The Adventuring Party

+1 Mailbag, May 2012: The 'Blurbs

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

+1 Mailbag: Have you ever seen anybody drive their garbage down to the street and bang the hell out of it with a stick? Well, it doesn't matter, 'cause that's not what we're talking about. Liam, humbug and ice-cream have a chat about blurbs for convention games.

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Per, May 2012: Upcoming events

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Per: There are loads of gaming related events coming up, conventions and otherwise. Listen in and don't miss out. Episode provided me with the reason to book q-con early and I had a breakfast roll for dinner. How was your day?

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Mailbag, May 2012: Generic games

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Mailbag: While not a comprehensive look at every generic game ever, we waffle away for our usual while on the subject. Last episode with Shane of the couple we recorded when he came back for a visit from the mainland.

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+1 Con, April 2012: Conpulsion report

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

+1 Con: Everyone who didn't go to Conpulsion should listen to this and decide to attend next year.

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+1 Exp, April 2012: Innsmouth Escape

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

+1 Exp: A review of Innsmouth Escape. Liam provides it with a number. I'm trying to remember if I won my first game of this game - something that I've found to lead to liking a game more - 'cause I think it's kind of good. Shane swans back to provide a mainland point of view.

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Con, April 2012: Vaticon report

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Con: Report on Vaticon from last week. Feeling poorly, no links or stuff.

Exp, April 2012: Eclipse

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Exp: Eclipse, a board game about space ships and exploration and other words with the letter 'x' in them scores some pretty good stats. Available from Finland or the internet. Don't those Star Trek/crossover fan made movies come from Finland? From now on the Finlandians are my #1 fans of space combat.

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+1 Con, March 2012: Itzacon report

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

+1 Con: Wow. I speak really fast when talking enthusiastically about GURPS. Guess it's never come up before. We talk about Itzacon. Plenty good.

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Con & +1 Int, March 2012: Leprecon report & Vaticon preview

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Con & +1 Int: We sucked in our attendance of Leprecon, but Eoin is able to hold the fort. Vaticon is shaping up. Figured that an earlier mention with less blurbs was better than a later mention with more.

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Exp, March 2012: Panic Ninja

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Exp: We have an honest-to-goodness theme linking our reviews this week. Suspicion or suspense or not knowing who the ninja or lobster is. There's a bit of bag rustling near the start, and a conspicuously loud gulp of tea. And Eoin says something about a clacker.

Int, March 2012: Itzacon preview

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Int: Itzacon 8 - Lost in the Woods is in Galway this weekend and you should all get lost! The irishgaming.com forums appear to be in a state of renewal flux, so there won't be a linky at the bottom for people to go there and not say anything about the episode. Instead, I'm going to click the button I was told not to push. Free gold and trouser hitpoints for all!

+1 GP, February 2012: 3rd Anniversary Pub Quiz answers

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

+1 GP: Congratulations to our pub quiz winner!, but you'll have to listen to find out who it was.

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Int, February 2012: Leprecon preview

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Int: "Will you have a glass of Pernod?"

"Well, I don't think I should.."

"Just one. You can finish editing and posting the podcast afterwards."

"If you think it's a good idea.."

"What could be better!"

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Mailbag, February 2012: Busy Time

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Mailbag: A couple of glitches on the track meant this episode was almost consigned to the aether, but only almost. We respond to a few points from a genuine email, touching on gaming contracts and such and such. Mails to liam@theadventuringparty, or have a look at the forum link below if anyone out there is in Poland and wants to do some gaming with a guy who sent us an email. Not many links when we're rambling:

Raymond Chandler

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Con, February 2012: Warpcon report

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Con: Podcasting follows common law, and that means precedent. I'd like to quote the case of Shane Vs. Not Posting Any Links Because He Had Been Drinking. We discuss Warpcon.

And now because I'm a good boy, here are some links:

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GP, February 2012: 3rd Anniversary Pub Quiz

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

GP: This round doesn't make me feel smart! Answers to party@theadventuringparty.net

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+1 Int, January 2012: Warpcon preview, part 2

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

+1 Int: Warpcon still coming up at the end of the month. Yayyyyyy - Warpcon. We take a look at the rest of the stuff that isn't RPGs. Spot the police siren and win a prize.

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Int, January 2012: Warpcon preview

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Int: Warpcon is coming up at the end of the month. Yayyyyyy - Warpcon. Don't forget to start your gaming early. The only reason you shouldn't be playing an RPG on the bus/train/car is if you're drinking.

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Source Material, January 2012: Gamer Book Recommendations

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:47:00 +0000

Source Material: If you're one of those people who think that books have a better use than keeping Hitler warm at night, then this episode is for you. 'Cause, eh, we talk about some books that we've read that _you_ might like. Liam provides background coughing.

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Exp, January 2012: Star Wars: The Old Republic

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Exp: Okay, so a Star Wars MMO isn't strictly 'gaming', but it's close enough. And the episode is on time, so there.

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+1 Downtime, December 2011: Drinking and Gaming

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

+1 Downtime: Drinking and gaming, everyone..

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Downtime, December 2011: Secret Santa

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Downtime: Christmas episodes suck. Y'know what. Was anyone ever happy when they were watching He-Man and it's all like, snowing in Eternia, and Skeletor is stealing presents or some shit and then He-Man saves the day, but all the presents are gone, but then there's a twinkling in the sky and ho-ho-ho and all the presents are back in the little Eternian bugger's houses. No.

Apologies for the later than normal posting of the episode, but I was gaming last night instead of working on the podcast, so it's okay.

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Exp, December 2011: Sentinels of the Multiverse

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Exp: A narrow miss on talking for ages about The Thing starts us out, but then Eoin reviews Sentinels of the Multiverse, one of those non-collectible card game/board game type games with super heroes and battles on the moon. Also included is a short course on Irish customs & excise law from the point of view of several different people who don't know Irish customs & excise law.

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Per, December 2011: Events in Dublin

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Per: Liam, Cillian, Ice-cream and humbug provide valuable, up-to-date and correct information about upcoming and ongoing gaming related events in and around Dublin. Does anybody read these things? Help me. Mentioned are an upcoming IGA pub-quiz, a soon to be starting steampunk LARP, and other things too.

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+1 Con, November 2011: Dominicon report

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

+1 Con: Liam, Eoin and Ice-cream were at Dominicon for to give us a run down of what happened there. Tangents include Street Fighter, whisk(e)y, Nobilis, Ice-cream playing hand games with his brother and Fighting Fantasy.

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Exp, November 2011: Blood Bowl: Team Manager

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Exp: We somehow end off as though we had spent the whole episode talking about a fictional board games convention, but we weren't. We were talking about Blood Bowl: Team Manager. Also, the GW site is gay (used here to mean gay), and I can't seem to linky without needing to pick your country first. Anyway:

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Con, November 2011: Gaelcon report

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Con: Rain, floods, hotel changes, things you didn't know about L5R. Idiotic dice games, deck building, mangled arms. Gaelcon.

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Int, November 2011: 8-Bit Dominicon preview

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Int: Dominicon is coming up this weekend, and we take a look at what is going to be going on. I felt sorry for Graham when he snatched the page off me and read out a couple of blurbs, so I stayed up all night editing with computers and chemicals and things to make him sound better than I had.

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Downtime, November 2011: Games we'd like to see

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Downtime: Today's episode is a little late because of Bacardi and repeated blows to both arms. And Gaelcon. I looked it up and there's precedent. Also, the file size is now less humongous than the last few have been. Liam, Cillian, Graham and humbug have a bit of a chat about games they'd like to see.

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Downtime, October 2011: Character Sheets

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Downtime: Shane told me to be sure to note anything that was even close to sexual innuendo as a non-linky line in the show notes, but I'm not going to give him one. We stay on topic in talking about character sheets, some of which are:

And a link to a long running internet character sheet guy that we didn't mention, but is still great:

Mad Irishman

And a formerly awesome site for character sheets that is now hit and miss (mostly miss) and with ads and junk:

RPG Sheets

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Bullet points never do what they're told

+1 Int, October 2011: Gaelcon preview

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

+1 Int: Now with even more links and formatting, a rundown of the latter two days of the upcoming Gaelcon.

Int, October 2011: Gaelcon preview

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Int: Humbug mixes up the Arctic and the Antarctic. Liam tells us about his member. Stu
distinguishes between things that are balls are things that are not. Oh, and we review
the first two days of the enormous Gaelcon.

Mailbag Exp, October 2011: Master Nomenclature, Poo

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:04:27 +0000

Mailbag: In another fine example of straying off topic, the question of what's the best thing to call the guy running the game is partially discussed.

Exp: Stu is suspicious of its similarities to Lunch Money, but we battle through the torrent of incoming missiles to review Poo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaa

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/929/the-great-dalmuti

http://www.atlas-games.com/lunchmoney/

http://poothecardgame.com/

Con, September 2011: Warlock Conspiracies

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Cillian tells us all about a game that comes in a box and has a board and is really a card game, and he thinks the guy who invented Magic: The Gathering probably played it before. And it's called Warlock. Meanwhile (afterwards) Liam tells us about how much Kilkenny stinks, and Conspiracy doesn't. Also, humbug does the intro and outro in one take, and it shows.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2146/warlock

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameartist/13893/russ-nicholson

http://poothecardgame.com/

http://www.kilkennytourist.com/details/st_francis_abbey_brewery.shtml

Con, September 2011: GenCon with Eoin

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:14:18 +0000

Con: Eoin is semi-officially a complete card-gaming badass, having recently traveled to GenCon to represent clan and country (mostly clan) and beat the card-playing snot out of almost everybody in the entire world, even you, even thought you may not have realised it. Shane, Cillian, Liam, and humbug have never been to GenCon. Graham has, but isn't a semi-official complete card-gaming badass. So, we quiz Eoin about his GenCon experience. Features:

Per, September 2011: A Game of War art exhibition

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Per: With the recent opening of an unusual cross-over between art and gaming happening in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Shane and Liam, who attended the opening (or maybe were a part of it) talk with Graham, Eoin, Cillian, and humbug about the game, the exhibition, and the free wine. Features:

Int, September 2011: Conspiracy

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Int: Filling the void left by the passing of the excellent ConFESS, Conspiracy steps up to take on the challenge of running a downright great non-college convention at the end of the summer. Join Shane, humbug, and Liam to take a close look at the games and events on offer, and mull over whether it's practical to attend even when it blatantly isn't.

+3 Downtime, August 2011: Missing players

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

+3 Downtime: What to do when a player, or worse yet several players, miss a role-playing game session? Ignore it? Give them diarrhoea? Send them down the hallways first to set off all the traps? Shane, humbug, Cillian, and Liam gather round to throw about some ideas, most of which are decidedly unsatisfactory. Features:

+2 Downtime, August 2011: Desert Island Games

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

+2 Downtime: Trapped on 3 separate desert islands, Shane, Cillian, and Liam struggle to decide which games they'll bring with them, being limited to only 5 each in the traditional fashion! Pull up a piña colada and join the fun as we select the cream of the crop based on accessability, replayability, and usefulness in a survival situation. Features:

Junta on BoardGameGeek
Games Workshop dice tin
Perudo
Heavy Gear
Strands of FATE
Lunch Money
Settlers of Catan 3D
Nobilis (you can still get it! again)
Khet
KerPlunk
Ambush Alley
Frag
Risk
Twilight Struggle
Labyrinth (actually a better option because it can be played solo)
Spirit of the Century
Axis & Allies Anniversary Edition
The Scatter Dice Game
Deadlands
GameScience Dice
Rock Band

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+1 Downtime, August 2011: Universe creation responsibilities

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:56:00 +0000

+1 Downtime: Where is the line drawn between player and game master when it comes to defining facts about the setting of a role-playing game? Shane, Stu, and humbug utterly fail to solve a problem that's never really existed anyway. Features:

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Per, August 2011: Upcoming releases

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Per: With all of the big gaming releases happening in and around now, Shane, Stu, Liam, and humbug get together to ignore not being at any of the major exciting events by digging about online to see what's supposed to be coming out. If you're particularly uninformed in general, this might even be mildly interesting to you. Features:

Legend of Drizzt
Star Trek: Fleet Captains
Battle Beyond Space at BoardGameGeek
Battleship Galaxies
Call of Cthulhu 30th anniversary edition
Black Crusade
Gears of War: The Board Game
Ascension: Return of the Fallen
Burning Wheel Gold
Deadwood
Eminent Domain
The Ares Project
Ikusa
1955: The War of Espionage
Confusion: Espionage and Deception in the Cold War
Airship Pirates
The Guns of Gettysburg
Technoir
RuneQuest II
Fortune and Glory
Blood Bowl: Team Manager
Pathfinder: Ultimate Combat
Guards! Guards! on BoardGameGeek
Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter campaign setting
Tomorrow's War on BoardGameGeek
1830: Railways & Robber Barons on BoardGameGeek
Talisman
Ventura

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Downtime, August 2011: Cross-over in RPGs

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Downtime: Cross-over - a shadowy flight into the dangerous life of a man who does not exist. Not a very common technique in role-playing games but with definite familiarity to everyone; Shane, Cillian, and humbug bounce around some ideas and discuss the pit-falls and triumphs possible when mixing and matching.

+1 Mailbag, July 2011: New gamers

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

+1 Mailbag: More tired plays upon the word "mailbag" kick off sage advice and discussion on the topic of new role-playing gamers and getting into the hobby. It's contradictory, it wavers between over-specific and over-general, it's not much use! Promises to find links to stuff mentioned turn out to be in vain, as follows:

Could not find mandating site
Also could not find excellent discussion thread about recruiting closet murderers to gaming groups
RPG.net Gaming Gatherings forum
EN World Gamers Seeking Gamers forum
Trinity Gamers
DCU STOCS
IGA Games Nights

Exp, July 2011: Storm of Magic, Station Master, Rory's Story Cubes

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Exp: Stepping in from the eldritch battlefields, the train station, the little box of dice, The Adventuring Party assemble to knock out reviews for some eclectic products. Join Shane, Cillian, humbug and Liam for a look at Storm of Magic for Warhammer, Station Master, and Rory's Story Cubes. Features:

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Mailbag, July 2011: Clichés

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Mailbag: Once more delving into the murky depths of The Adventuring Party mailbag, out comes a question about the use of cliche in role-playing games. Liam, humbug, and Cillian gather to investigate and engage in another confused semantics discussion, running from moustache-twirling podcast panelists to staunch defence of classic Paranoia jokes.

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Con, July 2011: Q-Con XVIII

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Con: Gather round, and heal told tales of great triumph, bitter shame, trials and tribulations, and indestructible psychotic jerk robots. Explore perversion with Shane! Stand confused in the hall with humbug! Consume spuds with Liam! Get the late bus home with Cillian! Join The Adventuring Party, as they recount their adventures at Q-Con, and answer the immortal question: What About Ye? Features:

AP, June 2011: The Haunting

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

AP: Fact: 'actual play' podcasts are bollocks. Even Johnny No-Mates who can't find anybody to game with should have something better to do with his time than listen to those. Compounding the case against your listening to this episode is that humbug, Shane, and Liam intentionally set out to destroy a classic Call of Cthulhu module, The Haunting (formerly The Haunted House), which has been the sample module forever and ever. And destroy it they do, by having a good old read through it before playing. Who will win? GM or game-breakingly-well-prepared player? Find out, if you dare, and if you don't ever want to play The Haunting yourself!

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+1 Int, June 2011: Q-Con, part 2

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 05:45:00 +0000

+1 Int: With last week's episode not even getting so far as previewing RPGs, a ludicrously jam-packed Q-Con leaves this episode running crazy long to cover the remaining bases. From reminiscing about high-profile and disruptive Paranoia games of yore, to the return of the Queen's RAG, Shane, humbug, and Liam wrap up the Q-Con preview in a cool 96 minutes.

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Int, June 2011: Q-Con, part 1

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Int: As reigning international Q-Con pub quiz champions of the world for the second year running, we have a soft spot in our hearts for Queens University's Dragonslayers society's convention. But are we so modest as to deny that our obnoxious victories colour our opinions, making them biased and unreliable? Indeed we are not! Nevertheless, Q-Con is great fun, and this year seems to be more packed with millions of cool events than ever before even. Shane, humbug, and Liam barely even get halfway through the preview.

A full set of links will not be forthcoming, due to prep for a big game taking precedence. However, there's loads of info on everything on Q-Con's website.

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Exp, June 2011: The Hobbit and Kill Doctor Lucky

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Exp: It's review time again, for a couple of fairly simple, fairly abstract, fairly time-killery board games whose actual linking relationship has yet to be determined. Shane, humbug and Liam gather round to examine the seedy underbellies of The Hobbit and Kill Doctor Lucky. Features:

Keeping the fourth wall intact
The Hobbit
...not The Hobbit (or the Lord of the Rings)
The Titular Hobbit
Gems are the best bit
Additional axe
If I can't win, nobody can
Happy dwarf sort-of-collaboration
The Titular Book
Unscientific dice
Warpcon
Kill Doctor Lucky
Game continuity
Get Lucky with the monkey paw
The prisoner's dilemma
Game wrecked by gamers
Expansion name as game mechanic
Laughing at people who don't get to play
Playing it doggy-style
Uncertainty in numbers
The theme of the episode

Downtime, June 2011: Players keep ruining my games!

