G*m*s Magazine Podcast Channel

The Mistborn Adventure Game, published by Crafty Games, took the world created by Brandon Sanderson and turned it into an excellent game. And I mean really, really excellent. Now they’ve come out with a new supplement for the game that explores and expands on the canon of the world and cities for the world. To find out more about this book and what it contains, I spoke to writers Alex Flagg and Logan Boner for a while to find out more. Hope you enjoy the show!

Relic Runners was released at Spiel 2013 by Days of Wonder and I was super keen to take a proper look. Designed by Matthew Dunstan, Relic Runner puts the players in the roles of intrepid treasure hunters who will have to search for treasure and uncover the secrets they need to obtain the relics needed to win the game. A light game with simple mechanics and great components (you wan see the unboxing video here) it’s meant to provide with an entry level game for all the family. Quick and fun too! Michael, Max and myself put this game to its paces and we had a good game and in this episode we tell you all about it! Hope u enjoy the show!

Braggart is what happens when Michael goes Christmas shopping. He gets games for his friends. In this case for Max, who gleefully and expectantly opened this game with tears in his eyes at the thought of what wonderful time we were going to have playing this cute looking card game. After all Braggart is a very cute looking game and who doesn’t like the idea of bragging about the many adventures and mighty deeds you’ve performed in the name of fame, fortune and glory? And who doesn’t like to mess with your friends and turn their stories into hilarious parodies that’ll ridicule them in front of other adventurers? Exactly. So we sat down and had a go at this game. Hope you enjoy the show!

Once again we’re Jim and I are back ready to talk RPGs to our hearts content and, hopefully to your heart’s satisfaction. Firstly Jim talks about systems that don’t manage to match the rules and the setting. We discuss how to go about choosing a set of rules for your game and when it’s more appropriate to create one’s rules and when choosing an existing set of rules. We talk about my game, Deimonorum and how I’m using the ORE system to get a cinematic setting that an reflect how dangerous everything is and make it flexible enough so people can decide how much risk to add to their actions.  We talk about Wild Talents 2 and The One Ring too! Another topic we tackle is FATE. I (Paco) am having difficulties getting to understand how it’s applied and how it plays with a specific setting, so Jim and I discussed how abstraction in rules can be difficult to get to grips with sometimes. Lastly, Jim decides to have a go at the Marvel RPG game.

Slavery has played a horrific role in the history of many countries for a very, very long time. Far from being a thing of the past, slavery is still very present in modern day and efforts to eradicate it continue. Learning from history is probably the best way to understand where we come from and where we’re going. Freedom – The Underground Railroad does exactly that. Taking a massive risk, Academy Games has created a game that explores the efforts to free slaves. The players take on the role of historical Abolitionists who will try to save as many slaves a possible between the 1800’s and the Civil War. A careful balance between raising funds for the cause and moving the slaves from location to location will be the key to save enough slaves and win the game. However every time the slaves are moved, the slave catchers will be alerted and will capture the slaves to send them back into slavery. The game has received a great deal of praise and we were very curious to find out how it worked and if it re

I have been looking forward to seeing Mindjammer for a long time. The Space Opera game that will probably set a new precedent for future sci-fi games is finally almost here and I am seriously looking forward to seeing what Sarah Newton is going to bless our gaming shelves with. I came accross Mindjammer years ago when Sarah Newton published her first novel. I read it in a lot less time than I was expecting and it already gave me all I needed. Great characters, great technology, believable settings in an incredible way… the formula was there. I never looked into the first edition of the game, Mindjammer, the only reason that the second one was coming and, knowing Sarah, it was bound to be a lot better than the first. Now that the game is in pre-order, I had to interview the author and find out even more about this fantastic setting. But before we talked about Mindjammer, we also talked about Monsters & Magic, a new take on the Old School type of games that truly and genuinely take the old rules

Mage Company, the guys behind Wrong Chemistry and 12 Realms, have now gone to Kickstarter to fund their latest game, Hoyuk, a game in which you take on the role of a human 10,000 years ago trying to erect a village. Although Hoyuk was released in 2006 as a print and play, the game has been reworked to be produced as a physical product and bring it onto the table. As always, I was very curious about how they’re doing this and what plans they have for the game, so I got together with our friends from Mage Company to ask them lots of questions about the game, the new features they’ve brought into the system, the production values they’re aiming for and a lot more. Hope you enjoy the show!

Published in 2012 by AEG, Dominare is part of the Tempest series of boardgame that the prolific company has released and that includes Mercante and others. In Dominare you try to gain control of the city of Tempest by spreading your influence through the city and developing a network to control the different areas of the city. Designed by Jim Pinto and with gorgeous artwork by Andrew Hepworth and Jeff Mimmelman, this game is a very promising edition to the series. Michael, Cesare and Max sat down at the table and had a first play at this game. Considering they like deep games with tons of options that make you think time and time again, will this game satisfy the intellectual demand of our intrepid players? Let’s find out!

Doctor Reddy, Paco and Kara mingle a bit to bring you some reviews and conversation on the world of boardgaming.00:00:00 Introduction00:03:30 What games have Paco and Dr Mike been playing including Ghost Blitz and Duko00:06:15 What Paco and Dr Mike got for Christmas including Ligretto, Lego Heroica and Pandemic and a chance to win Dungeon Roll00:16:28 UK Games Expo Guests and Workshops including Chris Barry and and a chance to win some Red Dwarf paraphernalia, and X-Wing discussion00:30:10 What games have we been playing (again) including Firefly: the boardgame, Council of Verona, Cornish Smuggler, Fleet, Pandante, Aquarius and Lego Heroica00:47:09 Our hopes for 2014, including:Firefly: the RPG, Salute, UK Games Expo, Emperor's New Clothes, You are the Hero: the history of Fighting Fantasy books, Torn Armour, Cthulhu Wars, 3D printers00:50:30 X-Wing speculation, includingQuick Snitch, Counters the Board Game Cafe00:57:57 Torn Armour update00:59:12 Discussion with Kara about the Leisure Games Game Redesign Co

After a while in which we’ve kept the room under lock and key, we are back to discuss all things role play and cover topics gaming related that might, or might not, be of interest to you, our lovely listeners. Together with the furniture, we’ve made some changes to the hosts. Or maybe I should say an addition. I am very pleased to announce that Jim Pinto, of Postworld Games will be joining us on a permanent basis to co-host this podcast with Vickey Beaver and myself. Jim has a wealth of experience in the world of RPG and boardgames with more designs in his portfolio than most, though he’s also less well-known than most. However, I have read a few of his games and backed his most recent Kickstarter and the suspicion that he has some sort of super power or alien heritage, because few other people can write as much apart from him and Endzeitgeist. Anyway. In this episode Jim explains why fads are a thing of the past and why cosplayer shouldn’t have a place at games conventions. We also find out why I am

I haven’t played an Euro with good theme since O2. And that wasn’t a game for beginners either. In fact it was quite a hard day. Michael Chamberlain was very excited about this one but, since for him a headache induced by a game is the best way to rate how good a game is, I was a bit apprehensive. The fact that this game is by Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer did put me at ease a bit, but not much. It sounded like a heavy game and I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy it. Then we started to play it and I have to say this game surprised me… a lot. As well as looking totally gorgeous, the game plays with some mechanics and mechanisms that surprised me in the best possible way. Hope you enjoy the show!

For a long time now I have been looking forward to playing Serpent’s Tongue, a game I came across at Spiel at the Arctic Union booth. The game looked just gorgeous and the premise was seriously alluring; two magi battle by casting spells against each other. Presented like that you’d be forgiven for thinking I am just getting carried away and that there are many other battling games out there. You’d be right, but no… you’d be wrong. This game has something unique. In this game you actually have to cast the spells by reading the symbols of magic and learning their pronunciation and their somatic component. You actually have to learn what sort of spell it is, how to pronounce the beautiful magic alphabet and develop your strategy to defeat your enemy. The game comes more than a hundred spells, of which you can only use a handful in each battle, thus having a bit of deck building element to it. So Michael Chamberlain and I got together, pulled the spells book and followed the walkthrough to learn to

I have learned to trust Michael Chamberlain when is about games. He kinda knows things I don’t. Tons of things. One of the things he knows how to do is spot great ideas and great sounding games in Kickstarter, and that’s exactly what he has done with Scoville. We got together with Ed Marriot and interview him about his game of chilly peppers farming. Must say it sounds a great deal more promising than I expected. I am not particularly into farming games and I need theme in euro games for me to be interested in them. Scoville certainly has that. A game in which you cross-breed chilli peppers to get the best plants out there. Result! Oh… and it looks gorgeous too! Hope you enjoy the show!

