HJRP0920 Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 09 Episode 20

Posted on May 25, 2013 by Stu

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HJRP0920

happy_jacks_all_ages300x300

Your hosts: Stu, Stork, Kimi, CADave

Show Notes: We discuss turncoat NPCs and also address William from Maryland who is trying to infiltrate a bag guy NPC in his game. Kaptain Kiwi asks about one of his players who doesn’t role-play much and how he can encourage him to do so more. N Eric asks about running games that mention “hot button” issues. Tarin asks us about future show-run contests, what we have planned for our 200th episode and gives a few comments about the Dresden Files series.

Karsten lauds Jib for his Sleepers game and Stu for his Ghostbusters LA actual play. He asks if we have adventures we consider masterpieces, and he comments on playing a super smart character. LeStew writes in to tell us about his RPG experience with his kids.

Temmogen talks about a litany of terrible role-players he’s experienced.

 

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HJRP0919 Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 09 Episode 19

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Stu

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HJRP0919

happy_jacks_all_ages300x300Your hosts: Stu, Stork, Jib, Bill

Thank you to the following for helping us get out the word about our RSS Feed Change.

Dan from The Carpe DM at CarpeGM.net

George from RPG Circus RPGCircus.com

Dan from Fear the Boot at FeartheBoot.com

Erik from Metagamers Anonymous at prismatictsunami.com

and the dozens of listeners who Tweeted, Facebooked and otherwise helped us spread the word about our new RSS feed address.

Show Notes! Clanhanna asked us to plug his band’s show. They’re Sportive Tricks, they perform at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire and they’re awesome. Their show is Friday, May 24th at Molly Malone’s. You can purchase their CD — a song from which should be at the end of this episode if I remembered to do so — at CDBaby.com or iTunes.

HosierRob squeaks in with a question about keeping role-playing in combat. Which we discuss at length. Jeb from Postcards from the Dungeon sends us a report of Fear the Con. Shoe writes in to ask about creating balanced encounters in games other than DnD. Dave asks how long an epic style campaign should be.

Len from Miami chimes in about GM Rules Morons (the opposite of Rules Lawyers). Eric from New Jersey asks us about resparking the creativity candle. And finally, Stephen from Postcards from the Dungeon writes in about the phrase, “the camel’s nose in the tent,” and changing and adapting such analogies and phrases in a fantasy game.

 

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HJAP0208 Happy Jacks RPG Actual Play Game 02 Session 08 – L5R Saga of the Inukai

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Stu

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HJAP0208

SagaoftheInukaiGM: Stu

Players: Stork, CADave, Tyler and Kimi

NOTICE: Our actual play episodes are UNEDITED. This session will contain interruptions, tangents, breaks for food, etc.

 

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HJRP0918a Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 09 Episode 18a – Email Catch Up

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Stu

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HJRP0918a

happy_jacks_all_ages300x300Your host: Stu

Shownotes! This is a experiment of an episode. Stu is listening to a few voicemails and reads a couple emails to catch up from our Renaissance Faire schedule (every other week).

Our favorite minmaxer from Chicago voicemails in with an intriguing way to start a campaign. Shoe in Seattle wants to know how we found so many like-minded players. Chris writes in about making magic items “magical” again. And Tentagil writes in to tell us about his game store FATE game.

 

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Our Feed Has Changed

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Stu

IHATECOMPUTERS

As some of you may be aware, our feed changed. We had to. We should have done it two years ago, but lacked the foresight. So we’ve bitten the bullet and done it now.

As a result, listenership (according to our download numbers) has taken a serious hit — even though we showed up in the iTunes Games & Hobbies/Other Games as #1 and the big Games & Hobbies directory at #10. Go figure. Perhaps that’s people unsubscribing and resubscribing. 

Since this change has temporarily (we hope) separated us from many of our listeners, we’re asking everyone to help us out. Please spread the word. Link to this post. Tweet it. Blog about it. Share it on Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, etc.

If you are a podcaster in the table-top RPG niche, we’re asking a special favor. Can you mention this on your show? Listener surveys show that if someone listens to one RPG podcast, they probably listen to several. If you can mention our feed change, we will gladly reciprocate by playing your promo at the top of one of our episodes.

Here’s what we know will help people get back in contact:

  1. Within iTunes, unsubscribing and resubscribing to the show seems to do the trick. 
  2. In other podcatchers manually change the feed to happyjacks.org/feed/podcast/
    (the actual play is happyjacks.org/feed/actualplay/)
  3. In the future, please consider signing up for our email newsletter. There is a form for your email address in the sidebar to the right. That way, if anything like this ever happens again (though it shouldn’t!) we’ll be able to contact you and update you.

Thanks for your time and support.

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HJRP0918 Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 09 Episode 18

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Stu

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HJRP0918

happy_jacks_all_ages300x300Your hosts: Stu, Stork, Gina, Jib

Update: The Free RPG Blog has a guide to writing a free RPG.

Show Notes! — First, we discuss crafting a scene in an RPG, as we all consider scenes to be the building blocks of an adventure. Stu goes off on Kickstarter, after hearing about yet another chronically over-due Kickstarter project mentioned on a recent episode of the Bear Swarm Podcast. A summary of said rant is available at the Douchydm.com. Grayson emails about two things: designing your own RPG, when you lack the money to purchase one and avoiding cliches when improvising. For the first question, we suggest the Free RPG Blog, where one can find numerous free RPGs.

Ryan writes in to ask us about pacing, as his players have told him his game runs too slow. Adam from Texas asks us about his DM’s DnD4e encounters, which he considers blisteringly difficult. MJT chimes in on some pointers for conflict in RPGs. Jayden suggests www.printablepaper.net and generatedpaper.com for some handy on-line resources. He also asked about disparate tech levels in Traveller and how and why they’d be maintained.

Mike emails us about a story of a wonderfully defective D20, JFever warns us from playing the WWF RPG and Brad treats us to a gaming nightmare and a gaming success story.

 

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Jackercon 2013?

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Stu

JACKERCON

Jackercon. The name bring up uncomfortable images of a hotel banquet room full of men doing unmentionable things to themselves while trying to avoid eye contact with each other.

But that’s not what it is.

Conceived, encouraged and planned by the inglorious yet magnificent basterds of our forum, Jackercon 2013 will be a virtual game convention run through the modern miracle of Google+ Hangouts.

Hell, they’ve even set up a conplanner page for it, where you can announce and sign up for games. (thanks to the Fear the Boot guys for creating such a great convention tool).

We at the Angryfolk.com Bunker are doing what we can to help it along as well. We’ve set up a virtual lobby for the convention, where there’ll be a chat client for attendees to converse, a live streaming audio player from which various programs and events will be broadcast, and other things as soon as we can find them, like a real-time scrolling Twitter thingy.

More on this later.

 

 

 

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** UPDATING FEEDS **

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Stu

It’s the dumbest thing a podcaster can do, but I really have no choice. Because of how I originally set up the show, I’m precluded from using certain features on my blog.

So, I’ve changed the feeds and am in the process of updating them.

It has since broken my iTunes links, so I’ve submitted a request to them to look into it.

Hopefully this will all be resolved soon.

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HJRP0917 Happy Jacks RPG Podcast Season 09 Episode 17

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Stu

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Season 09 Episode 17

happy_jacks_all_ages300x300

Your hosts: Stu, Stork, JiB

Shownotes! Character backgrounds and back stories — why we want them, what we like in them and how we like them presented. Matthew writes in to ask us about starting up the RPG hobby and playing in the third person, rather than the first person. Ira chimes in on fudging dice rolls again and makes his case for letting the dice fall where they might. JFever writes in to rail against players — especially good players — getting out of the hobby because of their significant others. General Insertion Joe writes in to tell us he’s converting a Star Wars D20 game to GURPS and asks about PC balance. He also talks about GMPCs and railroading.

Andreas from Sweden writes in with a theory about the schism between pro-fudgers and anti-fudgers, drawing the line at OSR games and quick chargen. And Daniel in Serbia writes in with a gaming horror story.

Also, at some point, Stu gives some first impressions of Traveller 5. More on that in coming episodes.

 

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HJAP0207 Happy Jacks RPG Actual Play Game 02 Session 07 – L5R Saga of the Inukai

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Stu

Podcast (actualplay): Play in new window | Download

L5R – Saga of the Inukai – Game 02 Session 07

SagaoftheInukai

They’re back after a long hiatus — Roukai, Misashi and Nikoma enjoy a surprise end-of-the-harvest celebration and the arrival of their young cousin, just back from Shugenja school.

GM: Stu Venable

Players: CADave, Tyler, Stork and Kimi

NOTICE: Our actual play episodes are UNEDITED. This session will contain interruptions, tangents, breaks for food, etc.

 

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