Haste - The Official Obsidian Portal Podcast

 [Episode 39] Announcements The d20Monkey caption contest is about to end, but it still demands you pour some sugar on it, as do Micah and I demand you tell us outrageous lies about how you got into gaming! Gnome Stew's 'Never Unprepared' The folks over at gnome stew are releasing another great tool for GM's this summer with Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master's Guide to Session Prep. It will be over 100 pages complete w/ artwork, published as a 6x9 softcover, pdf, and various other electronic formats. It should be ready this June/July, stay tuned and we'll be sure to re-visit the book on the podcast once it's out. Dungeon Generator Poster With the re-release of the 1e D&D books by WotC, this kickstarter is meant to be a complimentary 3'x2' poster that allows you to generate random dungeons. Done in full artwork in a very old school D&D style makes for a very cool collectors item, if not just a really neat conversation piece for your game room. Stretch goals are already completed, so grab one of these before it's too late! These Are Not the Rules You're Looking For In a recent Legends & Lore column, Mike Mearls discusses things like character "roles" in D&DNext as well as guidelines like the XP budget and treasure charts. He says he wants us to ignore some of the rules in the upcoming edition of D&D. Are these things everyone needs for their game, only useful for new players? Tell us how you feel about all of this in the comments. Tip Corner Use characters to their fullest on your wiki, hit up the textile tutorial if you’re not familiar. Really fill out the cunch and fluff blocks, you wont regret it the first time your folder full of character sheets gets lost or soaked in the rain! Twitter Question @d20Monkey asks: You’re trapped on an island with cool gamers and you can only have 1 game that ISN’T dnd. what do you have to play? Listen to find out! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" | Outro: "Stande Alone" | by LukHash |

 [Episode 38] Announcements The d20Monkey caption contest demands you to pour some sugar on it this week, as do Micah and I demand you tell us outrageous lies! Lords of Waterdeep The newest D&D board game being offered by WotC is a departure from their previous dungeon crawl and territory domination style games. Lords of Waterdeep is a euro style game for 2-5 players and it is dead simple, quick to play, a lot of fun and the cheapest of all the D&D board games. Micah and I discuss! Be sure to check out my review & unboxing of the game too! Dysfunctional and Co-Dependency  Steve Winter has written a really great piece over on his blog The Howling Tower about big name games like D&D and the caveats that come along with them. Steve discusses the nature of the game itself and touches on some really good topics, you should read his blog on the regular! Micah and I discuss the cyclic nature of the game and more! Baldur's Gate "Enhanced Edition" Announced After much teasing and toying the Baldur's Gate website has finally revealed that an "enhanced" edition of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 will be released this summer. Updated graphics and UI, new content from the original creators for the game but beyond that we don't know much. Listen in as I insult the very fabric of Micah's geek credibility! Tip Corner Keep a loot log for your sessions. Players often forget the stuff they looted, assign someone to keep a log of all items looted during your sessions and it should avoid confusions and argument later on down the road. Maybe toss them some kind of benny for keeping track too! Twitter Question @JssSandals asks: What don’t you want to see in DnDNext? Listen to find out! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" | Outro: "Stande Alone" | by LukHash |

 [Episode 37] Announcements Tonight we're joined by Sersa Victory of Save Versus Death who has recently released the Fourthcore Alphabet and re-released the Fourthcore Armory among many other great projects! Don’t forget that Micah and I are still asking you to tell us fabulous lies about how you got into gaming. Also, you need to get to captioning the latest d20Monkey comic strip, the fate of the goblin strip club depends on it! CDistiller One Page 4e Character Sheet CDistiller is an online character sheet tool for 4e D&D, it manages to cram everything you need onto a single page and acts as a fully functional, interactive character sheet. It's a pretty awesome tool, but did it come a little too late? "What is an RPG" Sections? It seems like almost every RPG rulebook you pick up has a section devoted to "What is a Role Playing Game?". Are these nescessary? A blog post over at Stargazers World asks, Sersa and I discuss the good and the bad of these segments. Lethality in D&D / D&DNext The D&D internet scene was all astir last week with the discussion of character death, save or die mechanics and other buzz regarding lethality in the next iteration of the game. This is a hot button for a lot of people, we weigh in on the topics. How do you feel about save or die and/or character death? Tip Corner Be wary of how you name your characters, we wrote a short blog post as sort of an OP community PSA. Check it out and let us know if you’ve got any tips or tricks we didn't cover. Twitter Question @cdistiller asks: How far in advance do you plot story? Do you 5×5 your villains as you go, or have a novel prepared? Listen to find out! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" | Outro: "Stande Alone" | by LukHash |

