Music & Audio

Three weeks of rainy days put a major crimp in my podcast-listening schedule in May as I was forcd to drive (rather than walk) to work. It's the difference between a 2 minute commute and a 15 minute one ... as well as no podcasts or three podcasts a week.

With the sun finally shining again and eastern Pennsylvania drying out, I've fired up my iPod and returned to some old favorites. After catching up on the Cato Daily Podcast (which provides me with regular audio injection of libertarian commentary) I turned to the Accidental Survivors.

Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition and Star Wars: Saga Edition were the big topics of conversation on my third guest appearance on The Secret Lair podcast.  Hosts Kris Johnson and Chris Miller and I spent about a half hour talking about the latest iteration of the venerable fantasy RPG before launching into why my gaming group decided to ditch it in favor of Star Wars.

Wish you had a new episode of Radio Active to listen to? Never fear, a new one is on the way, but in the mean time you can listen to Episode 17 of The Secret Lair podcast, in which I talk with hosts Chris Miller and Kris Johnson about S.M. Stirling's alternate history/modernized pulp novel The Sky People.

It's been a while since I've talked about the podcasts I listen to, partly because for much of the late summer and early fall I really wasn't listening to many of them (save the Order 66 podcast, which I've listened to slavishly since realizing my Star wars campaign was really going to happen). That's changed over the last few weeks as I've made an effort to queue up and listen to a summer's worth of podcasts.

DrupalCon Boston is looming large, but before I get there I decided to go visit my sister in New Hampshire. It's a long trip -- seven hours or so from Easton, longer with the family in tow -- so I had plenty of time to get caught up on my podcasts.

Your doom is upon you, pathetic humans. Buy A Very Scary Solstice from CthulhuLives.org

• Halo 2 Soundtrack
• Michael O'Donnell,  Martin Salvatori (Composer), Christian Knapp (Conductor), Tom Kroll (Performer), Northwest Sinfonia (Orchestra)
• Label: Sumthing Else
• MSRP: $15.98
• Buy it from Amazon.com.

Martin Rayla has a great thread over on Treasure Tables about using music in your game. He's not talking just about having something going on in the background, but also crafting a soundtrack that matches the expected actions, fights and drama that the players will be experiencing.