In this episode, I talk to Julia Bond Ellingboe about her forthcoming game, Tales of the Fisherman's Wife. The game is set in medieval Japan and is a GMless game for telling ghost stories. Our discussion includes handmaking books, the difficulty of finding playtesters, and issues of appropriating others' culture.

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/

This episode is 21.4 MB big and 23:44 long.

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/