Monthly Archives: August 2013

by | August 26, 2013 · 10:53 am

Bonus Episode: Gen Con 2013 Report

Dave and Yanni recap their adventures at Gen Con 2013!

Relevant topics:

download mp3

4 Comments

Filed under Discussion, Podcast

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

by | August 20, 2013 · 5:09 pm

IPMM 52: Story Time with Blake and Highcove #2

“Dem Bones”

In this episode of Story Time, our guest hosts discuss the worst campaigns they’ve ever played in.  Hilarity, as always, ensues.

Blake Mutschler is the owner of Fun N Games, the friendly local game store in Blacksburg, VA (facebook – website).

Matthew Highcove writes regularly on DMing with Charisma, his outstanding GM advice blog.

download mp3

4 Comments

Filed under Podcast, Story Time

Tagged as

by | August 10, 2013 · 10:12 pm

IPMM 51 – Bonus Episode: Skill and Magic Systems

“Submachine Gun: The Submachine-Gunning”

As Dave and Yanni prepare to go off to Indy for GenCon, we’re tossing out a relatively short round-table with three of our hosts.  In this episode, we talk about D&D Next, then about skill and magic systems in role-playing games in general.  We come to the following conclusions:

  • We like skill systems that let heroic characters do stuff
  • We like magic systems that are open-ended, not ones that make you pick from pre-generated lists of spells

Also, at one point, Dave refers to “Old School Revolution” – it’s actually “Old School Renaissance” [Sorry. –Ed].

download mp3

2 Comments

Filed under Discussion, Podcast

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

by | August 7, 2013 · 8:16 am

IPMM 50: Microscope

“A temple of bricks and bodies”

We’ve got actual play from Microscope, an innovative story game from Ben Robbins and Lame Mage Productions!  Microscope is a “fractal” story game that allows a small group of players to create an entire history – anywhere from decades to eons – and then zoom in on particularly interesting characters and details.  Microscope is a great standalone game but it can also be used to generate the campaign world and backstory for a more traditional RPG.

Microscope uses index cards on the table to track time periods, events, and scenes.  Here’s what things looked like after we were done [spoilers – you might not want to look until after you listen].

For this game, we had Blake, Dave, Joanna, Yanni, and Will.  We actually played with too many people (recommended is 2-4), but it didn’t break the game too badly.  At the end, we mention Kingdom, a new game by the same designer that’s coming out very soon!

download mp3

3 Comments

Filed under Actual Play, Podcast

Tagged as ,

by | August 1, 2013 · 11:40 pm

IPMM 49: The Pre-GenCon Episode

“Chekhov’s Phone Install”

Important Announcement: Dave [Fried] and Yanni [Cooper] will be at GenCon this year!  Both will be running at Games on Demand (GenCon sign-in required) – come by and play or just say hi!

We talk about communications technology in RPGs (cell phones, mostly), what the next “hot” urban fantasy monster will be, how cool Reaper’s new “Bones” line of minis are, Duncan’s new universal minis game “µ” (latest version here), and just in general what we’re all up to.

Bones Cthulhu

The Cthulhu model (unpainted) from the new Reaper Bones minis set.

Other topics discussed in this episode:

And finally, a shout-out to Jenn Martin and Lee Van Sickle out in Chicagoland, who played Fiasco with Joanna and Dave the week this episode was recorded!

IPMM-49-Pre-GenCon

2 Comments

Filed under Discussion, Podcast

Tagged as , , , ,