Improvised Radio Theatre - With Dice: Latest posts: Recent Episodes
Roger & Michael
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This month, Mike and Roger talk about what makes a system dead, andwhether we should care.
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Michael apologises for leaving the episode to languish in his inboxpast the deadline. It may be related to the bad attack of Renovationhis landlords put him through.
This month, Mike and Roger once again attempt RPG-a-Day asRPG-a-Minute.
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This month, Mike and Roger talk about the innocents in the city, andhow to start a fight.
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This month, Mike and Roger talk about introducing players to newsystems, and how much you stat up your villains.
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This month, Mike and Roger talk about the gaming possibilities ofpolice stories.
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This month, Mike and Roger talk about magic and allied systems.
(Apologies for quality, we had to use a backup recording for Mike.)
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This month, Mike and Roger look at two of Mike's campaigns that haveended recently.
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This month, Mike and Roger talk about game adaptations that havefailed, or indeed that never got a chance to fail.
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This month, Mike and Roger look at Roger's latest enthusiasm,Mongoose's revision of the Bayern campaign for 2300 AD.
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This month, Mike and Roger consider how to steal material for RPGs,and work out an example.
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This month, Mike and Roger consider the limitations of improvisedcampaigns and how to deal with rules layers.
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This month, Roger and Mike look back on our experience with Blades inthe Dark. Warning, Roger gets a bit ranty.
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This month, Mike and Roger consider our experiences with Enemy inShadows, the first part of the classic Warhammer campaign, and lookat the second edition of Reign.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider system choice and system mastery,and look at Mike's new Blades in the Dark campaign.
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This month, Mike and Roger consider how to do character sheets right,and ponder the future of generic systems.
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This month, Roger and Mike can't get away from bashing dungeons, andconsider the (sadly still-extant) adversarial relationship betweenplayers and game masters.
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This month, Mike and Roger review a bumper set of Bundles of Holding,consider our gaming plans for 2024, and consider the deep history of RPGs.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider railroading, its inevitability,and how to build characters who are a good fit for the campaign.
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This month, Mike and Roger dissect Mongoose Traveller and a coupleof campaigns Mike has run with it.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider class-and-level and other ways ofbuilding and improving characters.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider gods (what sorts are interesting?) and revolution (which side is more fun to play on and how can we tilt that balance?).
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This month, Mike and Roger reveal that really the world was like this all along, and consider how the Planning Scene can be restrained (and when it should be).
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This month, Roger and Mike consider making travel interesting, and ask whether RPGs need escapism.
This month, Mike and Roger do an end-of-the-season review of one ofRogerâs masterpieces and let their inner Grumpy Old Men out to have arant or two.
This month, Roger and Mike consider social interactions modelled ascombat, and magical school stories.
This month, Mike and Roger ask what makes a hero, and look into thebenefits and drawbacks of doing character generation as a group.
This month, Roger and Mike wonder why Roger doesn't get narrativegames, and then contemplate the criminal life.
This month, Mike and Roger give each other gifts, and consider how tobuild an almost-historical setting.
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It's our tenth anniversary! So as a special exception to our usual format we talk to each other.
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This month, Roger and Mike revisit British history: this time, the Napoleonic Wars and the Regency.
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This month, Roger and Mike discuss settings that didn't start as RPGs, and how to make your home base more interesting.
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This month, Mike and Roger contemplate another gameable age: the Stuart Restoration.
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This month, Roger and Mike discuss the English Civil War and how it can be useful to role-playing.
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This month, Mike and Roger contemplate madness in gaming, and attempt to don a veil of ignorance.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider the history and utility of character classes⦠and do not reveal their True Names.
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This month, Mike and Roger look at the history and current edition of RuneQuest, then talk with Dean Engelhardt about the new Cthulhu Eternal SRDs.
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This month, Roger and Mike review Mongoose's Traveller. (We had a lot of lag, which I've tried to fix.)
