Gaming On The Frontier

This week we explore the possibility of adding Fringeworthy to a Call of Cthulu campaign.  Most of the specific points of what Fringeworthy adds to this game were covered as the general benefits in last weeks episode so please listen to that first before this one. The point of Fringeworthy to another game campaign is not to change that game into Fringeworthy.  Instead we suggest ways of using Fringeworthy to enhance your already awesome game with new options, motivation, and abilities, without changing the game's genre, tone, or goals. Of course, if you do find your current game stale, as Trav says, "Fringeworthy is a shot in the arm!" Based on the amount of discussion on this topic, we will be review one game campaign or genre a week so expect a lot more in the future. 03:00 - Where the portals tend to be located. 03:40 - The Fringeworthy bring advanced healing. 04:20 - The city of R'lyeh. 06:64 - Inserting Bureau 13. 08:28 - Bigger guns! Awwww yeah, we got bigger guns. Aw nuts, here come bigger mons

This week we explore adding Fringeworthy to another RPG game system campaign world.  How would you add Fringeworthy to your Call of Cthulu game?  Your superhero game?  Your D&D game?  And not derail your game or change your game's distinctive tone? 02:30 - The tone of the game. 06:10 - Things that the Fringeworthy can bring to your game. High altitude maps, drones, lost tech/knowledge, advanced weapons and tech. 17:25 - Prior to the Fringeworthy filter. 18:45 - Hazardous creature removal. 19:30 - Fringeworthy underwriters. 27:45 - Provide a tactical advantage by using a portal that's in a strategic location. 29:30 - Reintroduce lost medicine and materials to a post-holocaust world. 33:00 - How do you introduce the Fringeworthy to your campaign? 37:30 - How do you endear them to the players? 39:50 - The dangerous ideas the Fringeworthy bring with them. 41:45 - IDET arrives on a world where the fringe paths have already been discovered... and they need to be rescued. Don't forget to check out th

What happens when there is no Earth for a prime or an alt.  What happens when the Earth is destroyed.  Our 5 hosts explore the possibilities on this week's Fringeworthy Podcast. 02:35 – No Earth. What happens to a portal where the earth has been destroyed? 07:30 – Will the portal jump to another nearby planet? 09:15 – Random generated no Earth portal. 09:40 – Black hole destruction. 14:40 – Hatched Earth. 15:00 – Moon portal. 20:00 – The Earth is gone. What about the system? Where does the portal go? 24:00 – Could a node be cut out of the system? 33:00 – Fixing problem portals. 34:00 – When Earth’s collide. Crashing one Earth into another. 36:00 – Is Earth where humans live or the third rock from Sol? 42:46 – Is the portal rooted to the physical ground? 44:30 – Alternate astrophysical. Trav schools us! 49:20 – What do the Fringeworthy do on a “Lost Earth” adventure? We return to our normal 1 hour episodes. Watch for more news of our expanded coverage of Tri Tac Games.

We continue to explore the possibility of adventuring in Japan in the 5th to 11th centuries.  We list a number of helpful reference books for this time.

Adventuring in the past:  Japan from 5th to 11th century.  Blix takes us on an journey to the beginnings of Japanese history and culture - before the samurai.  Here you will find powerful emperors, strong men of the mountains, ninja, and maybe a cappa or two. 02:20 - What no Samurai!? 02:40 - Shifting from tribes to cities. 04:19 - How to get along and fit in with the people of this time. 10:20 - Honor, Buddhism, and Bushido. 11:20 - The seat of power. 12:45 - The Golden Age of Japan. 14:25 - Ninjas and politics.

We provide more information on our Dragon Con demos plus we continue to answer reader mail on how to handle where your team members are met with prejudice and what happens when a team goes missing. 01:20 – Fringeworthy novel release at GenCon. 02:20 – DragonCon Fringe Worthy Savage Worlds event by Blix. 03:50 – ConClave FW d20 adventure by Trav! 04:50 – TriTacGamer Forums. 05:17 – Ideas for improving the role of women in your adventures in difficult areas for women. 13:00 – Minority groups in areas of bigotry. 15:15 – Time travel and ways to avoid paradox. 26:00 – Does IDET send teams to investigate a lost team? 32:00 – Killing off a team is a great idea… Bruce goes homicidal and we let him ;) 36:00 – Bruce hosts the Intro to PodCasting panel at GenCon. It must have gotten cut but Bruce is also running events at DragonCon. He will be running d20 Fringe Worthy events. We apologize for our audio quality on this one; the quality came out a little rough.

This week Bruce talks about his Fringeworthy demos at Gencon Game Fair in Indianapolis.  He and Blix discuss their upcoming demos at Dragon Con in Atlanta.  Also mentioned are new demos by John Reiher and Trav. Then on to reader mail. What are essential skills for a character and how to make sure they have them? We will have more questions and answers next week.

John Reiher ran a demo and got a lot of feedback this time.  We discuss his design and execution for his demo and make suggestions for more successful demos.

This week we continue our discussion of adventuring in the Native American cultures of North, South, and Central America in the 5th to 11th Centuries.   We talk about how they conducted war and how the introduction of modern weapons might not have the expected effect.   01:50 - Mesoamerican ball games. 05:00 – You are a God King! Trading the “shiny” with the Mayans and the repercussions. 12:45 – Other uses for gun powder. 13:35 – What adventures can you run? 14:40 – Holiest of Holy’s in Mesoamerica. 15:50 – What would fringe pirates do here? 17:00 – Where are the temples and what do they look like? 18:11 – Raiding Maya cities. Jay = Stupid Pirate, Bruce = Violent Pirate, John = Commercial Pirate 22:45 – Where to put portals and how the Maya would treat them. 26:00 – We are Terhmellern. 29:30 – John’s wrap up.

