GMS Magazine Podcast - RPGs, Board Games reviews, interviews, advice. Mostly Asian and Indie games.

Most people believe that we are into a very inclusive hobby that helps people come together and bind us into friendships and a community that is supportive and welcoming.

Yet, during the last few years I have seen that community fragmenting and becoming very, very toxic in many areas.

So, have games lost their ability to unite the geeks? Have we lost whatever common element we used to have that made us a cohesive community?

Because I think we have lost something along the way...

Tons and tons of games use some sort of religion in their setting. Many of

them have more than one religion and all of those will have player characters,

and those characters are meant to follow the tennets of religions that do not

exist in our world.

But our world does have religions people follow and they shape our views of

many things from very early age.

How does that affect us? How does that affect the characters we make, the

games we play, the games we write…

In this episode, Jim Pinto and I discuss that for a while.

Hope you enjoy the show!

Tons and tons of games use some sort of religion in their setting. Many of

them have more than one religion and all of those will have player characters,

and those characters are meant to follow the tennets of religions that do not

exist in our world.

But our world does have religions people follow and they shape our views of

many things from very early age.

How does that affect us? How does that affect the characters we make, the

games we play, the games we write…

In this episode, Jim Pinto and I discuss that for a while.

Hope you enjoy the show!

Can you imagine being a Sleeper soldier from the Cold War?

By Paco G. Jaen

Sleepers: Orphans of the Cold War is an RPG from company Death Spiral Games in which

players take on the roles of agents of the Cold War that have been in stasis for

a long time and have been awakened now by whatever means needed to make the

adventure.

The game was successfully funded in Kickstarter a while back and the result

is actually very good. I just wish they had got a lot more money to make it full

colour and more illustrations, because this game is really sweet!

Hope you enjoy the show.

Can you imagine being a Sleeper soldier from the Cold War?

By Paco G. Jaen

Sleepers: Orphans of the Cold War is an RPG from company Death Spiral Games in which

players take on the roles of agents of the Cold War that have been in stasis for

a long time and have been awakened now by whatever means needed to make the

adventure.

The game was successfully funded in Kickstarter a while back and the result

is actually very good. I just wish they had got a lot more money to make it full

colour and more illustrations, because this game is really sweet!

Hope you enjoy the show.

Are you a Crunch player or a Lunch player?

Every RPG needs a rules system. Some are heavier, Crunch, and some are

lighter, Lunch. But hardly all are the appropriate for each game, or even for

the game you are playing.

For example games that make you, or try to make you, roll for pretty much

everything and have rules that, if you miss them, well… it doesn’t bode well for

your poor adventurer/investigator/whatever.

And there are other systems that tell you “just do what you want and have

fun”, which might not work either if you have a power-gamer in your group. Or an

idiot.

But how do you decide if a crunchy system is the right system for your game?

How do you reconcile that, sometimes, the rules are not the right ones, or the

necessary ones to have a good game. Do you sacrifice fun or playability for the

sake of rules?

In this episode of the podcast, Liz, Jim and me discuss the advantages of a

crunch system vs. a light system.

Hope you enjoy the show!

Are you a Crunch player or a Lunch player?

Every RPG needs a rules system. Some are heavier, Crunch, and some are

lighter, Lunch. But hardly all are the appropriate for each game, or even for

the game you are playing.

For example games that make you, or try to make you, roll for pretty much

everything and have rules that, if you miss them, well… it doesn’t bode well for

your poor adventurer/investigator/whatever.

And there are other systems that tell you “just do what you want and have

fun”, which might not work either if you have a power-gamer in your group. Or an

idiot.

But how do you decide if a crunchy system is the right system for your game?

How do you reconcile that, sometimes, the rules are not the right ones, or the

necessary ones to have a good game. Do you sacrifice fun or playability for the

sake of rules?

In this episode of the podcast, Liz, Jim and me discuss the advantages of a

crunch system vs. a light system.

Hope you enjoy the show!

Since the OGL came into place a lot of years ago, there has been a totally

unprecedented amount of work published for a lot of role playing games. Mind

you, that doesn’t take much because RPGs are pretty young, so anything can be

“unprecedented”.

But the point is that it was. It still is.

But is it a good thing that there are so many products? Is it good that we

can have access to all of them?

Jim Pinto, Liz Mackie and I discuss.

And you can discuss it too!

Since the OGL came into place a lot of years ago, there has been a totally

unprecedented amount of work published for a lot of role playing games. Mind

you, that doesn’t take much because RPGs are pretty young, so anything can be

“unprecedented”.

But the point is that it was. It still is.

But is it a good thing that there are so many products? Is it good that we

can have access to all of them?

Jim Pinto, Liz Mackie and I discuss.

And you can discuss it too!

In this episode, Jim Pinto proposes that Geekdom as we know is about to die a

painful and very unavoidable death thanks to the blight that is cognitive

and confirmation bias in our lives.

In a nutshell, we are seeing more and more crappy shows and movies that

people consider to be super great when, if you look at them under a critical and

objective light, they are not all that great, like the Big Bang Theory, which is

crap. Very crap. And yet some people love it and god forbid anyone speaks ill of

that show.

So there.

Also I pay tribute to one of my Art heroes who recently and suddenly passed

away, the rather fantastic Wayne England. He illustrated more than 100 Magic:

The Gathering cards and, pretty responsible for the look and feel of the

Warhammer 40K universe from the moment go and illustrated dozens of Dungeons & Dragons books.

This is a controversial episode, so hope you like it!