My iPod finally decided to connect to my PowerMac, allowing me to finally download a bunch of new podcasts to listen to. First up on my list were for Dragon’s Landing Inn, Misfit Brew’s Round Table, Fear the Boot and Geek Fu Action Grip.
Dragon’s Landing Inn Alpha 67
Chuck and Lonnie always entertain, and I find their podcast a great resource for recharging my gaming batteries. Alpha 67 is a little light, content wise, but still a good listen. They start with a discussion of the takeover of GamingReport.com by SCRYE Magazine and Code Monkey Publishing’s pending loss of the Wizards of the Coast d20 license. The rest of the show is dedicated to the Frugal Gamer, in which they talk about Simpsons Character Generator, Ninja Golf, the Print-and-Play webring and the free RPG “The Darkness” available through DriveThruRPG.
Round Table, Season 3, Episode 6
The round table continues Season 3’s focus on world-building with a look in creating and integrating technology into your world. Guest hosting episode 6 of Season 3 is J.C. Hutchins, author of the 7th Son audio book trilogy, who offers his thoughts on designing technology to be used in novels vs. doing the same for RPG campaigns. While I don’t have any plans to create my own campaign setting any time soon, I still find the “world building” discussions useful because to some extent, every DM — even those running canned modules — is doing some sort of world building. Even if it’s just arranging published adventurers into a coherent order, you have to think about how it all fits together … and that’s what the folks at the Harping Monkey are doing.
Fear the Boot 27
My quest for new podcasts never ends; this time around I picked up Fear the Boot, which prides itself on offering “an irreverent look at tabletop role-playing games”. I started with Episode 27: RPG Movies. It starts off with scathing reviews of the two Dungeons & Dragons films before moving onto a discussion of why more RPG-inspired movies haven’t been made, what movies they’d like to see. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting — I’d hoped they’d spend some time talking about inspirational movies for RPGs — but it was a good round-table style listen. I’m planning on working through some of their earlier podcasts, in particular the ones on discussing the common mistakes that Game Masters and Players make at the table.
Geek Fu Action Grip 82
Mur is back in action after a two-month long hiatus. Episode #82 offers some cringe worthy (at least for geek parents) moments where she discusses her 3-year-olds adventures in dentistry as well as news of the “Geek Wedding” podcast, in which two geeks talk about their adventures in getting married. It also brings Season 2 of Mur’s serialized novel “Heaven”, entitled “Hell”. I’ve got to admit that I haven’t been listening to “Heaven”, mostly because I skipped the first few episodes and now feel like I’m hopelessly behind. I do plan on getting caught up though, a task which Podio Books (which offers it as a serial podcast) will help me with.
Geek Acres 58
I don’t listen to many pure geek podcasts any more, probably because I’ve been satisfying that fix by watching the DL.TV, commandN and GeekBrief video podcasts. One that’s survived is Geek Acres, which has the virtue of being short but informative. In Episode #58 we learn about a high-tech coffee pot that can display local weather, discover how to listen to podcasts on a cell phone via the Fonpods service, and figure out how to climb the podcaster tree.