Episode 206: Cyberpunk 2018

“Akeyo offers moi a kazi. Tres facile, she says. Cho lucrative, she says. Faces always lie. Tatemae, hombre. Allez, my brain says. OK, my boca says. Weil she with Sergei. His gun is ookii. His ‘tude is zverskiy. Samurai always punish. Sergei no hablo Angelo. He hablo Gewalt.
The paise is gooood. The crew is prooo. The kazi is faciiile. In and out, bra. You win, bra.
But the street don’t lie: THE SYSTEM ALWAYS WINS!”

– Neff Jacks, hardboi runner

In this episode, we present a list of questions that define cyberpunk. If a game, book, or movie checks these boxes, it’s cyberpunk. If not, sorry, bra. Is Shadowrun cyberpunk? Is The Matrix? Listen for the definitive answers.

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Episode 189: Five Games, One Shelf

In this episode, we pick the five RPGs every role player should have on his or her shelf, including which edition to have. These aren’t our five favourite games or the five most popular games of all time. Nope. These are five games whose mere possession will contribute to your overall gaming experience.

These are the criteria we used. Play along at home.

Innovative
Impact
Representative of a specific type of a game
Widespread
Paid us to mention them (Kidding. No company took us up on our offer.)

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Episode 187: Generalist vs. Specialist Players

The specialist: “How would you make a Jedi in D&D?”
The generalist: “I wouldn’t.”

In this episode, we compare focusing on just one game system (specializing) with playing a wide variety of games (generalizing) to see which is the best approach. Did your approach win?

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Episode 184: Creature Feature: Deities

“There can be only one!”
-Connor MacLeod, Highlander

Which is probably why we cut our references to Highlander: no one likes solo adventures. What we didn’t cut were Wayne’s frequent references to Dungeons & Dragons, odd coming from such a “fan” of Dungeon World.

In this installment of Creature Features, we discuss playing and playing against deities. After we cut all of the blasphemy, we were left with Thor comics and D&D cosmology.

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Episode 183: Magic and Realism

In a world with jumbo shrimp, deafening silences, and open secrets, we get that some people want realistic magic. In this episode, we discuss magic and realism. While we can’t say that you’ll be able to make the magic in your game realistic after listening to the episode, we can promise that you’ll be able to have it make sense.

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Episode 128: (Re)Introductions

Well, hello again. Meet the Idle Red Hands for the second time. Even after two years, their stories on how they got started in gaming remain the same. From the drug-infested, Magic-playing ghettos of Philly to the cheese-eating, cheese-wearing wasteland of Wisconsin to the nuclear-fearing, sparkly-scarf-loving ground zero of West Germany, these three gamers found and fell in love with the hobby.

Listen for the answers to these questions:

Is Heroquest is an RPG?
Who was the “inspiration” for the Punisher?
How many stolen D&D products has Chris bought?

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Episode 77: Literature Lessons: Science Romance

Let’s look 100 years into the future to see what 2012 will bring!

A pneumatic tube messaging craze will sweep the country!
Science will find the cure for racism: all babies born in 2012 will be white!
Automatons will do all domestic chores! Women will stay in the kitchen for the fun of it!
Man will teach dogs and cats to talk! Will learn that they never really had much to say!
The Idle Red Hands, a radio program about Marxism, will win best show of the year!

In this Literature Lesson, we look at the science fiction of Verne, Wells, and Burroughs. Despite having an outline that includes colonialism, eugenics and xenophobia, we’re actually surprised when the show gets dark.

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Episode 36: Time for War

War. Huh. Yeah.
What is it good for?

-”War” Edwin Starr

Well, a plus-sized podcast episode for a start.
In this episode, we look at the three stages of war, the buildup, during and the aftermath, and the kinds of stories you can play in them. We also discuss how a focus on technology can make for some pretty intriguing games no matter which era you play in.

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Episode 21: Elevator Pitch

When Hollywood runs out of Saturday morning cartoons to make into movies, we suggest a new source for shaky ideas: pen and paper roleplaying games. (Because, really, The Smurfs?)

In this episode, we discuss the few RPG movies out there, and then we pitch our own ideas for RPG movies.

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Episode 0: Six-sided Samurai

This was originally supposed to be episode 1, but there were concerns about the sound quality. As a compromise, we decided to make this episode 0, which apparently makes all the difference in the world.

In this episode, we look at how Japan is treated in roleplaying games, and we offer some recommendations on how Japan can be used to spice up your gaming experience. Yes, someone mentions school girls. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come.

At some point during the recording, Wayne started to think that the topic was “Things I’ve Seen at Toys ‘R’ Us”. We opted to cut out that part out, but you can still hear Lyal referring to it. Apologies for any confusion this may cause.

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