 [Episode 36] Announcements We've got a brand spanking new d20Monkey comic caption contest and of course Solstice, the hottest and freshest campaign of the month ready for your enjoyment so be sure to check them out! Now, on with the show! Marvel RPG Launches The new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying has finally launched and boy is everyone giving it some great praise. Normal price is 20$ for the softcover 13$ for the PDF (if you're quick, DriveThruRPG might still have it on sale for 9$ for the GM's day Sale) and comes with everything you need to play - characters, an adventure, and rules for making up your own superhero as well. Some really great people contributed to this game, so be sure to check it out! V20 Deluxe Kickstarter White Wolf is doing a kickstarter for a very prestigious Vampire: The Masquerade Companion, it's leather bound, silver gilt edged and topped off with a red silk bookmark. It will cost you 50$ to score one of these but it seems like it's well worth it for any dedicated Vampire fan, be sure to give it a look. Boring "How You Got Into Gaming" Stories Why do people always ask this? Does anyone actually have a non-typical 'how I got into gaming' story? Should we all start making up fabulous lies? Yes! We should, so why don’t you guys make some up and put them in the comments below? Winner gets a month of Ascendant time, and a T-shirt! (Please, keep the stories under 200 words.) Tip Corner Check out our new versioning feature for wiki pages, adventure logs, characters, items. View, compare, and restore old versions of your documents. It’s a rewind button for your campaign! Twitter Question Twitter poll results: 3rd person vs 1st person role playing. Listen to find out! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" | Outro: "Stande Alone" | by LukHash |

 [Episode 35] Announcements We're joined to night by game designer and artist Jeff Dee. He's got lots going on between  Cavemaster, Villains & Vigilantes, and recreating his lost TSR artwork. Jeff introduces himself and talks a bit about what he's got going on, and before we jump into topics I urge you to check out this month's d20Monkey caption contest while you still can! Sex at the Gaming Table Nevermet Press had a blog post up recently about sex at your gaming table and the awkwardness it may bring, Jeff and I discuss our experiences and would love to hear yours as well. Dragon Age Set 3 Open Playtest Looks like Green Ronin has started open playtesting their upcoming Dragon Age set 3, fans of the AGE system should eat this up! Includes lots of stuff like higher levels, new talents, specializations, spells, and monsters. The Dragon Age RPG has really gotten quite a following, if you've not had a chance to check it out, perhaps now is the time? School Daze Kickstarter Did high school suck? Did it need more pizazz like it always has in the movies, was it also lacking zombies, aliens, and/or vampires? A really cool school based RPG has recently launched (and, as of now been funded) on Kickstarter. School Daze is a narrative driven, mechanics light RPG by Tracy Barnett (a school teacher himself) that allows you to live out high school the way it should have been: awesome. Buffy the Vampire slayer, The Breakfast Club, The Faculty and basically anything else you can imagine can be pulled off easily with School Daze. Be sure to check out the video, and the comic d20Monkey did about the game while you're at it. If the next funding level is reached, backers are going to get custom dice by Chessex & dice bags by Dragon Chow Dice Bags! Tip Corner Use our forums! We've got a ton of great people in our community that are always willing to give advice and tips for your game, or help out if you have any gaming related questions, wiki questions, and a lot more! Twitter Question @OnlineDM1 asks: What advice do you have for GMs who will be running games at a convention for the first time? Listen to find out! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" | Outro: "Stande Alone" | by LukHash |