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This month, Mike and Roger wonder whether they're indulging in NPCs too much, while considering what the late Stephen Sondheim can tell us about game design.
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This month, Roger and Mike look for inspiration for a new campaign, and look into a very old-fashioned one.
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This month, Mike gets Roger to talk about his Second World War campaign, recently ended after fourteen years of play.
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This month, Roger and Mike look back at En Garde! and consider fate (as distinct from FATE) and destiny.
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This month, Mike and Roger consider adventures written by other people, and do RPG-a-Day faster than ever before.
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This month, Mike and Roger look at Realm Management and other game modes which move away from the individual PC, and consider how to write a TV show bible.
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This month, Roger and Mike (with guest vocals by Bruce) consider the British style of role-playing (if any), and a year and more of remote gaming.
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This month, Mike and Roger have played James Bond 007 (thanks to friend of the show Brett Evill) and consider how to de-crunch a crunchy game.
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This month, Mike and Roger regret a failed campaign, do each other favours, and contemplate the role of the trap in a modern game.
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This month, Roger and Mike delve into taxonomy, looking at types of thieves and what players want from a game.
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This month, Mike and Roger look at Modern Age, The Expanse, and Blades in the Dark; and split the party.
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This month, Roger and Mike talk about what they're up to and how on-line conventions are working for them, discuss GM nerves, and talk about how they choose a setting .
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This month, Mike and Roger look at the Dracula Dossier, do RPG-a-Day only a few months late, and generate another Ars Magica character.
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This month, Roger and Mike generate a character for Ars Magica, and worry about not fitting into the campaign.
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This month, Mike and Roger poke further into Ars Magica, wonder what you should simulate, and try to make school stories enjoyable.
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This month, Roger and Mike look at the Yellow King Roleplaying Game, worry about being the only one who has a problem with this, and consider an Ars Magica play-by-forum game.
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This month, Mike and Roger consider play styles enforced by game mechanics, and review a couple of unusual RPGs.
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This month, Roger and Mike look back on Man to Man and consider disease when applied to other people.
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This month, Mike and Roger rebuild the world, and chat with friend of the show Dr Bob about Astronautilus Productions.
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This month, Mike and Roger are ill, look at paperless play and finish off our play of The Fathomless Sleep
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This month, Roger and Mike resolve their challenge, and look to the future (not in the culty way, honest).
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This month, Mike and Roger consider the phenomenon of the Adventurers' Guild, start a Monster Hunters campaign, and look at what goes wrong with combat.
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This month, Mike and Roger do RPG-a-day, or more accurately RPG-a-3.1-minutes. Apologies for the audio quality; Roger messed up the setup (it won't happen (in that specific way) again), then mostly rescued the recording with Heroic Sound Engineering Skills.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider some more fantasy gaming tropes: the lawful good but still feudal kingdom, and the vast disparities of power found among people in fantastic societies.
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This month, Mike and Roger get into character, and look at the differences between Fantasyland and mediaeval Europe.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider what to do once the adventures are rich beyond even their wildest dreams, try to avoid the boring bits of game prep, and experiment with an actual play recording.
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This month, Mike and Roger look into conspiracy theories, and pick apart mystery adventures.
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This month, Roger and Mike (with helpful contributions from Anzac the dog) isolate an island, contemplate blindness, and look forward to the end of the world.
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This month, Mike and Roger consider characters cleverer than they are, fail to assume they're sitting round a table, and consider the narrative implications of The Law.
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This month, Roger and Mike feel burned out, consider the fun of being evil, and try to work out how to get better at GMing.
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This month, Mike and Roger search for secret doors, are intimidated by some but not all "large" campaign settings, and consider how to do cultural appropriation with respect.
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This month, Roger and Mike look at random tables, random character generation and particularly social class, and consider what to do when the system lets you down.
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This month, Mike and Roger remember Greg Stafford, bring recent events into their games, and consider the importance of Stuff, specifically the equipment list.
