260 – Setting The Hook Tale

We talk about story hooks and trying to set the ones you as a GM want, while still being okay with the changes your players will inadvertently want. Growing beyond the plots we have and maturing into the stories of the whole table.

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259 – A Blockade Run Tale

Rissa was posed a question about how to get players to run blockades, we both have ideas and advice on how to make the seemingly impossible into challenges your players won’t balk to see.

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258 – A Tale of Two NPCs

For Heroes Act 2 Ben needed advice on how to do an important characters voice without doing an accent. Rissa has experience with making new voices and showing off different personalities for characters. The advice given becomes useful for differentiating characters for all.

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257 – The Shepard’s Tale

Ben had a question for Rissa, how do you guide the players without taking their agency away from them? How do you get the players to choose to do something that will be cool, but they have no idea how to get there?

Rissa has some ideas and Ben has a thought or two as well.

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256 – The Android Tale

In part 2 of our Android review we talk careers, the construction of the book, the favor economy, and hacking. We loved the setup and found that it sparked each of our imaginations in making us want to explore the universe more.

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255 – The Beanstalk Tale

A little while back Shadow of the Beanstalk launched from FFG, we decided to do a review episode about it and even brought in noted cyberpunkfile David Pickering. We talk about the lore and why the setting and mechanics lead to interesting choices to be made and how adventured hooks drip from the book.

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254 – The Edge to Age Tale

Players grow and some want to move from the Edge of the Empire style of scum and villainy and a shade of grey for every action to something more obvious of good and bad. We have ideas on how to suggest this to your players and a few ways to nudge them into the rebellion.

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253 – The End of Thursday Tale

Ben’s Thursday night campaign is coming to an end, but he’s unsure how he should do it. Rissa has several helpful ideas on how to bring it in for an end in a satisfying fashion.

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252 – The Failing Up Tale

After a session or two when your players are having no luck with the dice it can be so disheartening, and which can lead to player resentment. We talk about how to deal with failure after failure in a story and how to make it more interesting and fun for the player.

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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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