So after a prolonged hiatus I’ve decided to end Carpe GM. This is not a bad thing at all. I started the podcast earlier this year because I wasn’t gaming very much and wanted to do something to keep gaming foremost in my mind. There were a lot of great podcasts out there already dealing with gaming and I thought I’d try my hand at it. It was a fun experience and I’m glad I did it but boy is it a lot of work! I have a new level of respect for those producing content so regularly. I took the break because I was burnt out after only the better part of a year producing a thirty-minute show every two weeks; imagine what some of the “big boys� go through! I also am at the point that I didn’t want to be a “one-man band� anymore and did not want to make the financial and logistical outlays to take on co-hosts.

I’m pleased with what I produced and definitely have learned a lot from producing my own show (even if it was just with a karaoke microphone and a free copy of Audacity). I don’t want to offer up the cop-out of saying that I don’t have the time to produce Carpe GM, because I do. I’d just rather spend it playing games than talking about games and now circumstances are such that I can.

I don’t plan to disappear from the podcast scene entirely, either. I’m just not going to produce my own show.

For everyone who gave feedback and gave me encouragement I thank you sincerely. Some of you are now friends and will continue to be for a long time, I hope. Keep in touch, keep on gaming, and keep supporting gaming podcasts!

(On an administrative note, I’ll keep the libsyn page up for a while and move the shows to something like archive.org for posterity.)

I'm a big fan of Alter Ego Software's Metacreator software. It's hands-down the best piece of software for creating and printing characters in a wide variety of systems. I'm personally excited that they're considering developing templates for the Deadlands Reloaded and Rippers settings for Savage Worlds but they'll only make them if they get fifty pre-orders for each by 1-Oct-2007. I've recorded this announcement in the hope of reaching as many people as possible to help the goal be reached. If you have a podcast, I'd humbly request that you play this announcement before 1-Oct-2007, and anyone reading this should check out Metacreator!

I got a little busy this week so this episode is a little bit on the short side. I discuss some feedback that I received in response to last week's episode about the announcement of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. I'll produce another full-length show in two weeks!

Links:

• D&D Insider - Wizards' preview of D&D 4th Edition
• Chaosium - Publishers of the Call of Cthulhu RPG
• Deadlands
• Privateer Press - Creators of the Iron Kingdoms setting and associated games.

Promos:

• Goblin Broadcast Network
• Geeklabel Radio

 

Unless you've been living under a rock you have to have heard the biggest gaming news item of the year to come out of Gencon: D&D 4th Edition will be at your friendly local game store in May of 2008. Some of the folks at Wizards of the Coast gave a 20-minute presentation teasing some of what we can expect to see in the next edition of the "grand-daddy of them all" so it's only appropriate for this show to engage in wild speculation and unsubstantiated opinion. It's what the Webernet is all about, after all!

Links:

• Teaser video
• Wizards of the Coast Gencon presentation, Part 1
• Wizards of the Coast Gencon presentation, Part 2
• Wizards of the Coast Gencon presentation, Part 3
• Wizards of the Coast Gencon presentation, Part 4

Promos:

• Goblin Broadcast Network
• Geeklabel Radio

No, I didn't report for gender re-assignment. That's Veronica Blessing from The Game's The Thing doing the intro and outro! After some banter about my recent trip to San Jose, California, I give some of my views on alignments in RPGs and suggest some ways to integrate them into your game even if alignments aren't your thing. For the record, I did cave in and buy that copy of Witch Hunter.

Links:

• The Game's The Thing
• Endgame (Oakland, CA)
• Game Kastle (San Jose, CA)
• Weapons of the Gods
• Witch Hunter

Promos:

• Goblin Broadcast Network
• Pulp Gamer
• Geeklabel Radio

 

I finally have a promo! If you have a podcast of your own and play promos for other podcasts please feel free to download this 90-second promo and insert it into your show as you feel appropriate. Many big thanks to the respective crews at Geeklabel (The Vicar, Kingfish, and Billy Flynn) and The Game’s The Thing (Ron & Veronica Blessing) for their recordings that made this promo possible. Finally… something to do with Carpe GM without my voice in it!

ARG! Sometimes Audacity drives me nuts. This week I talk to Paul Stevenson of Battlegrounds, a great new game store in my town. Paul speaks very frankly and openly about his store, why he opened it, and his experiences in over 25 years in gaming.

Links:

• AT-43
• Battlefield Evolution
• Battlegrounds - The best game store in Milton!
• Dungeons & Dragons
• Fantasy Flight Games
• HeroClix

Promos:

• Geeklabel Radio

Just a boring-looking blog entry for this episode. This week I go through my first batch of listener feedback and talk about having PCs as siblings in your sessions. Additionally, I touch on ways to incorporate elements of discrimination in your game and how you can use it to good effect to mess with your PCs. This is all discussed within the context of the Iron Kingdoms D&D 3.5 campaign I'm currently running.

Links:

• Iron Kingdoms (official site)

Promos:

• Goblin Broadcast Network
• The Tome Show

This week it's part two of my interview with Podthrall Jim from the Fell Calls podcast about roleplaying in the Iron Kingdoms setting. We go into detail about systems and campaigns in the IK setting.

Links:

• Iron Kingdoms (official site)
• Fell Calls (Iron Kingdoms Podcast)
• Mutants & Masterminds

Promos:

• Goblin Broadcast Network
• Geeklabel Radio
• The Tome Show by Jeff Greiner

As mentioned in the latest episode, thanks to dann-o on the Fear The Boot forums I have a snappy new logo for Carpe GM. Sam Chupp maintains an area of Second Life dedicated to gaming podcasts and here's a screen grab of our little spot on the wall: