This month Matt and Travis invite 3 special guests (and one tag along) to the show. Travis has struggled trying to work with the Red Market's RPG system. Tonight, with the help of our guests, we hope to rectify that. Along the way we will talk the different focuses GM's have when designing games, our advice for learning how to write scenarios, and personal tricks for running games.
Special thanks to Technical Difficulties' Greg, Laura, and Adam as well as Roleplaying Exchange's Sean for all their assistance with the creation of this episode.
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David Cage's Detroit: Become Human has become something of a bad joke among those who have experienced it due to its nonsensical twists and poor handling of the idea of the Civil Rights Movement. Since the internet at large has spent more than their fair share of time beating it down, we felt like comparing it to another cop story that deals with the subject of racial inequality by also discussing the first season of David Simon's 2002-2008 HBO Drama The Wire.
We also talk in detail about the concept of Sensitivity Editors and other ideas to bring more grounding to your work and iron out problems you may not think you had.
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Travis and Matt are currently dealing with personal issues. We will return in July.
Paranoia Agent is an animated program from Satoshi Kon, director of animated films such as Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, and Paprika. Paranoia Agent was described as a way for him to use ideas that he wasn't able to fit into his other feature films, connecting the scraps into an anthology by way of a framing device.
In this episode we discuss the themes of Paranoia Agent and the meanings of anthologies, series, and serials.
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As of now, as of right this second, there's a new dynamic at play. And this dynamic is the final from here on out until I state otherwise. There'll be no more debate, no more discussion, no more compromise. It's me speaking you listening, me saying you doing. Do you understand that?
It's time for a new course of action. A new direction. A game change.
You're joining me in the navy.
Speedrunning is a rather esoteric hobby of trying to beat games as quickly as possible under specific conditions. It's difficult to say where it began or what the first speedrun was, but on this day in the year of our lord two thousand eighteen it's grown into a large community that contains many smaller subcultures.
To the outside observer, speedrunning may seem like a fruitless or impossible task to pick up, as observation of the fastest run shows that runners immediately understand the whole game and execute it to the finest degree in ways not conceived by the developers. What is actually being observed in each speedrun, however, is the end product of dozens of hands in perfecting a route and hours of practice before finally reciting the sequence in a run.
No man is an island, and there's no wrong way to play. In this episode, we talk about this concept as it relates to tabletop gaming with our friend Greg Bennett of Technical Difficulties.
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What's the difference between a gimmick and a core mechanic?
In this episode, we discuss various games with strange ideas and odd control schemes in an effort to get to the bottom of this discussion, and also how this can be applied to your own games, be they tabletop or otherwise.
Strap yourself in and be ready for some spoilers.
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Do you have some writing ideas for Posthuman Studios? Check out their current writing contest!