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Downtime: Part witticism, part legitimate grievance, when Stu utters the catch-phrase Shane, humbug and Liam take up the call. It takes probably longer than it should to realise that nobody actually knows what it means.

The out-take at the end relates to memories of the classic Goatse picture. Surprisingly, the phrases "very open-ended" and "black hole" both got used during the episode and did not trigger crippling laughter.

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Character Creation, May 2011: From Another Time, Another Land

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Character Creation: Despite being a much-discussed and widely-known role-playing game, the convoluted character creation process is one that few gamers have actually undertaken. Shane, humbug, and Liam put their very sanity on the line and delve into the circumferential, accommodating depths of the process. We had to go through it, and now you bloody well have to listen to it!

Here's a fun game to play: humbug says that every time he says the word "right", he's making a Sanity check, but I think he's exaggerating. See if you can pick out the ones where he's really on the verge of losing it!

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+1 Downtime, May 2011: Role-playing in fantasy versus sci-fi settings

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 18 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

+1 Downtime: Get that mail bag out and see what's inside! In response to a completely fictional listener, Shane, humbug, Liam and Stu debate the question of whether it's easier to role-play in a fantasy or a science fiction setting, until a fortunately-timed technical glitch cuts things short. Features:

A wizard did it
Dungeons & Dragons
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Social differences
Traveller
More stuff
Das Schwarze Auge
A Song of Ice and Fire
William Gibson
World of Darkness
Chrome-plated magic
Shadowrun
Ars Magica
Non-Tolkienesque fantasy games
Legend of the 5 Rings
Planescape
Spelljammer
Nobilis on Wikipedia
Earthdawn
The need for back-story
Heavy Gear
Warhammer 40,000
Dark Heresy
Mutant cows!
Ugly is evil
Eberron

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Bonus Exp, May 2011: Recent gaming antics round-up

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 11 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Bonus Exp: Having done some natter-worthy gaming-related things in recent months unworthy of a full review individually but deserving a mention nonetheless, Shane, Stu and Liam recap some interesting (to them) stuff they've experienced recently, each of which is worth a look for yourself. Features:

Fear the Boot
Dread
Jenga
Inception
Lucid
Mind games
Leading questions
Bonaparte at Marengo
Napoleon's Triumph
Guns of Gettysburg design diary
Board edges as safe havens
Bellurgan Park airsoft
Gamers versus ass-kickers
Greed is good
Gold for victory!
Capturing objectives for victory!
Troops in Contact: The Rionegro Mandate
Pathfinder
Gamers versus ungenerous character creation
Gamers versus random encounters
Genetic supersorceror
TransAmerica
Ambush Alley Games
Force on Force
Black Day at Garmsir
He's talking about Rock Band 3
Board Game day on Saturday in the Dark Horse from noon!

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Downtime, May 2011: Economies in role-playing games

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Downtime: With different RPGs treating the idea of an economy in every way from something to be hand-waved and ignored to a complex system that's the focus of the game itself, Shane, humbug, Cillian and Liam mull over the concept of economies in role-playing games and find it to be a rich topic with a lot to consider. Features:

Twilight: 2013
Detailed, abstract or hand-waved
Call of Cthulhu
Ars Magica
Dungeons & Dragons
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Adventurers as economic nukes
The D&D economics game
Twilight: 2000
Rogue Trader
Birthright
Easy come, easy go
Dark Heresy
Dark Sun
Traveller
Prison Planet
Killing bag guys and taking their stuff
Deadlands
His horse eats him, and then itself
Pathfinder
Isle of Dread
Crafting and refurbishing for profit
Keeping track of vast amounts of equipment
Mechwarrior
Writing it down
World of Darkness
Exalted
Shadowrun
Buying a lifestyle
Spirit of the Century
Burning Wheel
Mutant City Blues
Heavy Gear
Availability codes
Money costs money
Actual toy money!

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Exp, April 2011: Civilisation and Twilight Struggle reviews

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Exp: Having delved sufficiently into delicious purchases made during con season, Shane, humbug, Cillian and Liam review two board games that both, like, have boards. And maps and multiple players and counters. Features:

Sid Meier's Civilisation
Eagle Games, makers of the old crap version
Unthematic inclusion of colonial America
Tech advances
How to fight
Racial abilities
Board or computer version? We don't provide an answer.
Twilight Struggle
Board game or card game? Eh, both.
Simulating the Cold War mentality
DEFCON as a game mechanic
The race to the stars!
Special Olympics
The balance issue
Thud!
Zip-lock bag fanboyism
The Irish Twilight Struggle Championships

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Downtime, April 2011: GM screens

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Downtime: GM screens are available for the majority of role-playing games, but do we like 'em, do we use 'em, and could we do better ourselves? Shane, humbug, Cillian and Liam have a natter about what makes for a good or bad screen experience. Features:

ST screening
White Wolf
Dungeons & Dragons
Rules
Hiding things
Cyberpunk
Shadowrun
Information overload
Marching order
Portrait or landscape
Where to roll the dice
Screen or no screen
SLA Industries
Things packaged with GM screens
Evil Chaos Granny
Art
Heavy Gear
Deadlands
Trail of Cthulhu
Spot the Cthulhu
All Flesh Mush Be Eaten
James Bond 007
Price of an Airbus - stat!
Material of construction
Dark Heresy
Build your own!
The high-pitched voice of reason

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Wis, April 2011: Getting started in Ambush Alley

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Wis: Excited about this week's release of the new edition of Force on Force, incorporating the revised Ambush Alley rules, Shane, humbug, Cillian and Liam present a rough guide to how to put together the required miniature people and places to play the game. Actual potentially useful content, from The Adventuring Party! Unprecedented. Features:

Ambush Alley Games
Funny joke!
Our Ambush Alley review
Osprey Publishing
13 regulars, 40 rifle-wielding insurgents, 6 RPGs, 6 RPDs, 6 leaders
What a technical is
Rebel Minis modern military miniatures
Ambush Alley battle boxes
Not The A-Team
15mm.co.uk (doesn't actually seem to have modern stuff)
Quick Reaction Force modern miniatures
What a Javelin is
Peter Pig AK-47 Republic miniatures
Lazy painting suggestions
Base boards
Flames of War terrain
Making buildings from balsa wood, foam board or cork board
Steel ruler, craft knife, cutting mat, PVA glue
Polyfilla!
GameCraft Miniatures middle east buildings
Paper Desert Village
Transporting, or lack thereof
How to make your own hotspot markers!
Quick impromptu competition!
Matakishi's Tea House: Making Desert Buildings tutorial
Olicanalad's Games: Making 'Arab' Buildings tutorial
Battlebuilders' Ambush Alley Buildings for inspiration
Ambush Alley Ireland Day for inspiration
Ambush Alley Ireland Day on Land War in Asia
Najewitz Modellbaushop North African\Middle Eastern Buildings for sale

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Con, April 2011: Vaticon report

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Con: With a technical hitch preventing release of a non-convention-related episode, Shane, humbug and Liam wrap up the hectic month of March's convention calendar with a somewhat exhausted report from Vaticon. We'd like to take a moment to commend the Irish gaming community for a convention season that's been mercifully short on flashes of wargamers' cleavage. Keep it up! (your trousers) Features:

Vaticon
Immediate lady-boxing tangent
Outrun
GURPS Discworld
Manurebot
Heavy Gear
The Trilogy
Call of Cthulhu
The Big Score
Insert mobster talk here
Unisystem
New World of Darkness
Hibernia rubber sword LRP
Arrow in the eye!
GURPS
Locked room murder!
Pub quiz
All gaming questions, all the time!
Let's do the time-warp again
Warhammer 40,000
Politics
Saying the wrong stuff
Cup of tea
Kill Doctor Lucky
Arkham Gaming Centre
Gamers World
Flames of War
Wargames
Card games
Magic: The Gathering
Legend of the 5 Rings
Super Meat Boy
Star Wars Saga Edition
Hunter: The Vigil

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Con, March 2011: Leprecon report, and Itzacon addendum

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Con: With the madness of con season arguably behind us (well, it's definitely behind everyone except Liam), the reports start. This one's a few weeks out of date as necessitated by scheduling, but was recorded fresh - Shane, humbug and Liam's Leprecon report. A short report on some great games at Itzacon is also included! Features:

Leprecon
Werewolf
How not to cure a schizophrenia patient
The true face of gaming evil
Hefferfest 2011, or lack thereof
Dominion Intrigue
Arkham Gaming Centre
STOCS Lite
The Falling Asleep On The Couch Game
Penny Arcade Adventures
Savage Worlds
Blood pressure nerdery
Malazan Book of the Fallen on Wikipedia
Spirit of the Century
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Civilisation board game
Pub quiz
The end of a legend
A brief endorsement of good con organisation
Dungeons & Dragons
Warforged, I mean robots
Ambush Alley Games
Black Day at Garmsir (the 4-part campaign from Leprecon)
The Defence of Wilson's Wadi (the 9-part campaign from Gaelcon)
Killer Breakfast
JumpTech
The Ceremonial Shelling of the Presidential Palace
Insane vengeful suicide
Telepathic box
sLAng
sLAng quick-start rules in Spanish
Contact NoSoloRol here and demand sLAng be translated into English!
SLA Industries
The League of Volunteers
Twilight Struggle
The box game
Card gamers in fancy dress
Warmachine
Command & Colours Napoleonics
Itzacon
Days of Our Destiny LARP
Call of Cthulhu At The Gates of Madness LARP
Pathfinder
Tedious discussion of new character class
Return of the Living Dead on IMDB

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+2 Int, March 2011: Vaticon preview

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

+2 Int: A last-minute recording and editing session wraps up con season depending on who you listen to, as Shane, humbug and Liam steeple their fingers and plot what to do this weekend in University College Dublin at Vaticon.

Due to some time constraints we're just going to dispense with the detailed show notes. Sorry!

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Exp, March 2011: Ambush Alley

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Exp: As Shane takes his first shaky steps back into wargaming, having discovered Ambush Alley at ConFESS some time ago and finally decided to take the plunge, the game itself is briefly occupying a strange position before its second edition but after lots of tweaks and spin-offs. Shane, humbug, Cillian, Stu, and Liam sit down (or stay sat down, for this was originally recorded as one episode alongside our review of Battles of Westeros) to talk about the ups and downs of martyring unbelievers and slotting hajis. Features:

We talked about Battles of Westeros
Ambush Alley
Warhammer 40,000
Necromunda
Video of Liam playing Ambush Alley at Gaelcon
Scale creep
In media res, that's Latin, you'd have to be pretty clever to use that
Fog of war
Optimum range and effective range
Ambush Z
Ambush Valley
Tomorrow's War
Force on Force
Proper explosives that aren't made from detergent
Force on Force new edition
Force on Force new edition on Amazon.co.uk
Fistfuls of dice
Liam mistakes Ethiopia for Somalia
Cross-Town Traffic
Ambush Z minis starter set
Effective play first time
Our episode on Lego board games
Tweaking close combat for Afghanistan
GI Samurai on BadMovies.Org
Campaign play
Solo play and the shared experience
That's "craic", foreigners
Space Crusade on BoardGameGeek
Escape From Colditz on BoardGameGeek
Last Night On Earth

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+1 Int, March 2011: Itzacon preview

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

+1 Int: Without a pause to report on Leprecon (it's recorded, just don't have time to drop it yet), Shane, humbug and Liam launch into examining what's happening this weekend in Galway at Itzacon, where lots of lovely gaming is on offer.

Due to a problem with our hosting system the show notes got eaten and not regurgitated, so if you want to find a link to something, you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way. (with Internet search engines, like our forefathers used to in days of yore)

Apologies for the delay as well (and the file that only half-worked), we've had all kinds of technical problems this week. It should all be okay now though!

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Int, March 2011: Leprecon preview

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Int: Con season is upon us once again, bringing with it a festive multitude of games, hangovers, overdrafts, ill-considered purchases, and hairy arse-cracks. And kicking things into gear is Leprecon in Trinity College, Dublin. Shane, Liam, Stu and humbug take to the mics to preview what is Ireland's oldest convention, you know. Features:

Leprecon
Names and numbers
Nonsense waffle
Dark Heresy
How to make Warhammer 40,000 worse
Yes, this was recorded before the counting had finished
Bioshock RPG
Penny Arcade Adventures RPG
Another type of wolf
Leprecon Tale of the Fallen
Poor apostrophication
Spirit of the Century
Bulletproof Monk on IMDB
sLAng: Blank Point
Werewolf: The Forsaken
Half-baked rat-related conjecture
The Hyperlinks of Destiny
Dungeons & Dragons
Garda Unit for the Bizarre and Unprecedented
Hefferfest 2011
Monopol: Det Berömda Affärspelet
JumpTech
Bounteousness
Warmachine
Killer Breakfast
Tank Duel
T-72 Balkans on Fire
Shank Or Be Shanked
Crack-reducing paramedic trousers
Legend of the 5 Rings
Magic: The Gathering
Yu-Gi-Oh
Settlers of Catan
Dominion
Battlestar Galactica board game
Small World
Foolproof directions to the pub quiz

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+1 GP, February 2011: 2nd Anniversary Pub Quiz answers

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

+1 GP: Your time is up! Actually it was up a week ago. Because you love pub quizzes, even though you don't seem to actually realise that simple fact, we're doing the whole works again, this time, with answers! Score along, see how you did! Not very well, you non-entering Scrooge. You know who else didn't enter our pub quiz? Hitler, that's who. Features:

Glorious fabulous prize
Traveller
Prime Time Adventures
Crime-solving pig
Dark Heresy
James Bond 007 on Wikipedia
Metres instead of feet
Conspiracy X (a.k.a. Darkie Darkie)
Nobilis
SLA Industries on RPG.net
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons on Wikipedia
The Shab-al-Hiri Roach
Burning Wheel
Starship Troopers on IMDB
Cillian's not there because he's IN BED
Tom Lehrer's song about elements
Stu's bonus round

Exp, Feburary 2011: Battles of Westeros

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Exp: George R. R. Martin might not be getting Song of Ice & Fire stuff out as quickly as Liam might like, but somebody else is, so Shane, humbug, Cillian, Stu and Liam sit down to have a chat about the BattleLore spin-off set in the world of that interminable Game of Thrones series, Battles of Westeros. Features:

Battles of Westeros
Grammar
Dungeons & Dragons
BattleLore
Memoir '44
Dice mechanics
Who you are and what you do
Problems with plastic
Within the woods
How to win
Captured or killed?
Differences and similarities
Warhammer
A Game of Thrones: The Boardgame
Amusing outtake

Con, February 2011: Warpcon report

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Con: Recorded a few short days after returning from the depths of the countryside, apparently that wasn't long enough to entirely recover from the revelry that is Warpcon. Shane, humbug, Liam and Stu reminisce about their triumphs and gloss over their failures at University College Cork's alcohol-fuelled convention madness. Features:

Warpcon
3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars
Deadlands Reloaded
Evil Mexican maze dragons psionic thoughts in bio-fluid
Dragon Age RPG
Anti-paladins
Call of Cthulhu: Evil Under the Sun
The desired outcome
How to win a table quiz
Hail VIP
Dungeons & Dragons: Gatecrashers
Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!
Shane pees in a bin
World of Darkness LARP
Make-a your peace-a!
Hellboy RPG
Now I'm thinking Hyperboria is Ancient Grecian for Scandanavia or something
A Storytelling of Ravens LARP
Whedder it was murther, begorragh
Rakehell: The Chimneys of Whiteham
How to get a copy of Rakehell
Mass Effect
JumpTech: Schism
Mutiny for the bounty?
Call of Cthulhu: Ye Sons of New England, Ye Daughters of Providence
Defining the present day
Charity auction
Belief in the beer fairy
Grand Canyon burgers
The song about the mickeys
World of Darkness: White Russian
Ars Magica
Wasting time for the fae
Deathwatch
Werewolf: The Forsaken
The greatest guesser in the history of the world
Arkham Gaming Centre
Sergeant playing a sergeant executes private playing a private in 3:16
Another interesting link about 3:16
Another interesting link about 3:16!

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A word from the War on Terror guys

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 01:25:00 +0000

With the usual intention of actually doing a little promotion of the podcast, I emailed TerrorBull Games and Gaming Paper to let them know about our reviews (because they're the little guys - haven't bothered with Hasbro or Lego yet but humbug insists there might be one guy at Lego headquarters who's constantly trying to push ahead the board game idea who'd be delighted to hear from us), which so far we've only done with the dude who wrote Duty & Honour (he said he appreciated our honesty because it was the only negative review it'd ever had. WHY?). Both companies wrote back! Gaming Paper said humbug's Army of Darkness bit was very funny and I don't believe them, and Andrew from TerrorBull Games had loads of excellent stuff to say about War on Terror, which he gave us permission to reproduce here:

Hi Shane,

Thanks for letting us know - and for taking the time to review the game. It's most appreciated.

So, a tough audience ... but I get where you're coming from. The criticisms that Liam (?) raised have certainly been mentioned before - the game can be pretty chaotic and unfair if the chaos lands disproportionately with you. Yeh, that kinda sucks if your shiny new empire gets bombed back to the stone age in one turn, but not only is that intentional, but we made it pretty easy to recover should that happen. Yes, you can nuke someone, play the "look through the deck" card and nuke them again and yes, that hurts, but it's damn funny for everyone else.

