RPG Design PanelCast

Creativity In Business: Pixar’s Success and Lessons For Tabletop Publishing Recorded at Metatopia 2015 Presented by Jeff Tidball, Cam Banks Managing a company of creative people can be challenging. New ideas are always being introduced into structured spaces that resist change and fear innovation and imagination. Tabletop game publishers and managers can learn from the success of Pixar, Inc, who have mastered the art of ushering in and protecting the new, releasing their employees from common limits on creativity, and not being afraid to try things in often radically different ways to create bigger and better projects As a fine example of creativity in business, the kickstarter for Unknown Armies 3rd Edition is currently up. Dig into the occult weirdness from Atlas Games! You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes

Project Budgeting For Tabletop Games Recorded at Metatopia 2015 Presented by Jeff Tidball, Cat Tobin & Justin Jacobson The process of producing a board game, card game, or role playing game is lousy, with opportunities for financial disaster. Learn what financial factors you should take into account when planning a game production, and walk through a spreadsheet that’ll help you plan your own projects by estimating their profitability (or lack thereof). You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes

Formalizing Your Game Business Recorded at Metatopia 2015 Presented by Fred Hicks, Steve Segedy, Darren Watts and Brennan Taylor Is your company ready to take the next step? We’ll discuss how to turn a tiny game company into a slightly-larger game company. You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes

Matters Of Scale: Running A Small Gaming Business Recorded at Metatopia 2015 Presented by Fred Hicks, Rob Donoghue and Steve Segedy Game publishing is a very different beast depending on how new you are to the industry and how much reach you and your game might have. Small press and independent creators will find that which printers, distributors and fulfillment channels they might use varies wildly depending on their goals and how much risk they’re willing to take. You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes

Genius Loci: Your Setting is the Character Recorded at Metatopia 2014 Presented by Will Hindmarch Places, rather than protagonists, are often what RPG campaigns have in common because the characters are bespoke but the setting is shared. How does your game’s space inform its setting – and vice versa? How does setting pose and reflect theme? Settings can be characters in their own right, tuned and portrayed through your design to dramatize the themes and issues at the heart of your game. In this seminar, I’ll share some of what I set out to do and some of what I’ve learned designing Project: Dark and its play spaces. You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes

Opacity, Transparency, and Player Incentives in Your Strategy Board Game Recorded at Metatopia 2014 Presented by Gil Hova Do people understand what’s going on in your game? Not just the rules, but can they tell who’s winning? If they should watch out for a dangerous player? If they know exactly how their move will impact their next few turns? Join designer Gil Hova as he discusses transparency and opacity in strategy board games. We will discuss what makes a game mechanism transparent or opaque, how they work (or fail) in existing games, and how to use them to incentivize players to make interesting plays. You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes

Lovecraft WTF Recorded at Metatopia 2014 Presented by Julia Ellingboe, Kenneth Hite, Darren Watts & Bill White. H. P. Lovecraft is one of the grandfathers of weird fiction and horror. His racist and anti-Semitic beliefs are no secret. They are the foundation of his fictional worlds. They are interwoven throughout his work and for many readers, impossible to separate from the genius of his writing. Can a Lovecraft-inspired game make his work more accessible? It’s okay to like problematic things. This panel will be neither an attack nor a defense of Lovecraft’s work. In a broad sense, it will be a conversation about how designers might interpret or use source material with themes or images that are problematic. Apologies for sound quality issues. You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes

Explicit vs Role-Based Knowledge Recorded at Metatopia 2014 Presented by Clark Valentine, Shane Harsch and Evan Torner. This seminar poses the question of whether it is possible to support a detailed, knowledge-rich environment for an RPG without creating a situation where the character that should know how to do something actually does not. Where is the balance between detail and role? You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes

Editing Rulebooks Recorded at Metatopia 2014 Presented by Joshua Yearsley. Your rulebook is the heart of your game, so why not give it the love it deserves? In this seminar, you’ll learn ten best practices for improving the structure, style, and clarity of your rulebook. Got any burning questions about rules craft? Get answers from a professional rulebook editor. Additional references and a copy of the presentation is available at http://joshuayearsley.com/case/ten-things-you-can-do-to-make-your-rulebook-awesome/   You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes  

Social Media Action Steps Recorded at Metatopia 2014 Presented by Beth Rimmels. Social media is a crucial marketing step, especially for new and small businesses. Even better, it can cost you little to nothing, but can be confusing or overwhelming. This panel will explain what’s essential, where to start (and on which social media channel), free and low-cost tools that will make your life easier, and how to grow an audience organically. You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes  

Executing a Smart Crowdfunding Campaign Recorded at Metatopia 2014 Presented by Fred Hicks, Joshua A. C. Newman & Hannah Shaffer How do you plan your crowdfunding campaign? How done do you need to be before you open? How do you engage your community? How do you plan for all possible outcomes? Joshua A.C. Newman (Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack and Shock: Social Science Fiction), Fred Hicks (Fate Core, Designers & Dragons, and more), and Hannah Shaffer (Questlandia) share their experiences and then ditch out on their planned talk to address your questions once they realize they can’t afford shipping.   Special Kickstarter Mentions Sig: The City Between         Headspace RPG         ******************* You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes  

The Best Practices for Information Organization in Tabletop RPGs Recorded at Metatopia 2014 Presented by Brennan Taylor, Matt Wilson, Meredith Reitman, Krista White & John Stavropolous Tabletop RPGs serve as both a “let’s play!” and a reference document. RPGs designers and writers often attend to one of these goals at the expense of the other. Come to this panel to learn about professional theories of information organization, best practices for making the important information in your games findable and learn lessons from experienced game designers who have made information organization innovations and mistakes in their own games. You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes  

Learn RPG Design Redux Recorded at Gencon 2015 Presented by Jason Pitre, Caleb Stokes and Andreas Walters  This panel, sponsored by the Indie Game Developer Network is a fresh new exploration of how to start roleplaying game design by focussing on mission statements, the important questions of game design, and other gems. Also an absurd number of references to games including, but not limited to: Inspectres, Headspace, Dog Eat Dog, Paranoia, Fiasco and Apocalypse World. There is a reference to cards with links to a ton of resources? All of that treasure-trove is available over here. You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes

Women in Game Design: Building Networks and Forming Mentorships Recorded at Metatopia 2014 Presented by Emily Care-Boss, Julia Ellingboe, Shoshana Kessock, Amanda Valentine & Avonelle Wing. The “gaming industry” has been a brutal place to be a woman this year. Join our esteemed panelists for a conversation about the need for strong support networks and finding mentors in a turbulent and sometimes hostile industry.   You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes

Dramatic Editing : Creating the Editing Bay Recorded at Metatopia 2014 Presented by Will Hindmarch How does your design facilitate dramatic editing at the game table? Do you have strict mechanisms that put editing into the hands of the players or their characters through overt metaphors or in-setting magic? Or do you provide procedures and guidelines for collaborating and revising action during play? Dramatic editing at the table allows for players to propose and explore actions without them necessarily making it “on stage” or committing it to “film” and that can be a messy freedom or a beautiful drudge. Let’s look at ways to facilitate what you want to happen at the table. Note that the sound quality is lousy in the first minute of audio, but it gets much better after that point. You can subscribe to us here!  RSS Feed iTunes