G*m*s Magazine Podcast Channel

For the last few years the discussion on equality in games, both in and out of the fantasies, have been raging with arguments being made on both camps that make you wonder sometimes if we have learned anything in the last two hundred years. Some of us do want to see more diversity in games, both in the creative environment – that is, the people who create the games – and in the created environment, inside the games themselves. Some other people consider that inclusion of diversity and the added richness it provides a burden on their creative juices. Which is bullshit. However there is an aspect of all this inclusion that makes people nervous because on the one hand they fee they *must* include minorities and, on the other hand, if they make a mistake in the representation, they will be scorned mercilessly by members of those minorities. Is there a balance to be striken here? Do we truly need equality in games? Jim Pinto and I discuss this at length. Lots of cursing!

Most people believe that we are into a very inclusive hobby that helps people come together and bind us into friendships and a community that is supportive and welcoming. Yet, during the last few years I have seen that community fragmenting and becoming very, very toxic in many areas. So, have games lost their ability to unite the geeks? Have we lost whatever common element we used to have that made us a cohesive community? Because I think we have lost something along the way...

Tons and tons of games use some sort of religion in their setting. Many of them have more than one religion and all of those will have player characters, and those characters are meant to follow the tennets of religions that do not exist in our world. But our world does have religions people follow and they shape our views of many things from very early age. How does that affect us? How does that affect the characters we make, the games we play, the games we write… In this episode, Jim Pinto and I discuss that for a while. Hope you enjoy the show!

Can you imagine being a Sleeper soldier from the Cold War? By Paco G. Jaen Sleepers: Orphans of the Cold War is an RPG from company Death Spiral Games in which players take on the roles of agents of the Cold War that have been in stasis for a long time and have been awakened now by whatever means needed to make the adventure. The game was successfully funded in Kickstarter a while back and the result is actually very good. I just wish they had got a lot more money to make it full colour and more illustrations, because this game is really sweet! Hope you enjoy the show.

Are you a Crunch player or a Lunch player? Every RPG needs a rules system. Some are heavier, Crunch, and some are lighter, Lunch. But hardly all are the appropriate for each game, or even for the game you are playing. For example games that make you, or try to make you, roll for pretty much everything and have rules that, if you miss them, well… it doesn’t bode well for your poor adventurer/investigator/whatever. And there are other systems that tell you “just do what you want and have fun”, which might not work either if you have a power-gamer in your group. Or an idiot. But how do you decide if a crunchy system is the right system for your game? How do you reconcile that, sometimes, the rules are not the right ones, or the necessary ones to have a good game. Do you sacrifice fun or playability for the sake of rules? In this episode of the podcast, Liz, Jim and me discuss the advantages of a crunch system vs. a light system. Hope you enjoy the show!

Since the OGL came into place a lot of years ago, there has been a totally unprecedented amount of work published for a lot of role playing games. Mind you, that doesn’t take much because RPGs are pretty young, so anything can be “unprecedented”. But the point is that it was. It still is. But is it a good thing that there are so many products? Is it good that we can have access to all of them? Jim Pinto, Liz Mackie and I discuss. And you can discuss it too!

In this episode, Jim Pinto proposes that Geekdom as we know is about to die a painful and very unavoidable death thanks to the blight that is cognitive and confirmation bias in our lives. In a nutshell, we are seeing more and more crappy shows and movies that people consider to be super great when, if you look at them under a critical and objective light, they are not all that great, like the Big Bang Theory, which is crap. Very crap. And yet some people love it and god forbid anyone speaks ill of that show. So there. Also I pay tribute to one of my Art heroes who recently and suddenly passed away, the rather fantastic Wayne England. He illustrated more than 100 Magic: The Gathering cards and, pretty responsible for the look and feel of the Warhammer 40K universe from the moment go and illustrated dozens of Dungeons & Dragons books. This is a controversial episode, so hope you like it!

