DiceCast Episode 16: Using Miniatures In Your RPG & "You Are A Cat"

We return with an honest-to-goodness episode about a game topic! As much as we love interviewing interesting people who are connected to popular culture, it feels good to be back to the game table for an episode. In this one, we talk about miniatures; not miniatures wargaming, but the use of miniatures in roleplaying games (RPGs).

It seems almost odd that we have to introduce miniatures to roleplayers, because RPGs evolved from miniatures wargaming. Indeed, the first RPGs were miniatures wargames optimized to playing a single character, rather than an entire army; a character who went on to evolve from scenario to scenario; scenarios which were more than just a battle. It was when the emphasis switched to interaction and plots and away from combat that roleplaying games evolved into something in which miniatures were optional. This has been great for the maturation of the hobby, but maybe roleplayers are missing out on something.

To that end, we introduce miniatures to roleplayers in this episode, with a few tips on how to get started using them. THere is nothing in here about painting or customizing miniatures or producing scenery. Those are topics for future episodes. Rather, we talk about the general concerns that come with using miniatures at the roleplaying table. We also give the quick and dirty rules to PUMMEL!^® (Pick-Up, Multigenre Miniatures, Easy to Learn), a miniatures wargame that can be adapted to any RPG for mass combats; and we offer the quickstart rules for free download.

We also have an interview with Sherwin Tjia, author of the Choose Your Own Adventure-style adventure book You Are A Cat (published on Conundrum Press). Mr. Tija discusses his love of cats, of adventure books, and why he made You Are A Cat. We mention the Cat RPG by John Wick.

Other links

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• RSS feed for DiceCast
• Subscribe to DiceCast in iTunes
  

Annonce pour Conjurations 2010 (version française)

NOTE: For the ENGLISH VERSION of this post and the audio, please see the preceding post dated February 12

Ceci est le message publicitaire official de Conjuration 2010, une convention de jeux qui aura lieu dans le centre-ville de Montréal au cours de la fin de semaine du 15 au 16 mai, 2010 (Samedi et Dimanche). Tous sont invités de placer cette annonce dans leur podcast autant de fois que vous le désirez et ceci jusqu’au jour de la convention!

SVP indiquer le site official de la convention http://www.ggconventions.com/home-fr.html dans les notes de votre émission.

Vous pouvez télécharger la version audio:

"http://www.archive.org/download/Conjurations2010Publicitfranais/Conjurations2010PubliciteFrancais.mp3"

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Conjurations 2010 Advertisement (English)

This is the first official advertisement for Conjurations 2010, a game convention to be held in downtown Montreal over the weekend of May 15 to May 16, 2010 (Saturday and Sunday). Everyone is permitted and encouraged to place this advertisement into their podcast feeds, or the ad itself into their podcasts as audio, as many times as they want, up to and including the date of the convention itself.

Please also put "http://www.ggconventions.com/home-en.html" into your show notes, as the convention's official web site.

The download link for the audio file is "http://www.archive.org/download/Conjurations2010Advertisementenglish/Conjurations2010Englishblurb.mp3"

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