Archive for the ‘Podcast Announcements’ Category

This Just In…From Gen Con!, the podcast that Paul Tevis and I started back in 2008, is about to do its fourth season. I’ve given the show to the esteemed Daniel Perez and Rich Rogers, both fine podcasters and gentlemen of note.

I’ve mentioned that the show takes a lot of work to do, which is why I’ve happily stepped away. Daniel & Rich are well aware of the work — they’ve seen what I’ve had to do over the years. So they’re doing something smart: looking to crowdfund the show. I’ll let them tell you about it:

It’s pretty exciting what they’re doing — they’re going farther than I did, using Twitter, Facebook & Tumblr to connect with fans and broadcast news and highlights from the show even when they’re not podcasting. And they’re going to do short early-morning segments for the at-GenCon crowd that listen to the show on the wait to the hall. Seriously, they’ve blown me away with their plans for this year.

I hope you’ll consider funding them. Let’s keep the show alive. Check out the IndieGoGo campaign here.

- Ryan

A couple of announcements!

Dresdacon II’s Coming Up!

I’ll be at Dresdacon II, at Endgame Oakland this June 18th. Want to chat with me? Want to play some Dresden Files? Want to enjoy the fine eateries in Downtown Oakland? Come on up!

We need some help, though. To quote Fred Hicks quoting Chris Hanrahan of Endgame:

Hey, folks. The fine folks over at EndGame are hosting a second DresdaCon event at their store on June 18th, but they’re short on GMs. Here’s the message from the store:

DresdaCon II needs a few more GMs!

We are rapidly approaching the deadline for GM signs-ups for DresdaCon II. We have space for 3 more GMs in each time slot. Yes, we are going for 16 games! Wanna help? Head over to http://endgameoakland.com/dresdacon for all the details.

Hope to see you there!

We’ve even made it easy for you to run, with the release of Neutral Grounds and Night Fears! So if you live in or near the San Francisco bay area, and are willing to run a game, please contact the store and let them know. And if you haven’t made it to Endgame before, you owe it to yourself — it’s one of the best gamestores in the nation.

I’ll be a Special Guest at Celesticon!

Celesticon is a San Francisco Bay Area convention happening this Labor Day Weekend, September 2-5, 2011 at the Hotel Sofitel in Redwood City. I’ll be there, along with James Ernest & Kenneth Hite. (As of the time of this post. Check out the special guests page.)

You can find out more about the show at the website, www.celesticon.com. I’m pretty excited to be there, and we’re working out what sort of shenanigans are in store for folks attending. Naturally, I’ll update as we get closer to time.

(Side note: after reading this blog post about writing bios, mine on their site feels anemic.)

Reddit Interview about Dresden Files RPG!

A few months back, Ben Woerner polled folks on reddit for questions to ask Fred Hicks, Leonard Balsera & I. The interview is up now! It’s a two-parter, done with the four of us on Skype, so take the audio quality as you will. It was a fun interview, and the questions were neat. A good group of folks there. Hope you enjoy!

- Ryan

Chris Hanrahan & I have just released the second episode of our short podcast series on publishing RPGs & selling into retail, Concept to Shelf. In this episode, we talk about the math some, which we call “Not losing your shirt?”

Check out the episode here. It runs just under 26 minutes.

After letting the holidays and travel blow their production schedule out of the water, Chris & Ryan are back to talk about The Math of making and selling a print RPG book that’s priced for retail sale. They get into how to arrive at your book’s retail cost and where all that money goes, between you (the publisher), distribution partners, shipping expenses, and retailers.

As an aid for after listening to the show, here’s the numbers breakdown (and again, your numbers could be different):

Go to the site for the rest of the show notes…

- Ryan

Eddy Webb, John Wick and I were on The Walking Eye podcast for one of their round table discussions. Kevin Weiser of said show wanted to talk with us about “drifting the rules of role-playing games.” From their site:

Kevin sits down with Ryan Macklin, John Wick, and Eddy Webb to discuss the pros and cons of drifting the rules in RPG’s. It’s a good discussion, and fair warning, the last 10 minutes or so are actually a tangent on the realities of being an internet microcelebrity, and how people act vastly differently to said celebrities when they meet them in person rather than how they talk about them on internet forums. Still  a pretty interesting conversation, but if you’re here just to hear about drifting, you might wanna skip the last 10 minutes.

The episode clocks in at just over an hour. It was really fun to do, and to hear Eddy, John & I mostly agree but use very different language and experiences to back it up was pretty fascinating. The last bit, which started with Kevin making a joke about how he grabbed the of the most hated people in RPG land for this round table led to a bit of venting about Internet bullshit.[1]

Anyway, worth giving a listen. And to restate a point I state twice in the episode: If you do that “you can drift X, but they you’re not really playing X,” you’re a fucking judgmental cockbite. Even if you’re the designer saying it. (Right or wrong, you’re a cockbite.)

Edit: Judd Karlman has a great fucking response on his bloggy blog. And the comments are on fucking fire, between folks like Rob Donoghue, Fred Hicks, Daniel Perez, Judd & myself.

- Ryan

[1] Which, while we recorded the episode last December, is awkwardly timely today. Or maybe it’s always that way.

I love Unknown Armies[1]. Anyone who has ever known me knows this, including the charming and svelte Rich Rogers from the Canon Puncture podcast. He has this really cool segment series on the show called Game Advocates, where fans of a game talking about why they love that game. So he grabbed me to talk about my most favorite role-playing game ever.

You can check it out here: http://www.canonpuncture.com/?p=1869

The episode runs 22:41, and is just my talk with Rich. I hope you enjoy it.

For those who love the game like I do, I posted this UA-style rumor on my Facebook feed the other week, as it popped into my head (while walking, so I had to type it on my phone):

Unknown Armies rumor: there’s a fortune teller (assistant manager for the Scotsman by day) in western Ohio who can predict your future by listening to your Pandora station on your smartphone for an hour. He can only predict one thing, though: the day and time you’ll leave this world. Godwalkers have sought him out to learn how much time they have left. And he is not aware of the Max Attax cabal that watches over him.

This shit hits my brain all the time. I love this game, because it’s memetically infected me like no other game has.

Also required reading: Kenneth Hite‘s essay on Unknown Armies is Green Ronin’s Hobby Games: The Best 100.

- Ryan

[1] Fans also know to check out John Tynes’ UA site. Man alive, so awesome.

[2] A footnote to a certain podcaster out there: Rich turned that around in a couple weeks. Just FYI. :)