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Adventure Base Raiding – a Base Raiders Campaign

Our second FATE campaign, and our first base raiders campaign.
In this campaign run by Raymond we explore the human nature, heroism, greed, and power through the lens of superpowered adventure.
Base Raiders is set in a world where all the heroes and villains have disappeared, but they have left their secret bases behind. Base raiders are the people that loot these places.
In our campaign our players are part of a international adventure race, where they break into, you guessed, abandoned super bases.Each adventure of this series is called a Heat, and each Heat has 2-4 parts/episodes. you can find all those episodes above in a nice big playlist, or in the ABR tag.

If you’d like to read our setting primmer you can find it here.
Below we also have some reflections on the campaign from the players.

Finn(Yurei): This turned out to be an amazingly human story given it was about a ghost, a demon, and a sentient cloud. Amid all the drag races across the Nile delta, raiding of undersea hot labs, and duels with Valkyries on tropical beaches of the Hollow Earth; we found some genuine moments of companionship and vulnerability. As we kicked up dust on the moon and punched Nazis over Paris, we really explored what it was that made each of us feel at home amongst this roving semi-illegal super-sport that we lacked elsewhere in the world. The game had a real warmth in the moments we were just sitting around talking amongst our characters or with the other teams and marketing execs that Raymond gave life to. Not to say that we didn’t absolutely tear it up when the action kicked off. Boy is there some wild stunts in this! Also some excellent camping.

Alex (Gregg): I’m so glad I got the opportunity to experience and explore the incredible and extraordinary world of Base Raiders. While I feel the system is designed to be a high-tech, abstract dungeon crawl, this campaign shied away from that. While there were definitely some amazing set piece moments (like the Nazi UFO rising up from underneath Paris), this campaign was really about three non-humans finding their humanity. I loved how Raymond gave every character a chance to shine and played upon everyone’s strengths and weaknesses at various times. Every character had a chance to grow, even my ridiculous sentient fart cloud.


Ryan (Amriel):First, there were the characters. We started off as an oddball bunch—a demon, a ghost possessing a robot, and a super intelligent cloud of nano-machines that smelled vaguely like a fart—and we just got weirder as the game progressed. Each of our characters had an arc that allowed us to explore their personalities and motivations.Beyond that, the evolution of the party relationship was fun to play out. With the volcanic explosion and the lost teammate in our backstory, not to mention our wildly divergent character concepts, we got off to something of a rocky start. By the end we’d developed a real rapport with each other as players, and our in-character banter and downtime role play became my favourite parts of the campaign. Heat 5, the section of the campaign where we went camping in the Hollow Earth, had me grinning as we played, even though we got very little accomplished aside from throwing a barbecue for the other competitors.

Finally, Raymond did a stellar job of weaving together all of our weirdness into a coherent story. From the huge cast of NPC competitors to the charming one-offs, he peopled the world with compelling characters who were fun to interact with. Even the Valkyr, who seemed to be the campaign’s heavies for most of the runs, were more than they appeared. In an imaginary space, you can never go over budget, and Raymond took full advantage of that as GM, taking us to various dangerous, odd and exotic locations across the globe (and on the moon). The locations, set pieces, and action sequences were all great.

Adventure Base Raiding was a blast to play, from the kick-ass fight on the side of the crashing flying saucer in Heat 3, to the fraught negotiation with the alien nebula in Heat 4. Every session had something new, exciting and interesting to offer.

Raymond(Game Master): I’m kinda touched by the wonderful things the boys have said. I wanted to take the opportunity to thank them for sticking with it and giving their best to the campaign. Make time for it every week and really focusing in on the play space.

They did an excellent job of portraying their characters and helping me bring the world alive.
I loved running this campaign, it was nice to return to superheroes (which is where this podcast started.) I liked exploring the relationships the boys built. By far my fav moments were when they had to deal with marketing people, or lawyers, reporters, or fans.
Of course there was stuff I would have done differently if I could. it was still an excellent campaign, and I think; a great series.
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Adventure Base Raiding – Heat 5: Hollow Earth, Hollow Hearts

Survival is under way. Can our teams hold out in this dangerous ancient jungle? What monsters await them there? What treasures are hidden within?

Part 2 of adventure 5 in our Base Raiders campaign. This is a 4 part Adventure. You can find part 1 here. If you want to read the primer for the campaign, here’s a link to that. You can find out more about Base Raiders here.

If you like what you heard, and you like to help us out; please share, comment, and subscribe.
If you’d like to listen to more of our content there’s over 150 episodes of our podcast here on wordpress, over on soundcloud, or iTunes.
You can find us on all the major social media sites; twitter,  G+ community, facebook.
And if you’re feeling super generous; check out our Patreon.

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Famous(ish) people I’d like to role play with

It’s about 10pm here is the land of Oz, and yet it feels like 3am because my brothers children woke me an hour early.

So I thought I’d make a list of famous people, of varying levels of fame, who I’d like to play a role playing game with. These are in no specific order, and some of these people will no doubt have never played an RPG, but here we go.

  • Ross Payton of RPPR. Technically he ran a game I played in, but still; i want to do it again.
  • Caleb Stokes of RPPR, I love all the guys and gals at RPPR but Caleb is the GM I wish I was. sadly I would need to change too much about who I am to get into doing that much planning.
  • Matt Easton of schola gladiatoria. I just find him an interesting bloke, and I think he’d be down for it.
  • Hank Green of vlogbrothers, Sci-show, and much more. I’m a long time nerd fighter and I’ve always enjoyed Hank’s videos more than John’s (though I love John’s as well). Add to the fact he’s about to be on RPG show with Wil Wheaton.
  • Vin Diesel. Probably one of the most famous DnD players around, I have no idea if that is a thing he is still into but man…if he is.
  • Adam Savage of mythbusters acclaim. He is a really creative personality, and I feel like if you could get him to embrace the hobby he could have a lot of fun with it.
  • Will and Norm of Tested.com. They have never played an TRPG, which seems odd considering their job as professional (and I kind of hate this word) nerds.
  • (This one is someone very few people would consider famous, but he is more well known than any of my other friends) Craig Page. He wrote a kind of well known paper on Jedi lightsaber forms, he also works for the dresden files larp.
  • Joerg of The Slingshot Channel. He’s a bit of a mad genius and I feel like he would be a lot of fun.
  • Mike Rugnetta of PBS idea channel. Oh man, I could fucking die happy. When I learnt Mike played Shadow Run, it made me rethink my decision not to get into shadow run. Kim and I both LOVE idea channel.
  • This isn’t really a famous person, but one of the minds behind Eclipse Phase. I have never been so enthralled by an RPG setting before, I’d love to see how they run it.
  • Michael Shean, Who is an author I have never read but have become friends with on tumblr… I should really read one of his books.

I don’t know, just some thoughts I had. I might add more to the list as I think of more. For now that will do.
Why don’t you leave in the comments your own list of famous and semi famous people you’d like to game with?

Farewell from the past, I’m Raymond.

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Quick update.

You guys should be seeing our new episode up in a couple of hours, I think you are going to like it, it’s our first Pendragon game!

What this post is for though, is to let you all know that we have a Twitter now!
We’ll be using it the same way we use our Facebook page, so we’ll post links to new episodes and posts, as well as letting you guys know what’s coming up in the future.
If you haven’t LIKED us on Facebook yet, please do. Facebook and Twitter are great ways to keep up with what we are doing.

You can find us on Twitter here: [insert quest here]
and Facebook here: insert quest here

In other news:
the writing challenge for April starts this Wednesday (there will be a post).
we are making plans for our next road trip, this time we are going to be doing a lot more camping.
and finally, we will be making a bunch of recordings for International Table Top Day (April 11th).
So we’ll have a special game up that night, with a few more released down the track.

