Theory From the Closet

Show044: Interview with Mike Mearls

This is the first interview coming out of Gen Con ‘08. I’ve wanted to talk to Mike for a bit, but didn’t catch him at Origins. Fortunately I caught him at Gen Con. I questioned him about Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition’s design principles. It was a really interesting interview, and I think gives a good perspective of what’s going on under the hood.

I have to thank Rob Donoghue for giving me many interesting questions for this interview. He posts quite often about 4th Edition, on his blog.

Show043: Interview with Andrea Sfiligoi

This is the last of my Origins interviews. This interview is with Andrea Sfiligoi, creator of Song of Blades and Heroes, which was an Origins award nominee. It came about due to Paul Czege’s sharp eye as we were looking at the Origins awards nominees. Paul pointed out that one of the minatures games didn’t seem to have a publisher, just an author. We both thought it was cool to see an Indie minature game designer and I decided to see if we could hunt Andrea down and see if he was at Origins. Half an hour later as I talked with different Origins folks we found out he was there and set up this interview.

I really enjoyed talking with Andrea… after the end of this recording I think we spent a good 3 hours or more talking about Italy, America, Politics, and Metaphysics.

Show042: Interview with Thor Olavsrud

This is another interview recorded at Origins. I talk to Thor Olavsrud about editing again, but this time he’s not in a spaceship. It’s amazing to me right now how much I have learned since last year via the method know as the hard way. Anyway, We cover even more material than last year by adding at least another half an hour.

Books Thor mentions:

1. Chicago Manual of Style
2. A.P. Stylebook
3. Words into Type
4. Werriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary
5. The Elements of Style Illustrated
6. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference!

So I joined the Amazon affiliate program today, which is why these all link to amazon instead of someplace else.

Show041: Forums and the ” i ” word

Not much to say about this show. I talk about how I’ve been thinking about creating a forum for this site, and what those thoughts are exactly. Then I talk about immersion and how it’s more than most people think it is.

Show040: Interview with Peter Adkison

At Origins I interviewed Peter Adkison the C.E.O. of Hidden City Games, and Gen Con. If I sound more stupid than normal it’s because I was operating without notes. Note to self, do everything in Google Docs. Although I found one redemption in that Spectromancer and Dragon Horde are listed as products on the Hidden City site.

Anyway, Peter helped me lose some ignorance about some basic business ideas. I’m not sure these questions really made him stretch but I’m planning on trying to make his seminars on Gen Con Wenesday to see if they get me to think of some deeper questions.

I was recently on Stabbing Contest again. I had contacted Ogre because there were some things I wanted to talk about publicly but didn’t feel Theory From the Closet was the appropriate vehicle. We talked about how not letting girls in the group doesn’t always equal misogny, the ethics of podcasts and money, how roleplaying is used as an exclusionary term, and frustration in the creation of a game. I think it was a pretty interesting show.

Show039: Interview with Ralph Mazza

Here’s the second, or third interview I did at Forge Midwest. This is with the other creator of Universalis, Ralph Mazza. We talk about Universalis, Robots and Rapiers, plus Blood Red Sands. We also discuss how we believe that folks aren’t paying enough attention to covering who gets to make decisions in a lot of Indie games. All the interviews I did at Forge Midwest were without any notes or prepared questions. That will be fairly clear in this interview as there is more rambling than usual, but I still think it’s a good interview. There’s also Tea.

Show038: Exploration

So this week I cover Exploration. Exploration is the level of the big model that is synonymous with Shared Imaginary Space. It’s made out of character, setting, color, situation, and system.

Show037: Interview with Mike Holmes

This is the first of the RPG recordings I made at Forge Midwest. I only made two, but I got to play some games and it was sweet. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to talk to Mike since last year but have kept dropping the ball. We discuss why you can’t reward Simulationism, the game he is working on called Other Worlds, and quite a few other things. We recorded in a room covered in tile with a loud refrigerator, I tried to take the refrigerator noise out, but didn’t want to be too aggressive to prevent robot voices. Hopefully it worked, although you folks with expensive headphones might be pissed off. Ha. Macklin.

I may have more to say later… although I never seem to follow through with that.

Show036: Marketing and Customer Service for Game Designers

This show is out of order. Show035 isn’t done yet and will be out later this week. Why don’t you just make this show035, Clyde? Good question, Clyde. It was already done which means the id3 tags were already made and I didn’t want to go back and take the time to change them. Anyway….

This episode will include very few questions from me. On these “blank for game designer” shows I normally work with the person I contacted whom I think has a lot of knowledge about the particular subject. This usually entails a back and forth, and adding to an outline until we think we have a somewhat definitive covering of the subject. I however knew nothing about customer service or marketing, so this really is Fred Hicks outline. Frankly I could have turned the laptop around, and just sat there, but it was more fun to get in the way. You can read a text post Fred did after this podcast that basically covers all this ground in text form, and you can keep track of Fred’s thoughts about game design and the games he is working on here.

Also this show wouldn’t have gotten done if Luke Crane hadn’t stood in for Fred’s shift at IPR, and his lending us the laptop to use. Many of these Dreamation shows wouldn’t have gotten done without Thor Olavsrud, and Bob Hawking Radiation, and their niceness of letting me kick them out of bed or keep them up late. Thanks guys.

This is the last Dreamation show. In two weeks we move to Forge Midwest.