GOZR on Save For Half

The fine halflings at Save for Half (my favorite podcast) have taken a look at GOZR! I haven't listened yet, but you should definitely listen immediately!

Thought Eater: Ray Otus

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It took going on the show to actually give the show a proper listen. I had listened to maybe 2-3 random episodes of the Frothcast before and enjoyed them but I hadn't dived in proper. And when I was on the show I hadn't listened to any of the Sunday Zine Club episodes. Shame on me.

Ray Otus is on this episode. I discovered Ray's stuff by randomly finding his zine Plundergrounds. I thought it looked killer even though I didn't know anything about Dungeon World. I quickly signed up for his Patreon and I generally stalk him about the interwebs.

In the interview I found myself nodding in agreement over and over. Seems that Ray and I share a lot of philosophical ground when it comes to creativity. Specifically, he was talking about how monetization often ruins a creative space. And I agree. There's a beautiful energy in creative spaces that are fueled not by money, but by passion. When you create something in spite of not making money on it then you really love it.

It reminds me of my days in small press comics. We would make our comics, photocopy, fold, staple, and mail in trade to lots of other creators doing the same thing. We had co-ops and clubs and conventions. We had review zines and zine zines. It was awesome.

So I agree with Ray on this. But there is a big caveat.

For some people, their creative life is a dream of freedom. They are stuck in shitty jobs (or no jobs) and they have talent. They want (need) to be paid. I never hesitate to pay someone for their creative work, especially if I know that person isn't just doing it for fun. If they are trying to make a go of it as a living then I will support that effort, if the creations compel me.

I think Ray totally agrees that creators must be paid. His point wasn't that people should give away their work for free. His point was that if you're in a position to be able to give it away then that's a noble thing. I think.

When I published issue #1 of Black Pudding I remember having an internal debate about whether or not I should make it Pay-What-You-Want. I considered setting a price. I didn't want to charge too much so that no one bought it. And I didn't want to make it free so that I couldn't earn any money from it at all. This was my creative labor, I wanted to have the option of being paid. So PWYW was, for me, a perfect solution. If you can pay me something, and you want to, then I'm happy to accept. If you can't or don't want to, then enjoy the work for free with my compliments.

As an aside, this reminds me of old debates back in the oughts among webcomics creators regarding charging for your stuff. A lot of comics back then were experimenting with paywalls. As far as I remember, those experiments didn't work out. A more reasonable model, and probably more enduring, was to publish your comics for free online and sell peripheral merchandise such as print collections, tee shirts, and mugs. Very early on in my online life, I adopted this philosophy. My preferred model is to offer my primary work for free (digitally), then sell related items. DriveThruRPG makes that super easy. But I'm too damned lazy to really capitalize on actually selling merch. There's a tee shirt link on my blog that I doubt anybody ever clicks. There's no Black Pudding shirts up there! I need to fix that.

I Am On Sunday Zine Club

As promised, here I am on Jeremy "Frosthof" Smith's podcast for the Sunday Zine Club. I have not listened and I am not sure if I can listen. Not yet. I'm weird about my voice. I guess we all are.

Please let me know if I sound like a complete dumbass.

Thought Eater

Jeremy "Frothsof" Smith is a podcaster and absolute RPG nut. He loves gaming, has a passion for talking about gaming, and is, by all measures, a great person. I had a great time going on his podcast to record for this Sunday's Sunday Zine Club. The episode isn't up yet as it isn't Sunday, so I'll post a link tomorrow.

I wanted to post this and acknowledge that Jeremy took a stand on the right side of the argument in the recent Bob Bledsaw II discussion. That's not always easy to do when your audience contains at least some people who are either a) in agreement with assholes or b) want to "keep politics out of gaming". Jeremy stated his opinion and stood by it. Good on him.

On a lighter note, I love that Jeremy's podcast exists because it's a really nice way for me to get the aggregate of cool shit that's happening in gaming while I'm on my way to work! I can take mental notes and remember to go to his blog later and click the links I heard him talking about. Good stuff.

Podcast: Fear of a Black Dragon

I was afraid I'd start drinking tea and eating biscuits (the sweet kind) if I kept going with the British podcasts. Luckily this one is only half British, the other half American. Fear of a Black Dragon is an RPG podcast in which the hosts do an in-depth dive into an adventure module or setting in each episode. I talked about this podcast here. It's a good one. Go listen.

Podcast: The Grognard Files

Another British podcast I adore is The Grognard Files. I discovered it accidentally when they were on episode #3 or so and I've been addicted ever since. Listening to the first few episodes made me feel like I was in sitting in the bedroom with Dirk the Dice and Judge Blythy in the 1980s rolling dice and eating crisps. It's a proper podcast.

Each episode of this show feels like a long, slow, comfortable visit from old friends. And I'm from Kentucky, not Kent. I think it's because the hosts speak comfortably and naturally in soothing tones and because they break the show into various segments such as Open Box and Judge Blythy Rules so it's a bit like a variety show, but focused. They cover lots of old games but have a bias for Runequest and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Oh, and White Dwarf magazine... ever the White Dwarf.

