Episode 161: Geekerati Returns with a New Format and an Interview with Dom Zook of Saving Throw Show

The Geekerati Podcast was founded in 2007 and streamed 160 episodes before going on hiatus in 2014. It was meant to be a brief hiatus as the Geekerati panelists coordinated their busy schedules, but it ended up lasting almost five years. With this episode Geekerati returns with new Bi-Weekly prerecorded episodes with new guests and new segments. We are proud to relaunch with an interview with our friend Dom Zook. Dom is the Executive Producer of Saving Throw Show a Role Playing Game Live Play streaming channel on Twitch. If you're a fan of Critical Role, or any other live play show, you should give Saving Throw Show a look.They are currently running a number of gaames online, but their Savage Worlds show launches its new season during the channel's Fundraising Marathon on June 21st!
 

This episode also sees the introduction of our first new segment, Something Old/Something New. This segment will be a regular review segment and will be joined by other segments including our Dungeon Master advice segment Dungeons & Dilemmas in the near future. Our current segment reviews the old Conan Roleplaying Game by TSR and Attack of the Necron, the first entry in Warped Galaxies the new YA Warhammer Adventures book series from Games Workshop. 

 If the discussion in Something Old/Something new piqued your interest in the system used by the TSR Conan Roleplaying Game, you will want to take a look at its Open Content successor ZeFRS and download the pdf rulebook.


This episode featured the following sound effects from Plate Mail Games: 1950s Space, Inside the Internet, and Space Battle. 

An RPG of Rifles and Magic: Brian McClellan's Powder Mage RPG is Coming Soon.

 

The best way to describe Brian McClellan's Powder Mage stories is by saying that they are an entertaining combination of Sharpe's Rifles and Full Metal Alchemist and The Scarlet Pimpernel. The novels, and short stories, fall within the noble genre of Military Fantasy fiction which has seen a resurgence since the publication of Temeraire by Naomi Novik. Like the best fiction in the genre, McClellan's Powder Mage tales evoke a world in which large struggles are taking place, and where one man can make a difference, but without the need for the "dark lord" trope that dominates much of Epic Fantasy.

Promise of Blood, the first book in the series, tells the story of Field Marshal Tamas who engages in a coup against his king and sends corrupt aristocrats to the guillotine. McClellan's imagery here is a combination of the French Revolution and Napoleon's French Consolate. It's a world where magic exists, but it doesn't exist around every corner. It's a world where old gods awaken. It's a world of intrigue and politics, but it is a world at war.

The books have sold over 250,000 copies and are enjoyable reads, but now fans of the series can bring Powder Mage adventures to their kitchen tables with the recently announced Powder Mage Roleplaying Game. The game is currently in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign and I had the honor to do a brief interview with Alan Bahr the game designer working with Brian McClellan on the upcoming RPG. Below is our brief exchange.

Brian McClellan's POWDER MAGE trilogy seems a perfect IP for a role playing game. How did you get attached to the project?

 - A mutual friend (who happens to be an author and my best friend, Steve Diamond) introduced us at GenCon 2014 after it'd been announced I'd be doing Planet Mercenary for the Schlock Mercenary team. I pitched Brian, and walked him through what such a project would look like, and we just sorta...went from there.

When adapting an IP to a role playing game, one of the biggest challenges a designer faces is translating the setting. How are you addressing this challenge? Are you reading the books 100 times, working with Brian (who's an avid gamer), or a mix of both?

- Heh. Well I have read all the books a few times now (enough that I'm actually pretty jumbled!), but I think the biggest thing that will help us do that, is Brian himself will be writing most of the setting/fluff pieces in the book. My job is to just write the rules that need to be written, and only those.

Usually game worlds are by necessity bigger than the glimpses we get in stories, what strategy will you and Brian be using to fill the gaps or encourage GMs to make their own versions of Adro and the neighboring states?

 - Honestly, just trusting the GMs and players to the story they want to tell. Not everyone will tell the same story, so we just make an effort to provide them all the options and some of the cool setting nuggets Brian hasn't disclosed yet in order to let their imaginations run wild. I think any RPG, especially an established setting, just has to give that trust to the group using it.

What was it about the Savage Worlds game system that you think makes it the best fit for the Powder Mage Trilogy?

- How it plays. We actually wrote two custom systems for the game, and while they worked, it quickly became apparent that it wasn't quite working perfectly. But we also tested a few systems we could license for it, and after a few months, it was pretty clear that Savage Worlds was the one everyone responded to the most, and turned out the best on the table. It was the flexibility of the magic system that really allowed us to grab the feel of Powder Mage in the rules.

I know that you are working on the writing side, and you've hired a stable of artists, is there anyone else working on the project?

- Well, Brian is writing most of the world fluff, and I wrote most of the rules. We'll be putting the game through layout (by Robert Denton), and editing (we haven't chosen an editor yet, we'll probably use two), but the primary writing will be Brian and myself at this point in the project.

One of the common features of Savage Worlds books, both official and licensed, is the use of Plot Point Campaigns and Campaign Generators? Will the POWDER MAGE role playing game be featuring GM Friendly options like these?

 - We definitely have plans to include adventures and adventure generators. Exactly how much we include is determined by how high we fund!

You mentioned the flexibility of the Magic System being one of the things that you thought was a way that Savage Worlds captured the feel of the Powder Mage Trilogy? Could you expand on that?

- The way the magic systems work in Savage Worlds fits the idea of Powder Mage very well. There's a lot of flexibility, and the ability to use magic in a lot of different ways, but have similar effects really fits Powder Mage and the style of stories it evokes. Honestly, the only "new" magic we had to create was how to depict the effects of the titular Powder Mages.

While not mentioned in the interview, one of the things that makes the Savage Worlds system ideal for Powder Mage gaming and Military Fantasy gaming in general, is the speed with which combats are resolved by the game's mechanics. While Savage Worlds is a robust roleplaying game, it has its origins in skirmish miniatures gaming and this foundation allows the game to handle large combats in less time than it takes other game systems to emulate. This is one of the reason's I'm very excited about this game and about Savage Worlds related games in general.

[Cross Posted at Geekerati Media]

When Pulp Meets Urban Fantasy

I love a good urban fantasy yarn. I'm a regular reader of the tales of Harry Dresden, Atticus O'Sullivan, and Detective Inspector Wei Chen. There is just something about the combination of noir tropes with magic that excites my literary appetites. I'm also a big fan of Pulp heroes like Nick Charles, The Spider, Doc Savage, and Billy Byrne. In my opinion, these two genre are too rarely combined. Manly Wade Wellman's tales of John Thunstone are among some of the most imaginative fiction I've read. The Thunstone tales combine the cool atmospherics of a Thin Man film and add a wonderful layer of sinister mysticism. Thunstone faces fantastic foes who lurk on the edges of human society, seeking our destruction.

The Complete Thunstone from Haffner Press. Image by Raymond Swanland.

Given my love of these kinds of stories, and my love of Angry Robot Books, it is surprising that I missed the release of Alyc Helms' The Dragon of Heaven which is the first entry in her Missy Masters/Mr. Mystic series of books. This July will see the release of The Conclave of Shadow, a title that echoes Wellman's School of Darkness, and it looks to be an intriguing entry.

 

The books tell the tale of a street magician named Missy Masters who had inherited magical powers, and a job as the vigilante hero Mr. Mystic, from her estranged grandfather. Missy soon discovers that it takes more than a snazzy clothes and a talent for witty banter to combat the forces of evil effectively, it also takes experience.

From this basic premise, it appears at first glance that Helms brings in narrative elements that might be inspired by Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds series and dials up the magical power dial up to 11. It's hard to tell where on the scale of Savvy Scholar outwits the Forces of Evil to Sorcerer Supreme obliterates Cosmic Threats this book series lies, but the premises are intriguing enough for me to find out. I'll be checking out this series in the next couple of weeks, so I'll let you know. I might even throw in a Savage Worlds and Shadow of the Demon Lord write up or two for characters in the series.

Geekerati Radio Flashback Friday -- Susan Palwick Discusses SHELTER

Susan Palwick is an award winning Science Fiction and Fantasy author who currently teaches English at the University of Nevada Reno. Many of her novels and stories deal with emotional trauma or questions of identity, and that includes her novel SHELTER. Susan kindly discussed her book with me and the other Geekerati hosts back in 2007.

It was a special moment in the Geekerati history as it was one of our first author interviews. We've done many more over the past six years, but this one was quite special. It isn't special solely for its place as an early episode, it is also special because Susan was one of my mentoring professors as an undergraduate. There is absolutely no way I would have been able to complete my degree if it hadn't been for her compassion - and the compassion of a couple of other wonderful academics.

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Gen Con:The Finest Four Days in Gaming Have Begun

Gen Con, one of the longest running hobby gaming conventions, celebrates its 45th anniversary this year and continues to provide its trademarked BEST FOUR DAYS IN GAMING.  The event opened to the public yesterday August 16 and will continue through Sunday, August 19.

If you've never been to Gen Con, it might surprise you to find out that it is as much a collection of creative workshops as it is a fan convention.  This stems from the fact that Gen Con has been deeply involved with the role playing game hobby since the very beginnings of role playing as a hobby, and as James Wallis wrote quoting the now famous game designer Greg Costikyan in Interactive Fantasy (IF) issue #2 back in 1994,  "gaming is a democratic form of entertainment, placing the audience and the creator on more or less equal footing."  This is true of most gaming, but it is especially true of role playing games where an expected part of play is the creation of new content -- either mechanical or narrative.  Since the early days of the hobby designers like Greg Stafford have been arguing that role playing games themselves are art, "Role-playing games are a new form of art, as legitimate as sculpture, drama, or prose fiction."  Gen Con is filled with events for those gamers who wish to become artists.

The Writer's Symposium contains over 70 events focused on the creation and marketing of genre fiction.

The Gen Con film festival -- and supporting "how to" panels -- keeps growing every year due to the democratization of film making tools. 

There are game design workshops a plenty, and a vibrant artist's gallery where new artists and established names share their work and their expertise.  The Miniature Hobby Events feature skilled miniature painting and provide over 60 workshops from those who want to learn more about painting, building terrain, and pursuing this artistic avenue.

In addition to the artistic and creative events, this year's event has a couple of highlights.

• As mentioned above, Gen Con is celebrating its 45th anniversary.
• The convention is also celebrating its 10th year in Indianapolis.
• Last year's event saw four-day turnstile attendance of more than 120,000 and this year's event is even bigger than last year.
• Thursday night featured a Keynote speech discussing the Future of Dungeons & Dragons.  It was the first time that Wizards of the Coast has provided a visionary Keynote address.
• More than 45 brand new games will be on sale at the convention -- form family games to card games and rpgs Gen Con is hobby gaming's version of E3.

There is something for everyone to do at this year's convention.  If you are in town, you definitely want to stop by.  If you aren't here this year, you might want to visit www.gencon.com and consider attending next year's event.