Actual Play: Recent Episodes
RPGgods.org and fictionsuit.org
How would I get more people playing RPGs? Me?
I am seriously not wanting to sound at all smug here, but I am going to reply, somewhat immodestly, “by doing what I have been doing this last five years.” Primarily by hosting a podcast about RPGs, secondly by recording (some, not all) our games and sharing them on another podcast feed. And more recently by streaming some of them, live on YouTube (and Twitch, but I don’t really care about Twitch).
Now I am not going to argue that any of these are any good. (Well, I am quite proud of podcast.) In fact my point about the actual plays, both podcast and on YouTube, are not great. They are not entertainment. Some people are entertained by them, I hope, but we don’t try to make them entertaining for the audience. We simply share the things that entertain us as we play.
We have two principles, to play (to the best of our ability) the Rules as Written, and to edit only lightly, so we don’t chop out much of the side banter, and we never re-record anything. We want the experience of the audience to be as close to sitting at the table as we can make it.
One reason for this is, we are lazy. But the other is slightly more principled. I worry that great shows like Critical Role are too good. I want to show that anybody can play games, you don’t have to be Hollywood voiceover artists, supported by prop makers, sound engineers and costumiers. I want to show you can sit at the table, with the rule book at your side and with your friends, you can make an adventure together.
And I know it works.
I was struggling to think of what to post today, until I realised that the 8th of every month is (on Twitter at least) #PodRevDay when listeners are encouraged to leave reviews of podcasts. “Aha!” I thought “The perfect opportunity to let our listeners throw SHADE at us.” So, while we set out to use […]
I am cheating with this one but with good reason. Day seven’s topic is couple, and I have been playing with a couple of brothers pretty much since I first touched a polyhedral. Actually Tony is the one I really like. In the year above me at school he was part of crowd that welcomed […]
One of the most fun things we did as part of the Podcast was in 2018 at Dragonmeet. The first printing of Forbidden Lands had just come out to Kickstarter backers, and a few copies were going on sale at Dragonmeet itself. Nils and Mattias JH were there, working the Modiphius stand. Dave and I […]
Yesterday, I mentioned how the support of our Patrons had enabled us to launch a second stream, just for Actual Play episodes. Before then we used to intersperse our magazine shows with weekly episodes of the games that our home group ran. The thread of each story interwoven with our chat shows. One of the […]
Last week Effekt published the last part of our Coriolis actual play, but given that it was recorded in two sessions a year apart and released in five episodes a year ago, and another four more recently, I though it might be worth posting links to all the episodes, on order, to help new listeners […]
Córdoba ©️Effekt/Tom Tyler-Jones In episode eight of Song to the Siren, our Coriolis actual play, Yaphet and Salah confronted Córdoba, the “cannibal king” of Salvagetown. To be honest, I don’t think we heard enough about him in the AP, so as I am writing the adventure in full for the forthcoming Free League Workshop, I […]