The RPG Academy - ARCHIVES

Hello all,

Evan and I decided beforehand that we would devote this entire episode to building a Sand-Box game, which is something I am struggling with right now in my game. Somehow, after talking for nearly 2 hours (only about 1 hour made the podcast), we NEVER got to that topic. Despite that, I think this may be my favorite episode yet.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do and please leave us some comments/feedback.

Thanks!!

Michael – AKA Mumbles

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

Hello all,

In this week’s Dungeon Talk Podcast, Evan, after remember to turn on the recorder (after we had been talking for half an hour!) discuss some of my all time favorite Dungeons and Dragons memories.  We tried to separate what made those games so special and memorable from being in College at the same time.  We then got into a really good discussion about the amount of verbal description I use in my games. As a bit of DM therapy we covered the fact that although I jokingly call myself Mumbles on this site it is tied to the fact I know that I have an accent (I’m from South Eastern Kentucky originally) I tend to talk fast and I do on occasion get tongue tied and mumble.  To overcome this when I give presentations at work and when I DM I tend to practice in my head what I’m going to say.  I think I’m really good at improvising on the fly but there is a substantial difference in how I describe scenes i’ve practice vs. the one’s I’m making up as I go.

I’ve been listening to a couple live-play D&D podcasts and it’s been a tremendous help to me as a DM. I pick out things I like (and steal, story wise) and then the things I think the DM could do better. I’m hoping to be able to record and post our Live Play D&D Podcast soon and then after each session post a dissection of it; what’s good and what’s not.

Please listen and we’ve appreciate any feedback you have.

Table Topic # 1 –  Discussion of my game experiences while in College  00:00 – 30:26

Table Topic # 2 – Underselling a moment  / taking time to describe in detail    31:25 – 53:39

Thanks!!

Michael – AKA Mumbles.

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

Michael and I took vacations and just got back this week so we recorded and will resume our weekly game this Monday.  We had another guest with us this week.  His name is Jared and he recently joined our weekly game.  He has been playing for many years and has a lot of DM xp. He’s not experienced with DnD Next so we start of discussing the play test process / materials.

Table Topic # 1 – The Five Minute Workday                  7:45 – 23:23

Table Topic # 2 – Setting a campaign length                 23:37 – 36:52

Table Topic # 3 – A look at what is Role-playing           37:00 – 46:08

Table Topic # 4 –  Rolling stats vs. standard array        46:10 – 47:00

Table Topic # 5 – DM ‘Cheating’                                        47:00 – 56:33

Thanks!!

Michael – AKA Mumbles.

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

Well here we are at our new home.  The first 9 or 10 minutes is Michael discussing what happened with the old website and why we decided to move.  The first topic begins after that.  We also have a guest with us, his name is Rob and he plays in our current weekly game.

Table Topic # 1 – In game rewards    9:53 – 33:30

a.  Magic items

b.  Hero Point systems

Table Topic # 2 – Playing yourself as a PC      33:36 – 45:25

Table Topic # 3 –  When a Player is cheating    45:30 – 58:00

Table Topic # 4 – 5 Minute work day   58:18 – 58:41

Thanks!!

Michael – AKA Mumbles.

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

Happy to bring to you episode 3!  We had a lot of fun recording this one, probably too much since we finished with about an hour and a half of recording.  I had to cut it down significantly to upload.

If you don’t want to hear Michael and I discuss his phobia of microphones then skip to about 2 minutes in.  It’s funny, but maybe vulgar for kids (or immature adults).

Table Topic # 1 – Pulled a few big moments from  Evan’s last game  1:10 – 12:30

a. Not having a PC roll for some actions

b.  My view of what was going to happen vs. what Evan saw happening

c.  How this game compares to Blazing Saddles

d.  Giving items to players that they don’t know what they do.

e.  Asking players for feedback.

Table Topic # 2 –  Having a distracted / distracting player  12:30 – 24:39

Table Topic # 3 –  Giving players/PC’s rewards.   24:40 – 40:00

a.  Experience and leveling rate

b.  Michael’s aversion to Magic items

Table topic # 4- Discussing Michael’s new campaign: The Lost City   40:15 – 58:00

a. Different ideas of how to start the game

b. having the DM create the PC’s for the players or not

As always comments are appreciated, thanks for listening, and send us some topics to cover.

Thanks!!

Michael – AKA Mumbles.

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

We changed the intro a little this time, the old intro was too long before we started talking.

Table Topic # 1 – Update on Evan’s game  00:24 – 15:00

Table Topic # 2 – We discuss me taking over Evan’s game  or starting my own   15:00 – 26:00

Table Topic # 3 – Rotating DM structure and my party getting killed while I wasn’t there 26:30 – 40:00

Table Topic # 4 – We briefly discuss encounter building theory in different editions  40:00 – 46:45

Table Topic # 5 – some PC’s don’t understand what a Sphere of Annihilation is.  46:50  – 51:11

As always comments are appreciated, thanks for listening, and send us some topics to cover.

Thanks!!

Michael – AKA Mumbles.

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy

Well this is the first true episode of Dungeon Talk.  We call it # 2 in the beginning, but that’s because we had an Episode 0 for a while.  We chose a couple topics brought about by our game this past Monday.

We begin with some things about the website and Michael and I’s progress on learning how to do this.

Topic 1 – 8:15 – 18:30  Evan’s  experience so far with being a first time DM.  How the game is going, and how his planning leading up to games has changed.

Topic 2-  18:30 – 36:30  Setting DC’s in the game.

Topic 3 – 36:30 – 46:30  How a game can be affected by one player interacting with the DM for too long.  We talk about a specific instance from our most recent game where a decision Michael made lead to a long drawn out role play between him and myself.  We talk about whether we thought it was a good thing, or could have been dealt with in a different way in order to keep the other players involved in the game.

Topic 4 – 43:30  –  51:05   We discuss a couple quick battles we did with no map or mini’s

We start out by discussing the development of the website – which is still on-going. If you want to skip over all that jump to the 8:15 mark.

Thanks!!

Michael – AKA Mumbles.

E-mail us at Podcast@TheRpgAcademy