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

Probably the most anticipated game I’ve backed in Kickstarter, Cthulhu Wars was going to be a massive hit or a huge flop. In

this game, you, the player, take the role of one of four faction of Great Ones

who are battling to conquer our planet and turn it into your realm. You’ll have

to manage you cultists, summon your creatures, fight for the control of lands…

And have fun. Lots of fun.The delays and problems with the production filled me with dread for months

on end and at some points I even wondered if we’d be able to see the game

produced.

The thing is that, being a game designed by Sandy Petersen, it was a risk I

had to take. Also, the little I know Sandy, merely some interactions in

Facebook, a quick hello at Spiel 2014 and references from people who know him

better than I do, did reassure me that he’s not the sort of running with the

money or give up because things are hard.

Quite the opposite, after all the problems, Petersen Games have gone out

of their way to make sure people get the game as soon as they were able to make

it happen and also had the foresight to delay things when needed because they

weren’t happy with the quality of the products they were getting prior to

release.

In any event, the game is now here and I’ve managed to play it a few times.

And I want to manage to play it a lot of times again. Lots, and lots of

times.

In this quick review podcast tell you why. Hope you enjoy the show!

Apologies for the initial problem with the sound. Using new editing software and found about this too late.Recently a massive outrage exploded onto the Internet on the back, of Bruce

Cordel’s game The Strange

and a recursion within the game that treats with the culture of Native American

people.

A petition was started that demanded the immediate removal of

the Thunder Plains from the book and that Monte Cook Games never publish

anything similar in the future again. Of course the person who created the

petition also demanded an apology.

I know Bruce Cordell, Monte Cook and Shannah Germain, three people involved

in the company and the game in question and I know for a fact they are as far

from being racists as anyone can get. They have moved into inclusivity and made

efforts to be socially aware that most companies should learn from. So what went

wrong?

In this podcast episode we discuss the issue of bringing minorities and other

cultures into your games and how to approach it to make sure the chances of

problems is minimised and you do the right thing from the very beginning.

A thorny subject, but one that has to be spoken about.

Hope you enjoy the show.

Shadow of the Demon Lord is a game that I have been looking

forward to for many months. Robert Schwalb is a

talented designer like few others and anything that comes out of his inkwell is

worth paying good attention to.

This Kickstarter has funded has funded a game that is breaking

with a lot of the traditions of Role Playing Games and offers a new system, both

mechanically and in its ethos, to shake up the way we look at games and how they

are played.

Everything, from the setting to the character sheet, has been designed with

the aim of offering a very quick but intense gameplay that moves as fast as you

need to.

Of course, this was also the perfect excuse for me to have Robert in the

podcast – something I’ve been looking forward to for a long, long time – and ask

him a few questions about the game.

Believe me, you will be gutted if you miss this one!

Other material we discuss during the interview:

A Song of Ice and Fire

RPG

Death Mark: A Dark Sun Novel (Dark Sun, Abyssal Plague)

Fablesmith has now a new game in Kickstarter by the name of Hylaria. A

storytelling game with different mechanics and quirky art work that sets it

apart from the rest.

In the past, Fablesmith has brought us Ortus, an abstract game for two

players with more strategy one can shake a stick at, and Oh No! Invasion a

cooperative game in which the players will have to work together to fight of a

series of aliens who want to conquer our planet.

This one is very different, though, so I had to get together with Joost Das

and find out how he came up with the idea for a type of game he’s never

published before.

Hope you enjoy the show!

Running a game is not an exact science. Not even sure it is a science but

sometimes it feels like it because you have to experiment a lot to get the

desired results. And then you have to try again in a different group to get

results and you might not get the results you wanted because… well, because

people.And yet we do learn to keep our games smooth so they are fun for everyone

involved. Or we try.In this episode we are going to give you our view and take on how to make

that happen. We’ll tell you our techniques, some more controversial than others,

and our approach. Hopefully you’ll find it useful!

Also, please please please take a look at the Shadow of the Demon Lord Kickstarter that’s going on as this

podcast comes out. It’s truly superb and, just in case you need any more reason,

we talk about it in this episode too!

M80 is a very interesting game that has been produced in a record time, play

tested in a record time and sent to Kickstarter in a record time too, which

makes it a very interesting project in my eyes.

I first met Hack at Spiel 2014 and he is a very impressive man who can work

more than most people and faster than a good number of super-heroes.

When he told me about M80, I had to find out more. Not just because the game

sounds like an interesting one, but also because he has some ideas about how to

run his Kickstarter campaign that made me very curious.

Hope you enjoy the interview!

Sleepers is a conspiracy horror game published by Death Spiral Games and

written by Ben Counter, veteran of many Warhammer novels.

This game has been in development for a number of years and puts the players

in the shoes of agents with super powers who have just woken up after a long

slumber and a post cold-war disaster that’s changed how the world works.

At the time of this recording this game is being funded in Kickstarter and it’s well on its

way to get the money it needs to be printed.

The setting sounds good, the mechanics sound good, the book looks good… Is it

worth backing it?

I spoke with Ben Counter to ask him a bunch of questions about the game, the

campaign and where the company is going with this book.

Hope you enjoy the show!

The Next Great American Game is a documentary movie conceived and brought to

life by producer and director Douglas Morse.

In this documentary, we’ll follow Randall Hoyt as he pitches his game,

Turnpike, to  publishers in order to get it published.

As you can imagine, that is a task easier said than done and in this movie

we’ll get some very good reflection of what is like to try and break it as a

game designer.

I spoke with the director and asked all sorts of questions from funding to

how real the situations in the documentary are. With a very impressive cast of

designers and publishers, this documentary is a must see for anyone who is

interested in any aspect of boardgame and specially to those with an interest in

game publishing.

Hope you enjoy the interview and you can find more information about the

movie in www.tabletopmovie.com.

Spirits of the Rice Paddy is the latest design and offering by

Philip DuBarry, who recently was successful with Skyway Robbery and has a number

of games under his belt already.

However Spirits of the Rice Paddy certainly looks and sounds

different.

This a farming themed game, but unlike other farming games, this one has an

oriental game and a much more focused and thematic farm: Rice.

But this game also comes with some special moves, like being able to use

different spirits to boost your abilities and giving you special actions to help

you grow your rice.

And that is not all, a very interesting drafting system, a water delivery

system and managing resources carefully if you want any of that water…

But don’t take it from me. Here’s an interview with designer so you can hear

it from someone with authority.

Hope you enjoy the show!

The Mistborn Dice Kickstarter project is the latest and most recent project

by RPG publishers Crafty

Games.

The creators of the Mistborn Adventure Game, based on the novels by author

Brandon Sanderson, also released a series of customised dice at the time of

releasing the game just over two years ago. Those dice flew off the shelf and I

was lucky enough to get a couple of sets for posterity.

Now the Crafty team are on Kickstarter with their first project to fund a new

production batch of dice to play with their rather excellent game.

But why are those dice important? What’s about them that makes it worth

pledging and backing this project?

Well, no one better than the project creator, Alex Flagg to let us know all

about it.

Hope you enjoy the show!