Rp_ok: Gaming, Storytelling, Tabletop

Narrative Structure and The Quiet Year. We recorded this episode the day before Fallout 4 was released, and Zack, understandably, is nearly melting down. We talk about Buried Without Ceremony's The Quiet Year, a fantastic quick-start game that lets you build a story and a future for a post-apocalyptic community with a paper, playing cards, a few dice, and an $8 PDF, all in just a few hours. We also discuss narrative structure -- the ways in which being open-world, on-rails, or level-by-level changes the way in which a video game's story is told and its world is built. We might even make it through the show without bringing up Mass Effect -- you'll have to listen to find out! Discussed today: The Quiet Year, Buried Without Ceremony http://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year/ Hosts Ben Lee Chris Loe Zack McQueen Editor / Producer Ben Lee Executive Producers Mike Fatum Jarys Maragopoulos Logo Design Sarah Wiener (sarahwiener-art.com) Theme "Crunk Knight", Kevin MacLeod (inc

If you think we're strange during the podcast, you should hear how weird Zack, Ben, and Chris get before we ever start recording.  We sat down to record a podcast; singing, yelling, and making fun of ourselves ensued instead, in this clip of pre-roll from before we recorded Episode 1. As a bonus, after that comes excerpts of our pre-roll for Episode 0, when we chatted about gaming experiences and tried very hard to decide on a title for the podcast; you can almost hear the gears clanking in our head the whole time -- we even try to find a way around deciding right away! Enjoy -- we'll be back with another episode next Thursday!

Proof of Concept. Welcome to RP_OK! Ben, Zack, and Chris introduce a bit of their personal roleplaying and gaming histories before launching into a discussion of their favorite worlds to play in. Do we bring up Mass Effect? Of course we do! But wait, there's more -- we discuss The Elder Scrolls, Dragonlance, and ask what settings we've never played in but wish we had. We talk about scalability in roleplaying games, terrible, terrible puns and some of our most engaging or triumphant roleplaying moments. (There might be butts.) This is actually the very first episode we recorded; even though it shows in our production value a bit, we really enjoyed this episode and didnâ??t want to just drop it. There's some crackling from the mic that starts around twenty minutes in and gets a bit louder, which could be a little rough if you're listening to the episode on headphones, so be forewarned â?? but have fun! Hosts Ben Lee Chris Loe Zack McQueen Editor / Producer Ben Lee Executive Producers Mike Fa

Characters. It's the first episode of RP_OK! Chris, Ben, and Zack are here to discuss all manner of storytelling games, from video games to tabletop games to interactive media and everything in between. Today, we explain a bit about the podcast's purpose, then discuss some of our favorite characters. Along the way, we make fun of Ben's Steam shame list, go straight into denial about our imaginary listeners, heap praise upon BioWare, and possibly accidentally mention butts. At least once. This was actually the second episode we recorded - the 'test episode' referenced in this week's episode will be up in a few days! Hosts Ben Lee Chris Loe Zack McQueen Editor / Producer Ben Lee Executive Producers Mike Fatum Jarys Maragopoulos Logo Design Sarah Wiener (sarahwiener-art.com) Theme "Crunk Knight", Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) For more podcasts, videos, news, and assorted geekery, check out aceofgeeks.net!