The crew of the Pirate ship the Dagger beaches itself upon Isla Luna to gather much needed water and supplies. Murmurs of discontent can be heard rippling through the crew, as Isla Luna is well known for being the home of a powerful witch. What’s the worst that could happen? Word to the wise: this episode gets pretty rank. “Dirty Dick Wiggins” makes good on his name, among other atrocities.

Roles

Brandon: Dirty Dick Wiggins Ship’s Gunnery Master

CJ: Bloody John Parr Ship’s Surgeon

Kevin: Solomon Cruikshank Ship’s Captain

Relevant Links

• Vincent Baker’s Blog
• Poison’d
• Forum Post About 2x Wear and Breakage
• Last Exile
• Germ Theory of Disease

Crunchy Bits!

• Poison’d Actual Play Session 2: 2 Hours 11 minutes
• Poison’d Actual Play Session 2 Part A: 1 Hour
• Poison’d Actual Play Session 2 Part B: 1 Hour
• Intro Music “Plunder” from Sid Meyer’s Pirates!
• Outro Music “Strike The Bell” by Wylde Nept

Kevin, CJ, Dan, and Brandon sit down for our third and final D. Vincent Baker game: Poison’d: A Pirate RPG. This session covers the creation of our individual pirates, as well as the crew and specifics of our pirate ship. We do just a tad of roleplaying at the end to get a feel for how Success Rolls work, and set things up nicely for next session. So far we’re all enjoying it a lot!

Roles

Brandon: Dirty Dick Wiggins Ship’s Gunnery Master Soul: 4 Devil: 4 Brutality: 4 Ambition: 4 Brinkmanship: 4

CJ: Bloody John Parr Ship’s Surgeon Soul: 4 Devil: 4 Ambition: 4 Brutality: 3 Brinkmanship: 4

Kevin: Solomon Cruikshank Ship’s Quartermaster Soul: 4 Devil: 4 Ambition: 5 Brutality: 5 Brinkmanship: 5

Relevant Links

• Vincent Baker’s Blog
• Poison’d
• Sgt. Hatred
• Cervantes
• A map of the Caribbean
• The Gunpowder history book Kevin mentioned.
• Burning Wheel
• Sid Meyer’s Pirates!
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• Dogs in the Vineyard
• In a Wicked Age
• 2-Masted Bermuda Sloop
• “That’s a REAL GHOST!”
• Misspent Youth
• Hardtack
• Rogue Trader
• Lego Tie Defender

Crunchy Bits!

• Poison’d Actual Play Session 1: 2 Hours
• Poison’d Actual Play Session 1 Part A: 1 Hour
• Poison’d Actual Play Session 1 Part B: 1 Hour
• Intro Music “Plunder” from Sid Meyer’s Pirates!
• Outro Music “You Are a Pirate” from Lazytown.

The Walking Eye Comics continues! Dan and CJ conclude their discussion of January releases with a focus on big event books from Marvel Comics.

Comics discussed:

• Adventure Comics #6
• Captain America Reborn #6
• Captain America: Who Will Wield the Shield?
• Captain America #602
• The Brave and the Bold #31
• Dark Avengers #13
• New Avengers #61
• Booster Gold #28
• Siege #1

Relevant Links

• Skeptoid podcast

Crunchy Bits!

• The Walking Eye Comics Cast #2: January (part 2): 1 Hour 8 Minutes
• Intro and Outro music: Pixelguru by Subatomicglue.

A new experiment from The Walking Eye!  Since we usually record on Wednesday evenings, our warmup conversation usually focuses on the week’s new comic books.  The Walking Eye Comics Cast features Dan and CJ discussing, and occasionally ranting, about January’s comic releases.

Comics discussed:

• Blackest Night #6
• Green Lantern #50
• Blackest Night: The Flash #2
• Blackest Night: JSA #2
• Superman #696
• Batman and Robin #7
• R.E.B.E.L.S. #12
• Secret Warriors #12

Crunchy Bits!

• The Walking Eye Comics Cast #1: January (part 1): 1 Hour
• Intro and Outro music: Pixelguru by Subatomicglue.

