Marty McGuire

Archive for October 2016

Fri Oct 28

Some hilarious RPG podcast episodes I've heard lately

I've recently been listening to a lot of podcasts where folks play through role-playing games live, often called "actual plays" or "live plays". A couple of them recently jumped out at me as too-good-not-to-share. They come from pretty far back in the catalogs of their respective podcasts, but they're new to me!

First up from the She's a Super Geek podcast is a three-part play through of a game based on the One Last Job system. One Last Job is a framework to tell the story of a team of past-their-prime experts, once part of a team on top of their game but who broke up due to the fallout of a botched gig, reluctantly coming together for one last job that will set them up for life. It has a lot of fun mechanics around players creating characters and backstory for each other, instead of for themselves.

The She's a Super Geek playthrough is pretty unique in that their One Last Job is set in a universe that is a pastiche of "Magical Girl Anime" tropes featuring washed-up former magical girls (and boy). It has everything you'd expect from the genre - cutesy animal sidekicks and enemies, ridiculous transformation sequences, enemies and power moves with terrible puns for names - but also touches on some beautifully dark notes such as the emotional scars that come with being magical child soldiers. The players really embraced the silliness of the setting, but also brought a ton of sincerity to their play. The climactic ending got me right in the heart strings.

You can find all of the magical girl One Last Job episodes here:

Another one I really enjoyed comes from the One Shot Podcast playing through a game of Dread. Dread has players taking on the role as characters trying to survive a tension-building horror story. One of the most fun features is that any time a player wants to do something that would be difficult for their character they need to pull from the "Tower of Dread" a.k.a. a wooden block stacking game (a.k.a. Jengaβ„’) - if they knock over the tower, the character dies.

The One Shot podcast playthrough featured three players who improvise together in real life playing improvisors who have been invited to audition for Saturday Night Live, only to find themselves trapped by a murderous creature with the power to warp space and time. The horror aspect seemed to really work on the players, but there were so many good comedic bits threaded throughout that I was laughing the whole time. I've been wanting to play a game of Dread ever since I saw the playthrough on TableTop, particularly with some of my improvisor friends, and this feels like a great example of how that would go.

You can find the One Shot playthrough of Dread here:

Wow, this turned out to be a really long post! Thanks for reading. I am trying to decide if I want to do more "what I'm listening to" posts like this. If you like it, let me know!

Wed Oct 19

πŸ—“οΈ GHOST PARTY πŸ‘»πŸŽ‰

Single Carrot Theatre 2600 N Howard St Baltimore MD 21218
πŸ“† Add to Calendar: iCal | Google Calendar

Celebrate Pumpkin Spice Latte season with the gothiest kids in the Baltimore Improv Group at a GHOST PARTY this Saturday, October 22nd, 8pm at the Single Carrot Theatre!

We’ll start off the evening with a hilarious set from the lovely folks of Training for Prom. Then, cross your hearts, join your hands, and say your prayers as GHOST PARTY makes contact with the unfathomable beings from the great beyond (using the power of short form improv games).

Don’t forget the reason for the season! Wear your Halloween costume, spooky face paint, or gothiest Hot Topic outfit for a chance to win a special prize: being complimented for wearing an awesome costume!

Get your tickets now! Only $12!

Thu Oct 20

Excited that I can now more easily post events to my own website from quill.p3k.io. #indieweb #micropub

Wed Oct 19

HWC Baltimore 10/19 Wrap-Up

Baltimore's second Homebrew Website Club meet up happened at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center on 10/19/2016. We had a nice quiet writing hour followed by some quick introductions, lots of progress on projects, and some new attendees!

Notes from the "broadcast" portion of the meetup:

Marty McGuire (co-organizer) - Wants an easy way to post events his own site, first, rather than Facebook. Wants to support Event posts from Quill to his custom micropub endpoint, but endpoint doesn't support JSON (yet). Working on that.

Jonathan Prozzi - has a start of a Jekyll website but moving to Hugo. Got a DigitalOcean droplet up and Hugo running on it.

Nate Parsons Β - Domain was a gift from his mom 12 years ago and finally getting something set up there! Taking things out of FB would be nice. Today signed up for DigitalOcean, set up DNS, got Nginx welcome page working, and Lets Encrypt for HTTPS.

Brian Young - Wordpress site for podcast/blog. Today worked on a new post! Also has an e-commerce site funlooksfun.com. Eventually brianey.com will have links out to everything. "It'll be my Alphabet." "I have too many projects."

Amy Hurst - Today working on a conference website, doing graphic design for a logo. Mocking the logo up in a template with real content.

Here's the customary HWC group selfie:

Left-to-Right: Brian, Nate, Jonathan, Marty, Amy

We had a great discussion and were all grateful for the dedicated time to working on our sites.

We hope you'll join us for our next HWC Baltimore on 11/30!



Wed Oct 12

πŸ—“οΈ Homebrew Website Club Baltimore Meetup 10/19/2016

Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center 1045 Light St. Baltimore MD 21230
πŸ“† Add to Calendar: iCal | Google Calendar

Create or update your personal web site!

  • Finish that blog post you’ve been working on
  • Demos of recent IndieWeb breakthroughs
  • Share what you’ve gotten working
  • Ask the experts questions

Join a community with like-minded interests. Bring friends that want a personal site!

Any questions? Ask in chat: http://chat.indieweb.org/today#bottom

Optional quiet writing hour starts at 6:30pm. Meetup begins at 7:30pm.

More information: https://indieweb.org/events/2016-10-19-homebrew-website-club

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/369206486803073/

πŸ“— Want to read We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse, #1) by Dennis E. Taylor