Volume 1 Issue 30 – Mad Dogs & Irishmen (Geek Out in the Midday Sun)

By 10 commentsPodcast, Show Notes, Volume 1

We welcome Patrick Murphy, AKA “The Mad Irishman” this week. Patrick is known throughout the gaming community for his old school (and new as well) character sheets for myriad systems, including 1E AD&D, of course.

Patrick comes on to talk with us about creating new supplements and materials for old school games, and we geek out about fonts a bit.

Intro 0:00:00
RFI Actual Play Feed feeds.feedburner.com/RFIActualPlay
DM Vince’s Skype Game bookofsorrows.tk/
Todd Hughes’s More Human than Human rfipodcast.com/show/2010/09/10/more-human-than-human/
Todd Hughes’s Monster Creating Contest rfipodcast.com/show/2010/08/31/a-book-by-its-cover/
RFI Forums rfipodcast.com/show/forum/

Sage Advice 16:36.297
Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks www.fightingfantasygamebooks.com/
Project Aon (Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf Series) www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Home

Guest Spotlight 29:06.263
Mad Irishman Productions www.mad-irishman.net/

Table Manners 1:10:25.539
OpenRPG www.rpgobjects.com/index.php?c=orpg
D20 Pro www.d20pro.com/
Gamer’s Table www.gamers-table.com/
EpicTable www.epictable.com/
Fantasy Grounds 2 www.fantasygrounds.com/
Battlegrounds www.battlegroundsgames.com/
RPTools/Map Tools rptools.net/

Poll Of The Week 1:34:44.220
Low Tech Con lowtechcon.com/base/

Outro 1:39:0501.210

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10 comments on “Volume 1 Issue 30 – Mad Dogs & Irishmen (Geek Out in the Midday Sun)”

  1. PC Buzz

    Judging by the links in the show notes it seems this show will be packed with content. I am looking forward to listening tomorrow.

  2. DM_Kade

    Alright a new show! I agree with PC Buzz this looks like its going to be a fun one!

  3. DM_Kade

    I was right this was a good episode! The Joe Dever books are great for hiking. The cool part is you build your character, and his stats and equipment go with him from book to book. Jason I hope to be able to listen to your actual play episodes soon, and Nick you should get in on the fun and run your own.

  4. maxspookington

    Sorry to be a downer,
    But the forum has some problems, so I am unable to post there. Still a classy episode, although, this last show was about pdf. editing/design…now it’s still nerdy and I can dig it, but it wasn’t the program I like to listen to. In fact there was barely any D&D topics covered. You know I’m a huge fan, but this was really for programming listeners. Which, if they can provide an editable fields for Mad Irishman’s sheets, was totally worth it.

  5. PCB

    Woot, they read my mail on the show! Well, some of my mail at least, it did ramble on a bit 🙂

    The many different kinds of gamebooks were a huge outlet for me when I was a kid; there was a long period when there was no gaming group to find. If anyone liked the Fighting Fantasy series, they should look for its cousin – the four book Sorcery! series (Steve Jackson alone on that set). Other ones that I recall playing heavily were JH Brennan’s series GrailQuest and its slightly more mature themed Sagas of the Demonspawn. I also recall R. L. Stine’s (of Goosebumps fame) Wizards, Warriors, and You.

    Those books had some solid writing, I wonder how much there is left to mine out of them for our own games? Quite a lot, I suspect

  6. Sogboj

    Those character sheet PDF’s on MadIrishman are awesome! Thanks for doing a segment on this. I was having trouble finding good 1E sheets and never stumbled on this site.

    As a side, is there a light weight cheap piece of software that is good for making your own sheets? I am trying to create a time tracking sheet and Word just doesn’t cut it.

  8. Hogie_weenie_baby

    Thanks for the podcast. There is so much out there it is nice to get the exposure to new ideas, tools, and styles of play. I have started investigating on-line tools and your review was timely and useful. I personally attracted to the RPTools/MapTools software because it solves my ultimate DM problem – tracking invisible characters without players knowing and limit characters view based on their vison/lightsource. Now all I need to do is get a few hours to really figure the software out. Wish me luck.

  9. Leaf

    Hopping zombies for the win!

    I once twiddled some ghoul stats and made them hop around like that… I thought it was a fair challenge, but they totally gutted the party… >_>

    It must have been the hopping power!

  10. LC Pete

    My favourite choose your own adventure books were the Fighting Fantasies. I used to collect them and still have he first 50 books or so. I also have the Fighting Fantasy rpg book and their monster book, Out of the Pit. I also enjoyed the original Choose your own Adventure books which had a wide variety of genres, the Middle Earth Quest books, the Lone Wolf and the TSR Endless Quest books. Some of them I really didn’t like such as the Marvel Superheroes books.

    When I played Ad&D as a kid I never used modules or printed character sheets. Everything was pencil and lined paper.

    If I use a DM screen it will change each session. I would only put on it what I would need for the characters at their level for this adventure. I would probably have the drug table (just in case the characters decide to celebrate before their adventure) as well and maybe a few other charts that I think might come up. I don’t need any combat charts and some of the other stuff I can make up if I don’t know the rule. I would also include full write ups of any spells tha I am using during that session and would provide the characters with full write ups of their spells and weapon info.
    The combat charts are pretty easy to memorize as long as you know what AC the PC’s and the monsters you are using hit on a 20. You also have to be able to do simple math in your head quickly so it is not for everybody but Gary Gygax also mentioned that he did not consult the charts during a game either. The initiative is quite complicated if you write it all down but once you understand the concept and make some minor changes it becomes quite straight forward. The hardest part of the intiative system for me to grasp is the casting spell in melee inturruption rules. The way it was written it appeared that a spell caster is less likely to get a spell off if they win initiative than if they tie so I changed the rule.

    I just started playing on OpenRPG (The ToEE game that Chad from the Dead Game Society started a couple years ago that has been taken over by a diffent DM for the last year or so it seems to be fairly simple to use but i haven’t looked into programming my own stuff.

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