Rascal goes full limey

Episode 11 of the Rascal Radio Hour spurns the Western shores of the Atlantic and circles wagons around the two UK-based team members, Chase and Caelyn. That's right: the rogue redhead has successfully upped stakes and now resides in some poppy-lined hedgerow, Wind in the Willows-style. Without the influence of their uppity sovereign child, the crew managed the most British thing possible — a bunch of miniatures wargame talk. Adepticon spoiled us, and we break down the juciest morsels of news.

Elsewhere, the duo discuss Wizards of the Coast's latest "mistaken DMCA takedown" targeting a fan mod for Stardew Valley, along with Chase's curiosity with whatever is going on inside Kobold Press' RiverBank RPG. Finally, a delve into the Question Dungeon proves full of rhetorical weeds — Chase and Caelyn wax long on video games adapting tabletop RPGs and where the next major innovation to how we play games might come from.

You can find Rascal Radio Hour on Apple, Spotify, and all the other various podcatchers. Leaving a five-star review helps us climb the charts and lets us afford the cat litter and meowing lessons we will need to trigger Texas lawmakers.

Here's an excerpt:

Caelyn: I really enjoyed reading [Cannibal Halfling's] blog post. I thought that the most interesting thing is actually what was omitted from it because there's two big things that I found missing.

It's very dismissive of virtual tabletops. I agree with everything that's said about virtual tabletops in it, which is that generally they are more work than just writing things down on a sheet of paper. What's completely missing there is that it enables people who aren't in the same room to play games together more easily, which is a big deal. That is innovation. Even though my group that I play with, we generally use Roll20 on a very simple, very surface level, we're still using it. We do a lot of what we do through Discord, but we still use Roll20.

So, I think ignoring that as an innovation for that reason is a bigg omission. The other thing is that it doesn't really get on to the fact that who you play RPGs with is a big deal. I live in Leeds. There's plenty of people here who play RPGs. If I just wanted to schedule an RPG session, I'm pretty sure I could quite easily. But I don't, because I care very deeply about who I'm playing a game with, which is especially important as a very visibly trans person. It's not like I can just rock up and be like, yeah, I'll be fine with whatever game group that I'm playing with.

Chase: Absolutely. That's asking for trouble in a lot of places.

Caelyn: I agree with the thesis that an innovation in scheduling and how we play games could be absolutely massive. Reading the blog post is a good idea, but I do think those are two big omissions. I've also read the Kieron Gillan piece, and I think it's right. The best way to do things is you schedule a game, and a game happens at that time and at that place. It may not necessarily be the game that you planned, but there's enough different things that you can do during a session time that it's like, yeah, make a game happen, whoever turns up.

Chase: It's also an accessibility thing. I think if you discount VTTs, you are a discounting an accessibility tool for a lot of folks who can only play because this is about the only way that they can get together with people. Was the piece being sort of flippant about it or just didn't mention it insofar as this is an innovation within scheduling?

Caelyn: There's a paragraph in there that starts like, I'll tell you what isn't the next major innovation: virtual tabletops. And the main thrust is that they are adding a learning curve to playing games, and that it's effort to do so. That's why the innovation's not gonna come from there. There's no mention of the accessibility angle and the fact that it enables you to play with people that you wouldn't otherwise be able to play with.

Chase: For that purpose, I feel like a virtual tabletop has sort of been solved in a way. I think it can get better. Most people, I would argue, use Roll20 for the very basic sort of let's all be able to sketch and throw dice and cards on it, like a shared space, right? We're not dropping battle maps. We're not using the fog of war and light and all that sort of shit.

We're just using it as a communal creative space. In that respect, virtual tabletops have sort of done the thing they needed to do by existing. A lot of design and innovation and new virtual tabletops that come out are trying to solve this problem of how do we make playing tabletop games feel more like actual play, right? How do we give it stage presence or this sort of dramatic effect? How do we make it feel like a performance on the part of the players and the GM? You know, or how do we make it easy for you to record this and post it as an actual play on Twitch or YouTube?