Episodes
Tuesday Oct 31, 2017
Bonus Episode 11 - Save Against Fear 2017 Con Report
Tuesday Oct 31, 2017
Tuesday Oct 31, 2017
Jenny and her mother Shannon (of STG 10 fame!) deliver an after-action report on Save Against Fear 2017, held Oct. 13-15 in Harrisburg, PA! Everyone had a great time, and the con was exceptionally well-run and definitely worth attending next year.
Some specific shoutouts: First, to our former co-host Branden, who was in attendance and ran a fantastic Mistborn game! Also to the Harrisburg Mall for providing an excellent con space; Harrisburg University's game design program; and of course to The Bodhana Group for putting on a great con and continuing to be wonderful people doing good for hurting people.
Games mentioned in this episode: Dreamchaser by Imagining Games; We Didn't Playtest This At All by Asmadi Games; Starfall by Pandasaurus Games; Spirit Island by Greater Than Games; Clank by Renegade Game Studios; Smallworld by Days of Wonder; Castle Dice and Epic PvP by Fun To 11; Cthulhu Invictus by Chaosium; Mistborn by Crafty Games; Kingmaker by Avalon Hill; Mysterium by Asmodee; and "Into the Dragon's Maw" by Dragonix.
Tuesday Oct 17, 2017
Episode 119 - Gaming Evangelism (with Gospel and Gaming)
Tuesday Oct 17, 2017
Tuesday Oct 17, 2017
Peter and Jenny have two special guests this week: Jacob Toman and Michael Mendis from Gospel & Gaming! Gospel & Gaming is, in their own words, "a ministry dedicated to sharing the love and Gospel of Jesus Christ with gamers all over the world." Jacob and Michael did a great job representing them, explaining their mission in online gaming communities and tabletop gaming communities alike.
We also addressed a question from Patreon backer Jim Nanban, who asked us about the coolest piece of RPG paraphernalia we each own. (As promised, there's a picture of Peter's dice bag right here in the show notes.) We also briefly plug our Discord channel, which is continuing to grow as a community. Then everyone settles in to talk about evangelism and how Gospel & Gaming approaches it—even to the point where Michael and Jacob turn the interview around and start asking the hosts questions!
A couple of quick notes about this episode: First, Grant was very sick and missed out on a pair of awesome guests. (He's better now.) Second, Peter's audio sounds very bad this episode; there was a hardware problem writing his track to disk that wasn't apparent during the discussion. And third, as hard as Grant tried we simply could not edit Blarey the Podcast Train out of this episode. That means that this is Blarey's first official podcast appearance. Enjoy!
Also mentioned in this episode were three books Jacob highly recommended as primers for Gospel & Gaming's mission: Michael Green's Evangelism in the Early Church; Jerram Barr's The Heart of Evangelism; and Jane McGonigal's Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.
Scripture: Psalm 105:1-4, Matthew 13:10-13, Romans 10:11-15
Tuesday Oct 03, 2017
Episode 118 - Ends and Means
Tuesday Oct 03, 2017
Tuesday Oct 03, 2017
We're back with an episode topic selected by our Patreon supporters: That old adage, "the ends justify the means"—in other words, consequentialism! First, a few announcements: Grant now regularly streams the editing process for these episodes over on Mixer, so come hang out if you want to chat with him while he does that. Also, to help wrap up our "summer of mental health" focus, Jenny and Grant have pulled together a few mental health resources; we've got those listed below.
Our Patreon backer question this week is from Doug Hagler, who asks us about using a board game to introduce or set the scene for a tabletop roleplaying game. We struggle a bit with this one, admittedly, but we do manage to come up with a couple of ideas!
Then we settle into the main topic: Consequentialism, a philosophy we all know from that "the ends justify the means" adage. We describe it and address its shortcomings, then move on to how to use this idea in our games without ending up with unbearable characters! We also plug The Sci-Fi Christian along the way, which you should definitely be listening to as well.
Mental health resources:
- USA: The Suicide Prevention Lifeline; Our Fractured Minds (podcast); GoodTherapy.org
- Canada: Canada's Suicide Prevention Crisis Site; Healthy Minds Canada's mental health resources page.
Scripture: Joshua 1:7-9, John 11:47-50, 1 Corinthians 13:1-3