Some people say we're sacrificing gameplay for theme and that may well be the case, but I prefer to see it as not looking for something in War on Terror that isn't there. It's not Diplomacy or Chess. Pure strategies don't exist - nor will they probably be rewarded. It's a very human game and full of human error. China's a weakspot to build your empire? No kidding - don't build there in great concentration unless you have a nuclear bunker handy (and a nuke for deterrence, why not?).

Anyway, sorry, I don't mean to sound defensive - it was an honest review and I can't (and don't want to) control how you approach the game. However, I did actually want to write with some advice. Some people find that they're not being aggressive enough and they focus only on empire building. Suddenly someone builds 3 cities and they've won. The solution here is to look ahead and keep people who are within 3 or 4 points of winning well in check. Other people have the opposite problem and are too aggressive and initiate a damaging and money-sapping tit-for-tat battle where you basically take it in turns to demolish each others' empire. These games can be particularly chaotic and "tippy". The solution here is to be creatively aggressive. Pay someone else to do your fighting for you - or better still, play two Empires off against each other.

I just wanted to offer that to those of you who are interested in playing the game again. It can be tamed and it can be very rewarding - you can almost go as deep with the game as the group wants to go. I know I've left some particularly intense games psychologically and emotionally drained.

Anyway, thanks once again. I like your show - very listenable.

Cheers,
Andrew

Good stuff! He also said it's spurred him to make a video on how to play the game to get the most out of it, which I haven't been able to find yet but will post here if I do so basically this useless sentence serves no purpose but as a placeholder.

Shane

GP, February 2011: 2nd anniversary pub quiz

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

GP: Another year of regular blather in the bag, it's time to celebrate the only way we know how (apparently): with a pub quiz, ritual beloved of gamers everywhere (except possibly abroad)! This innovation, in combination with cheap cans, lets you take the pub quiz with you, for the busy gamer on the go. Stuck in traffic? Bored in a meeting? Significant other telling you about something important? Pop in your earphones, crack open a cold one and get scribbling down answers to our 50 exciting questions. There's a prize in it for you if you win, which frankly you're quite likely to do.

Download this and become the obnoxiously-celebrating victor! Closing date is the 16th of February, with ties broken by earliness. Except Stu's bonus round.

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Downtime, January 2011: Fate points

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Downtime: Having satisfied themselves that they've produced enough actually decent content for a while, Shane, Liam, humbug, Cillian and Stu get to needlessly discussing the topic of fate points, under whatever name and mechanic they may lurk, in role-playing games. Features:

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The Adventuring Party on Twitter

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 01:00:00 +0000

We don't do much promotion because it's nowhere near as much fun as playing games and waffling about it, but we just set up a Twitter account. It's non-invasive!

http://twitter.com/#!/adventuringpty

Exp, January 2010: War on Terror, Cranium: Wow You're Good, Gaming Paper, Lego board games

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Exp: With an embarrassing amount of pre-holiday waffle recorded and released, a sheepish Shane, humbug, Cillian and Liam knuckle down to produce some actual useful content, by reviewing some interesting games and gaming products they've been putting to use in recent times. Photographs are sideways because humbug's camera is stupid! Features:

Spot the mistake!
War on Terror
How to end a game of War on Terror while drunk
Cranium: Wow You're Good
Cillian doesn't even explain how to spell 'aardvark' forwards
Manipulating people into performing unsavoury household chores
Gaming Paper
Scrolling dungeon
The price of brain-time
Battletech
Lego board games
Ramses' Pyramid
Err, ludography, of course, not ludology
GameScience
Atlantis Treasure
Shave a Sheep
Torpedo a sheep
Pass the Pigs
Yahtzee
Spanners
The Lego board game RPG trilogy

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Int, January 2011: Warpcon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Int: Time for a convention! The madcap insanity that is Warpcon hoves into view over the new year's horizon, luring gamers from across the land to Cork town, home of the unintelligible, the gaming intervarsity cup, the Grand Canyon burger. Get your drinking trousers on and follow us to Warpcon! Features:

Warpcon
Probably not coinciding with exams!
Vampire: The Requiem
Crucible: Dark Age of Imeria
BESM
Dragon Age RPG
Call of Cthulhu
Exalted
Mass Effect
Spoilers for Mass Effect
Rakehell
FATE
Hellboy RPG
Call of Cthulhu again
Hoary graveyards
Cemetery Polka
Mouse Guard RPG
Mouse Guard again
Burning Wheel
Deadlands
World of Darkness
Dark Heresy
GURPS Discworld
Discworld MUD
GURPS Warpcon
GURPS
Dungeons & Dragons
Pathfinder
Neverwhere RPG
A Storytelling of Ravens LARP
JumpTech LARP
JumpTech discussion forum on IrishGaming.Com
Ars Magica LARP
Werewolf: The Forsaken
Warhammer Fantasy Battle
Warhammer 40,000
DBMM
Cork Gaming
Board games
Collectible card games
Magic: The Gathering
Charity auction
Club Warpcon
Burger obsession
Bootyliciousity
Intervarsity Cup
The Adventuring Party Institute for Advanced Gaming
Sci-Fi Screenings
Fundubbing
Special Guests and associated conjecture
Our Secret Thing

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Exp, January 2011: Twilight Imperium and Space Crusade

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Exp: Some nice reviews, tied haphazardly together by both being board games set in space (remember when we did Escape From Colditz and that Call of Cthulhu LARP and pretended it was a World War II themed episode?). Liam unpacks his large copy of fighting-and-trading-and-diplomaticising monstrosity Twilight Imperium and its expansion, and humbug teleports back to his misguided youth to take the Space Marines to some blips. Features:

Twilight Imperium
Trade your way to a happy furry
humbug can't pronounce the name of the space-turtles
Puerto Rico
Reroll your missus
Twilight Imperium RPG
Space Crusade on BoardGameGeek
Non-musical interlude
Warhammer 40,000
Pre-Necrons
Warhammer Quest on BoardGameGeek
Space Hulk
HeroQuest on BoardGameGeek
Advanced HeroQuest on BoardGameGeek
Advanced Space Crusade on BoardGameGeek
Ireland's claim to fame
Space Marines Versus the Dreadnought: The Board Game
The Space Marine voice

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+3 Downtime, December 2010: Accents

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

+3 Downtime: It's episode 100! We've put out an episode a week, every week, 100 times, and that's something. In lieu of something elaborate and special, we thought this would be the ideal opportunity to let our hair down and do the mildly silly episode we'd been wanting to do for a while. So sit back, relax, pick up your stress balls and grind your teeth as Shane, Cillian, Stu, Liam and humbug ponder accents in role-playing games.

Editing for this episode was delayed by holiday travel and gaming, and further gaming is preventing the writing of full show notes. We don't mention anything we haven't linked to repeatedly in the past, anyway, and gaming always trumps podcasting, and anyway it's episode 100 so cut me some slack.

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Character Creation, December 2010: Santa Claus

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Character Creation: Putting festivity ahead of common sense, an even more informal than usual seasonal episode sees Shane, humbug, Liam and Stu putting stats on one jolly old elf in a number of different role-playing game systems, to no appreciable end. Thanks for listening, happy holidays and we'll be back in the new year! Or the end of this year if there's another Wednesday yet to come.

Apologies for the lack of the actual character sheets for your perusal, we might have them some time if fingers are gotten out ever.

Features:

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+2 Downtime, December 2010: High-level play

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

+2 Downtime: Whether it be epic-level spells or delta-grade cyberware, and climbing the experience point ladder or starting characters with ridiculous creation points, most role-playing game systems have something that can class as high-level play. Shane, humbug, Liam and Stu consider the various aspects of all this, with a little thought also given to low-level play, and reach very few useful conclusions. Features:

Dungeons & Dragons
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Shadowrun
Save or suck
Enemy power increase
Pathfinder
Writing for high-level
The most irritating part of gaming
Exalted
Boring gaming story
Games designed to be high-level
Deadlands
Heavy Gear
Plot as the measure of high-level play
Eberron
Debating about debating
Twilight: 2013
Adapting the world to high-level
Trail of Cthulhu
Burning Empires
Traveller
Lifepath-based character creation systems
Prison Planet
The same adventure at different levels
Ars Magica
Class disparity
Dark Heresy
Rogue Trader
Vampire
Powerful characters doing small stuff
One of several differences between Stu and Superman

+1 Downtime, December 2010: Power creep

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

+1 Downtime: Maybe it's the only way to sell game expansions, because there sure seems to be a lot of it around - prestige classes in RPGs, army lists in wargames, cards in collectible card games. Shane, humbug, Liam, Dizzy and Stu get on the mics to discuss what power creep is, where it is, why it is, and whether we like it or not. Features:

No jackassery... oh wait
Narrowing the field
Warhammer 40,000
Item One
Rogue Trader
Cyberpunk 2020
Shadowrun
Dizzy tries to ruin role-playing games
Twilight: 2013
Cold Warriors, the battle rifles book
Deadlands
Dungeons & Dragons
Pathfinder
Advanced Player's Guide
Power through versatility
Ars Magica
Fascist thought-policing GMing
Heavy Gear
Power Creep: The Gathering
Pirates of the Spanish Main at BoardGameGeek
Yugioh
Doomtown
Stu's heartwarming story
Dominion
Dominion: Prosperity
Getting specific
World of Warhammercraft
Alienating listeners
Alienating Liam
Outtake

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Downtime, December 2010: Printed modules

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Downtime: A topic that we've been considering for some time (although you might not realise it to listen to the uninformed half-assery), Shane, humbug, Liam, Dizzy and Stu talk about official adventure modules they've known and loved and hated and just been downright confused by, from Swiss Army knife espionage to D&D's smuttiest. Apologies for the late release of this episode, the editing process was delayed by playing Ambush Alley and creating a sweet snowman. Features:

Unprofessional introduction
Reasons to buy a module
Burning Empires
Dungeons & Dragons
World of Darkness
Ars Magica
The Fallen Angel
Cynical conspiracy theory
Twilight: 2013
Everytown
Self-spoilering
Cyberpunk 2020
Northwest Passage
Avionics, Polar Bear Wrestling and Petroleum Chemist
Night Below
Deadlands
Perdition's Daughter
Star Wars
Twilight: 2000
Rappan Athuk Reloaded
Dark Sun
Prison Planet
Incorporating plot hooks
Grenade launchering for everyone
Messing up the plot
Heavy Gear
The Paxton Gambit
The New Breed: Battle Before the Storm
The Far Orbit is not the thing Dizzy's talking about
Back-of-the-book modules
Eberron
Living Greyhawk
Dark Heresy
Rogue Trader
Box text
Let's rock!
Palace of the Silver Princess
Deadlands Dime Novels
Mutant City Blues
Greenwar
Eurotour
Red Hand of Doom
Time pressure
Shadowrun
The Free City of Krakow
Call of Cthulhu
Goatswood
The shared experience
Too much character, not enough modules

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Exp, November 2010: Pathfinder

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Exp: A dream team of experienced Pathfinder veterans sits down at the microphones, and so does Shane. They tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Pathfinder, and about an hour's more. If you like Pathfinder, your opinions will be slightly different and you'll be enraged! If you don't like Pathfinder, you'll be bored and borderline suicidal! Everyone's a winner. Features:

A brief moment of laughter before the tedium
Pathfinder
Fighting a dragon in half a ballgown
Eberron
Big fat swords style of artwork
The Index
Beefed-up base classes
Example of play
The black-and-white side of the screen
Fun with feats
Online resources
Horse-eating so-and-sos
Well-prepared idiocy
The ol' scry-buff-teleport
Fate chips!
World's best GM screen
Pervious

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+1 Con, November 2010: Dominicon report

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 05:00:00 +0000

+1 Con: Rushing straight from the halls of Maynooth college to The Adventuring Party's headquarters, a snuffly group of Shane, Liam, humbug, Cillian and Dizzy recap a multitude of events from Dominicon 2010, ranging from Liam's poor spelling to Shane's brief emergence from the closet. Features:

Dominicon
Blood Bowl
Crucible: Dark Age of Imeria
Khan-like venom
GURPS Space
Warhammer Fantasy Battle
Warhammer Ancient Battles
THE MISTS OF RAVENLOFT
RPG Atmosphere
Dark Heresy
Dominion
Trans Europa
Mutants & Masterminds
Pub quiz
humbug's GAA club story
Magic: The Gathering
Pathfinder Society
Placenta armour
Battle of Westeros
Strange Cases LARP
Street Countdown
Shopping
Ablaze!
Apples to Apples
Sanity-retention
Amusing out-takes

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Int, November 2010: Dominicon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Int: Without a break from the madness of Gaelcon, Shane, Stu, humbug, Cillian and Liam get stuck into a preview of the myriad goodies on offer in Maynooth at Dominicon this very weekend! Features:

Dominicon
Casual racism
Where's the john? (Hume building)
Chronology
GURPS Space
Hunter: The Vigil
humbug and Wesley up a tree
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Pathfinder
Crucible: Dark Age of Imeria
Sink the airship!
Eden Studios
Ravenloft
How to get to Ravenloft
Dark Heresy
Amusing gun-related puns
Darwin Detectives
Cortex System
World of Darkness
Serenity RPG
Pathfinder Society
Deathwatch
Mutants & Masterminds
Strange Cases
CCGs
Magic: The Gathering
Yugioh
Computer games
Grifball
Wargames
Warhammer 40,000
Warhammer Fantasy Battle
Warmachine\Hordes
Arcane Legions
Infinity
Battletech
Board Games
Jenga
Ca$h & Gun$ at BoardGameGeek
Munchkin
Special Events
Table quiz!
Charity auction!
Quizzy fun!
Street Countdown
Demeaning sexism
Accommodation
More racism against culchies

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Con, November 2010: Gaelcon report, part 2

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 04:00:00 +0000

+1 Con: Forced by common sense to split one long enthusiastic chronological ramble about Gaelcon in twain, Shane, humbug and Liam pick up where they left off almost as if they'd never been away, to talk about what they got up to on Sunday and Monday at Ireland's national gaming convention. Features:

No welcomes to this party
No extra hour in bed either
Dublin Area Rapid Transit says no to humbug
The Usual Suspects
The butler didn't it!
GURPS Old West
Good old trustworthy Colonel Van Cleef
Whittenham Forum
Good old trustworthy William the Negotiator
Chips
Escape From Colditz during the Charity Auction
Yugioh
Sean Alpha's Geek Media Centre
Show me the way to go home
Deadlands
Gitcher accent goin'
Wonders From the Occident
Iron Kingdoms
How to lose a LARP
Not playing Rakehell
Requiem for Rome
Spoken like an expert
More train trouble
Wayne O'Connor
GMs say no to idiocy

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Con, October 2010: Gaelcon report, part 1

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 16:19:00 +0000

Con: Fresh (ish) from the constant barrage of madness that is Gaelcon, Shane, humbug and Liam manage to drum up enough residual excitement from their withered husks to report at what turns out to be great length on their antics at Ireland's national gaming convention. After recording it turned out to be really quite long indeed so it's being inelegantly broken into two parts. Check back next week for the second half! Features:

Gaelcon
Monster board games table
Patented chronological approach
Ticket to Ride: DART edition
Live-action Space Hulk
LET'S ROCK!!
Faw the Empewoh
Trail of Cthulhu
On-the-spot prizegiving
Axis & Allies
Cyberpunk 2020
Vampire: The Masquerade
Hell for Leather
Ambush Alley
Yet more reasons not to close-assault British troops
JumpTech
Big ultimatum!
Battletech
Monty Python Fluxx
Cthulhu Dice
The Avowal Falls
The Pub Quiz
Smallworld

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Post-Gaelcon delay

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 02:41:00 +0000

This week's episode is going to be a little late, because I pretty much slept through Tuesday when I should have been editing as a result of Gaelcon (and I'd do it again). It'll be up as soon as I get it together.

