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.
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.
