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Hello all,

Here is Episode 11 of our DnDNext actual play podcast. I recorded a live intro for this one so no text one here. (I would love some feedback if you prefer live one or text one . . .)

Not much technical or spoiler-y things in this episode.

As always, feedback and comments are welcome and thanks for listening!

Michael – AKA Mumbles.

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Hello all,

During a recent recording Evan and I found ourselves on about a 15 minute tangent. We decided to start over, but thought it might be funny to hear how easily we drifted off the tracks.

So here’s a short outtake.

Hope you enjoy.

Thanks!!

MIchael – AKA Mumbles

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

Hello all,

Here is Episode 13 of Dungeon Talk. In this Episode Evan and I touch on or discuss the following topics.  This is the general order that we go in, but we do jump back and forth a bit as well.

1.  Wanting to change up and play a non-fantasy RPG

2.   Game rotation. Losing a player for a while we swtiched to having Evan run a game again

3.   Evan discusses his comfort level running this game vs. his 1st one.

4.   Character Backgrounds: Keep them in their place

5.   Rewarding effort.

6.   Humor in the game

7.   Giving a player their moment in a game.  Building trust between player/DM

8.   Evan is not defining our PC’s by their classes.  He’s not really even sure what classes we are.

9.   Not all backgrounds are created equal.  Strong silent type is hard to play.

10.  Team work takes work

As always, thanks for listening.

Comments and feedback are always welcome.

Thanks!!

Michael – AKA Mumbles.

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

Hello all,

Here is Episode 10 of our Made Men Actual Play Podcast.  One more time: sorry about Episode 9.

In this Episode we pick up right after Grexil has returned to the group after his secret meeting with The Silent Sisters.  The majority of the episode is spent in a role play heavy scene. The PC’s are at a turning point and they spend a lot of time trying to get everyone on board for what happens next.

The Wang situation is resolved in this episode and it ends on a cliffhanger of sorts.  I hope you guys enjoy.

Thanks!!

Michael – AKA Mumbles.

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

Hello all,

Well here isn’t Episode 9. This is just me explaining what you would be hearing in Episode 9 if I hadn’t somehow lost it.

After the session that we lost, we recorded a long Dungeon Talk which was posted as episode 9.0 and 9.1. If you go back and listen to those podcasts you might get a bit more out of what I posted here.

Very sorry!  Episode 10 should be up soon.

Thanks!!

Michael – AKA Mumbles.

**************************SPOILERS*********************************

The reason I’ve been posting these spoiler sections are just to give some insight as to how I run my games and do the things I do.  My original idea for doing the Actual Play Podcasts was to start each episode with me and maybe Evan doing an intro about the game you would hear and then at the end, do a recap where I would explain the same things i’ve been tying here.  Despite my good intentions, it was readily apparent that wouldn’t happen.  So, my compromise is to post a few DM trade secrets in this section.

The Shit Demon encounter was designed to separate one PC and add some tension (it worked).

I’m still not sure who the GHOST is. I have a couple prime suspects but it could go either way. The PC’s don’t know that and that’s okay.

The whole point of the GHOST in this session was so the PC’s would find the bodies of the woman and hopefully piece together that whomever killed the princess has been practicing. The runes on the bodies are for a magical spell (remember that in this world Magic doesn’t really exist so no one can ready magical writing). The spell is designed to open a gateway allowing demon’s into this world.  This aspect of the game will come out dramatically in the next few sessions (the ones we haven’t played yet, not the ones I’ve yet to post).

if you have any questions about any of the things happening in the game or the spoiler section, let me know.

Michael

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

Hello all,

Here is our newest Dungeon Talk Episode. In this one we have a special guest. Rob, one of my very good friends from my old gaming group in Cleveland joins us. We had set up a SKYPE session but it didn’t work out well so we ended up just putting him on speaker phone (thus the title).  The quality of this is not great, you can definately tell that he’s on a phone, but the volume and quality of his voice is good enough for you to hear and understand what he says (when Evan isn’t talking over him! 🙂

****If anyone out there knows a better a way to do internet or phone interviews for podcasts, please let us know ***

On this Episode we discuss conflicts in game and out of game.  What causes them, and what you can/should do about them. We also cover some events that happened recently in the new Game that Evan is running and discuss ways to improve.

As always, we hope you enjoy and look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks!!

Michael – AKA Mumbles.

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

Hello all,

Here is Episode 8 of our Made Men DnDNext Play test game.

In the last episode most of the time was spent bringing the party together. Eventually everyone met up at Yomi’s apartment.  The fact that Yomi had a Rex addiction was already beginning to surface, but it hit the fan when he had an overdose.   In this Episode the Party tries to keep Yomi alive despite some challenges (many of them self-inflicted).

We are also introduced to the Silent Sisters, a gang of female assassins. For more on them, see the spoiler section below.

As always, comments and feedback (both here and on iTunes) are appreciated.

**************SPOILERS************

**************You may want to listen to the episode before you read below here************

A couple things happened this game I’d like to comment on from a DM’s perspective.

One of the things we’ve commented on this site and podcast multiple times is the fact that the PC’s never do what you think they will.  Rob, who plays Yomi, and I had a conversation about his Rexan addiction. I think it was his idea for him to OD, but I took the idea and ran with it. Certainly Pulp Fiction was used a creative springboard (I do think the scene played out very much like the movie – to an extent, anyway).  I had assumed that since Yomi lived over a herbalist shop that it would be fairly easy to get him the antidote and then pave the way for some cool role play as they do an intervention and he went through detox/withdrawl.  However, Niko as Grexil, had killed two guards earlier so when he went down stairs (because he thought he was protecting Zaine) it created a new set of problems that made it more difficult for them to get the antidote.  I could have just caved as the shopkeeper and given them the antidote, but in the moment it felt right to be an Ass to him since he was being an Ass to me (though in hindsight, I doubt the shopkeeper would have really reacted that way to the 8′ tall mutant killing machine!).

So, instead of this being a quick little moment it turned into a very tense scene.  Grexil and Wang got to have some battle that night. Once Zaine and Yomi were running I decided to bring in the Silent Sisters.  I had decided they would attack the party at some point, but it seemed like the dramatically appropriate time to do it when the party was separated (we spent almost the entire last episode separated, then right when they get together they split again!!).

This was the first contact this party had had with the Silent Sisters (though the PC’s would have known about them), but the players had fought them before. If you are keeping score you know that this game was originally designed as a one-shot in the same world as my previous game. In the original game the PC’s were attacked by the Silent Sisters while visiting the Dwarven City of Thronhold (this city will likely become important in the current game soon).  The Silent Sisters use weapons from left over Ghiss technology (essentially hand guns and shot guns). They also have access to devices that create a bubble of silence (similar to the spell Silence).  These devices, however, absorb the sound and eventually will overload and explode.  In this game after the Sisters are defeated Alicia takes this devices and runs away with it.  Not sure the Players caught on, but this was me telling them that she knew what the device was.

One of the other points I wanted to make was about the Silent Sister battle.  An observant listener might notice that the very first attack on Zaine by the Silent Sisters did over 20 points of damage to him, which was over 50% of his total HP.  There was never an attack of that magnitude again. I’ll admit it, I fudged the dice a little in his favor. I wanted the scene to be tense, but I didn’t want to kill two characters (if Zaine had gone down, Yomi would have died too). The reason I want to talk about this is because I feel that it is very important that Players know their PC’s can and will die.  Once the game looses that risk of failure and PC’s can just re-spawn like in Halo then I think the Players react differently. It’s like playing poker for no money. Everyone is going to go all-in and call because there’s no reason not too.

Having said that I choose to make sure Zaine didn’t die in that battle for a couple reasons.

1. I didn’t think it would be fair for Yomi to die without having any chance to fight back himself. I’m a stickler for the story to run organically and i’d rather fudge a die roll here and there than to destroy continuity and have Assassin’s choose not to kill the guys they were sent to kill for no reason.

2. I wanted to show the players that there was more to Alicia than meets the eye (no, she’s not a Transformer!) but from the beginning I’ve had in mind that she had some big secrets, more than even Grexil knew.  I did not know that Zaine would take Yomi to her, but it worked so well I couldn’t resist using her as the Deus Ex Machina in this battle and allow her to save the day.  I think that reveal overshadowed the fact that Zaine was spared. At least for me, it worked out and I’m happy with it.

Thanks!!

