Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 121

A Special Show From Rabbit Con, Board Games, Rock Band, Face To Face Gaming and more!

This week we have a very special show as Cory "Demiurge" Banks, Lara "KaterinLHC" Crigger and Erik "wordsmythe" Hanson join Julian Murdoch live from his basement studio. The crew talks about what they're playing, gaming in person and shares some recordings from the gathering. If you want to submit a question or comment call in to our voicemail line at (612) 284-4563!

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined. You can also submit a question or comment call in to our voicemail line at (612) 284-4563!

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

"GWJ Conference Call More Cowbell" (Ian Dorsch) - 0:39:27

Comments

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Great show. Good to hear some new voices!

I think people play the Wii because they forgot how to play charades.

Hearing y'all talk about Conflict of Heroes reminded me of a great story Dear Old Dad told me about his wargaming days when he was in college. He belonged to a strategy game of the month club, and the first game was Waterloo.

He was down to his last unit of light cavalry. His friend mounted several divisions to root him out of the town he'd holed up in. A roll of the dice later, and Dear Old Dad's cavalry was dead, but so were all of his friends units.

The conversation following that went something like this:

Dad's Friend: EXCHANGE!?!!?
Dear Old Dad: We sell our lives dearly.
DF: No Sh**!

Thinking about that always makes me smile. Thanks for reminding me of it.

I have a singing voice like an angel.

Katerin, taking things back to my 7 year old level with Magic The Gathering.
I made a whole goblin deck, based not on winning (I never did), but because it had the best quotes and pictures.

Ye gods! Make it stop, make it stooooop!

(guess how far into the podcast I am ;))

nossid wrote:

Ye gods! Make it stop, make it stooooop!

(guess how far into the podcast I am ;))

Am I talking?

I'm guessing "Round and Round."

Lovely to hear your voice again Katerin! Good job with the Con audio fill-ins, too.

Video and Board games in one podcast, great stuff

Really liked the podcast,can I have one of this weekly please?

Who is the one that sings at the end? Cory?

Yes, that's Cory. It's all I managed to record of the morning coffee jams, and it was the worst he sang all weekend. The boy needs to join a band and give up his day job. You should hear him sing "Rio" or anything from Oasis.

Okay okay okay! I'll buy Dominion so it can sit in my office with my other boardgames that don't get played nearly enough!

Yay! Great show. New voices I would welcome having on more often.

Only thing I didn't quite enjoy that much was that neverending tempting of Rock Band, or World Tour for that matter. And well, it was pretty much talk about the Wii, but it was quite relevant.

THX

Fjornsvavne wrote:

Yay! Great show. New voices I would welcome having on more often.

Only thing I didn't quite enjoy that much was that neverending tempting of Rock Band, or World Tour for that matter. And well, it was pretty much talk about the Wii, but it was quite relevant.

THX

I agree. It really could have used more talk about literature and language.

KaterinLHC wrote:

I have a singing voice like an angel.

An angry angel, maybe. (Kidding! It was lovely!) I personally would have rather heard you sing Rush. Alittle disappointed, frankly.

Guys and Lady, this was a fantastically timed podcast - This weekend, I'm hosting the Inaugural Confusion of the Honorable Association of Tacticians and Strategists (HATS). Basically, after a few fun board games at Christmas, I really wanted to get back to the face-to-face tabletop gaming with my friends, but accept that none of them would really be the PnP/DnD type. But all of them are smart and competitive. A couple military types in there and suddenly wargames seem like the obvious choice.
I've got some standard family boardgames and I invested in the Tide of Iron box to get us started on the wargame side. (Given the choice between Company of Heroes and ToI, I went with the one that had miniatures.) So I'm looking forward to hopefully doing it regularly and really capturing what I loved about my busiest gaming years (high school LAN parties of 6-10 and college PnP RPGs.)

The comments about social gaming were all quite relevant as well. This Saturday is a slightly different beast than we have tackled before as a group, with different guys from different backgrounds and 'friend circles,' but I'm sure we're all going to have a blast. There'll be beer, Six Nations Rugby and plenty of Wii. Everyone loves the Wii when they come over, but I think I'd have a hard time bringing everybody down just for a day of Wii-age. Maybe when they release Rock Band 2 over here, that might change.

Horribly envious of Rabbit-Con, but I'll get my dose on Saturday. You're all welcome to join in, if ever you're over here.

Well done. Really enjoyed it.

I wonder if rabbit's daughter was wondering who the heck these weirdos are.

Oh! Dr. Dave will be tickled by the end. I'll have him listen in tonight. In the future, we are not hauling up any games that have a posted play time of more than 90 minutes. Android and BSG got a lot of flirtatious looks, but no one was up for the commitment.

Here's the site for the BSG board game in case anyone's curious. Took me forever wading through the slow-as-molasses BSG Wiki to find it.

Games that take a whole evening are always hard to get time for, especially if someone walks by with something shiny, like Rock Band.

Very cool episode guys, would be good to have Katerin and Wordsmythe on more often. I was thinking it just as Demi said it.

No Tom Sawyer? Much disappointment.

Regarding Shawn Elliotts blog post, I think his point was more that RB/GH are something of a return to the older traditions of communal music making.

*edit* And Katerin didn't know rabbit has Wii Fit? She clearly doesn't listen to the podcast, of there was a 3 month period when she didn't.

A few notes as I'm listening:

  • Wordsmythe isn't British? I had no idea. I knew he lived in Chicago, but I had assumed he was an émigré.
  • Katerin, you have a beautiful speaking voice and were a great contributor to the discussion, and I would love to hear you on the podcast more often.
  • I love face-to-face gaming, but I don't enjoy gaming online. This might have changed significantly from the last time I tried it out (i.e., with the introduction of headsets), but I found the experience of playing online to be cold and unpleasant. However, I don't have too many friends that I hang out with regularly in person, so I find myself drawn at times to online gaming just to enjoy what I'm doing with other people. Isn't that a significant part of gaming with other people: sharing the experience of something you enjoy with people you like?
  • When I was in college, we had organized parties in my dorm room to watch people play through Chrono Cross and Metal Gear Solid 2. I'm not surprised at all to hear Katerin talking about doing that with the SNES.

great episode! loved hearing about pencil paper / board games as well as video games!

i just wanted to make a quick comment about psn (don't worry, not a fanboy!). While the social gaming experience on xbl is soooo much better than on psn, i don't think that sony is specifically targeting people looking for single-player experiences at the exclusion of those that prefer multiplayer.

and there are more than a few sony exclusives that are specifically targeting people who want a social experience. LBP is one obvious example. i've had many fun games with friends and strangers, all who had mics, just playing random levels together. load times are painful, but lbp still has a great little built-in party system. resistance 2 also offers great multiplayer options. almost everyone who plays has a mic and there is usually a lot of communication between players (in co-op at least). i also play a lot of tf2 on my ps3 and there is a pretty solid die-hard community on there - complete with clans and a league - all organized by the players themselves (thanks to no support from valve or sony).

so the community is there. as suggested on the podcast, not throwing a mic of some sort into every box was sony's big mistake, along with psn being WAYYY behind xbl by not having any sort of party-system.

in conclusion, sony's trying - they're just sucking.

Anyone want to see Wordsmythe doing Wii Fit's Hula Hoop minigame? Anyone want to see him shake his money maker? I've got just the thing for you.

Demiurge wrote:

Anyone want to see Wordsmythe doing Wii Fit's Hula Hoop minigame? Anyone want to see him shake his money maker? I've got just the thing for you.

Finger --> Butt.

Did I do it right?

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Very cool episode guys, would be good to have Katerin and Wordsmythe on more often. I was thinking it just as Demi said it.

No Tom Sawyer? Much disappointment.

Oh, there was lots of Tom Sawyer. We did it three times, and each time I sang. Rabbit was taking mercy on you by not including it in the podcast.

I believe Tom Sawyer is now banned at the rabbit-hole.

And Katerin didn't know rabbit has Wii Fit? She clearly doesn't listen to the podcast, of there was a 3 month period when she didn't. ;)

Actually, it was just a brain fart; after we wrapped, I realized I even remembered when he bought it (because he lorded it over me that he was able to get a copy, and I wasn't). My only excuse is that by that point, I hadn't had enough gin.

adam.greenbrier wrote:

Katerin, you have a beautiful speaking voice

Glad you qualified that, else I would've suspected you mixed me up with Cory.

Demiurge wrote:

Anyone want to see Wordsmythe doing Wii Fit's Hula Hoop minigame? Anyone want to see him shake his money maker? I've got just the thing for you.

God bless you Mr. Banks. My only regret was that this was before everyone else got there. Think of the public humiliation in person!

It looks like he is spastically humping the air and then all of a sudden throws his hands up for a second, only to resume his humping immediatly afterwards.

Demiurge wrote:

Anyone want to see Wordsmythe doing Wii Fit's Hula Hoop minigame? Anyone want to see him shake his money maker? I've got just the thing for you.

Quoting so we can get an embedded version in here.

One could make a truly weird animated avatar from that, if we had those. Which we don't. Thankfully ;).

KaterinLHC wrote:
adam.greenbrier wrote:

Katerin, you have a beautiful speaking voice

Glad you qualified that, else I would've suspected you mixed me up with Cory. :)

The boy's got some pipes.

Demiurge wrote:

Anyone want to see Wordsmythe doing Wii Fit's Hula Hoop minigame? Anyone want to see him shake his money maker? I've got just the thing for you.

That ... That is the best evidence I've yet seen that maybe I shouldn't get Wii Fit.

adam.greenbrier wrote:

That ... That is the best evidence I've yet seen that maybe I should get Wii Fit.

Fixed.

Watching others humiliating themselves is easily 50% of the Wii's appeal to me.

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