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Episodes
The best panels and seminars about analog game design & publishing.
Episodes
Sep 1, 2016
Sep 1, 2016
59 min
Heartwrenchers: Emotional RPGs
Recorded at Gencon 2016
Presented by Jason Pitre, Shoshanna Kessock and Emily Care Boss
The very best roleplaying games will tug on the heart strings during play. Whether the games make you feel love, grief or rage, they make for a memorable play experience. We will discuss these emotion-rich games, and what makes them tick like a broken heart.
Apologies for poor sound quality on this recording.
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Aug 20, 2016
Aug 20, 2016
53 min
Introduction to RPG Publishing
Recorded at Gencon 2016
Presented by Jason Pitre, Shoshanna Kessock and Caleb Stokes
Want to publish a roleplaying game? This panel, sponsored by the Indie Game Developer Network, is here to get started, avoiding the hidden pitfalls. Learn about Kickstarter, budgeting, distribution, printing, and the other black arts of publishing.
Before you go, we would like to ask you to fill in the RPG Design Panelcast Listener Survey! This will help us learn more about what you like, and solicit suggestions for future panels.
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Aug 15, 2016
Aug 15, 2016
57 min
Introduction to RPG Design
Recorded at Gencon 2016
Presented by Jason Pitre, Dustin Depenning, Emily Care Boss, Shoshanna Kessock
You can design games, and we want to help. This panel, sponsored by the Indie Game Developer Network, is here to get you started by sharing resources and best practices. Want to find out the basic of game design? We are here to help show you the way.
Before you go, we would like to ask you to fill in the RPG Design Panelcast Listener Survey! This will help us learn more about what you like, and solicit suggestions for future panels.
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Aug 11, 2016
Aug 11, 2016
53 min
Fictional Cartography
Recorded at Metatopia 2015
Presented by Mark Richardson & Kenneth Hite
Presented by Mark Richardson & Kenneth Hite. A discussion of map making for use in games. From tools to methodology and creative process. Learn what goes in to bringing life to the maps at the center of our gaming tables!
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Jul 30, 2016
Jul 30, 2016
54 min
Game Mechanics as Social Engineering & Social Engineering as Game Design
Recorded at Metatopia 2015
Presented by Jason Morningstar & John Stavropoulos.
Can a game’s mechanics influence player behavior? Evidence – from XP-grubbing to sophisticated and subtle systems for using player agency to adjust real-world habits – suggests it can. Join Jason Morningstar and John Stavropoulos for a stimulating and perhaps surprising discussion on this topic. Bring your own examples to share!
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Jul 24, 2016
Jul 24, 2016
57 min
Gaming the Future: Putting the Science Fiction in SF RPGs
Recorded at Metatopia 2015
Presented by Joshua A.C. Newman, Dev Purkayastha, Laura Simpson & Rachel Walton.
Science Fiction, as a genre, has always been about social change and the pressures that change exerts on those caught in that change. That vertiginous change in perspective is designed to give us insight into the human condition as we experience it now. Our panel will talk about the techniques we use to focus RPG play on the interplay of ideas that makes Science Fiction such a compelling genre.
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Jul 17, 2016
Jul 17, 2016
56 min
Sanity Points
Recorded at Metatopia 2015
Presented by Elsa S. Henry, Will Hindmarch, Kelly Osborne & Craig Page.
The worst thing that can happen to you in a horror game is either that you die, or that you lose your mind. In games that focus on a world “gone mad”, how do we support real people living with mental illness through our game development? This panel will focus on revisiting systems like sanity points, and discuss how to address breaks with reality and surviving the very worst that horror has to throw at the world without treating mental illness as a comedic happenstance, or as something to be dismissed.
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Jul 9, 2016
Jul 9, 2016
55 min
GMing Outside Your Comfort Zone
Recorded at Metatopia 2015
Presented by Cheyenne Wall-Grimes, Sarah Richardson and Elsa S. Henry
We all have games that we love to play and GM, but what happens when you break out of your normal type of game and venture into unknown territory? How do you deal with a new group of players who are into something very different than what you normally run? Whether it’s in a campaign setting or running con games, we’ll go over some of the things to expect, avoid and how to bounce back.
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Jul 1, 2016
Jul 1, 2016
54 min
Recycle! Using Material From Other Games Ethically and Effectively
Recorded at Metatopia 2015
Presented by Justin Jacobson, Cam Banks, Jeff Tidball & Andre La Roche.
At one time or another, every designer gains inspiration from existing works. Whether it’s snagging a single mechanic or repurposing an entire game with one crucial tweak. What are some tricks for finding that inspiration and using it in interesting ways? What are the ethical and legal considerations when using material? When does inspiration cross the line into plagiarism or, worse, infringement? What sort of attribution should you use?
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Jun 24, 2016
Jun 24, 2016
51 min
Patterns and Shapes in Larp Design
Recorded at Metatopia 2015
Presented by J Li and Jason Morningstar
From spatial layout to information management, this workshop lays out some of the architectural and psychological principles behind LARP design as craft. What’s the difference between a three person conversation and a four person conversation? What does time pressure do to plot? How do you change the outcome of a game by placing chairs? Join us in exploring the fascinating complexity of building stories out of spontaneous human behavior, and playing with the tools we can use to shape it.
Associated information is available at larppatterns.org
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Jun 17, 2016
Jun 17, 2016
49 min
How to Give and Receive Critique
Recorded at Metatopia 2015
Presented by Joshua A.C. Newman, Hannah Shaffer & Rachel E.S. Walton.
Planning and running a Kickstarter campaign for your game can be like designing and playing another game. Will you hack an existing formula or take a risk on an unusual approach? Will it include lots of fiddly mechanics and rewards or will you take a more artistic direction? When you’re running the campaign, how do you play the roles of marketer, designer, publisher, business person, and artist? Join panelists as they talk about the design and management of Kickstarter campaigns themselves. In what ways have they evolved into established systems (stretch goals, etc.) and how are some creators breaking those conventions?
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Jun 7, 2016
Jun 7, 2016
1hr 6 min
Kickstarter 101 (2015)
Recorded at Metatopia 2015
Presented by JR Honeycutt, Joshua A.C. Newman & Chris O’Neill
Planning and running a Kickstarter campaign for your game can be like designing and playing another game. Will you hack an existing formula or take a risk on an unusual approach? Will it include lots of fiddly mechanics and rewards or will you take a more artistic direction? When you’re running the campaign, how do you play the roles of marketer, designer, publisher, business person, and artist? Join panelists as they talk about the design and management of Kickstarter campaigns themselves. In what ways have they evolved into established systems (stretch goals, etc.) and how are some creators breaking those conventions?
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May 28, 2016
May 28, 2016
48 min
Cinematic Plays
Recorded at Metatopia 2015
Presented by Will Hindmarch
What are cinematic game mechanics? What makes a game cinematic and what do we call it when a game is not cinematic? In this presentation, writer/designer Will Hindmarch examines the languages of film and what we can borrow from cinema when we make our games, our adventures, and our plays at the table.
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May 14, 2016
May 14, 2016
59 min
Game Distribution
Recorded at Metatopia 2015
Presented by Brian Dalrymple and Darren Watts
An overview of the 3-tier system (Publisher to Distributor to Retailer), following the course of a game after production (solicitation to wholesalers, trade shows and open houses, discount structures, buying patterns and reorder cycles, the preorder system, flooring, and more…), and covering how stores discover, order, stock, and merchandise, as they try to put them in customers’ hands. Viable alternatives to the 3-tier system are also discussed.
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Apr 30, 2016
Apr 30, 2016
1hr 2 min
Agile Design and Publishing
Recorded at Metatopia 2015
Presented by Rob Donoghue and Emily Dresner
Join our panelists for a discussion of how nerdy business concepts such as Agile software development to can be applied to your gaming experience. Key concepts of agile software design include rapid and flexible response to change – let’s talk about how to apply them to running games.
More about Agile from Rob over on his site, at this blog post!
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Apr 16, 2016
Apr 16, 2016
53 min
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!
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Mar 31, 2016
Mar 31, 2016
55 min
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).
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Mar 16, 2016
Mar 16, 2016
48 min
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.
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Mar 5, 2016
Mar 5, 2016
56 min
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.
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Feb 6, 2016
Feb 6, 2016
55 min
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.
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Jan 18, 2016
Jan 18, 2016
52 min
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.
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Dec 5, 2015
Dec 5, 2015
59 min
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.
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Nov 28, 2015
Nov 28, 2015
58 min
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?
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Nov 22, 2015
Nov 22, 2015
49 min
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/
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Nov 14, 2015
Nov 14, 2015
52 min
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.
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