Tag: Vampire: The Requiem (RPG)

Episode 202: Creature Feature: Clowns

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“What are you going to do with those pies, boys?”
– second last words of Farmer Gene Green

“Aaaarrrrgh!”
– last words of Farmer Gene Green
Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Happy Halloween! You laugh at them at the circus. You welcome them into your homes to entertain your children. You let them sell you hamburgers. But in this Creature Feature, we look at the horror that is the clown. We discuss clowning through history and clowns in fiction. And while we can’t imagine why anyone would want to play them as protagonists, we share ideas on how you could.

Also check out our video on clowns here.

Episode 190: Festivals

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“Memento mori.” (Remember you will die.)
-the famous phrase whispered in the ear of a victorious general during a triumph
“Shut the f**k up.”
-the less famous response

With hanami (cherry blossom viewing) still fresh in their minds, Wayne and Lyal discuss festivals and the questions you need to ask yourself when including them in your game. We also discuss Savage Rifts (guitar riff), the game that threatens to break the Internet.

Episode 189: Five Games, One Shelf

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In this episode, we pick the five RPGs every role player should have on his or her shelf, including which edition to have. These aren’t our five favourite games or the five most popular games of all time. Nope. These are five games whose mere possession will contribute to your overall gaming experience.

These are the criteria we used. Play along at home.

Innovative
Impact
Representative of a specific type of a game
Widespread
Paid us to mention them (Kidding. No company took us up on our offer.)

Episode 176: GM Corner: Monsters

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GM: “You see four men carrying another man on a litter”
Player: “Ok, we go and talk to him.”
GM: “He’s 8 feet tall.”
Player: “Um, I draw my-“
GM: “Hold on. He’s on fire.”
Player: “Uh, we put him out?”
GM: “He doesn’t seem to mind being on fire.”

Much like a marriage, the key to any player-GM relationship is finding ways to keep things fresh. In this episode, we discuss how to choose and create interesting adversaries for your stories.

Episode 175: Creature Feature: Imposters

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“I know I’m human. And if you were all these things, then you’d just attack me right now, so some of you are still human. This thing doesn’t want to show itself; it wants to hide inside an imitation. It’ll fight if it has to, but it’s vulnerable out in the open. If it takes us over, then it has no more enemies, nobody left to kill it. And then it’s won.”
-MacReady, The Thing

Our month of horror has been reduced to a week, so we give you a plus-sized episode about imposters: doppelgangers, pod people, jumpers, things, etc. Wayne didn’t know that we were allowed to read or see anything for people over eighteen, so be prepared for his tour of the young adult section of the library. We also discuss John Wick’s article “Chess is not an RPG: The Illusion of Game Balance.”

Episode 151: Alignment

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In this episode, Chris and Wayne discuss Alexander Macris’s article “All about Alignment” and whether or not there’s still value in having morality systems. However, with all their talk about trickle down and bad neighbourhoods, you’d think they were running for Congress on a Republican ticket.

Episode 144: Playing Han Solo

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Chris: “Lyal, Can I play Batman in your DC game. Batman with a Scottish accent. ‘Ach. Ay’m the heerooo this city deserves, ya wee lass.'”
Lyal: “Wow. I’m not looking forward to that, but sure. Wayne?”
Wayne: “Hmm, maybe Sen … Sensible … Sensual … Sen … tence. Centennial. The Centennial.”
Lyal: “The Sentry. Wrong universe. How about Superman?”
Wayne: “No thanks. I do like Spee … Speeder … Speederma … Spice. Spicer … Spicerman …”
Lyal: “Spider-Man. Wrong universe, again.”

In this episode, we discuss the advantages of playing iconic characters as well as retelling classic or not so classic stories. Also, listen to find out what all the fuss about Sparks Nevada is.

Episode 141: Review: Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle Part 2

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In our first Vampire: The Requiem game, one player found that his character didn’t feel like a vampire, which apparently meant being able to beat up random gangsters and using the promise of alcohol to “seduce” high school girls. (We were kind of creeped out by the second one as well in our pre-Twilight innocence.) The disappointment drove him to Savage Worlds.

Do we think that the rules in Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle will help to avoid such a tragedy in the future? Listen to find out.

Episode 140: Review: Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle Part 1

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Before True Blood, Twilight, Underworld and Vampire Diaries (but a little after Dracula), there was Vampire: The Masquerade. It was a time when email was exotic and we didn’t really have a name yet for those kids that wished for more mall-friendly goth music. Years later, we got Vampire: The Requiem, a game that was lighter on mythology and tighter on rules.  Now, in the post-Twilight era, Onyx Path Publishing, who Lyal insists on calling “Onyx Publishing”, gives us Blood and Smoke: The Strix Chronicle.

In Part 1, we focus on the setting. What clans are in it? Who are the Strix? Can you play Edward? All these questions and more will be answered.

Episode 137: Review: The God-Machine Chronicle Part 1

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This is how you do edition rage, Internet: you don’t.

In this episode, World of Darkness superfans Wayne and Lyal review The God-Machine Chronicle, which includes the World of Darkness rules update. Chris also claims to be a fan. Yet, he can never remember the rules, and when it comes time to record the episode, his daughter gets “sick”.

This turned out to be a really long episode, so we broke it into two parts. This part covers most of the character rules. The “story” rules (e.g., combat) and the setting will be discussed in Part 2.