 [Episode 34] Announcements Our character contest has just wrapped up, congrats to our winning characters Shank and Miner! We've also got a fresh d20Monkey caption contest up, so go check it out! Story Forge Kickstarter There's a really cool kickstarter up for a writers utility called Story Forge, they basically appear to work like Tarot cards for writers. These could be used by DM's, novelists, or basically writers of any kind. 25$ is the entry level to score a deck if the kickstarter succeeds. Micah and I discuss! ENWorld Presents Short weekly casts are all the rage! ENWorld is bringing you RPG news in about 5 minutes or less in video format with host Matt James. Micah and I discuss and hope for more episodes in the near future. Iron Kingdoms RPG News! Privateer press has finally given us some more tasty tidbits about the upcoming Iron Kingdoms RPG on their blog. They discuss the feel of the game mechanics as well as outline the first 3 books coming down the pipe. The rules are very familiar to hordes/warmachines so far, good thing or bad? Tip Corner Don’t just use OP to track games you’ve already started, there’s a reason why campaigns have the “In planning” option. Use it to organize your thoughts on your game and collaborate with your players before you ever even sit down to roll dice or make characters! Twitter Question @SaveVersusDeath asks: What do you feel the role of bloggers and podcasters is/should be in this transition period for D&D? Listen to find out! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" ~ LukHash | Outro: "Stande Alone" ~ LukHash |

 [Episode 33] Announcements Our character and comic contests just wrapped up, winners will be announced shortly, and be sure to check out Legacy of the Realms - February's Campaign of the Month! Also, Kobold Quarterly is giving away a free issue so go and snatch it up before you wind up broken hearted (offer ends Feb 14th). Monster Stand Ins Like minis but not into how expensive/random they are? Check out Monster Stand Ins, a huge assortment of plastic stand ups for use in your games. You also get a printable PDF of the stand ups so you can print your own as well. Need 50 kobolds? No problem! This kickstarter is going to end shortly so if you'd like to get in on the awesomeness you better act fast! Update: The stand ins have been cancelled but there is a new project that is just as good! A Lesson In Kickstarter Speaking of Kickstarter, Daniel Solis (Writers Dice, Do: Pilgrims of the flying temple) has a great post up on his blog about some of the financial ins and outs of funding kickstarter projects. There's also some good wisdom in the comments as well, definitely worth checking out for any of you entrepreneurs out there! FLGS Deaths Self Inflicted? Stargazers world has a post up about FLGS's closing down, is it always the economy? Poor customer service and downright unprofessional staff seem to plague some game shops. Micah and I discuss how this may be true, but there is also a much bigger picture affecting local game shops (and other niche businesses) these days aside from just poor customer service. Tip Corner Got a new player coming? Update your campaign homepage with a basic runthrough of your campaign. Don’t expect them to read each and every adventure log and wiki page, but maybe they’ll read the basics of the campaign. Twitter Question @Toperatl asks: Tips to get players re-engaged with a long running campaign? Listen to find out! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" ~ LukHash | Outro: "Stande Alone" ~ LukHash |

[Episode 32] Announcements None today other than yelling at you all to hit up the d20Monkey caption contest! I'm joined by Matt Dukes (@DireFlail) and Tracy (@Rolling20s) and we're getting straight to business here! An Edition for All Editions We explore the first seminar that talks about the 3 pillars of D&D: Combat, Exploration, and Roleplaying. We also talk about what this upcoming edition means in terms of modularity and where exactly it is in terms of completion. Hint: Pre-Alpha Class Design  Baseline complexity, Vancian magic, modularity and a ton of other elements were discussed during this seminar. We all discuss, be sure to check out our video of this seminar if you get a chance. Future D&D Products The future products seminar was full of goodies for all walks of D&D fans it seems, we talk about the upcoming board game Lords of Waterdeep (pic), Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms, Dungeon Command, and more. Be sure to check the video of the product seminar for all the nitty gritty! But Wait, There's More! After our recording there was still one more seminar to go: Reimagining Skills & Ability Scores for D&DNExt. Be sure to check it out if you haven't yet. Not only was it the best recording of the bunch, but some of the most stimulating of the bunch regarding game design. Hope you enjoyed all of our DDXP coverage and our very D&D specific, exclusive podcast straight from the convention. Next week we're back to our regularly scheduled non-D&D saturated audio-only podcast. See you then! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" ~ LukHash | Outro: "Stande Alone" ~ LukHash |

