Thu, 20 August 2009 This episode is 18.4 MB big and 20:08 long. In this Talk To Me Now episode I talk to Ron Edwards of Adept Press and The Forge about a recent trend in indie game design: two-player games and single protagonist games. The two are not necessarily synonymous. This came out of my observation/contention that most fiction is about single protagonists, but most RPGs are not. We mention a load of games, and you can find info on them here: Ron's own Trollbabe, S/Lay w/ Me, Sorcerer & Sword, and Spione Kevin Allen Jr.'s Sweet Agatha Julia Bond Ellingboe's Tales of the Fisherman's Wife Seth Ben Ezra's Showdown Tim Koppang's Mars Colony Emily Care Boss's Breaking the Ice Ben Lehman's The Drifter's Escape and Clover Matt Weber's Showdown The outgoing song on this episode is The Arrivals Gate by Ani DiFranco from the album To the Teeth. I spent a lot of time in airports on my way back from Gen Con. Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/ Comments[4] |
Thu, 30 July 2009 WARNING: The Independent Insurgency is an "explicit" podcast. This episode is 60.6 MB big and 01:06:11 long. 00:00:55: About the game 00:01:46: The "Mad Libs" thing 00:06:20: The interesting role of humanity in the game, reminds me of Asimov's Elijah Baley stories 00:07:45: A rare indie game with a strong setting 00:09:20: Science fiction and the Native American analogy, and an NPR piece on the subject (which I can't find), which then reminds me of The Celluloid Closet 00:10:41: Why such a specific setting? 00:12:24: One of the early playtesters, Clinton R. Nixon, felt it accurately captured his past experiences of going to live in foreign cultures 00:14:21: Jonathan Walton has a vision for the game that makes it rather like Red Mars 00:15:38: Goofiness 00:16:57: Emily talks about gaming at NerdNYC's Recess 00:17:36: Dadaist games like Eat Poop You Cat 00:20:26: Emily gets all John Stavropoulos (of NerdNYC) on me 00:21:13: Ideal number of players 00:23:20: How long is the play cycle? 00:27:01: Blue booking 00:30:05: Spotlight sharing 00:32:49: The way dice work, inspired by Otherkind 00:37:39: Why complete and publish this game? 00:41:26: Emily was recently inspired by Montsegur 1244 at Camp Nerdly 00:46:37: A dropped system where players—a la Misspent Youth and Dread (Jenga)—asked leading questions of one another. 00:49:40: Emily mentions "Loading the wrong ammo" and "flags," ideas created by Chris Chinn 00:50:03: What was difficult to fix? 00:51:17: Archipelago, shock: social science fiction, and Annalise all do some cool stuff with owning pieces of the world 00:54:42: Getting playtesters 00:57:05: SIS got some very nice exposure on The Durham 3 (who are now back in action!), from episodes 49 to 51 00:58:51: Emily has agreed to do a cross-longer-term-play exchange with Mendel Schmiedekamp 00:59:21: How many times has the game been played? 01:00:15: Defining success There's a new The Hub City Stompers album called Ska Ska Black Sheep and I'm all excited about it. It's half new songs and half dub versions of older songs. I decided to start with what is probably my favorite track from the album to close this show, Ska Train to Dorkville. Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/ Comments[0] |
Sat, 18 July 2009 WARNING: The Independent Insurgency is an "explicit" podcast. This episode is 25.2 MB big and 27:27 long. 00:35: Defining Pirate Jenny 02:01: Anna Kreider of Tasty Bacon Games has Thou Art But A Warrior, which is a Muslim knights setting supplement for Ben Lehman's Polaris, which I interviewed her about 02:28: Danielle Lewon's Cream Alien Games has Kagematsu, a game about the seduction of a samurai by women who need his aid; Danielle is the wife of Paul Czege 03:23: Kagematsu is based on a design by Scott R. Knipe; the game is partly an examination of Knipe's experience as a transgendered person 04:52: Kat and Michael Miller's Incarnadine Press will have Serial Homicide Unit, a game where you play civilians at the mercy of a serial killer, and the cops who are out to catch him; I interviewed the Millers about this game 07:14: Shreyas Sampat and Elizabeth Shoemaker's Two Scooters Press will have Homecoming, Elizabeth's game about the re-integration of returning war vets 08:24: Julia Bond Ellingboe's Stone Baby Games is releasing the full version of Tales of the Fisherman's Wife (which I interviewed her about), a game of sexy Japanese ghost stories 10:00: Emily's own Black & Green Games is going to release her game of alien exploration, Sign in Stranger, which will be the subject of a future episode of my show 12:56: Terry Hope Romero, awesome lady and totally famous vegan cookbook writer will be there running demos and helping out 13:58: The mission and purpose of Pirate Jenny 17:48: RPGirl is a zine by and about women in gaming 20:20: The interesting pricing scheme and profit-routing plans for RPGirl 20:50: Possible international people for RPGirl 2 include: Anna Westerling, Johanna Koljonen 21:18: RPGirl 1 is already pretty international, contributors include: UKian Charlotte Law (of Mongoose Publishing); Jenni Dowsett from New Zealand; and from from Denmark, the Gnavpotveksler project, run by Luisa Carbonelli, which came out of conversations at Fastival The outgoing song on this episode is Little Plastic Castle by Ani DiFranco from the album Little Plastic Castle. It seemed particularly apropos to me, given that we're dancing around—and avoiding—defining what femininity and feminism are in this episode. Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/ Comments[0] |
Thu, 16 July 2009 WARNING: The Independent Insurgency is an "explicit" podcast. This episode is 45.5 MB big and 49:37 long. 03:43: The premise 04:38: Ultimately, what's the game about? 05:33: How is the game about what it's about for the humans? 07:27: What does it mean when you say "it's about fear?" 09:40: What mechanical pressure exists to make humans be jerks to each other? 11:44: We hear from someone who just played in the game 13:56: More testimony of the goodness from someone who played 16:45: Zombie game with a twist 18:47: Do you have questions for us? 20:10: Problems getting people to follow the rules 23:39: Prisoner's dilemma 24:24: The Road and The Walking Dead 25:33: Creative agenda clash, and why it's your fault when people don't follow your rules 30:00: State markers 32:00: Setting-interactive rules 38:31: Lightning round The closing song is Night Of The Living/Deoch An Dorais by The Hub City Stompers Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/ Comments[1] |
Tue, 30 June 2009 WARNING: The Independent Insurgency is an "explicit" podcast. This episode is 56.2 MB big and 1:01:20 long. 00:59: I interviewed Eppy in the last episode about playstorming and MonkeyDome came up 01:17: What's the game about? 02:46: The game was designed in (almost less than) a week! 08:11: The difference between funny and zany. 10:22: Playable as an ongoing game? 12:06: The mechanics 19:52: What it means to learn a lesson 21:02: Endgame 25:14: The GameBlaster's Tools: The Fuel and the Fire 26:03: World creation and what the characters do in the game 29:02: Other games you came up with? 30:20: Jim mentions a game idea that's a lot like Jason Morningstar's Fiasco (which he talked about on Canon Puncture #66) 31:20: Who did you steal from? 32:07: John is always inspired by Eppy's game Dread 34:00: What had to be dropped that you liked? 34:44: The hardest thing to fix 35:24: Playtesting 36:43: Trial and Terror is the prior game-in-a-Jiffy for JiffyCon game 38:13: Division of labor and editing 43:06: The ISS used a site called A.nnotate which lets you upload a fully-laid-out document that others browse through and comment on 44:06: What the art (by Scott LeMien and John) is used for 47:11: Luke Crane loves John's flow chart 48:05: Why this form factor? 48:41: Marketing 50:21: Branding and credit 51:24: Defining success 53:46: Selling the game 56:58: The next JiffyCon may be paired with MaulCon The closing song is Skins Don't Cry by The Hub City Stompers Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/ Comments[5] |
Thu, 11 June 2009 This episode is 23.4 MB big and 25:34 long. 00:35: We're at the home of Joshua A. C. Newman 01:34: Playstorming developed between bouts of making hate with Jim Sullivan 02:40: The first game playstormed (kinda) was Time and Temp 03:49: The gamebearer 05:36: Games in a Jiffy for JiffyCon: Trial and Terror and MonkeyDome 09:30: Techniques for successful playstorming? 12:06: What do people get wrong about playstorming? 13:00: The pitfalls of playstorming 14:55: Joshua joins us, opening the door to discussing his game in development, Xenon: 16:06: A list of games that have had some level of playstorming 18:09: Jason Keeley and John Stavropolous are seminal members of the Imagination Sweatshop, the group that they created to do playstorming The outgoing song on this episode is Fuel by Ani DiFranco from the album Little Plastic Castles. Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/ Comments[0] |
