Wanna know the REAL way to win at tabletop RPGs? It doesn’t have anything to do with minmaxing or feat optimization or cheat dice. All you gotta do… is be nice, ya dingus! Today’s 101 topic is table etiquette, and Monica and Rai have five simple steps to becoming the best there is at roleplaying games.

The Extended Version of this episode can be found on our Patreon, where you will also gain access to: thoughts on the Broken Earth RPG, Bookclub Experience, Rai’s status as a living mosquito lure, why we just trust Fair Folk and Sidereal players know what they’re doing, and dog groomers who dry pets off with that like, puppy oven thing.

BXP is brought to you this week by COMMANDROIDS, now on Kickstarter!

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What the heck is this “Session Zero” everyone keeps talking about? Why is it such a big deal? Should you have a session zero? LET US TELL YOU

The Extended Version of this episode can be found on our Patreon, where you will hear us expound additionally on: Game Conventions We Have Loved, listening to Dan Avidan freak out over a literature club-related visual novel, Henry’s Best Disasters, messing with Julia, and hatpins and how they relate to a miniseries starring Tom Hardy that I’m pretty sure only Rai watched?

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Our schedule is still a little rough and bumpy but your friend (and ours) Chris S. is still coming through with the Big Edit Energy. Hopefully we’ll have this barren stretch of time behind us in, say, 14 days? 

You join us today for our Kickstarter Guestpert Episode featuring Johnathon Grach! Johnathon is a wealth of knowledge for the do’s and do-nots when Kickstarter-ing your project, and it was a blast talking to him. Are you considering crowd funding your game (which of course is awesome because you’ve been listening to our advice)? Listen to this guy, he knows his stuff!

ALSO: We are brought to you this week by Hit the Streets: Defend the Block, now on (say it with us) Kickstarter! Please check them out and lend your support! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/orklord/hit-the-streets-defend-the-block-tabletop-rpg 

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Annnd we’re back! Sorry about that everyone. Margaret disappeared into some sort of, uh, mimosa portal? To the brunch dimension? We asked your friend and ours Chris S. to lend his editing expertise for the next few episodes until we can extract Margaret.

But enough about that! Today we’re wrapping up our player characters discussion with a dive into Morality Systems (and things that are sort of like Morality Systems). It’s not just D&D alignment! Thankfully. I mean. D&D alignment is fine. It’s all right. But morality stats are neither required nor perfect. Let us tell you why!

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MARGARET: Please do not c+p my notes to you into the description field of scheduled episodes. You can’t replace one with the other. Related, the next episode is about replacing PCs—write a (new!) description about what to do, as a GM, if your players want to change their character or completely redo them. This episode also has a lot of “chaff” regarding Pokemon GO, please cut. R&M are back in the office tomorrow and I’m sure they’d like to see you at your best work when they return. Thanks.

—MPM

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The second ep of our Actual Play just dropped for Patrons, and to celebrate, we’re releasing ep1 for everyone to enjoy. Join us (Jess, Rai, and Relia) as Monica facilitates Lady Blackbird, a free adventure module presented by One Seven Design and featuring: space airships, pirate captains, unrequited love, snarky goblins, and disaster bisexuals (at least, the way we’re playing it).

Want to know what happens next? Zip over to our Patreon and chip in at the $3 level to get our AP series on the reg!

This episode features sounds used under the Attribution Non-Commercial CC License, provided by: Speedenza, etcd_09, KNO SFX, fl1ppy, jameswrowles, SolarPhasing, and jsbarrett.

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MARGARET: Rai and Monica are out of office right now. Make sure to queue episode six and write a description for the website. This is the one where they discuss why people make PCs, the idea that someone always leaves a bit of themselves in their PCs, and also they waste close to ten minutes at the beginning talking about beer. You cut that part, right? Thanks.

—MPM

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Kitty of the wildly popular DnDestiny project is here to talk to us all about hacking 5th ed. D&D! What do you keep in mind when designing new classes? How do you stop yourself from reinventing the wheel? What should you do when porting D&D into new genres? And so much more! Like… seriously, a lot more. Kitty really knows her stuff.

Patrons can find Margaret’s extended cut of this episode on our Patreon, featuring a whole extra 30 minutes of us dicking around, debating how D&D views encounters, talking about how much Vancian magic sux, and trying to convince Monica to start playing Destiny and/or Rai and Kitty to start playing Borderlands.

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Good morning, you beautiful content consumers. Today we bring you the final installment in our How Do You…? series, and we’re sharing tips on how to make room for diverse characters, stories, and settings at your table.  We also share what to do if you mess up, or feel an enormous amount of anxiety re: messing up. Thank you @Mypsilan on Twitter for suggesting the topic!

We ALSO address everyone’s obsession with reanimating Tolkien’s corpse, commit countless audio sins, and in general this is kind of an ADHD-fest but we DO stay laser-focused on the important stuff (including discussion of James Mendez Hodes‘ excellent work [www.jamesmendezhodes.com], if you like this episode read his blog because it’s basically what we’re saying but 100% better!!)

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Hey, Bonus Babies! It’s entry two in our How Do You…? series, talkin’ all about surprising your players. If you’re looking for how to better keep secrets from them, how to play out entertaining twists, or just need advice on how to maintain a poker face, we have a few tips and tricks for you. Also, we crack wise about Edgar Allan Poe’s terrible mystery writing skills and share our thoughts on Forbidden Pizza.

Patrons (y’know, of our Patreon) can find Margaret’s extended cut of this episode now! Featuring rave reviews of Headspace for your crummy ADHD brain, as well as a treatise on Forbidden Pizza, and an explanation of that one time Rai started a war over pizza in the Misdirected Mark slack. It’s uh… it’s a pretty pizza-heavy episode, ngl.

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