Episode 60: Independent Games
Hosts: Todd, Megan, Scott, Rob, Timo

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, you fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. Or, if you’re us, you chew over the gristle of a topic like independent games for an hour on Sundays. More fritter than waste, but a bit of both in the end.

Lot’s of games mentioned here, so the show notes will be longer.

BRING ME THE MUNCHKIN!
Angel Eyes Concert: Fuck amps.
Too many nice guys in metal
Google search of Black Metal
Denny’s
Magician’s Arrest
GM-less game day at Chicagoland Games
Main Topic: Indie games
Some sort of definition of Indie, and some ill-spoken history
What do you think of when you think of indie game
Scott: Story from players imagination
Introduction of Rob
Rob: System interaction with the kind of story
Timo: Individual designers not trying to be big distributors
Todd: One off book
Megan: Anything that’s not D&D; Games that afford me the opportunity to create and explore with others.
The argument for randomized tables instead of source books.
Colonial Gothic
Unhallowed Metropolis
Indie Aesthetic
Zine production quality
Weapons of the Gods
Shared Creation
Basic Action Super Heroes! (BASH)
Spirit of the Century
The WOTC bouncers
No right way to game
Sorceror
In a Wicked Age
Shock
Orc’s, gelatinous cubes and dragons.
Sewer’s and Slaves
Constraint as freedom
identifying the douchebag
Fiasco
Story elements direct play, don’t rule.
Grognard theory: Supplements are the product of gaming, not the input. (Reply 42, by Walt Freitag)
Emphasize the internal conflict highlighted
a rant in favour of social mechanics
pared down mechanics
Trust the people at the table
gaming vs improv games (aka: JP is a bad person)
stylistic differences between games and game designers
Apocalypse World
s/lay w/me
Why is there hate?

Rants
Scott: Metal Places of the world: the south is Metal!
Megan: Heaping the abuse
Todd: Tommy Bartlett’s sky, ski and stage show
Timo: Eve Ellis and the phantom referral.
Rob: Lucasarts games

You have been listening to The Jank Cast, copyright 2010 under the creative commons license. You can find out more about us at jankcast.com. All the music in the show is from the song, “Jank is a Dork Word” written and recorded by Todd and is used with his permission. You can send comments and feedback to feedback@jankcast.com Again, we are sponsored by Chicagoland Games, and this is JOHNKELLY reminding you to support your local gaming store. Now go out and roll some dice.

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Episode 59: Race in Gaming
Hosts: Scott, Vak, Majdi, Lexx, Megan, Timo

Possibly one of the more serious conversations we had. Which we at times address with a bunch of juvenile and offensive humour, but hey, that’s what we term “quality” around here. We had some problems with Vak and Majdi’s mike, so their levels are pretty low.

Megan’s Father and the Really Weird Food!
Main Topic: Race in gaming
Warning of Asshole-dom and racial identification
Being a minority in gaming: Conventions, Belegarth
Gaming came from middle-aged white suburban historians
Racism in Video Games
L5R
Robert E. Howard and Conan
Tolkien and other ideas that gaming was based on
“Gaming would be different if made by black guys”
race IN games
The Table of Hatred
Avoidance of racism in games
Shadowrun is an exception
Race is not necessarily something people want to talk about
Steal Away Jordan
Call of Cthulhu
race in historical versus fantasy settings
Dark Elves
Getting Shifty in Games, letting something “slip”
Superficiality and Bigotry: being white and playing minorities
Improv rule: play it big, or don’t play it at all.
Playing your own race/heritage.
What if someone is actually being racist at the table
Being overly polite

Rants
Lexx: Why aren’t there more Indian Villains.
Megan: Being single in your 30′s is like Zombieland.
Timo: Enough with the Nostalgia
Vak: Timo, your childhood is dead
Scott: Beware the dice witch!
Majdi: The future train

Angel Eyes Record Release (Todd’s Concert)
Ronny’s
2101 N. California
21+ Show
July 23 (Bar at 9/Music at 10)

Little Shop of Horrors (JOHNKELLY’s Show)
5900 W. Belmont
Chicago, IL
July 23, 24, 25, 30, 31 August 1
Friday/Saturdays: Doors at 7 pm, Show at 7:30 pm
Sundays: Doors at 11:30 am, Show at Noon
Tickets: $12
(773) 282-8844, ext. 277

You have been listening to The Jank Cast, copyright 2010 under the creative commons license. You can find out more about us at jankcast.com. All the music in the show is from the song, “Jank is a Dork Word” written and recorded by Todd and is used with his permission. You can send comments and feedback to feedback@jankcast.com Again, we are sponsored by Chicagoland Games, and this is JOHNKELLY reminding you to support your local gaming store. Now go out and roll some dice.

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Episode 58: Gaming Social Graces
Hosts: JOHNKELLY, Scott, Megan, Majdi, Reek, Todd

Hello, delicious friends! A little note to tell you that your episode is being delivered by Timo this week, because John Kelly might in fact be a punk ass-chump (note the hyphenation). The scientific study has only now received it’s funding, so we won’t expect a definitive answer for another few years, but I think we all know what’s going to be confirmed.

Regardless, your show notes will be a little haphazard so that we might get the aural abuse out to you a little faster. Enjoy!

No crying in gaming (the fat kid)
The new theme song
False start
Deodorant commercials
And we’re off (real intro)
Mortal Kombat teaser
Shameless plugs
Sending invites on Facebook
Drunken Reek
Main Topic: gamer social graces
Fatbeard and the Febreeze
The tell-tale stench
Gameboy denied
tusslin’ at the LARP
Tales from the Southland: trailer gamin’
John Kelly: put away the internet
the 80′s controversy and the Elfish Gene
Little Ricky
Majdi misuses the word svelte
Gamers aren’t nice
Social Hobby, and the Pig Roast
Getting in to the game
Investment in Character death
Ritual demarcation from normal time (maaaagical!)
Well actually (rules lawyering stopping the game)
A kid enters the store, and West Side story rears it’s ugly head
Character creation and min-maxing

Rants
Majdi: The universe is a giant game.
Reek waffles and havers through to a rant in the end.
Megan: Don’t be a dick about booking burlesque shows with me.
Todd: 1) Seattle 2) Banana pudding (this get’s a little … odd)
Scott: The happy little pig, and how he was consumed.
JOHNKELLY: Fails, then talks about being on the train.

Burlesque Bingo
Playground Theater
3209 North Halsted Street
Chicago, IL 60657
July 17th

Angel Eyes Record Release (Todd’s Concert)
Ronny’s
2101 N. California
21+ Show
July 23 (Bar at 9/Music at 10)

Little Shop of Horrors (JOHNKELLY’s Show)
5900 W. Belmont
Chicago, IL
July 23, 24, 25, 30, 31 August 1
Friday/Saturdays: Doors at 7 pm, Show at 7:30 pm
Sundays: Doors at 11:30 am, Show at Noon
Tickets: $12
(773) 282-8844, ext. 277

You have been listening to The Jank Cast, copyright 2010 under the creative commons license. You can find out more about us at jankcast.com. All the music in the show is from the song, “Jank is a Dork Word” written and recorded by Todd and is used with his permission. You can send comments and feedback to feedback@jankcast.com Again, we are sponsored by Chicagoland Games, and this is JOHNKELLY reminding you to support your local gaming store. Now go out and roll some dice.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Ah, those damndable aussies and their comedy. They understand the gaming:

On gaming and relationships
Dungeons and dragons!

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Happenstance is a funny thing.

The building where my office was until last month is in the process of being torn down. All the other graduate students and professors were emptying out their offices of unwanted books so that they didn’t have to carry them in the move to a new building. As such, tables lining the hallways were piled high with books like miniature paper fortresses. While walking through this dense forest of books, a book with a clever little title caught my eye.

“The Elfish Gene.”

When I looked closer, the subtitle was “Dungeons, Dragons, and Growing up Strange.”

“Huh,” thought I. “This looks fun. And the price is right.” As I walked home I opened it up the first page and began reading. I had, literally, no idea what to expect. It turned out it was a sort of memoir by a British author named Mark Barrowcliffe of his D&D addicted youth. By the time I had reached my apartment, I had read the first three chapters. While walking.

Now, having finished the book, I can say this was a nice little bit of happenstance. Who knows if I ever would have found this book had some unknown professor not propped it in the free book piles? And boy am I glad I did. This book is fan-fucking-tastic.

To me, what this book really did is define nerdom better than any book I’ve ever read. At one point, Barrowcliffe is talking about how when he got into metal (predominantly because it made sense with his fantasy obsession) he went way overboard with the clothes. He then relates a story about how he recently went into a gaming store with his wife and found himself attempting to one-up the clerk with his old-school gaming knowledge. He concludes these stories by saying that it’s never been enough for him to be obsessed with something. Everyone he encounters must KNOW he’s obsessed.

Nerd. Defined.

This story is really a fairly classic coming-of-age memoir, minus all the sex and drugs and rock-n-roll that usually fill those books. Instead of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll, it’s dungeons, dragons, and more dungeons. Barrowcliffe talks about D&D like junkies talk about heroin. He mainlined it, non-stop, right into his veins his entire adolescence.

The narrative really revolves around his relationships with hi friends, however, in particular two young boys named Billy and Andy. Barrowcliffe looked up to both of these boys, despite their night and day differences and vast discrepancies in the way they treated him. Billy was a dyed-in-the-wool leftist, literate and sensitive, who treated Barrowcliffe with genuine friendship. Andy is a manipulative, snide, fascist who treats Barrowcliffe with a combination of ambivalence and disdain. Their relationships unfold in ways which are funny, heartbreaking, and infuriating, always striking true to life.

In fact, I challenge anyone, D&D nerd or not, to read this book and not see something of their own relationships, their own life story, their own insecurities or obsessions in the narrative. I found the book calling up long-lost memories from my high school years like a wizard summons animal familiars to her side.

(Clever, eh? I thought so.)

So what about the role-playing?

It seems to me, someone who came up in the late 80s and 90s, that I was learning a little something about the early days of gaming. Barrowcliffe portrays the gamers as a group of reactionary, math-obsessed, hyper-macho, rules-lawyers living out their adolescent power-fantasies via the games they played. In other words, it sounded like a Munchkin fest. Barowcliffe seems to blame this in equal measure on both the gamers and the games, which he seems to suggest simultaneously encourage superiority and inferiority complexes.

This leads me to my main problem with the book. At times, Barrowcliffe writes in a semi-accusatory style, in which he seems to be blaming D&D for any and all problems in his young life. D&D wasn’t his problem. His problem was that he appears to have been a giant asshole when he was younger who spent all his time hanging out with other giant assholes, all of whom were completely socially inept.

Barrowcliffe does own up to this several times in the book, especially towards the end, when he actually makes some very interesting points about friendship, adolescence, gender, and relationships. Having said that, several chapters end with Barrowcliffe making overblown statement like (paraphrasing) “as I walked home that day, I had yet to realize just how dark my life was about to become as I spiraled further and further into my D&D addiction.” You can practically hear the “Dun-Dun-DUUUUHHHN!!!!” as he drops these over-dramatic cliffhangers. In fact, early in the book, as I began noticing these little asides, I worried it was going to turn into some weird cautionary, Christian tale about how awful and sinful and addictive D&D is.

Despite its too dramatic treatment of D&D as an addiction and its too frequent portrayal of the rouges gallery of dickheads at its center as blameless addicts, The Elfish Gene spends most of its time relating hilarious stories about hurt feelings over games, awkward encounters with girls, and the inability to flip off the nerd switch. My girlfriend got sick of me reading paragraphs out loud to her as I snickered and giggled at passages which were simultaneously gamer in-jokes and universalistic stories of adolescent insecurities. I truly can’t recommend this book enough to anyone who enjoys gaming, or, for that matter, to anyone who enjoys reading. Although the tendency towards treating D&D as causal in any problems in his youth rubbed me the wrong way, Barrowcliffe has more than enough brisk wit and genuine insight into growing up jammed into The Elfish Gene to keep you turning pages.

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Episode 57: Historical Gaming
Hosts: JOHNKELLY, Timo, Lexx, Scott, Megan, Juan

The Under-boob discussion
The LOST Jank Cast Episodes
Stone Mountain
Main Topic: Historical Gaming
Colonial Gothic
God Like
Cold City/Hot War
Unhallowed Metropolis
Black Cadalics

Rants
JOHNKELLY: Little Shop of Horrors (more details bellow)
Timo: A War Zone
Lexx: Congratulations Twilight
Scott: Steve the FNG
Megan: Eowyn’s Challenge
Juan: Festia Mexicana!

Angel Eyes Record Release (Todd’s Concert)
Ronny’s
2101 N. California
21+ Show
July 24 (Bar at 9/Music at 10)

Little Shop of Horrors (JOHNKELLY’s Show)
5900 W. Belmont
Chicago, IL
July 23, 24, 25, 30, 31 August 1
Friday/Saturdays: Doors at 7 pm, Show at 7:30 pm
Sundays: Doors at 11:30 am, Show at Noon
Tickets: $12
(773) 282-8844, ext. 277

You have been listening to The Jank Cast, copyright 2010 under the creative commons license. You can find out more about us at jankcast.com. All the music in the show is from the song, “Jank is a Dork Word” written and recorded by Todd and is used with his permission. You can send comments and feedback to feedback@jankcast.com Again, we are sponsored by Chicagoland Games, and this is JOHNKELLY reminding you to support your local gaming store. Now go out and roll some dice.

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Episode 56: Pulling your weight
Hosts: JOHNKELLY, Todd, Megan, Lexx

Lots of banter including:Dentist, Orcus, Comic Shop stories, bad audio, food stories, Google SketchUp, Let me Google that for you

Main Topic: Pulling your weight within a group
Mechanical vs. Backstory
Spirit of the Century
BASH

Rants
Todd: The Dunkin Donuts Breakfast Sandwich
JOHNKELLY: Thursday is an important day
Lexx: GW: Really?
Megan: Kittens = Old Feeling

Go see Todd’s band

You have been listening to The Jank Cast, copyright 2010 under the creative commons license. You can find out more about us at jankcast.com. All the music in the show is from the song, “Jank is a Dork Word” written and recorded by Todd and is used with his permission. You can send comments and feedback to feedback@jankcast.com Again, we are sponsored by Chicagoland Games, and this is JOHNKELLY reminding you to support your local gaming store. Now go out and roll some dice.

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I give up, I really do. What is it about Vincent Baker’s work that turns me in to a giggling fanboy? In general, I have little patience for fanboyism. To me the term evokes a sort of blind and arbitrary ardour for something. A kind of nerdish religious fundamentalism that brooks no critical analysis or discussion. But it would be hard to describe my relationship with Baker’s games and game theory as anything else. I have a hard time finding fault with anything that he puts out, or the style in which he does it. Even the one major complaint that I have voiced, that the rules can be obscure and dense, I actually secretly think is a good thing: I honestly love his writing style as being an act of poetic terseness! He uses one word exquisitely to say what would otherwise be said with 10! For fucks sake! Any criticism I might muster is inherently weak, because I honestly just believe that this shit is just too good.

At least I can take refuge in the fact that I’m apparently not alone in this. With the advent of his game Apocalypse World Baker has set up a some forums to provide support and give people access to hack the game for their own design. A game that I have always thought of as having a rules set utterly inseperable from the setting, being adapted to other settings? C’est impossible! But then you look at the discussion, and realise that the heart of the game is not the moves as per se, but the principles and agenda of the Master of Ceremonies. The moves, the mechanical actions possible, are really artifacts of the setting. Which means you can have a hack for the rules for most settings. There’s one in planning for Iceland, which is amazingly hot (Viking viking viking! viking!). How about the apocalypse of D&D, Dark sun? No worries! Or, my favourite two so far (both partially or fully the brain child of Baker of course) one for the game of Knife and Candle (Echo Bazaar) and one of Vincent Baker’s own design called Dragon Killer: a fantasy post apocalypse. “When the dragon lived, there was magic everywhere, and ley flowed like water. But when the King of Death broke the dragon’s heart, everything was ruined.”

Seriously, who doesn’t want to play in that world? Who doesn’t want to know what happens next, what does the dragon’s death mean, how does doom come upon us all? I feel like I should be branded, like some sort of cattle. I’ll be the Hefer with the Vx branded on it’s side. I shall attempt to maintain the poise of a critical decision maker, but in the end it’s all just the lowing of steak-in-waiting.

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Via Apocalypse world, I heard tell of a thing called Echo Bazaar. A sort of online game, played through your browser using a twitter account, of life in subterranean London after it was stolen by giant bats. You start off escaping from prison and try to make your way in this fanciful world.

It’s pretty amazing, so far. easy to play, interesting to get involved in, and there’s no time commitment other than you can when you get a mo’. I invite you to join in, delicious friend. All you need is a twitter account. You can find me under my alter ego, Motipha. I look forward to seeing you,perhaps a bout in the game of Knife and Candle, eh? All is well that never dies, you know.

Here’s a guide that helps explain what’s going on. Here’s a quick guide to the very beginning of the game, to get you started.

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Episode 55: PvP -Special Edition-
Hosts: JOHNKELLY, Majdi, Lexx, Scott, Vak, Reek

Happy Birthday Reek (hurray!)
Thanks Jason
Reek caused the apocalypse/the scene from the first Ghostbusters
Main Topic: Player vs. Player combat
JOHNKELLY can’t host episodes
Lexx, the word is Gank not Yank

Rants
JOHNKELLY: Raid. Mud. Water. Fuck you Reek.
Majdi: Tumblin’ Dice!
Lexx: Player Egos
Scott: What would I have got?
Vak: Why is there no save point in life?
Reek: Welcome to my Life.

Questions for Gaming Gods

This week’s question is for Geoff Johns

You have been listening to The Jank Cast, copyright 2010 under the creative commons license. You can find out more about us at jankcast.com. All the music in the show is from the song, “Jank is a Dork Word” written and recorded by Todd and is used with his permission. You can send comments and feedback to feedback@jankcast.com Again, we are sponsored by Chicagoland Games, and this is JOHNKELLY reminding you to support your local gaming store. Now go out and roll some dice.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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