Shane

Exp, October 2010: Escape From Colditz and Demands of the Deep LARP

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Exp: Adopting a coincidental World War II theme in recent activities, Shane, humbug, Cillian, Liam and Stu provide their thoughts and opinions on the decrepit prison-break board game Escape From Colditz, and live-action Lovecraftian horror in the wilds of Northern Ireland in the Demands of the Deep LARP event. Apologies for the sound quality resulting from a mistake in recording. Features:

Gaelcon
Escape From Colditz on BoardGameGeek
These colours don't run
Irish Red Cross
A byword for ambiguity
The land before hexes
Tackling guards
Appel!
The other versions
Rules abuse, or lack-of-rules abuse
Crackdown
The Colditz Story movie on IMDB
Do or die!
Shoot to kill!
Bidding war
Larp NI (turns out they do have a website)
Arkham Gaming Centre
The gravy train
I forgot to mention the murder that started it all, of course
Rolling Library Use
Bank vault contrivance
Misdirected paranoia
Ritual requirements
What happened the fishmen?
Driving up North

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+1 Int, October 2010: Gaelcon preview, part 2

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 04:00:00 +0000

+1 Int: Because Gaelcon's so big it took an entire episode just to talk about the RPGs, so this episode Shane, humbug, Liam and Stu squash in everything else that's going on - LARPs, wargames, card games, computer games, special events, and social (drinking) stuff! Getting very excited indeed. Features:

Gaelcon
Late-breaking Yugioh card game news
Bad directions
LARPs
Rome Wasn't Built in a Night
The Camarilla
Wonders From the Occident
Iron Kingdoms
Whittenham Forum
Jumptech: Doppleganger
How to blow up a space station
The Usual Suspects
Murder mysteries
Scintilla Concorde
Dark Heresy
NiteRider
Licence to incessantly mouth loudly
Consoles
The "I've Never Played Before Honest" league
Super Street Fighter IV
Halo Reach
Super Smash Bros Brawl
Nice clean MUD
Card games
Legend of the 5 Rings
Indie RPGs
Hell for Leather
Wargames
Warhammer Fantasy Battle
Battletech
Memoir 44
Warhammer 40,000
En Avant! (free rules download)
Ambush Alley
The Taliban's kill limit
Battle of Endor
Special Events
Gamer of Steel
Live Action Space Hulk
Warhammer Ancient Battles: Raid on Lindisfarne 793AD
Ticket to Ride: Ireland Edition
Social
The Gaelcon Pub Quiz
IGA Charity Auction
Unfounded speculation
Club Gaelcon
Radio Gaelcon
Board Games
Trade

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Int, October 2010: Gaelcon preview, part 1

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Int: Gaelcon is the main event in the Irish gaming calendar, a long weekend of wall-to-wall gaming, drinking, and buying stuff you absolutely have no use for. In the first of what last year turned into about a million episodes Gaelcon-related, Shane, humbug, Liam and Stu take a look at what's on the cards in RPGs, and a bountiful selection it verily is. Features:

Gaelcon
The big one
Actually maybe it is sort of interesting
Pre-con Meet-up
The Geekest Link
There is no H on the roof
RPG blurbs
The Avowal Falls
Dead Men Tell No Tales
I can't believe I didn't think of the obvious solution - they all repeatedly shot and decapitated each other
How to become an expert
Broken Sword
Exalted
Wholesale Destruction
Authentic frontier gibberish
Rakehell
That Fallen London game (Echo Bazaar)
Operation: Overthrow Olympus
Mutants & Masterminds
Absent Without Official Leave
Deadlands
Go Go Team Unscrupulous
Necessary Evil
Shadown Over Pontypandy
Call of Cthulhu
Sacrificial Lambs
Promethean: The Created
The Defence of Meridian
Well-defined system specification
From Persephone With Love
Victorian Age: Vampire
The Last Days of Outpost 241
Traveller
Shadows of the Earth
GURPS Old West
Front Lines
The Dresden Files RPG
Cogs and Dogs
GURPS Discworld
Shane gets outed
Dracula's Wives
Sang Real
Vampire: The Masquerade
A Night That Will Live in Infamy
Trail of Cthulhu
Enemies of Dune
Dune RPG
The Things They Left Behind
GURPS
Deciphering the timetable

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+1 Mailbag, September 2010: RPG character background

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 04:00:00 +0000

+1 Mailbag: Another non-fictional listener has a question about when and how much character background it's best to create. Typically, the answers from Shane, humbug, Liam and new guy Stu are many, varied and inconclusive, although drag in some interesting examples from experience. Features:

The mailbag joke yet again
Lifepath automatic background creation
Twilight: 2013
Traveller
Eberron
Dungeons & Dragons
System stunting background
Deadlands
Handy GM hooks
Ars Magica
GM-made amnesiac characters
Heavy Gear
Character background to justify munchkinism
Generating background on the fly
The divide between personality and background
Nazis versus furries
Swordo Von Bigtown
The Classic
Prison Planet
Lifepaths that shaft you
Tying character backgrounds together
How to lose friends after the apocalypse
Spirit of the Century
Glistening pectorals
Midway LARP
Writing yourself into a corner
Burning Empires
Shadowrun
Dark Heresy
Rogue Trader
Dave's MERP character chain
Vampire: The Requiem
Warpcon
Coneheads

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Mailbag, September 2010: Background music

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Mailbag: Listeners got questions, we got long-winded vaguely-related rambling. One irlpotato asks us about background music in gaming, and Shane, humbug, Liam and Cillian manage to scrounge together some opinions, and for once we don't concentrate exclusively on RPGs. Features:

That joke again
A non-fictitious non-fictitious listener
That zombie one
Wizards of the Coast's webpage
Kult (unofficial)
Death to the Huns
GM's attention resource management
Themed scene playlists
Xenogears, Total Annihilation
Command & Conquer, Quake 2, Heavy Gear, Aliens vs Predator
The good old days
Conan the Barbarian
Ravenous
Highlander
Event Horizon
Limited experience with jugs
Deadlands
Radio Free Krakow
Playing your favourite CD while playing wargames
Noisemarines and Goff Rockers
Pokemon
Vs
Sound system quality
V for Vendetta
Lemmings
Gaming soundtrack company thing
Soundboards and why they're a bad idea
Pathfinder
Burning Empires
Marching Song
Some final opinions
Major tangent about one-man bands
I couldn't find anything about Dr. Gizmo on YouTube

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+1 Downtime, September 2010: Gaming club venues

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 04:00:00 +0000

+1 Downtime: With Dublin's Thursday Games Nights on the move again as its pub venue closes down under it, Shane, humbug, Liam and Cillian throw around ideas for what makes a good space for a gaming club to conduct its shadowy business. Features:

Unlikely business truths
Good drink and bad food
Let them eat cake
Vote for wargames!
The Eldar Pit of Doom
Questions from passers-by
Hotels instead of pubs
Imaginary American game shops
Community halls
The Camarilla
No lammie, no game effect
Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the diamond toilet
Who ate all the pies?
They Ended Up Having To Eat Each Other
Wreckage and murderage
Gaming on the Orient Express
Memoir 44
Axis & Allies: Europe
Playing on the floor
Getting off the floor

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Downtime, September 2010: Money in gaming

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Downtime: Although money plays a major part in a lot of board games and RPGs, that's for another day; today Shane, humbug and Liam are discussing the subject of real actual money and how it relates to the hobby. Gaming has been accused of being both an expensive hobby and defended as being a cheap one, so what's the truth? How can you make it cheaper? How can you make it more expensive? What lies within Liam's big chest and Shane's bellybutton? Features:

MB Games
Monopoly
Yu-Gi-Oh
Doomtown on Wikipedia
Warhammer 40,000
Cinema units
Twilight Imperium
The Great Dalmuti at BoardGameGeek
The cost of cons
Warpcon
The best value
Shadowrun
Deadlands
Gaelcon
Phoenix Command
Twilight: 2000
Axis & Allies Anniversary Edition
Pathfinder
Friendly neighbourhood convention trade stand guy versus the Internet
White Wolf
Books as PDF files
Dominion
Game of Thrones living card game business
Things you can't help but buy
3d Settlers of Catan
Liam says something rude
Really expensive gaming furniture
Really expensive theoretical gaming furniture
Munchkin RPG
Shane's glow-in-the-dark precision dice
Twilight: 2013
Kitty money
Other reasons gaming's good value

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Character creation, September 2010: Midway LARP

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Character creation: Excited about the ongoing outdoor LARP starting this week in Dublin, Shane, humbug and Liam dig into the rules document and see what kinds of characters they can turn out - a real man, a real roleplayer, a munchkin and a loony. It's worth noting that in the short amount of time between recording and release a new version of the rules has been released so some of the rules referenced are now out of date. Some of them are just referenced incorrectly, of course. Features:

Midway LARP
Camarilla
Real Men, Real Roleplayers, Munchkins, Loonies
The nature of apocalypse
Leather chaps
Downtime and uptime
First Aid and Surgery
Professional-grade munchieing
WWMD?
Prestige: Pterodactyls
Rolling on tables!

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Mailbag, August 2010: RPG wound systems

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Mailbag: A Completely Non-Fictional Listener is back with another rambling question, and Shane, Liam and humbug are at hand with another rambling non-answer. It's all got something to do with RPG wound systems, lethality and healing, and as with so many questions about RPGs, raises the big issue again of "what exactly is that nonsense trying to simulate, anyway?". Some interesting things to think about are raised. Features:

Alarming rummaging
Unstoppable fantasy killing machines
Liam says "gambit" instead of "gamut"
Exalted
Call of Cthulhu
Twilight: 2013
Fate points and chips and karma and emergency dice
Deadlands
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Shadowrun
Silhouette
Dungeons & Dragons
Who suffers when you get hurt
Rolemaster
Where rules and genre don't match
Wound negatives and system shock
Heavy Gear
Hit location versus one big blob of person
Critical hits and fumbles
Playing a healing character
Ars Magica
Star Wars Saga Edition
How role-playing was born
Computer games and injury systems
Ghost Recon 2
Halo
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Lethality as an extension of GM personality
Amputation and sanity loss as other things that make a system lethal
Cavitation - might actually be just for listening to submarines
Traveller
The United Federation of Caveman Planets

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+1 Downtime, August 2010: RPG supplements

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0000

+1 Downtime: With stacks of role-playing supplements accumulated from years of ill-advised purchasing, Shane, humbug and Dizzy examine the merits and flaws (ho ho) of the big-line-of-crap-for-each-game model, and discuss the many forms those supplements take. Unfortunately a computer error wiped out the list of things in the episode which should be here. I have no idea why humbug's new camera-phone is making all the embedded pictures be sideways.

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Downtime, August 2010: Initiative

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Downtime: Initiative systems in role-playing games are something abstract and strange and full of weird anomalies and holes, possibly the hardest part of a role-playing game rule system to get right. This week, Shane, humbug, Liam, Dizzy and Cillian take a look at the complexities and pitfalls of the concept in general and some specific games, eh, specifically. Features:

Roll initiative!
Dungeons & Dragons
Cyberpunk
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Lethality and initiative importance
Shadowrun
Twilight: 2013
Ars Magica
Call of Cthulhu
Movement and initiative
Multiple actions
Heavy Gear
Deadlands
Vampire: The Requiem
Dragunovs do indeed take 10-round box magazines
Round-the-table initiative
Traveller
Cyclical versus rolled each round
Who shouts first
Combat stress via GM

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Exp, August 2010: Axis & Allies

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Exp: Fresh from games of the apparently rare Axis & Allies Anniversary Edition, Shane, humbug, Liam, Dizzy and Cillian discuss the original, the revisions and the board game spin-offs of this classic in the high on World War II, low on swastikas stakes board war game. Features:

Axis & Allies
Aggravated uninformedness
Canada and Australia weren't proper countries back then, either
Breach of non-aggression
Historically correct terminology
Germans with funny accents
World in Flames
The Manhattan Party
Zeros and Lancasters and Chaos cruisers from Battlefleet Gothic
Burning the Statue of Liberty
Downing fighters with Lugers
The Fuhrer has taken a sleeping pill and is not to be disturbed
Rooting
The navel option
War of the Ring
Money/3=infantry
The only copies of the game in the country
Playing online
Nuclear War
Marks on a scale from 3 to 18
Don't listen to this if you like Axis & Allies

Downtime, July 2010: Good con scenarios past

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Downtime: Happy memories! Shane, humbug, Liam, Dizzy and Cillian cast their minds back over their con-attending careers to talk about some of the role-playing scenarios that really stood out as being great, either because they actually were great or just because of where our own heads were at the time. Features:

Days of yore or current
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Gamer masochism
Earthworm Jim on IMDB
Brainfreeze
Junta on BoardGameGeek
A very bad year
Masks from Gaelcon 1998
All the spoilers
Blue Planet
Shane goes furry
Weird Wars
All aboard
Dungeons & Dragons
Sparklies!
The Rich and the Unfortunate
The most virulent disease of our time
Star Wars Saga Edition
Both sides against the middle
Prince of Persia
Death to the Vizier

+1 Per: Berget 8, part 2

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0000

+1 Per: With more enthusiasm than any human could bear to hear in one sitting, Shane, Dave, Dizzy and Liam return for the second part of the excited ramblings about their experiences at Berget, the world's biggest airsoft game with a large chunk of LARP mixed in. If you haven't listened to part 1, go do that now. We'll wait for you. Features:

Berget 8
Those wacky civilians
Unreasonable demands
Those two doctors again
A bit of purple monkey dishwasher
Gypsies, scientists and berets
To the Batcave!
5 minutes! 10 minutes if we're bringing Dizzy.
Schiess dem Fenster
Angry toilet lady
The Big Push
Word of the day
Beer party
No regrets
I'm a dude playing a dude pretending to be another dude masquerading as a dude disguised as the third dude
Get Doctor Frumpy!
Waffle about food

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Per: Berget 8, part 1

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Per: With the series of episodes examining what's going on in the greater sphere of gaming which brought us interviews with Camarilla organisers and Lorien Trust players as an excuse, Shane, Dave, Dizzy and Liam go on at great length about their action-packed holiday at Berget in Sweden. More than an airsoft game, more than a LARP, it was a gaming experience more intense and sustained than any we'd had before. Features:

Dizzy's Swedish language skills
Berget 8
Our episode on airsoft
Mountaineer madness
It's not the size of the game area, it's what you do with it that counts
Sjätte Tunnan (Sixth Barrel restaurant)
Why your teachers taught you to write neatly
How to escape from prison in the most convoluted fashion possible
Lack of medical attention
Moustache appreciation
The Camarilla
Code purple!
Crazy Gypsy Lady
Anti-trust
The big red one

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Listen to the second part of our Berget report!

Int, July 2010: BroCon preview

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Int: Not long now until the anticipated BroCon hits us, the University of Limerick's combined gaming and anime convention. Shane, humbug, Dizzy and Liam check out the offerings listed on their website. Well, Shane does, anyway. Features:

BroCon
River navigation
Drunken yahooery
Dr. Stimulance and his porn star brother
The One With The Robots In It
The Adventuring Party: Irish Con Pub Quiz Champions of the World
Scandalously cheap booze
The source of rock
Francesca Dani
Wired
Warhammer
Magic: The Gathering
Competitive karaoke
Liam's back door system
Cyberpunk 2020
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition
Savage Worlds
Firefly RPG
HeroQuest at BoardGameGeek
Exalted
Our powers combine...
Dark Heresy
Vampire: The Requiem

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Con, June 2010: Q-Con

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Con: Fresh from the con-face, our heroes bring you tales of derring-do - at the gaming table! In the pub! Upon cartons of mashed potatoes! Q-Con has happened again, and it brought a lot of very cheap drinking, along with some games. Features:

N is for Queen
Moving up
Perudo
The Great Dalmuti
Monopoly
Security upgrades
Hungary 1944 LARP
Doctor Who RPG
Time to change your cant's
War on Terror
Firefly LARP
Imaginary languages
Castles & Crusades
Save versus tea!
Magnanimity in victory
The Starship Troopers thing
4D Dungeon
Save versus walking away!
Cliché playtest
Imperial
Austro-Hungria and narrow margins
Cyberpunk 2020
Too much Cyberpunk!
Alahambra
Mystery counterintuitive computer game
Black Powder
Camouflage nerdery
Japanese choccie biccies
The Queen's Rag, again
Kings of all men

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Exp, June 2010: Cheapass Games

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Exp: Cheapass Games have been a constant in shops, on trade stands and at convention main hall tables for years, but it's easy not to notice them. Shane, humbug, Liam, Cillian and Dizzy take a look at some of the many Cheapass games. Features:

Cheapass Games
Uncertainty as to state of company
How cheap is cheap?
Kill Doctor Lucky
Save Doctor Lucky
Outlandish requirements
The Great Brain Robbery
Unexploded Cow
Newspaper clippings
The Big Idea
U.S. Patent Number 1
Secret Tijuana Deathmatch
El Santo
El Santo en el museo de cera
Las Vegas: The Trying to Win Money Going Around the Board Game
Assembling a cheapass gamepiece set
Before I Kill You, Mister Bond
Captain Park's Imaginary Polar Expedition
One False Step for Mankind
Valuable antique component-holders

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+1 Int, June 2010: Q-Con, part 2

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 04:00:00 +0000

+1 Int: Having only managed to touch on RPGs and LARPs in last week's episode, Shane, humbug, Liam, Cillian and Dizzy return to examining the forthcoming Q-Con by looking at... everything else. Features:

Warhammer 40,000: Fields of Blood
Ancient Eldar artefact
Warhammer Historical
How come the Celts sacked Rome? Because it was full of cool stuff they wanted.
Field of Glory
De Bellis Magistrorum Militum
None of those fourteen-eighty-sixers
The Uncharted Seas
Black Powder
Gunsmoke and beards
Memoir '44: Operation Overlord
Arkham Horror
Rock Band Live!
The chosen charity
How to win winning the pub quiz
Computer games
Magic: The Gathering
Yu-Gi-Oh
Japanese cartoons and dress-up and so on
The fish licence sketch
Possible attempt at "Rady in Led"
Best champ in Ireland
Useless Dark Sun and Ravenloft discussion
Prizing Liam's pants off
The economics of travel
Sticky reproductive fluid production

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Int, June 2010: Q-Con, part 1

