52:24 long & 50.3 MB big

In this episode, Robert Bohl (designer of Misspent Youth) and Joshua A. C. Newman (designer of shock: social science fiction), we talk about a few possible initial scenarios, and decide which one we want to explore first. There’s some good progress here from the absolute slaughter and misery we inflicted on each other in the prior episode.

Joshua’s homework and Rob’s notes during the show

- Joshua tries to let Rob off the hook for being lazy
- Vincent Baker gave us extremely helpful feedback on the forum
- We get more status by talking about Vincent’s input than we do from discussing Paul Beakley’s
- Joshua talks about a whispered Story Games thread between he and Alexandre (board name Kobayashi), who was a soldier in the Yugoslav Wars
- Joshua’s scenario idea is the refugee one
- In LIFELESS, you play…. (around 10:30)
- Simon C’s feedback, which brings up discussion of Vincent’s fiction-first posts
- Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix and Crystal Express
- Requisite references to Dollhouse and Richard K. Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels
- We settle on the refugee thing, as at least the first “module”
- A mention of (and spoiler for) the film Silent Running
- Emily Care Boss’s Sign in Stranger
- We want to have the game to come with the scenario all set to go, like John Harper’s Lady Blackbird
- Our homework: each of us writes: a setup for the war, 6 characters, a relationship map, and the initiating technology that made it terrible
- No listener homework
- Working title: “Lifeless”
- We mention the comic book/game store we were about to head to in Northampton, MA: Modern Myths

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The intro music is “Gotta Whizz” by Boris the Sprinkler, from the album Mega Anal. The outgoing music is from the same band and the same album. The song is called Sheena’s Got a Microwave Now, and I chose it because it’s the harrowing story of a love denied and interfered with by an insurmountable gap in technology.

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First of all, I like the new front page pic. I have to wonder, though. Rob, do you ever get “mic envy.” I mean my gosh, look at that mic Josh is sporting … it's like a frozen banana.

Ahem. Anyway. There were some interesting ideas being tossed around in this show. Here is my feedback, whether you want it or not.

1. I'm realizing that I would be happier hearing you both talk about conclusions each week after some bout of negotiated creativity, rather than hearing that session in-the-raw. That's completely the point of your 'cast, I know, to capture the process. It is frustrating to listen to, though, because one naturally wants to respond to ideas that are half-formed or will ultimately change completely. I'm trying to be more “passive” when I listen to your show now and just wait on ideas to more fully materialize before allowing myself to have a gut response, but it's tough.

2. I sometimes feel like you all are making your job much harder than it needs to be. When you talk about war refugees, trash-eating critters, communication technology, etc. I always want to ask the question … what does that have to do with transhumanism? I realize that they are all tied together in your mind with the overall fictional world you want to create (or rather inpsire gamers to create), but I kind of wish the talk was more squarely centered on people altering themselves through transhumanist technology and the ramifications of that. I don't need a war for that to be meaningful. If alter myself to be gorilla-like so I can study mountain apes in the Congo for two years, how does that affect my nuclear family. When I come back how will I relate to my loving wife who has decided sex is passe and has turned herself gender-neuter, or my sons who turned themselves into 7' tall basketball studs? The thing I really loved about Forever War was that the war itself was just a fictional device, the real story was about how the world changed each time the main character went away to soldier, and his struggle to identify with the new state of humanity each time he came back.

Wow. Furry porn I was not expecting here.

Anyway, listening to this ep (in particular the part where Joshua is talking about Lifeless) I was reminded of this story I heard recently on Escape Pod that is all about that single-body-multiple-identity society where people you meet one day may play a certain role relative to you, and a different one the next.

Also, it's a kickass story.

Here's the link: http://escapepod.org/2009/09/03/ep214/

It's about an hour long, and well worth the listen.