work from. As mentioned in the episode, the unpublished paper models for Star Frontiers by the late Dennis Kauth can be found through this link: https://www.papermodelers.com/forum/alternate-dimensions/44572-rpg-vehicles-dennis-kauth.html. Please keep the letters coming. We plan to return again mid-June. Happy gaming!

Join me as I review Theros Ironfeld by Don Perrin, live! Share your thoughts on this fourth volume of seven in the Dragonlance Warriors series, released by TSR, INC. on March 1, 1996.

Story of the Week (DR):Right wing faux populism:Josh Hawley blasts Allstate CEO for making $26M last year — while company can't ‘afford' to pay out claimsTrump Attacks Walmart, Tells Retailer to ‘Eat the Tariffs' Instead of Raising PricesTesla CFO earns staggering $139M compensation packageVaibhav Taneja: Approximately 80% of Mr. Taneja's equity award was granted as stock options and 20% of the award was granted as restricted stock units. Robyn Denholm member of Pay CommitteeIn 2024, Tesla experienced its first annual sales decline in nearly a decade, with a 1.1% drop in global deliveries. In April 2025, Chinese automaker BYD surpassed Tesla in European electric vehicle sales for the first time, registering 7,231 units compared to Tesla's 7,165. This shift is attributed to BYD's competitively priced and technologically advanced lineup. Tesla's sales in California, its largest American market, declined in all four quarters of 2024, with Model 3 sales plunging 36% for the year. In 2024, Tesla led all automakers in the U.S. with over 5 million vehicles recalled across 16 separate campaignsIn 2025, Tesla dropped to 95th place out of 100 in the Axios Harris Poll, down from 8th place in 2021In a hidden 10K/A from 4/30/25“Staggering” is from Fox: even more fake anti-capitalist rhetoricScared bro dictatorships: Duolingo deletes its TikTok and Instagram posts amid AI backlashCEO Luis von Ahn, posted a memo on LinkedIn last month describing plans to make the company "AI-first." He said the company would "gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle" and "headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work."The backlash was harsh. Tweets, TikToks, and Reddit posts exploded in outrage. As of Tuesday, Duolingo's social accounts had been wiped — no posts, no icon. Duolingo did not respond to a request for comment.And the one statement that was released by a Duolingo spokesperson, after the account went dark, did not shade much light on the situation (pun intended): “Let's just say we're experimenting with silence. Sometimes, the best way to make noise is to disappear first.”Duolingo CEO says there may still be schools in our AI future, but mostly just for childcareBro dictatorship (76% combined voting power)Co-founder CEO Luis von Ahn (43%); co-founder CTO Severin Hacker (40%)Classified board: why?Each share of Class A common stock is entitled to one vote, and each share of Class B common stock is entitled to 20 votesThe worst kind of suck-ups: Verizon ends DEI programs, diversity goals as it seeks approval for Frontier acquisition MMVerizon dumped DEI. Then regulators cleared its $20 billion Frontier deal4/1/25: T-Mobile announces DEI changes in pursuit of LumosA day after T-Mobile said it would end some diversity, equity and inclusion practices, the FCC gave a green light to T-Mobile's deal with EQT for fiber operator Lumos.5/22/25: AT&T CEO on potential Trump DEI pressure for $5.75B deal: 'We don't have to roll back anything'AT&T CEO John Stankey isn't showing his hand yet on whether he plans to dial back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives to gain approval for a big new fiber deal from the Trump administration.AT&T said late Wednesday it would acquire all of Lumen Technologies' (LUMN) fiber business for $5.75 billion, above the already pricey $5.5 billion that deal watchers estimated a few weeks ago.Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):DR: Most US executives want to remove at least one director, PwC survey says93% said they wanted at least one director to be replaced, an all-time high for the five years this survey has been conducted78% said two or more should be replaced56% worried about directors' performance being diminished by their advanced age47% worried members served on too many boardsOnly 32% believe their boards have the right skills and expertiseMM: BYD overtakes Tesla in Europe for the first time. That's more bad news for Elon Musk. MMI'm now rooting for China… and I'm not alone: Jamie Dimon says he is a 'red-blooded American patriot capitalist,' but he sees how China's hustle is paying offAssholiest of the Week (MM):Shareholders lamenting the rise of virtual meetingsShareholders lament the rise of virtual annual meetingsThey miss the time they could meet directors face to face before voting 97% in favor?Shareholders afraid to vote against directors93% of U.S. Executives Desire Board Member