Sun, 3 May 2009 This is a longer TTMN episode than I intend them to be, usually, but I felt there was enough worthwhile stuff here that going long was ok. This episode is 53.7 MB big and 58:40 long. 01:36: What clouds and boxes are 02:16: Ben Lehman got excited on Vincent's blog 04:02: The purpose of the diagrams 06:12: The problem with traditional games 10:00: Constructing a diagram via theater of the mind 10:26: The problem with "story games" (he's talked about with me, Joshua A. C. Newman, Emily Care Boss, and Ben, about which he expects to get death threats) 15:34: Where Vincent's interests are at now: rightward-pointing arrows (RPA) 17:30: An example of RPA from Vincent's pirate game Poison'd 22:23: My malformed objections 24:08: The high ground example 30:28: Danger or problem in focusing on RPA? 30:51: The GM's attitude toward play 35:41: A false ending 42:35: The GM's role in Dogs in the Vineyard is similar to what he found when running D&D and what he wrote into Storming the Wizard's Tower 45:14: I'd like to see GMless games that employ RPA 45:52: I played in a GMless game called Salt River that uses a version of Otherkind dice 51:25: Wherein I give up 53:25: Apocalypse World is like super-Poison'd The outgoing song on this episode is Superhero from the album Dilate. Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/ Comments[5] |
Sun, 19 April 2009 WARNING: The Independent Insurgency is an "explicit" podcast. This episode is 53.5 MB big and 58:25 long. 00:43: Set in the Edo period 01:48: The mechanics have you playing War 08:15: The title comes from a famous painting, The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife by Katushika Hokusai 09:11: Why design this game? 11:20: Thematic links between card suits and fiction 12:40: Is this an adult game? 18:15: My prior interview with Carrie Bernstein 19:29: What did you steal from? 20:11: 1001 Nights by Meguey Baker 21:33: What did you have to change from the ashcan? 24:13: What was difficult to fix? 25:36: The trouble with getting playtesters 26:37: JiffyCon and Double Exposure's Dreamation conventions 27:26: Editing the book 28:45: What use, art? 30:36: Getting the game printed (Collective Copies) 31:37: Layout and design challenges 35:19: Form factor 37:27: Marketing the game 38:05: Oh My, a "Sensuality Shop" that Julia would like to market the game in. 39:09: What is success? 44:06: Taking yourself out of the equation 48:43: The cultural sensitivity issues around designing a game about a culture that you're not a part of The closing song is Tocotta and Droog by The Hub City Stompers Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/ Comments[0] |
Mon, 6 April 2009 In this episode, I speak with Joshua A. C. Newman about the In A Wicked Age... game we've been playing in with Meguey and Vincent Baker. The game was about first contact between two human species at the fictional level. At the gamey level, we were making a real effort to make sure to provide world-fiction details, and we talk about that impulse in this episode. During the show, we talk about Apocalypse World, Sign in Stranger, shock:, the oracle for Human Contact, The Brilliant Gameologists, and JiffyCon. The outgoing song on this episode is Subdivision by Ani DiFranco from the album Revelling/Reckoning. I like it for this 'cause it's got interesting synchronies with the topics that get brought up in our game. Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/ Comments[0] |
Fri, 13 March 2009 This episode is 18.5 MB big and 20:15 long. NOTE: This is the first in a new sub-series within The Independent Insurgency that I'm calling "Talk To Me Now." In this series, I'm going to have brief conversations with friends (and sometimes strangers) about things they are interested in or want to say about roleplaying games. Going forward, these episodes will be marked as TTMN and my other episodes will be marked as Design Episodes (DE). The outgoing song on this episode (as well as the incoming one for the series) is Talk To Me Now by Ani DiFranco from the album Ani DiFranco. Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/ Comments[0] |