Here’s the 2nd half of Kevin’s interview with Ron Edwards.  In it we discuss the necessary skills and attitudes for approaching gaming, a breakdown of some of Kevin’s prior difficulties with Sorcerer, and finally some discussion on what The Forge is all about. Kevin does a fantastic job of sticking his foot in his mouth by comparing The Forge GenCon booth to a Scientology recruiting station. See how he backpedals! Awkward comparisons aside, I had a great time sitting down and talking with Ron. I look forward to seeing him again at Forge Midwest 2010!

Relevant Links

• Adept Press
• Sorcerer
• Trollbabe
• Prime Time Adventures
• Dust Devils
• The Forge
• Burning Wheel
• Planescape
• Runequest
• The Moose in the City
• In A Wicked Age
• Dogs in the Vineyard
• 7th Sea
• Over the Edge
• Riddle of Steel
• Shadow of Yesterday
• Burning Empires
• Jared Sorensen
• Inspectres
• Ars Magica
• Mike Mearls
• Ed Healy
• RPG.net
• Paul Czege
• Vaughn Bode
• Mark Bode
• Cheech Wizard
• Richard Dawkins
• Rob Bohl
• The Last Supper

Crunchy Bits!

• The Walking Eye Interview 11: Ron Edwards Part 2: 1 Hour 30 Minutes
• Intro and Outro music provided by Oh Possum.

While Kevin was over in Chicago to hang out with the Jank Cast he got a chance to sit down with Ron Edwards for an hour or three.  I’ve broken the interview down into two parts for ease of consumption. In this first part, we talk a bit about his inspirations for his new game S/Lay /w Me vis a vis early gaming history and the conservative crackdown on all things considered “obscene.” Then we move on to discuss how identity politics can interfere with system discussion, and then a bit about why and how he wrote Trollbabe. Stay tuned for part two!

Relevant Links

• Adept Press
• IPR
• Monte Cook
• Sorcerer
• Skype
• Code of Unaris
• The Forge
• Actor, Director, Writer stance
• Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser
• Henry Kuttner and CL Moore
• H.P. Lovecraft
• S/Lay W/ Me
• Rob Bohl
• Clyde Roher
• Forge Midwest
• Moral Majority
• Scopes Monkey Trial
• B.A.D.D. and The Pulling Report
• Comics Code Authority
• Zap Comics
• Robert Crumb
• S. Clay Wilson
• Gilbert Sheldon
• Meese Report
• Tipper Gore
• Frank Frazetta, Frazetta “Cat Woman” and Boris Vallejo, Vallejo Conan the Barbarian
• Elmore (Red Box)
• Elric of Melnibone
• The Riddle of Steel
• The Shadow of Yesterday
• Dave Arneson
• Blackmoor
• Nine Worlds
• GURPS
• Champions
• Heroes Unlimited
• Vampire: The Masquerade
• Over the Edge
• Prince Valiant
• Chivalry and Sorcery
• The Jank Cast
• The Infamous Five Threads
• Spirit of the Century
• Robert Jordan
• Vincent Baker
• Trollbabe
• Andrea Dworkin (who apparently denies attribution for the quote Ron used, see the 6th question here)
• Liz Danforth
• The Fantasy Trip
• Eastern Promises
• Anna Kreider
• Dragonlance
• XDM
• Jonathan Tweet

Crunchy Bits!

• The Walking Eye Interview 10: Ron Edwards Part 1: 1 Hour 20 Minutes
• Intro and Outro music provided by Oh Possum.

Our review of “Vincent Baker’s Concentrated Awesome” aka Dogs in the Vineyard. We sit down to discuss the dice mechanics, moral ambiguity, and how advancement is inextricably tied into not only changes to your character, but also the damage model. Also, Brandon’s still not over his fear of cows.

Relevant Links

• Dogs in the Vineyard
• Vincent Baker’s Blog
• Dogs in the Vineyards Forum
• Apocalypse World
• State of Deseret
• Burning Wheel
• Diagonally Through the Woods
• Mutants and Masterminds
• D&D
• Warhammer Fantasy RPG
• Mind Flayer
• Arcana Evolved
• Burning Empires
• Oregon Trail
• The Jank Cast
• Call of Cthulhu

Crunchy Bits!

• Discussion Episode 16: Dogs in the Vineyard 50 minutes
• Intro Music from the soundtrack to The Proposition by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (the composer, not the comic writer)
• Outro Music “Palomino” by Tree Adams.

