#Sacrosanct || A TTRPG Actual Play Podcast

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March Wrapup, 2023!

March Wrapup, 2023!

It’s funny to me that I know more things that reference the phrase march comes in like a lion and leaves like a lamb than I have ever heard the phrase in its own sake. It’s a floating signifier. I think, if you forced me to explain it, it’s a phrase about the sudden shift in the weather at the start of March and then the way it very slowly settles down, which sounds like either a reference to a specific period of time or a reference to a weather pattern that’s very different to me here. Here in Australia, March comes in like Extra February and leaves like Soggy February.

You didn’t come here to listen to me talking about the wet ones, though, you came here to see a monthly roundup of interesting articles on interesting topics that I think you, yes, you, should consider going and reading and now I’m going to present them to you in a sort of ‘list’ form that makes it easier for you to break them down into your areas of interest!

First up, what about the standard features of Story Pile and Game Pile articles?

Well, Story Pile first:

The second and third seasons of My Hero Academia, a show that’s, okay? Getting okay?

Arrival, a modern movie about how governments would respond to a globally significant, collaborative problem.

Ultra, the Rachel Maddow historical podcast about the history of the fascist Right Wing in American politics, and the way that famous people were doing things because Nazis were paying them to do them.

Game Pile

Klotski, a game which made me think about speedrunning as a relationship to your conditions

Forms and Factions, discussing the enemy factions in City of Heroes

Necromolds, a game I played with Fox and talked about at length with her there

Balikbayan, a creative TTRPG where I wanted to listen more than to command

Infocom’s Infidel, which goes up tomorrow and talks about a thing that you might think is reasonably new, but really isn’t!

And now, outside of that, here are some other articles from this month that I’m pretty proud of:

A Game I Don’t Know How To Make; I got asked by a patreon subscriber about making a game of a particular type, and the idea I followed led me to a space where I don’t have skills.

Defending the Defended, where I talk about how we frame our own engagement with enormously popular things.

The Magic Circle (The Magic is Racism), where I considered the way that nonwhite games scholars have really different opinions about the sacrosanct isolation of games.

Paperclippers, a rare excursion from me into actual fiction writing based on listening to a lot of goofy conspiracy theory types trying to sell people on their nonsense fiction of secret Mars bases.

Us Beastfolk, and what it means to be a political class of ‘animal’ people, and how the title needed to be self-imposed or it’s a slur.

The Tiny God of Christianity, where I considered the way that God, as I understood him growing up, was kind of pathetically limited.

Veganism in Pokemon and how the topic is complicated by sentient plants and consensual farming.

Playing with Your Food, drawing games to a close conveniently.

The Fastest Woman In History, where I tried to answer a simple question and found a bunch of annoying, complex answers that featured a bunch of racism.

Bob Ross’ Basilisk, where I reflect on generative art, and how regardless of the tool, the surrounding experience calls on us to treat each other better.

Also, for this month’s shirt-or-sticker design I decided to follow my heart and make something based on my ongoing archive binge of Knowledge Fight to examine the depressing mediocrity of the media empire of Alex Emerich Jones. I think of Jones as very much the Garfield of his space – he’s got no actual ideology, no position of his own to hold to, he’s just doing everything he can to sustain his position in the media landscape he is, which means standing in the middle of the worst fucking people and yes-anding them. This meant yes-anding a few ideas that may have led to him getting slapped with a nearly two billion dollar bill, because speech is free, but lies can cost you.

You can have this sticker in a variety of sizes, available here.

This month marks the start of a new semester of teaching. I’m teaching two classes this semester; one on game making, one on emergent media devices. It’s interesting to work on these two spaces because one of them is very reliable and cares about universally applicable structures in people’s minds. You need to understand and empathise with people and recognise incentive systems to make good games, and that serves as the underpinning fundamentally of experience design. The other class is about looking at tools like generative art software and chatGPT and Augmented Reality tools while I try to very politely inform students that these tools are probably going to look real different in two years’ time. There, the skill is about trying to make sure the students are aware of the ethical needs of these toolkits, and to get them from the high school mindset of ‘do what the teacher wants’ to ‘explain to the teacher what I wanted to do.’

At one point during the month, I had a conversation which made me feel like I’m not good enough. Like the effort I put into doing what I should and being good and working hard are all just not really enough and I need to be doing more, better, and I need to think of things differently and better and in ways that are fundamentally alien to me, and that wasn’t great. I’m trying to change on this front but it’s kind of hard to escape the feeling that I’m not good enough, that the things I’m needed to do, I can’t do.

But there’s some hope. At this point I’m writing this, I’ve pretty much written a thousand words every day and made progress on the PhD every single day. There have definitely been some days when, personal news reasons why, one or the other suffered, and those aren’t great. But the biggest fear I had this year was going to be that getting back into the habit of working on the grand project was going to be stymied by the first and most convenient excuse.

I can do this.

I can do this.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Diary

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SACROSANCT : a d&d 5e actual play podcast

Episode 1 || Bait & Switch, Part 1

The Meeting of the Worthy is about to take place by private invitation of only the most prestigious city heroes. Each of the players has, somehow, come across an invitation-- and they are certainly no heroes, let alone Worthy (whatever that means). Everything goes wrong in unexpected ways as one of the players asks, “Is he, like, dead-dead?” in this debut double episode.

Find us on on Podbean and on iTunes at Sacrosanct: A DnD Live Play Podcast. Follow us on Twitter for more updates. Theme & background music composed by Catalin on Fiverr.

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Sacrosanct || A Dungeons & Dragons Live Play Podcast

Starting August 7th, join us for the premier episode of a brand new D&D 5E Actual Play podcast. 

Leading up to the release of our first episode, we’ll be sharing a few “choice clips” for a behind the scenes look at shenanigans that happen on call. 

Follow us on Twitter for more frequent updates. 

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SACROSANCT : a d&d 5e actual play podcast

Episode 4 || Bait & Switch, Part 4

The Cullings have begun – probably. After agreeing to Guard Captain Arizima’s terms, the party was whisked away during the night and dropped into, uh, a forest? The map they were given included some annoyingly cryptic words, but what they know for sure is that this is a race. The question now is what they’re racing toward, or against.

You can find us on Podbean, iTunes, and Googleplay. Make sure to follow us on Twitter for updates and more shenanigans! 

Theme & background music composed by Catalin on Fiverr. Additional music composed by Parvus Decree & Borrtex.

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SACROSANCT : a d&d 5e actual play podcast

Episode 3 || Bait & Switch, Part 3

The Cullings are about to begin, and the party is faced with the decision of whether to opt in or not.They also have some visitors, both the underwear-model-attractive kind and, uh, the maybe-sincere kind? They bring both news and secrets of the investigation into the scene, as well as more information about the Hero’s Games.

Are you all caught up? Need a refresher before the next episode? Make sure you’re ready for what’s next! You can find us on Podbean, iTunes, and Googleplay. Follow us on Twitter for more updates and shenanigans!

Theme & background music composed by Catalin on Fiverr.

Additional music by Parvus Decree.

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Starting tomorrow for the next week, we’ll have some audio samples from our first episode that are completely out of context, and several of which probably don’t even appear in the final cut of the episode! Please enjoy them, and get hyped along with us!

Also please enjoy how off everyone’s claps are!! 

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Time to kick off our marathon of choice cuts from Episode 01, and what better way to do that than the DM singing our “theme song”*???? 

(*note: This is not actually our theme song)

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SACROSANCT : a d&d 5e actual play podcast

Episode 2 || Bait & Switch, Part 2

Well, this isn’t what the party signed up for. After trying to make a getaway from the grisly scene, the party is caught and promptly arrested for a murder they didn’t commit. Assigned to the dungeons, Guard Captain Zima comes to them with a deal that might absolve them of the crime, but it’ll require the party to play the villain they’ve been accused of.

Find us on on Podbean, iTunes and GooglePlay. Follow us on Twitter for more updates. Theme & background music composed by Catalin on Fiverr. Additional incidental music by Meydän on the Free Music Archive

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“Stay safe” orrrrr “be murdered”? Choices..... 

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DM Mood: OKAY YEAH FINE

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Sometimes you get a 24. Sometimes you get a.... well, a 100% increase from your previous roll. 

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Sometimes, your rolls are so good, you just see beyond the veil of space time and you find yourself looking down at a table with five people clustered around it and--

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IT’S ALMOST GO TIME, EVERYONE! ARE YOU READY?

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At least he’s enthusiastic about his bad rolls

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Listen, things can be dead, or they can be dead dead, or just mostly dead.