Yes Indie'd Pod

Support the show on Patreon Layla Adelman, who goes by the handle pandatheist in RPG spaces, is a rpg designer, writer, and serial twitter thread writer. She's one of the co-designers of the Illuminated Worlds system for Critical Role's Darrington Press. This is the system which powers Candela Obscura and potentially other unannounced games. She was an Ennies judge two years. She blogs over at Bone Box Chant at wordpress.com, including a major series collating and analysing statistics around Kickstarter's ZineQuest and a series of interviews with TTRPG editors. You can follow her on BlueSky and Mastodon. Show Notes: 01:04 - Layla's Introduction 08:18 - Masks of Nyarlathotep and GMing like an editor 15:53 - Layla's approach to reviewing 29:26 - Tips for writing a good rulebook 35:48 - Games Layla is excited about 39:54 - Tyranny of Numbers 41:11 - All Advice Is Advice For Myself Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Support the show on Patreon Dave is a youtuber, reviewer and game designer. His Youtube channel, Dave Thaumavore RPG Reviews, currently has about 180 videos and more than 25,000 subscribers. He's also got a great newsletter where he publishes written interviews game design luminaries. Links to all of this stuff will be in the show notes. He's designed supplements for the Index Card RPG but his most recent standalone game is Fluxfall Horizon, a zany, scifi PbtA game of dimension hopping do-gooders (and some potential do-badders). Show Notes: 00:52 - Introducing Dave 01:56 - Youtube journey and the challenge of constant comparison with other creators 09:29 - Dave's process 15:34 - Making sponsored content 16:55 - Favorite games to review 21:43 - Do reviewers have to play games? 35:52 - Advice for reviewers 38:12 - Infectious Enthusiasm: Wanderhome 39:22 - Tyranny of Numbers 41:45 - All Advice is Advice for Myself Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Support the show on Patreon Christopher Chinn is the blogger behind the long-running and well-loved Deeper in the Game blog. He's probably best-known for the Same Page Tool. But started in 2007, the blog has 15 years of thoughtful and insightful writing and advice on RPG design and play. Show Notes: 01:17 - Introducing Chris 02:54 - The origin of the blog (also "rules are for preventing bitterness between friends") 9:56 - How Chris learned to ditch the railroad and embrace improvisation 23:34 - On playing with and writing for geeks of color 26:35 - Why the Same Page Tool shouldn't exist 37:38 - Advice for new bloggers 41:29 - Infectious Enthusiasm: Errant 43:37 - Tyranny of Numbers 46:20 - Replay: Tenra Bansho Zero 48:49 - All Advice Is Advice For Myself Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Support the show on Patreon Emily C. Friedman is an associate professor of English at Auburn University and director of 18thconnect, a website dedicated to scholarship of the 18th century. Though an 18th-century literature scholar and critic by training, Emily is now one of the foremost chroniclers of the phenomenon we call actual play. She teaches games and actual play in the classroom and regularly writes about actual play on gaming website, Polygon. In fact, as of recording this, we're close to the one year anniversary of her first piece on Polygon, about New York by Night, a Vampire the Masquerade AP. She's also working on a book titled Improvised Worlds: Digital Storytelling Through Play. Also, here's her youtube channel, CriticalProf. Show Notes: 00:46 - Emily's bio 02:28 - How did you start working on actual play? 09:22 - What is actual play anyway? 15:39 - The state of actual play today 23:07 - Examples of actual play that break the form 36:52 - Infectious Enthusiasm: The Quiet Year 38:42 - Tyranny of Numbers 40:07 - All Advice Is Advice For Myself If you'd like a written transcript for this episode, you can find it here. Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Support the show on Patreon On this episode, I'm talking to Becky Annison, the co-founder of UK-based design company, Black Armada Games. She's the award-winning designer of When the Dark Is Gone, part of the Seven Wonders anthology from Pelgrane Press. And is probably best known for the high drama werewolf game, Bite Marks, and GM-less mystery game, Lovecraftesque, on which she's the co-designer. When she's not working on games, she's a lawyer who works on high level climate change issues. Check out Wreck This Deck on Backerkit. Show notes: 00:41 - Becky's Introduction 05:25 - Being the UK's Queen of the Werewolves 10:18 - Wreck This Deck 20:18 - Favourite Demon 27:43 - Infectious Enthusiasm: Escape From Tentacle City 30:47 - RePlay 35:30 - All Advice Is Advice For Myself If you'd like a written transcript for this episode, you can find it here. Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Support the show on Patreon This week, we're talking to Paul Beakley has been involved with the games industry since at least the mid 1990s. He's a Game Chef finalist, a Golden Cobra honourable mention, and an official designer/adventure module writer for games like Deadlands, Earthdawn, Mutant Chronicles and more. He's also been writing about games for a long time, across various websites, forums, and magazines like Pyramid and Inphobia. But we're here today to talk about the Indie Game Reading Club, which began on the long lost shores of GooglePlus in 2015. It's now a standalone website and slack community where there's a lot of great writing and discussion of small-press storygames. I love reading it and you will too! Show notes: 1:38 - Starting the Indie Game Reading Club 16:32 - Why do we write about games? 21:31 - Roleplaying as faith practice 26:03 - How to be critical without being mean 38:02 - Who is your audience? 43:54 - Infectious Enthusiasm: a|state, Fellowship 49:58 - Tyranny of Numbers: the economics of criticism 51:53 - RePlay 59:30 - All Advice Is Advice For Myself This episode was edited by Gabriel Caetano. Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Support the show on Patreon On this episode, I'm chatting with Fiona Hopkins and Stephanie Burt, who are the co-hosts of Team Up Moves, a podcast about playing and discussing superhero tabletop RPGs. I'm a big fan of the podcast and so I reached out to the two of them. Apart from RPGs, Fiona is a front-end software engineer by trade who worked at Google, Twitter, the City of Boston and now the Democratic party. Stephanie is a poet and a professor of English at Harvard University. She's also a critic, who has published a number of books, which you can read about on her Wikipedia page, which she has. Show Notes: 00:43 - Introducing Fiona and Stephanie 01:51 - Why supeheroes? 13:28 - Analyzing superhero RPGs 34:01 - Picking games for the podcast 44:02 - Infections Enthusiasm: Wool of Bat, Monsterhearts 2 50:21 - Tyranny of Numbers 52:13 - All Advice Is Advice For Myself You can find a written transcript of the episode here. Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Support the show on Patreon On this episode, we're talking to Tan Shao Han, a TTRPG designer, writer, and cultural consultant from Singapore. He's contributed words to various Paizo Pathfinder books, including Lost Omens: Impossible Lands, new Dagger Isles supplement for Blades in the Dark, and other games like Monster Care Squad and ARC. He's the co-founder of Curious Chimeras, a company that makes games and games-adjacent interactive experiences. Shao Han interestingly did his Master’s Thesis on tabletop role-playing games and their ability to engage, empower and educate. Show notes: 00:27 - Shao Han's bio 01:41 - Learning D&D from videogame manuals 08:01 - Merging gaming and history and mythology 23:08 - Da Xia, a WIP game of folk heroes in WW2 Singapore 24:04 - Showcasing indie RPGs in the community 33:42 - Infectious Enthusiasm: The Nightmares Underneath 36:28 - Tyranny of Numbers 37:48 - RePlay 38:46 - All Advice Is Advice For Myself You can find a written transcript of the episode here. Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Support the show on Patreon On this episode, we're talking to Indrani Ganguly who is the marketing manager for Hunters Entertainment, the publisher of Kids on Bikes, Alice is Missing, among other games. She is also the co-founder of Desis n Dragons, probably India's largest community of tabletop roleplayers. Of which, I am a humble member. Indrani is also a dicemaker, an artisan, making beautiful and custom math rocks under the name Nonagon Dice. She was a part of last year's Big Bad Con PoC Leadership Team and expertly organized the India programme where three people from India were invited to attend Big Bad Con 2022. She is an inductee of the TheGameAwards Future Class of 2022. Show notes: 00;30 - Indrani's bio 02:24 - Getting started 08:26 - Starting Desis & Dragons 14:14 - The vision for the community 24:04 - Showcasing indie RPGs in the community 30:03 - Marketing TTRPGs 35:50 - Up All Night, a game of bargaining with your brain for one night's rest 37:29 - Infectious Enthusiasm: Alice is Missing, blase monotony, Bubble Bubble 38:54 - Tyranny of Numbers 40:24 - RePlay 41:52 - All Advice Is Advice For Myself You can find a written transcript of the episode here. Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Support the show on Patreon On this episode, we're speaking to Jahmal Brown aka Mad Jay Zero. Jay is a podcaster, designer and rockstar GM. His podcast Diceology features interviews with folks from the RPG scene as well as fun recaps of his various games in Last Week in Gaming. As a game designer, he's contributed words to books like Pathfinder's magnificent Mwangi Expanse as well as designed his own games, Lifted Vol 1: Indomitable, a people with superpowers game primed by cortex. He also did some Pro GMing before it became cool when he kickstarted a West Marches campaign called Into the Mad Lands. Show Notes: 01:05 - Introduction to Jay 04:13 - About the Diceology podcast (talking to Mike Pondsmith and Sarah Doombringer) 06:19 - Jay, on playing with kids 10:45 - Jay's 30+ session Twilight 2000 campaign 14:16 - GMing Practices 21:50 - Running West Marches 28:36 - Lifted Vol 1: Indomitable 37:43 - Infectious Enthusiasm: Legacy 2e: Life Among The Ruins 41:09 - Tyranny of Numbers: Kickstarter Advice 47:40 - RePlay: Jay shares story from Lifted/Champions Now about every table making corporate superhero teams You can find a written transcript of the episode here. Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Support the show on Patreon On this episode, we're speaking to Lowell Francis the writer behind the Ennie award winning RPG blog, Age of Ravens, which you can find at ageofravensgames.com. He's the co-designer of the fantastic Hearts of Wulin, a PbtA game of wuxia melodrama. He is also the Gauntlet Gaming Community Manager and co-host of Gauntlet Podcast. He is a comics author (he wrote Superman!), met his wife playing Magic the Gathering, and got knocked over by the fifth Dr. Who at a signing event. Show Notes: 00:45 - Introducing Lowell 02:56 - Discussing Age of Ravens 07:08 - Reviews 12:12 - RPG Chronology Lists 15:43 - Post-Apocalyptic Games 20:57 - GMing Styles 26:54 - PbtA and Hearts of Wulin 34:20 - Community Management 41:04 - Infectious Enthusiasm: Eclipse Phase 2nd Edition 42:44 - Tyranny of Numbers: GMing 200 Games a Year 48:05 - RePlay: Scott Pilgrim via Hearts of Wulin This episode comes with a transcript automatically. If your podcast reader does not display the transcript, you can find a version here. Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Support the show on Patreon On this episode, we're speaking to Judd Karlman, the podcaster behind Daydreaming about Dragons, my personal favourite source of GM advice. Every episode of his podcast has two parts: table techniques, where Judd talks offers techniques to play roleplaying games, and inspiration goat, where a real goat recommends media to Judd and he explains how that media can inspire your game. Judd is also the author of gaming supplements, most notably Dictionary of Mu, a setting for Sorcerer written like a dictionary. And you can find Judd's blog at GithyankiDiaspora.com. Also on reddit, where he's often on DM advice subreddits helping new DMs picking up D&D for the first time. Some helpful timestamps: 00:54 - Introducing Judd 02:24 - Talking about Sons of Kryos, an early experiment in RPG podcasting 06:38 - Talking about friendly versus snarky advice, and generally the problem of talking on the internet 11:47 - My favourite episodes of Daydreaming about Dragons: Episode 85. Playing Chess With Villains and Episode 70. Making World History Relevant. 24:45 - How Judd preps for games 26:10 - Using socialism to find the fun in dungeons (the municipal, unionized dungeon-delving actual play with Sean Nittner) 31:19 - Infectious Enthusiasm: Judd recommends The Between, Into the Odd, and As The Sun Forever Sets 34:48 - Tyranny of Numbers: Judd shares his podcasting statistics 37:30 - RePlay: Judd shares a Dictionary of Mu gaming story If your podcast player supports transcripts, you should see one automatically. Otherwise, please go here for a full transcript. Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

