We're only mostly dead!

Hello Faithful Listeners,

I wanted to let everyone know that the recent absence of activity is not due to the fading of the podcast, but instead the arrival of the newest gamer to our family. While only a few days old, I hope that she will soon help round out our adventuring party.

Look here again in a few weeks for new reviews and actual plays.

Kindly,
A Game of Whit's

Ep.43 Scratching the Rules Itch

In this episode we have a roundtable discussion about what we like in our rules, from light to heavy, narrative games, and generally what scratches our rules itch best.

Show Audio

tremulus Kickstarter Launched!

If you've been enjoying our tremulus sneak peeks lately, you'll be pleased to know that there kickstarter has just launched! As an RPG that strongly evokes the literary tone of Lovecraft, I encourage anyone who is a fan of H.P.L., horror, or story-games like Fiasco to check the tremulus kickstarter out. It's definitely the most excited I've been about a new Lovecraftian horror game in a long time. Let's all make this great idea happen!

Ep.34 Miami Gaming Authority Interview

In this episode we talk with the members of the Miami Gaming Authority, the stars of our actual play podcasts. Sadly one of our players was out this evening, but we will fill in the rest on a future actual play.


Show Audio

Three to See: Great Crowdfunded Projects

This time on Three to See I wanted to feature some great projects which have secured my attention lately:

Project Zomboid has been around for some time, but each new test build improves the game. I'm a sucker for zombie games, and this scratches the itch for real survival game-play. While its a video game, there is a whole scripting language the developers have designed, which promises for custom stories and highly elaborated custom sandboxes. If you love this kind of thing and somehow haven't seen this, totally check it out at http://projectzomboid.com/blog/. You can even support the game early and test all the versions released.

Another new crowdfunded video game, Spy Party, has an awesome concept. It's early in development, but basically purports to be a thinking-man's spy game. It's a sniper with a single bullet itching to make an international incident versus a subtle spy trying to accomplish hidden objectives. Like all great projects funded by fans (whether on kickstarter, indie go-go, or all on their own) it just needs some help to be fully realized. A great two-player game that certainly evokes those feelings I look for in a suspense RPG. Check it out at http://www.spyparty.com/

Last, and probably what I'm most excited about, is Race to Adventure! This is a board game from Evil Hat Productions. These are the publishers of Spirit of the Century, Don't Rest Your Head, and the awesome Dresden Files RPG. This board game uses the same pulpy setting as Spirit of the Century, including the Century Club, Rocket Packs, and sentient apes! Best of all, this game appears to be targeted toward newbies to euro-gaming as well as veterans, and has a quick play time. These are both great things to have in one's library. Check out their kickstarter at: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evilhat/race-to-adventure-a-spirit-of-the-centurytm-board

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Follow the link on the left to our forum, or click here, and join in on the discussion and tell us what you like and didn't like about the show. You can also find many other great podcasts over at RPG Crosstalk.

Three to See: Gaming Podcasts

I'm starting a new feature, Three to See, here on A Game of Whit's. The plan is to share three things that I think are great and want to share with our listeners/readers.

This time its great gaming podcasts you might be interested in checking out.

Critical Hit

I'm not big on D&D actual play audio, as I think the market is a bit saturated. However this podcast is very high quality, has great game play, and is a great way to introduce new players that like listening to podcasts.

Fear the Boot

Irreverent and entertaining gaming discussion with a great following. These folks really discuss the issues that we encounter in gaming, as well as the kind of table chatter that keeps me laughing after any given episode.

RoleplayDNA

The latest brainchild of the folks who put together The Game's the Thing. They have a neat roundtable setup, essentially a McLaughlin Group of gaming, in which they record both audio and blog. Their previous show was a staple of mine, and the new show is shaping up nicely.

News: WaRP, Dominion, TableTop, Classic Reviews

Hello Everyone, it's been a busy week, but there are some really neat things going on out there in cyberspace.

Close on the heels of the 13th age announcement, another Jonathan Tweet-related news item just began circulating. Atlas Games has announced that Over the Edge by Jonathan Tweet and Robin Laws will be released to an Open Gaming License. Over the Edge has inspired a ton of indy games since its release, and remains an awesome system and setting.

Have you played Dominion? Some of you may have just laughed out loud at that question. It's a bit hard not to, given its status as a Barnes and Noble board-game section mainstay. What's neat is there is an online website where you can play with others, without the need to harangue your friends and loved ones into another game. The art is sparse, but the game-play is spot-on. Check it out at http://dominion.isotropic.org/

There is a new episode of TableTop where they play another classic, Settlers of Catan. It's awesome stuff guys, and I really hope they start to work in things like Mouse Guard, Fiasco, or maybe a D&D 4e board-game. I think the coolest part of the show is all the nerd guests who are very successful and positive role models.

To help get the highest quality audio, A Game of Whit's will soon be upgrading its audio equipment. Once we're set up, expect less tin-can in the podcast, especially in Actual Play recordings. I'll also continue to re-record classic reviews in the podcast format, for those who prefer my dulcet tones to a screen.

News: 13th Age and Tabletop

There are some very cool things that have come up on the Horizon that have me excited.

The first is 13th Age, a game being authored by Jonathan Tweet (Ars Magica, Over the Edge, and 3e) and Rob Heinsoo (4e, Dreamblade, Three-Dragon Ante). This is basically a fantasy game with old-school sensibilities in its tone, and given the people involved, it will be right to my taste. The art on their page (http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=7750) looks very neat and I look forward to hearing more in the coming weeks!

The second is the newest addition to the YouTube Geek and Sundry channel (a.k.a. Felicia Day and Friend's YouTube), which is the Wil Wheaton hosted TableTop. This is essentially a godsend as it is a normal (well mostly normal) show about geeky boardgames (and I hope one day RPGs) where the fact that everyone on the show being a gamer is not a joke (I'm looking at you Big Bang Theory). These are well dressed, well mannered individuals who don't live in their mothers' basements but enjoy gaming. I might be making a mountain of a molehill here, but shows like this give me hope that the gaming industry will live a good long time.

Be sure to check these out!

MGA Update - Epic Gygax Conclusion and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying One-shot

Hello Everyone,

In addition to reviews and discussion I also like to keep everyone up to date with what is going on at the table with the Miami Gaming Authority, the gaming group to which I belong.

Last night brought us the epic conclusion of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, the classic Gary Gygax module. The GM for this campaign, Dan, recast the original adventure to work with Savage Worlds.


It's been a long time since he took the GM seat, and pulled off a pretty ambitious undertaking for his return. He also added some extra spice to the end, including some extra meta-plot, a self-destruct sequence, and diving away from an explosion. Now we fervently hope that our poor characters didn't irradiate themselves too much to reproduce in the process. A good time had by all.

Next up I'll be running a one-shot of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. This may end up replacing Savage Worlds for the upcoming Necessary Evil campaign if it plays well for our group. For those unfamiliar with it, Necessary Evil is a plot-point campaign for Savage Worlds written by Clint Black, Scott Pyle, an others. The conceit of the setting is that an alien invasion has eradicated the super-hero population of Earth. The only people left to save the world now are the super-villains. It's a bit toward the "grim'n'gritty" side, but has a dark humor about it which both loves and lampoons its source material. I'm hoping the system change will ramp up the comics flavor, if it's not to taste we'll have our go-to Savage Worlds to fall back on.

Expect more updates as they develop, hope that you enjoy hearing about our exploits!

MGA Update: Gary Gygax Galore and a Pathfinder One-shot

A quick update from the Miami Gaming Authority, the stalwart gaming group of which I am proud to be a member!

Our current main game is a retro-reboot of S3-Expedition to the Barrier Peaks by Gary Gygax. We've been running it in our go-to game system, Savage Worlds. It's been quite a flashback to be playing this old module. What's even better about it is Dan, one of our players from the beginning of MGA, took up the GM reins again after not having touched them since his college days. So far we've escaped zapping, trampling, mind-control, poisoning, amateur surgery, and tainted meat... but we've still got several levels to go at least!

I've also started running the one-shot (more like a 3-shot at least) of Pathfinder that I mentioned previously. We really wanted to try out what Paizo has done with the OGL, as many of us haven't played D&D since 3.5 (or even 2nd!). The plot centers around a mercenary company in the employ of the Merchant-state of Essandre, which plays third fiddle to two empires locked in a bloody war. So far I've been pleased to the tweaks to 3.5, and been pleasantly surprised with the addition of collective background creation cribbed from Spirit of the Century. We may try and record some of our actual play as podcasts, if we do I'll be sure to post it here!

Fifth Edition Blitz

Hello All,

Just a quick post, hard at work on the next review!

The buzz is back on D&D now, with the new fifth edition on the horizon. I've signed up to play-test along with MGA, and I hope that I'm pleasantly surprised. My fervent hope is that they took notes on all of what has made Pathfinder a success in comparison to 4e, and a return of the Open Gaming License (OGL). I feel its really Wizards last real chance to win back the customer base, so I wish them luck in

Patron Funding a.k.a Smarter with Kickstarter?

So there is buzz lately in the virtual halls about a growing number of games being funded on services like Kickstarter or through patronage programs run by the author. For those who just wondered whether you've accidentally stepped through a rift into the 18th century, fret not, a patronage program these days means that you shell out some cash ahead of time and the author uses that as support costs while making the product. Often shelling out some money ahead

Gaming Group Recap

My tabletop gaming group, which has dubbed itself the Miami Gaming Authority, have been playing together for about two years. We meet weekly to play in an ongoing campaign format, punctuated by one-shots and short adventures. We like to play a variety of systems and routinely share Game Mastering responsibility, although two of us have historically run most of our campaigns. We play Savage Worlds the most frequently, but have also played two campaigns in GURPS and one-shotted a wide variety

Mission Statement

Hello Everyone! I'm Whit and on this blog I'll be talking about my pen and paper and tabletop gaming experiences.

For the uninitiated these are the pretend games of our childhood, grown up for adults. It's also known as role-playing, collective storytelling, more often by the names of the products. Vampire, Shadowrun, or the ubiquitous Dungeons and Dragons; there are a lot of descriptions for it, but we're talking about the same thing: a fun game which you play with friends rather than against them. 

I'm going to tell you about the games that I GM and play in myself, discussion of issues in gaming, and reviews of products I've played and read. I hope that you enjoy reading about my gaming perspectives and stories.