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This month, Roger and Mike run through the GURPS Spaceships series, and consider how and when to construct your own setting.
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This month, Mike and Roger revisit RPG-a-Day, and consider some possibilities for role-playing without violence.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider demonstration scenarios, revisit the Infinite Worlds, and contemplate how to encourage new players.
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This month, Mike and Roger indulge in crass commercialism, consider players who don't turn up reliably, look at high-powered games and how to keep them interesting, and delve into the pulps and what gaming can learn from them.
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This month, Roger and Mike (plus a supporting cast of birds and trains) fire players, think about themes that make them uncomfortable, and indulge in Ruritanian romance.
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This month, Mike and Roger look at RuneQuest that isn't RuneQuest, ponder why some campaigns just flow more easily than others, think about GURPS books that were never written, and work on long-term goals.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider a historical mystery, ponder how little you can get away with telling your players, and wonder whether a rigid lack of metaplot can be as bad as having metaplot in the first place.
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This month, Mike and Roger look at two games on special offer and one that's just interesting, and examine name lists and stats for NPCs.
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This month, Roger and Mike revisit Fall of Magic, and take a long introductory look at GURPS.
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This month, Mike and Roger look at what it takes to do Star Trek "right", and explore the language of role-playing and its native narrative forms; and Mike perpetrates a carefully-organised surprise.
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This month, for our sixtieth episode, Roger and Mike are inspired by music, get decadent, and consider their equipment lists. The inspirational tracks for the first segment are Rocketman by the Red Elvises, and Lucifer by The Alan Parsons Project.
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This month, Mike and Roger wonder how you know when you're a good GM, consider their exploits as players, and consider the ideal composition of a player group.
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This month, Roger and Mike lack enthusiasm, contemplate great big detailed settings, and wonder how you lot got involved in role-playing games.
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This month, Mike and Roger contemplate types of government, and look at #RPGADay for 2017.
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This month, Roger and Mike give advice to the GM of a new time travel game, and consider the thousands of worlds of a Traveller-style setting: what makes them interesting? How can this work?
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This month, Mike and Roger contemplate long-term campaigns with gaps, travel in gaming time, and consider tech levels: threat or menace?
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This month, Roger and Mike talk about the new edition of Unknown Armies, and ask why mid-century hard SF has been relatively unrepresented in games.
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This month, Mike and Roger criticise themselves regarding Pendragon, consider intuition, revisit game recordings, and plan for disaster.
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This month, Roger and Mike talk about the core concepts of magic, and distinguishing personality from backstory in character generation.
With spoilers for Dennis Wheatley's The Ka of Gifford Hillary and Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away.
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This month, Mike and Roger talk about adding new players to a long-running group, spy stories (including a game Roger didn't know he wanted to play), and the golden age(s) of gaming.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider the games we always run, the laws of magic, and gaming within a chain of command.
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This month, Mike and Roger talk about why superheroes are terrible, killing Hitler, utopias, and appropriate rewards and treasures.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider steampunk, the tendency to add magic to everything, and epic games.
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This month, Mike and Roger outline a new magic system, consider Trail of Cthulhu as it's on sale at the Bundle of Holding this month, and contemplate the practical application of Microscope.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider Dungeon Fantasy Powered By GURPS, when campaigns go wrong, and GURPS Adaptations.
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This month, Mike and Roger talk with Marcus Rowland, take a wildly accelerated pass through
RPGADay2016, and find
that they're both starting to run The Great Pendragon Campaign.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider inappropriate laughter, player-driven world-changing, training, the tension of paradigms, and temptation. (Yes, it's longer than usual.)
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This month, Mike and Roger talk with Nick Marsh, consider the ending of Roger's Torg game (and what's likely to follow it), and anatomise Michael's engagement with this year's Game Chef.
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This month, Roger and Mike finish our talk with John Dallman and Dr Bob, promote a new game book, and talk about cliffhangers.