Due to some lucky circumstances, I managed to land an interview earlier this week with Ryan Macklin and Lenny Balsera. This was a serendipitous event, as Evil Hat had just released their official press release announcing the release date and info about the Dresden Files RPG. I sit down with these two and BS about the challenges of creating a game from the Dresden Files license, then we dive into some of the nitty gritty about how FATE was used to create the world of Harry Dresden.

Relevant Links

• Dresden Files RPG
• Evil Hat
• Lenny’s Blog
• Ryan’s Blog
• The Sunless Citadel
• Duke Nukem Forever
• Urban Fantasy
• Perdido Street Station
• Endgame Oakland
• Evil Hat Brick and Mortar Guarantee
• Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies
• Ptolus
• Chris Hanrahan’s Blog
• Scribd
• bittorrent
• GURPS
• Hero
• D20
• Starblazer Adventures
• Diaspora
• FATE mailing list
• Spirit of the Century
• Jared Sorenson’s 3 Questions
• The Wire
• Clark and Amanda Valentine
• Caine  (Kung Fu)
• Las Vegas: The Strip, Sumerlin, Henderson
• Steve Wynn
• Burning Empires
• The Bracelet Problem
• Mage (The Awakening and the older Ascension)
• In Nomine
• In Nomine Fate Fan Conversion
• Robert Bohl (and our interview with him)

Crunchy Bits!

• The Walking Eye Interview 9: Dresden Files RPG with Ryan Macklin and Leonard Balsera 1 Hour 26 Minutes
• Intro and Outro music provided by Oh Possum.

Dogs in the Vineyard wraps up with the small ranching town of King’s Crossing. The players experiment with taking on conflicts solo, and finds some pretty serious challenges facing their characters. The defeats culminate with a very tense final showdown!

Unfortunately this is our last session of Dogs. We had a pretty rough three months this winter and have only managed to record twice due to plague, work, weather, and holidays. It was very difficult to keep the momentum going, but we all feel this is a good session to end on. The conflicts were tough, the morality fuzzy, and the ending suitably tragic.

Relevant Links

• Clancy Brown
• Deadlands: Los Diablos
• Little House on the Prairie
• Wolf Brother
• Conner from Angel
• Silent Lucidity

Crunchy Bits!

• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 3: 2 Hours, 34 Minutes
• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 3 Part A: 65 Minutes
• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 3 Part B: 1 Hour 28 Minutes
• Intro Music from the soundtrack to The Proposition by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (the composer, not the comic writer)
• Outro music from “God’s Gonna Strike You Down” by Johnny Cash.

And here we have our first full town for D. Vincent Baker’s Dog’s in the Vineyard. The gang learns a few good lessons this session. Namely, there’s pretty much no stopping a group of Dogs when they team up, and no matter how bad you don’t want your cousin to be a Sorcerer, sometimes you just have to face facts.  This town was created by Jason Morningstar, and is based on the true story of Olive Oatman. When Jason found out I was running his towns, he shot me an email warning that a few of his early town designs aren’t the most ideal. I thanked him for his concern, but went ahead anyway.

Since then, I’ve done a LOT of reading on the lumpley forums on The Forge about town design, and gotten a bit of play under my belt. I now know what Jason was concerned about. I’m not sure if it comes through in the recording, but this town lacked the tension of some later ones I’ve run, and I know exactly why: The situation was too clear, the antagonist too one-sided, and the problems of the town hadn’t escalated to Hate and Murder yet. Vincent recommends ALWAYS designing a town up to Hate and Murder. I learned a lot from running this town, and my second town is one I made myself, and I think really hits all the right spots for what a town should be. Stay tuned for that!

Relevant Links

• Dogs in the Vineyard
• Vincent Baker’s Blog
• Dogs in the Vineyards Forum
• Kevin’s Post on the DitV Forum about this session.
• January Branch Document
• Jason Morningstar’s awesome play aids
• Mouse Guard
• Wheel of Time
• Detect Evil
• Carnivale
• Deadlands
• Unknown Armies

Crunchy Bits!

• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 2: 2 Hours, 51 Minutes
• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 2 Part A:  Minutes
• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 2 Part B:  Minutes
• Dogs in the Vineyard Session 2 Part C:  Minutes
• Intro Music from the soundtrack to The Proposition by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (the composer, not the comic writer)
• Outro music from “When The Man Comes Around” by Johnny Cash.