A promo for the soon to be released Fringeworthy novel and an offer for a free proof edition at Gencon 2010.

Adventuring in the 5th to 11th centuries:  Americas This week John Reiher takes us on a tour of ancient americas.  Mayans and Mixtecs and Mound Builders, Oh my! 1:49: Exploring the New World 5th to 11th Centuries 2:03: The Mound Builders. 2:27: The Anasazi. 3:00: The Mound Builders: What we know about them. 4:00: The Mayans: the Classic period. They lived in city states, ruled by a God king. 5:02: Combat with the Meso American peoples: Combat is for the taking of prisoners. 5:45: Your place in Mayan society. 6:00: Where to find more information about the Mayan. Wikipedia, Books, lots of them! 6:35: Mayans are not peace loving mathematician astronomers. 6:56: They developed their own writing system. 7:18: Nova: Cracking the Mayan code. 8:39: Dropping a Mellor into a Mayan society. It's a smorgasbord! 10:11: Mayan God Kings were the head of a personality cult. This may have helped lead to the collapse of their cities. 10:43: The Mayans are still living in the Yucatan today. 11:36: Missionaries

Bruce and Blix continue their discussion of how taking the time to understand how objects of huge or micro scale can greatly affect an adventure.  They continue on and add the meta discussion of how big or small to  make your campaign as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSY42-QTfDM&NR=1

This week Blix and Bruce discuss how differences in scale can radically change the nature of an adventure and any solutions to problems presented in the adventure.  Why this is important in a science fiction game. 01:20 – Dealing with super fast speeds in space. Astronomical Unit, Speed of Light 04:10 – Saving an entire society and dealing with large scale problems. 06:30 – Dealing with the small scale. 13:20 – The scope of the adventures and campaigns. Little game time requires a small scope. Lots of games time allows for bigger scope. 18:50 – Fringe Pirate example of story arcs. 24:20 – Running one adventure after another with no big arcs. 25:50 – Know your players. Only run scopes as big as their desires.

We explore Persia and India from the 5th to the 11th century.  Hop a ride with sinbad and catch the belt of Vishnu. This one is a little fact heavy but we have provided plenty of links to everything disscussed so you can listen without taking notes. You can look everything up from the notes page later on. Persia 01:50 – Trade in Persia Caliphate, Sunni, Shi'ah, Caliph 03:30 – Missions 04:20 – Historically accurate – the “real” ugly dirty past vs. “movie style” pristine romantic past. Sinbad, Richard Burton, 1001 Nights,  Black Plague, Islamic Golden Age 08:50 – Beware the religion bomb. See Episode 7 for more info. 10:31 – Battles and Wars Ottoman Empire, Bagdad 11:15 – Mellors in ancient Persia 12:00 – The effect of the crusades. Saladin, Crusaders   India 16:00 – Dynasties of ancient India. India, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam 17:45 – The role of the caste systems. Caste System 22:00 – Cultural influences on India. Alexander the Great, Khyber Pass 24:00 – Caste conflicts within the party

We continue our discussion of what adventure and play technique bring the awesome.  This week we concentrate on teams pooling their skills and backgrounds to provide better solutions than trying to create uber characters. 01:20 – The role of the essential skills. Giving free skills, allowing automatic successes, including NPCs. Ways to handle failed essential checks. 09:25 – Playing more than one character at a time. 10:30 – Skill checks. Puzzles, the GM’s bane. 16:40 – Knowing your PC’s and players. 18:20 – Letting each character shine. 21:20 – Make characters a real person! 26:20 – The 3x3 method.   If you are listening to this on iTunes please give us a review. It helps promote the show and only takes a minute of your time. Thank you!

Part 1 of our discussion of adventure design and play techniques that either worked well or were really terrible ideas.  We discuss good methods to motivate characters and how to make the game more fun for new and experienced players.  Sometimes both. Note: We now move to our summer format we announced 2 weeks ago.  Our episodes will only be 1/2 hour long instead of about an hour .  Episodes that are split will have the rest published the next week.  We will be returning to our normal format in the fall after Dragoncon.  Hope to see you there. 02:00 GM’s entertain your players – Combat! Putting in a teaser, setting the mood, flashback combat scene, medias res. 08:00 Don’t use capture or blackmail to make the player’s friends with an NPC. 11:30 Players, surrender is sometimes an option. 12:50 Give the characters more tasks than they can possibly complete. 14:15 GMs, use the player’s comments to influence the adventure. 16:10 Big story arcs along with short story arcs. 20:12 Being funny, it’s harder th

We continue our adventuring in the past series with a set of podcasts on the 5th to 11th centuries.  We start off with Africa, ramrodded by our good friend Trav.   Essay on Africa Metallurgy in Africa Route of Lost Kingdoms Kingdoms in Pre-Colonial Africa Ancient African Kingdoms Swahili Language Black Like Me African Folklore Ark of the Covenant - Ethiopia Ark of the Covenant - Southern Africa Tarzan and the Lost Empire Roman Empire

So you want to time travel and the time shifted worlds aren't enough.  Okay.  We tell you what works, what doesn't and how to not wreck your campaign and avoid screwing over your players with time travel.    Players take note:  This is the hardest kind of adventure to write and run so if the gm hands it to you, drink the Kool-aide.  It's yummy!

Hey fringers, We were are a little bit behind this week but we threw together a short segment about what's going on with Fringeworthy. John and Blix talk about Savage Worlds, convention appearances, and our summer schedule. Enjoy! We also threw in a promo at the end of the PodCast for the new Scott Sigler novel Ancestor. Let's help him reach number one this month by pre-ordering his book! Go to www.scottsigler.com/ancestor right now and get your copy today!

This week we discuss how to handle failure in a campaign.  This is a companion piece to the Jay Hailey interview.