We couldn't help but notice the mini-mecca of gaming that Tucson has become and decided to spend a few minutes on the topic. Aside from the grand Pulp Gamer Media Network and all of its glory, we have several stores, publishers, and other outlets. The Games the Thing is an independent podcast that includes Ron Blessing, with several credits now to his name. Other media outlets include Uncle Bear and Cerise. Publishers in town include Good Company Games, Tasty Minstrel, Shifting Skies, Ship of Fools, and Master Pieces. Dice manufacturer, Crystal Caste calls Tucson home. Some game stores include Nemesis Games, Hat's Games, and 3 Game Daze stores. The Southern Arizona Gamers Association keeps a calendar on meetup.com, and holds the highlight event of the year, RinCon. A handful of other topics in today's show includes Hasbro teaming up with Discovery for some new television. The Dead Matter winds up post-production. Dialect training presentations, Accent Your Character is increasing its reach. Evil Hat has a pdf guarantee. Uncle Bear makes Wired Magazine's top 100 geeks to follow on twitter. White Glove Movies by Mayfair Games is soon to launch. Origins Game Fair is just around the corner - several of us will be there. Games covered in today's show include Alpha Omega (also covered by Uncle Bear at examiner.com), Armory Reloaded, PS238, Cornerstone, Candamir, Elasund, The Day After Ragnarok, and Age of Conan. Be sure to join in on the discussion by emailing us, commenting, or joining our facebook group. We talked about a number of other podcasts including a special episode of Yog Sothoth, a special episode of The Game's the Thing, Grammar Girl, Fear the Boot, 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction, Have Games Will Travel, and Game On!

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We are still reminiscing about the trip to Las Vegas and shout out to one of our friends we seem to only be seeing on that trip, Alan Sugarbaker of Ogre Cave and now doing a lot of work for RPG.net. Uncle Bear has released a couple of interviews with Don Dehm and Ron Blessing that you may enjoy. We also call back to the passing of Dave Arneson and pointed out an interview we did with him last year. A lot of things are coming up to include Origins and Gen Con. At Gen Con, we have put together an entire list of events to include our Saturday Night Meet & Greet at The House. We have now taken audio production in a new direction with our first audio fiction release, Smoky Mountain Horrors with Weston Ochse. These are available from your favorite audiobook provider, along with our dialect training series, Accent Your Character. Games in today's show includes Exalted, Barbarossa, Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, Stone Age, Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix, Traveler, the Scion Companion. Our main topic is with World War II and started from a discussion on our facebook group. Additional games brought up on this include Weird Wars, Flames of War, Dark Heresy, Gurps WWII, Hollow Earth Expedition, Cold City, and Grey Ranks.

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Our main topic today is ghosts ? where to find them and how to use them in your game. We returned home from the GAMA trade show with a whole list of games to explore. Others are more related to our main topic. Some of these include Arcane Legions, Are you the Traitor, Battle Spirits, Pack & Stack, Amazonas, Spirit Slayers, 10 Commandments, Bill of Rights, Savage Worlds, Inspectres, Green's Guides to Ghosts. and Houses of the Blooded, Lost Souls, and Ghostwalk. We also mention several sources in and out of the Pulp Gamer Network. We welcome Game On! to the network. We also mentioned the fundraiser by Fear the Boot. Be sure to take the survey that Podgecast has put together. The Games the Thing has entered into the Ennies. The D6 Generation had an awesome interview with Curt Covert. Don appeared on an episode of Myriad Games. We also referenced the Small World parody. We also gave mention to our facebook group. Be sure to hop on over there for additional discussions. We'll see you at Random Con!

