Its funny how a dealer room looks different once you have a kid.  I’m not saying all dealer’s room are naughty, but it is interesting how the world changes right in front of you like that.

Tonight I will be playtesting my Lady Blackbird hack I’m calling “Making the Bigs”.  Its a minor league baseball setting in small-town American yesteryear.

I know there are some holes in my method for resolving an entire nine inning game, but I’m so psyched to get this thing on the virtual table (we’re playing over Skype)!  I want to see how it feels, if it will be fun for the group and fun to GM.

This is just a quick message of excitement and me hoping it doesn’t crash and burn like my only other playtest of another game I was trying to write (that would be  D-Com… what a horrible thing it was).

Thanks to Chris Norwood and JJ Lanza in advance for giving me some of their time in hopes of me giving them a decent game session in return!

EDIT: Due to a flight delay, the playtest was postponed.  While I was bummed, this gave me a chance to get some more feedback and update and improve the rules.  I actually replace a piece of GM Fiat with.. game rules.  Yay me!  We playtest this Wednesday coming up (8/18).

PPG will be delayed this week.  The strip will be up soon.

Interviews:

• Luke Crane and Adventure Burner (http://burningwheel.org/)

Luke mentioned his Rogue’s Gallery.  Here it is: http://www.burningwheel.org/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Characters

• Chris Perrin and Mecha (Pre-order page: http://www.myheroicjourney.com/mecha-pre-order-page/)

Congrats audio provided by:

• Remi Treuer, a thoughtful friend and former member of the amazing and inspirational podcast http://www.durham3.com/

• Kristian Serrano of http://realityblurs.com/

• Renato Ramonda, a very cool Italian fan; his blog (some of it is in English) is here: http://renatoram.wordpress.com/

• JJ Lanza, a gaming buddy (Dain rules!) and author of the blog http://back2rpgbasics.blogspot.com/

• Ryan Macklin, podcaster, editor, “muse”. http://ryanmacklin.com/

• Clyde Rhoer, a fabulous man who makes me think more than I want to… and the podcaster behind  http://theoryfromthecloset.com/

That Supergirl Ad:
Thought Bubble Audio Studios http://thoughtbubbleaudio.com/
I’m an editor and small-time voice actor on this upcoming audio drama podcast.  It is coming soon, you should check it out, very exciting stuff forthcoming.

Thanks everyone for listening, emailing, commenting, tweeting, everything you do!

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I think this is my first “can’t we all get along” strip.  I’ll probably beat this horse to a bloody pulp over time.  I love many of the ideas of the “old school revival” or “old school renaissance” or… wait, what did OSR stand for?  Aw crap, I like the D&D that is older and stuff.

Geez.

The Monday Rangers continued the final leg of their epic quest to destroy the Items Three and prevent the return of a dark god to their world.  This session the party snuck into an unassailable stronghold carved into the rock of the Everwall with an ancient red dragon swooping overheard.  How did they fare?

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This strip is a bit biographical.  RapierCon 2010: I was set up to run Lacuna with no pre-regs.  Then, my table was handed to a different GM.  It hurt.  Ah well, I got to run Lacuna later that day in the lobby.

The other toons in this strip are Mick’s bitstrip avatar and that of Tancid.  Thanks!

The ENnie Awards are a popular vote contest held for various categories of role-playing game items, from games to minis to podcasts and art.  There are a number of interesting entries for a variety of ENnie Awards this year, but only one I am passionate about.  That’s Lady Blackbird.

Who… or what is Lady Blackbird?

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Game Advocates is a miniseries of interviews about a single game, not with the game designers but with people who have thoroughly played the game. In Game Advocates we ask about how the game plays, what’s fun about it, possible pitfalls for new players, and why this and not another game.

This episode’s advocate is Tavis Allison, blogger on The Mule Abides and author in the Fight On! fanzine. Tavis advocates for Dungeons and Dragons in its originally published form.

This episode was sponsored by Drive Thru RPG

Please be sure to take the Open Polls 2010 RPG Podcast Listener Survey at RPGpolls.com.

Direct Download: http://www.canonpuncture.com/audio/99-canonpuncture99-GA-ODnD.mp3

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There’s a thread going on over at Story Games about how the ENnie awards are… well, could use some changes to give the “little guy” a chance.  You can read it here.

In the thread, someone observed that the games selected for voting are chosen by the ENnie judges and the judges are elected by popular vote.

That got me thinking. The nominees for next year’s Ennie award judging are currently up for the public to see.  I skimmed through them for a bit to see if I found any nominees who caught my eye.  I read through the applications that each nominee has posted and decided that what a person plays says more about how they’ll judge games than any of the theory or “here’s how I’ll judge if I’m elected” mumbo jumbo on the application.

So I’m honing in on the following Ennie judge question:
7. What games have you played in the past year? List up to 10 RPGs you have played the most.

Here are the nominees who have played a few small press games (that I like or have read) and the games they mention that they have played (followed by some commentary from me).

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