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Int: Kicking back into the con groove, Shane, humbug, Liam, Cillian and Dizzy take a long-winded look at what Q-Con's promising us at the end of this month. RPGs and LARPs feature this week, and there's so much stuff that the remainder will have to wait until next week! Features:

Q-Con
Frequently asked question
Guaranteed accommodation
Living Forgotten Realms
Unknown Armies
Paranoia
Rouge Trader
Cliche
It sounds familiar because of a Vampire game at Sillicon called Cliche
Judge Dredd RPG
I am the maritime law
Infinite Mayhem
Doctor Who RPG
Starblazer Adventures
The biggest con of all time - Q-Con!
Shadowrun
Call of Cthulhu
Dark Conspiracy on Wikipedia
Mutants & Masterminds
Castles & Crusades
Wild Talents
Puppet ignorance
The voice of the Mysterons
Super Street Fighter 4
Firefly LARP
The rules of hats
Star Trek LARP
Hungary 1944 LARP

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Downtime, June 2010: Dice fudging

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Downtime: Fudging is a despicable activity practised by depraved villains for their own perverse ends. Perhaps someone you know could be a disgruntled saboteur, attacking your gaming enjoyment in order to fulfill their hidden desire to write a novel or screenplay. Beware! Liam, humbug and Dizzy find themselves without a straw man, little suspecting the dreadful sound quality that haunts them. Features:

Identity theft
Fat ladies and captains
Dungeons & Dragons
Swinging
Playing hard
Sub-contracted NPCing
The sniper problem
Nurse, the screens
Deadlands
Nobilis on Wikipedia
Ars Magica
DO-OVER!
Player fudging
The other fudges

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

+2 Exp, May 2010: Pit, Oregon, Pandemic & Dominion

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 26 May 2010 04:00:00 +0000

+2 Exp: With a selection of unreviewed games in boxes knocking around, Shane, Liam and humbug see what, if anything, lies within bell-ringing Pit, wagon-firin' Oregon, city-infecting Pandemic and expansion-releasing Dominion. Features:

Pit at Boardgamegeek
Frantic shouting!
Gratuitous belling
Comprehensive reviewing
Oregon
Creepy kids with diseases
Exactly unlike a road-map
Serious dissing of Carcassonne
Pandemic
Free packet of donoteat
Disease spread! Yummy.
Naked Pandemic
Stats
Dominion
...versus Mega-Dominion
Four-player solitaire
Pterodactyl Attack
Confusing time-travel

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

+1 Exp, May 2010: Currently Playing

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 18 May 2010 04:00:00 +0000

+1 Exp: One little microcosm of the Irish gaming scene is we ourselves, The Adventuring Party. Rather than purely being all talk (although we are that as well), we play games too. So in this episode, we're chatting about what those games are and how we're finding them. Features:

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
The only kind of Wood Elf
Dungeons & Dragons
Dragon-men!
Traveller
Doing the same thing those guys were, and they're dead
Silhouette
The difference having aids makes
Dizzy's creamy fun-paste
Eberron
Pathfinder
Smiting stuff for the dark god
Planescape
Spelljammer
Dark Sun
Cleaving your way down and levelling up
Twilight: 2013
The cleric deciding what's happening
Warhammer Ancient Battles
Rocks and pointy sticks
The expanse of the Irish Empire
Peace through superior fire power
MERP
Statistical abberations
Cyberpunk 1920
Pay per finger
Heavy Gear
What happens before being executed but after being demoted all the way
Cyberpunk 2020
Call of Cthulhu
Mechwarrior
On\off power
Heavy Gear: The New Breed: Battle Before the Storm
Fun and Prophet
Nuclear War
Diplomacy
Smallpox isn't nuclear
Feedback elicited!

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Downtime, May 2010: The Dice Gods

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 12 May 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Downtime: Paying homage, or lack thereof, to the Dice Gods, or lack thereof, and the many zany behaviours we as gamers hold dear in our interface with what to the less enlightened would be a simple random-number generator, Shane, Cillian, humbug, Dizzy and Liam put their faith to the test. Features:

Mistaken introduction as the third week of May when it's only the second
Introducing Dizzy
Offence intended
The unbeliever
What a crazy person might think
Axis & Allies
The folly of lacking faith
Faith over maths
A hard day's night
On-the-job training
Getting cocked
Roll dem phones
Deadlands
That guy (seriously, you need to watch this or you're wallowing in wilful ignorance)
Terrible explanation of That Guy's point
Etymology uncut
Mind over matter
The Dice-O-Matic
...very inaccurately described
The gauntlet thrown
Science, baby

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Exp, May 2010: Early American Chrononauts, The Da Vinci Code, The Great Dalmuti, Puerto Rico

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 05 May 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Exp: Returning once again to reviews of games, Shane, humbug, Cillian and Liam hit up two card games and two board games - the obscure of subject matter Early American Chrononauts, the surprisingly non-crap The Da Vinci Code board game, the belongs-in-a-museum The Great Dalmuti and the horrifically racist Puerto Rico. Features:

Reverse turn order
Early American Chrononauts
Utter lack of familiarity with foreign history
The American equivalent of school
Another incorrect word for you good folks on the ends of the earphones
Victory through mutual assured destruction
Death to Garfield!
The Da Vinci Code board game
Peace through superior airhorns
The Accusation Room
Spoilers?
No one who speaks German could be an evil man
Church secrets
The Great Dalmuti at BoardGameGeek
Chairs worse than standing
Revolution! No taxation!
Big pompous grand poobah hat
A game that exists in history and cultures
Dalmuti at Q-Con!
Puerto Rico
Race for the Galaxy
Brown-coloured "colonists" that work on your "plantation" that turn up on "ships"
The yellow stuff strategy
Stuff to flog
Agricola
Shadows Over Camelot
Battlestar Galactica board game
Liam is right
San Juan

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

NPC Exp, April 2010: Richard III and Maria

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:00:00 +0000

NPC Exp: Another over-long in-depth analysis of board games you'll never even see! Tom and Dizzy are back and they've brought historical board war games with 'em. Features:

Richard III
Hammer of the Scots
Questionable history
Britannia
Picking at nits
Command & Colours
Bad pun about canon
Status quo retention
Fix bayonets! (did they even have bayonets?)
Treachery!
How to gain votes and execute people
Navel movement
Maria
King of Hungary and Elector of Bohemia strangle each other
Male heirs in a hurry
Pragmatically fighting France
Glory deposits
Strike Them A Blow
The War of Jenkins' Ear
Psychological warfare
War by suits
Dizzy's ghost armies
The colourblind leading the blind
Indestructible wagons
Pillage shortages
Liam confuses historical periods yet again

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Downtime, April 2010: Idealcon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Downtime: What would you have at your ideal gaming convention? That's not what this episode is about. It's about what Shane, Liam, Cillian and humbeg would like at their ideal gaming convention, or more correctly conventions, because of course opinions vary dramatically. Convention organisers take note! But not too much note. Apologies for Cillian's faintness, he was actually in the recording room but slouching very far from his microphone like a big slobby gamer. Features:

Lord of the Pies
There's 'ideal' and there's 'ideal'
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Pub quiz time
Conduration
Looking at wargamers
Layout by the guys who did R'lyeh
Venue for atmosphere
Medieval or at least pre-60s
Lots and lots of delicious trade
humbug's junk
Lots of travel or none at all
Girlfriends in another country
Unspecified vague adversity
People talking to you
Style over substance
Slots a day
RPGs versus pub quiz
Call of Cthulhu
Savage Worlds
Special events
BattleTech
Space Hulk
Variety
Elaborate GMed wargame scenarios
Serious boardgame throw-down
Battlestar Galactica
Twilight Imperium
Axis & Allies
Pie-corresponding toilet facilities
Up-front information
Leaving the con excited
The prize fight
RPG and LARP coordinator
Scenarios ready
Nice weather
Belt up!
The crack is ninety
How not to organise a con

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Source Material, April 2010: Films that have been turned into games and vice versa

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Source Material: With the film industry seeming to lean more and more heavily on existing intellectual properties from other media for material and a number of surprisingly good and unsurprisingly bad tie-in games knocking about, Shane, Liam, Cillian and humbug discuss a number of examples in each direction, and then start dreaming. Features:

Farewell to Dave
Supernatural
Have hockey sticks, will smush demons
humbug pees
Army of Darkness
Eden Studios
Informed about our uninformedness
Timeline destruction
Babylon 5
Thrust!
Indiana Jones
Diana Jones Award
Crystal skull tangent
Shane mistakes Andy Lau or someone for Jackie Chan
Stargate SG-1
My First Stargate Space Combat Game
Star Wars
Criticisms of Saga Edition
Too accurate for Sand People
Serenity
Battletech RPG
Kurt Russel's haircut
James Bond 007
Fading Suns
A simpler age
Alien Fuzion
The Leading Edge Aliens Gaelcon legend
The most useful thing you've ever learned from The Adventuring Party
Mutant Chronicles
Big in Germany
Prince August
Dungeons & Dragons
In defence of Jeremy Irons
Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God
Last Night on Earth
Paranoia
Liam mistakes the 1970s for the 1950s
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Kindred: The Embraced
Shane is right, everybody else isn't particularly
Battletech cartoon
Heavy Gear cartoon
Action Force
Monty Python Fluxx
Star Trek
Highlander
Immortal
Legacy: War of Ages
Judge Dredd
Blissful partial ignorance
Starship Troopers
Ultraviolet
Heavy Gear
Primetime Adventures
Diplomacy
Shadowrun
Deadlands
Blue Planet
Battlestar Galactica
Battlestar Galactica
Probably no spoilers
Irish con LARP, the series
Call of Cthulhu
CthulhuTech
Inbred fishmen versus aliens, with giant robots
Abrupt ending!

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Con, April 2010: Vaticon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Con: Small, cheap, and with lots of fun crammed into it, Vaticon is in many ways like your mum. Shane, humbug, Dave and Liam gather around to discuss the goings-on of the weekend, including Dave's first foray into rubber-sword LARPing. Features:

The correct opinions on Vaticon
Dave is completely unfair toward the excellently-organised Leprecon and Vaticon of last year
Concentric-circle-free travel
Outlast
Timeline as sand painting
Winning minor-drinking by default
Dominion for Trilogy
Geist: The Sin-Eaters
Real actual informative facts about Geist
The International Convention for the Normalisation of Protocols and Legislation With Reference to Temporally Locomotive Technologies
Fastest finger in the west
Rubber-sword LARPing
Waving big latex-encased weapons about
Laying down your arms, werewolf attack style
Field-expedient Jebrovian palliative care
BY THE POWER OF BEING A HIGH-LEVEL NECROMANCER!
The Innquizition
Human people dressed as nuns
Etymology of a hangover
How's the cracks?
Battletech
Zangief versus Chun Li
Deadlands
The Quick & the Dead
Drinkies for directy-man
Chrononauts
Dominion
Judge Dredd RPG

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Mailbag, March 2010: Atmosphere in combat

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Mailbag: Coming to the aid of a listener in distress (or at least a listener with a question), Shane, Liam and humbug stutteringfully tackle the issue of how to keep the atmosphere alive when a role-playing game hits combat rounds. Features:

Completely non-fictional listener!
Dungeons & Dragons
Not letting players know how many hit-points they have left
How to play RPGs wrong
Twilight: 2013
Exalted
Huge dice pools
Shadowrun
Insufficient GM processor power
Shorn off fingers
Feng Shui
The coward problem
The combat mini-game
Evil speeches first, offing characters second
No atheists in foxholes
Quaffing not drinking
Not naming the threat
Arm-waving
Heavy Gear
Thinking fast or losing your action
Descriptions and franticism to a point
Intent, roll, description
Captain Kirk versus the GM machine

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+1 Int, March 2010: Vaticon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 04:00:00 +0000

+1 Int: With a great line-up, novel ideas, a tight schedule, lots to do and serve-yourself free tea, Vaticon is looking to be one of the best college cons of the year - it certainly was last year. Shane, Liam, Dave, humbug and now featuring a guest appearance by Oisín take a look over what's to get excited about this weekend. Features:

Vaticon
The Sum of all Adventurers
Geist: The Sin-Eaters
...explained by our expert
Victoriana
The good ship Punctilitious
Mass Effect: Spectre of the Past
C-Sec's (say it fast)
Liam confuses Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey for Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Space 1889
Pirate's Life
Outlast
Chrononauts
The Trilogy
Harry Potter & The Dagda's Colossal... Wand
A very serious in-depth going-over
Deadlands
Broken Gears
Ditches and D-Words
Mr. Flibble vs Ballygobackwards
Dark Heresy
Hong Kong Action Theatre!
The International Convention for the Normalisation of Protocols and Legislation with Reference to Temporally Locomotive Technologies
Obsessing over speed limits and timetables
Hard Times rubber-sword LRP
Pigged and dangerous
Mooks on a budget
The ever-present crop
The Olympia Tragedy
The Warhammers
Battletech
Sign of weakness!
The more things change
Warmachine
...or go home
Magic: The Gathering
Legend of the 5 Rings
The smell of victory
Board games from throughout history
Smash Bros. Brawl
Goldeneye
Rock Band
Mariokart
Modern Warfare 2
Street Fighter IV
The InnQuizition
Guaranteed free tea and coffee
Posthumous accolades for Leprecon
Armed goons

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Con, March 2010: Leprecon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:00:00 +0000

Con: Staggering from Leprecon to The Adventuring Party recording-hole, Shane, Liam and humbug tiredly enthuse about a weekend of LARPs, RPGs, associated goings-on, board games, unnecessary purchases and pints, many of which got to go in mouths instead of on trousers. Features:

Shane finds Leprecon
Step back in time
Loudest In Scenario
Pandemic
Pathfinder
Dice project
JumpTech
Head in a box
Mouse Guard RPG
humbug's furry costume
Pub quiz
Breaking a duck times something
The Camarilla
Irish government X-Files dudes!
Last Night on Earth
Hell for Leather
Liam's 1 in 10 trillion
Necessary Evil
World War S
Winning of hearts and minds
Hair bra
Castles & Crusades
The Ghost Zombie Demon Pirate LeChuck is Dead...
Uoy Sevol Natas
Society for Creative Anachronism
Steve Jackson Games
Maximum tea
Killer Breakfast
Battlestar Galactica board game

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Int, March 2010: Leprecon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Int: The oldest thing in gaming in Ireland that anybody knows about, Leprecon's been going since dice were carved from granite by nerdy cavemen and wargames featuring flintlock muskets were categorised as science fiction. It still usually manages to serve up an excellent show. A full house of Adventurers takes a look at what's on the cards for this year's. Features:

Leprecon
Legless Adventuring Party robot
Jumptech
The Camarilla
Magicians versus Scientologists
Christmas in Valhalla
Thor versus Neptune versus Umbongo Big Wooden Mask Guy
The Demon-Zombie-Ghost-Pirate LeChuck is Dead
Monkey Island
Where There's a Will
Something Shane can get behind
Unfounded speculation
Spirit of the Century
Call of Cthulhu
MURDER and MUTILATION!
Mouse Guard
Furry costumes at the ready!
Penny Arcade
Savage Worlds
World War S
A day that will live in infamy
Dark Heresy
Liam cofuses the Deathwatch and the Legion of the Damned
Castles & Crusades
Having fun and playing, with D&D?
GURPS
Metagame Disney
Eberron
Ridiculous question with a proper answer
The Writers' Conspiracy
Race for the Galaxy
Settlers of Catan
Doing the right thing
Power Grid
Battlestar Galactica board game
Ruining a stranger's fun for a change
Ticket to Ride
humbug's other Klingon impression
Caylus
Carcassonne
Carcassonnes and Catapults
Chainsaw Warrior
Magic: The Gathering
A ton of surprise real information
Construction of a standard
Yu-Gi-Oh
Legend of the 5 Rings
Construction of a standard
Warhammer 40,000
Warmachine
A bit of speculation
Society for Creative Anachronism
Some wargame!
Pub quiz!
Hostel!

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GP, March 2010: 1st Anniversary Pub Quiz results

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0000

GP: Your time is up! Minions, collect the answer sheets! Pencils down! Don't make me take off my sunglasses! With the opening time of the Pub Quiz past, Shane, Liam, Dave and humbug welcome Cillian aboard as a new fifth Beatle, and make asses of themselves attempting to answer their own questions after having had a month to research them. Pitiful, really. Also, the actual winner is announced - assuming that is that it isn't The Adventuring Party. Features:

A new contestant
Scoring our contestants
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Round humbug
The owlbear question
humbug forgets about Yorkshire and Black Sea
Not the Necronomicon
Round Shane
Liam's knobulous face
Round Liam
Races and political alliances
Round Dave
Mysteriously vanishing whiskey
A short pause
The losers
The winner

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Per, February 2010: The Camarilla

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Per: Roaming the night in up to, eh, six or so guises are the members of the Camarilla, White Wolf's ongoing, worldwide LARPs. Ceire, Boomer and Phil from the Irish Cam contingent join us to give the low-down on just what it's all about, and to spill the beans on whether Dave's actually as much of a badass as we make him out to be. Features:

The Camarilla
White Wolf
Supernatural tea-party o' the month
Players versus population
Going crazy and playing a ghoul
The vampire redshirt
Typical game types
An awful area to drink blood in in Dublin
Downtiming
Splat-vampires
Conflict resolution
Learning life skills through LARP
Mage: The Awakening
Changeling: The Lost
Death by Internet
Camunism International
Geist: The Sin-Eaters
Vampire: The Masquerade
Those guys in Edinburgh
Be afraid of Dave's character
The Prince of Dublin
Sparkly vampires again
Character generation
How to earn experience points the Dave way
How to lose humanity and torture people
Canonical games at conventions
Costume, signature items and lack thereof
Camarilla timeline and the real world
Alliances with Satan
Local, national and global plots
Scion
Hunter: The Vigil
Mummy: The Resurrection
Promethean: The Created
Playing NPCs
The Werewolves of Hollers Millow
Kingmakers and puppet-masters
Powerful roles in vampire society
Crabs in a bucket
How to coexist
Decapitation, my secret vulnerability!
Combat
A mildly-embarrassing story about Dave
Getting involved or starting a group
Irish Camarilla website
Vampires on ice!