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We just returned from the Caribbean and are headed out to the GAMA Trade show in Las Vegas. Our main topic is controversial games. We touch on a number of heated titles such as War on Terror, Fishing for Terrorists, Suicide Bomber, Killing Puppies for Satan, Stoner Flux, Playing Gods, Ghettopoly, Blasphemy, Kablamo, the Ouija Board, Hot Chicks, Choice and Blood, and Juden Raus. During the discussion, reference was also made to the move, Paradise Now. Of course we can't help but to bring up the ignorance of Jack Chick. We cover a number of great games and supplements in today's show. These include Paranoia, Night Stalkers of Hunter the Vigil, Pillars of the Earth, Dominion, 10 days in Europe, Mortal Coil, Gemstones, Dino Dice, Silverton, Ptolus, Arcana Evolved, Savage Worlds, and Hey! That's My Fish! We welcome a number of shows to the network. These include Myriad Games, Fear the Boot, and The D6 Generation. We also shout out to our friends at Brilliant Gameologists and All Games Considered. In other news, we talk about Monte Cook and dungeonaday.com.

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We are sailing the open seas with Gamer Adventures, Mayfair Games, Fear the Boot, and 4500 of our closest friends. Forty-one of us signed up with Gamer Adventures to cruise the Caribbean, play some board games to include a qualifying Settlers of Catan tournament, drink rum, explore Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Key West, and of course our originating port, Fort Lauderdale. Listen in on our experience and be sure to join us next time. Our discussion continues on this episode of Fear the Boot. We are joined by Larry Roznai of Mayfair Games, Kim Maita of Gamer Adventures, Dan Repperger of Fear the Boot, and the winner of the latest Settler's of Catan qualifying tournament, Darren Lacoste.

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We are now headed of to the Caribbean with Gamer Adventures and Mayfair Games! We'll do some recording on the boat so you can share it at least some of the fun. We touched on a handful of board games, to include Catan Geographies Germany, Hey! That's my fish!, Monuments, The Dutch Golden Age, and Formula D. Asmodee has a new customer service email, contact_us@asmodee.com. On the topic of RPGs, we discuss White Wolf's, Seers of the Throne for Mage the Awakening. That ended up launching an entire discussion about designing good antagonists for your roleplaying game. Berin gives us a good look at Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook II and gave us links to all sorts of blogs on the topic. Atomic Array: Episode 018: Player's Handbook 2 Game Cryer: Player's Handbook 2 Review Gnome Stew: A Veteran GM's Take on GMing and the PHB2 Critical Hits: The Avenger Campaign Mastery: The Barbarian Uncle Bear: The Bard Critical Ankle Bites: The Druid Kobold Quarterly: Review: Player's Handbook 2 The Core Mechanic: The Invoker Flames Rising: The Shaman Stupid Ranger: The Sorcerer Musings of the Chatty DM: The Warden

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We add Berin Kinsman, AKA Uncle Bear, to our group today and continue our discussion on Game Mechanics. Berin helped us trace the discussion even farther back to an article by Ron Edwards. Berin also references the RPG Blogger's Network, Musings of the Chatty DM, and The Core Mechanic. He also talks about his Get Your Dice Off My Lawn contest. Jeremiah had a list of news notes to share around a board game resurgence, Hasbro's cash flow, Nerds at Heart, and Con of the North. Of course a number of games came up today. Those of note include Mouse Guard, Tigris & Euphrates, and Pandemic. Jason has been editing Verge Recharged. Its still in playtest mode and all feedback is welcome. Feedback included a link to Brilliant Gameologists about gaming environments from a previous episode. We also want to welcome The Game's the Thing to the Pulp Gamer Media Network!

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We have a studio full and a great time. We talked about the gaming environment and finally closed the show with our discussion of mechanics and how much of an impact they have on the roleplaying game. We were also very excited to find from CNN a singles venue around games called Play Date. We touched on a few games today, but some of those most notable include Empire Builder, EABAnywhere, and what is now called The Sales Activator shown to me by my sales friend from New View Group. We almost got Uncle Bear to join us today and expect him soon. He was the inspiration for our main topic. Be sure to visit his blog and perhaps you will find your muse as well. Peter contacted us about coldwars by hmgs. I look forward to hearing more about it!

