Sources of Inspiration: Play on Target Podcast Ep. 5

For the fifth episode of Play on Target we each picked out three books or supplements we found really useful for gamemastering and gaming in general. We’ve called these sources of inspiration, but that may undersell them. They run the gamut from abstract thinking about games to more solid and concrete mechanical materials for GMs construct a session. Particularly interesting are the different directions we each went. We also have  disagreements- which I think is great to hear. That discussion shifted my thinking a little. I selected Graham Walmsley’s Play Unsafe, S. John Ross’ Big List of RPG Plots, and Hindmarch and Tidball’s Things We Think About Games. As you can see, I leaned towards the abstract.

If I had to pick some concrete GMing resources, I might choose something like Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads for Cyberpunk; The GM’s Survival Guide for L5R, or one of the better Storyteller companions from classic World of Darkness. If I were going to point people to games that do really interesting things I’d probably go with Brian’s pick of Amber Diceless; either Robin Laws Kaiin Player’s Guide or The Armitage Files; or Ben Robbins’ Microscope. We record ahead a fair distance and so it has been a while since I’d heard this episode. We recently recorded a set of “Sell Me on a Game” segments. It is interesting to hear some of the shifts and developments in our thinking and approach between this episode and that one. There’s so much interesting stuff coming out in RPGs, it is hard to keep up.

Sources of Inspiration
Play on Target Episode Roundup

We present twelve different products and you can find reference links to those on the Play on Target entry for the episode. If you like RPG Gaming podcasts, I hope you'll check it out. We take a focused approach- tackling a single topic each episode. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes or follow the podcast's page at www.playontarget.com.