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Int, February 2010: Itzacon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Int: With mere seconds to spare, Shane, Dave and humbug see what they can find on the Itzacon website to tempt their strange and arcane appetites. Features:

Itzacon
Retro-sci-fi aesthetic
The Galwegian language
Geist: The Sin-Eaters
Half-informing you so you don't have to
Mystery games
Starfleet Special!
What year it is
Weirdness in the Appalachians, go figure
The old half-orc-maker
Vile experiments
Warhammer likes its beer
No flamethrowers
The sixth dandy
Secret babies
Call of Cthulhu
Benevolent Dr. Smythe
Uninsulting rustic accent
American explosions
How to get rid of this prince
Kneel before Zendikar!
Gravity floor

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Con, February 2010: Warpcon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Con: Shane, Dave and humbug gather and recollect a weekend of debauchery at Warpcon, a con filled with booze, games and booty. Yarrrr! Features:

Crap junkfood
Games starting on time
Pub-quiz fuel
Chrononauts
Second place is first loser
Good Golden Axe questions
The smartphone club
Insufficient kazoos
Booty!
Normal proper good con organisation
The drinking con with games at it
The world's worst human shield
Time management struggles
Dragon Warriors
Was der Dragon Warriors ist
Saves versus death
The gentle Tyrannosaurus Rex
ZOMBIE GIANT SQUID
Extra spicy bits
White Wolf
Helping desperate companies get results
Battlestar Galactica board game
Charity drinking
Twilight: 2000
A bit of occasionfulness
The Potato Thing
All the chess-playing gamer ladies
Mah Jongg
Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
Black Dynamite
Corporation
Silhouette Core
Best in Scenario
DBMM
Dominion
Good main hall
Itzacon

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Cha, February 2010: Warpcon special guests

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Cha: LIVE from Warpcon (all our podcasts are recorded live), Shane, Liam and humbug haul people from the timetable to the recording table and make them talk for your gratification. Alessio Cavatore is the head behind Shuuro, the game that takes chess to new places, and the crew of Terrains4Games are making high-quality wargames scenery features in Cork. Features:

All Games Considered
That chess game
Shuuro
Getting very into your set-pieces
Horsey on a plinth
Ramping up the pawns
Minds in wargames mode
Shuuro on the clock
Downfall through greed
Pawn phalanx
Knightmare Chess
The core engine
Shuuro on Facebook
Lots of ninjas
Terrains4Games
Joining hobbies and work
Non-secret production techniques!
No more forests
Planet of the blue trees

Due to a mistake uploading, this post initially linked to last week's episode. This has been fixed! Sorry.

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Change of release day

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:04:00 +0000

As of this week (the new year!), the podcast will be dropping on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays. It's to do with scheduling issues with real life and all that. See y'all tomorrow...

GP, January 2010: 1st Anniversary Pub Quiz

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0000

GP: As the first year of The Adventuring Party draws to a close, gather round as Shane, Dave, humbug and Liam host your very own portable digital pub quiz! Get a pencil and some paper because the most right answers sent in wins a thoroughly spiffy box of the new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Questions may be daft, obscure, silly or unfair, but you should be used to that by now. The quiz will run through February and we'll wrap it up in the first episode of March.

Thanks to everyone for listening, and to everyone who encouraged us, said they like the show, commented on the episodes with something other than ads for World of Warhammer gold, and to our many guests.

Now get answering!

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Theatrics vs Human Perception, January 2010: Heavy Gear

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:59:00 +0000

Theatrics vs Human Perception: As in times gone by, the gamer is oft called upon to display feats of great informedness. Shane, Dave, humbug and Liam instruct you on the specifics of Heavy Gear, complete with pre-packaged opinions for you to pretend to share. It's a bit like My Fair Lady, with particle cannons. Features:

The Haiti bundle! (available after the start of the 20th in EST, America)
Restraint in the face of Liam's face
Heavy Gear
Shane's Heavy Gear Brain Junkyard
Shane's munificence
Tannhauser gates
Chess pieces
Getting to the robots
Agility out the arse
Peace through superior typos
A new despotic regime
Science
10% crew casualties, minimum 1!
Cigarskill
Blue Angels
Cardboard for back armour
A guy-killing gun and feet
Gulags over violence
The pistol-whippin' bit
Things you'd do if you had giant robots and a planet with at least one hole in it
Fight o' the week
The way that Hevay Gears brain
Wrecking the world though player characterism
The fastest man on Terra Nova
Heavy Espionage
Places to stick your XP

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+1 Con, January 2010: Warpcon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Con: Too excited about Warpcon to contain it within a single episode, Shane, Liam, Oisín and Brian return to the preview, to cover everything they can find that isn't RPGs. Features:

Warpcon
Ilk ilk
Zombies as part of the political process
Area-probing
Yet more fawning over JumpTech
How to kill Superman
Metal or dresses
Funny hats versus funny hair
Unimaginable... funny hats!
No fighting in the War Room
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Free pointy ears!
Pointy bikinis!
Pointy heads!
Pointy hats!
Pantheon wars
Clash of the Titans
Werewolf: The Forsaken
Mentioning the war
Warhammer
Electro-something
Fantasy glower-off
Krak grenade sticks to Lionheart
Warhammer 40,000
germanleaks.com
De Bellis Magintrorum Militum
Warmachine
PDF of the Dungeonbowl rules
Faster than a speeding halfling
Legend of the 5 Rings
Pokemon trading card game
Laws against that sort of thing
Doomtown
Yojimbo
The ultimate play-off
Eurovision Song Contest
Choo-choo games
Dork Tower
Tummy-rubbing fun
The burger story, at last
The circle of avian life

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Con, January 2010: Warpcon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Con: With Warpcon XX looming near, Shane, Liam, Oisín and humbug are on scene to delve into the very heart of its game blurbs - so you don't have to. Features:

Warpcon
A nice angular number
The Mid-Atlantic Line
The fourth wall
Leather bikini guy
GURPS Vikings
5-man longboats
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Cool hats with buckles on and candles on the top
World of Darkness
The funny-head corporation
The Self-Preservation Society of the Old Republic
Paranoia
Call of Cthulhu
Entering the wrong game
Serenity RPG
Linguistic abuse
Demon Hunter X, where Strike Force Zero comes from
The Hunters Hunted
The Economy Bloody
Vampire: The Masquerade
Malazan Book of the Fallen
Dark Heresy
Memory of a shouty man
Grit through inexperience
Legend of the 5 Rings
Corporation
Those little twists that make RPG scenarios great
Shane's amusing anecdote about The Day of the Jackal
The 18s debate
The "the year is..." rule
Sex Virus
Exterminatus for all my subjects!
Fallout
Dragon Warriors
Oisín's bus

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+3 Downtime, December 2005: Character Deaths

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:49:00 +0000

Downtime: Shane, Dave and humbug together explore the graveyard where character sheets go, and talk about the myriad of topics relating to role-playing game character death. Features:

Campaign lethality
MERP
Keeping it in the family
Deathcon I
The near-inevitability of death
That cartoon
Avoiding misery through all-powerful badassery
Getting stoned out of your gaming group
Avoiding misery through self-medication
Blaze Of Glory Guy!
A bit of the old group suicide
Dungeons & Dragons
Other peoples' fault
Diplomacy
The Camarilla
Deadlands
Avoiding misery through acclimatisation
Killed by your own stupidity

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Episode delayed

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:58:00 +0000

The grueling rigours of Christmastime have filled editing time with dinner and drinking and prezzies and telly and all that, so this week's episode is delayed! Sorry about that!

+2 Downtime, December 2009: Games for Christmas

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:27:00 +0000

+2 Downtime: With visions of sugar-plums dancing in their heads (or they would be if they knew what those are), Shane, Dave and humbug remember some of the great games they received as Christmas prezzies in the past, and think about what they'd love to get this year. But first, announcing the lucky winner of the Twilight: 2013 competition! Where by 'lucky' we mean 'knows a mildly unhealthy amount about gaming'. Features:

Twilight: 2013
Big money, big prizes
Mithril Miniatures
Pipe-licking
Eason or Eason's or Easons'
Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs
Pterodactyl swoops!
Volcano erupts!
Subbuteo News (I'm not even kidding)
Diameters, not dimensions, so there
How to beat England
Escape From Atlantis
Send in the sharks!
Battle Masters
Memoir 44
The skill of Battle Masters
Fighting Fantasy
Clever marketing ploys
Some vampire game
d8s where you don't expect
Ogres and stuff
Advanced Heroquest
Advanced Space Crusade
Perudo
Screwball Scramble
Waterboard stand-ins
Dave's sad Christmas
Escape From Colditz
Do or die!
Shoot to kill!
Go For Broke!
Shane dooms his family
Robust horse-racing
Pandemic
Civilisation in the sky
Battlestar Galactica
Evil robot family
GameScience dice
The wrath of the dice gods!

+1 Downtime, December 2009: Gamer-Friendly Family Games

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0000

+1 Downtime: Following on from last week's yak about weird games your family might like, Shane, Liam and humbug turn things around and consider family games your weirdo might like. Features:

Scrabble
Dictionaryifica
The Power of Hydrogen!
Monopoly
Doggedly bankrupting little Johnny to death
The charades hat
Advanced self-policing game mechanics
Kerplunk on BoardGameGeek
A different game every time
Pictionary
Taboo
Tree!
Hedbanz
Quentin Tarantino Versus Nazis
Both Churchill AND egg-timers!
Trivial Pursuit
...Harry Potter and Spice Girls edition
Deal Or No Deal
Poor explanation of game show mechanics
Take me to the Derb
Countdown
Blockbusters
Jenga
Dread
Better Jenging through tactics
Things to do on Earth when you're alive
Talisman
Twister
Sadism Twister
A piece of crap with a Guaranteed Irish symbol on it... sort of like us!
Discovering Ireland
Hungry Hungry Hippos
Fire & forget gaming
Find The Egg-Timer Game Box

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Downtime, December 2009: Family-Friendly Gamer Games

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Downtime: With impending family time looming on the horizon, Shane, humbug, Dave and Liam make some recommendations and some anti-recommendations for gamer games that you can dig out to play with a human family. Features:

The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow
Post-dinner eye-closing
Risk
Shogun
Monopoly
The elimination of house rules
Dave's family tactics throughout history
The Settlers of Catan
Apples to Apples
Cineplexity
Setting anime fans on fire
The true spirit of Christmas
Perudo
Carcassonne
Hunters & Gatherers
Carcassonne: Catapult
Game of Life
Ticket to Ride: Europe
Tunnel RULES!
A draw
TransAmerica
Continental snobbery
Diplomacy
Divorce in a box
Through the Sausage
Delicious candy-coloured camels
Battlestar Galactica board game
Riding and Shadowrun swear-words

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Exp, December 2009: Perudo

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:00:00 +0000

Exp: With the holiday season finally unarguably upon us maybe people will stop looking oddly at Shane for wearing a Santa hat and even Mean Old Mr. Humbug has found some Christmas spirit, because they with Liam and guest expert Stu are reviewing Perudo (Dice of the Andes) as part of the Game Cryer Holiday Gift Guide project. You should buy this now. NOW! Features:

Game Cryer Holiday Gift Guide
Perudo
Oh No, Not More Pirates
Dank Peruvian Mexican Prison Cell
Little sock of a game
Ordinary human charisma
Other prisonly activities
Ignorant gamers
Non-structural drink colour change
Guesswork, bluff and luck
Some kind of statistics
Swearing
The Conflict
A rules example
The House Rule
What's hiding behind that moustache
The Advanced Rules
humbug's hip flask
The bell curve of godhood
Mojo loss

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

GP: Twilight: 2013 competition

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:38:00 +0000

GP: If you think having to roll for cholera, track how thirsty you are, perform constant preventative maintenance on your gun and count expenditure of valuable, irreplaceable ammunition sounds like fun, enter our competition to win a copy of Twilight: 2013! Alternatively, if you think naming all the games in our logo sounds like fun, you can enter too.

Late episode

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:49:00 +0000

Today's episode is going to drop at 1800 instead of the usual midnight-wherever-our-server-is, because it's part of a bigger project spanning multiple gaming podcasts and blogs and they're trying to sync it all up. There'll be something to keep you occupied in the meantime though; watch this space. Shane

Per, November 2009: Military Simulation airsoft

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Per: Units of toy soldiers skirmish over imaginary battlefields, complete with advanced rules for firefights, objectives, intelligence, explosives and even airstrikes. The unusual part is that this time, the toy soldier is you. Shane, Dave and humbug meet with a sniffly DoC from the Irish Airsoft Association to take a look at running about for wagamers. Features:

Irish Airsoft Association
A story
Deadly weapons
That German guy from Die Hard
Your own activity level
Sitting-in-a-tree fun
That gun with the funny sight that cocks off to one side from Die Hard
Faint whining
Pokemon for grown-ups
A flag the shape of a briefcase
Running with your human legs
Chairsofting
The Argument
Berget 7
Running up a ski resort in summertime
The Jebrovian Conflict
The Liberation of Fictionalistan
Phoenix Rising III
The South rising again
The Mall
The coolest man on Earth

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Con, November 2009: Gaelcon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Con: All excited from three days of gaming excellence, Shane, Dave, humbug and Liam talk Gaelcon. Features:

Gaelcon
Darts
Dragoncon
The best thing that has ever come out of Atlanta
Self-restraint or treason?
Light without heat
Duty & Honour
The 5th Royal Warwickshire Guard
Deadlands
That reward money you didn't get
The Buffalo Emporium
The joint-last-greatest people in the world
Big plastic-and-fibreglass wolf face
The Miracle of Gaelcon
GURPS Horror
Serious fail
"Saturday" incorrectly being said instead of "Sunday"
Oregon
Fighting Fantasy
Free lollipop
Dune
Warpcon
Dungeons & Dragons
Hitpoint inspectors
The Big R
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Man versus musical
The best chipper on the southside
Giant impractical novelty cheque
Avalon Hill
Dark Heresy
Legend of the 5 Rings
The mother of all police actions
Acting like a stupid robot
Spelljammer
Dave versus an 8-year-old girl
Society for Creative Anachronism

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Int, November 2009: Dominicon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Int: With seconds to spare until Dominicon 2009 (in space!), Shane, Dave, humbug and Liam examine what's on offer at the end of the train line. Features:

Dominicon, the Maynooth gaming convention of Maynooth College University
Students and people who used to be cool
Tekken 6
Guitar Hero
Super Smash Bros Brawl
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
Liam threatens his weapon of mass destruction
Yu-Gi-Oh!
Magic: The Gathering
Legend of the 5 Rings
Uninformed conjecture
Etten
Blood Bowl
Space Hulk
Really nice cardboard
Warhammer 40,000
Warhammer Fantasy Battles
A nice round number
Warmachine
Draconian wargame rules
Spelljammer crazies website
An implausibly large reward
Firefly RPG
The history of the future
Stargate
Father Ted
World of Warcraft RPG
Foxy icy minky mink
Hellboy RPG
Terrible accents
...versus the British National Party
Knight of the Old Republic
Attacking a school tour
Unknown Armies
Dark Heresy
The classic argument
Star Wars Saga Edition
Martian Rails
Lunar Rails
Twilight Imperium
The Starfarers of Catan
Munchkin
Diplomacy
Lack of humbug's funny story
Novelty moustache
A lot of people with hockey masks
Inappropriate language
How to get to a con
Insincere guarantees

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Cha, November 2009: Gaelcon Live II

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Cha: More hi-jinks from Gaelcon, as Shane and Dave, with assistance from unfortunate guest host Pixies, accost other punters who happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time or have otherwise attracted our fell attentions, including an "overly candid" interview with Ireland's famousest game writer. Pretty much entirely unedited for authenticity. Guests are human beings and as such may use the foul language common to that species. Features:

Crazy hippie-looking guy from Cork
Noodle a.k.a. You In The Red T-Shirt
The most affable man in gaming
Drew from the bring-and-buy charity stall
Tristram Hills, wargames co-director
Darryl Trainor, warmaster for forces of Chaos and Tristram's expendable minion
Ireland's famousest game writer Gar Hanrahan

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Cha, October 2009: Gaelcon Live I

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Cha: From down the end of the charity desk and elsewhere at Gaelcon, Shane, Liam, humbug and Dave talk to passers-by, attend the charity auction and grab the likes of the SCA, Cillian the trader and Gaelcon committee members for a chat. Pretty much entirely unedited, possibly some naughty words. Now correctly constructed and containing promised link and picture!

Boomer the RPG and LARP guy
Guy in a hurry
Hugh
Andrew the con director
Aidan the spirit of Gaelcon
Dave versus Oisín
The return of Aidan Marsh the musical director
Tristram the wargames guy
Mike from the Society for Creative Anachronism
www.loughdevnaree.org
Ceire the charity lady
Boomer again, because I had absolutely no memory of talking to him previously
Cillian the trader Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

+1 Int, October 2009: Gaelcon, part 2

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0000

+1 Int: Shane, humbug and Liam get stuck into the other half of unfounded speculation about Gaelcon. Apologies for the unbalanced sound levels, a mistake in editing skipped a stage of the process. Features:

Gaelcon
Builder's cleavage
Return of the big ass-titan
Battletech
Tide of Iron
Taking advantage
Toy car envy
Space 1889
Shadowrun but with bigger moustaches
Werewolf: the Forsaken
Dungeons & Dragons
Poison'd
One eye and saying yarr
Joystick-waggling
Vampire: the Requiem
How to deal with jackasses
Legend of the 5 Rings
Thinking outside the spaceship
Primetime Adventures
Drug-sniffing pig
Warhammer Fantasy Battle
15" penalty
Warmachine
The Duck Hunt bazooka debate again
Spelljammer
Paranoia
GURPS
Hot War
Inducing the juices
Unkeepable promises
Liam runs out of wood

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Int, October 2009: Gaelcon, part 1

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Int: With so much going on at Gaelcon this year, Shane, humbug and Liam have broken the preview into two parts, abiding by the chronology of the future. Blurbs are read, postulations thrown about, shocking revelations made. Features:

Gaelcon
El Mundo
Android lib
Liam's brand new combine harvester
Paranoia
Grimm
That bird what told the Arabian Nights stories' talents
The lack of Dave
Duty & Honour
Warhammer 40,000
Big ass-titan
"Partial cover!" "NO!" *punch*
Duck Hunt
Tetris
GURPS Discworld
The fantasy game-loving thing turns
Deadlands
Forward down diagonal punch!
Fallout 3
World of Darkness
Fifa 09
Street Fighter IV
Spirit of the Century
Tables of a dozen people
Shane reads Japanese names impressively fast
Call of Cthulhu
Guitar Hero Metallica
There's a name for people who prefer The Beatles to Metallica. It's "Mum".
The surly dwarf game
GURPS Horror
The Smutometer
The new Carol Vorderman
Dune
Slasher Flick
Things to do with yourself in the dark
Battletech
Blame FASA!
Who'd win in a fight between a Battlemech and a Heavy Gear
Left 4 Dead
Magic: The Gathering
Informative segment on release dates

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Con, October 2009: ConFESS report

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Con: Shane, humbug and Liam attended the grand finale of ConFESS for assorted amounts of time. This is what they got up to. Features:

Freedom of information
Hardon Brothers
Ireland wearing a boobaliser
Man with guitar
Charisma-modifying magic item
A wipe city
Ambush Alley
Shane gets his Combat Mission going
Connect The Japanese Pipes
The Way of the Path (do-do)
Circuitry Man II
Runequest
Hot towel gaming
Articulate!
All Flesh Must Be Eaten
Liam versus John Carpenter
Outrageous cheating
Signs you like looking at
Pandemic
Traveller
Conspiracy X
Beatles music for no reason
Trail of Cthulhu
Bellybutton combat

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Cha, September 2009: ConFESS committee reminiscence

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Cha: Shane sits down live at ConFESS (in fact, all our episodes are recorded live) with Jude, Wayne, Dwane, Dave and Joe, the boys of the Flat Earth Society to talk about the lifespan of the convention that's burning out rather than fading away, from inception to grand finale. Features:

Power struggles
The craic
The origin of Flat Earth
Grassroots Magic
Solidarity through t-shirts
The classic double-take
Just another transvestite on The Wall
Sligo infiltration
The epic pub quiz
Multiple Gamer Olympic gold medallist
Gamers who both know AND like each other
Peer pressure to marry
The high-Dex convention
Epidemic friendliness
Ultimate relaxation
The Emergency Wargame Coordinator
Half-assed pirates
A town of former mental hospitals
The touch of DEATH

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+1 Exp, September 2009: Not Fighting Fantasy

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:00:00 +0000

+1 Exp: Part 2 of the excited banter about those adventure game book things has Dizzy aiding Dave and humbug on the enthusiastic side and Tom not aiding Shane on the somewhat confused side. Features:

New Fighting Fantasy Books
The first thing Dave ever GMed
Only a dream
Schoolboggers
Robin of Sherwood
Budget survival education
Entries snobbery
"The reader is a person reading a book"
Happy anger
The Deathometer
A thin shaft of blue light with laughing scary faces in it
Leather facemask
How to win a girl
Strange outlandish clothes
Escape from the valley of the dinosaurs
Tricky puzzles
Shane's £550 DVD player
Bearded shouty king
Sim Ninja
The one-sentence D&D campaign

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Exp, September 2009: Twilight: 2013, Battlestar Galactica: Pegasus, Duty & Honour and Smallworld

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Exp: A full house of hosts with reviews and previews, except that Oisín insists he hasn't played anything new ever. humbug is in with first impressions of Twilight: 2013, Dave carefully conducts a spoiler-light consideration of the Pegasus expansion for a game about a space-ship, Shane rips into the redcoats of Duty & Honour and finally Liam's up with Small World after all. Features:

Twilight: 2013
Game of the Year 1985!
Wolverines
What happens to Ireland
The Dark Sun character archetype
Rolling your Fieldcraft
Unhamminess
Battlestar Galactica: Pegasus
A game about another space-ship
Treachery!
Bits in the box
Like a brig
Duty & Honour
How many groats are in a... eh.
You get the sex?
A large moustache
Donkey-tending
Your physical pain-hole
A go on a horse
4 shots a minute
Small World
Guys sitting on tiles
The same rebuttal
Mildly amusing flying giants
The little icon
One for everybody in the audience
The greatest game in the history of the world

Discussion thread for this episode on IrishGaming.Com

Int, September 2009: ConFESS

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Int: With the last ever ConFESS drawing perilously close, Shane, Liam, humbug and Oisín preview what's announced for the line-up there. Features:

ConFESS
Flat Earth Society
Free con!
Itzacon
Upsurgence of gaming in the west!
Help from the homeless
Playing like gamers
A change of underwear or booze
Conspiracy X
Traveller
World of Darkness
Cyberpunk: 2020
All Flesh Must Be Eaten
First shoutsest winsest
Drool trigger
Tales of Gaelcon Past
Lethal murders by the dice
Bard for life
The wargamer distributed hive mind
Ultimate responsibility
A ton of stuff that you don't want or need
Stupid swearing policy
Clothed fight photos
Dead Hard in 60 Seconds
Discussion thread for this episode on IrishGaming.Com

Bluff vs Scrutinise, September 2009: Deadlands

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Bluff vs Scrutinise: Shane, humbug, Dave and Liam present the ultimate bluffer's guide to Deadlands - information and pre-packaged opinions to enable even the most ill-informed gamer to blend into a conversation like a suave secret agent. It's a bit like My Fair Lady, with breaking chairs over peoples' backs. Features:

IrishGaming.Com
What an RPG is
Deadlands
Damn Yankees
California doing what it does
Spells that cost an arm and a leg
No, YOU'RE open-ended
Authentic frontier gibberish
Pavlov's poker-playing dogs
Failed Cognition check
MYSTERIOUS PAAAASSSST
The anomaly in botching
Grim servants o' death
Spades like what you'd dig a grave with
Women in human society
Crazy Dave
Zombie Mad Max
Deadlands in SPAAAAAAAAACE
Weirdness arms race
My d12s cry themselves to sleep because I've been touching them inappropriately.
John Wayne humbug
The Adventuring Party forum on IrishGaming.Com
Discussion thread for this episode

Exp, August 2009: Fighting Fantasy

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:04:00 +0000

Exp: With the enthusiastic assistance of Dizzy, Dave and humbug leave a bewildered Shane in the dust reminiscing about the Fighting Fantasy game-books of yore. Features:

Archetypal something
Use of your own judgment
The abandonment of reason
Little cube things
Adventurers from another world
Skill, stamina and luck
Heroic leaping
Left turns
Waking up hungry
Tank of all tanks
Library Use
What makes it hard
F.E.A.R.
Big dirty patch of flaying red skin
Zap zip zop big or pop
Sabre-tooth tiger fur bikini lady
The dud option
Aliens that look nothing like the alien on the front cover
Turning to page 400

Per, August 2009: Rubber-sword LARPing and The Gathering

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:49:00 +0000

Per: Shane, Dave and Oisín are joined by veteran rubber-sword LARPer Brian (not that Oisín isn't a veteran in his own right) to introduce us to the magical world of rubber-sword LARPing in general, the Lorien Trust in particular and The Gathering specifically. It's a long one (fnar fnar) but very informative and worthwhile, and it was fun to record. Features:

A game where you act out the actions of your character!!
Camarilla
Suspicious denials
Real-life experience points
Incredibly complex terms
Lorien Trust
A certain epic fantasy novel series
Personal spmace invasion
Dave's impeded magical abilities
Derogatory terminology
A card-rippingly good time
A system for looting the dead
Actually, it's physical representation, isn't it?

NPC Exp, August 2009: Punic wargames

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:00:00 +0000

NPC Exp: Further somewhat obscure board war game antics in the bag, Tom and Dizzy return to tell Shane, humbug, Dave and YOU about Command & Colours: Ancients and Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage, where players do battle over the colour purple. Apologies for lots of background noise, caused by constant fiddling with game pieces lying on the table. Features:

This Just In... From GenCon!
Knowing more nothing
Command & Colours: Ancients
Disobedience
A few hours of fun new boardgame
The pain prize
Memoir 44
Your chance to try and re-play history or something
Colour-matching
Very little skill
Victory points you're handing your opponent
Big plume
Top Trumps
The new Gor
A bad word
Massive disappointment
Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage
A lot of Spain
Incompetent McIncompetent and Stupidius Maximus
Province counting
Rain in the mountains
Dirty Sicilian nice people
The Punic Wars by Nigel Bagnall
Pestilence
Gibberish dice
Tom taking the initiative
Portugalis
Axis & Allies
World War II on Earth again
The best way to win games
The Siege of New Carthage
The feel of the Second Punic War
1870
Pre-hardass Rome
Arkham Horror

Downtime, August 2009: Historical RPGs

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:29:00 +0000

Downtime: With limited knowledge of historical wargaming, Shane, Liam, humbug and Oisín embark upon a rambling but ultimately productive discussion of using historical, quasi-historical and half-quasi-historical time periods in role-playing games. Features:

Boring learning
Weird Wars
Deadlands
History with fireballs
Lonely humbug
That thing they make the war movies in
Hats you could turn into a raft
Biggles
Biggles: Adventures in Time
The present day of the 1980s
The dinosaur conspiracy
Prehistoric GM notes
Ancient grease?
Elephants with different-sized ears
Hairy guy on a cloud
The damn city in Italy
Asterix
Another podcast about gaming out there
A tiny bit of inaccurate knowledge
Ars Magica
World of Darkness
Denver Public Library
Eberron
The society of 5th century Kerry
Sword thrust to the groin
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Savage Worlds
Stick with a rectangle coming out of it
Too many mushrooms
GURPS Celtic Myth
Clan Spacenaarg
Run Out the Guns!
humbug versus King Ferdinand
7th Sea
Duty & Honour
Murdering dudes with bayonets
Aces & Eights
Victorians with horsemen and dogmen
7th Sea: Japan
Godlike
Call of Cthulhu
Red Pokemon
Shane makes a clever
A sweet and beautiful thing
Twilight: 2000 (well, 2013)
A toast!
Ancient Macedonians with Dublin accents
Moral ambiguity

Late podcast!

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:19:00 +0000

Apologies folks, this week's podcast is going to be a little bit late due to bank holiday festivities impinging on the editing process. Should be up by Tuesday afternoon, fingers crossed! Shane

Downtime, July 2009: Excuse to tell story of Dave not saying short sentence correctly and Dizzy not drinking olive oil

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Downtime: The line or lack thereof between character knowledge becomes the bread in an excuse-to-tell-the-story-of-Dave-not-saying-a-short-sentence-correctly-and-Dizzy-not-drinking-olive-oil sandwich. Without Dave to defend himself, Shane, Liam, humbug and Oisín take on the task. Features:

Successful entrants to humbug's competition
Fortune and glory
Gaming stories
Murder mystery
Great GMing
Klaatu Verata, eh...
The name of That Guy
Levels of immersion
Baron Grellis
Rolling a 1
Lost axe
The origin of Shane and humbug
Shady banking
Chemistry 101
Squad-level tactics
Corporal punishment
NPC mentality
Deadlands
Heart health
Game-related arson
11-foot poles
Diligently avoided mickey jokes
Kicking-out time
Goons on the roof
Thespnapping
Corpse looting
Mongo
Dumbing Liam down
Pre-dumbed-down players
Shades of grey
Unleashing the dark side
The condensed lessons
Olive oil for everyone

Source Material, July 2009: Gamer Book & Movie Recommendations

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Source Material: Attempting to communicate something more constructive than "...and you should see it because yer man's all like hiiiyaaaah peowm peowm kerprgh kprgh and the bad guy's all like whaaaaaaaaaaaa-bowww!" or "...and then the screen goes all dark, right, and up in big letters it says: Jean-Claude Van Damme. And that's why it's great." Shane, Dave, Oisín, humbug and Liam demand that all gamers familiarise themselves with a list of books and movies. Features:

Life in the future
Thousands of Space Marines
Mad Max
Crazy cockroaches and mad hair
A Song of Ice and Fire
Pervy chainmail bikini
Andean doubt
Plot advancement
An important life lesson
Unknown cyberpunky movie
Ruined city full of canals
Pervert with binoculars
Free pint competition!
Necroscope, and others
The adventures of Harry Something
Special agents with powers
Poseidon
Traps and obstacles
Tremors
Strange happenings
Arsenal owner
Stargate: SG-1
Aiding another
Monster of the week
Group dynamic business
H.P. Lovecraft
Stupid gods
Our colleague
Kelly's Heroes
Perfect con scenario?
World War Z
Son of Mel Brooks
Stuff that'll make the GM angry
Sad Dave
Guns, Germs and Steel
Different insight
Blissful ignorance
Sharpe
A really big eagle that Bonaparte had down his trousers
Sean Bean dedication
Return of the Living Dead
Rabid weasels
Graveyard dancing
1984
Thought crime (thinking bad about The Adventuring Party is wrong!)
A truckload of grit
Dog Soldiers
Gigantic portion of cheese
Berserk
Repeater crossbow
Extended, non-musical montage
Gladiator
He's-behind-you bad guys
Vaguely whiny operatic music
Lord of the Rings
Sean Bean's hit points
Words we know
Ghostbusters
Maxed-out Bluff score
Improperly fleshed-out character
Mountain Survival
Scary hillbilly
Oisín versus a motor rifle division
"Pint" followed by "[name of movie]"

NPC Exp, July 2009: Codex: Imperial Guard

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:00:00 +0000

NPC Exp: Shane and Liam are joined by Seán and Skippy to take a look at the new Codex: Imperial Guard for Warhammer 40,000 - its changes, its new units, its background fluff, its dreams, its desires, its most intimate of intimates. Features:

No gag reflex
Codex: Imperial Guard
Codex envy
Standard Imperial bullet-stopper
Dark Eldar rumours
An awful lot of tanks
Valkyrie
Hommina
Meat ablative armour
Pie plates
Squadronables
All sorts of fancy orders
Lord Commissar
Mr. Shouty
Primaris Psyker
Sanctioned Psykers
Tau Empire
Stormtroopers
Ogryns
Sly Marbo
One man, but what a man
Heavy weapons
Veteran squads
Salamander scout vehicle
Leman Russ Conqueror
Leman Russ Punisher
29 dice
Griffon
Colossus
Crazy machines of death
Wargear
Bionic face
How to destroy Skippy
Kill points
Lots of command squads running around
How to be the baddest
Chainswords and power fists and stuff like that
A guy standing on the treads of a tank while it's moving
The Great Enemy
Deathstrike missile launcher
Hot new models
Hydra flak tank
Elite SAS operatives
Penal legion
Valhallans and Tallarns too
Damn Spoiled Marines

Con, July 2009: Q-Con

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Con: A maxed-out Adventuring Party reports on the goings-on at Queens University Belfast's gaming-and-cartoons convention, Q-Con. Features:

Starblazer Adventures
Castles & Crusades
Only 4 microphones
Identity theft
Sink vandalism
Cheap booze
Star Trek: Of Gods and Men
Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning
The cosplay element
Celebration of the Feast of Maximum Occupancy
Inn security
Shane addressed by correct title
Dark Heresy
Rouge Trader
Castles & Crusades
Thigh-rubbing goodness
Video games and board games
Steve Jackson Games' Men in Black
Bangers, beans and chips
Tree spuzz
Call of Cthulhu
Removal from duty with the aid of a fragmentation grenade
A dead cow
Big bushy moustache
The Holy Bomb
A dose of the verdigris flux
Reigning All-Ireland Con Pub Quiz Champions of the World
Looks and towering intellects
ConFESS
6-pound pitchers of booze
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
The WFRP Companion
Double-great prizes
Paranoia XP
The 36-hour hangover
Impressive mutations
Castles & Crusades
Longsword delivery!
Infinite Mayhem seems to be a role-playing game that doesn't actually exist
Weird dream-like thing
iSpy LARP
Magicks and truth serums
Imaginative hilarious house rules
Trade stands and shopping
Pizza stain from 10 years ago
Traveller: Pocket Edition
A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying
High mortality potential
Shadows Over Filmland for Trail of Cthulhu
Castles & Crusades
No overthanking, no double-thanking
Travel advice
The LARP scene
Congratulatory words
Lack of boardgames
Nice cheap activities
Spud's

Downtime, June 2009: Maps

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:44:00 +0000

Downtime: "We need an idea for a topic." "How about... mug. Chair. Microphone. Shirt. Maps." "Hey, maps is pretty good."

