Please join me as I navigate three very different topics with the help of some kind callers. This episode features calls from hosts of The GMologist Presents, Hindsightless, Spikepit, and Nerd's RPG Variety Cast podcasts. Karl, Joe, Colin, and Jason were kind enough to listen to one or more episodes of this podcast and have called in to give depth and meaning to the conversation. Links to those shows are below.

Topic One: Difference between Cinematic and Campaign Modes in Free League's Alien RPG 

Topic Two: RPGaDay Call-ins 

Topic Three: Immersion, call-ins, and commentary 

LINKS:

Casting Shadows blog   -  https://castingshadowsblog.com

Runeslinger on YouTube -  https://www.youtube.com/runeslinger

PODCASTS mentioned or calling in to this episode:

Spikepit  - https://anchor.fm/spikepit

Hindsightless  -  https://anchor.fm/joe-richter9

Nerd's RPG Variety Cast   -   https://anchor.fm/jason376

The GMologist Presents   -   https://anchor.fm/karl-rodriguez

Sections include notes on my appearance on Roundtable Roulette ( https://youtu.be/3PlkIWaajKs ) with Craig Shipman and Seth Skorkowsky, thoughts about the next RPGaDay, more on our ongoing but sometimes interrupted Alien Campaign, and a special focus on the once-again recent and always interesting topic: immersion thanks to an interesting series of observations and call-ins appearing on the Nerds' RPG Variety Cast.

Bonus Content - This is a more detailed description of how Queensryche's concept album Operation Mindcrime informed the play of a Mage: The Ascension chronicle in the mid-nineties called Broken Homes. 

Music can be a useful tool when playing an RPG, but in my experience, I have found it to be even more useful in preparation for play. in this episode I survey some of the ways I have found to aid my preparation for improvisation with music and playlists. We also touch on, thanks to the interest of The GMologist Presents and Hindsightless podcasts, the use of the incredible Operation: Mindcrime in these pursuits~ 

Part 1 - Context of using music for Improvisation and Example 1: character playlists 

Part 2 - Example 2: Using Operation: Mindcrime by Queensryche on the metalevel for preparation and reference in play 

Part 3 - Using variations, covers, and remakes and Example 3: Tom Waits songs to inspire an NPC 

Further Example Playlists: 

Tom Waits: Delta Green - tRUST   

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4HxiFwdUhC86M8EmakmAh0?si=4b43a704eba44fa1

Icecream Man - God's Away on Business - Murder in the Red Barn - What's he Building? - 16 shells from a 30.06 

Tragically Hip 

Delta Green - Seasons of Deepening Dismay 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gEBc1EfGYcNpgsFxsGfEA?si=c211bcdb03324daa

She Didn't Know - 38 Years Old -  Little Bones -  Locked in the Trunk of a Car -  Nautical Disaster -  

Various Artists (re: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds) 

Dimensional Shambles Red Right Hand covers, variations, and remakes

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7mlggy3RMWhJlJ1WmdAtA6?si=fde0cf8cf5da4c22

The blame for this episode rests squarely on the shoulders of Jason of the Nerd's RPG Variety Cast. If you have not yet given him your thoughts on this matter, please do so now:

Alienating the Alien.

What are some of the elements of Free League's Alien RPG that I find most useful? This episode looks at three: Abstract processing for Detailed outcomes, Conversational Gamespeak, and Layered Consequences. As always, if you would like to communicate with me about the Alien series or any of the other episodes of past seasons of the podcast, you can leave a voice message on Anchor or try runescastshadows at the intersection of g and mail.

For the YouTube of playlist of the campaign, tutorials, unboxing, and commentary for Alien, please click here.

In this installment of the preparation for improvisation series using Free League's Alien RPG, we give a brief overview of the campaign so far and look at the process of ongoing assessment and analysis of play which makes it easier to shift and react to how play is really going, rather than how we might want it to go. 

Blog Version

This is a partial interlude in the Alien RPG series on horror and improvisation in that it is a different example of the use of improvisation toward a specific genre and player-experience goal for atmosphere and context, but unlike Alien, is high adventure pulp heroics in an implausible setting of super-science and derring-do. Some of the techniques are similar, some are identical, and some are divergent from what we have discussed in the series so far.  This session uses one of our favorite systems (Ubiquity) to support a setting of my own invention. I hope that you enjoy it~

If you would like the watch the original session:

If you would like to listen to the podcast version with its commentary on the session, that is Episode 1.6 of this podcast.

Episode 1.6 [Actual Play] Sky Riders and the Mist Pirates of Venus