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We have a new guest we hope will continue to join us. Jason has been accused of being the best GM in Tucson and certainly had a lot to contribute to our discussion on coordinated campaigns. We talked about how to get 20+ people together to play in the same cohesive story and have a good time doing it. We started with a good story from NPR, Interactive Games Make Museums a Place to Play. Making education fun is always something we have stood by and it makes us happy every time we hear of it. We touched on several games in todays show. Those that received the most attention included Shear Panic, Shogun, and Silverton. Don also spent an evening playing CashFlow by Robert Kiyosaki. The game night was run by a really great group of people from Nouveau Riche. We are pleased to be included on War Pig Radio with Atomic Array and Fear the Boot. This is a great streaming project that will be of interest to a lot of folks. Derek took at look at Lovecraftian Tales from the Table. This DVD is chalked full of goodies that Derek went on about for quite some time. Its an exciting packet of Yog Radio and other Cthuloid goodies.

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The year begins anew and we start off having a great time with a bunch of games. Today's discussion included Bella Sara, Sutter's Mill, Monuments, Express, Lunar Rails, Galaxy Trucker, Silverton, Tabogans of Doom, Say Anything, Battleship, The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Prime Time Adventures, Call of Cthulhu's Mountains of Madness, Titan, To Court the King, Hive, Big Big Battles, and the new credit card version of Monopoly. We also talked some about the new Dungeons & Dragons character generator that is available online for beta testing. The online sources we touched on was Gleemax, Game Table Online, Yog Sothoth, and The Master Plan.

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This just might be our last Out of Character for the year. We have many more games to talk about and can only squeeze in a few before the gift giving season concludes. We start by talking about some of the news surrounding Gen Con. The responded to an anonymous request to buy them before Anthony Gallela revealed his acquisition group on icv2. References in this discussion were also made to Matt Forbeck's blog post and the money paid by Gen Con to the Make a Wish foundation. At least some of the games discussed on today's show took on a Mad Scientist theme. These include Mad Scientist University, MWAHAHAHA!, and Theophrastus. We also talked about Monopoly, Rorschach, Express, and Sutter's Mill. For roleplaying games, we talked about Prime Time Adventures, Pathfinder, Promethean, Vampire, and Changeling. We also learned some about D&D Insider and the Character Generator as we recorded. Several roleplay reference materials were brought up by the listening audience. These include PC Pearls, GM Gems, Play Unsafe, Play Dirty (by Lord Strange/John Wick), and Things We Think about Games. We were also given a link to Invisible City's print and play games. And finally, we were directed to a board game designers forum. It's the season to be generous. We learned and shared Wapcaplets' charity to buy livestock for 3rd world countries. Fear the Boot has also been doing the same thing. Don't forget our most recommended gift for the season, Accent Your Character. This dialect training CD for young actors, roleplayers, cosplayers, and other casual pretenders is available at Paizo, Lovecraftianna, and RPGNow. We played a promo during today's show for DiceCast from the guys at Polymancer. We'll see you next year! Don't forget to book your trip for the Caribbean Cruise!

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We continue going forth into the electronic frontier and bring the games with us. Some discussion in our Facebook group has been brought to the show. Don has also contributed his first blog to Fear the Boot. We were also directed to a BBC story on Dungeons & Dragons we thought you would enjoy. Our discussion on essays for gamers started with See Page XX and Robin's Laws. RPG.net has an old list with a variety of gems on it. A list of articles geared more toward development can be found a indie-rpgs.com. A more scholarly approach can be found at rpgstudies.net. We touched on a handful of games in today's show. These include Say Anything, Senji, Portobello Market, Rorschach, Hive, and Battleground Fantasy Warfare.

