In this debut segment of "In the Lab", Fred runs a complete game of Escape or Die! at Dreamation 2008. You may recognize podcasters Remi Treuer (of the Durham Three) and Rob Bohl (of the Independent Insurgency) as two of the player voices. Escape or Die! is currently in playtest and has a few hurdles to cross before publication, but you should be able to get a pretty good idea of how it plays from listening to this. The idea is simple: you're in a highly lethal escape movie where the only options are, indeed, to escape or die. The catch with the game is that it's run on the clock, putting a lot of pressure on players to narrate circumstances and push their characters forward quickly before their doom catches up with them. In play, this makes the game almost a "real-time RPG", in that it lasts about as long as the movies it emulates. Like a big dork, I turned off the recorder before I got a bunch of feedback from the folks who played -- but I got a chance later in the weekend (unrecorded) to put a few of their suggestions into practice to good effect.

(1hr 8min; 31MB) Fred sits down to kick off his Faith, Faces & Fingerprints game with Rob, Deborah, and Kim. This session focuses entirely on creating the setting of the game, starting with some setting seeds that Fred brought to the table. Part one of several