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02 May 2018 12:44 - 02 May 2018 12:45 #272498 by Gary Sax
Exactly on the challenge re: doing a single game cast style show with board games. They take so much time and have to be done with other people so it's going to be hard to put together the expertise to have single game discussions. Movie and video game club podcasts solve that by going out separately and watching/playing for the show and that just highlights the unique challenge of doing it for board games.

We're in fantasy mode right now, I recognize, but the easiest way to do this would be to have a board game staff and do different games on some schedule but not have all podcasters on for every episode if isn't one they've played. That's a pretty common solution to this problem in the video game space. Something like Three Moves Ahead or Cain and Rinse does a single game per episode but has like 10+ potential contributors. That might make the board game version of this doable but it's a huge institutional ask so presents other problems.
Last edit: 02 May 2018 12:45 by Gary Sax.
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02 May 2018 12:44 - 02 May 2018 12:45 #272499 by SuperflyPete

Space Ghost wrote:

charlest wrote: Could you even select four people on this forum that had enough experience with the same newer and older release to make those comments? I can't even think of a single new game that four distinct members of this community have played. Maybe Cthulhu Wars or Terraforming Mars?


This is definitely difficult. I imagine that Spirit Island is a newer game that several of us have played. However, I think the harder thing would be the older games, unless we limit it to post 2005 or something.


Yes. I can.

Barnes
Me
Frank Branham
Shellie
Al

Between us we could easily talk about hundreds, if not a thousand, new and old games. Especially Frank.

I’ve been playing games since I was a young kid. My uncle used to have giant, fully realistic terrain filled tables to play home brews and commercial war games. Like, 3 6x4 tables with hundreds of miniatures from several periods.

I’d have to ask my cousin but I think they once spent a year re-enacting every battle of the ACW. That one family in my “greater” family has 1 nurse, a history professor, and two physicists alone.

But the fix is to come up with a “season” and choose the games in advance, then poll maybe 10 people in a larger group and ask about their experience. Those 3-5 who have the most do that episode.
Last edit: 02 May 2018 12:45 by SuperflyPete.
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02 May 2018 12:46 #272500 by Gary Sax
ha, Pete sort of ninja-ed me there with the same idea on a staff format.

Again, lots of issues remain with this. Podcasts work much better when everyone is actually together, and doing remote setups is difficult and requires real equipment to make the thing smooth and listenable.

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02 May 2018 12:48 #272501 by Gregarius

charlest wrote: Could you even select four people on this forum that had enough experience with the same newer and older release to make those comments? I can't even think of a single new game that four distinct members of this community have played. Maybe Cthulhu Wars or Terraforming Mars?

A film like Ready Player One is much easier to consume. Two hours and some critical thought and you're good.

Now a game, that requires multiple plays, tracking the game down somehow, and organizing groups. We're talking weeks of commitment.

I think you make a valid point, but I disagree.

First, there are a lot of us in these forums who have been in the hobby a long time. Of course we don't have the *same* experience, but that's what makes a round table interesting. I like hearing a grognard's opinion of a euro-style light war game, just as I like hearing a CCGer talk about a minis game. Different perspectives makes for interesting conversation. Most of what everyone's complaining about is that we're getting reviews from people who already like what they're reviewing. No critical thought, just a rundown of the rules and components. If some of the panel were pushed out of their comfort zone, so much the better.

Second, I don't think a full, deep dive into either game would be required. One or two plays would give you enough of a feel for the game to make the comparisons. You wouldn't be doing a full review, just a general comparison. It would be great to force a youngster to play something from the 90s or an old vet to have to try the new hotness. That would be some of the fun, hearing how either one loved or hated the experience. So, "two hours and some critical thought" seems to apply just as well to games, in my opinion.

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02 May 2018 12:51 #272504 by SuperflyPete
Everyone gets on FREECONFERENCECALL.COM. All of those are recorded and downloadable. Someone downloads it, edits it, and you convert it to AAV or whatever podcasts use.

Not hard.
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02 May 2018 12:56 #272507 by Space Ghost

SuperflyTNT wrote:

Space Ghost wrote:

charlest wrote: Could you even select four people on this forum that had enough experience with the same newer and older release to make those comments? I can't even think of a single new game that four distinct members of this community have played. Maybe Cthulhu Wars or Terraforming Mars?


This is definitely difficult. I imagine that Spirit Island is a newer game that several of us have played. However, I think the harder thing would be the older games, unless we limit it to post 2005 or something.


Yes. I can.

Barnes
Me
Frank Branham
Shellie
Al

Between us we could easily talk about hundreds, if not a thousand, new and old games. Especially Frank.

I’ve been playing games since I was a young kid. My uncle used to have giant, fully realistic terrain filled tables to play home brews and commercial war games. Like, 3 6x4 tables with hundreds of miniatures from several periods.

I’d have to ask my cousin but I think they once spent a year re-enacting every battle of the ACW. That one family in my “greater” family has 1 nurse, a history professor, and two physicists alone.

But the fix is to come up with a “season” and choose the games in advance, then poll maybe 10 people in a larger group and ask about their experience. Those 3-5 who have the most do that episode.


Perhaps I underestimated how many people have played a lot of older games (I didn't think Frank was active here anymore). Like you, I have been playing games since I was a little guy -- I PM'ed Barnes about a possible column where I could just review older stuff from the late 70s through the 80s to begin with (and still get to play several of them today -- I like new stuff, but still just enjoy older weird stuff). Kind of a formalizing of some of the reviews i had done before. I don't know if there is a great interest there, though.

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02 May 2018 13:00 - 02 May 2018 13:01 #272509 by charlest
I think you're misunderstanding my comment about experience. I'm not challenging anyone's experience here with newer or older games (this community has the strongest wealth of posters I've been a part of), I'm saying what group here has the same experience with the same newer game?

Pete, what game would you and those others talk about? I guess Cthulhu Wars? I'm not sure I can think of another newer game that you all have played and talked about on here.

Second, I don't think a full, deep dive into either game would be required. One or two plays would give you enough of a feel for the game to make the comparisons. You wouldn't be doing a full review, just a general comparison.


I'm not sure a single play impression is conducive to critical discourse (at least with meaning). But that's debatable I guess.
Last edit: 02 May 2018 13:01 by charlest.
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02 May 2018 13:01 #272510 by Sagrilarus

SuperflyTNT wrote: Everyone gets on FREECONFERENCECALL.COM. All of those are recorded and downloadable. Someone downloads it, edits it, and you convert it to AAV or whatever podcasts use.

Not hard.


It's harder to get the rapport going when you're all remote, and there is a lag between the locations, so you can end up stepping on each others' toes a bit. If you listen to Leo Laporte (perhaps the best podcaster in the business) you'll hear him explicitly queue up particular people for a response. He shapes the conversation. But at times when things get heated he steps out (appropriately) and the people involved need to play nice as they both get six words into a sentence simultaneously. The distance poses some technical challenges, especially for people not accustomed to doing it.

Frankly, part of the problem with Charles' original question is the dependence on "new" games being up for discussion. I appreciate that "new" draws listeners. But frankly, that's where everyone is trying to capture market share. Every damn podcast on Earth is trying to do what came out last week. I think you'd do better covering high-quality games that have been out longer, and to focus on the experience of playing it instead of on the game itself. So yes, the three people getting in on the recording session may all have to play Firefly The Board Game in a relatively short window of time, but it's a game that is readily accessible, and if you queue up three or four titles and have a different set of people sitting in from week to week that's probably not a hardship.

If I was running the show I would instruct the people recording to speak to what happened in their session of the game, using the session's narrative as a way to describe how it's played. Let the rules fall out from the experience, not the other way around. That's a more interesting approach to me.
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02 May 2018 14:10 #272515 by charlest

Sagrilarus wrote: Frankly, part of the problem with Charles' original question is the dependence on "new" games being up for discussion.


Well, my question was directly related to the example of other media podcasts and comparing Ready Player One to Tron.

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02 May 2018 14:53 #272521 by hotseatgames
I'd say that in a perfect world, the people talking about their experience playing a game would be talking about sessions that they actually played TOGETHER. We could easily round up a group to talk about Cthulhu Wars, myself included. But anything I say about CW will be framed around "and then this other guy who you have never heard of, he was running Yellow Sign...."
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02 May 2018 15:18 #272524 by Legomancer

hotseatgames wrote: I'd say that in a perfect world, the people talking about their experience playing a game would be talking about sessions that they actually played TOGETHER. We could easily round up a group to talk about Cthulhu Wars, myself included. But anything I say about CW will be framed around "and then this other guy who you have never heard of, he was running Yellow Sign...."


I disagree. If you're going to talk about Cthulhu Wars, I don't want to hear a session report. I want to hear what people like about it. What they don't. What works for them or doesn't. Why is this even worth talking about? And I don't need a deep dive into it. In fact, I specifically don't want it to be about the game of Cthulhu Wars that these four or five people played because that's a single play. Four or five different plays would be far more interesting.

The part I really like for So Very Wrong is at the beginning, when they talk about the games they played in the previous week. It's a mix of new and old, stuff they liked and stuff they didn't, they are usually able to articulate why, and it's not any kind of thorough autopsy of each game. I don't give a shit whether or not some new thing is worth playing or buying. I want to hear discussion about playing games. Not buying them, not "investing" in them or "collecting" them, not designing them.

For me, and I know I'm something of a weirdo outlier, these are not questions I care about a podcast answering:
What's new?
Is this game worth buying?
Is this game worth playing, assuming I don't think everything I haven't played is worth at least playing once?

These aren't interesting to me because the current atmosphere of the hobby is the assumption that what's new is automatically good and interesting; it's good to play every game you have an opportunity to play; if you have money and space and want it (or merely don't have it), a game is worth buying; everyone wants to design games and that's good because more games is good. I disagree with every one of these stances and am not interested in stuff that caters to them.
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02 May 2018 15:18 #272525 by Gregarius

charlest wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: Frankly, part of the problem with Charles' original question is the dependence on "new" games being up for discussion.


Well, my question was directly related to the example of other media podcasts and comparing Ready Player One to Tron.

Yeah, don't blame Charles for my lame idea.

Part of my reasoning, aside from it just being fun to compare old and new, was that you could appeal to different audiences' blind spots. For the Cult of the New people, you might introduce them to an old classic they were unaware of, and for the Get Off My Lawn crowd, you might tempt them into trying something different. Win-win.

But hey, it's just one idea. I'm flattered by the discussion it started, but there are tons of other things you could do with a podcast. Like, there are so many about the look and feel of the plastic minis in CMON games, but how do they taste?

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02 May 2018 16:21 #272528 by cdennett
Guys, guys, guys...you're thinking way too hard on this. The key to success is in three little words:

Top Ten Lists
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You're welcome.
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02 May 2018 16:29 #272530 by Black Barney
yup. Ryan Seacrest does one on EVERY episode of Regis and Kathie Lee. He's no dummy. That stuff is EASY

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02 May 2018 17:09 #272537 by Shellhead

Black Barney wrote: yup. Ryan Seacrest does one on EVERY episode of Regis and Kathie Lee. He's no dummy. That stuff is EASY


I'm disappointed that you didn't mention Letterman.
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