This week, in a departure from our usual format, we hand the episode over entirely to our Pathfinder roleplaying campaign, in which we talk about what Pathfinder is, the characters and stories in our campaign, and have a good old chat about the wonderful world of roleplaying in general, from the perspective of both new (Chris and Euan) and experienced players (Pawel, RPG maestro extraordinaire). This episode begins with a dramatic reading from the journal of Euan's character, Bobby Treetops, the elf sailor. He's some lad. Enjoy!
063 - BUCKET HELMET ARMY
This week's video games episode finds Chris in his happy place as he shows Divinity: Original Sin 2 a whole lot of love while arguing with Pawel about what a Fantasy RPG is. Meanwhile, Pawel has been playing Echo (not Ecco), a stealth game in which the AI learns how to beat you from observing your choices and behaviour. Also this week Chris and Dave have a bit to say about Starbound and its excellent balance of relaxing base building and exploration of alien planets. Enjoy!
Divinity: Original Sin 2: 03:34
Echo: 29:40
Starbound: 45:20
055 - EGYPTPUNK, CYBERPUNK, CLICKPUNK
Chris, Euan and Pawel bring you another video games episode! Chris kicks off with an update on two VR games, first asking Pawel about his experience with Star Trek Bridge Crew and then a short bit about his own playthrough of Farpoint. Euan then talks about the strange Egyptian sci-fi old-school style indie RPG Void Pyramid and how he's been stalking its mysterious designer known only as "A Hagen". Chris jacks himself into Neon Chrome, an addictive and well designed top-down cyberpunk shooter with roguelike elements, while Pawel returns to the Gabriel Knight series with the 20th Anniversary remake of Sins of the Father. Also, more vague politics. Enjoy!
Star Trek Bridge Crew/Farpoint: 3:20
Void Pyramid: 13:04
Neon Chrome: 26:10
Gabriel Knight Sins of the Father: 41:04
049 - SOLDIERING ON
In this week's Video Games episode, Pawel's bias finally breaks down as he admits that the bugs and weird things going on in Mass Effect: Andromeda are actually ruining his immersion, and instead retreats to the world of Expeditions: Viking, a tactical RPG which is the successor to Conquistador. Meanwhile, Chris travels through a war-torn country with a baseball bat in randomly generated side-scrolling survival game Home Behind.
Enjoy!
046 - GANDALF, OR SOME SORT OF DUMBLEDORE
Chris, Euan and Pawel are joined in this episode by their gaming chum Dave to talk about tabletop games! Dead of Winter, the truly semi-cooperative zombie survival game, is first up this week, as the fingers of blame are pointed in all directions. Pawel then gets his names confused as he talks about Mage: The Ascension, which is set in the World of Darkness (not Warcraft), and is definitely not the entirely fictional board game Mage Quest. Lastly this week, the lads give another spoiler-free update on their Gloomhaven adventures, with Dave giving some input into what he describes as a bonkers game. Enjoy!
041 - TRIBALPUNK
In this video games episode, Chris and Pawel talk for a good bit about Horizon Zero Dawn, the action RPG set in the future in which humans have reverted to living in primitive tribes... and Pawel reveals it's also one of a handful of games he has taken time off work to play this year. Nerd that he is. Chris then gives a tongue-in-cheek review of new Tom Clancy game Ghost Recon Wildlands, an open world multiplayer squad shooter, which has everything you'd expect from a Tom Clancy game, such as guns, freedom, and offending an entire country. Last on the agenda is a brief chat about RIGS: Mechanized Combat League, the PSVR game of big mechs killing each other and occasionally playing American Football. Enjoy!
040 - GLOOMHAVEN INTERNATIONAL
New fantasy dungeon-crawling legacy game Gloomhaven is the (very) big thing everyone's talking about, and Chris, Euan and Pawel give a quick pre-review review of the game and its many millions of bits. The lads then go on a world tour, starting with Korean game Patchistory, the game of patching together tiles to create a civilization, and Chris talks about Hanamikoji, a Japanese two-player card-based game which has a small footprint but a surprising amount of depth. Finally, Pawel is given some time to talk about Coriolis, a sci-fi tabletop RPG with a Middle-Eastern twist. Think Arabian Nights in space, and you're pretty much there. This episode can be divided by ten. Enjoy!
035 - MAKE DRINKS, RIDE ROLLERCOASTERS
The first episode of 2017 brings reviews of another of Chris's Kickstarters, the fantasy drink-serving dice-placement game Cavern Tavern, and Rio Grande's Power Grid: The Card Game, which manages to give you that Power Grid feeling without the need for a map. Pawel kicks off with Tyranny in the video games section, an RPG in which you're forced to play an evil character. The lads also talk about Eve Valkyrie, the online space dogfighting VR game set in the Eve Online universe, and Chris's current favourite game Planet Coaster, the theme park simulator the world has been waiting for. Oh, and Chris has a cold. Enjoy!
034 - PARTY!
In the last episode of the year Pawel will tell you ALL ABOUT the real-time strategy PC game Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, Euan chats about an old classic RPG from Sierra called Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, and Chris talks about My Summer Car, the bizarre mixture of car-building and survival game. Chris and Euan then give a summary of their night of tabletop party games, specifically Ultimate Werewolf and Two Rooms and a Boom, two similar and yet also very different hidden role/social deduction games. The episode rounds off with an interview with the designer of the party game Rebels Unite, Leandro Tokarevski, who tells us about the game and his thoughts when designing it. Enjoy!