Replacements, Survey Finds - News and Statistics49% of directors think one other director should get the axe too according to PwCGrant them their wish!! Just YOU choose instead of them!I'll do it for you:If I look at directors actively on 2+ boards, who have served on at least 3 boards in the last 7 years…Filter them by performance - below average earnings, TSR, AND controversies…There are 66 options to choose from!Including… Stephen Girsky, CEO of fraudulent company Nikola!Randy Weisenburger at Valero Energy and Carnival!Robert Johnson on the boards of Spirit Aero, Roper, and Spirit Airlines!Arnold Donald on four boards - Salesforce, BofA, GE Vernova, MP Materials! Four times the underperformance!Chip Bergh at HP and Pinterest!What, you don't recognize any of these names? These sound like random board members? Shame on you!Johnson has been on the boards for 18,19, and 14 years respectivelyWeisenburger for 14 and 16 yearsDonald's been at BofA for 12 yearsBergh's been at HP for 9 years!These people are tenured. They've been around. They've proven they are really good at overseeing underperformance. VOTE. THEM. OUT.I'm sure you're worried about hurting their feelings or seeming activist - you're not, and you won't! Even the boards and executives wish you would vote someone out! Try it!Harvard board members DRDHS barred Harvard from enrolling international students. Here's what's at stake and what's still uncertainYou've let Bill Ackman be your big fat useless mouthpiece - where the fuck are you all? Oh, I found you…2,173 companies in our database have at least one director who attended Harvard848 of those companies are NON US companiesJust under 4% of ALL GLOBAL DIRECTORSHIPS are held by what we KNOW are Harvard alumsIt's 9% of all US company directorships - nearly 1 in every 10 US directors at a company are from HarvardAverage network power of a Harvard director is $6.2 trillion, compared to a global average of $2.6 trillion - Harvard directors have nearly 2.5x the power of an average directorHarvard directors have on average 13% influence compared to 11% for other directorsOn average, 38% of Harvard directors have merit - while 20% of non Harvard directors doDriven largely by the fact that 62% of them have core industry knowledge and 55% are company leaders - vs. 19% of non Harvard directors with core industry knowledge and 44% of non Harvard directors being leadersWhere we have race/ethnicity data for Harvard directors (1,664 of them), 28% are non white - compared to non Harvard directors where we have race (12,412 of them) only 16% are non whiteAt least 70 of the directors who went to Harvard in our database are tagged as international nationals in our data - and that's a WOEFULLY incomplete datasetOpen your fucking mouths! Did going to Harvard any of you help you get jobs and board positions? Was it nice to network and meet people who eventually could help you get jobs? Is there a culture of Harvard? I hate Harvard, and even I think this is utter madness and stupidity - stand up! Say something you cowards! Headliniest of the WeekDR: Chicago Sun-Times prints summer reading list full of fake books: Reading list in advertorial supplement contains 66% made up books with real author names: "Tidewater Dreams" by Isabel Allende and "The Last Algorithm" by Andy Weir MM: ‘Buy the dip'? You're twice as likely to do that if you're a manNacho dip? Women Outperform Men as Investors, Statistics Show. Here Are 3 Possible Reasons.MM: Anthropic's new Claude model blackmailed an engineer having an affair in test runsMM: Pitney Bowes appoints activist investor as new CEOI love when a company literally just gives up entirelyWho Won the Week?DR: Sam Alman, Ugh: Sam Altman Tells Staff Plan to Ship 100 Million Devices That See Everything In Users' Lives after OpenAI is buying iPhone designer Jony Ive's AI devices startup for $6.4 billionMM: Bud Light - thanks to one trans beer drinker, everyone that shot their Bud Light cans avoided future illness: Beer is the latest source of hazardous PFAS, or ‘forever chemicals,' according to worried scientists. Thank you, trans beer drinkers! You saved us once again!PredictionsDR: When AT&T gives up its DEI program to the Trump altar, I buy some string and quickly make hummus so I can use two empty cans of chick peas to make my new phoneMM: Since this is going forward - Antitrust Cops Say BlackRock, Other Fund Giants May Have Hurt Coal Competition - which should read “Company owners ask companies they own to do stuff” - Blackrock will launch a new investment vehicle called “Pick Your Own Damn Stocks, We Don't Give a Damn LP” in which clients can pick the investments and are auto enrolled in a proxy voting program called “Whatever the Fuck Ever” in which voting and engagement are assigned directly to every board chair.

The largest battle we've ever undertaken continues, in part four of our playthrough of the classic TSR giants module.

