2024: A Year in RPGs Ep. 77

Summary

The GROGNARD Files – Episode 77: 2024 – A Year in RPGs

Podcast: The GROGNARD Files
Host: Dirk the Dice (with co-host Judge Blythe)
Date: January 12, 2025

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Overview

This episode is a retrospective on Dirk and Judge Blythe’s year in tabletop RPGs—2024. They look back at the highs and lows of their gaming, discuss systems and campaigns played, reflect on how real-world events shaped their routines, and hand out their signature tongue-in-cheek annual awards. The discussion is as much about the texture and rhythms of their gaming lives as it is about the nuts and bolts of RPG systems. The mood is full of camaraderie, self-deprecating humor, and classic British grognard banter.

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Key Topics and Insights

1. Setting the Scene: The Rhythm of 2024

• Transcript 03:02–07:02
  • The year’s start saw the co-hosts meeting in person in a chilly attic for a rare face-to-face chat, complete with a hot brew and battered Hobnobs.
  • 2024 featured disruptions to traditional routines (e.g., no Expo attendance, Grogmeet rescheduled, more game session cancellations due to life).
  • A notable "clearing out" of the gaming den allowed for new freedoms (and more room to roll back on the office chair).

"It's been a funny old year. It has been a funny old year. Because the patterns and the routines in our normal year have not been there, have they?"
— Dirk (17:05)

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2. Reflections on Game Systems and Play Styles

• Transcript 05:09–12:28 & 13:16–19:39

  • Savage Worlds: Held back by lack of good one-shots; more campaign-structured, not ideal for convention play.
  • Memorable Campaign Moments:
    • Savage Worlds – “Battle beyond the Planets” and a dramatic “Ripper’s campaign” finale where a lowly minion swung the fight.
    • Traveller – “Pirates of Drinax” spaceship battle lauded for tension driven by hard mechanics rather than narrative fudge.
  • They discuss preferences for mechanics-driven gameplay vs. narrative/story-based systems, with a leaning toward the former for tension and excitement.

“I kind of stuck with me that thought because I think I've run lots and lots of systems and what I've realized is… those kind of narrative story game systems, they're not really for me. I prefer a game that has game type mechanics and I like that to drive the story.”
— Judge Blythe (09:16)

“It's a balance of both… to make the actual thing around the table interesting.”
— Dirk (11:51)

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3. The Groggy Awards: Reflecting on The Year's Standouts

• Transcript 20:54–48:11

Best GM Experience

• Dirk’s Pick: Reviving the Racklash campaign (original homebrew fantasy, intertwined with earlier one-shots and player histories).
  • The vulnerability—and thrill—of running your own world is acknowledged.
  • Campaign’s future shaped by a series of one-shots; no prescribed ending, just emergent story.

"I think it's the epitome of a messianic megalomaniac."
— Dirk, joking on being both GM and creator (25:04)

• Judge Blythe’s Pick: GMing Pirates of Drinax (Traveller), especially as the scale increased and the narrative’s direction became less predictable.

“It gives you things that after the session you have to go away and think about and think, right, they've done that. I didn't expect them to do that… How does the world react to what they've just done?”
— Judge Blythe (32:04)

Best Player Experience (Favorite Game & Character)

• Shared Award: Helvézia campaign (GM: Chris Sharp)
  • D&D-based system set in mythic Switzerland, described as "picaresque" with a Grimms’ Fairytales and Vancian edge.
  • True sandbox/hex-crawl with no fixed plot; standout for how “the sessions are like stories, you could write them down.”
  • Favorite characters: Antonia the Spanish duelist (played by Blythe) and Ulrich the drunken priest (Dirk).
  • Special commendation to Chris Sharp’s “Fishman” NPC, awarded “Fishman of the Year.”

“I did really enjoy it because I think at first when we started playing it, we were probably a bit puzzled. But once you get your head around… it's a genuine hex crawl where there is no plot. You go from hex to hex and encounter things and you can engage with those things or ignore them.”
— Judge Blythe (41:42)

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4. New ‘Kid on the Tabletop’ – Standout New-To-Them Game

• Transcript 48:31–56:10

• Dirk: West End Games’ Star Wars (D6 system)—praised for elegant, scalable mechanics that capture the cinematic SW vibe and allow for quick one-shots or campaigns.

• Judge Blythe: Doctor Who Roleplaying Game (2nd Ed, Cubicle 7)—Vortex system is praised for ease, flavor, and balancing “story points” with mechanics. Discussion about its flexibility in delivering “Doctor Who” moments (story/drama over lethal jeopardy, but still with some mechanical consequences).

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5. Events, Ideas, and Insights – Random Encounters on the 2024 Tabletop

• Transcript 56:10–68:34

Dirk's Pick:

• Attending the Planar Effect Gaming Imaginaries symposium in London—an academic event on RPG worldbuilding.
  • Key takeaway: “RPGs defy analysis” (Stu Horvath, 58:40), i.e., you can’t pin down ‘the right way’ to play or even analyze RPGs fully because of their personal, mutable nature.

Judge Blythe's Pick:

• A conversation with Paul Fricker (co-author, Call of Cthulhu 7e) at a curry house:
  “What kind of world is the world of D&D?”
  • D&D is not simply Lord of the Rings, Vance, or any one source—it’s a lingua franca of fantasy, “everything and nothing all at once,” a place any player can easily ‘get’ and operate inside, despite lacking clear real-world parallels.

“It's its own thing. D&D is its own thing… like a lingua franca of worlds…”
— Dirk (65:15)

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6. Things They’re Glad To See The Back Of

• Transcript 68:34–73:02

• Both agree 2024 was the year they chucked Twitter overboard.
  • Twitter had been vital for community building, but is now more friction than fun—analogy: “like being at a good gig, then eventually everyone around you starts punching each other.”
• No major gaming disasters—just real life “weighing heavy,” reducing play time.

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7. Listener Favourites – Grognard Files Podcast Poll

• Transcript 73:09–77:19

• Joint 2nd Place:
  • “White Dwarf Covers with Thunder Phase”
  • “Monsters with James Holloway”
  • Notable insight: “RPGs are defined by their adversaries” (James Holloway).
• First Place (massive lead):
  • “Traveller Revisited with Mark Miller” (77:00)

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8. Community Recognition

• Transcript 77:38–79:10

• Groggy of the Year: Roderick Hamilton
  • For organizing and maintaining Mancunian in-person gaming with Morpcom—giving Dirk, Blythe and others regular face-to-face tabletop play.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the state of RPGs:
  “RPG's defy analysis.” (Stu Horvath, 58:40)

• On difference between homebrew and published scenarios:
  “For some reason, if you’ve made it up, you feel quite vulnerable, I think.” (Judge Blythe, 26:36)

• On D&D’s unique fantasy setting:
  “D&D is everything and nothing all at once.” (Judge Blythe, 65:26)

• On Twitter:
  “Earlier this week I went to Co Op Life to see Paul Heaton… Part way through, it all kicked off and people started punching each other around me and I had to move. That's Twitter, isn't it?” (Dirk, 72:06)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |---------------|-------------| | 00:55–03:02 | Intro, setting, clearing the gaming den | | 03:02–07:02 | In-person meetup, gaming routines upended | | 07:02–12:28 | Reflections on Savage Worlds and tension from game mechanics | | 13:16–19:39 | System mastery, “back to basics,” return to comfort games | | 20:54–28:10 | GM Awards – Racklash & Pirates of Drinax | | 38:06–47:54 | Best player experiences – Helvézia, role play highlights | | 48:31–56:10 | Best new (to-hosts) games: Star Wars D6, Doctor Who RPG | | 56:10–68:34 | Random encounter: symposium, Paul Fricker’s D&D musings | | 68:34–73:02 | “Chuck it overboard”: Departure from Twitter | | 73:09–77:19 | Fan-voted Grog Pod of the year | | 77:38–79:10 | Groggy of the Year – Roderick Hamilton |

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Final Thoughts & Tone

The episode is a gentle, funny, and conversational meander through a year’s worth of gaming, friendship, and tradition. It’s not just about which games or sessions were ‘the best,’ but about how tabletop gaming forms the fabric of longtime friends’ lives. The hosts are honest about disruptions, changing tastes, and nostalgia; they celebrate their community and the changing scene, all with warm humor and a sense of perspective.

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For more: Read Dirk’s blog, or join their next gaming meet-up—preferably somewhere warm, with less risk of hypothermia and more battered biscuits.

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Transcript

[Judge Blythe]

A new form.

[Dice]

It is a new form.

[Judge Blythe]

New form.

[Dice]

It's got AI built into it, of no use whatsoever. It just seems like summarizing your emails. Yeah. So you read them twice.

[Judge Blythe]

It summarizes it. You don't trust it. Yeah.

[Dice]

It gets it wrong. Grog me. Yeah, so I've gone through the list and I contacted them and it said, grog me unable to attend. And I thought, all right, okay. I look down. He doesn't say that at all. What it says is that planning on coming, but it's an open day at college and he's trying to get cover.

[Judge Blythe]

So he might be coming.

[Dice]

He might be coming. The AI has told me that it's not coming.

[Judge Blythe]

AI as we say in the know.

[Dice]

AI Bobby Hunt, have you seen me.

[Judge Blythe]

Dice bag the Grognod files?

[Dice]

Hello, my name is is Dirt the.

[Host]

Dice and this is the Grognard Files podcast where we talk bobbins about tabletop RPGs from back in the day. And today I'm coming live from my den here in the heart of the northwest of England. I'm completely surrounded by my stuff. This podcast is hot on the heels of the recent Ben Aranovich interview about the rivers of London and rpg.

[Dice]

And you can see this is a.

[Host]

Bit of a little bit on the side, you know, something that's been stuffed into a secondhand copy of Rivers of London that you can't quite work out its significance. Is it a shopping list, Is it a receipt, a recipe or the ramblings of fools? I've had a bit of a clear out, the futon has gone from the den. It was one of those items of furniture which was useless whichever way you looked at it. It was rubbish as a seat because it was hard on your ass and rubbish as a bed because it was hard on everything else. But it was an extraordinary clutter collector. Now that it's gone, it allows me a bit more freedom to roll on my office chair. If I roll back now, I can get a few feet before the fish tank gets it. I have to do a slalom around the piles of books, of course, that remain here despite of the new bookshelves. I have told you about the new bookshelves, aren't I? In this episode, I'm joined in the room of role playing rambling by Judge Blythe, our resident rules lawyer. And we cast our eyes over a year on the grog, the ups and downs, highlights and lowlights of playing in 2024. It was good to have an in person chat face to face in the Cold attic space clutching a hot brew and some slightly shop damaged Hobnobs Ramblers.

[Dice]

Let's get rambling groggies. 2024. Welcome to the room of role playing rambling. And it is a rare occasion where we are in the room. We're up in the attic with the one eyed pigeon tapping on the window like Tiny Tim. And it is cold.

[Judge Blythe]

It is cold. Freezing cold. It is, isn't it?

[Dice]

There's no heating on in this diet.

[Judge Blythe]

Hypothermia. I think he's broken up here. Yeah. But it is quiet. It is quiet. You know, you've got to, you know.

[Dice]

Take the rough with us. And we were going to enjoy the delights of some non alcoholic beer to celebrate the fridge.

[Judge Blythe]

In the works fridge there are two tins of non alcoholic beer. Which is okay. Actually. It doesn't t. It's not. It's not. We've moved on from the days of caliber, haven't we? That tested like potatoes and almost peas or something. Yeah, we've moved on from that. It's all right. But it's so cold up here. We've got a brew keep us alive.

[Dice]

Yeah, just.

[Judge Blythe]

Just to keep us thawed out.

[Dice]

Yeah. Otherwise, you know, we'd be like we're Creedy in the thing, wouldn't we? Yeah, it's that time of the year. We're on a bit firmer grain because we did the groggies, didn't we, for 1984.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

But we'll zoom ahead to 40 years in the time machine and bring us up to date this year.

[Judge Blythe]

2024.

[Dice]

Looking back on this year and you had some grand plans, Mr. Blighty. Blight.

[Judge Blythe]

Did I? Did I have some grand plan?

[Dice]

You did, yeah. You sat out at the beginning of this year.

[Judge Blythe]

Oh, no. You're going to remind me of things.

[Dice]

I've said in the past.

[Judge Blythe]

People keep doing this. I don't like it. People keep reminding me of things I've said. I'm going to stop saying things. Yeah. I can't be reminded of anything.

[Dice]

It's the curse of the podcaster, isn't it?

[Judge Blythe]

It's the curse. I don't mean the podcast is curse of life. I've said something and people remind me. You said this. Stop remembering. Stop remembering things I've said.

[Dice]

Sometimes you just say them.

[Judge Blythe]

Don't you just say things? You might just say something in the hope, but no one will remember. But apparently they do. But anyway, cool. Were my grand plans okay?

[Dice]

Let me look at my little book. You said okay in January I feel.

[Judge Blythe]

Like I'm in court.

[Dice]

20, 24.

[Judge Blythe]

God, did I.

[Dice]

You said that you would run More Savage Worlds 1 shots around the table.

[Judge Blythe]

How many of you don't prove it? Did I say it in the podcast? You did. Oh, you can prove it. None.

[Dice]

None.

[Judge Blythe]

None. Yeah. None. None.

[Dice]

None.

[Judge Blythe]

I've not run any Savage Worlds one shots ever.

[Dice]

No. And we were complaining last year when we're doing this that, well, it's gone a bit of a. It's been on a bit of a Savage World's dreams.

[Judge Blythe]

Yes.

[Dice]

And it can. It's continued this year a bit.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, it has, yeah. I think the problem with the one. Yeah. This thing is it's like anything, isn't it, when you get to one shots, convention games and things like that. I don't know. It's always difficult to make a decision about what to run, isn't it? Because you sometimes have an idea that I'd like to run more of that. But when it comes to the crunch, you always think, yeah, but what. What would I do with it? You know?

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

I think this is a bit of a problem with Savage Worlds though, because I've got the Savage World's fantasy book. It's quite like I've got the horror one, got the superheroes one. There's not much out there for them, you know. They do these plot point campaigns, don't they? Pinnacle and they're all right, they're good, but they're not really suitable for one shots, are they? I do have a qu. I do have a memory of earlier in the year looking at fantasy stuff to Virtual Grog meet, thinking, oh, I might run some fantasy. We've never really run the fantasy version of it, have we? I could have written my own thing, but I was looking for something, something to base an idea on, something to run. It's hard to find anything. They do lots of campaigns. Deadlands is the same. They do lots of campaigns, but they did. There's not many one shot scenarios. They do those page scenarios, don't they? But those are the things you look at and think, that's not going to fill three hours, this.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

You know. Yeah. You can't. Between two stools of. This is a bit thin. This might be an hour and a half. Not long enough. Or it's a plot point campaign.

[Dice]

The only Savage Worlds that I ran this year was Battle beyond the Planets. One of.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

Scenario one of them. Never going to do it again.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

Good at a system that was quite fun. And Savage Worlds did that quite well. Even though I didn't have the science fiction subject.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

I just used the good game.

[Judge Blythe]

It's a good game. It's one of our favorite games, isn't it?

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Certainly one of my favorite favorite systems. So I know kind of divides people a bit, but I think it's a really good system. Sometimes it's hard to know what to do with it.

[Dice]

One of the better games masters that we've experienced playing Savage Worlds because of his tactical noose is Mark. And we had the tail end of the Ripper's campaign.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

That we completed. We've had a break, haven't we? And we're going to come back to it. I think this is what this year has told us is. And we'll perhaps go on to talk about how Traveler has done this. The excitement of mechanical elements in a game and how that can create tension and excitement. Because you remember that epic battle in the deserts.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

Ripper camp.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

It's the Mummy.

[Judge Blythe]

Something out of the Mummy, wasn't it? Yeah, it was out of the Mummy. Real. But it was. Yeah, yeah, it was a good. It's a great fight. Lots of incident in it. Yeah.

[Dice]

And where I'd be tempted as ever to hand wave things. Mark just went steadfastly through the tactical rules. And there was a cast of thousands, wasn't there, in that battle? We. It came down, really, didn't it, to one of the minions.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, it was. It was the minion, wasn't the woman who was the archaeologist minion. It was kind of relatively insignificant, became quite important and that she managed to get a lucky shot or something and. Yeah. Finish off the Mummy. King of the mummies or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dice]

Because it was one of those situations where a bit like the end of a football game where everything was at stake. So we pushed everything forward, even the archaeologist Minion, played by Caroline Munro.

[Judge Blythe]

And we had a similar experience, didn't we, later in the year with Traveler.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Where we were playing Pirates of Drina and there was a spaceship battle that was a very tense battle driven by the mechanics, the cold hard mechanics of the game. The dice rolling, the rules drove the tension because you were aware there was no way of narrating your way out of the trouble you were in. I kind of stuck with me that thought because I think I've run lots and lots of systems and what I've realized is I don't really. I don't think as a gm, maybe not as a player, those kind of narrative story game systems, they're not really for me I prefer a game that has game type mechanics and I like that to drive the story. Yeah, I remember one years ago, a few years ago I got into fate. I never found it satisfactory because it always felt a bit wavy and vague at times. Those story elements or you've been injured or let's come up with some kind of injury. Well no, let's not. Let's. Let's roll on a table and it'll tell you where you've been injured and that will make it more tense and more exciting.

[Dice]

I don't know whether I completely agree with that. I think there's something to be said for both because even like Savage has a bit of metacurrency, doesn't it? So you've got the bennies where you can alter things. And even in that game of traveler tense as it was and it all depended on the dice rolls, we're using luck to sway things.

[Judge Blythe]

You have. But there are. That's true. But they still feel like tactical game based decisions. Whereas some, some role playing games have looser, more narrative things in it. I think you had a, you had an experience you were complaining about recently. I can't remember which game it was but it was one of these games where you've got some kind of background, career background on your character sheet. And he said oh, he's all right this. But everyone just says oh but surely, surely my career as a bartender would help me negotiate with the CIA operatives who are guarding the building. Because a bartender's good at talking to people.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

And it's like no, rubbish that, that's what I mean, that kind of thing. I'm not. There was a time when I was quite enamored with that kind of thing. I'm less enamoured with it now because it feels like what I'd rather, what I'd rather say is what's your persuade skill? Let's roll your persuade skill. Let's not say that because you were a bartender you've got some kind of weird charm, you know where you can.

[Dice]

Oh it's a balance of both. Balance of both because I think to make the actual thing around the table interesting. So in that bartender case I think somebody has to put forward, right. What, what are the tactics that you're using? What are the way. Just saying, hanging on a roll.

[Judge Blythe]

But I find it, I do. And it's just the kind of thing that's occurred to me this year. A lot of the games I like if you asked me to do top five games, a lot of the games in that they're more driven by the dice rolls and where the dice rolls might take you within that story rather than where everyone agrees to go in that story, if that makes sense, where that's been the case.

[Dice]

Yeah, I mean, that was a dramatic, dramatic moment when everything was hinging on one dice roll whether we were going to change the fate of the campaign movement on one dice roll. And it just didn't go in our favor. But we narrowly, narrowly missed it by a few points. And that was very exciting. But I think there's a place for that and there's also a place for talking.

[Judge Blythe]

And I'm not saying. I'm not saying people shouldn't play those games. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I've realized perhaps they're less for me than I thought they were.

[Dice]

Well, we've gone. We're not even started yet. And he said, if you were asking me to name your top five, I'm glad you're in that kind of frame of mind because it's the award season. That's what we're doing.

[Judge Blythe]

They've got the golden envelopes ready. The.

[Dice]

The spirit's golden envelopes are being pint. We're ready to distribute the awards, apparently.

[Judge Blythe]

Golden envelopes?

[Dice]

Yeah, they're right here. You do my old. But before we do that, I've got a prefab spread game for you. Okay.

[Judge Blythe]

Go on.

[Dice]

I'm going on holiday in a few days. All right.

[Judge Blythe]

Where you going? You know where I'm going. I know where you're going. I'm just for people listening. This is the artifice of this podcast. Next you'll be suggesting you've really got golden envelopes. Where are you going, dirt dice on your holiday? For the benefit of people listening who don't see every bloody day like I do, to Sweden.

[Dice]

I'm going to Stockholm. Yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Stockport, Stockholm.

[Dice]

I thought I would do a Swedish role playing games. Okay.

[Judge Blythe]

Prefab spray. Gone.

[Dice]

Okay. Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to give you two options here.

[Judge Blythe]

All right?

[Dice]

Okay. One of them is a significant element of Swedish role playing and the other one is a place that I'm going visiting. There's only three of them, so don't worry, it's not a particular thing. I've got these from outside the box. How Sweden Conquered the World of Role Playing Games by Magnus Seter. I was given a review copy. I'm going to review it early in the new year.

[Judge Blythe]

So can I just say, though, as well, why do we find ourselves In a position where almost everything we do on this podcast, we struggle pronouncing things we're talking about. Call Cthulhu, never pronounce any of it, but here we go again.

[Dice]

Yeah, we're playing it. Playing to our strengths here.

[Judge Blythe]

You're gonna. But go on. How many?

[Dice]

Well, I think it's a bit. We do have Swedish listeners, so it'll be a challenge for them.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dice]

For them to understand what I'm saying in a Bolton accent.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. Be harder for them to understand as.

[Dice]

I mangle the language. Okay.

[Judge Blythe]

All right. Come on. Here we go.

[Dice]

Autograph Iska or photograph Iska.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. Yep.

[Dice]

Or Draco. Uch Demoner. Which one of those is a role playing item?

[Judge Blythe]

The. The second one, I think.

[Dice]

Draco Demon.

[Judge Blythe]

I think that's dragon band. Is that right?

[Dice]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Source of dragon bane. Yep. Basic role playing inspired game.

[Judge Blythe]

And the other. What's the other one? The other one's a place. Is it?

[Dice]

HCX Photography Museum. All right. Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

All right. That was quite easy, but I'm gonna get out on it.

[Dice]

Okay.

[Judge Blythe]

Ready?

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Synchronous Syngidus.

[Dice]

Syncadus.

[Judge Blythe]

Syncadus. Okay.

[Dice]

Or Ostermau's Solo Hall.

[Judge Blythe]

I have no idea. I'm going to say Syncadus.

[Dice]

Syncadus.

[Judge Blythe]

Yes.

[Dice]

Syncadus was a magazine inspired by different worlds. Ostermoln's Sudhahol is a historical food market. See, you learn.

[Judge Blythe]

Could it be three out of three? Could it be a hatchet? This will be a first tour. The free pub scrap. I heard.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

I feel a lot of pressure now to get this right. You're gonna.

[Dice]

You're gonna get gold or gavel.

[Judge Blythe]

Are you in it? Patrick, Go on.

[Dice]

Fairwell Winter, Sevavel Winter or Waldersmar Sud.

[Judge Blythe]

I'm gonna go for Savaval Winter. Well done.

[Dice]

Savavel Winter is a campaign for Draka Undimina.

[Judge Blythe]

Oh, there we go.

[Dice]

Hat trick.

[Judge Blythe]

The golden gavel.

[Dice]

The other one's a gallery. That.

[Judge Blythe]

The Golden Gallery. A bit like the golden envelope.

[Dice]

Yeah. I'll give it to you then I'll award it at the end. Ignore this. It's a rug covering a hole. 20, 24. Looking back, how's it been for you?

[Judge Blythe]

Well, from a gaming perspective, it's been.

[Dice]

It's been weird.

[Judge Blythe]

We say it every year. It's been a funny old year.

[Dice]

It's been a funny all year. It has been a funny all year. Because some of the things that. Because the patterns and the routines in our normal year have not been there, have they? Because we decided not to go to export.

[Judge Blythe]

We didn't go to export. And I think. I think we both agree that's possibly a bit of mistake.

[Dice]

I don't think you could have gone anywhere, could you?

[Judge Blythe]

Well, no, because of the elections. Yeah, that's true. It would have. That when we did say that, didn't we decided not to go and we didn't expect a 4th of July general election.

[Dice]

No.

[Judge Blythe]

But of course it. Yeah, it would have probably scuppered it.

[Dice]

We should say that you're an electoral administrator and so you've had to do two elections. Well, three elections this year, haven't you?

[Judge Blythe]

Well, yeah, two elections. One. Two elections on the same day and then a general election.

[Dice]

Yeah. So it's been busy, hasn't it?

[Judge Blythe]

It has.

[Dice]

And that impacted us.

[Judge Blythe]

Does a bit.

[Dice]

And grog meat, of course, we didn't have that.

[Judge Blythe]

Grog meat's been moved, hasn't it? Yes. Yeah, you're right. The kind of rhythms of the year been. Yeah. Disrupted slightly. You said earlier some of the gaming rhythms of the year have been different. Like Savage Worlds stopped. We've not played much called Cthulhu this year.

[Dice]

No, we did right at the beginning.

[Judge Blythe]

I ran something for you and Eddie right at the beginning of the year. And that's odd because we've all. We. We've commented before, haven't we've? Always been playing some Cthulhu. So there's two games there that have kind of. And I don't think they've drifted off the radar because we're fed up of them. I think it's just a kind of almost accidental thing, isn't it? I think we'll go back to both of them. It's not like we've fallen out with them.

[Dice]

I think we used to thrill actually at these o' groggy awards by the number of systems that we played during the year. Just like amazed that, you know, at one time we would only be playing a handful and now we were playing like 30 different systems. I think this year it settled down. When I've gone back over it, it's more like 10 different systems.

[Judge Blythe]

It has settled down. And again, another thought that I've had this year. The system mastery thing is an increasingly important factor when I'm running something. I'm not saying I'm a master of these systems. That's how they are, isn't it? But what I've realized is knowing. Knowing a system does. But makes it a lot easier. More a relaxed experience.

[Dice]

Well, one of us New Year's resolutions was going Back to basics for that reason, like just going back to some of those games that we enjoyed and connected with. So a lot of traveler, a lot of being.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, yeah. This, this year really I've run. I've run. The only new game that I've run, and talk about this later, is the Doctor who role playing game which I've got this year. And that actually is the only. That's the only new system that I've got this year.

[Dice]

Start of the year, I declared that I wasn't going to touch big book campaigns and that's held true apart from over recent weeks. But perhaps come on to that where we started looking at the Borellas connection, which is for Follow Delta Green, that book campaign. Our Monday group. Another element of our routine.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, it has, isn't it? Yeah. A bit more difficult for you, didn't it? Mondays just became a bit of a difficult.

[Dice]

Yeah. And in talking about difficulties, I've gone through the calendar, looking over the past year. It's first time that I've seen the words canceled next to game sessions compared with previous years.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

Or postponed. Real life has been disappeared.

[Judge Blythe]

Real life, there's a constant. There's a constant tussle, isn't there, between real life and gaming? That's always been the case and some years I think real life wins a bit and sometimes gaming wins a bit.

[Dice]

I think it's fair to say that this year real life has been heavy on the balance sheet.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

But that put aside, it was a rich and varied.

[Judge Blythe]

Obviously, isn't it? Like we said, we're playing more than we've ever played really. So we can't really complaint, is it? This has been a funny year. Like you said, the biorhythms of the year have been slightly different.

[Dice]

Okay, let's get into the awards and the first envelope I've got is the Messianic Megalomaniac Games Master Award. Now, have you won it again? We have this discussion. What does it mean?

[Judge Blythe]

What does it mean?

[Dice]

What does it mean?

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, we're gonna have that again because I'm never quite sure what it means.

[Dice]

Is it just.

[Judge Blythe]

Is it a way of you getting an award if you need an award? I don't, I don't mind.

[Dice]

What I observed last time, if you remember, is that these awards, things that we normally do, we normally kind of. We've been friends for a long time.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

Like 40 odd years.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

But when it comes down to this, it always has like a bit of an element of hostility. Well, I think it's because you Called.

[Judge Blythe]

It the megalomaniac messianic. If he'd said GM of the Year, we could say, oh, it's such and such. But because you've titled it that, that's suggested that they're a messianic megalomaniac. There's only you happy with that title?

[Dice]

Well, let's agree to drop it. Because last year, if you remember, we said to take the hostility out of.

[Judge Blythe]

It, the adversarial nature of it, that.

[Dice]

It would be your favorite GM experience of the year and my favorite gym. And we don't have to decide which is the best. They can both be equally as good as it is.

[Judge Blythe]

This is like one of those school sports days.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Male bangs on the back that aren't true. Walk, walk walker. Arty podcasters give everyone a prize.

[Dice]

There we go.

[Judge Blythe]

So our best. Our best GMN experience. You're my bet, right? Yeah. You're good. No, you can start.

[Dice]

Okay, well, I'm gonna go. And I've been banging on about this and I do worry about. I do worry that me banging on about it more than others indicates I probably have enjoyed this more than the players.

[Judge Blythe]

Doesn't matter. That's all right.

[Dice]

Do you think that's all right? And that is reviving the Reckless campaign. I'm going to continue that through. Yeah. Next year because I really enjoy it because I think it's because the way that I've done it. For Virtual Grog Meet, there were some prequels, sort of like some one shot little stories that everybody. People participated in, and those were the foundations for the campaign that you did. And Mark was part of a couple of those. So he had a bit of prior knowledge before the start.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. It's kind of interesting that. Yeah. It kind of overlaps a bit. And one shots here and there are kind of interconnected. Yeah.

[Dice]

But I get the view of that. So fortunately, Grog me, I've got a couple of scenarios.

[Judge Blythe]

It is very much a megalomaniac. Yeah, absolutely. So I've got.

[Dice]

I've got a couple of one shots and I think Mark's playing in one of those, so. His character. Yeah, because at the end of the campaign period, it was a point where the king had been revived. The city was surrounded by various factions who were ready to take over. A storm demon was approaching. And we decided at that point we were going to pause.

[Judge Blythe]

Pause for a few. Cliffhanger, end of season cliffhanger.

[Dice]

However, these little one shots are going to influence what happens next because, you know, one of them goes out.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

And they're going to assassinate one of the war leaders. Or. Or not.

[Judge Blythe]

Oh yeah.

[Dice]

And they can choose which one they go for. So that might have an impact.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

And the other one is the one that Mark's being part of. He's just going intercepting the people who approach him with a storm demon to see if can bring it under control again. You have nothing to say about this experience of playing it?

[Judge Blythe]

Nothing to say.

[Dice]

You played 10 sessions of it.

[Judge Blythe]

I enjoyed it.

[Dice]

This is.

[Judge Blythe]

This, this I. I've enjoyed. I enjoyed it. It's very good. And it is good to go back to Raklash, the place that. It's kind of good to go back to something that we invented in your bedroom 40 years ago and really it just left half baked, I suppose. But what you've done kind of made it more alive as a place in ways that you know some. Bit. Some. And some of it's familiar but some of it's not because obviously things have been invented and added on to it.

[Dice]

I think it's the epitome of a messianic megalomaniac.

[Judge Blythe]

It's a me of it. Yeah.

[Dice]

But it leaves you speechless.

[Judge Blythe]

Speechless. Well, you can't shut up about it. I think what is interesting about the Racklash thing though is I think at one point you were. I think it might have been when you were preparing the very first one shots before we were playing it on Wednesday night and you said to me, the problem with this is I can't think. And it's all daft.

[Dice]

Yes.

[Judge Blythe]

And. And that's because you've made it up. Yeah. There is that odd thing with this kind of. It's all daft. But when it's a pre written scenario or campaign that you're working with, and I don't just mean following a pre written scenario slavishly because we all adapt these things and I quite like getting a pre written one and adapting it. But because the foundation of it is written by someone else, there's always a sense of like, well, if people think it's daft, it's not my fault.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Was if you make it all up. And I've done the same. I've had done scenarios and things at conventions that I've. I have made it all up and it seems to have gone down well and it seems fine. But there is an anxiety as a GM where you think, but I just made this up. Yeah, stupid. Because you could argue Greg Stafford just made up Galantha, didn't it? It's all made up for Some reason, if you've made it up, you feel quite vulnerable, I think.

[Dice]

Yes.

[Judge Blythe]

There's a vulnerability there. There's no excuses. If this falls flat, it's all on me. Because a bit like when we did the Conan thing. Yeah. The. Was it the Shadow of the Sorcerer?

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

And you. You ended up thinking, I really like this campaign. It's a bit flawed and there's a bit. Bits in it that are a bit stupid. But that wasn't your fault, was it? But if you create something yourself, it's, oh, well, it's my fault.

[Dice]

And maybe it was that Shadow of the Sorcerer campaign for Conan that persuaded me at long last, just to write my own campaign. Because I think that' we started at the start of the year that I have not actually. This is the reason why I'm so thrilled to be running my class. It's good to have Eddie back playing as well. That's another good element of it. But also it's. I don't know it's going to end. Whereas you get those big book campaigns.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

It's all predetermined. I don't know which way this is going to go.

[Judge Blythe]

That's. That's true. That is one of the problems, isn't that. That is, as we've said a few times about me running Pirates of Drinax. That's what's good about Pirates of Drinax is that I don't know how it's going to end. Whereas some. Some of these big campaigns, they are going in one direction.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

And that's where you're going to end up. And that's when you get a bit. As a gm, you get a bit tired of them, can't you? Yeah.

[Dice]

And that other aspect of that corner campaign was loads of exposition. A cast of thousands.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

I can create a cast of thousands. I know who they all are because I'm making them up.

[Judge Blythe]

I'm making them up.

[Dice]

Yeah. And when I'm giving exposition, I'm only giving the expedition that I've managed to make up on the hoof.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. I suppose it's a thing, like you say, it's a thing of. There's campaigns and campaigns. So there are some campaigns, like your racklash thing, where anything could happen and then you have to react to it as a gm.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

So this will happen and then you'll have to go away and think, right, well, that's happened. What am I gonna do about that? As opposed to it being a programmed set series of events that are leading to a particular climax. Almost like it doesn't really matter what you do. You're gonna have to face down this baddie at the end, and that's that, because that's what keeps it fresh. But again, it is a strange thing, I think that when you are making stuff up, you can feel quite vulnerable.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Particularly like fantasy, because again, it's one thing to sort of make something up and go, well, I'll tell you what, I'm gonn. In the real world, it's called Cthulhu and it's going to be set, I don't know, in the Houses of Parliament during the Thatcher government or something like that. You're still basing it on something real, but with fantasy, there is that thing of. I'm not really basing it on anything.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

And he's just made up because it's a bit of.

[Dice]

As well as doing the scenarios, you're also doing that secondary world building, aren't you?

[Judge Blythe]

And you.

[Dice]

What are you trying to avoid? You're using cliche, but you're trying to avoid it just appearing like another version of something else that you can mask the.

[Judge Blythe]

You need the cliches because that's what makes it familiar for players and manageable for everyone around the table. But at the same time, you try and just veil the cliches or twist them or turn them a little bit so they're not quite as cliche as they may seem. It's kind of fine balancing act, isn't it? Of, yeah, this is familiar, but I want it to be unfamiliar as well and a bit different. That's quite difficult to do.

[Dice]

So the gains master in the Rackless campaign is what I'm giving the award to. What about you?

[Judge Blythe]

I suppose my big, big GMing experience this year is again, Pirates of Drillax, isn't it? Because I was GMing at the beginning of the year, then we had a summer break and I'm GMing it again.

[Dice]

It is a. And I think you should rightly claim that as your GM award because it's pushed you into different directions. Yeah, it has as particularly over recent months, recent sessions, because it has got a bit more abstracted and a bit more larger scale. I feel like in the last. This last season has taken a different tone and a different level.

[Judge Blythe]

Well, there is a different. Yeah, and. And we're playing it tomorrow morning, aren't we? And you will find there is. There is a different tone to it. It does kind of change a bit in terms of the way the game works and the way the dice kind of role It's a much bigger thing in terms of what you're then trying to do when you're trying to form an empire. You know, going, going around planets, kind of recruiting people and doing some piracy is quite granular. What happens when you have a fleet where you have a massive naval battle which you might need no spoilers, but you may need to do that at some point. Yeah, it has some different rules which are a bit more abstracted because it has to be. Because we'd be there all day, wouldn't we, if you had 30 ships on either side. We never finish it, would we?

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

So there are some, there are some mini games within it to form the empire and do certain things slightly outside of them.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

So yeah, there's about. And I suppose, yeah, I suppose it is my. It is. It is my favorite thing that I've GM this year because it's so kind of. It's kind of so present, isn't it? For me as a gm, everything else is one shot. So I mean I'm running a bit of DCC landmark for our Wednesday group now, but that's only just started, so that probably doesn't quite qualify, does it? No.

[Dice]

And I think it has a similar effect on you is the racklash as. I mean that it's giving you a bit of a few knots to untangle.

[Judge Blythe]

And I can see, I can see that. That is the thing, isn't it, as a GM with both your Racklash thing and my perhaps Trinax. It gives you things that after the session you have to go away and think about and think, right, they've done that. I didn't expect them to do that, but they can do that because it's kind of open ended. It's sandbox. They can do that. They've done that. How does the world react to what they've just done?

[Dice]

Yes.

[Judge Blythe]

What's going to happen if they do this and if they do that, that kind of thing. And always surprises me that as players you do things that I'm not expecting you to do. You have different attitudes about certain things. So, yeah, I suppose that that has to win it. Another good experience though kind of was a ransom called Cthulhu for you and Eddie. The Cults of Cthulhu book that Angel's Thirst. Yeah. And it was a good, good scenario. I enjoyed, I enjoyed running it.

[Dice]

It's got some mixed reviews, that scenario, but I think it was a strong one. I felt it's very atmospheric and it's very.

[Judge Blythe]

Well, I thought it was very well put Together. Because as an investigation, it does give you lots and lots of options in how to investigate it. And as a gm, it gives you all the characters and there's a sense in which, you know, some investigations sometimes feel a bit linear. Yeah. So you do get some investigative scenarios that all hinge on. You go here, you must find that clue that'll take you there. You must find that clue that'll take you there. And then you find this clue and down leads the confrontation. They do feel quite linear. But that Angel's List is not really like that. It's obviously taking you to a certain confrontation, but you can do it in different ways. Yeah. I think that's what's quite good about it.

[Dice]

And it'll depend upon your obsessions as well. So you can hook onto an element of it that you find fascinating as a player. I want to kind of dig into more.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

And it'll yield a bit more as well because we got a bit obsessed about the architecture of the place.

[Judge Blythe]

Yes.

[Dice]

We were examining and we went probably further into that. Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

So you can. You can investigate like the architecture and the architect is one thing. There's the mob, there's mobsters involved in it. At some point you can go into that, or maybe not go into that. And then there's this weird church and you can investigate. So you've got a few options which things. Quite good. Yeah. It's a lot of work being put into it that if it was something I was writing, it'd be a lot of work to write about things that may not come to fruition.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

And that is one of the. That's sometimes a good thing about pre written scenario that they've put the work in to give you all these options, some of which inevitably will not be investigated.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

But I have not had to do that work.

[Dice]

You don't do accents.

[Judge Blythe]

I don't do accents.

[Dice]

And Ellie Drummond. But I felt that the NPCs were very distinct just by the way, obviously they'd given you clues on what the attitude.

[Judge Blythe]

Yes. Is different. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really good. Really good scenario. Really good, kind of interesting scenario with a lot going on and a bit of the mystery as well. I think the mystery was good in that you didn't quite. You didn't know what was going on. And I know that's like. It's a mystery. Of course you don't know what's going on. But sometimes, again, in investigative scenarios, sometimes it's a bit obvious where to go. It's a bit obvious what's going on. And it's obvious where to go, but in that, it's not particularly obvious.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

At first, what's going on. You're not quite sure, are you?

[Dice]

No.

[Judge Blythe]

You know, you brought into it in quite an innocuous way, some taxi driver's gone missing, hasn't it? Yeah. And of course, that's not. That's your way in, but that's not really. Yeah. What's going on.

[Dice]

And there's also where some of those might have, like, one little twist that'll send you another different. Different direction. There's quite a few little.

[Judge Blythe]

Yes, that's what I mean. There's a few little elements to it that can send you in different directions and they're all quite well written and quite well fleshed out. So, you know, you might go to some garage on this, like this industrial estate. You go to a garage. Those NPCs have fleshed out quite well in terms of what they know, what they think, what they think of you. Or they might think of the mob. But then you don't have to go there, do you?

[Dice]

No.

[Judge Blythe]

And if you don't, it doesn't really matter. You will eventually get where you need to be.

[Dice]

At the end of last year, I think I said that Courts of Cthulhu was one of the best. Cthulhu supplements, one of the best supplements that come out. And I still think that that's the case. I think it's a really strong supplement that's overlooked a bit.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, I would agree. Because as well, the book itself gives you a kind of like a. It's the phrase a deep. It's a deep dive into the cult of Cthulhu. So, yeah, you kind of understand that cult more than.

[Dice]

So you've got 2. Got 2 GM experiences there for contender. Are you landing on one?

[Judge Blythe]

Ages. I'll land on. Well, I don't know.

[Dice]

You can have tea.

[Judge Blythe]

No, The Daily Mail will be outraged. You can't give us both an award. Megami 2. You're mad. It'd be lollipops for everybody. Now stop it. I don't want. I don't want to be dragged through the tabloid press for giving awards to everyone. No, I'll go for pirates. Well deserved. Well deserved.

[Dice]

Yeah. We're just patting ourselves on the back. It hardly seems to matter. Right, it goes. Next is the olive Players plays, the people who play awards.

[Judge Blythe]

Confusing award. Confusing.

[Dice]

So all you have to say is, what's the best game you played in and what's your favourite character? All right, then we Landed on that last one.

[Judge Blythe]

Well, I'm gonna say my favorite game of the year that I've played in, and I've played in lots of good games. Again, that's a great thing about the moment. I think a lot of the games I've played have been very enjoyable. And again, we can't pronounce it. Oh, it's Helvezia.

[Dice]

Helvezia.

[Judge Blythe]

I've enjoyed, really enjoyed Helvezia.

[Dice]

We've been criticized, actually. I'm just gonna pick up on this.

[Judge Blythe]

Criticized? Yeah.

[Dice]

So, yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

By who?

[Dice]

Somebody said that we call it Alvasia. Alvacia.

[Judge Blythe]

What is it?

[Dice]

Well, no, they said it was Helvetica.

[Judge Blythe]

But Helvetica's a type face like a font, isn't it?

[Dice]

Yeah. So I'm sticking with Alvasia.

[Judge Blythe]

We'll stick with. How well, do you know what we mean?

[Dice]

We'll vary it.

[Judge Blythe]

Should we just vary?

[Dice]

Yeah, we'll just vary it and.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, just stick to it like we have with massive Narclatep. We've pronounced Nakhla set wrong, but we're sticking with it. It's 40 years of mispronunciation. Yeah, we're sticking with it.

[Dice]

Stick it.

[Judge Blythe]

But I know I really. I really enjoyed Havezia.

[Dice]

So do we need to explain? Sound like Rory's journey. Do you need to explain?

[Judge Blythe]

Yes. So it's a game. And this is what. And I've said this to Chris Sharp, so I know this will not offend him. When he first suggested it, I thought, oh, I really. Is this gonna be fun? It is a game. It's based. The system itself is based around like D and D. It's a D and D type system. So the system's like. There are some tweaks here and there, different rules about virtue and stuff and the magic. But. But basically it's a. It's a D20 armor class kind of system. So that. That's not Nothing. Nothing, I suppose, unusual about that. And.

[Dice]

And the rules hardly seem to matter. No, let's just put that to one side.

[Judge Blythe]

Well, I think the rules matter if you want them to matter, I think. Depends. Right. But go on anyway. Go on, Go on anyway. But it's set in a kind of imaginary. What would you say? 16th century, 17th century Switzerland. So he's set in the cantons of Switzerland, but in an imaginary fantasy version where there is magic and there are miracles and there are some monsters. It has a sort of. I would say it has a kind of Brother's Grimm feel to it. So you know, you know, the world's not awash with monsters. It's just that there are legends about monsters and strange things and magic and witchcraft and that kind of thing. So it's set in like a brothers group and it is. It describes itself as picaresque. It's a very pickeresque.

[Dice]

Yeah. I think brothers grin if Alexandre Dumas had written it.

[Judge Blythe]

Grim's got his brothers graves.

[Dice]

There's a bit of swashbuckling and I suppose as well.

[Judge Blythe]

And this is maybe why I like it. Maybe you like it. There is a kind of Vancian thing to it as well, in that it's not like the dying earth. It's not that kind of fantasy world, because that's a very, very different world. But I think the characters that you end up playing and the scrapes that you get into did feel very vancing. They felt like something Kugel the Clever might get involved.

[Dice]

And the NPCs you encounter have all got the motivations, if not spiteful. Bit cruel.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. Everyone's respectful, jealous, arrogant, vain people, which I think we ended up playing characters like that. Yeah. Which was quite funny.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

And I think it's the first time where we use this expression sandbox. But that campaign is a genuine sandbox, isn't it?

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. It's like a hex crawl, isn't it? Well, I don't think we've ever. We have. We have played games, campaigns and run campaigns of the sandboxes. Often a sandbox can have a plot. How you deal with a plot could be anything you want. Oh, straight out.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

A sandbox in the. You do have a plot, but you can do it anywhere. Whereas with this one is. It's a genuine hex crawl where there is no plot. You go from hex to hex and encounter things and you can engage with those things or ignore them. It's up to you. And that's what I found quite fascinating. Yeah. We've never really. In all the 40 years we've been doing these games, I never really done that.

[Dice]

And so the couches we were playing, I was playing Urich, the German cleric priest who had a chance for drinking.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

And your character.

[Judge Blythe]

I was playing Antonio, who was a Spanish lady. She was a duelist. Spanish duelist with a very low virtue. So it has a thing called virtue. If you're a. I mean, my character was a. Was a fighter, a duelist, it didn't really matter. But if you are a priest, you can do, like, miracles, can't you? But you have to keep your Virtue high. So you have to do things. And this is, I suppose, this is the thing about rules, I suppose, isn't it? I'll go back to the rules in the. It isn't about. It isn't about just being virtuous and everyone agreeing that you're being virtuous. And if you're what's called student, which is like a black magician or a witch, you have to keep your virtue low. Because if you become too virtuous, the devil won't give you the powers that you need. And your virtue's tracked, isn't it? There's points that you lose and gain points. So if you do something, if you're a witch and you do too many good things, your magic won't work because your virtue will go too high. And you as a priest, if your virtue drops, then that impacts on you. So there is a kind of rule system tracking, you know, virtue. And it affects other characters as well. Because I think if your virtue drops to zero, I think the. The devil kind of comes to claim your soul, doesn't he? Yeah. So it even matters.

[Dice]

And our companions, because we were a bit of a double act, weren't we, in the. When things happened, but our companions. Mark was a soldier.

[Judge Blythe]

He was a Swedish soldier, wasn't it?

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Matthew was a French rogue, wasn't it? Yeah. Foot pad. That's not a rogue.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. So we're all kind of quite colorful characters. And I did really enjoy it because I think at first when we started playing it, we were probably a bit puzzled. Cause we thought, what are we supposed to do here? But once you get your head around. Let's just engage with this. So we went to, like a tavern, didn't we, where these fish people. And again, you didn't know whether they were real or not. I think that was a good thing about it. The tavern man kept saying, these fish men keep coming and wanting to steal this idol from my tavern. Is he bonkers?

[Dice]

We previously we'd encountered people who were deluded.

[Judge Blythe]

Exactly.

[Dice]

Yes.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. We met a guy, a guy in.

[Dice]

A cottage who thought he was a.

[Judge Blythe]

King and acted like everything there was a castle. It's like mad.

[Dice]

I think what happened a few sessions in, and you're right, we start to engage with it, is the realization, the hex crawl, that what Chris was doing was just presenting the situation to us.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

And I think you and Mark, when I played with you a lot, are naturally cautious players. So when presented with something you're trying to tactically work out. Right. What. What's going on here.

[Judge Blythe]

I've been tricked through something. Yeah. Yeah.

[Dice]

However, what it needs is for it to. You need to provoke it a bit.

[Judge Blythe]

Yes. Poke it over the stick.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

And that was like, oh, the tavern guy, he was like, well, he's talking to these fish people. And we thought, well, I'll tell you what, let's try and start this all out for him. Yeah, let's sort this all out for him.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

It was kind of a great. A great adventure where. I mean, this may be spoilers, this, isn't it? But the fishermen gave him some scales that turned into silver. But course we stole the scales and when you get in the daylight, they turn back into scales and not coins anymore. It's kind of quite a picaresque ending that. We were quite rogish and thought we were stealing money, but in the end we weren't. And it did lead to make the greatest NPC portrayal of the year.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Chris Sharp's Fishman.

[Dice]

Yeah. We don't have an award for this, but I think we'll give a special award for Fishman of the Year.

[Judge Blythe]

Fishman of the Year. When I said, well, there's a fishman said. And he went. He just says, all right, okay. Oh, I can't speak to these fishmen. Never mind. Yeah. NPC of the Year Fishman. Hello. This year, Fishman.

[Dice]

Well, I think the Olive Kinnisberg plays players and people who play.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

Award goes to Helvesia Elvesia for Antonia and for Ulrich.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. Double act. Weren't they double that? Yeah, it was quite good. Drunken priest and a slightly. A slightly selfish woman who was quite. It was a very, very entertaining game. And I think as well, it warrants the award as well, because of all the games we've played, it's the one that surprised me the most.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Because when it was suggested. Well, never. I've never heard of it. I'd never heard of it. But I do think it's a very kind of colorful and creative game and lots of stuff in it that you can.

[Dice]

And an example of one of those games as well that you come away from and you think, you know, you experience it in the moment. It only exists in that moment, but you come away and then you remember all the things that happened.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

And it is like a story. You could write it down.

[Judge Blythe]

Yes, that. And we think we said that, didn't we? After some of the. We thought you could write this session down and it would be a story. It would be a good story. That's why it reminded me of like Jack Vance. It would almost be like a vancy picaresque Vancian tale of where we're swapping.

[Dice]

Letters and forging letters.

[Judge Blythe]

That's right, yeah. We got a letter, didn't we, that several people were after. And it ended up being this farce almost of forging a letter and you make your priest making a bad forge.

[Dice]

Because I was drunk.

[Judge Blythe]

Three versions.

[Dice]

I was drunk.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. Three versions of it. And different people who wanted it and trying to pass it off to different people.

[Dice]

The trying to convince a woman that the letter had appeared in a fish miracle. Oh, all great stuff.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. So really, really good, really good game and very, very enjoyable. And like I said, you kind of surprised me. That's a good thing, isn't it? We play a lot of games and sometimes it's good to play something that just takes you by surprise in a good way, I think.

[Dice]

Oh, no, they sat in our chairs. New kid on the top, the table top. Okay, okay. So this is the game that we. Oh, new to us. It looks new to us. Yeah, new to us.

[Judge Blythe]

Cool. Do you want to start with that?

[Dice]

Well, there's been very few games actually that I played for the first time this year. There's one exception that I'm going to put forward, but I don't really want to talk a lot about it because I think it's going to be the part of a future episode.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

Coming soon. And I played quite a bit of West End games. Star Wars.

[Judge Blythe]

Oh, yeah, we did play that, didn't we? I played it with. With Eddie. And you and Eddie, you ran the. The manhunt. Was the manhunt one.

[Dice]

Yeah, manhunt, which I've run a couple of times now. And it's all. It's worked out diff. Again, it's one of those scenarios that's worked out differently each time. It is really a scenario that you're meant to play over a series of sessions. But I did one of my compressions to put it into a one shot, neat little system.

[Judge Blythe]

It is a good system. Yeah, yeah.

[Dice]

D6 system, which you can have a lot. It just, you know, coming back to that thing of rules, it's very light on its feet in terms of rules, but it replicates that fast and loose feeling of Star wars and the Star wars universe.

[Judge Blythe]

I think, I think you're right. What's good about it is it's got quite a light rule set, but there are enough rules and enough things in it to make it feel like Star Wars. Yeah. And hold it together as a Game of Star wars rather than like they're not overdone it on the rules. And sometimes games when. When people are designing something around a specific film or tick idea, they'll put lots of extra rules in to make it seem like that setting. Yeah, but they don't do that. But it still manages to hang together as Star Wars, I think. Quite. Quite an achievement, really. Yeah.

[Dice]

Quite sophisticated in how it can scale as well. So, you know, you can do it for armed combat. So combat rules, for example, work on face to face combat, but you can use them for ship to ship combat. It's the same principles that you're applying and I think that's quite clever. So, yeah, I think the new kid on the top the tabletop is Western games, Star wars, which I want to play some more of this year.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

In 2020 and 25. Yeah. What about you?

[Judge Blythe]

I think mine is clear. Clear cut winner, I suppose because like you, I've not. I've not really encountered and certainly not bought any new systems this year, apart from Doctor who. The Doctor who role playing game. Yeah, the second edition.

[Dice]

Is that a story based game by any chance?

[Judge Blythe]

I'm not sure it is. I'm not sure it is. It has things called story points, but to be honest, it is.

[Dice]

I think it's one of those story games. I think if we did. If we did.

[Judge Blythe]

I think it is. Maybe I won't. I'll never play again then. Come on.

[Dice]

It's.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, but I think the. The V. It's called the Vortex system, isn't it? Yes, system.

[Dice]

It does work very well.

[Judge Blythe]

It does work well and I suppose it. I know what you mean, but I suppose the story. They are called story points. But there's. They're a bit like. A bit like Benny's in them savage worlds in that really what you use them for is to adjust roles. You adjust roles. So it's not. You can use them to come up with story detail, but generally they're used mechanically. I suppose that's the thing about them. But I quite like it. It's a second edition and I always shied away from buying the first edition because I know myself and I know my bank account and I knew that if I'd have bought the first edition, all those separate books about each Doctor, I'd have bought more. Yeah, because we did play it, didn't we, you ransom.

[Dice]

Yeah, we've done an episode, I quite liked it.

[Judge Blythe]

But they've done a second edition which is. It's very similar, it tweaks the game A bit, but not. Not much.

[Dice]

I mean, it's very much backwards compatible. It is, yes.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, very much so. But I suppose what's kind of appealing about it is they've condensed all the stuff about the doctors into two volumes. So rather than buying 14 volumes, you got to just buy two. Yeah. Got all the background for all the different eras of the Doctor. Um, but it's. I suppose it. I thought what's interesting is what you said about Star wars is very true about Doctor who. It's a very light, easy system, but there's enough in it to make it interesting. Yeah. And it does capture Doctor who. It captures the style of Doctor who. I mean, I know Doctor who in style has changed over the years. You know, you look at a Tom Baker one and a Jodie Whittaker one, they are different, but generally some of those kind of key things give it the feeling of Doctor who. So you can create time agents or unit soldiers, there's all sorts of options. But if you run a traditional Doctor who story where there is one of the Doctors or you create your own Time Lord, they're a lot better, but they have very few story points. Whereas the companions are a bit rubbish, but have loads of story points and they can argue about roles more than the Doctor. So the Doctor, in a way, is slightly more jeopardy than they are thing. And I ran it, Albert, and I've run it around it for you, didn't I? Yeah, for our Wednesday group. And I think it's a. It's just a really nice. It's a nice system. I like. I like the system. Yeah.

[Dice]

I would still contend. I mean, I'm not being provocative, but we're, well saying that there's space for different types of games. And you're right, you know, that jeopardy feeling of things hanging on a dice is this experience that Traveler brought. But I do think with this, the Vortex system, I think it is really good. It has a certain flexibility around using story elements that you. Because we came up with a fantastical way of it.

[Judge Blythe]

Does it? You're right, it does. But. But I suppose it's. I suppose it still comes back to some roles at the end of the day.

[Dice]

Yeah, but I never, at any time when I'm playing that I never feel at any point where anything particularly high risk. Yeah, because it isn't in Doctor who, is it? It's like it's mild jeopardy.

[Judge Blythe]

No, but it's. I think what's interesting about it, and I've not really done this because the two times I've run it. It's not really come to that, but there is a certain lethality with the weapons. So some of the weapons in it, yeah, have a thing where they are lethal. So if they. If they hit you and you. They do a. What's called a brilliant success. So they roll two, die. One of the dice is a six and they do it. It's lethal. So you're dead. You are dead. Yeah. And the story points can be used to adjust that role. So if you run out of story points and the Dalek hits you, you are dead. So there is a lethality in it. But I know what you mean. As long as you've got the story points, you can avoid that. As in Doctor who, You can. And another kind of good thing about it is how quite very simple mechanism of combat order gives it the feel of Doctor. Yeah. And that. Yeah, what happens in combat is you talk. If you want to talk, you can talk. You want to run, you can run. And then it's fighting at the end. So if you're confronted by some Daleks, yeah, you can try and talk to them and fool them before they shoot you. They can't shoot you until you've either tried to fool them or run away. And that is very Doctor who, isn't it? That's incredibly Doctor who, isn't it? The Daleks never kind of fire first. They're always talk to him, don't they? And he offers him a jelly baby or something. You know, that's. Yeah. And it's a very simple thing, but it captures the flavor of those stories very, very well.

[Dice]

Yeah, but no, I enjoyed playing it. It'd be good to play that more. I think we've got in the locker some actual play that we recorded of the Autons. I've never put it out.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, yeah, we did, didn't we, with the. The original game. The original game's good. Let's say it's not hugely different. No. There's a bit of controversy. People who like the first edition don't like the second one. But I think the only controversial thing for me is that I have now got a rulebook with a picture of Bradley Welsh on the front cover.

[Dice]

Was it ever? Thus edition wards. Right, next one random roll on an encounter table. Okay, so this is where we talk about stuff that we've done, events that we've attended, and it's been relatively not been a lot of it this year.

[Judge Blythe]

There's not. Because I suppose, like we say, grog the biorhythms isn't It. Export, export, export. Elba grog meat. But we've been to women, to Elba.

[Dice]

Albert, the wizard stuff. That's the one that's in Leamington Spa.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, yeah, been to that. And we've been to some Mopcoms in Manchester, which is like a local. Yeah. Gaming.

[Dice]

Fairly regular.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

And my nomination is. I had a trip to that there. Fancy London.

[Judge Blythe]

Oh, you did, didn't you? I did.

[Dice]

And I went to an event that was being held in a gallery and it was a symposium about role playing games, world building. It was all very, you know, erudite.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

And interesting. It was like the setting. I've wrote about it on the blog, so if you interested, you can read about it there. But it was like in the setting of. Do you remember those youth programs in the 1980s?

[Judge Blythe]

Why don't you?

[Dice]

Yeah, not like a concrete. It's something that'd be on Channel 4 with.

[Judge Blythe]

You mean like the youth program on the young ones present? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of program.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Dice]

It's that scaffolding and bits of concrete here and there.

[Judge Blythe]

Are they not finished yet?

[Dice]

It doesn't look like it's finished. One of the people that were was there, but wasn't there, but was beaming in from the swamps of New Jersey.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

Stu Horvath, when he came on, because he does a vintage RPG podcast and he's had a book out this year and he was there, he's been interviewed and he gave a bit of wisdom that I've written down. I've got it held and I've thought about it all year. And that is RPG's defy analysis.

[Judge Blythe]

Yes, yes. It's a good point though, isn't it? Yeah, very good point. And you can see how most of the controversies around RPGs, how you play them, which are the best games, etc. Etc. Oh, because of that. Yeah, because it's hard to analyze it. You've got people doing actual plays that you can watch and go, oh, that's one way of doing it. But a lot of RPGs, they're just played by people in online, like us, roll 20 every other Wednesday. We do our thing with people who, like, that's what we do. We do it our way. There's no way you can really say it's right or wrong.

[Dice]

Yeah, yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

And I think in a way that's an interesting thing, isn't it, in the modern. The modern world where you hear things about professional GMs. I saw something online. I think it was like a pub can't Remember what it was called now? It was a pub or a bar. Right. But it was. It ran D and D, said, oh, you come to this pub and we'll show you how to play. D and D seemed to be, like, latching onto the idea that D and D was becoming more and more popular and therefore people want to play it. So you come to our pub and we'll. We'll run it. We'll run again. We have. We have professional GMs who will show you how to do it. I thought, I'll show you how to do it. I'll get eight to a pipe. Because you. Yeah, you have to show people what to do. This is a D20. This, roll this. Yeah. More than that. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, of course. But at the same time, like I said, it puts me back up a bit for that reason, I think, and it always has. And until you quoted that at me, I didn't know why. I think. Now I know why I think it is because it's people trying to bracket it and define it as, this is how you do it. Don't do it like that, do it like this. We're professionals. Pay me money to run a game because I know what I'm doing. You don't know what you're doing. You run the kitchen table doing this game. You don't know what you're doing. I know what I'm doing. And that's the kind of thing I'm not sure you do, because it defies analysis. People do all sorts of things with it, don't they? Yeah.

[Dice]

All kinds of solo games, story games, tactical games, all different approaches, and people.

[Judge Blythe]

Want different things from it. So you can take exactly the same game. People will play it in totally different ways. Even something like 5th Edition D& D, you could take that. The most popular game, et cetera, et cetera. There are people who play it as a dungeon crawl. There's people play it wandering around Waterdeep, ordering the breakfast and buying a fancy hat and never rolling. Hardly rolling the dice. Then there's other people who play it as if it's about some geopolitical campaign, about people trying to control different parts of the world and all that kind of thing. They're all playing the same game in different ways.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

And that is actually fine.

[Dice]

Yeah, that's fine.

[Judge Blythe]

And that's the thing. He's right. It defies analysis.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

It's what frustrates people about it.

[Dice]

It frustrates people about it. I suppose it's what keeps people in podcasts Isn't it?

[Judge Blythe]

It is what keeps people in podcasts trying to define it. But it also means that's why when you go to a convention, We've had this experience where you go to a convention and you find yourself playing a game at a convention and thinking, what's going on here? I'll do it like this. Yeah. But that's just me not quite enjoying that style. But that doesn't mean it's wrong. It isn't, you know, it's just a device to explore something in the way that you want to explore it. Yeah.

[Dice]

So that was. It was a good day. It was good just to have a trip down to London. Went into it and then came away and came home. It's really well organized.

[Judge Blythe]

It.

[Dice]

It was called Planar Effect Gaming Imaginaries and it was by David Blandy and Jamie Sutcliffe. So that was really, really good. But he did give me an idea. I know that I've got enough on, but it'd be good to organize a symposium up here, won't it?

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, have a proper chat. Yeah, proper chat. About the thing that can't be defined. Try and define the thing that can't be defined. It's a symposium with you. Walk in, there's a sign. Don't worry, it can't be defined. Go to the pub.

[Dice]

So it gets the award this time.

[Judge Blythe]

Well, that's. That's my Random Encounter.

[Dice]

What's your Random Encounter?

[Judge Blythe]

My Random Encounter. It's not that random because it's Paul Fricker. We know Paul, don't we?

[Dice]

Oh, yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

So it's not. Not really random. But it. But it is. It is random because there's a random question thrown at me over the. Over the table in the curry place at Auburn. So on the Friday night, everyone goes for a curry and I was sat opposite Paul Fricker and.

[Dice]

And was the conversation about the menu in the Indian.

[Judge Blythe]

There was conversation with the menu. It was confusing menu. Yeah.

[Dice]

It is a bit like one of those role playing supplements that tells you everything about the world in which these curries come from.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dice]

The history of the curries for 700 years.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, 700 years. This carries been made traditionally in Southeast Asia. You think? Yeah. What is it?

[Dice]

What is it? What is.

[Judge Blythe]

What am I actually going to be getting here? Yeah, I think me and Paul were eating a green thing with potatoes in it. Like green stuff with potatoes. But anyway, it's quite nice. But it was. It weren't. No Jail Frazier, put it that way anyway. But that's that's beside the point. But after that, after we'd all go over the menu, he. He presented me with this question. He said, what kind of world. What. What kind of world fantasy world is the world of D and D? And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, when you think about it, people often talk about the world of D and D being like this, like that, like the other. But it's not really like any fantasy world, and yet everyone understands it. Yeah. So I just can't say anything. Is the. The world of D and D is like Lord of the Rings? It's not like Lord of the Rings, is it really. It has elements of that, but it's not like Lord of the Rings, is it? Is it like dying Earth, you know? But no, it's not like dying Earth. No. It's not really like any one fantasy. It's like an amalgam. So he was talking about, like, magic potions. He said, people in magic potions. There's no magic potions. Magic potions all over the place. In Lord of the Rings, it not really is, though.

[Dice]

No. Or in many.

[Judge Blythe]

In anything. Yeah.

[Dice]

Examples.

[Judge Blythe]

But it's not Alice in Wonderland, magic potions, Alice in Wonderland. So, yeah, it's kind of like brings together all these different components of fantasy and make believe into this world that is a world in its own right. It's D. And D is its own world, but not just as its own world, but it's a world people understand very quickly.

[Dice]

Yeah, it's like a. It's like a linga franca of worlds.

[Judge Blythe]

Yes, yeah, yeah.

[Dice]

That if you put it in front of somebody, they instantly get where it is. But. Yeah, but it's everything and nothing.

[Judge Blythe]

It's everything and nothing. Yeah.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

And he's kind of posed this question. We had a conversation about it, and I thought again, that's kind of stuck with me. It's a weird thing of.

[Dice]

Yeah, it's.

[Judge Blythe]

It's everything. And it's kind of everything to nothing all at once, isn't it? It's really odd and it. It resonates as well, because I think in the last podcast I talked about for Grog Meat, running an old ad module called the Secret of Bone Hill. And I'm not doing that now. And one of the reasons I'm not doing it is because when I started working on it, it all felt a bit bland. It's a bit like, like you say, everything and nothing. The world of D, D's everything and nothing all at once. It's a kind of Strange world where there's some magic potions here, there's a magical this, magical that. There's something very familiar about it. And you can see why it's a popular game because in a way, if you present that to people who've never played a role playing game, and this is kind of Paul's point, I think they would cotton onto it very quickly.

[Dice]

As we were saying earlier, it's the problem presenting a secondary world, isn't it, where it's not Earth, it's not Earth, it's an imagined Earth. So what do you present to people with D and D? It's cliched, but it also defies cliche because it's its own thing.

[Judge Blythe]

Yes, it's its own thing, yeah. Is it pseudo medieval? Not really, no. It's like a mixture of. Of times in a way, ranging from Dark Ages right through to. I think we talked about this in a podcast earlier this year, bordering on 17th century, kind of Europe, it's. And everything in between all at once.

[Dice]

With a bit of the frontiers of Western America as well.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, yes, Yeah. A bit of Wild west in there as well. There's a bit of everything, like I said, a bit of Lord of the Rings, bit of Jack Vance, bit of Lankmar, a bit of Corner, bit of Alice in Wonderland, bit of all sorts of things that are in there that comprise this world that people do understand quite readily. Whereas they say other settings. Maybe people wouldn't quite understand those settings or get. Not so much understand them. But I suppose maybe Paul's point is it's very easy to slot into it and operate as a player in that world. Yeah. Whereas you might understand the world, the universe of travel, for example. You could explain it to someone. But maybe it's a bit trickier if you've never played a role playing game to fit into that world. You see what I mean?

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

I thought it was kind of really interesting conversation because a bit like that, the thing about the defy explanation, when someone says it, you go, yes, I've always thought that. But you never thought it. I've never thought it. But now you've said it. That's what I've been thinking. And it's a bit like Paul's comment, I thought, oh, yeah, that's right. That's the thing I've always struggled with a bit. And like this secret of Bone Hill, I'm now running something in the Midlands using old school essentials that has just a lot more flavour to it and it's quite a specific setting, whereas D and D is like. Yeah, it's everything and nothing all at once.

[Dice]

Are you sure? It's my round this point of the year. We also like to reflect on stuff that we quite glad to see the back of. So we imagine ourselves in a balloon.

[Judge Blythe]

Oh yeah.

[Dice]

Lifting and so what have you chucked out of the balloon this year?

[Judge Blythe]

Chuck out the balloon. You see, normally there's been some kind of bad experience, hasn't there? And I've chucked that. But I don't know, this has been a really bad experience. Game wise. There's been some bad experience life wise. But game wise are there anything.

[Dice]

Well actually packaged those things that have been bad in life and chuck them.

[Judge Blythe]

Things have got in the way of gaming. Yeah, chuck them over the side. I think that's.

[Dice]

This was the year that I finally cut ties with Twitter. I did. Oh yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Maybe I'd agree with you now.

[Dice]

Yeah, I suppose everybody's doing it now, aren't they? But it was, it was strangely it was a strange breakup because the Grognard Files started as a Twitter concept. We started on there myself and Daily Dwarf we started about the same time and we started reflecting on gaming from the past and it became this podcast. I just think it's made me reflect on a bit on the whole thing of engaging on social media, which was probably a biggest percentage of the friction in my life, my day to day existence a couple of years ago than it is now. And I feel better for it that it's not as important as it was.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, and I'm very similar but I mean you've always engaged with a bit more than me. But there was a point where I engaged with Twitter I think for a few years now actually when I was on Twitter. Twitter, I've drifted away from it. I kind of there I like things and it's good to. For sending messages. Gaming group messaging, direct messaging was quite useful. But I agree with you. I certainly for the last two, two and a half years before coming off it, I'd stopped really engaging with it in terms of posting things.

[Dice]

But I think you can't ignore the fact that it brought a lot of people together. A lot of people that are now our friends formed through that kind of community that was built up and you see blue sky in many ways feel as a look and feel of Twitter 10, eight years ago. But I feel very little need to replicate that experience of eight years ago. Quite glad for it to just be a kind of a side elements.

[Judge Blythe]

Well, you know, I think I once said this boy, the Thing that you know I dislike about social media and a Moss, don't you?

[Dice]

What's that?

[Judge Blythe]

It's the social aspect of it. Do you know I like the most about social media?

[Dice]

Is it the social.

[Judge Blythe]

It's social aspect of it?

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

That's kind of irony of it, really. It's like the fact that there's all these people, some of you, people you don't know, banging on about stuff. You think, oh, for God's sake, like being at some awful party full of people we don't know. But what are you talking about? But equally, course, if it wasn't for Twitter, none of this kind of would be happening. So the social side of it is also a great thing.

[Dice]

It's kind of as an analogy. Earlier this week I went to Co Op Life to see Paul Heaton.

[Judge Blythe]

Yes.

[Dice]

The Beautiful south, or the Beautiful south as it was written on the side. And he did a performance there and it was full of people who packed and I saw a few friends that saw familiar faces and they came over and said hello and went there. Then part way through, it all kicked off and people started punching each other around me and I had to move. That's Twitter, isn't it?

[Judge Blythe]

Yes, that's a good. Yeah, good analogy. Yeah. You meet people you like, but then eventually everyone start punching each other. If you don't know, we'll start punching each other and somehow you'll be caught in the middle of it all. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah. It's a strange, strange thing of. The social side of it is great.

[Dice]

We're all here to try and enjoy ourselves, but you've decided, you decided to.

[Judge Blythe]

Ruin it by punching each other.

[Dice]

Punching each other.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

Anyway, that's Twitter.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. Maybe we both agree for once that's the thing that's going over the side.

[Dice]

Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Goodbye, Twitter.

[Dice]

Next up is the grog pod of the year. What would be your choice? It's hard to judge.

[Judge Blythe]

Our own work, but it's hard to judge. I don't know, I've been doing it.

[Dice]

For the last hour. So you haven't listened to the interviews until they've await.

[Judge Blythe]

No, no, I have a different. Yeah, I do have a different take on it. You. You edit it. So you've listened to it endlessly and I. I record endlessly. Record endlessly.

[Dice]

I might cut out one of those endlessly, but I might leave them on Endlessly.

[Judge Blythe]

Endlessly. Endlessly, yeah, go on Endlessly. So, yeah, I listened to once, but I just like to know. I always find it difficult to Pick a favorite, really. Because I suppose, although I don't have that. I don't. I've not edited them, but I always have a bit. You've still got a bit of knowledge behind the scenes about. Is it one that you think. Is it one that you think, oh, this is going to be any good? Oh, but it is quite good. Oh, struggled with that. But it sounds all right from an.

[Dice]

Editorial point of view. We want you to again, go back to basics at the start of this year and just going to kind of turn over a bit more in nostalgia, hit a few nostalgia buttons. And that was a deliberate choice. And this year, and I think, I think we have done it. I do think in the year ahead it'll be good just to, as we said last time, just explore some games that. Yeah. Are not familiar to us but might be familiar to other people.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dice]

Okay. Do you want to know?

[Judge Blythe]

Go on. What are the great grog. Grog. Groggy public.

[Dice]

Well, this year, as you know, has been a year of elections. So this is a. I think in the history. More people around the world this year have engaged in the democratic process.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, that's true.

[Dice]

Than any other side.

[Judge Blythe]

I think the way it's all fallen. I read that somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Batman. Bolton turnout was 46%.

[Dice]

Okay, so this is the vote. So we've got a joint second plates.

[Judge Blythe]

Okay. Yeah.

[Dice]

Joint second place at 15% of the vote. And that is for White Dwarf covers with Thunder Phase.

[Judge Blythe]

Okay.

[Dice]

White Dwarf covers with Thunder Face. Do you remember that?

[Judge Blythe]

I do, yeah, I remember that.

[Dice]

And the second one was a joint second place is Monsters with James Holloway. Monsters.

[Judge Blythe]

Oh, yeah, yeah, I can see that. That's a good view. Some good insights into monsters.

[Dice]

I think I enjoy putting those monster episodes together.

[Judge Blythe]

And again, we've talked about Paul Fricker's comment and the comment from your symposium, but I think James Holloway's comment has stuck with me as well. Again, another one of those things where you think, yes, I've always known that, but I've never been able to articulate where he said role playing games are defined by their adversaries. They were defined by the things that will oppose you because generally the players will create their own characters. But the things that are there in the game book that are created for you are the monsters. Yeah, that's true, isn't it? In any game, it's what's the opposition? What's the problem that you're facing? Who are the enemies? Who are the bad guys?

[Dice]

The antagonists shape the game.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. The antagonists shape the game. It could be companies, monsters, aliens, whoever. But that's. Yeah, I thought I said all those points. We go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That is very true. I've always known that.

[Dice]

Boy, you've said it, but you've said.

[Judge Blythe]

It and obviously you stick to say it. There you go.

[Dice]

And by a bit of a landslide, the one that our listeners enjoyed the most was Traveler Revisited with Mark Miller.

[Judge Blythe]

Oh, right, okay.

[Dice]

Yeah, so a big banner headline and you know. Yeah, you get that Spotify all wrapped up thing.

[Judge Blythe]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Dice]

Delights.

[Judge Blythe]

Reminds you of things you were listening to when you were drunk. Yeah. Why steps on this? Oh, I remember. Yeah, I was drunk one night.

[Dice]

Number three artist.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. Listen to tragedy too many times.

[Dice]

700% more people listen to that episode than any other episode really, so. But they did stick around, did that because the statistics would like be on an even keel then, wouldn't they?

[Judge Blythe]

Throughout the year they'd come back, give me 700%. The next one. The next one.

[Dice]

So people came to listen to Mark Mill, heard us talk about Hobnobs and never came back.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, I thought the Martin Miller interview was great, but then they started talking about abnorms in incomprehensible accents and I decided to never listen to it again. Is this supposed to be fun? Yeah, okay. No, it's not supposed to be fun. It's educational.

[Dice]

And last and not least, we award the Groggy yes of the year. Groggy of the year. We award to a member of the Grog squad who we think needs a special mention. Yeah, the worthy winners in the past.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah, go on, open the golden envelope.

[Dice]

And the golden envelope.

[Judge Blythe]

And it's Roderick Hamilton, organizer of morpcom.

[Dice]

Organizer Mort Con Things deserves special mention because we said, didn't we, that this year we've had a relatively few conventions that we've attended. So having a regular face to face group on our doorstep in Manchester. Yeah, it's been good. It has had a regular pattern and it just goes to show, I think if you've got somebody who's willing to keep it going.

[Judge Blythe]

Keep it going. Yeah. And it used to be go play. And that stopped and Roderick kind of picked up Lebaton, so to speak, and carried on with Mortcom and that been a good thing because without him it would have just stopped. And for us it's like you say, it's a face to face thing. We get five or six face to face games in every year with different people through that. And it's they sit on our doorstep. So. Yeah.

[Dice]

And it's a nice, friendly group of people who go there regularly and some people who just happen to come along.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah.

[Dice]

And we play a game and go for a drink afterwards.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. What's not to like about that?

[Dice]

So thanks, Roderick, for keeping that going.

[Judge Blythe]

Yeah. A worthy winner.

[Dice]

Right?

[Judge Blythe]

That said, okay, not here for another year.

[Dice]

Another year. Yeah.

[Judge Blythe]

Where do they go? New Years? Where do they come from? But there we go.

[Dice]

2025 is going to be the year once we hit August. So we've been doing this nonsense for 10 years.

[Judge Blythe]

Feels longer.

[Dice]

It does. See you later. Bye, then.

[Judge Blythe]

Goodbye.

[Dice]

There isn't another bit. So there you have it.

[Host]

2024. As I'm recording this, I'm just on the brink of doing 2024's grog meet, which has been deferred to January 2025.

[Dice]

For reasons I won't go into right now.

[Host]

But, yes, I've not got a lot of time available, so I'm going to.

[Dice]

Keep this one quite short.

[Host]

Just to say thank you for listening, thank you for sharing, thanks for reviewing, thanks for staying with us all through this year, and particular thanks to the patrons, old and new, who have contributed to making sure that this thing stays on the road. Please, in 2025, if you do nothing else, pass it on to someone else. Yes, this is going to be the 10th year of the Grognard Files and we've got a few things, things planned up our sleeves, but until then, adiosumy goes.