Mon, 19 January 2009 So right now, I have no material recorded for the show and it's getting to the point where it might be hard for me to keep up a biweekly schedule. I may have to dedicate far more time at cons to doing interviews if I'm going to avoid this in the future. If you are (or know) an independent game designer within driving distance of Western MA, and you want to be on the show, please let me know. The show's email address is at gmail, and it's indie.insurgent there. You can also just email me if you know my address. (I should note that I do not do Skype on my show, face-to-face interviews only.) Category: general -- posted at: 10:23 AM Comments[0] |
Wed, 14 January 2009 Also, I had a cold. Also, big news on the music front (scan down). WARNING: The Independent Insurgency is an "explicit" podcast. This episode is 64.8 MB big and 01:10:46 long. 00:01:08: The origin of the "Project Donut" working title 00:04:00: What's it about? 00:06:20: The primacy of cooperation 00:07:17: Transhumanism 00:07:54: Blade Runner (in case you didn't know) 00:10:13: Jared claims FreeMarket is one of the first real science fiction games (and his explanation for what that means for shock: social science fiction by Joshua A.C. Newman) 00:10:58: What is science fiction? 00:11:13: J.G. Ballard's three pillars of science fiction 00:13:45: How the game works 00:15:30: The game's concept of Flow reminds me of face rank in Extras by Scott Westerfeld 00:15:43: Cory Doctorow 00:17:17: "Deathing" people 00:19:35: Setting is built into the skills, and characters use the same game terms players do 00:20:34: Division of labor 00:21:29: Oldboy 00:23:16: When I played FM, I created a Y.T. gene line for my character (from the book Snow Crash) 00:24:08: Luke ran a game of Jared's game Lacuna for he and Peter 00:25:36: Luke and Jared would have liked to have done the Bella Sara RPG 00:27:28: The influence (or lack thereof) of other games 00:32:07: Rebekah "Spyder" Bennington has done art for FreeMarket 00:33:22: Difficult things to fix 00:37:42: Things they couldn't make work 00:40:17: The fascinating role of death(ing) in the game 00:42:16: Sengoku 00:42:47: The GM is called the "Superuser" and the other players are the "users" 00:44:33: FreeMarket is a no-prep game 00:45:45: How to get playtesters and get them to give you feedback 00:47:30: A RadioLab episode on choice that I babble on about 00:49:17: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell 00:51:03: Darcy Burgess 00:51:54: Playstorming 00:52:03: The purpose and use of art 00:53:49: Pictures of the "white book" for the game are on its site 00:55:46: Slugfest Games put them in touch with their printer 00:56:28: The PDF of the game will be given out for free 00:57:23: Skekses 00:57:32: You'll be able to register as a "colonist" and choose the number of the game you want 00:58:37: The contents of the boxed set 00:59:28: Empire of Dust by KNRPG Productions is another boxed set 00:59:34: Marketing 01:02:50: Jim Munroe, author of Everyone in Silico and the movie Infest Wisely, which were inspirations for FreeMarket 01:03:27: Jared has visions of one day playing the game with Doctorow, William Gibson, Munroe, and Bruce Sterling 01:05:00: George W. Bush as the Manichean president 01:05:09: When will it be out? 01:06:45: The Farm is not happy I'm super-lucky that Righteous Babe Records gave me permission to play music by Ani DiFranco. I'm going to start doing so for a while, since she's my favorite musician. We're going to start with a song about a corporate entity trying to get you to sell yourself out, a song called The Next Big Thing. Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/ Comments[1] |
Fri, 2 January 2009 WARNING: The Independent Insurgency is an "explicit" podcast. This episode is 65.3 MB big and 1:11:18 long. 00:00:59: What Contested Ground Studios is 00:04:29: Twilight 2000 is one of the first games Malcolm played 00:05:16: Hot War was also inspired by British authors like John Wyndham (specifically Day of the Triffids) and J.G. Ballard, and is unlike "cozy catastrophe" books like A Canticle for Leibowitz 00:06:00: Hot War is set after a nuclear (and quasi-occult) war touched off by the Cuban Missile Crisis 00:06:30: The Zone of Alienation, where physical laws don't work properly, is inspired by the film Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky and the novel upon which it's based, Roadside Picnic, as well as the Chernobyl Disaster 00:08:01: Characters in the game have secret agendas that often come into conflict with their organizations' agendas 00:09:32: A rundown of the game's mechanics 00:13:09: Ani DiFranco's song Letter to a John 00:13:31: We talk about music and politics as influences