TCW Podcast Episode 233 - Baldur's Gate   When three doctors, a prolific dungeon master, a database programmer, and a writer come together to make video games, you get Baldur's Gate! Often credited with saving the Western RPG, Baldur's Gate became a phenomenal hit, taking full advantage of Microsoft's new DirectX API and Windows 95. With this technology, the team created massive, beautiful maps for players to explore. They began shopping their new Infinity Engine around—drawing attention from top figures at Virgin Interactive—but ultimately secured a deal with Interplay, after an initial rejection. This partnership allowed them to shift from an original pantheon-based RPG to using the Dungeons & Dragons license that Interplay had acquired from TSR. They focused on the Sword Coast and the city of Baldur's Gate—an underdeveloped region of the Forgotten Realms that stayed true to the classic swords-and-sorcery motif. The result was a game that captured the spirit of D&D while delivering the fast-paced action that gamers of the late '90s craved!   VGA Standard Explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5exFKr-JJtg SSI Gold Box: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBodtk1JnxQ Dungeon Master (Atari ST): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3UdUWU4j1Y Shattered Steel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvyi0l4s-wI&list=PLFTDBbYrcivppTQ8bupD3DQ7U23qTv5cK What is DirectX and Why is it important?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfSk6kwWBuE Why Windows 95 was a big deal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DCNt0cqTQY Volo's Guide to the Sword Coast: https://archive.org/details/tsr09460addfrvolosguidetotheswordcoast Baldur's Gate Playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooqFu_enV30&list=PLNU3jYa35cy3gahj5NBKymMB6grIGykOr   New episodes are on the 1st and 15th of every month!   TCW Email: feedback@theycreateworlds.com  Twitter: @tcwpodcast Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theycreateworlds Alex's Video Game History Blog: http://videogamehistorian.wordpress.com Alex's book, published Dec 2019, is available at CRC Press and at major on-line retailers: http://bit.ly/TCWBOOK1     Intro Music: Josh Woodward - Airplane Mode -  Music - "Airplane Mode" by Josh Woodward. Free download: http://joshwoodward.com/song/AirplaneMode  Outro Music: RoleMusic - Bacterial Love: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Rolemusic/Pop_Singles_Compilation_2014/01_rolemusic_-_bacterial_love    Copyright: Attribution: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Start your very own Credit Repair business - Learn how by joining our FREE 5-day challenge: http://startrepairingcredit.com/When you focus on helping people and delivering results, your business will grow.Today's guest, Leonides Valdez, the newest member of our Millionaires Club, is a perfect example of this. As the founder of National Best Credit Solutions, Leo has not only transformed the lives of countless clients, but his own as well—in just a few short years. From serving only two local clients in San Antonio, he's grown into a national brand. Through consistency, referrals, and a relentless drive to change lives, Leo has made it all the way to the Millionaires Club. Now, he's here to share his best-kept secrets with you.Tune in!Key Takeaways:00:00 Intro 01:44 The Millionaires Club Award 02:31 Before Credit Repair07:39 First Year in Business & Getting New Clients 13:20 Personal Growth and Business Challenges 17:24 How to Get Unstuck 18:31 Affiliates and referral partners 27:05 Credit Repair Strategies 31:13 Common Misconceptions About Credit Repair 32:07 Staying Compliant with the TSR 33:06 Improving Your Credit Score 37:21 Advice for Aspiring Credit Heroes 45:52 Utilizing Social Media 49:20 Rapid Fire 53:35 OutroAdditional Resources:Follow Leonides on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leonides.valdez.180/National Best Credit Solutions: https://nationalbestcreditsolutions.com/Get a free trial to Credit Repair CloudGet my free credit repair training  5 Possible Reasons and How to Fix ThemMake sure to subscribe so you stay up to date with our latest episodes.

In this episode of Epic Realms, we sit down with legendary author and game designer Bruce Nesmith to explore his incredible career spanning decades of storytelling. From his early days at TSR, crafting unforgettable adventures for Dungeons & Dragons in settings like Ravenloft and Spelljammer, to his influential work as a freelancer across the tabletop RPG industry, Bruce has helped shape the worlds we love. We dive into his time at Bethesda, where he played key roles in iconic titles like Skyrim, Fallout, and Starfield. Now enjoying retirement, Bruce continues to share his imagination through original fantasy novels. This is an unforgettable conversation with a true titan of fantasy and gaming! ---------------------- Check out our Sponsor Factor75 - Chef made meals delivered to your door! Use my link to get 50% off and free shipping on your first Factor box! https://strms.net/factor75_epic_realms Code:  FACTORSE69608

