GMS Magazine Podcast

Carrie Fisher, for me, epitomised the concept of a strong character when she became Leia Organa. Not because the character was well written, but because she was an incredible character herself. The death of the beloved Carrie Fisher was a massive shock for most of us. Not just because she was so young – 60 years old today is young, in my books – but because she was the fiercest and most respected...

It is safe to say the RPG crowd is unlike any other out there. We tend to be more open, more creative and a lot more accepting than many other hobbies or sub-cultures. And we are more accepting of mental health issues. And please that I say mental health issues, not illnesses. There is a massive difference that we have to keep very much present. However, does our hobby, do RPGs attract more people...

Because the time of the year when people celebrate some sort of festivity approaches, Jim and I have decided to record a rambling episode on how to be good to each other. Aaawwwwww…… Well… how to be good to your GM, that sacrificed, dedicated, studious, sensible, caring and wonderful human beings who spend so long looking for ways to kill the party in the most fun possible way. Because, let’s face...

At G*M*S Central we believe that there are too many products being sold as PDFs at the moment and that is contributing to a languishing industry with too many companies that can’t stand on their own two money feet because there aren’t enough people buying all games and supplements. We know it is not an opinion shared by all, and we do believe everyone should have the right to publish whatever they...

I will not say it is a fact, but it is a fact that a lot of games are very repetitive. Either the theme is repetitive, the tropes are a repetition of another game. Basically, there are too many elves out there now. And too many Cthulhus and mutants. In this episode, Jim and I discuss the whys and why nots of that situation. This should be interesting!

What RPGs are bad for the industry? Are there any games you wish hadn’t come out? Both in Europe and in the USA, we have had some games that have hurt the industry, and some others that are hurting the industry and the hobby as a whole. Some games have helped contribute to the stigma of weirdness or danger that some people attached to RPGs in the 80s and 90s. For different reasons and in different...

Why play RPGs? Why spend hours reading books and preparing for games? Why belong to a community that is both so hostile and welcoming at the same time? Believe it or not it is a question I ask myself very often. Why bother with a hobby in which a dissenting voice is shut down instead of welcome with healthy debate? Why am I in a hobby that still has strides to walk in terms of inclusivity and dive...

The topic of cultural appropriation is a hot one in Social Justice circles. But is it a justified outcry when someone uses someone else’s culture to create games, costumes or anything else? It is a matter of fact that cultures evolve both by themselves – traditions that become canon in time or ones that die, fashion that evolves… – and by assimilation when we see something from another culture and...

A few days ago Jim and I talked for a while about culture in games. How they are not well used or even created in most games and we touched on some of the social aspects of cultures and how to translate them into gaming. Also how to convert real cultures into gaming cultures. After that, it was pointed out by someone who heard our episode and, in particular, the bit about understanding someone els...

Many people try to portray cultures in their games. Whenever a game has a setting, the description of their cities, countries, societies… they are meant to have cultures. But that is not something most games do well. When you scratch the surface of any setting, there are massive gaps that are not easy to fill and subtract from the understanding of how the world works. How can one create new materi...

Sometimes we have ideas, lots of ideas, and we want them to grow wings and fly to the skies until they reach heights never suspected by humanity. And then they get nowhere. Ideas are very hard things to deal with because we love them, we get attached to them and we look after them like they are our children, regardless of how ugly or useless they can be. So what can you do with them? How can you i...

Lone Wolf Development has been going for a number of years and Hero Lab has become the go-to application for a lot of people when is about character creation and campaign management. A hugely comprehensive set of stats and data, it makes the task of managing your character, campaign or adventure easier and with less things to remember. It has been a while since they released the Pathfinder Adventu...

The last podcast Jim and I discussed a lot about bad graphic design in RPGs and some of the very many reasons for it. But we didn’t really get to discuss everything (maybe because we can’t really discuss everything without spending the rest of our lives talking about it) so we decided to have another go at it and this time we got help. Help from someone who is one of the best in the industry, Jonn...

Graphic Design is a massive part of any visual product, in fact is totally paramount. With bad Graphic Design, the product will never be good, no matter how many qualities it has. In this impromptu podcast, Jim and I talk about this precise topic and we try to figure out why there are so many bad products out there. This podcast was recorded at 2am in Spain and I was a bit on the tired side, so it...

Should Authors pander to what the gaming crowd want and produce what sells, or should they produce what they want and get stuck with poor sales? This is a very real question and a very real situation that many RPG authors out there have to face every day. And it is not an easy decision to make. Sometimes making creative and truly new games and games mechanics means people will look at the product...

For the last few years the discussion on equality in games, both in and out of the fantasies, have been raging with arguments being made on both camps that make you wonder sometimes if we have learned anything in the last two hundred years. Some of us do want to see more diversity in games, both in the creative environment – that is, the people who create the games – and in the created environment...

Most people believe that we are into a very inclusive hobby that helps people come together and bind us into friendships and a community that is supportive and welcoming. Yet, during the last few years I have seen that community fragmenting and becoming very, very toxic in many areas. So, have games lost their ability to unite the geeks? Have we lost whatever common element we used to have that ma...

Tons and tons of games use some sort of religion in their setting. Many of them have more than one religion and all of those will have player characters, and those characters are meant to follow the tennets of religions that do not exist in our world. But our world does have religions people follow and they shape our views of many things from very early age. How does that affect us? How does that...

Can you imagine being a Sleeper soldier from the Cold War? By Paco G. Jaen Sleepers: Orphans of the Cold War is an RPG from company Death Spiral Games in which players take on the roles of agents of the Cold War that have been in stasis for a long time and have been awakened now by whatever means needed to make the adventure. The game was successfully funded in Kickstarter a while back and the res...

Are you a Crunch player or a Lunch player? Every RPG needs a rules system. Some are heavier, Crunch, and some are lighter, Lunch. But hardly all are the appropriate for each game, or even for the game you are playing. For example games that make you, or try to make you, roll for pretty much everything and have rules that, if you miss them, well… it doesn’t bode well for your poor adventurer/invest...

Since the OGL came into place a lot of years ago, there has been a totally unprecedented amount of work published for a lot of role playing games. Mind you, that doesn’t take much because RPGs are pretty young, so anything can be “unprecedented”. But the point is that it was. It still is. But is it a good thing that there are so many products? Is it good that we can have access to all of them? Jim...

In this episode, Jim Pinto proposes that Geekdom as we know is about to die a painful and very unavoidable death thanks to the blight that is cognitive and confirmation bias in our lives. In a nutshell, we are seeing more and more crappy shows and movies that people consider to be super great when, if you look at them under a critical and objective light, they are not all that great, like the Big...

FAITH is a Spanish Science Fiction RPG by company Burning Games.  FAITH, unlike other RPGs, comes in a box with tons of cards and tokens. Nice looking too! In FAITH, the universe has been connected by a network of wormholes that have thousands of exits to just a many solar systems and planets and five races are playable, each one with their traits and differences. A lot of thought has gone into th...

I have known Louis Porter Jr. for a fair bit now and for that bit and much longer he’s been producing a lot of good products. Neoexodus has received some very good reviews from Endzeitgeist, probably the most prolific and demanding reviewer out there, and Louis keeps coming up with new ideas all the time. This time, he wants to create Crisis of the World Eater, a multi company project with a long...

Prime Time is a Recources Management game for 2 to 4 players in which each player takes the role of a Television magnate who must build their channel and for that must buy actors, producers, writers, show ideas… The game was Kickstarted a while ago and, as it is Elad Goldsteen´s tradition, delivered pretty much on time and on budget. With whimsical graphics and good quality components, Prime Time...