
127 episodes

Yes Indie'd Pod Thomas M
-
- Arts
-
-
5.0 • 2 Ratings
-
Do I like game design? Yes, indie'd! A podcast of bitesize interviews with indie tabletop roleplaying game creators about their work and game design theory & practice. Releases every two weeks.
-
How To Summon Demons With Cards (w/ Becky Annison)
Support the show on Patreon
On this episode, I'm talking to Becky Annison, the co-founder of UK-based design company, Black Armada Games. She's the award-winning designer of When the Dark Is Gone, part of the Seven Wonders anthology from Pelgrane Press. And is probably best known for the high drama werewolf game, Bite Marks, and GM-less mystery game, Lovecraftesque, on which she's the co-designer. When she's not working on games, she's a lawyer who works on high level climate change issues.
Check out Wreck This Deck on Backerkit.
Show notes:
00:41 - Becky's Introduction
05:25 - Being the UK's Queen of the Werewolves
10:18 - Wreck This Deck
20:18 - Favourite Demon
27:43 - Infectious Enthusiasm: Escape From Tentacle City
30:47 - RePlay
35:30 - All Advice Is Advice For Myself
If you'd like a written transcript for this episode, you can find it here.
Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter -
Reading Indie Games At The Club (w/ Paul Beakley)
Support the show on Patreon
This week, we're talking to Paul Beakley has been involved with the games industry since at least the mid 1990s. He's a Game Chef finalist, a Golden Cobra honourable mention, and an official designer/adventure module writer for games like Deadlands, Earthdawn, Mutant Chronicles and more. He's also been writing about games for a long time, across various websites, forums, and magazines like Pyramid and Inphobia. But we're here today to talk about the Indie Game Reading Club, which began on the long lost shores of GooglePlus in 2015. It's now a standalone website and slack community where there's a lot of great writing and discussion of small-press storygames. I love reading it and you will too!
Show notes:
1:38 - Starting the Indie Game Reading Club
16:32 - Why do we write about games?
21:31 - Roleplaying as faith practice
26:03 - How to be critical without being mean
38:02 - Who is your audience?
43:54 - Infectious Enthusiasm: a|state, Fellowship
49:58 - Tyranny of Numbers: the economics of criticism
51:53 - RePlay
59:30 - All Advice Is Advice For Myself
This episode was edited by Gabriel Caetano.
Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter -
All Superhero RPGs, All The Time [w/ Fiona Hopkins and Stephanie Burt]
Support the show on Patreon
On this episode, I'm chatting with Fiona Hopkins and Stephanie Burt, who are the co-hosts of Team Up Moves, a podcast about playing and discussing superhero tabletop RPGs. I'm a big fan of the podcast and so I reached out to the two of them. Apart from RPGs, Fiona is a front-end software engineer by trade who worked at Google, Twitter, the City of Boston and now the Democratic party. Stephanie is a poet and a professor of English at Harvard University. She's also a critic, who has published a number of books, which you can read about on her Wikipedia page, which she has.
Show Notes:
00:43 - Introducing Fiona and Stephanie
01:51 - Why supeheroes?
13:28 - Analyzing superhero RPGs
34:01 - Picking games for the podcast
44:02 - Infections Enthusiasm: Wool of Bat, Monsterhearts 2
50:21 - Tyranny of Numbers
52:13 - All Advice Is Advice For Myself
You can find a written transcript of the episode here.
Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter -
Singapore, History, & RPGs (w/ Tan Shao Han)
Support the show on Patreon
On this episode, we're talking to Tan Shao Han, a TTRPG designer, writer, and cultural consultant from Singapore. He's contributed words to various Paizo Pathfinder books, including Lost Omens: Impossible Lands, new Dagger Isles supplement for Blades in the Dark, and other games like Monster Care Squad and ARC.
He's the co-founder of Curious Chimeras, a company that makes games and games-adjacent interactive experiences. Shao Han interestingly did his Master’s Thesis on tabletop role-playing games and their ability to engage, empower and educate.
Show notes:
00:27 - Shao Han's bio
01:41 - Learning D&D from videogame manuals
08:01 - Merging gaming and history and mythology
23:08 - Da Xia, a WIP game of folk heroes in WW2 Singapore
24:04 - Showcasing indie RPGs in the community
33:42 - Infectious Enthusiasm: The Nightmares Underneath
36:28 - Tyranny of Numbers
37:48 - RePlay
38:46 - All Advice Is Advice For Myself
You can find a written transcript of the episode here.
Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter -
Building India's RPG Scene (w/ Indrani Ganguly)
Support the show on Patreon
On this episode, we're talking to Indrani Ganguly who is the marketing manager for Hunters Entertainment, the publisher of Kids on Bikes, Alice is Missing, among other games. She is also the co-founder of Desis n Dragons, probably India's largest community of tabletop roleplayers. Of which, I am a humble member. Indrani is also a dicemaker, an artisan, making beautiful and custom math rocks under the name Nonagon Dice. She was a part of last year's Big Bad Con PoC Leadership Team and expertly organized the India programme where three people from India were invited to attend Big Bad Con 2022. She is an inductee of the TheGameAwards Future Class of 2022.
Show notes:
00;30 - Indrani's bio
02:24 - Getting started
08:26 - Starting Desis & Dragons
14:14 - The vision for the community
24:04 - Showcasing indie RPGs in the community
30:03 - Marketing TTRPGs
35:50 - Up All Night, a game of bargaining with your brain for one night's rest
37:29 - Infectious Enthusiasm: Alice is Missing, blase monotony, Bubble Bubble
38:54 - Tyranny of Numbers
40:24 - RePlay
41:52 - All Advice Is Advice For Myself
You can find a written transcript of the episode here.
Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter -
The RPG Dream Hustle (w/ Mad Jay Zero)
Support the show on Patreon
On this episode, we're speaking to Jahmal Brown aka Mad Jay Zero. Jay is a podcaster, designer and rockstar GM. His podcast Diceology features interviews with folks from the RPG scene as well as fun recaps of his various games in Last Week in Gaming. As a game designer, he's contributed words to books like Pathfinder's magnificent Mwangi Expanse as well as designed his own games, Lifted Vol 1: Indomitable, a people with superpowers game primed by cortex. He also did some Pro GMing before it became cool when he kickstarted a West Marches campaign called Into the Mad Lands.
Show Notes:
01:05 - Introduction to Jay
04:13 - About the Diceology podcast (talking to Mike Pondsmith and Sarah Doombringer)
06:19 - Jay, on playing with kids
10:45 - Jay's 30+ session Twilight 2000 campaign
14:16 - GMing Practices
21:50 - Running West Marches
28:36 - Lifted Vol 1: Indomitable
37:43 - Infectious Enthusiasm: Legacy 2e: Life Among The Ruins
41:09 - Tyranny of Numbers: Kickstarter Advice
47:40 - RePlay: Jay shares story from Lifted/Champions Now about every table making corporate superhero teams
You can find a written transcript of the episode here.
Support the showThe Yes Indie'd Website // The Indie RPG Newsletter
Customer Reviews
Should You Listen to This? YES, Indi'ed you should!
This show is an awesome little window to the world of tabletop design. I love how approachable the host and guests sound. It's like having a quiet moment while at a game convention sharing a coffee with people passionate about gaming.
Should you listen to it? Yes, Indie'd...