Remember to LIKE us on Facebook and FOLLOW us on Twitter, Sound Cloud, and WordPress, it really helps motivate us by showing that you listen in and read our posts.
ALSO; when we reach 100 likes on Facebook we’ll be recording a special listeners choice actual play.
You, the Listeners, will get to pick the setting and the system. You could have us play as genius penguins trying to stop the invasion of the Antarctic by strange hairless apes that ride around in metal whales.

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NEWS TIME: Expanding our managment team AND new content coming soon.

First thing’s first: our new assistant editor and marketing advisor; Kim. since we launched in November 2014 most of the work at [insert quest here] has been done by Raymond. Lots of people helped create content by playing in games but Raymond was the one that ran the site. Over the months Kim (a regular player and close friend of Raymond’s) has become more involved. Kim has been key to keeping Raymond motivated, as well as expanding the sites reach, he even ran a campaign for us; Arcanum Quest. Recently, Raymond had to go away for a week and Kim bravely stepped up to help keep the site running. At the moment, Kim’s duties mostly extend to proof reading and spell checking Raymond’s writing, making Facebook posts promoting the site, and helping Raymond come up with new content. In the future Kim’s role will expand but for now he has enough on his plate.

New content: we’ve got a lot of ideas for role playing games we’d like to feature. But, we’re also looking to expand! Many of the ideas we have still require more planning, but one thing we are ready to launch is a monthly writing challenge.

The monthly writing challenge is designed to get YOUR creative ideas out there and onto the [IQH] site.
How it works is every month we’ll post an image to serve as inspiration for a creative writing project. Anyone can take part and you’ll have until the 28th of that month to submit your article. Think of it as a short story based on the stimulus image.
We’ll post something of our own based on the image, but really we’re more interested in seeing what you have to offer. Who knows where it might lead?
One month’s writing project could turn into the idea/setting for an entire campaign, or start people along the path to becoming the world’s next best-selling author.
The fundamental idea behind the monthly writing challenge is to get inspired; whether that’s inspiring yourself or someone else, all inspiration should be cherished and nurtured.

In the mean time, we at [IQH] hope you continue to enjoy and, if you’re keen, share out content.
Until then, Happy Gaming!

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Crusading Couch: news for February 2015

We’ll be recording a new episode of The Crusading Couch this weekend, the topic is organisation.
Both the planning of scenarios and adventures (working out your story), as well as planning for games (working out where you’ll be playing, snacks, transport).

If you’ve got any ideas for this episode or a future one, please leave us a comment. or you could email us.

If you like what we post please share it with others.
Sharing our content increases the chances that someone new might discover a love for role playing, or even just actual plays. If you’d like to show support in another way you can follow us on WordPress or Soundcloud, or like us on Facebook.
When we get to 100 followers or likes (which ever comes first) we will be doing a special listeners choice recording.
It could be anything! It could be a mecha combat RPG set during the Vietnam war, featuring imagery reminiscent of the great Greek tragedies.

Farewell from the past, I’m Raymond.

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Crusading Couch news…kinda

Thought I’d see what you’re all interested in, is there something you’d like to see us talk about on The Crusading Couch in the future?
We’re currently looking at diversifying our panel, but I’m more interested in new topics to explore. Something I’d like to do is a GM advice episode…but I’m not sure on how to structure that yet.

We’ve also been looking at doing interviews with game developers (though that is a little beyond as at the moment). I’ve also been thinking about doing a live streamed game, though that is still just an idea.

ALSO: a reminder that when we hit 100 subscribers on WordPress or Sound Cloud, or 100 likes on Facebook; we are going to do a listeners choice actual play.
You, the Listeners, will be able to send us in suggestions for setting, rules systems, themes, what ever. We’ll pick the ones we like most and then have you all vote on which one we’ll play.

Finally, at the moment we are quite small in terms of listeners, but I’d really like to grow our audience. A key part of our strategy for doing that is you, the people reading this. Every time you link to our page, mention us in conversation, or reblog us; you are potentially increasing our reach. If one new person finds us by clicking your link, that is worth it to us. so please share our content.

Farewell from the past, I’m Raymond.