Ryan is joined by Sean Nittner—owner of Big Bad Con, project manager for Evil Hat Productions, and all around excellent human. (Or human-wolf hybrid.) The conversation revolves around thinking about convention games as part of the design process, but our journey takes a few twists and turns.

About Big Bad Con: A fantastic tabletop RPG and LARP convention in Oakland, California on October 16–18, 2015. Check out the Kickstarter (ends July 2nd)!

We also talk about:

• Organizing conventions
• Being a publisher
• Katanas & Trenchcoats
• Useless speculation about Apocalypse World 2
• All games will be made into convention games
• “It doesn’t matter if you have a square or round peg, we will shove it into a con slot.”
• The amount of work it takes to set up a game
• The first scene problem in GM-less games
• Love letters, as seen in Apocalypse World
• In medias res adventure games
• Supernatural season 10
• Drama game set-ups, notable with Smallville RPG
• “Shut the fuck up” as a technique

Follow Sean at @SeanNitter.

1:22:04 / 41 MB

- Ryan

Ryan tries out a new format for the show, and brings on indie game designer Kit La Touche to chat about various game design and game publishing topics.

• Designing the GM side of games
• Citizen reviewers
• Walter Ong’s writing on oral cultures
• The nature of fans
• "A failed dream"
• Games that shift over editing or editions
• Having a regular playtest group
• How your form of playtesting shapes your game
• Fantastical elements in games, and how they make a game more marketable
• Playtest budgets
• Being afraid of a game
• Getting to be a fan
• Little projects
• The desire of jamming together as a creative group

Check out Kit at: games.transneptune.net and @wlonk

1:25:04 / 41.5 MB

- Ryan

Ryan talks with Mark Richardson, who is by night a freelance tabletop games cartographer and indie publisher, and by day a badass Canadian geographical information survey machine. (That means he makes huge maps using very detailed software.) Mark's got a fresh perspective on cartography, coming from a technical, GIS background rather than a purely illustrative one. We sit down to talk about the art and business of making maps for games.

If you like the cut of his jib (and you should), check him out at @slavetothehat, his Green Hat Designs, and his upcoming Headspace Kickstarter!

Projects Mark has Made Maps For Include

• King Wen’s Tower: blackgreengames.com
• Urban Shadows: kickstarter.com/projects/1287928832/urban-shadows-rpg
• Project Dark: kickstarter.com/projects/wordstudio/project-dark
• No Country for Old Kobolds: kickstarter.com/projects/53201108/no-country-for-old-kobolds-a-dungeon-world-hack
• Other maps at his site: greenhatdesigns.com

Open GIS Data Resources

• Metro Extracts from Open Street Map database (Worldwide major cities): mapzen.com/metro-extracts
• Natural Earth – World wide data at Regional, Country and Continent scales: naturalearthdata.com
• Canadian GIS Data (Index of a sites across the country): canadiangis.com/data.php
• GeoGratis (Search for data/maps for Canada): geogratis.gc.ca

Other Links

• David Rumsey (Historical Map Collection): davidrumsey.com
• ESRI – The Company that makes ArcGIS: esri.com

51:29 / 25.3M

View on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=CP_BYapSUpI

- Ryan

Ryan kicks on one of his planned 2015 interview series—this one on setting design in roleplaying games—by talking with luminary and setting veteran Robin D. Laws. Robin's well known for his work in Feng Shui (and the recently Kickstarted second edition), the Dying Earth RPG, and various games using his GUMSHOE and DramaSystem engines.

Works that we brought up that you can check out now:

• Feng Shui 2 (linking to finished Kickstarter page, so you can check it out if you were a backer or in the future)
• The Esoterrorists, a GUMSHOE game that touches on things Robin finds unsettling
• Mutant City Blues, a GUMSHOE game dealing with police procedurals that features the Quade Diagram
• Ashen Stars, Robin's take on the space opera procedural through GUMSHOE
• Hillfolk and Blood on the Snow, the DramaSystem and its collection of setting pitches

If you want more Robin goodness, check out Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff.

– Ryan

59:35 /29.2M

View on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=BeG2XtV-C1g