FAITH is a Spanish Science Fiction RPG by company Burning Games.  FAITH, unlike other RPGs, comes in a box with tons of cards and tokens. Nice looking too! In FAITH, the universe has been connected by a network of wormholes that have thousands of exits to just a many solar systems and planets and five races are playable, each one with their traits and differences. A lot of thought has gone into this game, including a different character sheet and a mechanics system that uses a hand of cards instead of dice. In this podcast episode I take a look at the game and review the components, system and more. Hope you enjoy the show!

Nightmare Forest: Dead Run is a racing game for one to five players in which the aim is to leave a zombie infested forest without getting killed, which is to say eaten by zombie bunnies and racoons. The premise of the game is pretty simple and the rules are just as simple too. You have a row of upside down cards for each player and the cards can be zombie animals, allies or gear. If they are a zombie, you have to fight it. If they are gear, you can use it. If they are allies they will help you. Then you can fight the zombies with the pool of dice you have available for each of the four stages of the race. If you win the fight, you can use the remaining dice to search for gear, which could be handy. Player interaction comes when you throw some gear at your friends in order to make noise and attract zombies their way, who will hopefully get rid of the competition. I only got a pre-production copy, so can’t really comment on the finished game itself, but if things continue as they are, this will be a v

I have known Louis Porter Jr. for a fair bit now and for that bit and much longer he’s been producing a lot of good products. Neoexodus has received some very good reviews from Endzeitgeist, probably the most prolific and demanding reviewer out there, and Louis keeps coming up with new ideas all the time. This time, he wants to create Crisis of the World Eater, a multi company project with a long and enormous story arc and a lot of adventures in many worlds. Still in development and with a Kickstarter campaign looming in a few weeks, I wanted to talk to Louis himself to find out more about the project, the adventure and the experience of bringing together some top-class companies to contribute to this project. Hope you enjoy the show!

Prime Time is a Recources Management game for 2 to 4 players in which each player takes the role of a Television magnate who must build their channel and for that must buy actors, producers, writers, show ideas… The game was Kickstarted a while ago and, as it is Elad Goldsteen´s tradition, delivered pretty much on time and on budget. With whimsical graphics and good quality components, Prime Time gets us quickly into the ins and outs of TV management with a deep and complex game that surprises us in its complexity and depth hidden behind the quirky and light looks. In his podcast I give you my reflections on the game and whether I think it was fun to play or not. Hope you enjoy the show!

A couple of weeks ago I brought you an interview with Sarah in which we talked about the game and the Kickstarter campaign. However we left behind some important aspects of the game, like the illustration and the physical products, as well as the schedule for the production line and the Traveller version of Mindjammer that has already been backed. So here we are again, having another chat with the rather talented Sarah Newton and her no-less-excellent Kickstarter campaign for the line of Mindjammer products.

By Paco Garcia Jaen Those of you who know me at all, or listen to the podcast, know that I am in love with Mindjammer and its universe. I liked it when I read the novel, I liked it even more when I read the book and the adventure Hearts and Minds consolidated what I already knew with a superb setting packed with action. Of course the whole concept is by Sarah Newton and I still believe she’s probably one of the most promising RPG writers out there. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a genius. Now she’s on Kickstarter for the first time to create a new adventure for Mindjammer and, aptly put, kickstart a whole new line of products for the game that will allow her to create material much more quickly and frequently than planned. I got together with her for a while to talk about the original Mindjammer, the journey from first publish till now and what her plans are for the game, adventures and supplements. Hope you enjoy the show!

Thanks to Piotr Żuchowski, I managed to get my hands on an early production copy of Heroes a few months ago. Since then, I’ve managed to do the Unboxing video and play the game a few times and must say loving it every time I play. This is a weird thing for me to say because, to be perfectly honest, I don’t like real-time dice-throwing games. They make me very anxious and the lack of chance to think between dice rolls drives me potty. And Heroes has a real-time dice-throwing mechanic. The difference is, though, that at times the game stops and you can think about what you want to do. Anyhow, I am getting ahead of myself. Heroes is a game for two to four players in which the players create a deck of creatures and spells that they use to attack the enemy and inflict enough damage points on the adversary’s general and win the game. With gorgeous artwork and pretty frantic gameplay, Heroes mixes dice and deck building very, very well with a dash of strategy – no ta lot, but enough to make it matter. I a

Rome: Rise to Power is another history based game, this time from Golden Egg Games, creators of City Council and Athlas Duel for Divinity and also with a nice twist: A trademarked mechanic system. It’s all in the podcast… Also very interesting is that this time the game is also going to be finished, printed, produced and delivered in time for Spiel… And it has four days to finish! Hope the interview will give you all the excuses you need to look at the game and become a backer!

Prime Time Broadcast Tycoon is the latest offering from Golden Egg Games, a company that keeps coming up with great game after great game. This time they are offering a TV channel simulator in which the players have to create their own shows, arrange a weekly schedule and compete to get the most audience and generate sales through advertising. That sounds very much close to real life… And they keep meeting some very tight deadlines too! The Kickstarter is going at the time of releasing this podcast and yet they are going to deliver in less than two months at Spiel… How? Well, I got together with Elad Goldsteen, designer and mastermind behind Golden Egg Games to find out about the game and their strategy. Hope you enjoy the show!

For those of us who are on the other side of the planet, GenCon is a very difficult to reach convention. And that can be frustrating because, inarguably, GenCon is the best RPG convention in the world and the biggest. And we can’t be there. Or I can’t. However both Vickey and Jim do get there and spend a lot of time working and doing cool stuff and can tell us all about it. And we discuss the Ennies and the usefulness or futility of pursuing awards like it. Yep…. we’re going controversial! Also, Jim M. Ward, one of the legends of RPG is going through a rough time at the moment. As it tends to happen in the USA too often, when people get ill. they face huge bills and that is Jim’s situation. He is a genuinely good man and doesn’t deserve to be in this situation. A GoFundMe campaign has been setup to help gather some funds for him. Please, if you can, donate anything you can. If you can’t help, please share this page and let people know. Thank you for your support.

Heroes is a deck building game for 2 to 4 players that combine real time dice rolling mechanics with deck building and battling all in one. And it looks truly stunning. Now, I am not a friend of real-time dice-rolling mechanics. It just drives me mad, but in this occasion it works really well and the game is a joy to play at every single level. The battle side of things is also pretty cool and I loved this game. Want to know more? It’s all in the podcast. Hope you enjoy the show!

Sometimes people have great ideas and they need to go to Kickstarter to get them realised because money is tight. That’s the whole principle of Kickstarter, I know. But I also know that some people have grown increasingly cynical of some projects that go to Kickstarter for the marketing and not the need. This is not one of those situations. The Bespoke Geek is a newly created company that wants to bring cosplaying into every day dressing by creating gaming related clothes you can wear to work. Or the park. Or the cinema. You get the point. And this is something else that’s very cool about this project. It’s creative, games related but not a game and it’s been created by a gamer who’s got other interests too. And just for that, this project deserves backing. But to make sure you get all the facts, here’s this interview with Kara Gander, the designer behind the project.

I came by Soulfall, from Smallbox Games, after my friend Alf Seegert recommended it and I pretty much right away backed the game based on the artwork alone. With dreamy and very evocative illustrations, this game for two to four players already had something to pull me in even though I knew nothing about the theme or mechanics. It didn’t matter. This time I was buying out of a recommendation from a friend I trust and my eyesight who knows what I like. Fast forward a few months and I have with me my copy of the game. A bit squeezed “thanks” to the postal service, but looking good. After I sat down with my friends to play it, I can finally bring you my impressions and they’re good ones. Hope you enjoy the show!