251 – The Tale of Destiny

We get talking about the Destiny pool and how to keep it in play and moving between sides. From using it as a GM intrusion to an adventure to upgrading rolls and so many places in between

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250 – The GM Experience

We have David and Leslie on to talk about our methods of preparation, what we find needed, and how to encourage a new GM into running a second campaign.

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249 – The Period Tale

Playing in the Old Republic Era has no stats behind it, nor does the Sequel Era. We have ideas on how to still use the system to tell amazing tales and not worry about the mechanics behind everything.

Things talked about in this episode:

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248 – The Composition Tale

Translating the inspiration for a campaign into what the players hear and see is hard. We have a few ideas on how to take that comncept that evoked your desire to run the adventure into what your players are having a blast in doing.

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247 – The Rumble Tale

An episode of Heroes makes Ben wonder about different ways of presenting encounters to the players. Rissa and Ben have some ideas on how to make sure that the players weapons aren’t always the first thing grabbed for.

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246 – The Player Pet Tale

Recounting a few missteps in our own history we have a few ideas on how to make the pets of a player matter to the game and to the players in ways that aren’t always obvious.

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245 – The Growing Threat Tale

We said it was going to be a series, and we’re starting it. Threat is a tricky thing to use since it’s very easy to undervalue it, we have ideas on how to make it more vibrant and how to not try to steal the success of a roll with threat.

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244 – The New Advantage Tale

We start our discussion about the extra mechanics in the FFG narrative system with advantage, as we start talking about the scale of what makes one advantage a small boost versus making three or four amazing and how to scale mechanically and narratively between.

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243 – The Indecisive Tale

We talk about methods of how you as a player and a GM can move a disagreement at the table between characters and players along to some form of resolution, with a few examples from our own tables.

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242- The Unexpected Tale


Surprises can be an amazing thing, and we have a few ideas on how to turn a cliff hanger into something that the players will never expect. From fantastic settings to NPCs that will haunt your players long after they’re put back in the box, we have ideas.

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241 – The Conflicted Party Tale

An explosion of discussion happens in this episode about using the conflict mechanic as two GMs talk about their strategy for completely integrating the mechanic into their adventures and sessions.

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240 – The Momentum Tale

We talk about how to end a scene and how to keep narrative momentum up when interest feels like it’s flagging. From adventure starts and getting that spur into adventure to the pacing when your player group is traveling.

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239 – The Narrative Tale

We talk about getting your players to narrate their actions more, from beginners who have never played an RPG before, to dungeon crawlers, to GMs who are there to relax.

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238 – The Explosive Character Tale

Ben and Rissa watched a live stream of Star Wars the RPG and things happened, over the top things, things that made us want to talk about it. Here we are talking about what happens when a group that’s combat heavy comes to your more moderate adventure.

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237 – The Starting Character Tale

A longtime patron got in touch with us about something that was on their mind and we thought it would make a good episode. This is talking about what do you give characters to start with and how do you guide them into directions your story might want to put on display.

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236 – The Force Majeure Tale

We have Adam Beltane on from the Force Majeure Podcast to talk about their experience with running their games, how they prepare, and how they got into the fun of Star Wars Roleplaying

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235 – The Escort Tale

We looked to a list of RPG plots and figured out many ways of making them work, from escorting NPCs to transporting items, to what happens when you find a ghost ship?

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234 The Variable Party Tale

We talk about the need of theatrics at the table and how and why the need grows the less you know the players at the table as well as how it can become harder to do at the table.

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The Trope Tale

Tropes get brought up quite a bit, we’ve heard it so much, from how a scene is hollow because there isn’t anything else attached to the trope to how some tropes repeated enough can be harmful to your own gaming table.

We talk about how this happens and how to deal better with tropes.

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The Writers Block Tale

Rissa ran into writers block and we go through a few ways of inspiration while doing a very good method of talking out what lead to the indecision.

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The Clue Path Tale

We talk with Leslie from Heroes and get questions about how to make sure your adventures don’t hit dead walls when giving players paths forward, especially with setting scenes and making sure that clues are actual clues.

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The Branded Tale

I got watching the Bumblebee trailer and then wouldn’t stop talking about it, so Rissa and I got talking about how to bring our more favorite franchises into being used in Genesys and Star Wars.

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The Environmental Tale

We look at environments and how to make them matter to your players who have taken talents and species that would make use of them. We also talk about how to lead the way in getting the most use out of an environment

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The Social Tale

We’re back and talking social skills, how we use them, how the intent of the rolls are a good indication of how they should be adjudicated, and how two skills can be used for the same roll

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The Single Shot Tale

Thinking about the one shots we’ve run, and how we’ve gone into preparing the adventures. We look at two vastly different styles of creating an experience for our players.

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