Category: Saving The Game

This episode, we manage the unthinkable and actually get our quarterly Patreon-selected topic in before the last possible episode! It’s a whole new world, folks. We open up the show by talking a little bit about our assorted podcats, the 200 Word RPG Challenge, Pilates, and a couple of other minor things. Then we move on to a pretty heavy question from Patreon backer Paige: How to memorialize a player in your gaming group after they pass. (We also recommend Fear the Boot’s recent bonus episode on this same question.)

After our Scripture readings, we delve into an equally dense topic: Resurrection in our games. Naturally, we start by contrasting the forms of resurrection ‘magic’ (or t […]

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This week, we’re talking about positive metagaming! First, we catch up a bit and recap what games we’ve played recently (including Peter’s terrifying encounter with a flock of seagulls and Jenny’s Beyond the Wall game.) Then, Grant goes on for a while about the Link to the Past Randomizer race at AGDQ 2018 (seriously, it’s fascinating.) We also answer a simple question from Patreon supporter Francisco, who asks if we prefer roller coasters or 4D immersive movie rides.

Then, after our Scripture reading, we delve into various ways […]

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We’re back with a follow-up to our previous episode on mass combat! This time around, we’re talking about actually roleplaying in a mass combat scenario, and treating war and conflict as a setting for more traditional roleplaying. First, though, we plug Peter’s blog posts, and especially his heavy metal D&D setting design series and his most recent post on Horvu. (Happy Horvu, everyone!) We then tackle a question from Patreon supporter Richard, who asks us about Bible stories as one-shot games.

After our Scri […]

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(Fixed audio.) This episode’s conversation about mass combat—a topic selected by our Patreon supporters—turned out to be so big, we’re following this one up with another episode on a related topic next time! Before that, though, we’ve got a lot of other things to discuss: The holidays, and especially all the games we played and picked up over the Christmas break. We talk a bit more about our Patreon and the need to change things somewhat as we move forward into 2018 (leave your comments on that below.) We also send our congratulations and prayers to Mike Perna and his family as they welcome their son into the world; and we send our condolences to the family and friends of Pat Roper, longtime […]

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It’s an emergency bonus episode due to illness and holiday stress, but an interesting topic: Joseph as a gameable figure! (Listen to find out which Joseph, naturally.)

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As promised in Episode 120, we’re tackling “battered group syndrome” in this episode and the next! Yes, it’s a two-parter, because we had so much to say on this topic we couldn’t keep the conversation short enough for a single episode. We lead off with two quick plugs: One for Grant’s appearance on the Gameable Saturday Morning Podcast to talk about Exo Squad (Part 1, Part 2, and the horror of a Gameable AU involving Palladium’s Ninjas & Superspi […]

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As promised in Episode 120, we’re tackling “battered group syndrome” in this episode and the next! Yes, it’s a two-parter, because we had so much to say on this topic we couldn’t keep the conversation short enough for a single episode. We lead off with two quick plugs: One for Grant’s appearance on the Gameable Saturday Morning Podcast to talk about Exo Squad (Part 1, Part 2, and the horror of a Gameable AU involving Palladium’s Ninjas & Superspies); and one for

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We’re back with our angriest, most rant-filled episode yet! Well, not really—but there’s a lot of passion in this episode, because we’re talking about GMing traditions the gaming community still seems to support despite being destructive, uncomfortable, and simply wrong. First, though, we’ve got a question from Patreon backer Paige Lowe about how blatantly one should steal from other media when planning a game. After that, we tackle our Scripture as usual before diving into six common behaviors we still see: Adversarial GMing; monopolizing narrative control; turning exceptional successes into failures; misunderstanding metagaming; harming characters to punish players; and creating in-game penalties for missed gaming sessions.

Also: Grant was recently on the Gameable […]

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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[…]

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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 wher […]

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