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We have jumped on board with Facebook. Join our group there and lets talk about the topics that interest us on the show. Settlers of Catan makes MSN's Top Ten Games list. WizKids Games is closing their doors. Polymancer is calling for bloggers. We received word of the coming Pulp Fest. We wish we could go! We thank Myriad Games for their ongoing support! The podcasting friends we mentioned on today's show include Yog Radio, Game On, and Fear the Boot.

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We were inspired with a gift basket question to start addressing small and affordable games for stocking stuffers, secret Santa gifts, or other office celebrations over the holiday season. This turned out to be quite a list. Enjoy looking more closely at these titles: Catan Dice, Family Business, Megastar, Bison, Gloom, Once Upon a Time, Mad Scientist University, Fluxx, Are you a Werewolf, Chrononauts, Treehouse, Dungeoneer, Treasure Fleet, Liar's Dice (play online here), Coloretto, Set, Take 6, Iliad, Jungle Speed, Citadels, Management Material, Marriage Material, and playing cards from Gemaco. Other games include Ron's review of Last Night on Earth. Mayfair has also announced a new train series by Martin Wallace, based on Age of Steam. We have also been playing Intrigue and To Court the King. Our gateway RPG discussion continues with RECON, Microlite20, Tunnels and Trolls, and Tactics. The discussion on roleplaying tips also continues. Tim offers one of his blog posts for more. RinCon is done for the year. Jess shows us some of her pictures. We have more excitement coming up. We will be starting to think about Phoenix Comicon very soon. Join us in Tucson to game by visiting SAGAgamers.com. The most recent game days added to Tucson's schedule will be taking place on Wednesday nights at Safehouse. You will definitely want to join us in the Caribbean, though. There is still time to register for this cruise. We are in a winning mode. Jeremiah was sent a prize from the Wandering Geek podcast. Derek won a drawing sponsored by Game Daze at RinCon. We also took a look at American Nerd by Benjamin Nugent. Jeremiah reads a small excerpt and have a good time with it, including shamelessly plugging the Ramsey County Public Library. Jeremiah also mentioned some Cthulhu Cycle books.

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We had a great time with a number of things in today's show then we are off to RinCon for the weekend. The GAMA Trade Show Seminars are complete. The Gen Con panels are up and running at full speed. We touched on Twitter. Continuing on our Games as Art discussion, The Philosopher's Zone talked about what qualifies as art. You must also check out the Citizens of Virtue. We kick the day off by taking a look at the book, The Elfish Gene written by Mark Barrowcliffe and published by SOHO Press. It is easy to relate to this account of growing up geek. It's humorous and a lot of fun. We took turns reading our favorite passages to each other. On the same topic, we also talked about a youtube video we found linked on the author's blog that was a lot of fun as well. Our main topic was Gateway Roleplaying games. What is the best game to introduce someone new to? Perhaps even your mother can play. Those mentioned include Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, Prime Time Adventures, Risus, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds, The Fantasy Trip (Wikipedia),Long Live the King, and Once Upon a Time. Some podcasters that came up in today's show or otherwise deserve credit in today's discussions include Antti, Tim, Ryan, Ross, Ron, and Paul.

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Most of us agree that Halloween is our favorite holiday. This Halloween, we will be at RinCon. The preregistration is coming down upon us, so get signed while you can. Also upon us is an important date for securing your spot on the Caribbean Gamer Cruise. There is limited space available, so you will want to secure your spot now. Oh, and here is that list of things to do in Jamaica we promised you. During feedback, the topic of Accent Your Character comes up. We were also sent some pictures from our friends from the Wrecking Crew. Games to play this Halloween... Monster Mayhem Vampire: Prince of the City Zombies!!! Mall of Horror Last Night on Earth Betrayal at House on the Hill Kragmortha Theophrastus Alchemist Arkham Horror Zombie Flux Munchkin Cthulhu Nightmare Fury of Dracula Unspeakable Words Dungeon TWister Forces of Darkness Call of Cthulhu World of Darkness Hunter: The Vigil Vampire: The Requiem Werewolf: The Forsaken Promethean: The Created Changeling: The Lost

