Ah, I know those of you that check this page are wondering what in the world is going on with the show? I'll admit to a bit of flagging motivation of late. After the hard drive crash, Cam and I did record a show but as I was editing it, I realized that it just wasn't very good. We seemed to simply be going through the motions and not really finding the fire that animated us in previous shows.

So, Cam and I are going to look at re-vitalizing the show a bit. I think the main theme will not change - Cam and I talking about the games we play and how to get the most out of them. You may see some segments shortened or cut altogether though. I am also looking to cut the length down to one hour.

I would especially like to hear from you, our listeners, what you would like to hear us chew the fat about on-air. To be honest, we don't get a lot of email, maybe one or perhaps two messages per show. Please, send us your feedback! What shows and segments have you particularly enjoyed and which ones made you hit fast-forward? What sort of segments would you like to see us do? Do you like the reviews, and should we continue with them? Any feedback will be eagerly read and taken into consideration!

Hopefully, we can record again at the beginning of December, and present a new, and hopefully, improved Godzilla Gaming Podcast!

Mike

I'm sure all our loyal listeners out there are wondering when we'll have the next show up. Unfortunately, the hard drive on my laptop died and this is the machine I use to record and mix the show on. My older Mac (which I am typing this post on) can record, but when Cam and I tried this, the audio quality was so poor (Skype + not as much memory in this old Mac = crappy output) that we realized we would have to postpone the recording until I get my laptop fixed.

Hopefully, that will be very soon!

So, fear not, we're not going away! Once I get my laptop fixed we will record the next show as soon as we can!

Thanks to all our listeners for hanging with us! Stick around - we WILL be back!

We’ve got a great show for you this month! Luke Crane, creator of the Burning Wheel RPG is helping us co-host the show! We also interview Luke in our feature segment, and preview his new game, The Blossoms Are Falling, which is a Japan/samurai themed Burning Wheel implementation that truly focuses on what it means to be a samurai!

As you are probably also aware, the Godzilla Gaming Podcast is up for an ENnie Award for Best Podcast! Online voting continues through to July 29th. Head on over there and show your support!

You can also show vote for a slate of indie gaming products nominated for this year’s Ennies. Check out all the nominees, including Luke’s Burning Empires, at summer-revolution.com !

Fortunately, Glico’s Pocky sticks are magnitudes better than some of the crap we’ve eaten on the show! If any of you out there have discovered some wacky J-snack you’d like us to try, drop us line!

As always, send feedback to godzilla.gaming@gmail.com or hit us up here on the blog!

Feedback – 00:04:34

What We’re Playing – 00:14:15

Gaming In J-Land – 00:30:31

Feature: Interview w/ Luke Crane – 00:35:34

Preview: The Blossoms Are Falling – 01:04:54

How about that? The Godzilla Gaming Podcast has been nominated for an ENnie Award for Best Podcast! This is the first year podcasts have had a category in the ENnies, which are rapidly becoming one of the hobby's most coveted awards. To even have a shot at this is extremely exciting!!

Ah, but look at the list of nominees and you will see that despite our namesake, we stand in the company of giants! Pulling off a win is going to take more than an earthshaking roar and radioactive halitosis!

All you GGP fans, head on over to the ENnies site and vote (when the time comes)!

http://www.ennieawards.com/2007noms-1.html

Voting begins July 16th and ends on the 29th. Vote early and often!

The roller coaster of life throws some wild turns at you every once in a while. I started a new job at the beginning of May and trying to get up to speed took all my energy and time, so, the May podcast has become the June podcast.

I’m also moving in mid-June, so that may also impact the schedule. But all you loyal GGP fans never fear! The show survived my international move – it can survive a cross-town one – and Cam and I will definitely keep on keepin’ on!

We really would welcome ideas for feature topics from you all! If you have an idea for a discussion, please let us know!

godzilla.gaming@gmail.com

And pin yourself on our frappr map!