on game design and life 00:15:13: Malcolm's soundtrack for Cold City is dominated by non-50s music like DJ Krush, DJ Shadow,Fingerthing, and the Joe Acheson Quartet 00:16:10: The soundtrack for a Contenders game Malcolm played set in New Jersey (where I used to live) in 1983 included Blondie, Bauhaus, Talking Heads, The Cure, and The Clash 00:17:41: Malcom needs to visit New Jersey, if only for Dexposure's Dreamation gaming convention 00:18:15: We talk about more music: Nine Inch Nails, Front 242, and Green Day 00:19:11: How Hot War's conflict system works 00:19:55: Malcolm and I both worked the Playcollective booth at Gen Con 00:25:03: Megablockbuster 3:16: Carnage Amongst the Stars handles character death in a cool way 00:26:30: Why design this game? 00:31:09: "The people are not motor-bike-riding leather-clad, crossbow-wielding neo-barbarians" 00:32:46: The prevalence of kilts at gaming cons, Gen Con in particular 00:33:52: Jennifer Rodgers 00:36:17: What other games have you begun to shit out? 00:37:18: Malcolm wrote a game based on the song I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper 00:39:20: The possible third game in this thematic trend would be set in 1920s Constantinople and inspired by the book The Orientalist 00:41:36: The main differences between Hot War and Cold City 00:46:15: Gen Con's t-shirt problems: aggression, passive-aggression, and fascism 00:49:32: Malcolm "nicked mercilessly" from The Mountain Witch, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Covenant 00:53:38: Use of art in the book 00:56:54: The printer for the book is Fidlar Doubleday 00:58:44: Marketing (which Malcolm thinks Evil Hat are particularly good at) 01:02:19: Defining success Closing song is Thick Ass Stout by Skankin' Pickle which can be found at Podshow's Podsafe Music Network, http://music.podshow.com/ Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/ Comments[5] |
Tue, 9 December 2008 NOTE: This episode was shot in a hotel room where the air conditioning kept popping on and off. Hopefully it's not too distracting. Sorry! This episode is 63.6 MB big and 1:09:25 long. 00:00:57: Dirty Secrets is a "detective crime noir" game, similar in tone to the works of Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and Dashiell Hammett, but it's set in "your home, last week," and thus also bears similarity to the movie Brick or the show Veronica Mars 00:02:05: Robin Laws covers similar ground with his GUMSHOE rules system in a somewhat more traditional way (with a gamemaster and pre-plotting, for example) 00:03:03: Fred Hicks describes the game as having one player and many GMs 00:05:46: Situation generation 00:07:40: Scene framing 00:10:10: Conflicts use liar's dice and has a back-and-forth similar to Dogs in the Vineyard 00:12:05: Structuring the session 00:14:18: I make reference to the HBO TV series The Wire which is, in the context of this interview, absolutely obligatory 00:16:50: The crime grid 00:22:08: "When Ron Edwards in [The] Sorcerer's Soul talks about relationship maps and drawing them out of detective novels, he's using Ross Macdonald novels as an example." 00:26:31: Seth blames John Tynes and Greg Stolze, and their game Unknown Armies (which was pitched as James Ellroy meets Tim Powers, for his designing Dirty Secrets 00:27:58: The darkness of Ellroy's books and the perhaps-surprising implications for Seth as a Christian 00:30:56: The place that Dirty Secrets has vis a vis Seth's other games, Legends of Alyria and Mara 00:32:28: Ben Lehman describes Alyria as something C.S. Lewis would have written if he'd grown up playing Final Fantasy VII, but Seth sees it as the "intersection of Tolkein and Gene Wolfe" 00:35:41: An obligatory Chinatown reference 00:40:04: Seth loves In A Wicked Age..., and feels that Grey Ranks, Steal Away Jordan, and Dogs in the Vineyard are really "about stuff" 00:42:08: The demographics system, the racial implications, and my issues with it 00:47:14: Challenging design issues 00:47:32: Seth was inspired by the The Iä! Iä! Ph’iles by Christoph Boeckle, which reminds me of Kat and Michael Miller's Serial Homicide Unit 00:49:22: How many times was the game played before you published? 00:55:51: Anything you'd change in the book as published? 00:57:49: Defining success 01:00:18: A bit about Flowers for Mara, Seth's Jeepform game. Closing song is Toccata and Droog by the Hub City Stompers Logo courtesy of Daniel Solis: http://danielsolis.com/ Comments[0] |

