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In this episode, I speak to Paul Czege, a game designer with a deep catalogue that is hard to pin down. An article on RPG.net from 2009 reads "Paul himself defies any sort of easy classification" . It continues, "Depending on your viewpoint, Paul is either one of the most prolific of the Gaming Outpost/Forge designers or one of the least. Also, depending on you how look at it, his best contribution lies in a single game (the still popular My Life With Master) or in the thought and effort he has put into the hobby of role playing and the practice of game design." Apart from LWM for which he won the Diana Jones Award in 2004, he also designed the melancholic minotaur game, The Clay That Woke. Recently, he's been writing about solo journalling games, publishing two zines, The Ink That Bleeds and Inscapes about how to play them, as well as some actual games including the Balsam Lake Unmurders, about catching a necromancer in Minnesota who keeps bringing people back to life, which is crowdfunding on Kickstarter.

Paul Czege’s itch page: https://paulczege.itch.io/ 

The Balsam Lake Unmurders on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/252728880/the-balsam-lake-unmurders 

Show Notes:

Mosaic Strict

The interview on the Indie Game Reading Club

Carl Jung, The Red Book

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

M John Harrison’s Viriconium

Games Mentioned

Earthdawn

The Clay That Woke

The Ink That Bleeds

Inscapes

Traverser (unreleased)

Earth Mother, Sky Father

A Viricorne Guide

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In this episode, I’m talking to Viditya Voleti, a game designer and interactive artist. He's a visiting instructor at the Pratt Institute in NYC. He's freelanced for Paizo, Possum Creek Games, Evil Hat, and RRD. His own tabletop designs include vampire cowboy game, Bloodbeam Badlands, GMless optimistic scifi game, Space Between Stars (forthcoming from Possible Worlds Games), and A Land Once Magic, a post fantasy worldbuilding game currently crowdfunding on Backerkit.

Viditya’s itch page: https://vidityavoleti.itch.io A Land Once Magic on Backerkit: https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/moreblueberries/a-land-once-magic?ref=yesindied 

Show Notes:

Action Button Reviews Tokimeki Memorial (6 hour video essay)

Kekkai Sensen // Blood Blockade Battlefront (anime)

The original post coining the term Fruitful Void by Vincent Baker

++ Here’s a good Levi Kornelsen article about whether D&D has one

Ludonarrative Dissonance

Games Mentioned

Ithaca in the Cards by Aaron Lim, crowdfunding on Kickstarter 

Free from the Yoke (Legacy) by Mina McJanda

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In this episode, I’m talking to Gabriel Robinson, a writer and game designer. He's the lead writer on the Silt Verses, an RPG published by the Gauntlet press adapted from the hit audio series. He's contributed to a number of other Gauntlet publications like Trophy, Brindlewood Bay, and more. Through his own imprint Glowing Roots press, he's published Token, a two-player tragic fantasy game, and Candlelight, a GM-less game of lost spirits revisiting their final moments. His games often have a folk horror aesthetic, dark and mysterious but usually stopping shy of macabre.

Gabriel’s website: https://glowingroots.carrd.co/

Gabriel’s bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/glowingroots.bsky.social 

Show Notes:

The Silt Verses, horror-fantasy podcast

The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper

Games Mentioned

Silt Verses RPG

The Wassailing of Claus Manor

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In this episode, I’m joined by Caro Asercion, who is an interdisciplinary artist, game designer, and theatre person. They do a lot of work in theatre as a dramaturg and producer of various kinds. In games, they're best known for im sorry did you say street magic, a game of cities and their secrets, based on the classic world building game, Microscope. They've also co-designed supplemental material for Beam Saber with Rufus Roswell, coining the mantra, "bangers only", which was all about how much a precise and skillful use of language gives to game design. Last year, they released Last Train To Bremen, a 4 player game of doomed musicians trying to outrun a deal they made with the devil.

Caro’s itch.io page: https://seaexcursion.itch.io/ 

Show Notes:

Chase Carter’s review of Last Train to Bremen

Article about all the Rascals playing the game

Cheap Bots Done Quick

Games Mentioned

CJ Linton’s Prince of Nothing Good (unreleased, work in progress)

Space Between Stars by Viditya Voleti

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On this episode, I’m joined by Levi Kornelsen, previously known as Amagi Games. He is a Canadian designer who's been part of the scene for a long time. He's designed a bunch of games like the Schema framework and the recent Saints of the Empty Throne but is probably best known for his RPG theory, such as the essential Manyfold Glossary. He's a big open source advocate and most of his work is distributed for free under a creative commons license. Everything he writes on his itch page is worth reading for designers looking for language and tools to diagnose or just better understand what it is exactly they're doing.

Blog: https://levikornelsen.wordpress.com/

Itch store: https://levikornelsen.itch.io/

Show Notes:

Praxic Compendium (by Levi Kornelsen)

Manyfold by (Levi Kornelsen)

Rec.games.frp.advocacy

rpg.net

The Phoenix Guards by Steven Brust (novel)

Traitor’s Blade by Sebastien de Castell (novel)

Games Mentioned

(Too many to list them all)

Saints of the Empty Throne

Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple

 The Whispering Vault

League and Fathom

Castle Falkenstein

Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast

Under Hollow Hills

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On this episode, I’m joined by Meguey Baker. She's the designer of PsiRun and 1001 Nights, published under her label, Night Sky Games. She's also the co-designer of Apocalypse World, which started the fundamental Powered by the Apocalypse design movement. She wrote the influential Fair Games blog with Emily Care Boss for many years. She's a textile conservation specialist who works with museums, a quilter, a trained sex ed teacher, and a breast cancer survivor.

Meguey and Vincent Baker’s patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lumpley 

Blog: https://lumpley.games 

Itch store: https://lumpley.itch.io/ 

Show Notes:

Children’s Books

Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran and Barbara Cooney (read aloud)

Dragon Scales and Willow Leaves by Terry L Givens (read aloud)

A Hole Is To Dig by Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak (read aloud)

Once Upon A Pirate Ship by Mircea Vasiliu

Games

The Old, The Cold and the Bold by Whitney Delaglio / Little Wish Productions

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Bonus episode, where guests from across the year chime in with games they've played that they loved and want to talk about.

Games mentioned:

Hannah Shaeffer recommends The Beast

Evan Rowland recommends Usagi Yojimbo

Quinns recommends World Wide Wrestling

Aaron King recommends Saga of the Icelanders

Max Lander recommends Blood Feud

Graham Walmsley recommends Lumberjills

Sidney Icarus recommends Bump in the Dark

jay dragon recommends Last Train to Bremen

Tom McGrenery recommends Wolves Upon the Coast

Mint recommends Bones Deep, Moth-light and Spectaculars

Aaron Voigt recommends Subway Runners

Huffa recommends here there be monsters and many other games

B Marsollier recommends Anamnesis

J Strautman recommends Rom Com Drama Bomb

MV Soumithri recommends Stonetop

Zoheb Mashiur recommends After the Mind, the World Again

Marsh Davies recommends No-tell Motel

Jim Rossignol recommends Agon

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On this episode, I’m joined by Quinns from Quinns Quest as we look back on the last year together. 

Show Notes:

Rascal News

Indie RPG Newsletter

Quinns mentioned Mythic Bastionland, Good Society, Public Access, The Siltverses, Blood Borg

Thomas mentioned Hearts of Wulin and its expansion, Numberless Secrets

Also: Draw Steel, Yazeba’s Bed and Breakfast, Triangle Agency

Jubensha video on People Make Games

Street Fighter RPG from White Wolf

Mothership Month

Stream where Matt Colville talks about sending Quinns’ Draw Steel

Cain and the week that was all Tom Bloom

Reach out at thomas by writing to notrueindian at outlook.com

On this episode, I talk to Marsh Davies and Jim Rossignol. Jim was the co-founder of videogaming website Rock Paper Shotgun, where he worked for many years. He's also the author of This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities. Now, he does things like write the Ludocrats with Kieron Gillen and develop indie games through his company, Big Robot. Marsh is a writer and illustrator who has written about video games at RPS and PCGamer and was former head of creative writing at Minecraft developer Mojang. He's also part of the Crate & Crowbar, a weekly PC gaming podcast, that has more than 400 episodes and we can all agree might be too many.

Their itch page: https://teethrpg.itch.io/

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On this episode, I speak to Elliot Davis, an artist, podcaster and, game designer. He's one of the co-founders of Many Sided Media, a podcast production company behind shows like My First Dungeon, Bitcherton and Talk of the Table. His games include Rom Com Drama Bomb and solo timetravel game, Project Ecco.

He's currently crowdfunding his latest game, The Time We Have, a tragic game about two brothers, one of whom is slowly but inevitably turning into a zombie.

Show Notes:

03:09 - The Time We Have: brothers, using a door as immersion, and other design tweaks

18:00 - Becoming a full-time games person

37:40 - Infectious Enthusiasm: They Came To Play Ball by Adira Slattery

38:50 - Tyranny of Numbers

40:53 - RePlay

43:22 - All Advice is Advice For Myself

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