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Our headline topic is about meeting other gamers and finding space to build your group or a full fledged club. This is such a huge topic that we can barely scratch the surface, but some great ideas came to light, like game stores, conventions, meetup.com, or even just google. In our need to continue reminiscing about Gen Con, we talked about the Q-Workshop Dice, Midnight Syndicate's trailer to The Dead Matter, and The Dead Gentleman's movie, Dorkness Rising. Our discussion of media continues to talk about Journey to the Center of the Earth and Igor. And in our own kind of media, Polymancer releases their podcast, DiceCast. We welcome Polymancer to the world of podcasting. Coming conventions of note include RinCon over Halloween weekend and the Caribbean Gamer Cruise. We also had correspondence regarding FlatCon and Gamer's Reunion. Be sure to check out our dialect training CDs for roleplayer's, storytellers, and other casual pretenders. Accents include the Queen's English, Cockney, Irish, and Scottish. Accent Your Character can be found at Paizo, Lovecraftiana, and RPG Now.

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Talk like a pirate day is upon us, and we are adding some flavor with a variety of pirate themed games, but we can't stop there. We talk about a bunch of titles to include Seventh Sea (and Swashbucker), Plunder, Treasure Fleet, Jamaica, Pirate's Cove, Pieces of Eight, Anno 1503, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Tomb, Hunter, and Delta Green. We are participating in a contest at podcastawards.com and are asking for your nominations. Please take a moment to fill out this form with your favorite shows. We are encouraging the GAMA Trade Show seminars for Best Business Podcast, Family Night for Best Educational Podacst, and this one, Out of Character, for best Gaming Podcast. Our travel itinerary is filling up. We are delighted to be sponsoring the open gaming for Tucson's premier gaming convention, RinCon, and will be hosting the Chaos Challenge there. We will also be setting sail for a Caribbean Gamer Cruise in March. We invite you to join us on both of these occasions. As an added benefit to joining us on the cruise, you will have a chance to win a trip to Gen Con for the North American Settlers of Catan Championship. We talk about a host of friends on today's show, to include Ron from The Game's the Thing, and Yog-Sothoth. Paul (of Cthulhu) is putting together a massive collection of Yoggie stuff for a DVD and invites you to participate in the production and to be privie to some added benefits. We also mention Fear the Boot and World-Wide Wing Night on November 8th. Jeremiah also sings praises to another favorite game store of his. Games by James has shown him excellent support in demonstrating games in their store and helping him make a selection for a gift. Jeremiah usually frequents The Source and is always pleased to shop there as well.

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Today's focus is on Dragon*Con and the good time Don had at the show. One of the highlights this year was the Mad Scientists Ball, where ArcAttack entertained the crowd of evil geniuses with their singing Tesla coils. We also got caught up to most of the feedback leading up to the convention continuing on topics such as the role-playing table tips and opening a new topic on gaming with friends you don't like to game with. Some of the board games discussed on the show include Pandemic, the Kingsport Horror expansion to Arkham Horror, Amuse Amaze, Ilium, Nautilus, Agricola, Jungle Speed, Theophrastus, and Settlers of Catan.

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We settle back in after a convention spree. We got back from Gen Con and took off for Dragon*Con, where Don accepted a Parsec Award for The Game Kennel as The Best Gaming Podcast. We held off some on our Dragon*Con report to talk mostly about Gen Con, especially the excitement we had visiting with you. Your support is quite literally keeping us going. We touched on a number of games today. Board games included Theophrastus, Horus, Wings of War, La Strada, and Red November. We also talked quite a bit about Beyond the Mountains of Madness for Call of Cthulhu. We mentioned a lot of friends in todays show. They include Meg from The Brilliant Gameologists, Dave from Purple Pawn, and Paul from Yog-Sothoth. We had some fun with Goldfarb's recent comments slighting Dungeons & Dragons players. Wired had some fun with it. We found a great response on YouTube. ICV2 also had some good follow-up on it. We were most pleased with Hasbro's response. We close with a follow-up interview with Chief Kobold, Wolfgang Baur, who shared a victory for the Diana Jones award with Grey Ranks by Jason Morningstar this year for Open Design. We also shared news that Polymancer Studios has announced a new magazine to come out called Paladin.

