William reveals an important truth about Ezzie. Also, board games! Then, a deep discussion on the nature of fear. And we kiss listener butt like it’s going out of style!
Don’t worry, there’s also a good bit of storytelling in the form of Tony’s Dresden Files Game!
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You should have totally changed the site’s banner image to have Ezzie wearing a hat for this episode.
No one can? Wrongo-bongo! SHUT UP! ;p
Producer: Mad props on the 20 minute run!
Yeah for context-laden comments!
Cosplay: Pics or it didn’t happen.
Serialized radio drama? Sounds interesting, I’d definitely like to hear more and would be willing be help out if I can. So definitely get that fleshed out ASAP!
Blargh, more video game talk. Haven’t we had words about that?
Tony: Congrats on your promotion.
Dresden File RPG:
* William, nice summary. Are you interested in starting to play some RPGs? I know some groups who could use somebody to remember/summarize what happened between games….
* Walk through the desert? Did they not have a horse with no name to ride?
* Breaking the laws of magic? Awesome for the GM, suck for the characters.
Tony: Good luck with the walking.
Sounds like one of those board games was Betrayal at the House on the Hill, which is my current favorite board game.
Tabletop is a fun web show.
<Insert joke re: role-playing with spouse here>
Audacity: One of you should really spend sometime just playing around with that program; so the next time it crashes, you can cut out the 30-40 seconds of silence rather than making the listeners wonder if they downloaded a corrupted file. Do not let any fear of failure stopping you from doing this!
Go Team Hat!
One of the reasons I listen/interact with the blog is simply you guys are fun to hang out with, but I’m a lazy sod who’s terrible at scheduling anything. So since I’m too damn lazy to actually schedule a time to get together; I listen to TMTH to keep up on what you’re up to.
William in the mood to be a jerk? I don’t think that word means what you think it means. I’ve met you and never seen you act like a jerk.
Re: me acting like a jerk… or not…
I wish more than anything that everyone who has known me could make the same claim as you, Mark. But, alas, I know there are far too many who cannot. 🙁
Thanks, Mark!
And yes, it is Betrayal at the House on the Hill. I always refer to it as “The One Where We Ganged Up On Jim in the Basement” which is why Tony doesn’t know its real name.
Seems a lot of people have alternate names for it. The group I used to be a part of always called it “Happy Fun Times at House on the Hill, because anybody who believes in ghosts, werewolves, zombies or the supernatural is just being silly.” Being gamers the first part of the game often devolved into trying to explain why such an unexpected group would all go and explore an anbandoned house.
Sometimes there are also have session-specific names. Like last week it was “Betrayal at the House with the Broken Elevator” because the damned thing never left the main floor no matter how many times we tried to use it.
The Magical Talking Hat… The only podcast that seems to remember that it’s the only podcast that does something, tries to remember what that something is, can’t remember it, aaaaaaaand theeeen giiiiives uuuuuup!
CONGRATULATIONS PRODUCER!
Thank you!
Oh, and Tony for his promotion or whatever.
All of the costumes I wore at Dragon*Con were “old” costumes. I didn’t do anything new for it except for a few props for the Savage Worlds Fallout game I ran with Kertain from the HJ forums.
My friends had some amazing and fun costumes also.
So you can see pictures of the Fallout costumes and props (including Nuka Grenade, Rad Away, Maria, 1st Recon hat, etc) from past cons at this Flickr set… (Click the link)
I don’t think you’ve seen my “Fem!5” costume, so you can click the link for that. It’s a Doctor Who costume, a re-working of the 5th Doctor’s outfit as something more befitting a lady.
Yes, I knitted that piece of celery myself.
(When I say, “click the link” I mean click my name. I’m adding the links to the “Website” field when I post the comment.)
I was very excited about v2 of my Nuka Cola caps and less excited about the “minis” I tried to make for “So You Want To Be A Vault Dweller” (a Fallout inspired table top RPG adventure run with the Savage Worlds rules).
Here’s a picture of a bunch of caps. With two V1 caps in the center and all the rest are V2.
For V1, I printed out a page of labels, cut them out, painted some caps, decopodged the labels onto the caps, and then used a couple of paint washes to distress them further and tie the whole thing together.
For V2 I painted the caps white, then gave them a coat of red, then I took them down to ATX Hackerspace and placed them in our laser cutter/etcher and used the laser to vaporize off the red in the shape of the Nuka Cola logo, revealing the white (and sometimes metal because I made both coats sloppy to make them look distressed) underneath.
These were a hit, and I’ve been encouraged to open an Etsy store.
So I converted some Vault Boy/Girl images and etched them onto some acrylic with the laser. Then I rubbed some black paint into the etching.
These are the ones that worked out the best, but the rest looked not good at all. We were going to use these as the minis for the game, so we used the caps as minis as well as bennies.
I think, if I try these again, (and I will) I’ll slow the laser down so the etch is deeper.
In the interest of not posting twice my usual post count. I’ll put the rest of the links in this post.
Here is my friend Tim as Hercules from the Marvel Universe.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hitshermark/7987134708/
My friend Jade shaved her head to cosplay as Zahn from Farscape, so when she wasn’t Zahn she was cosplaying as the gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan. Here’s a picture of Jade (center) with another Spider cosplayer (left) and Tim again (right) as Spider’s editor Royce.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hitshermark/7987114807
The look on that random Spider cosplayer’s face when Tim stomped up to him demanding, “DAMNIT JERUSALEM! WHERE’S MY GODDAMN COLUMN?” was priceless.
Not a lot of Royce cosplayers out there.
We also ran into an Asian guy dressed as Uncle Duke from Doonsburry. (This is significant as both characters are based on Hunter S. Thompson.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hitshermark/7987113169
My other friend Mish. Had a number of costume changes across the weekend but most significant was her “Lady Loki”. (Of which there were many. But she had the best horns quite frankly.) At some point I will find the pictures of the scale-mail pieces she was making (and wasn’t able to finish sadly) to show to Sir Gido as they were breathtaking. The best part of her costume in my opinion though was her wig, which we called a “Snooki” wig because it had a GIANT bumpit. Behold
http://tinyurl.com/9d5rrqe
Girl got drunk.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hitshermark/7987120532
So drunk she was seeing double
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hitshermark/7987112327
Then this happened
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hitshermark/7987119620/
And I was standing by, making sure people didn’t step on her and everybody was like, “Did the Hulk just come through here or something?”
Super funny.
I saved the best for last.
Jade and Mish as Chiana and Zahn from Farscape at the Atlanta Aquarium.
Post Credits Easter Egg
I have done voice-over work, but I can’t travel to record…
Well, that’s the beauty of the Intertubes… one doesn’t have to travel to record! 🙂
I do have a Snowball Mic from Blue.
The board game that takes place in the haunted house where one player suddenly becomes the bad guy is called “Betrayal at House on the Hill”.
I’ve played it. I really like it.
I really like the Walking Dead board game and Last Night On Earth. Which are both about surviving zombie attacks.
There’s a card game called “Guillotine” where you’re an executioner in the French Revolution and you get points by executing people, and there are cards that change up the order in the line.
I also like “Cards Against Humanity”, which is like “Apples to Apples” except way more crass and dirty and wrong.
“Munchkin” is also a great game even if you’re not a gamer.
Also, I have a copy of Fiasco and I totally need to watch that episode of Table Top now.
It *is* “Betrayal at House on the Hill” and I love it! It’s fun that it’s different every time, and we always enjoy ribbing the traitor. Plus there’s virtually no set up. Some of the games we have (Puerto Rico, I’m looking at you!) feel like they take almost as long to set up as they do to play.
Munchkin is fun. We put a chicken on someone’s head, then Tony took it away and made them sad.
We should check into some of the card games – we need a few more filler games for when it’s still early and no one wants to go home, but no one wants to slog through another 90 minutes of setting up and playing another game.
Flux is excellent for this sort of thing, comes in multiple flavors and I’ve got several of them…
“Once Upon a Time” is a fun storytelling card game.
I also strongly suggest anything by CheapAss Games. Particularly “Give Me The Brain” where all the players are zombie fry cooks who only have one brain between them for thinking. There’s a special version where the cards are in Czech and there’s a little card with English translations. So one fun way to play is with the Czech version and the card with the translations is the brain.
Hey, Tony & I even own “Once Upon A Time”! I wonder where it is . . . probably in the crap that still hasn’t been unpacked from our last move.
Right now our favorite filler is “Unspeakable Words” which our neighbors found somewhere and gave to Tony. It’s got nothing outstanding to recommend it from a game design perspective, but it’s been a lot of fun to play. Except for the fact that it’s made me aware that my gaming group as a whole has a persistent belief that laser is spelled lazer, which just annoys me.
😀
Crap! Darned threading – this was supposed to be in reply to “The Magical Talking Hat… The only podcast that seems to remember that it’s the only podcast that does something, tries to remember what that something is, can’t remember it, aaaaaaaand theeeen giiiiives uuuuuup!”
cause it made me lol
I just want to point out that I posted this at the moment I heard Tony give up on trying to remember the thing.
Regarding fear of failure, my biggest fear would be somehow failing my child. I remember how awesome Tony’s parents are, and Mr. Bee and I both work very hard at being supportive of our son, but when he’s not as successful at something as we hoped he’d be, there is some self-reflection going on. Like Tony experienced, though, our son has had a hard time realizing that he’s not the center of attention in many situations, and I end up feeling bad that I haven’t better prepared him to deal with negativity in social settings.
This is the first podcast that I’ve listened to on a regular basis, and I set the time aside to listen every Friday night. There’s been times where we’ve been on vacation or I haven’t been otherwise able to listen, and I always make it a point to catch up. Even if I don’t comment on every episode, I’m still listening. Thanks for the shout-out. 🙂
Tony – congratulations on the promotion!
Producer – congratulations on the run!!
Bloodsparrow – I might have to check out this “Give Me the Brain” game in Czech. Sounds funny and maybe even semi-educational.
William – I don’t think you can be mean. It’s fun to listen to you try though.
Kiya Bee – I’m with you there – this is the first podcast I’ve really every listened to. I usually listen at work when I have a monotonous task to do. Sometimes I get a little behind and often I don’t comment, but I do go back and catch up when I get a chance.
Producer – you should try out Flux. It’s a card game with various rules that go into and out of effect as well as having changing objectives. A game can last as little as 10 minutes and as long as about 45, depending on how the game changes, how familiar players are with the game, and how long it takes people to decide what to play.
Tony – Thanks for the shout-out!
Thanks!
You’re now the second recommendation for Fluxx. I think we’ve avoided it in the past just because there’s so many flavors of it that it gets overwhelming trying to figure out where to start. But it sounds like we should buck up and check it out.
I’d suggest you start with the basic, non-flavored Fluxx unless you have a strong desire for a specific variant. Most of the variants are effectively identical, just with some themed cards. How crazy the themed cards get depends on the variant and your definition of crazy. I can tell you the Pirate version does add a new card type which when it was played in front me seemed mostly used to prevent another player (namely, me) from winning the game. Also games of the Monty Python variant, for whatever reason, either finish in about 15-20 minutes or drag on and on.