In this episode I talk about the referential nature of geek subcultures, and how that affects and can be used by role-playing games. Nerds naturally reference stuff, and use that to communicate better by generating a shared subculture. The question is, how can RPGs take full advantage of that, in both play and design? This is another solo episode, because in some ways I like doing those better, despite the fact that it’s harder to come up with good topics for them.

Yaruki Zero Podcast #8 (42 minutes, 17 seconds)

Show Notes

1. Introduction
• The Fantasy Role-Playing Game: A New Performing Art by Daniel Mackay
• Shared Fantasy by Gary Alan Fine
2. Intertextuality of Geek Subcultures
• My current D&D character Octavia was partly inspired by Devilotte from CyberBots.
3. Big Setting Games
• Nightwish’s song “Wishmaster” and Blind Guardian’s song “Soulforged” (a fan video with footage from the unfortunate direct-to-video movie) are both based on Raistlin’s adventures from the DragonLance novels.
• I’m working on both a novel and an RPG for my Slime Story setting. Here’s the prologue, and if you’ll recall, episode 3.5 of this podcast was a reading of that.
4. Otaku Culture
• Otaku know series like Gundam, Yamato, Evangelion, and more recently stuff like Lucky Star and K-On!.
• The Touhou Project
• Jonathan Walton’s Bliss-Robed Lie, a great example of what hacking and riffing RPGs can produce.
5. Using and Creating Subcultural Contexts
• Nathan Fillion visited our GURPS Firefly game at Gen Con SoCal.
• Canon Puncture Actual Play, featuring the Star Wars PTA game.
• Queen’s Blade, Japanese Lost Worlds game books that in turn have spawned a franchise with figures, an anime series, etc.
• Pinky St. dolls!
• Toki Densho Angel Eyes, a really cool, but very obscure Japanese PlayStation fighting game. (Available from the PlayStation store!)
• Abstract Nova publishes the Althelia RPG, and Tales of the Seven Dogs Society, an anthology of stories based on the game’s world.

This podcast uses selections from the song “Click Click” by Grünemusik, available for free from Jamendo.com. If you like the song, consider buying some CDs from Nankado’s website.

Very awesome caricature of Ewen courtesy of the talented C. Ellis.