By Paco Garcia Jaen Time travel is one of those subjects that fascinate people throughout the Science Fiction and Fantasy spectrum and Timewatch wants to do something about it. There are tons of movies, novels and games that do their best with the subject, but with something like traveling the waves of time, it’s tough to come up with something truly convincing, specially if you have or want to interact with it. That is what Timewatch attempts to do. The role playing game by Kevin Kulp uses the Gumshoe system, which powers Trail of Cthulhu, Night’s Black Agents and other games published by Pelgrane Press. With a very successful campaign that saw the game funded in a matter of days and then unravelled stretch goal after stretch goal,  I wanted to find out why it had attracted so much attention, so I had Kevin Kulp around the interview room to have a chat and find out about him and his game. As someone who was very sceptical, I had quite a few questions to ask. And I got some really convincing answers

Star Wars has been at the heart of Science Fiction and geek culture since the first time it was screened in 1977 and the X-Wing has been one of the most iconic space crafts in the series. Thus it was no surprise that Fantasy Flight chose that very name for their Star Wars based miniatures game when they obtained the license from Lucas Arts. No doubt it was a big and pricey gamble for the company and they had to ensure they hit the nail on the head with this game. With the talent and passion of Jay Little behind the overall design of the miniature game as well as the Role Playing Game, the whole operation was set for a good start. However, no matter how good the designer behind the scenes is and how gorgeous the miniatures look, no game is fit for everyone and we had to check for ourselves if this was actually as good as people say. So we sat down and played the game so we could tell you all about our experience. Hope you enjoy the show!

Many people hear the words “historical games” and immediately get the unavoidable urge to yawn. Loudly. Yet, Academy Games has challenged that yawn reaction time and time again, and time and time again they’ve been successful. With an impressive collection of games of which their series Conflict of Heroes continues to succeed and draw new fans, Uwe (pronounced “oova”) Eickert and his team of merry humans take a no-nonsense approach to games that are carefully crafted to reflect history accurately and uncompromisingly. This includes tackling subjects as sensitive as the abolitionist movement and, in the near future, more modern wars and social movements. Kickstarter has also played a great role in helping the company grow and to say that Academy Games’ have enjoyed great results would be a disservice to how well they’ve done. With a project going on at the time of publishing this podcast called Fief that has already obtained more than ten times the initial amount they were aiming for, we had the plea

By Michael Chamberlain and Max Murray In this podcast episode Michael and Max took a look at Rasputin, a game by designer Bob West and published Blue Panther. The premise of the game is to infiltrate the Winter Palace and destroy the menace that is Rasputin. Which is a lot easier said than done, btw. Interesting about this game is that it has, probably, the most durable tokens ever. They’re not made of cardboard, they’re made of wood! A game that Michael considers to be one of the best balanced games we’re going to see this year! Hope you enjoy the show!

By Paco Garcia Jaen, Michael Chamberlain and Max Murray Firefly, a boardgame with the simple motto Find a Crew, Find a Job. Keep Flying. Can it do justice to the series that inspired it? Firefly is a very much loved Science Fiction series. It surprised everyone when it turned out to be very, very decent, and it has a legion of loyal followers – and rightly so! – who are claiming and longing to see more of the series. So it was kind of expected that, at some point, a board game would be released. I think by now we can start relaxing a bit when we see a licensed game. There are lots of very good games out there that have been licensed. Firefly happens to be one of them! Produced by Gale Force Nine, the game tries to re-create the flavour and atmosphere of the series with a well looked after and detailed art direction, plenty of photos and plenty of game. There are lots and lots of parts to this game indeed! But does it play well? We learned the rules, sat down and recorded our impressions after playin

I’ve been waiting for Hero Forge for years and years and years and years. A company that can produce customised and bespoke  minis, printed on demand and to a such a high standard that there is no difference between those minis and those produced by more established companies. At least that’s what they claim and that’s why I thought it’d be a good idea to invite the two instigators and chief thinkers of the company to find out what their plans are, what sort of miniatures, the artwork behind the minis, how are they going to avoid problems in the future and also what plans they have for the future! Joshua Bennet and Teagan Morrison joined me to discuss all sorts of things and face some unnerving questions they probably weren’t expecting! Hope you enjoy the show!

By Paco Garcia Jaen The Gamerati himself has been into creating, promoting and playing roleplaying games for a very, very long time and in that time he’s learned a great deal. A great deal that he’s more than happy to share that knowledge. From helping create Eden Studios to setting up the Gamerati Network, Ed Healy has been enthusiastically promoting not just games, but gamers; celebrating our idiosyncrasies and  showcasing how our differences only make us richer. But who’s Ed Healy really? Where does he come from and why is he so keen on games and gaming? And what drives him? As I suspected, an interview worth listening to. Ed is probably one of the nicest men our hobby has ever seen!