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Marx interviews Thomas Manuel about games journalism, the synergy or dissonance between being a playwright and being a game designer, and about his games The Spider and the City, Hypercity, and Depths Unfathomable. Yes Indie'd Pod on TwitterYes Indie’d Pod websiteYes Indie’d Pod PatreonDonate via Ko-Fi Thomas Manuel on TwitterThomas Manuel on ItchioThomas Manuel official website Marx Shepherd on TwitterMarx Shepherd on ItchioAll music derived from: be quiet from the album Sketches by Jahzzar is licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License • available from Free Music Archive Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Marx interviews Cezar Capacle about Push and philosophies of game design, I Guess This Is It and minimalist story gaming, and how to publicise oneself in a post-Twitter world. This episode is kindly sponsored by Matthew Gravelyn, whose game Tapestry is available now. Yes Indie'd Pod on TwitterYes Indie’d Pod websiteYes Indie’d Pod PatreonDonate via Ko-Fi Cezar Capacle on TwitterCezar Capacle on ItchioCezar Capacle bio page Thomas Manuel on TwitterThomas Manuel on ItchioThomas Manuel official websiteAll music derived from: be quiet from the album Sketches by Jahzzar is licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License • available from Free Music Archive Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Marx interviews Michael Low of Luck of Legends Games about games in the classroom, education in games, and about the choose-your-own-adventure colouring book RPG training manual Starsworn. This episode is kindly sponsored by Matthew Gravelyn, whose game Tapestry is available now. Yes Indie'd Pod on TwitterYes Indie’d Pod websiteYes Indie’d Pod PatreonDonate via Ko-Fi Starsworn on KickstarterMichael Low on TwitterLuck of Legends on Itchio Cezar Capacle on TwitterCezar Capacle on ItchioAll music derived from: be quiet from the album Sketches by Jahzzar is licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License • available from Free Music Archive Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Marx interviews Thomas Eliot of Sixpence Games about Fear of the Unknown, a one-shot game of building towns and investigating horrors. This episode is kindly sponsored by Kurt Refling and Ian Howard, whose game Here We Used to Fly is on Kickstarter now. Yes Indie'd Pod on TwitterYes Indie’d Pod websiteYes Indie’d Pod PatreonDonate via Ko-Fi Fear of the Unknown on KickstarterThomas Eliot on TwitterSixpence Games official website The Midnight World official websiteThe Midnight World on FacebookThe Midnight World on DTRPGItchioAll music derived from: be quiet from the album Sketches by Jahzzar is licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License • available from Free Music Archive Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Marx interviews James Davey of Gem and Eye Games about The Midnight World, a game about mental health, world-altering powers, and terrifying gods from other dimensions. This episode is kindly sponsored by Kurt Refling and Ian Howard, whose game Here We Used to Fly is on Kickstarter now. Yes Indie'd Pod on TwitterYes Indie’d Pod websiteYes Indie’d Pod PatreonDonate via Ko-Fi The Midnight World official websiteThe Midnight World on FacebookThe Midnight World on DTRPGItchio Starsworn on KickstarterMichael Low on TwitterLuck of Legends on ItchioAll music derived from: be quiet from the album Sketches by Jahzzar is licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License • available from Free Music Archive Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

A brief announcement about the future of Yes Indie'd Pod. Yes Indie'd Pod on TwitterYes Indie’d Pod websiteAll music derived from: be quiet from the album Sketches by Jahzzar is licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License • available from Free Music Archive Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter

Marx interviews Jeremy Gage of Have You Played This, whose podcast Draw Your Dice is an educational podcast exploring how to make TTRPGs. This week’s sponsor is By Odins Beard RPG whose game We Deal In Lead is available for pre-order now! Or, check out the Other Worlds game jam on Itchio. Yes Indie'd Pod on TwitterYes Indie’d Pod websiteYes Indie’d Pod PatreonDonate via Ko-Fi Jeremy Gage on TwitterHave You Played This? NetworkDraw Your Dice PodcastAll music derived from: be quiet from the album Sketches by Jahzzar is licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 International License • available from Free Music Archive Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter