Self-Critical Hits!

James is the one on the right.

We recorded this on the street corner.

An intimate little episode this time out. James and Miles talk about games that promote thought and discussion on important, but sometimes uncomfortable, topics. This boils down to (more) talk about Dog Eat Dog and Dogs in the Vineyard…and the hosts’ unconscious tendency to portray some rough stereotypes in both those games.

And! Miles talks about his experience at Geek Girl Con 12 with his increasingly large youngest child, James recommends some art film you may have heard of, and S-CH’s predictions for the Penny Arcade KS campaign come true!

• Fiasco Mobile – all the playsets, and fits in your vest pocket
• Matriarchy – awesome free online game that has taken the indie-game-design-twitterverse by storm
• Geek Girl Con in Seattle
• Unnecessary link of the week: The Artist
• Come and play games with us at PAX Indie Games on Demand!
• The Games: Dog Eat Dog, Dogs in the Vineyard, Farewell to Fear, Reality

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Our 30th episode goes not with a bang, but a whimper…well, more like a throaty groan really. It’s kind of a “come hither” thing…

This time on Self-Critical Hits we give some brief mini-reviews of The Dark Knight Rises (The Panther doth recommend) and Marvel RPG, with some talk of  how the latter stacks up to our one other experience with the Cortex system (the Battlestar RPG) and its flexibility, hackability, and Avatarability.

We also talk up the Raygun Lounge Kickstarter (which, seriously, why haven’t you backed it yet?!), and get into a little bit of what we’re excited for at PAX 2012. This includes David enthusiastically gushing over the Blackwater video game. Doesn’t he realize that’s exactly what The Man wants?!

Hosts: David, Kaycee, Miles

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Notes & Links:

• Unnecessary link of the episode: The Dark Knight Rises
• Marvel Heroic Roleplaying(!)
• The Raygun Lounge – Kickstart this place, then drink in it!
• The PAX Pink Party!
• Indie/Story Games at PAX – Details to come!
• The Games: Skyrim: Dawnguard, Assassin’s Creed 3, Haunted (not free, I lied!), Steel Battalion, Blackwater (not linking to this one, lest they come for my librul ass!), Battlestar RPG

My uncle Uli gave me advice before we left. Most of it turned out to be right, but that was mostly procedural stuff. He was wrong about migrant dwarves. Uncle Uli made it sound like they would just show up empty-handed and be a burden on the stockpiles. Turns out that they may have saved us all. We only had four cats left, and fucking all of them are the woodworker’s pets. Iton said that if I cooked any of his cats he would put my spine on the lathe. He only really talks to his cats, so when he talks to us we take him seriously. The guy can build a hell of a bed, though. I guess he’s a savant that way.

Well, Uncle Uli wasn’t entirely wrong. The new migrants aren’t particularly useful. We’re trying to carve out dormitories and stabilize our food stocks, and we get lyemakers and fish processors, like we need lye or have any fish to goddamn process. The boss, Avuz, has them hauling rocks and furniture around now. We did get an herbalist out of it, and she’s a good forager. The migrants brought food, also. Barrels of it, and livestock too! I had a blade to that water buffalo’s throat before he could even start grazing and it fed us for weeks. We had plenty of booze for everybody, and now we have something to put on our plates. I can finally enjoy my work again, and I don’t even care that I’m sleeping on my kitchen floor until they finish carving out my bedroom. I’m cooking, so I’m happy for now.

We are running out of cats to eat.

This was not our (read: the expedition’s) first choice, though I am not complaining. Cats, and all of their component parts, are delicious. Oddly, the farmers are the only ones who complain despite the fact that this outcome was largely of their design. Had they succeeded in their cave farm we would be in a different situation, but the fact of the matter is that we had no surplus beyond what we needed for booze. I can tell you unequivocally that each dwarf in this doomed expedition would rather have ale than bread. Each one of us. That’s why I’m friends with the brewer; cooks and brewers usually get along great. The farmers grumble, but when we put a grilled cat haunch and a mug of stout in front of them they grumble less.

I don’t know why we didn’t bring chickens. I could whip up an insane catmeat omelet that would completely cure the worst hangovers the miners could impose upon themselves, but we have no eggs and we’re running out of cats. The hunter brings meat back once in a while but it’s nothing we can count on, more like a bonus than a staple. I don’t know the first thing about hunting, so I don’t know if this region is sparse in the way of game or if he is just terrible at hunting. Ultimately I suppose that doesn’t matter. What matters most is that we have been relying on cats to eat for the last two seasons and now we don’t have many left. I shudder to think what will happen when we run out; I have heard rumors of cannibalism, but I don’t want to believe them. I can’t think about that right now. I’m going to see what’s brewing over in my buddy’s workshop and sample some of it. Well, a lot of it, at least until I can figure out some other way to feed these jerks. That or pass out. Whichever, really.

The Site of GPNW 2013?

SPOILERS for Legend of Korra in this episode – watch out!

We are all over the map in this surprisingly journalistic installment of Self-Critical Hits. David gives a lengthy and glowing review of the new-ish Walking Dead video games, Miles reports on his HARDCORE multi-story game experience at Go Play NW 2012, James tells the tale of his run in with a gang of Scientologist toughs downtown, and we do our best to jeopardize our PAX media credentials. Plus – surprise! – blue humor!

We also get all mushy and a little entitled about the finale of Legend of Korra, discuss our singular capacity for butchering game rules on actual play recordings (what up, Dog Eat Dog), and talk James through his fear of twitter (short version: he is worried it will turn him into a closeted, homophobic, southern politician).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Hosts: David, James, Kaycee, Ken, Miles

Notes & Links:

• The Walking Dead – for Steam and Xbox 3600 and maybe that Sony deal…
• Go Play Northwest – Be there next year!
• Legend of Korra – if this episode spoiled it we’re sorry…but you totally should have watched it already
• Scientology
• Jerry Seinfeld interview re: Scientology
• Migration from Asia to North America
• Penny Arcade Sells Out! (no, hey, they called it that) on Kickstarter
• Xena warrior princess on the battlefield of tomorrow?
• New CoD: Black Ops featuring Ollie North as spokesman and “the Messiah of the 99%”
• CGI Money Shots!
• Science! Homophobes!
• The Games: Dog Eat Dog, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, My Daughter Queen of France, Freemarket