• Committing to the premise of a game.
• Being indecisive in character.
• Playing the opposite of yourself.
• In character moral lines.
• Consequences of past actions coming back.
• Roads not taken in play.
• Violence in more grounded situations.
• When play goes differently than you anticipated.
• Seeking a more grounded fantasy.

• Using your character to motivate other characters.
• Maintaining attention during play.
• Playing a character outside your comfort zone.
• Creating a character in an open system without archetypes.
• Playing a character with questionable loyalties.
• Not exceptionalizing the PCs.
• Character motivations in the face of horrific injustice.
• Characters relationships to violence that happens around them.
• Being out of the action at a critical moment.
• The moral qualities of situational fallout.
• Looking forward to follow-up scenarios.
• Pausing play to think through consequences.

• Bringing fresh ideas to player material
• Setting up other players for character moments
• Pace of developing a characters motivation
• Considering other player characters’ motivations when acting.
• Pushing for the fail moment.
• Contingency planning or lack there of.
• Character informing game decisions.
• The morality of letting an NPC you could save die.
• Processing the tone of a game.
• Fantasy For Real as a GM training tool.
• Having the perfect storm of players and game.

• Developing a character from game cues.
• Playing a protagonist that mirrors the antagonist.
• Self-expression in an open magic system.
• The morality of child vengeance and recruitment..
• Developing an ethical framework in a villainous character.
• Setting inspiration.
• When player magic intersects with each other.
• Watching inappropriate media in our youth.

• Bringing emotions to the game.
• Games as safe spaces for bad feelings.
• Emotionally connecting with your character.
• RPGs as “therapy” and self-expression.
• Being emotionally disconnected from overly scripted moments.
• Resonating with biracial themes in our game.
• Struggling with awkward resolutions.
• The difficulty with mixed-successes.
• The myth of agency through narrative control.
• Why math shouldn’t pace your games.
• Thirsty Sword Lesbians, game or meta-game?

Guests Include:

• Kodi Gonzaga On Ten Candles
• Sarah ChristianScher On Broken Tales
• Greg Hellings On Fantasy For Real
• Kyle Wolfe On Story Engine
• Jeff Jones On Sorcerer
• James Ritter On The Hour Between Dog And Wolf
• Tea On Ex Tenebris
• Bre Seale On Cthulhu Dark
• Eva Wierzbicki On Bluebeard’s Bride

• The joy of adding incidental details.
• Finding the salient detail of scene vs playing toward one.
• Formulating alternative consequences for conflicts.
• The power of restricting conversations about in-progress play.
• Following the creative focus of the group.
• Discerning meaning within thematic resonance.
• Processing and teaching rules texts.

• The value of playing in familiar locations.
• Playing fantasy selves.
• Navigating NPC social pressure.
• Forming meaningful connections between PCs and NPCs.
• Assuming responsibility for your character’s actions.
• Playing with family members.
• Running a game without a plot.
• Other historical contexts for play.

• Vibing with other players.
• Fighting contrarian impulses in play.
• Aggressively casual creative prompts.
• The value of time flow interruptions.
• Backdoor GMing a GMless game.
• Deliberate vs. informal scene framing.
• Game structure as religious observance.
• What does it mean to cope with death?
• Death as resolution point vs. transformative moment.
• Less literal implementations of source inspiration.
• The joys of play variety.

• Playing from the hip.
• Player agency within moments of fictional loss of agency.
• Seizing a course of action and seeing it through.
• Finding symbolic resolutions.
• Seeking justice in supernatural contexts.
• Honest vs obstructive play.
• RPGs as safe space for self-expression.

• Coping with failure in investigation scenarios.
• Trust in play.
• Playing a physically disabled character.
• Portraying a corrupt character.
• The politics of the advancement system.
• Constructing honest investigation scenarios.

• The professional and private life of a replicant blade runner.
• Pushing beyond your limits for the job.
• The complexity of interrogation scenes.
• The politics of blade running.
• Adjudicating beyond basic success.
• Rules that occasionally disconnect from the fiction.

• Developing scenarios from a minimal premise.
• Creating personality profiles for background characters.
• Managing colorful characters in a chaotic situation.
• Resolving uncertainty outside the rules.
• Building relatable characters in a silly context.