 [Episode 31] Announcements Tonight we're joined by GM Steve Wollet, winner of January's Campaign of the Month acting as co-host. He gives us some cool tidbits from his game and discusses lots more with us. Also be sure to hit up our Tell Us About Your Character contest, as well as the d20Monkey caption contest! We're also going to DDXP this week so be sure to tell us what you'd like to see while we're there! WotC Reprints AD&D Books For Charity Yes, this is true. It looks as if the AD&D PHP, MM, and DMG will be reprinted by WotC to benefit the Gygax Memorial fund. With D&DNext approaching WotC is touting 1e playstyle to be possible once again, so perhaps these may serve a bit more than just nostalic purposes? These high quality hardbacks will have limited availability and new artwork so be sure to keep an eye on them if this interests you! Cavemaster RPG Kickstarter Cavemaster is an RPG being created by Jeff Dee (ex TSR artist, among many other credits) which is actually an rpg that cave men would have played. It is a Stonepunk style game set in an alternate history and looks very, very cool. Go check it out and be sure to watch the video if you get a chance, lots of cool goodies for backers too! Recompiling Digital D&D Matt Dukes (aka @Direflail / Vanir) over at Critical-Hits talks about the next iteration of D&D and how to get the digital tools for the game right this time around. Explains the parallels of modular D&D and the modular software that should accompany it. Bringing suggestions of new platforms to build upon in order to insure that all types of devices and OS's are able to access and use the content, and to allow the community to interface more directly this time around. Tip Corner Don’t just use OP (and especially the campaign forum) just for in-game stuff, use it for campaign meta-game discussion, talk about what you can do to make your game more fun. Heck use it to help decide what food to order, remember OP is here to make your game better in any way we possibly can! Twitter Question @DelayedSession asks: tokens vs. plastic miniatures? Listen to find out! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" ~ LukHash | Outro: "Stande Alone" ~ LukHash |

 [Episode 30] Announcements Tonight we are joined by Dave "The Game" Chalker, editor-in-chief of Critical Hits.com and freelancer of many, many facets. Dave has been doing some work on the Marvel heroes RPG with Margaret Weis Productions recently, among many other things including writing DDI articles and being one of the first to play test the next form of D&D. We've also got a fresh Caption Contest and Campaign of the Month, so be sure to check them out! New Dungeons & Dragons Announced After much speculation and rumor, the next iteration of D&D has finally been formally announced as being in development. Wizards is committing to taking a lot of play test feedback with this next edition as well as touting modularity and a version of D&D for those who love all editions of the game. Dave and I discuss what this means for the industry, and ourselves personally, among many other things. Evil Hat Announces Atomic Robo RPG A recent announcement by Evil Hat has got the internet all abuzz with joy regarding the Atomic Robo RPG. Based on an indie press comic about a robot built by Tesla himself, the game is sure to be a hit. If the awards for Dresden Files don't speak enough for themselves, the people at Evil Hat know how to do a license and the game's atmosphere will lend well to the FATE system they are so notorious for. Scheduled release is looking like 2013. Pathfinder Battles Launches! Another way for all of us to get our plastic crack has finally come to fruition, January 11th marks the launch of Pathfinder Battles. Mini's come in a variety of packages including the most recently announced single pack. Dave and I discuss mini's for a bit and remark on the extremely high quality Wizkids and Paizo are putting out here. Tip Corner Do you write really long adventure logs like me but you don’t want them clogging up your adventure log page? Use the tag on your posts to allow people to click to read the rest and keep your front page nice and tidy! Twitter Question @RJonesEsquire asks: What is the most controversial sacred cow WOTC SHOULD get rid of going into #dndnext? Listen to find out! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" ~ LukHash | Outro: "Stande Alone" ~ LukHash |

 [Episode 29] Announcements Check out the newest Campaign of the Month and first one of 2012, Star Trek Late Night! Also, we've got a winner for December and a new caption for the new year, ready for you guys to start cracking wise upon this month. Go forth and jest, fellow portallers! The Real Year In Review of D&D A piece published on critical hits serves to do its own justice of summing up D&D as a counter to the recent escapist pieces we covered last episode on D&D's past, present & future. While the article doesn't directly counter any statements made, it does give another (good) perspective on the state of the game. Ryan Dancey also wrote a small novella on the subject as a follow up, over at ENworld. Pathfinder Comic Book Paizo has announced that there will be a Pathfinder comic book coming in 2012. They are working with dynamite entertainment to produce the comic, adding yet another Pathfinder goodie to the list of schwag they have recently been kicking out! Skill Challenges, Ignore them or Simplify Them Rob Schwalb, D&D freelancer and author of many, many books recently wrote a few pieces on skill challenges and how to handle them, or to simply ignore them. Some great insight is provided here, Micah and I discuss thoroughly. Tip Corner Use the calendar and make events and collect RSVPs, but don’t stop there. On the day of the game, hit everyone up with a text message, email, call, facebook message, whatever. Just make sure to get some kind of final confirmation that they will be there! Twitter Question Justin Mason (via Facebook) asks: What are your thoughts on ambient music during gaming? Listen to find out! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" ~ LukHash | Outro: "Stande Alone" ~ LukHash |

 [Episode 28] Announcements Congratulations to DungeonMasterLoki and The Spelljoined for winning the 2011 Campaign of the Year! Also a huge congrats to all of the runner ups, everyone did a great job! D&D Past, Present, & Future Articles Recently, TheEscapist ran a series of articles about D&D, the most recent and final piece regarding the Future of D&D has been quite the talk of the internet, we strongly encourage you all to read the serires and share your opinions with us, Micah and I discuss in depth. Gaming Resolutions for 2012 Micah and I take turns going back and forth discussing each of our three gaming resolutions for 2012 and ask you guys for yours. Tell us what yours are and we'd like to feature/talk about them on the next podcast, but remember we can't do that without you guys actually chiming in! RPG Stack Exchange Recently we stumbled across a great resource for RPG players & GM's alike, even for people who are just inquiring about RPG's in general. Over at the RPG section of the Stack Exchange website you'll find a great community ready to answer all your questions and more. Micah & I discuss our experiences with the site. Tip Corner Sharing on Twitter and Facebook is a whole lot better now. You can edit what it says and make the posted shared message much more personalized. Check the share on Twitter/Facebook checkbox and see how it works. Twitter Question @Oldbie asks: How do we get back to the table after the holidays without a lot of catch-up? Listen to find out! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" ~ LukHash | Outro: "Stande Alone" ~ LukHash |

 [Episode 27] Announcements Campaign of the year voting starts now! Be sure to toss in some of your very own brand of funny on the holiday caption contest while you’re poking around the blog too! Topics Wizards of the Coast Layoffs Recently Rich Baker and Steve Winter were let go from Wizards of the Coast, both of them having been with the company since the TSR days. A thread at ENWorld is attempting to track who is currently still on staff at WotC. This seems like an almost systematic occurrence every year at WotC, Micah and I speculate and give well wishes to the recently departed. Also, on a related note Stephen Radney McFarland has wrote his final 'Save My Game' column for WotC as well. It seems more big changes are coming to D&D, perhaps we'll find out more at DDXP this year - Jerry will be there with coverage! Paizo's RPG Superstar The Paizo RPG Superstar contest for 2011 have started, and its a really cool way to usher in new blood to the tabletop world. The contest starts with a basic entry of "create a wondrous item" and from there 32 winners will be chosen to go on to various other challenges until only one remains! It seems like a good way to get your foot in the door of the RPG design industry, check it out! The Escapist's RPG Info Sheets The Escapist has some pretty cool fact sheets for RPG's covering topics from the occult stigma, stereotypes, and what playing tabletop role playing games is actually like and how they originated. There are two pieces: The RPG Fact Checker, and The 5 W's of RPG's. Check them out, they may not be of practical use for some, but I sure wish I had them when I was 15 and being accused of summoning the Beelzebubs in my bedroom. Tip Corner Did you know you can edit map markers once they are placed? Need to add something to one like an adventure log or other links, change colors? You can do it easily by just clicking the pin and hitting the edit icon. The map features have greatly improved so if you haven't used them a while, definitely check them out now! Twitter Question @Raddu76 asks:What needs to change to play D&D without a gridded map? I want to use terrain, like warhammer 40k, or other tabletop minis Listen to find out! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" ~ LukHash | Outro: "Stande Alone" ~ LukHash |

[Episode 26] Announcements New campaign of the month is here, and a new comic so check them out! Also, be sure to send us any topics you'd like to see us cover - get them in front of us any way you want and we'll try and cover them! Topics Dungeon A Day Closes Down Recently, some more bad tidings have come to the land of RPG's. Hate to follow up bad news from last week (HERO), with more bad news this week but there it is. Sounds like Monte Cook handed the site over to Super Genius games back in 2010, but financially it's not working out so they have to abandon ship. Keep in mind this is just for Dungeon A Day and not Super Genius games entirely. Sit will remain up until at least April of 2012. Penny Arcade Switches to Pathfinder So in case you haven't heard, the guys at Penny Arcade have switched to Pathfinder. Dedicating a series of blog posts, and 7 comics to the topic so this is huge, not only for Paizo but WotC as well. They explain that the game was fun but as it goes on it becomes mechanically dysfunctional and they also found that their players were focusing far too much on the power cards instead of interacting with each other and the world around them. Premise Concealment and the Overvaluation of Secrecy Robin Laws gives us a short blog post about the roots of Secrecy in tabletop gaming that of course, tie all the way back to D&D. Micah and I discuss secret doors and more, and does everything in gaming need to be so secret? Tip Corner Keep all the XP for the various players on a single wiki page. Every time XP is awarded, update the page. Make sure you track the following: XP for each player The last time the page was updated (ie. ‘this is up-to-date as of Dec 12’) If you’re diligent, it can become the de-facto XP listing. If your players have a discrepancy on their sheet, unless they have a good excuse then what is on the XP page is the law. Twitter Question @SupersaijinKyle asks: Do you prefer creating your own world for a game or would you rather take a campaign setting and carve your own niche in it? Listen to find out! Music Credits | Intro: "Prelude" ~ LukHash | Outro: "Stande Alone" ~ LukHash |

Intro: "Prelude" ~ LukHash Outro: "Stande Alone" ~ LukHash Announcements New campaign of the month is here, and a new comic so check them out! Topics Paizo Announces Pathfinder MMO A big announcement over at Paizo recently shocked the RPG masses with their announcement of creating a Pathfinder MMORPG. The project is very early in development and appears to be by a company by the name of Goblinworks which is also headed by Paizo folk as well. No release date yet, so check the FAQ. Micah and I discuss and keep our fingers crossed for them! HERO System Layoffs Some sad news has come from the home front of HERO games, in that the three guys who have made up the company for the past 30 years are leaving the company. While they did not say it was certianly the end, it does sound like it. Their game system is known far and wide, this is a sad thing to see happen. We wish them the best. The Fourthcore Alphabet A really cool gaming aide for any game master called the Fourthcore Alphabet has recently been released, it was created by fourthcore founder Sersa Victory with artwork by Brian Patterson. Its a great tool for any GM, not just those who play 4e D&D, it isvery mechanically light and almost completely system neutral. The book is a goldmine for evocative and dark content generation for your games, it can be picked up in PDF or print at lulu.com and comes highly recommended by the OP crew. Tip Corner You can “gift” a character to another player (as the GM). This way, if you have a player who just refuses to put their character on the site, you can create it yourself and then give it to them. Just go to the edit character screen and scroll all the way to the bottom. From there you can choose who to give it to. Twitter Question @Poorly_Designed How often do you take story and encounter ideas and suggestions from your players? Listen to find out!