Good samurai RPGs? Sengoku, L5R, and Bushido are the main ones but we’re always on the look out for interesting new ones. The Mountain Witch has a samurai theme but is really less about samurai/ronin than it is about trust and character issues in general.

Oh I can’t get enough of 2300AD! The new D20 version, 2320AD is out now in PDF format, and it looks pretty good. I bought it for the background and the advanced timeline, since I’m not a D20 fan. Also looking at Burning Empires (which Cam is already into) and Wild Talents. And Cam gets his zombie campaign going!

But Cam can’t get any Asse! Send us your weird J-snacks and if we can track them down, we’ll do a taste test!

We’re talking about turning your campaign model on its head and drawing outside the lines. Tell us about your campaigns that went off the beaten track!

Carry is now back in print and available from IPR (so ignore what I said during the show – it went back in print just this week). This truly is a roleplaying game about war, in a way no other game with this theme has done it before. If you really want to try something different, give Carry a shot!

See you next month!

As I mentioned in the intro, we’ve been invited to submit the GGP to the Ennie Awards (“For Your Consideration� eh?) and help get a Best Gaming Podcast Award category going. If it happens and you see Godzilla there on the ballot, you know what to do!

If we manage to get a game of shock: social science fiction under our belts you’ll definitely hear a review of it.

Not a lot going on for me but do check out the Endgame Minicons! Cam wound up The Mountain Witch and Escape From Innsmouth, which is out of print but well worth hunting down. Now the lucky schmoe gets to play Burning Empires next! Am I jealous? Yes!

But if I’m getting over-excited perhaps I need a shot of Deeppresso.

Our feature this month looks to movie trailers as sources of inspiration for RPG campaigns. I was looking at Pathfinder, which at least looks cool, and Cam, thinking about his upcoming “serious� zombie campaign, dips into the trailer for 28 Weeks Later for his inspiration. What sort of movies have you guys based campaigns on? What trailers for upcoming films look exciting to you? Drop us a line and let us know!

Deadlands (link is to the PEG webstore) is an old favorite of mine that got an extensive workout at my table a few years back. This month Cam and I look at this fine example of 90’s RPG game design. Get your copy on eBay, or from the Pinnacle Entertainment Group website. These days though, I highly recommend the Savage Worlds version of Deadlands. You’ll need the core Savage Worlds rulebook in addition to the Deadlands: Reloaded book to play.

As always, godzilla.gaming@gmail.com

See you next month!

It’s always a good feeling to get another show finished up and posted for everyone!

I can be found haunting the RPG shelves at Endgame in Oakland, CA these days. If you’re interested in meeting me in person sometime, keep an eye on the Thursday Nite RPG Madness page (I’ll be running a game of Godlike in April) and I'll probably come to the next minicon they run there. Endgame is my favorite game store and the guys who run it really know how to make it a great place for gamers to do their thing. Give a listen to my buds over at 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction and Ogre Cave too!

This month we drop a few comments about good places to get English RPGs in Tokyo. The first being Shosen Bookmart in Jinbocho/Ochanomizu, and the other being Yellow Submarine in Shinjuku. The web pages and maps are in Japanese, but if you’re living there, or going there, I’m sure you can handle the language barrier.

The Kheper scale for hardness in science fiction is pretty interesting. Surf around to some of the links too. Also, in my search for star mapping software, I’ve found some interesting stuff on Winchell Chung’s page on the subject (grognard pop-quiz – Who is Winchell Chung?)

And for something completely different, a review of Dogs in the Vineyard! Hit the Lumpley Games website for those cool extras we mentioned in the show.

We’d really like to hear from you guys about what we should talk about next. You listen to the show, you know what we like to talk about – suggest something you would like to discuss with us in person if you could and we’ll see if we can’t give it a good chewing over!

As always godzilla.gaming@gmail.com

See you next month!

OK, I’ve found a little piece of software that has taken care of the volume problems in the recording. It still fluctuates a bit here and there, but it's a marked improvement from before. There’s also a bit of quality loss, but I’ll worry about that later – one step at a time here! It still sounds a lot better. Anyway, I’m, reposting the “re-mastered� show. Enjoy!

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Hey, Happy New Year! OK, a bit late for that but anyway, we mean it! I think we really are back on schedule now, and all that remains is to work the kinks out of our recording set-up.

Cam will likely continue to procrastinate on his Unknown Armies campaign – you can bug him about by sending him an email! godzilla.gaming@gmail.com Feedback from you guys really keeps us going!

I’ve made EndGame in Oakland my FLGS, and you can catch me there at one of their mini-cons, or on Thursday nights!

The Mountain Witch, Cat, Call of Cthulhu, and True20 have all been on our tables recently. Lots of gaming going on – hope you’re getting some too! Absolutely check out Jason Morningstar's Grey Ranks (still in playtest), which is a take on WW2 gaming that I guarantee you have not experienced before!

Japanese convenience stores have all kinds of weird snacks. Some of these you can also find in Japanese grocery stores right here in the U.S.! I get my J-snack fix at Yaoya-san in El Cerrito, and the Nijiya Market in San Francisco’s Japantown.

Feature - This One Goes to Eleven: Bringing the Awesome to Your Game
One of the best gaming podcasts out there is Son of Kryos, and they talk about bringing the Awesome all the time! Check ‘em out! You will also not regret tuning into The Durham Three, who have their finger on the pulse of Awesome!

Of course, we'd like to hear from you what is Awesome! in your games and how you achieve it! Send us your comments!

Review: Nobilis – Impenetrable! Unplayable! Beautiful! Amazing! All these words have been used to describe Rebecca Borgstrom’s Nobilis, what Cam calls “the best game you’ve never played.� Go get the player downloads from the Guardians of Order website (company’s dead but the stuff is still there) and start there. Then when you’ve grokked the system (all of like, 2 pages) start nibbling on the main tome itself.

See you next month!

At last! It’s good to get the show back on the road! This month Cam and I are talking about bringing new people into the gaming hobby. To help us out, we’ve got Jenny McConnell, a co-worker of mine from Tokyo, to help us out and give us her perspective on being a newbie gamer.

There's a bit of ghosting on the soundtrack during the feature - still shaking down the equipment here so I apologize for that.

I’ll be running The Mountain Witch in January at Endgame in Oakland, California. Endgame is the gamestore I’ve always wanted to go to, and one of the owners is Chris Hanrahan of the Ogre Cave Audio Report, which is the premier gaming industry news podcast (as far as I’m, concerned).

Nobilis, Warhammer (CSI: Middenheim!), and The Mountain Witch were all on the table last month. If anyone out there has played these, shoot me an email – I’d love to hear what your group did with these!

Next month I think we’ll scrounge up some interesting J-snack for your gastronomic edification (did I just use ‘edification’ in a sentence) but this month we do a little traveling. Check out the Japanese Sword Museum and the Edo-Tokyo Museum if you’re in Tokyo, and the Toshogu Shrine is in Nikko, only a 90-minute train ride from Ueno. All three are perfect for getting you pumped for some samurai gaming!

In our review, we look at Arc Dream's Godlike, the World War Two superhero RPG, which turned out to be a lot better for me than I thought. Godlike is grim and gritty, and really captures the mood of World War Two combat.

In our feature, we’re on about introducing new players to RPGs. We’d love to hear about your experiences with bringing new people to the hobby! Send your stories and any other comments about the show to godzilla.gaming@gmail.com

See you next month!

FIrst, thanks to all you GGP listeners out there for hanging in there with us during our break. I'm back in the Bay Area and starting to settle in. Despite all that, I'm more excited than ever about the Godzilla Gaming Podcast!

Cam and I have just recorded the bulk of our next show, and we'll finish it up this coming weekend. This time around we have a special guest, Jenny McConnell, one of my old co-workers from Japan and a recent addition to the Tokyo gaming crew. She'll be joining us as we talk about bringing new people into the gaming hobby, and giving us her perspective as a new gamer.

So, you can expect that show to hit the feed sometime next week!