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This month, Mike and Roger talk with John Dallman and Doctor Bob, and look at the new transhumanist games Mindjammer and Nova Praxis.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider After the End, problems peculiar to long-running campaigns, and the layout of role-playing rules.
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This month, Mike and Roger look at politics, and particularly how to bring political elements into games.
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This month, Roger and Mike get away from the table, to LARPs and gaming by videoconference, and consider some stories that are hard to adapt to RPGs.
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This month, Mike and Roger examine some real-life weirdness, interview Phil Masters, discuss the passage of game time, and consider the future of the future of role-playing games.
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This month, Roger and Mike discuss handout-driven campaigns like The Armitage Files and The Dracula Dossier, consider British role-playing conventions, and ask: how railroady is too railroady?
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This month, Mike and Roger talk about how to get started in Tékumel, the negotiations at the start of a campaign, an anniversary adventure, and the shaving of yaks.
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This month, Roger and Mike discuss RPG a Day 2015, and how to get started as a GM.
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This month, Mike and Roger compare generic systems, get romantic, and touch on more real-life weirdness.
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This month, Roger and Mike discuss the Powered by the Apocalypse game, GMPCs, and real-world weirdness.
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This month, Mike and Roger improvise, rant, and consider the three faces of Doctor Who role-playing.
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This month, Roger (with reduced nasal resonance) and Mike look at time travel and ponder the simplest and most complex possible role-playing games.
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This month, Mike and Roger look at Savage Worlds, the Amazing Engine, and GM-player miscommunications.
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This month, Roger and Mike look at the turbulent fourteenth century, and cross-universe games.
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This month, Mike and Roger consider doom and gloom: backwards character progression, campaigns after the big hero or villain is gone, and game worlds in which things are slowly getting worse.
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This month, Roger and Mike look at single-protagonist stories, end campaigns, and pontificate on what should be in a new edition of an old game.
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This month, Mike and Roger consider three games of pulp space, and look at surrealism in RPGs.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider preparation for a seasonal one-shot, Dragonmeet and what we want for Christmas, and at least two sorts of handwavium.
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This month, Mike and Roger consider how much weirdness is too much, discuss how to steal material, contemplate pre-written adventures and look back on a gaming classic.
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There's something off with the sound quality this time round, possibly interference on the recording. Sorry about that.
This month, Roger and Mike consider disease, recorded game sessions, running the same scenario with different systems, and how to worry experienced role-players.
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This month, Mike and Roger answer David F. Chapman's RPG a Day questions, and consider GMing advice.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider maps and other visual aids to gaming, contemplate the problems and opportunities afforded by foreign languages, and venture with some trepidation into the politics of RPGs.
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This month, Mike and Roger hurl some games aside with great force, consider their local area as a role-playing setting, try to be consistent, and discuss a possible new way of introducing people to gaming.
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This month, Roger and Mike discuss Paranoia and adversarial GMing, ask how little you can tell your players before a campaign starts, have a rant about story games with limited-use abilities, and praise thematic worldbuilding.
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This month, Mike and Roger discuss how to get started at worldbuilding, how you can persuade your players to co-create, Roger's Torg campaign, and how to be a good playtester.
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This month, Mike and Roger discuss types (and pathologies) of GM, apocalyptes, campaign design when uninspired, and adapting settings.
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This month, Roger and Mike talk about Rolemaster and Microscope, and are Never Unprepared.
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This month, Mike, Roger, and special guest John Dallman talk about gaming in the Second World War, and a little about military role-playing in general.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider Dragonmeet and games that aren't RPGs, look back at Tékumel, consider what's different about modern games, and contemplate seasonal adventures.
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This month, Mike and Roger bring 2300AD out of the cupboard, take another look at Torg, and consider death and other things players don't like.
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This month, Roger and Mike consider weather and other things too complicated for realistic simulation, and bring In Nomine out of the cupboard.