Podcast: What Would the Smart Party Do?

I should post more about the podcasts I listen to. When my mom's condition really started to take a south turn back in November I started seeking out and gobbling up RPG podcasts. I guess I just needed to have an escape from reality and gaming has always been my safe place. I like listening to cool people talk shop about gaming. It's soothing to my soul.

So let me start off with an excellent British treat: What Would the Smart Party Do?

This podcast features two hosts named Baz and Gaz who bang on about RPGs. On the faux-spectrum between OSR and Story Games, these guys seem to fall in the middle, possibly leaning slightly OSR. But that's all a bunch of bullshit so ignore that I said it. They really have a soft spot for Call of Cthulhu (as do all British gamers) and also Savage Worlds. In fact, they did a really nice series on SW that helped me understand that game a bit, as I've never played it. I might actually buy a copy now.

But better than that, they did a super cool episode on Earthdawn! I remember when that game hit the shelves and I picked it up a million times just to flip through and see what it was about, but I never pulled the trigger and bought it until around 2005 or so when I picked up a battered and bruised junker copy at The Rusty Scabbard. Their coverage of this and other games is more than you get on most podcasts, but not so much that you choke on it. Some episodes, such as this one, clock in close to or more than an hour. After listening, you'll understand what the game is all about, how to make characters for it, and how the rules work in play. For the most part.

This podcast pairs well with Hobnobs.

Fear of a Black Dragon

Sometime during the phase in which my mother really started to decline as she neared the end of her life, I started binging all the RPG podcasts I could find. I spent a lot of time at her apartment sitting with her and later cleaning it out and much of that time I had podcasts in my ear.

It's not that I'm new to RPG podcasts. No... in fact it was Save or Die and Spellburn that brought me into the OSR RPG scene to begin with. I would never have dropped $50 on DCC RPG if not for Spellburn. It's just that lately I've been listening to a lot of podcasts.

Fear of a Black Dragon is one that I binged from episode 1 through current over the course of a month or two. It seems redundant to say I liked the show since I did in fact listen to the entire catalog. I would have bailed if it sucked.

The show is ostensibly "OSR" in the sense that the hosts wanted to do a show about old school gaming. But these guys are coming from the story games spheres, not OSR. They play a lot of Dungeon World, World of Dungeons, and Blades in the Dark. Their focus in this podcast is 99% on scenarios with very little talk of game mechanics. Each episode is a review/exploration of an adventure module of some kind. It might be an old D&D module such as Against the Cult of the Reptile God or something more modern such as Dead Planet. The hosts give you a detailed synopsis of the adventure and then dive deeply into it, asking questions and pointing out their favorite bits. They are not afraid to be critical and they try to always run or play the adventure before covering it. Episodes usually wrap up with a list of inspiring resources such as movies, other games, books, etc.

One thing that's interesting is how the hosts don't really adhere to the game systems that the adventures are written for. Even if the scenario is written for Call of Cthulhu the hosts might have ran or played it using World of Dungeons. As I said, these guys are deeply into story games and they make no secret of their bias toward drama and story, mechanics be damned. So if you want crunchy details about how modules interact with specific game mechanics you'll be disappointed. This is a show about adventure, tension, drama, and no shortage of horror. And it's really damn good.

Story and Games

I've been listening to the most excellent podcast Fear of a Black Dragon. Kind of on a bender with it. I started with the first one I could find in the feed and just let it autoplay over the last week when I'm driving or whatever.

Great show. I love the hosts' enthusiasm and their non-OSR approach to OSR adventures. They clearly appreciate a good old fashioned dungeon romp, but they are not locked into the bog standard, quasi-cultish devotion to a rose-colored-glasses version of 1970s-style gaming. They are quick to dismiss things they don't find useful at the table and introduce ideas that are often treated as anathema to OSR. Y'know... very very bad things that come from nasty story games circles.

I love it. Fuck gaming purity. Gimme the good stuff. I'm the guy who does Black Pudding, which is just about as OSR a thing as I'm capable of producing. It's got motherfuckin' descending armor class for pete's sake. Don't question my street cred.

But I'm also a guy who created a proto-story game before that term was coined. And it had legs and it is still played and talked about today, god damn 20 years later (holy shit). So clearly I have a soft spot for styles of play that aren't purely about exploration, combat, and acquisition of treasure.

And yet... and yet I still approach story game elements at arm's reach. There is a reason that after 20 years I still never play or even think about The Pool, unless someone brings it up. I clearly have play style preferences that aren't in alignment with the meta-fiction elements that are the hallmarks of story games. For example, I still cringe when I think about GM-less games. I think it's because I almost invariably approach gaming as exploration and for the exploration to be meaningful I feel like the fiction world needs to be grounded in one place or one person's imagination - modified by the choices of others, of course. But not driven by an equally shared creation of the fiction.

Or so.