Start your very own Credit Repair business - Learn how by joining our FREE 5-day challenge: http://startrepairingcredit.com/What if I told you that you could make millions by changing people's lives?Well, that's exactly what today's guest, Paranda Davis, has done! Paranda, also known as The Credit Beast, is a repeat guest and new member of our Millionaires Club. In this powerful episode, Paranda shares her inspiring story of becoming a single mom who took control of her financial future.With no prior experience, she started her own credit repair business and earned $30,000 in her first month. Now, she mentors others and continues to change lives every day.Want to know the secrets that helped her build her empire?Tune in!Key Takeaways:00:00 Intro 02:00 Getting the Millionaires Club Award 03:13 From Credit Repair to Mentoring03:59 Paranda's Journey Into Credit Repair 07:57 Paranda's Marketing Strategies 10:57 Advice for Aspiring Credit Heroes 13:42 The TSR and Working with Clients 18:57 Rapid Fire 20:56 How to Reach Paranda 21:27 OutroAdditional Resources:Get a free trial to Credit Repair CloudGet my free credit repair training  How Paranda Davis Made $30K in the First Month of Her Credit Repair BusinessMake sure to subscribe so you stay up to date with our latest episodes.

Welcome to part two of the April Fool's Day episode! This year's game is played using a game published in the ‘90s by TSR called Marvel SAGA. It is a card-based role-playing game where the players create and play their very own superheroes. So, without further ado… here is A Valiant Attempt at a Re-Image of the Dark Horse Marvel in D.C. - Part 2Song parodies recorded by ButterBean (Julie Jurgens and Charlie Crane)Julie Jurgens can be found at juliejurgens.comCharlie Crane can be found at charliecrane.bandcamp.comMore information at facebook.com/ButterBeanRecordshttps://www.recklessattack.comWant to hang out with other fans?Join us on Discord!Like the show? Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/recklessattack

A saga for the ages… or at least a podcast appropriate for April Fool's Day British heavy Bruce Payne (Passenger 57) is the only cast member willing to return for a Dungeons & Dragons sequel now that the 2005 campaign is being launched on SyFy Channel.  Can new director Gerry Lively (Darkness Falls) do a better job of advancing the fantasy role-playing game into a credible cinematic universe by more closely studying the classic monster manuals and rule books of TSR?  Find out if hosts Justin, Stuart, and Arnie have much clemency for yet another low-budget quest to enchant today's tabletop players. Listen Now! 

A saga for the ages… or at least a podcast appropriate for April Fool's DayBritish heavy Bruce Payne (Passenger 57) is the only cast member willing to return for a Dungeons & Dragons sequel now that the 2005 campaign is being launched on SyFy Channel.  Can new director Gerry Lively (Darkness Falls) do a better job of advancing the fantasy role-playing game into a credible cinematic universe by more closely studying the classic monster manuals and rule books of TSR?  Find out if hosts Justin, Stuart, and Arnie have much clemency for yet another low-budget quest to enchant today's tabletop players. Listen Now! 

Welcome once again to the April Fool's Day episode!  This year's game is played using a game published in the ‘90s by TSR called Marvel SAGA.  It is a card-based role-playing game where the players create and play their very own superheroes. So, without further ado… here is A Valiant Attempt at a Re-Image of the Dark Horse Marvel in D.C.Song parodies recorded by ButterBean (Julie Jurgens and Charlie Crane)Julie Jurgens can be found at juliejurgens.comCharlie Crane can be found at charliecrane.bandcamp.comMore information at facebook.com/ButterBeanRecordshttps://www.recklessattack.comWant to hang out with other fans?Join us on Discord!Like the show? Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/recklessattack

Join Our FREE Start Repairing Credit Challenge: http://startrepairingcredit.com/Three years ago, I was sued by the CFPB.They sued me over the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), and it was the most stressful period of my life. The craziest part is that we don't do telemarketing, we don't have salespeople, and our software doesn't even make calls. Yet, they alleged that we were in breach of the TSR simply because our software was being used by others who were breaking the law.After a three-year battle, we finally reached a settlement with the CFPB, and I can now talk about it to help you avoid the same nightmare!Some people think that because the CFPB is now in trouble, the TSR doesn't apply anymore, but that's dead wrong. If you're in credit repair, the TSR still applies to you. It always has, and it always will. At our VIP mastermind event, Troy Hitt, our Head of Customer Success, explained everything you need to know to protect your business.Tune in!Key Takeaways:00:00 Intro 01:25 Do You Still Need to Follow the TSR? 04:10 Troy's story 15:09 What Is TSR and How Does It Impact You?18:04 Best Practices 28:43 My Final Point29:27 Outro Additional Resources:Get a free trial to Credit Repair CloudGet my free credit repair training  Generate Leads 24/7 with a 100% TSR-Compliant Credit Repair WebsiteMake sure to subscribe so you stay up to date with our latest episodes.

I really hope you're enjoying this string of very old games, we're doing our best to get back into them quickly (ever since I found one of my old box sets fully eaten by bugs and had to fumigate). In this case, it's a game about real old timey cowboys! Like Boot Hill but not TSR! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices