Episode 238 – collaborating on antagonists
by Dan Repperger
* (0:31) Welcoming our guest host, Michael, to Fear the Boot!
* (1:06) Fear the Boot will be sponsoring This Just In…From Gen Con! during the 2011 convention. Be sure to catch that show for some excellent convention coverage.
* (1:30) The Con Planner site is now ready to go for our activities at Gen Con. Be sure to sign up if you want to be kept in the loop on the games and social activities we’ll be doing during the con. All you need to do is visit this link, go to the Ticketing area to create an attendee, and make sure your profile includes a cell phone number for texting purposes. If you have any questions, write to the email address listed on the site.
* (2:00) Fear the Boot is now a proud member of the Stitcher audio network. Be sure to stop by their site, see if their app is something that interests you, and give us a positive review so others can find us!
* (3:52) Some background on Michael and the tabletop gaming scene in Japan.
* (6:36) The double-edged sword of D&D as the most recognizable title in our hobby. Many of us play it and enjoy it, but it can also conjure up negative stereotypes among non-gamers, leading us to distance ourselves from the game.
* (22:03) Collaborative design of a roleplaying game’s antagonists. Letting the players work together to build the villains, trading off some level of control for added buy-in. How to keep the plot exciting despite the meta-game, player knowledge of the group’s enemies.
Hosts: Chad, Chris, Dan, Michael, Pat, Wayne
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Dear Fear,
I recently started a website to bring experienced gamers and non-gamers together to share tabletop RPGs. The players and GM run a normal session with a live audience watching and occasionally participating in a variety of ways that give them some control over events and the story.
Your subject in this episode is relevant to what I’m trying to do because non-gamers do need to get past the stigma that the culture wars of the 80s put on role playing games. D&D, being the most popular and relating to fantasy and paganism, turned off Christians and people who saw fantasy as childish escapism. Clearly the industry, game designs and gamers have matured, so we are well prepared to make a case for tabletop RPGs as acceptable entertainment for families and hip professionals. I also envision a place for RPGs in the classroom as an alternative teaching aid.
Please checkout my website and let me know what you think. Derek Guder of Gen Con sent me an email to say that he has shared my website with their Sales & Marketing Department and wants me to contact him in September, after this years convention is cleared away.
Thank you,
John MacLeod
LAPIT Master
http://www.lapitrpgs.com
When you talk about the players playing the antagonists, I’ve actually done that in the past. It was a great way to do exposition without just rattling it out and no one listening. The set up was that the particular antagonists were present and played a major role in sacking the character’s homebase/town while the characters were away and now hunted the PCs. What I ran was something of a flashback where the characters played through that invasion/sacking. It was pretty fun to watch them get completely sadistic with the antagonist’s actions and then when they converted back to their usual characters, loathe the antagonists even more for the gruesome stuff that they the players had thought up. It worked out incredibly well.