The RPG Haven podcast is a fairly regular podcast on roleplaying games that I've been listening to recently. I think that I've now listened to enough episodes to put a review in place so here goes.
Content
There are quite regular interviews with game designers and other industry figures, with some semi-regular segments like 'Friendly Neighborhood Gamer', where a gamer who is not heavily involved in the online pen & paper RPG scene is interviewed. I was particularly interested in the interviews with Neil Gow, designer of Beat to Quarters and Duty and Honour & Simon Washbourne designer of Barbarians of Lemuria, but I've found all the interviews to be well presented and conducted. The two hosts - walkerp and Mount Zion Ryan work well together to discuss games and conduct the interviews.
Technical
The podcast is produced in mono with a 96khz bit rate and can be dowloaded from the website above or via iTunes. I've found the downloads to be quick and reliable. The audio quality is good particularly considering that much of the podcast is produced using Skype to conduct the interviews or link up the two main presenters who are quite remote from each other.
Overall
I definitely recommend this podcast to anyone interested in the design and development of roleplaying games and will be listening regularly in future.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Friday, September 03, 2010
More lovecraftian audio reviews: Cthulhuwho1 blog
Just when I thought I'd started to produce a comprehensive list I get a lot more interesting audio content for lovers of H.P. Lovecraft's fiction, so with a nod to YSDC for pointing this out I can provide another review.The content is at Will Hart's Cthulhu who 1 blog.
The Iguanacon recordings from 1978 are fascinating to listen to with a number of very well known names making up the panel.The panel members are: J.Vernon Shea; Fitz Leiber; Donald Burleson; Dirk W. Mosig and S.T. Joshi. The topic is "what if H.P. Lovercraft lived into the 1960s" giving a lot of scope for reflection on Lovecraft's personality and beliefs with the changing times between 1937 and the 1960s.This is a fascinating discussion and very worthwhile listening. The audio quality for this recording is actually not bad considering it was originally made on cassette and has had to be digitised and converted to mp3 format.
The other audio content that is available is a reading of Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth and some samples of computer generated voices reading excerpts from Lovecraft and Poe. The samples are there to get comments from listeners while the actual reading does deserve a proper review. To use my normal headings of Content Technical and Overall Summary, I'd say that the technical quality is good on the new computer generated voices and the Fungi from Yuggoth and understandably poor on the Igauanacon recordings. Contentwise the recordings from Iguanacon I would class as unmissable while the readings not so essential.
Overall this site is well worth a visit from any fan or scholar of Lovecraft.
The Iguanacon recordings from 1978 are fascinating to listen to with a number of very well known names making up the panel.The panel members are: J.Vernon Shea; Fitz Leiber; Donald Burleson; Dirk W. Mosig and S.T. Joshi. The topic is "what if H.P. Lovercraft lived into the 1960s" giving a lot of scope for reflection on Lovecraft's personality and beliefs with the changing times between 1937 and the 1960s.This is a fascinating discussion and very worthwhile listening. The audio quality for this recording is actually not bad considering it was originally made on cassette and has had to be digitised and converted to mp3 format.
The other audio content that is available is a reading of Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth and some samples of computer generated voices reading excerpts from Lovecraft and Poe. The samples are there to get comments from listeners while the actual reading does deserve a proper review. To use my normal headings of Content Technical and Overall Summary, I'd say that the technical quality is good on the new computer generated voices and the Fungi from Yuggoth and understandably poor on the Igauanacon recordings. Contentwise the recordings from Iguanacon I would class as unmissable while the readings not so essential.
Overall this site is well worth a visit from any fan or scholar of Lovecraft.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Redesign in progress
Time to change over the design I think as my old extra simple approach is not working quite as well as I'd hoped over time, particularly with the vast list of labels used. Things will keep altering till I reach a final image that I want.
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