The RPG Ancients

The RPG Ancients poke at listener questions with sharp sticks until they die or run away screaming into the night. The Ancients poke at long term player character planning, also at players who have no goals, frequency and depth of prep, and at the care and feeding of factions - what they are, how to create them, and how to handle them in game. It is always best to placate the Ancients by giving th...

The Ancients are given free reign via a listener's question to excoriate  what they think is the worst RPG game, for whatever reason, excluding the usual suspects of FATAL and RaHoWa, which really are the worst, so this is just games which stick in their craws for some reason. After that they go loose and feral!

The ancient answer their measly single listener question, sort of, then go an a rampage thoroughly demolishing initiative, ravaging culture, and dredging up quaint and antiquated roleplaying incidents to support their malformed opinions! They survive technical difficulties and peresevere like the stubborn bastards they are until the session is over, leaving no tern unstoned!

Well so long as your prayers include questions! The Ancients talk about abusive GMS, and about what kind of questions from you they really love getting. Ancient Bill says he enjoys getting checks, for example.

The Ancient are stacked with listener questions, and after discussing sex in their games, how Evil works for them, whether there are constraints on the PCs other than consequences of their choices, how they would design a fun game about podcasters, how they handle players whose PCs who are down early in a session or longer, or if they are possessed or charmed, they look at the six more questions t...

The Ancients discuss how they organize (or DON'T organize) their notes during sessions. Tales of mysterious and cryptic notes found years later add a colorful note to the proceedings. Turns out the Ancients are not the highly efficient roleplaying machines they seem to be. Also they each discuss their 5 strangest roleplaying games, with why they found them strange. 

The Ancients answer listener questions, about Cage fight death-matches, adventury stuff vs. non-adventury stuff, and whether they read comics and manga/manhwa and how it influenced them. This last led to talk about supers gaming and the Ancients' experiences with it. Capping the night they all talked about their experiences with Cons over the years.

No listener questions this session, so the RPG Ancients are free of their Geas to talk about whatever strikes their fancy, which is a target rich environment! The ancients talk about new projects, why players hate negative adjustments, how to work with LLMs, editing a manuscript, baseball as an RPG and why it is superior to model compared to other sports, how to visually represent altitude in RPGs...

Rob announces he is almost finished with his player facing book for his Majestic Wilderlands RPG, and describes what he is trying to do with it and how he has addressed that. Then the Ancients address two listener questions, and in the process describe a great deal of what they find fun and interesting, and sharing techniques for GMing their games. This is a deep rabbit hole, so take your shovel a...

Having no listener questions the Ancients cackle with glee as this condition frees them from their geas and they are free to randomly launch into any topic they damn well feel like! The Ancients enthusiastically steal topics from fora, talk about ChatGPT experiments concerning alternate futures of The Great Society and Jefferson Airplane and Firefly, and ramble freely where their addled brains lea...

Frank Filz joins the Ancients for a chat about using music in Tabletop games, converting games and setting to work together, and the fact that clash is hearing music in his brain non-stop 24/7 and not paying any licensing fees!

The Ancients Deal with Inspiration, Hanging Rope, Newton's Third Law, Ancient Mass Media, GURPS, and Dino Pulp!

The Ancient handle questions from their listeners - The Great Fur and Scale War in the prehistoric Americas, The Great Curse of Metagaming and how to strangle players, The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune and their ranges, The Weak vs. The Strong how it happens and how to deal with it, and Prince/Princess == Spoiled Brat? Why or why not?

The ancients having gathered together from their Places of Power in their magical Gathering Place, realize they had no idea why they gathered and began talking about cats, which, of course, led to games, which led to the pulp solar system which led to more games and cool ideas, and ended up with SF authors. They then wandered back to their Places of Power, also known as porches, where they had goo...

The Ancients reveal their nefarious plans to cooperate as step one in taking over the world, before answering some burning listener questions! 

The Ancients have run out of listener questions, so, being Ancients of very little brain, as everyone knows Ancients are wont to be, they each start talking about their current RPG projects. One would think at this time of their lives they would be resting on their laurels, but apparently laurels are not particularly comfortable. Go figure!

The Ancients answer user questions on using LEGO for miniatures and terrain; how we use AI to help running games; How we prepare for game sessions; using abbreviated and full stats for NPCs; What do we do when PCs refuse to bite a hook; and what are the characteristics and habits we consider 'good' in players.

The Ancients talk about times we have most regretted giving some power or other to a PC, and why; about Player Agency and Character Agency, why they are different, and why we care so much about one and not so much the other; about the biggest destruction a PC ever wrought in one of our games, and if they got away with it; about whether the Ancients have people they talk to about the design aspect...

The RPG Ancients find themselves again answering questions from a dragon whose name shall be held confidential but whose initials are Mia the Dragon. The ancients cull their eroding memory banks to hold up something to amuse or entice or entertain or even confuse the dragon so she... or he... or they... or whatever...  doesn't immolate them in cleansing fire!

The ancients discus cons, the two methods of playtest, keeping players involved, hooking player characters, and playing in Old Meyoss

The Ancients get together to find our who has the biggest echo! Also listener questions from Frank Filz, AsenRG, and Mia the Dragon. We talk about how we generate cultures, determining if an NPC is male or female, how do PCs seek out worthy problems, how to use RPGs for educational services, and whether or not we have ninjas in our games! Enjoy!

Today's questions are from ChatGPT, the Artificial Intelligence application. I asked if it would like us - the RPG Ancients - to answer any questions, and it supplied 12 solid, concise questions! We answer I believe four of them. 

In which we answer a slew of complex and multifaceted questions from Mia the Dragon to our entertainment and delight!

The Ancients field more questions from listeners - Subjects are: What is your ideal gaming group size range? How do you handle trading? What do you think about 'Knife Theory'? and the ever thrilling Medievalism???

The Ancients decide to ignore the pleas of their listeners and ask each other questions for a change! Bill Reich had a senior moment and lost track of what day it was, but luckily Frank Filz stepped in and we had a wonderful time. It was so pleasing to ignore our listeners! It felt so... God-like! So we will be doing this more regularly! Enjoy!