Apologies for slight delay in release of episode, caused by important drinking.

Downtime, June 2009: Food

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Downtime: For the historic first time, all five hosts are present on all four mics to talk about the various roles of food in gaming, and the roles of drink in gaming and elsewhere.

GP, June 2009: The Adventuring Party Convention Awards 2008-2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:00:00 +0000

GP: An idea that could have been excellent with more forethought, The Adventuring Party recognises the stuff that matters to us at cons. Recognises with talking about it, there's no physical award or anything. We'll probably ruffle your hair if you ask nicely though.

Int, June 2009: Q-Con

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:35:00 +0000

Int: Back to it, I guess... Shane, Oisín and Dave attempt to preview Q-Con 2009, but probably mostly end up previewing a strange figment of their collective imagination. No real enhanced content in this one due to it being late, sorry about that!

Exp, June 2009: Family Business, Dwarf Fortress, Last Night on Earth and Race for the Galaxy

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Exp: Shane, Liam and humbug play fun games so you don't have to! And also Family Business. A review episode where our handsome heroes explore not one, not two, not three, not five, but four games for your convenience! Features some excellent double entendres that I'm refusing to point out.

+1 Con, May 2009: Vaticon

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 26 May 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Con: Shane, Oisín, Dave and humbug go on at length about the great time had at Vaticon in University College Dublin at the tail end of con season, ranging from surprise excellent LARPs to radio miscommunication to getting locked in the pub.

I've decided it's a bit puerile to keep doing the double entendre thing for every episode, so why don't you folks give it a go? Post any good ones you find in the comments. I'll start you off: hot seat.

NPC Exp, May 2009: Napoleon's Triumph and Star Warriors

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:00:00 +0000

NPC Exp: The return of Tom and Dizzy, our obscure board game contractors. This time around they're talking about Napoleon's Triumph (not Bonaparte's Triumph as Shane mistakenly says in the intro) and Star Warriors from the good old days. Apologies for all the snuffling and coughing, two of the four panelists were ill.

Stretches out the edges a little bit.
The polygons are quite large.
You want to get around behind somebody.
Wrestling for position.
It's going to be messy.
Mounted on hard board.
He kept coming at my flank.
Put them in the cockpit.
It was a bit too long.
It fits in lovely.

Con, May 2009: Conpulsion

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Thu, 14 May 2009 09:37:00 +0000

Re-publishing this because my own stupidity messed things up for subscribers. Sorry folks!

Con: Shane, Liam and humbug's excitement about how great Conpulsion was causes a general break-down of communication.

Shane got a giant fist.
I've made a pile.
You took that out in the pub.
Play ball.
Two people deep.
Someone stuck up their hand.
They were looking to put out.
Look at an Imperial thingie.

Downtime, May 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Downtime: Torn from within by confusion over whether or not computer wargames are better than table-top wargames, Shane provokes debate on computers versus reality throughout the spectrum of gaming.

Big barrier to entry.
I go up and I can only do certain things.
Doing it with another person.
Raise another point.
Face-to-face ambience.
Keeping a log.
Strip!

+2 Con & Wis, April 2009: K2 report & Event Organisation part 3

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 11:22:00 +0000

+2 Con: Shane and humbug welcome guest Drew, who attended K2 so we didn't have to (actually we were at Itzacon that weekend). K2 is a residential, freeform con in the depths of the bog and very unlike any other gaming con in Ireland - and that's a good thing.

Up in the back yard.
People go down.
Your Imperial Destroyers are about 3 inches long.
Bought the box.
A huge amount of meat.
Didn't happen to fit in.
Next year we'll get it in there.

Wis: Brian Nisbet is back, finishing up his excellent advice on organising and running a con or con-like event. This time he's dealing with how it'll impact your life. And it will.

Touched on the actual nuts.
Who you're going to do it with.
Looking at their areas.
Interfering with a whole bunch of other areas.
In the end.
If I'm involved in one more of these, I'll never want to come.
Go it alone.
I appreciate Shane's time and his huge array.
A variety of parts.
lir at lspace dot org

Episode delay

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:25:00 +0000

Apologies for the lack of an episode today - I claim the universal excuse of having been too hungover to finish the editing last night. It should be up tonight! Shane

+1 Con, April 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 04:00:00 +0000

+1 Con: Shane, humbug, Liam and Oisín report on Itzacon, which happened in Galway from the 6th to the 8th of March.

It was bigger than I thought.
Straight up, straight in.
I would have been happy with twice the length.
Cup them in your hands.
Went to bed; it was tight.
Selling out their slots.
You could have gone in, done your five minutes, come back and then gone in again.
It's nice to give people something to do in between slots.

NCP Exp, April 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:00:00 +0000

NPC Exp: Extra-special guest hero stars Dizzy and Tom join us to talk about complicated map-board wargames World In Flames and Strike Them a Blow they've been playing so we don't have to.

Laid hands on.
Putting this thing out.
Look at that thing!
Knobbly bits.
Looks an awful lot like a submarine.
This is a tool.
Unfolding the Asian.
Covering the hole.
Navel combat.
Tom was invading me.
Came in a box.
In a bag for a tenner.
Flank presents itself.
Retreat to the rear.
Debatable what the rear is.
A bit fiddly.
Felt quick.
On the folds it's quite hard.
They're nice and big.

File format switch

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:05:00 +0000

Mere minutes after adding the little Flash audio player over on the left, I've had to remove it because it's not compatible with the .m4a format to which we've moved. It's a shame as it was a neat addition, but it's only practical to keep your webpage in basic HTML for so long (that's a metaphor). Standing still and waiting for every player or viewer to advance is stagnation - moving on will push the software end to catch up.

In my browser I'm using plugged-in Quicktime to click on the little "Pod" icon beside the show notes and it works perfectly. Henceforth I think I'll be putting any links I feel the need to directly into the podcast rather than the show notes, which is just as tedious and risks being spirited away by Internator gremlins as happened last night.

Sorry to anyone this inconveniences, but to you I say: Welcome to the WORLD OF TOMORROW!

(actually it's not that big of a deal at all)

Shane

Con, April 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Con: A software error eradicated the show notes I'd painstakingly constructed and am not redoing. It's now a .m4a file anyway, so has some links in it. Also people said a few things that sounded a bit rude. In this episode, Shane, Oisín and humbug explain what they got up to at Leprecon to Liam, who had to work instead. Hah. Pub quiz cheating is rumbled.

+1 Int & Wis, March 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0000

+1 Int: Shane, humbug and Dave preview the line-up for Vaticon, this weekend in University College Dublin.

Wis: Brian Nisbet returns with part 2 of his advice on running an event.

Nuts.

Housekeeping: The file format switch happening from next episode, and some networking.

D&D Game Day, March 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Worldwide D&D Game Day: Time to celebrate the granddaddy of them all! Shane, humbug and Dave banter about Dungeons & Dragons character classes (so you don't have to), but they are not alone...

Worldwide D&D Game Day
Dungeons & Dragons
War Pig Radio
Player's Handbook 2
Come up with.
Straight rouge.
Going down.
Meat and potatoes.
Open up.
Lay on hands.
Gaelcon
HeroQuest
Barbarian

Random Encounters, March 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:56:00 +0000

Having some technical difficulties with this week's episode! I'll have it sorted as soon as possible. In the meantime, here's some chat with D&D players we recorded for War Pig Radio, which is an excellent service of streaming Internator radio about gaming. Mucho thanks to the guys in Models Inc. for allowing us to record there and interrupt the game.

No-frills bonus stuff

Paddy's Day, March 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Paddy's Day: For the day that's in it, The Adventuring Party break out the potions of charisma and get down to hashing out what exactly it is they talk about in the first place - the Irish gaming scene. This recording required wild guesses about how things might be different elsewhere; it's not easy being green.

The Gamer Traveller
Two of my favourite things.
The biggest thing.
Camarilla
Lorien Trust
Gencon U.S.
Run within a student.
Leprecon
Itzacon
K2
Jostling for position.
Hand up your sheets.
Gimmicks that make it more interesting.
Diana Jones Award
Gaelcon
Conpulsion
Stuck my hand up.
Dungeons & Dragons
Do yourself.
Free plug.
Shared experience.
Do you mind if I grab that?
IrishGaming.com
Rubber sword.
Start up equipment.
Maelstrom
Takes a bit of effort to get into.
You go in, you have your three-hour slot.
Society for Creative Anachronism
First outing of this system.
Vaticon
Dave touched on this earlier.
Dark Heresy
Irish Games Association
Entering Aladdin's Cave.
You'll be rooting around.
SLA
Low-cost model.
Cassidy's
The Mercantile
Better things to be doing.

Exp, March 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Exp: A tropically fruity selection of game-and-similar reviews. Liam concludes that the play's the thing with Shakespeare: The Bard Game, humbug recounts schmoozing and backstabbing around France at a Diplomacy tournament, Shane simpers over his favourite computer game (ehh, tactical combat simulation) Combat Mission: Shock Force and Dave refuses to review his way from sea to shining sea in TransAmerica.

Twilight Imperium
Warpcon
Shakespeare: The Bard Game
Extend it out.
Überplay
Metro
Firey shaft.
Diplomacy
That book
Hindered the old performance.
Trying to move into it but you know you'll bounce.
Backstabs.
Combat Mission: Shock Force
Mac
Windows
Hot seat.
Between slots.
183something
Ticket to Ride
TransAmerica
Trying to link up.
TransEuropa
I'd go higher.

Int, March 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Int: A look forward at events for the busy month of March - Itzacon, K2 and Conpulsion - by Shane, Liam, Dave and humbug.

Itzacon
A Game of Thrones
Head.
Overlay.
Sucked.
Evening slots.
Thud!
Up for it.
Warpcon
Leprecon
Fill in.
Paranoia
Cadillacs & Dinosaurs
Twilight: 2000
Dark Heresy
FKRP.
Savage Worlds
Gaelcon
SLA Industries
Package.
Neverwhere
GURPS
Come down on something.
What kind of flavour it has on it.
Weird fairy thing.
Warhammer 40,000
Warhammer Fantasy Battle
Warmachine
Magic: The Gathering
Vampire: The Eternal Struggle
Necromunda
Blood Bowl
Legend of the Five Rings
ConFESS
We had three engineers.
SingStar
Lego
The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow
The Crystal Maze
Sandman
Crossbows & Catapults
Star Trek
Perudo
Smyths
Toymaster
Conpulsion
Ryanair
3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars
Best Friends
The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Traveller
Call of Cthulhu
Big Eyes, Small Mouth
Dungeons & Dragons
Dead of Night
Aliens
Phoenix Command
Space: 1889
Judge Dredd
Dragon Warriors
Houses of the Blooded
Dogs in the Vineyard
Spirit of the Century
Tolkien
Traveller
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Mob Justice
The Untouchables
Agon
Star Wars
Tales From the Floating Vagabond
Solipsist
Hollow Earth Expedition
Shadowrun
Living campaigns
All Flesh Must Be Eaten
d20 Modern
Dr. Who
The Camarilla
Embraced
Mind's Eye Theatre
Wings of War
Dominicon
San Dimas High School football rule!

Downtime, February 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Downtime: To no discernible end, Shane, Liam and Dave yammer about character creation in a number of RPGs, and try out the create-yourself system of Timelords, 2nd edition.

Heavy Gear
People have dump.
Mind's Eye Theatre
The Camarilla
A very important part of it.
Relationships with NPCs.
Shadowrun
Deadlands
Poker. Hand.
Dungeons & Dragons
Traveller
Star Trek Role-Playing Game
FASA
Last Unicorn Games
Decipher?
Burning Empires
Burning Wheel
It's nice to fill in all the back.
Spirit of the Century
Such-And-Such In The Great Whatever
Guest spots in other players.
Dark Heresy
Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play
Cyberpunk
Conspiracy X
Pools their resources.
Big arsenal.
Primetime Adventures
Something that they're trying to overcome.
InSpectres
Fill that void!
Dark Sun
Twilight: 2000
Hoses the entire party.
Ars Magica
Ars Magica.
Getting towards the bottom.
3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars
Fighting Fantasy
Timelords
Hold it.
Fibber's
Square root.
This is a hard one.

Exp, February 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Exp: Dave launches into Carcassonne's daft Catapult expansion, Liam takes on the world with Axis & Allies: Anniversary Edition, Shane battles zombies in the snow and everyone takes a stab at catching a killer in Serial Homicide Unit.

Fine expansion.
Carcassonne
Popular tile laying.
Score points.
Catapult expansion
Let's do this!
When one of those comes out.
These are nice and round.
Quick and simple and fast.
Probably doubles in length.
Axis & Allies Anniversary Edition
Brought out this big massive...
They've... done things...
A land affair.
The only way Italy has to go is down.
China used to have two regions.
You get a massive bonus.
It can be quite long.
All of their troops in their own little box.
Don't Rest Your Head
Dogs in the Vineyard
A fair crack of the whip.
You want to try and work them in.
Zombies in the Vineyard
Slight modifications to make it fit better.
Much further into it.
Relationships the characters have with themselves.
Primetime Adventures
3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars
The thing that I'm most interested in playing with.
The Mountain Witch
Cold City
Something that I can lift and put in.
A solid one.
A handle.
It's long and inefficient.
Serial Homicide Unit
How to do each portion.
Two joke ones.
You want a certain length.
Fiddle them around.
With you guys, on the first time we're doing it...

Int & Wis, February 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Int: Want to hear about the upcoming Leprecon XXX? Because Oisín sure as hell wants to talk about it.

Leprecon
Been involved with.
Staffer.
Been on the committee.
The hardcore theme.
Abuse that to the nines.
Very big special events.
Checking out a couple of them.
Little Wars
A hundred men a side.
This time it's going to be bigger.
Fire your Nerf guns.
Fecking around with little miniatures.
Covered in floor varnish and PVA glue.
An awful lot of protection.
Blood Bowl
Now entering its third year.
People standing there in armour doing the whole.
Society for Creative Anachronism
Unpulled blows.
Deadlands
Warhammer Fantasy Role Play
Spirit of the Century
Space: 1889
Warhammer 40,000
Warmachine
Shot at a prize.
Command & Colours: Ancients
Memoir '44
Battle Cry
Challenging three people at a time.
Star Wars miniatures
Legend of the Five Rings
Magic: The Gathering
VS
They get very into it.
Seven foot long handle.
Not quite the top drawer.
Social stuff.
Fun that was had in the hostel.
Jacob's Inn
Robo Rally
Rock Band
Cassidy's
Q-Con
Looking at a couple.

Wis: Thinking about running an anything? Brian's run more than you have. Have a listen to what he's got to say - especially when he's alienating the Finnish.

Share some of his hard.
Discworld Convention
K2
Three main areas.
Sometimes you can look at it.
Why can't I just do what people have done before me?
Why can't I just open my doors?
These things are big.
Out of pocket.
Finncon
Huge waste disaster.
Audience hangs out.

Con & Per, February 2009

shane@theadventuringparty.net (The Adventuring Party) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:25:00 +0000

Con: Shane, Liam and Oisín look back at Warpcon 2009, held from the 23rd to the 25th of January in University College Cork.

Warpcon!
Things to do in hostels when you're thirsty and sober.
Robo Rally
Portly gentlemen in pyjamas porn.
Illogical conclusions.
Battlestar Galactica board game
Shadows Over Camelot
President Admiral Cylon Adama.
Titan
Know what you're getting yourself in for.
Wet weekend in with your mates.
Someone will come up behind you and jump on you.
Red Dwarf
The Spirit of Red Dwarf.
Trying to fill the entire slot.
Twilight Imperium
Shuuro
It's like random chess!
I use this starting manoeuvre.
Drop people straight into Titan.
High-point bad-asses.
Came fourth.
Dork Tower
Steve Jackson Games
Munchkin
Munchkin underpants!
Conpulsion
Fair amount of beer.

Per: Andrew Coffey talks about the Dark Heresy LARP, running on Tuesdays in Dublin city centre.

Dark Heresy
BRAIN CHILD.
Warhammer 40,000
Read into the fluff.
Players come in costume.
No costumes, just models.
More immersive and a lot more likely to get emotional attachments.
Email Andrew about the game!