* (0:29) Julia ruins everything.

* (1:35) Things are getting set for Fear the Con! An intro to RPGs game is available for newcomers. You can also announce your games on Discord.

* (9:03) Coming out of a period of deep fatigue. How one game still never missed a week.

* (16:18) Spoons and other finite resources.

* (20:06) Why it might be best to bite off a bit less. You may not be gaming as much as you think, anyway.

* (26:41) Does gaming with strangers help the problem?

* (31:37) Kids, you’re already in the real world.

* (34:32) Strange schedules and cascading cancellations.

* (37:42) Gambling with the eleventh dollar.

Hosts: Dan, Julia, Mary, Wayne

* (0:28) Running a game when someone else knows the setting a whole lot better than you do.

* (2:07) The lack of pronunciation guides in most games.

* (3:16) Narrowing down the task by asking what’s important about the setting to the players.

* (7:59) Getting the essence or feel of the setting right. We need a Thug Notes recap of BattleTech lore.

* (12:53) Start small and work outward, learning just what you need for each step along the way.

* (21:15) Tell your players you only know some canon and therefore will only use some canon.

* (24:01) Setting an ending to the canon so you can tell your own story. Breaking continuity early to get it over with.

* (28:35) Keeping a chunk of authentic setting. Otherwise, why run it at all?

* (33:56) Asking your setting experts to give you limited homework.

* (35:09) We look forward to seeing you at Fear the Con!

Hosts: Dan, Mary, Wayne

Show links…

* StartPlaying Games

* Bite Size Tales

* Gaming with Gage

Hosts: Chris, DJ, Josh, Wayne

* (0:29) The Kickstarter for Fear the Con 2023 is live for one more week!

* (1:56) The wonderful confusion new players and GMs bring to a roleplaying game.

* (16:59) An imagined internal-consistency is sometimes more fun than an intended one.

* (22:17) The burden of your own expectations.

* (28:29) When contradictions aren’t actually contradictions. The Law of Non-Contradiction.

* (35:16) The emotion of Muscle March.

* (36:22) The ideas that mistakes allow us to explore.

Hosts: Dan, Julia, Mary, Wayne

* (0:31) The Kickstarter for Fear the Con 2023 is live!

* (1:04) The new fiction podcast, Bite Size Tales.

* (3:09) Game mechanics we’re particularly fond of.

* (4:54) Rerolls and other roll-modifying mechanics.

* (10:13) A close relationship between skills and attributes.

* (15:46) Life paths in character creation.

* (24:48) Using all the dice.

* (30:12) Injury instead of a simple health pool.

* (38:08) Lots of randomness.

* (40:31) Building something bigger than your character.

* (44:13) Double-edged character traits.

Hosts: Dan, Mary, Wayne

* (0:28) The Kickstarter for Fear the Con 2023 is live!

* (1:12) Things a Game Master has done to make a world seem a little more alive (with credit to JoshB for the topic).

* (5:46) Plot hooks, substories, and unanswered questions about my character.

* (9:16) Allowing characters to have goals, ambitions, and projects.

* (13:32) Giving me things I can trust that won’t betray me or become a vulnerability.

* (19:52) Investing the players in world-building that matters.

* (29:25) Don’t constantly veto your players.

* (31:55) Digging through enough specifics may reveal a general truth you can use.

Hosts: Dan, Mary, Wayne

* (0:28) The new fiction podcast, Bite Size Tales.

* (1:43) Dan re-reads the D&D 2nd Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide. Wayne watches Secrets of Blackmoor. The inspiration D&D’s creators drew from Strategos.

* (6:38) The rather disjointed rules of early RPGs.

* (8:23) The heavy crunch of early RPGs that might be as much unearned reputation as reality.

* (13:02) Why an early RPG may have needed to describe concepts that would be misinterpreted as immutable rules.

* (16:06) Narrative examples of play.

* (19:17) Separating old games from OSR games. Conveyed interpretation and social tradition.

* (27:07) The shortcuts around setting building, and how rules may have gotten caught up in those.

Hosts: Dan, Mary, Wayne

* (0:36) An odd tangent on names.

* (3:39) A conversation about AI art. Some parameters we’re putting on this episode. AI art wins a fine arts competition.

* (8:08) An admittedly non-technical overview of how AI generally creates its work. Syntax versus semantics.

* (17:43) AI creations as a starting point instead of the final product. Why the lack of semantics may distinguish what inspires humans as opposed to AIs.

* (29:32) The positive impact of AI creativity, contrasted with the intellectual property and monetary concerns.

* (37:02) The human-seeded meta-thought used by AI, and the inevitability of its adoption across multiple industries.

* (47:26) After taking jobs, technology may also improve lives and push humanity forward. Automating simple tasks or “shifting them left”.

* (54:45) The financial incentive to use AI art versus the status incentive to use human art.

Hosts: Dan, Julia, Mary, Wayne

Some of the sample AI art Dan made while playing around with an app…

A man with two beards that’s holding a third beard (stupid beard hog), Jesus with hot dogs for fingers, and…OH NO! Its mini-Jesus off the ropes!

What’s that Lassie? Jesus is here? And he thinks our dogs are gnolls? And Gabriel is also a dog?

OK, so now we’ve got gnolls with underbites, some random people in the background, Jesus with John Wick levels of determination, and…what the hell is that thing in the lower-right!?

What the AI thought Gnarl should look like. I’m totally going to stat this out and use it in a fantasy game.

* (0:30) Giving a remote episode a try. We have a fix for Dan’s audio that should improve the quality on our next remote show.

* (1:42) Catching up with Brodeur and DJ, who was on episode 466 to talk about BuJoRPG.

* (4:43) Putting some parameters on the topic.

* (9:42) Does Wizards of the Coast hate you? Envy other publishers? Or just not understand the market?

* (16:36) Why people went along with the OGL to begin with. A genuine belief that some people in the mix have the best of intentions.

* (24:47) Why care at all?

* (29:23) The silent majority that may neither know nor care this is all happening.

* (36:21) Why this might be a good thing. The episode on Dan’s resentment of what D&D represents, despite his enjoyment of the game.

Hosts: Brodeur, Dan, DJ, Wayne

* (0:44) Friday night chit-chat on Discord each week, starting at 8pm Central.

* (2:18) Fear the Con 2023 dates have been reserved with the hotel for June 16th and 17th of 2023, with the Wing Night on June 15th.

* (3:37) Wayne preps his players for a Savage Worlds: Alpha Flight game.

* (8:18) Learning through trial-and-error by running homebrews and setting-dense games.

* (10:42) Give your players a little homework.

* (15:04) Where will the game begin?

* (20:37) What the characters need or want.

* (24:53) Trickling out more information as the game goes on.

* (31:31) Pay careful attention to the questions your players ask.

Hosts: Dan, Julia, Mary, Wayne