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We go back to the realms of tabletop roleplaying games with two special guests in this episode: my good friend Julien of the French speaking podcast I regularly contribute to, Les Voix d’Altaride and Greg Stolze.
Greg is a game designer, writer and novelist – particularly known for his work on tabletop roleplaying games. I was looking forward to this conversation given he co-designed one of my favourite games: Unknown Armies. They recently went through a crowdfunding campaign for the 3rd edition of the game and raised over $250 thousand dollars to bring the project to life and I’m very much looking forward to it (if you’re late to the party it’s still possible to participate in the campaign to order the game in advance via Backerkit). I played a campaign of Unknown Armies 2nd edition with a group of friends in the South of France last year that was great fun.
We had a brilliant conversation and I’m glad to touched on themes that hadn’t been on the podcast so far, discussing different types of horror games, ethical and moral dilemmas and why it’s fun and/or interesting to include those in games. We also talk about ways to approach game rules and systems according to a setting. As usual, everything is very approachable and – at least I think – interesting for both people into roleplaying games and people who don’t know too much about it, so don’t feel left out if you’re not much of a tabletop player.
I should note, there are a few face off and distortions in speech towards the end – it’s all right, during our call I thought it was a actually worse than it is, and it’s really mostly in the last few minutes, I managed to get most of the conversation OK.
Links / info mentioned in the episode:
- Greg Stolze’s website & on Twitter
- Unknown Armies RPG 3rd edition crowdfunding campaign
- Unknown Armies on Backerkit (to order the game if you missed the Kickstarter campaign)
- John Nephew – Atlas Games
- Cam Banks, Game Designer (Twitter)
- Aurora, Illinois
- Wayne’s World
- The Spindle (stack of cars sculpture)
- Captain Kirk
- Dungeons & Dragons – Green Box
- Robert A. Heinlein, Fritz Leiber, Isaac Asimov, Stephen King
- Jonathan Tweet
- Over the Edge RPG
- The X-Files
- William S Burroughs
- Whimsy cards
- Once Upon a Time (storytelling game)
- The Farm RPG by Jared Sorenson
- Steal Away Jordan RPG
- Gen Con
- Schadenfreude
- The Ritual, Adam Nevill
- Delta Green RPG
- Game of Thrones
- Darth Vader
- John Tynes, Game Designer
- Shadis Magazine
- The New Yorker
- Robin D. Laws, Game Designer
- Strahd von Zarovich
- Call of Cthulhu RPG
- Sombre RPG
- Player agency
- Reign RPG
- Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco
- Vampire the Masquerade RPG
- The Cold War, Epic Story of a Cold War between two Ice Cream Trucks
- Tanqueray Gin
- Grappa