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Don and Jeremiah record in front of a live audience at Gen Con 2008. We are joined by Mike Selinker, Derek Guder, and Alex Yeager. We talk about a variety of events going on at Gen Con to include Gygax memorials, the results of the Catan World Championships, the ENnies, and Johan, the Settler of Catan. Some games mentioned in today's show include Unspeakable Words, Changeling: The Lost, Yetisburg, and Settlers of Catan. Thanks again to everyone who has made Gen Con special to us. We look forward to seeing you again next year!

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We are all back together in the studio again and dive into something we have wanted to talk about for a long time. This is a collection of tips you can implement to run a smoother roleplaying game. We also respond to some feedback that continues with the Are Games Art discussion, started by Johnathan. In other news, Wizards will be closing down Gleemax. We touch on the Southern Arizona Gamer's Association's new projects, the coordinated campaigns. One is for World of Darkness, the other is going to either be using Dungeons & Dragons 4.0 rules, or Pathfinder. One of the project participants, Berin, wrote a good introduction on his blog after we finished recording where you can learn more. Other games discussed in todays show include Horus, Settlers of the Stone Age, Race for the Galaxy, Loot, and War of the Ring. Next up, Gen Con. If you are going to be there, be sure to take note of our scheduled events. We also want to wish Curt and the Wandering Geek podcast luck at this year's ENnie awards.

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Derek is missing from today's show, but we have several clips from some friends we talked to at Origins. Each with good stories to tell. Ron from The Games the Thing launched a topic of game store ethics that we are eager to hear your opinions on. We also talked to Kim from Gamer Adventures. There are several gaming cruises coming up. We have got to get ourselves on one of these trips. Perhaps we will participate sometime soon. Some of our news was around the changes with West End Games. It sounds like the final punches have been thrown. We are looking forward to Gen Con. Mike Selinker is going to join us for our live Out of Character episode. There are several other events also on the schedule to check out.

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Today's main topic fascinated us. Are games considered art? We even get into the topic of how gaming itself may or may not be art. Join in the discussion. We talk some about our friends at Polymancer. They had a little car wreck, but things seem to be going well. Their magazine is certainly looking good. They also have other projects coming. We talk about D&D some, mostly to bring up the Chaos Challenge at RinCon. Many will enter; all but one will die. The last one standing wins. We want to thank Jeff Greiner from The Tome for his help at Origins. Find out how to get free copies of Accent Your Character by listening to his show. You can now order the CDs or the digital downloads from Paizo, Lovecraftiana, and RPGNow. Gen Con is the next coming convention that we are biting our nails in excitement for. There is an entire track of events to participate in. We can't wait to see you there!

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We area really enjoying the new features of the network. You can create your own custom feed and put a player on your web site. Choose what shows you want with mycast and listen to the rest of the instructions in today's show. We would like to thank Myriad Games for including us on their web site and in their store. Our topic today is about using games in professional training arenas, especially sales. This and other topics brought up games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Ars Magica, La Strada, Traders of Genoa, Settlers of Catan, Settlers of the Stone Age, China Rails, Chez Dork, and Ben Hvrt. On the topic of gaming, Don also could not help but to bring up player driven campaigns and a reference to Kobold Quarterly. We are right in the middle of convention season. We talk about Con Games, Origins, Gen Con, Dragon*Con, and RinCon. We also talk about the schedule of events we have planned at Gen Con. We also mention Crunch-Waffle's metagame. In the podcast arena we have to thank Jeff from The Tome for helping us at Origins. We also received word from Itmar of Hamishakia and DeAnna from Madhatterrgames.

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