I know the cost is prohibitive, and agree with Daniel on his points (as he also mentioned in the comments on my post), but I think there are ways to get that kind of content for cheap or free. I have a few ideas on how to do it, and I might just have to explore them.

As far as any disagreement with my assessment of DDI’s critical fumble, my assessment is it’s too little, too late. I remember being at the official unveiling of 4e at GenCon ‘07 and everything was supposed to be ready to go when the core books shipped (the VTT, dungeon designer, character builder, etc.). They may have recovered a little now, but they missed an epic success.

Anyways, thanks for highlighting Mad Brew Labs!

Along the lines of Mad Brew Labs’ post, the May RPG Blog Carnival is all about the Future of Gaming, and there’s been a few posts looking at tech at the table and the industry. I suggest you look those up or wait till early June to get the entire roundup for more food for thought.

Enhancements on a PDF… yeah, we all want them, but they’ve so far not proven cost effective at all. I’m looking with interest at White Wolf’s new SAS series for Hunter, Collection of Horrors, as various of the releases in that line do come with props, such as audio or video files. Those could very well be the examples of profitability we’ve been waiting for. For someone at my level, and there’s quite a few publishers like this, it becomes cost-prohibitive UNLESS you yourself know how to do these tricks. But think about how much effort goes into a podcast episode, now imagine that for various releases (and remember these would be tailored to the genre, so they would involve more targeted research and production), plus the writing and the art, etc. I know I couldn’t do it unless someone donated their talents. But we’re moving in that direction.

As for Buried Without Ceremony, all I heard was 10 or so minutes of “this rocks, go see it,” but very little of WHY you think it rocks. I know I’m riding you hard on this angle, and it’s because you are both friends that I get so chummy, so take it as constructive criticism. I WANT to know your thoughts on the matter.

Feel free to continue pluggin’ me.

My morning was already pretty fantastic, and finding this episode was really exciting. Thanks for all the really cool praise.

At around 17:40 (one of) you mentioned that “Imaginary Funerals” is really talking about a specific kind of gaming, and that not everyone comes in with conscious issues they want to work out – that some people want to just kill orcs.

Part of what I hoped to say in Imaginary Funerals was inclusive of “those people” – That the amazing virtue of our craft(/hobby) is that you can come in wanting a simple experience, and you have every right to make it simple and to bury it without reflection. The phrase “buried without ceremony” implies a right: we have the right to create these experiences with any degree of meaning, and any degree of analysis. Including zero.

From a different angle, part of that post Malcolm Sheppard wrote (the one quoted in both The Internet Already Exists and Imaginary Funerals)includes: I remember one of the most important things anyone’s said to me about gaming. I was at the bar with a friend from university: a woman I never gamed with, but who played quite a bit with her friends. She remembered a long RIFTS campaign and talked about it in light casual tones, then stopped for a beat and said this:

RIFTS, for God’s sake.

So, yeah. I quote that to say: I think that people hacking orcs in dungeons are still, primarily, creating experiences. And they own those experiences, and they can do whatever they want with them, and that’s beautiful and rare.