Questing Beast's Questions

First I need to announce that although I was planning on attending TotalCon due to an unforeseen and extremely expensive emergency home repair I will not be able to attend. I do still hope to attend ShireCon in September. 

I am still cobbling together the ruleset for my solo play game but I did not want to leave readers hanging so I decided to answer the questions that Ben over at Questing Beast asked some YouTuber's in a recent video. You can find that video here:

 

While it is true that I am not a YouTuber I am a podcaster and I think the questions are still valid. Here are the questions.

1) Favorite game as a player versus favorite game as a GM?

As a player outside of conventions I typically am picking the people I want to play with more than specific games. For example I am three years into a Pathfinder 1E game where we are playing through The Wrath of the Righteous adventure path. I stopped playing D&D during the AD&D 1E era and had no interest in the later editions. That said a good friend is the GM and he asked me to play, I am glad he did. The group is great and they are the reason I come back every other week, I would happily play any game with that group because I genuinely enjoy the people in it even if the games, like Pathfinder, aren't my favorite.

At conventions I do take the game into account. Not always, ofttimes I will join a game because the person running it is someone I know or want to meet, but usually I pick games that I have not played before and am interested in. There are also some games at conventions, like Thom Wilson's Tavern Brawl, that I will try to always play because they are so fun and really can only be pulled off properly at a convention. 

When it comes to favorite game to GM I tend to prefer games that I have a decent level of system mastery with. I an not good at picking a single favorite. Some of my favorite games to run are Boot Hill 2E, Barbarians of Lemuria, ICRPG, Ninja City (based on DCC) and Night of the Ninja. 

2) Do you ever feel like you're stuck making tabletop role playing game content? Ever wish you could make something else you're excited about but it doesn't really fit the theme of the channel? What would it be?

As you can tell from my podcast I definitely do not feel constrained to just cover tabletop role playing. I have the advantage that I do this as a hobby and instead of making money putting out the podcast actually costs me money. I am not concerned about growing my views or likes or if my show is recommended by an algorithm to new listeners. That does not mean that I am disinterested in what my listeners want, one of the best parts able podcasting is the interactive nature and the ability to play and respond to listener calls, but it also gives me the freedom to talk about things that interest me outside of tabletop role playing games. 

I am conscious that my podcast is primarily a gaming podcast and do to try space out the movie or book talk. I appreciate that not all my listeners are interested in the non gaming topics. I do not want to alienate them but I also feel if a specific topic is not of interest it is ok for someone not to skip that episode. 

3) What's a very strong tabletop role playing game opinion that you used to hold that over time you've changed on significantly? 

When I was in high school I felt more complex and detailed was better. For example I started with the original Top Secret and when Top Secret SI came out I thought the more streamlined projectile combat rules were needlessly dumbed down. I felt the same way when I opened the boxes of Freedom Fighters and The Price of Freedom back in the day. Of course now I see the error of that way of thinking. I still like Top Secret 1E, in fact it is my favorite espionage game, but I see advantages in the way the rules were streamlined in Top Secret SI. For example I see how the way automatic weapons are handled really speeds up play. I have also come to appreciate games like Risus and USR that teenage me would have felt were too light and simple. I loved Palladium Games back in the day and still love them but they can be a lot of work to run! These days I'm not as interested in all that work so when I ran the adventure Road Hogs for After the Bomb last year I cut some corners with the system to make things flow better. There is no way I would use Palladium's experience point system as written in a long term game for example, it is just too much book keeping.

All that said I haven't abandoned those old games, Boot Hill 2E is still my preferred western game and I still have a fondness for AD&D 1E. That does not keep me from appreciating newer games and I am open to playing anything, for example I was in short playtest of Modiphius' Space 1999  recently and had a great time. That said I am not sold on meta currency as a necessary part of tabletop role playing games, I think it has a place in some games (such as Top Secret 1E, Barbarians of Lemuria, and Reaver) and other games are better without it. But that is a topic for another day...

That's all I have for today, I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments below. I will be back in two weeks, remember the words of the great ones, be excellent to each other.