Michael – AKA Mumbles

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

Hello all,

Here is Episode 7 of our Made Men DnDNext Play test game. In the last Episode the original group of PC’s (Zaine, Grexil and Yomi) met up with Jared’s new PC (Wang).  In this session the group manages to stay apart just as long as possible. Wang learns he’s not the craziest member of the group, the gang learns about the Bounty on Zaine’s head and one of Yomi’s secrets comes out in an almost tragic way.

Enjoy!

Michael – AKA Mumbles

**********************Technical Stuff*************************

I had originally planned on recording myself doing an intro and doing a brief recap of the last podcast (since there is often days or weeks in-between them being posted but only seconds in-game terms), but right now I have a cold and sound terrible. Look for that change up next time.

Recently we started using a Mic stand to keep our microphone off the table as we play. I think this will reduced the odd (and annoying) wub, wub, wub sounds that I keep hearing. As always I try to edit out as many as I can, but in some cases the dialogue behind them is too important.

I’ve been very happy with the set up we have using a single Blue Yeti microphone but in this Episode more than the others so far I got frustrated with the limitations. There were often side-converstations going on. If each Player had their own Mic I would have greater flexibility in turning those side conversations down, allowing for the main ones to be heard more clearly. In some cases those side conversations were in character role-play and there’s some good stuff there, but it’s hard to hear.  I may experiment a little further in getting multiple mic’s but i’m just not sure how practical that would be, or relevant until we get a studio room.  There’s still so much ambient noise from my basement i’m note sure it matters yet.

Anyway, please enjoy. if you have any questions or comments about the game or how we set up to record and/or edit, please let me know.

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

Hey all, so here is our first dungeon talk for 2013.  We took a break for a couple months for Michael to have a surgery, which he discusses.  We really talk a lot about what happened in our game this week which was the first game Michael has run in a couple months.  We are a little rusty and just needed to record something to knock off the cob webs, enjoy!  Oh, and Happy New Year!

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

Hello all,

Here is Episode 6 of our Made Men DnDNext Play test game. This is our first session after our initial all-day Saturday game. To recap, the PC’s were told by Gradon that if they hunted down and killed the 4 NPC’s (the Players previous PC’s) who were thought to be responsible for the Princess and Sir Acues deaths that all would be forgiven.  Since Jared (the Player) had missed out on the Saturday Game he did not yet have a PC in this game. Now, I could have simply added him in and waved the Magic DM hand and said, “His PC was there the whole time,” and that would be that. I don’t like to do that, though. Never had. In this case, I wish I had gone against my usual predilections and just did the hand wave. Jared the Player and his PC Wang, had a hard time fitting into this game. We discussed this somewhat in some of the Dungeon Talk Podcast that happened after this game (I think 9 and 9.1). There was also some confusion about Wang. Jared thought he was a Bounty Hunter, but we (over e-mail) had decided to make him a Hit Man. This was to keep from stepping on Rob’s (as Yomi) toes, since he was already a Bounty Hunter.  Also, Jared decided to make his PC crazy, actually bat-shit insane. I really didn’t get that, which meant my vision of his PC and his vision of his PC were not the same.

As a general rule, I don’t think playing a truly insane PC is a good idea. Unless you are a very skilled player and the DM is very skilled it can cause problems the same way playing a loner, or a secretly evil PC can ruin a game.

Stay tuned for how things turn out.

*******Technical stuff*************

This was the first game in our regular venue of my basement. I don’t have all the audio equipment Evan has, so instead of each of us having our own microphone, we used a single Blue Yeti microphone in the center of the table. In some cases this turned out better, in some cases not.  You also get some additional background noise from my wife and kids upstairs. As always I tried to cut out as much of it as possible, but in some cases I would have lost important dialogue so I left it in.

I added in the intro we use for our Dungeon Talk podcasts. Evan, uses Studio Pro for editing where I use the free version of Audcacity. I am not nearly as experienced as he is, so while it may be a matter of tools available, it’s more likely that I just don’t know what I’m doing yet, so the intro doesn’t fade out the same way, and I can’t figure out why.

Also, I included the outtro Evan did as well, that too isn’t mixed the same way. I’ll keep working on it and maybe by Episode 7 i’ll have it worked out.

Thanks!!

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy