The Criminal Class - Rogues, Night Caste and their ilk

Many RPGs let you play character types that can only be described by our modern sensibilities as "criminal" or "outcast", whether it's talking about characters that are thieves, assassins, necromancers or something else. This can create an attitude problem, especially when the rest of the party sees themselves as "righteous", or the world doesn't see the "criminal hero" as a "hero".

Scoundrel amongst heroes - the Night Caste

In the base game of Exalted the players play Solars, returning heroes of the world in the vein of Gilgamesh and Hercules. The character "classes" are named after the stations of the sun. The Dawns are the generals and warriors. Zeniths are the priests and leaders. Twilight are sorcerers and scholars. Eclipses are the diplomats. All of them you can see as heroes to be glorified, praised and love by all of their people, getting along and being praised by their fellows. And then you have the last Caste - the Night Caste, the assassins and spies - doesn't sound like something you can trust or be friends with.

Sure, the Night Caste are very valuable when you want to get things done and they compliment the rest of the Castes pretty well, but as far as RPG mentality goes, they feel different.

First of all, they appear less trustworthy than other party members because they are sneaky. They can steal from you, sabotage you, backstab you, lie to your face, etc., that's what they are good at. If you are a paranoid player, you will be paranoid about them, and that's never good.

Secondly, by their nature of being assassins and so on, most of the things they excel at they will try doing alone. This gives them a lot of opportunity to do things without oversight and often give them free reign to call some shots or get the first pick of whatever they steal. They can negotiate with your enemies, steal the best treasure, keep secrets to themselves and so on that the other party members wouldn't be privy to. This again breed more paranoia.

Thirdly, they can be hard to balance encounter-wise and fun-wise. An assassin is supposed to kill people, so if they infiltrate the base of the BBEG, they might want to kill that BBEG by themselves. If they are able to, the rest of the party doesn't get to do some cool fight. If they can't, they might feel like they can't have fun their way. So it's a hard balancing act on how strong they should be vs opponents that might be designed to take most of the party to beat.

Fourthly, if they are too good, they can negate the need for a lot of encounters. We had this problem in Heaven for Everyone - we had a character that cranked Stealth to such a ridiculous degree they could infiltrate whatever they wanted, get all the information they need and sneak out without leaving a trace and avoiding all human and even supernatural guards. We joked that they could just sneak their way to figure out who's the person at the tippe top of a conspiracy pyramid, kill that one person and solve the entire campaign by themselves, but that wouldn't be fun. So we opted not to do that so everyone can have fun.

Fifthly, a lot of what they do is "villain-coded". A Night Caste is all about doing things sneakily, and a lot of activities that require being sneaky are often also shady - running a criminal underground, stealing, assassinations, kidnapping people, espionage, blackmail, stalking, etc. all have negative associations to them, even if they are used for "good" in big quotations. All of these fall under what a Night Caste could easily do, but if they do engage in them they are seen as the bad guys, and perhaps rightfully so.

And finally, these kind of characters are not something you typically glorify - a famous spy is an oxymoron. Sure, in-universe it might not be uncommon, but it still would take a perspective shift for the players at the table to glorify someone running a secret stasi-esque police and a criminal underground silencing dissidents and killing people for future-crimes against the state, in comparison to a Twilight that makes pretty music. All of these sound like something a villain would do from our, modern day perspective, and defending it often is a Thermian Argument.

While a Night Caste might not be the most common go-to when discussing the problem of a criminal RPG class, it is perhaps one of the more fully realised because of the high character agency and power level in Exalted. I've had some experience with that - even in a group of five larger than life narcissists a hero that was all about human sacrifice did not trust me because my character was capable of shady dealings...

A killer is a killer

Going down to more D&D-like things, another similar attitude was perhaps well encompassed by a recent video from All Things DnD:

A paladin and an assassin are one and the same...

Beyond the usual fears of a sneaky character wanting to steal from the party, the characters can argue about the morality of their professions, the honour they possess and so on while at the core of things most if not all D&D characters are killers. This is not through the fault of their own, but by the focus of the game - a combat-focused game like D&D informs the combat-focused characters that play it.

Whether you're a warrior, a paladin, an assassin or the like, in D&D, you kill. One might kill for glory, another for a deity, and yet another for money, but they all kill. To hold that one is immoral while others aren't above one character class can feel bad to play. Sure, most of the time the player opted to play that class on their own "so they should accept its downsides", but it can still be demoralising when other characters boast about how heroic they are or how everyone welcomes them with open arms while potentially shunning the rogue because they are clearly criminal. If they get past that and are all treated like "adventurers" then the situation can graduate upwards to being a Night Caste problem...

Dark magic, evil races, taboo things

In a similar vein you can run into similar type of hang-ups from different kinds of characters. Obviously necromancers, warlocks, orcs, tieflings, or any characters that by default fall on the "evil" side of the alignment chart can be similarly discriminated against by the setting or other players at the table. All such hang-ups should be cleared up before the game starts so everyone would know what they are getting into, how will the game world react to their characters, how will the other players react, etc.

One time we played a game of Godbound in a zombie post-apocalypse setting with one of the characters being a demigod of death. We forgot to discuss how the people of the setting and the PCs from the land that got ravaged by zombies would treat someone that will raise more undead as their main powerset, so we had an argument about it during the game before realising that it would be a really shitty thing to do to tell a player that they couldn't use a large part of their power set due to a hang-up like that mid-game. It was an important lesson to learn.

A pirate is a pirate

On a flip side, sometimes you have to acknowledge when the players are criminals.

A few months back I was looking into running a Stars Without Number campaign. Someone suggested I ran The Pirates of Drinax, one of the more well known campaigns from Traveller. In it, the party is given letters of marque by the king of Drinax so they can be privateers helping restore the kingdom to its former glory.

However, all things considered, it just means the party is a bunch of pirates. The kingdom might have some history, but it's been reduced to a single floating palace. The party will be raiding ships passing by, taking over planets, etc. The only difference between what they are doing and piracy is some descendant of a ruler putting their name on it. Until the actual kingdom is rebuilt, those letters of marque mean nothing.

It's good to call things by what they are so that the players won't be surprised when someone hunts them down like pirates down the line or they get the idea that maybe they should be in charge in this new kingdom. As long as everyone's onboard, have fun!

The same applies to all other potentially criminal or evil activities, like usurping a throne of a kingdom in D&D, or aiding the BBEG...

Conclusions

Before you start playing with "a criminal class" PC in a party that features "good" or "righteous" PCs, it's best to talk with one another about how the characters might be perceived in the setting, the GM or by other PCs. As long as everyone's onboard with how things will be handled, that should be fine. Just remember to stick to it - if you agree that an assassin will be treated like any other adventurer, don't complain about them doing their assassin business (provided they don't betray the party's trust more than other PCs, etc.).

Similarly, it's important for game designers to put extra consideration when introducing "a criminal class" into their game and how they should be treated. Ideally you'd write it broad enough that you could use that same class or character option in a more positive manner, or maybe just let anyone "minor" in the sneaky, subversive arts without making any one class specifically "the criminal class" - warriors could turn into ninjas, diplomats could turn into criminal bosses, sorcerers could turn necromancers and so on so anyone would have the potential to see themselves in heroic or villainous light as needed.

Congenials - an Exalted Podcast Review

I’ve spent the last few months listening through a few of the Exalted RPG Podcasts / Actual Plays and I figured I’d share my thoughts on them with you. There is a good deal one can learn from them, whether you’re making your own actual plays or just gaming in general.

In today's episode, I will cover Congenials by Sponsored By Nobody.

Disclaimers

There are a few important disclaimers to get out of the way before we start.

First of all, I understand this was a fan project and should be judged accordingly. I am thankful for the effort the cast has put into entertaining us with their stories, but there will be some criticism of the podcast present.

Secondly, any criticism made against the characters portrayed or how the game played out should not be held as criticism or insults of the game master or the players. Not everyone is perfect and sometimes something doesn’t work out or falls flat in execution. It’s important to keep the art separate from the artist and focus on the former without being disrespectful to the latter.

Thirdly, I’ve been a part of this podcasting group (but not this specific game) both when those episodes were being recorded and since. I intend to go into this review as objectively as I can, but you should be aware of the potential bias at play. Here is your disclaimer.

Finally, there will be some spoilers for the show, it would be rather hard to discuss some things without that...

Overview and minor things

Congenials is an Exalted actual play hosted by @Tavelgorge and part of the Sponsored By Nobody podcast. It was made up of the same GM that ran Princes of the Universe Exalted game, as well as fans of that podcast as players (some of which are starting their own podcast, PodPodCastCast). It features a shifting cast of 7 Exalts, almost all of which from a different splat.

The game’s system is GM’s very own homebrew hack of Godbound - Godbound Conversion of Exalted.

The series takes the form of an audio-only podcast with 2-4 hour episodes with minor editing, recorded over the Internet. The cast consists of casual RPG fans (so no voice actors or improv artists this time).

Player Characters

The game features seven PCs that come and go:

Sola Bright Light, a Zenith Solar priestess.
Mocking White Wind, a New Moon Lunar.
Mirage of Ideal Destinations, a Sidereal Chosen of Journeys.
Magister Invil, a Getimian scholar.
Heroism Advancing Algorithm (HAAL), an Orichalcum Achemical from Classlat.
Multitudinous Mask, a Changing Moon Lunar, very spider-like.
Hunter of Shades, a Liminal.

The party’s theme for this game was twofold:

• They are monster hunters
• They are nice people (which is an important contrast to the Princes of the Universe game…)

General Plot

The game starts with the group of Exalts hunting monsters in Kingdom of Halta, the Chanta region in the North-East of Creation. The local area has been attacked by Kaiju, large augmented monsters. After slaying a few of these beasts, the group discovers the mastermind behind this - an Exigent of Kaiju that’s unleashing those monsters on the world for heroes to rise up and earn their glory fighting them. The group strikes a deal with him to use his powers to help train Solars and work with the Cult of the Illuminated.

Meanwhile, the Autochtonian nation of Classlat has completed Project Razor and established a colony in the nearby area. They are looking for resources to send back to the Land of Brass and Shadow and are establishing relationships with the Kingdom of Halta, as well as the local Fairfolk. It’s soon revealed, however, that the Fae have made deal with the Guild to enslave Classlat. To that end, the Fae have reached into the Wyld and brought Aradd the Hunter, an ancient Behemoth to get through their defences.

During the second Season the Exalts look for ways to deal with this threat, seeking help from the Jadeborn, confronting the Guild in Nexus, using the Rathess Observatory, and finally enlisting the aid of an ancient Sphinx of the South to stand a chance at defeating Aradd before he can get to Classlat.

Highlights

Variety of Exalts, no Solar problems

After listening to Swallows of the South, ExalTwitch, Demon City Slickers and even Princes of the Universe, with a total of 20 Solar PCs between them with a sporadic sprinkle of one-off non-Solar PC guests, it was a breath of fresh air to have a diverse group of PC Exalt types.

A large part of the podcast focused on the Alchemical HAAL, his culture and enclave of his people. Secondary to that were the stories of a Sidereal and a Getimian, both being rather novel and unique. Tertiary we saw a glimpse at what a Liminal might be up to, some Lunar shenanigans, and a minor Solar business.

Very notably, the game also didn’t fall into the typical trappings of a Solar-focused game - there was no Wyld Hunt, there was no Realm invading the place, there were no Sidereals out to hunt the PCs, etc.

So if you’re done watching any of the other Exalted podcasts that I listed and want a breath of fresh air to get a palette cleanser on Solar stuff, this series is a good place to go.

Autochtonia and HAAL

Since one of the player characters was an Alchemical the game had an opportunity to explore the concepts associated with them - the Autochtonian culture, the industrial aesthetics, the purveying propaganda, the concepts of 1984 mixed with communism and everything that’s usually quite alien to Exalted and Creation. Both the GM and the player portraying Heroism Advancing Algorithm nailed that portrayal, making it both the highlight of the series as well as the centre focus of much of the campaign. It is clear both of them were very familiar with the source material and had fun depicting that culture.

Morality of monsters

One fun part of RPGs is being able to explore worlds and cultures that are different and alien to our own. Congenials offered its own interesting twist when dealing with the Exigent of Kaiju.

In our world a person making giant monsters and unleashing them onto the world would be really bad. However, Creation is a different place. It’s a land of capital H Heroes. Those heroes don’t rise up without a challenge, and they need to forge their legend, so what better way than engineering opportunities for that to happen?

Enter the Exigent of Kaiju, an Exalt who took on the task of creating monsters so that heroes might rise up to defeat them. The PCs were just such heroes, rising up to protect Halta from kaijus disrupting trade, killing people, etc. When they finally tracked down where those monsters are coming from and why they were made it became an interesting engagement for the players and the characters - they had to make a judgement whether this is something they want to allow to continue and if so - how to make the best use of it.

Garfield Minus Garfield

Season 1 Episode 6 is a very unique episode. Since this game was recorded online, by accident this episode did not record audio from the players, which resulted in almost an hour and a half of just the GM describing things, reacting to players, etc. It could’ve been a disaster to redo or a lost episode instead turned out to be an okay listen in the spirit of Garfield Minus Garfield. The GM is expressive enough that you can infer most of the context and still enjoy the show. Congenials Minus Congenials!

Everyone is Magister

Born out of the joke that Magister the Getimian is full of spiders constantly chattering inside of him and telling him to do awful things, the Congenials decided to run a more joke episode of Everyone is John. Suddenly, the character of Magister was controlled by The Ebon Dragon, The Perfect Magister, Grand Defensive Buttress Engineer, Edumaster, Old Cat Lady Magister and The Perfect of Paragon.

That episode went off the rails pretty quick as I’d guess any Everyone is John did, but even more so because the characters are living demigods. So you have cities being conquered, major NPCs being killed like chums, multiple second circle demons being summoned and bound in service of an Old Cat Lady, etc.

The episode was a fun if silly romp!

Opulence of Yu-Shan

Yu-Shan, the city of the gods, could be portrayed in a few ways in Exalted. The GM had some fun playing up its opulence as the golden metropolis when it came to describing how life has been treating Mirage the Sidereal. It’s a fun contrast hearing about how he’s moving up in the world into a giant palatial estate with a host of servants and hand-bedazzled butterflies, meanwhile in Creation people are struggling to get by. It was similarly a bit of a fun scene when the other PCs went to Yu-Shan by themselves and visited Mirage’s estate. There was much judgement and condescension, but in a fun way.

Criticism

No show is without its flaws, and so we should turn to what Congenials has committed. Not as an attack on the show or its creators, but as a learning experience on how everyone could improve...

Some character duds

As with all RPGs, some character concepts or portrayals work better on paper than in practice. Congenials was unfortunately no exception.

I would like to once again remind that a critique of characters and their actions should not reflect on the players portraying those characters. Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes we try playing a character one way that comes off different from what we had in mind, etc. With that out of the way…

I personally wasn’t fond of the character of Mocking White Wind, the Lunar, for a few reasons. First of all, I think the player operated on a lower Level of Trust than the rest of the party and the GM. In the very first episode the group transported a stash of magical materials they acquired into Chanta. They rented a secure storage room and deposited their precious bits. Unsatisfied with that however, Mocking spent the next half an hour or more working his way through a Lunar spy network to work out a deal for a more secure holding spot in exchange for clearing a manse out. It played out overly paranoid and felt like a waste of time in the grand scheme of things because the GM wasn’t going to have anyone try to steal their stuff - he never does that. The character had a similar level of distrust permeate the rest of the series, setting up extra fortified ways of capturing people, etc.

Secondly, the character came off as rather condescending and moralising, judging people and telling them what not to do and what’s good and bad. Sure, that’s what Exalts do, but it can be stressful to even listen to. He wanted to completely shut down the concept of the Exigent of Kaiju and all of his work, and tried to lecture a Guild Acquirer about how she could be starting a war by trying to enslave people in the Classlat Enclave. It all rang a bit hollow and a bit annoying to listen to. Understandably, that sort of thing could be a tough balancing act to pull off between having a strong moral code and being a moralising prick. Unfortunately, this one didn’t stick the landing.

The other Lunar of the group, Mask, was also a bit of a problem. His introduction was basically V for Vendetta speech, which got promptly interrupted and diffused by another character noticing his name being a part of Mask’s long name, which made that already failing bit flop. After that he played a bit of a self-absorbed loner, but one that wanted to have a say on everything, which seems to fall under one of those RPG tropes of a dark brooding character with an edgy backstory. In general, I didn’t enjoy this character either.

And finally, we have two characters that make you want to say “and they were there too”, those being Sola Bright Light and Hunter of Shades. Both of those characters were introduced and contributed to some fights and solving some problems, but you would often forget they were there. Sola had one bit with her cult that was interesting (we’ll get to that soon), and Hunter had his character introduction which gave him a goal to achieve (kill the Perfect of Paragon), but other than those I couldn’t tell you much more about what they did. Part of it could be because of how often they appeared in the story (4 episodes for Sola, only in Season 1, and 8 for Hunter, only in Season 2), part of it could be because not everyone likes to take centre stage, so it’s understandable if some characters don’t leave a mark.

Dragon King plot elephants

Dragon Kings in the Exalted world can be a bit of a plot elephant - drawing a lot of attention to themselves when introduced and possibly being a fountain of exposition when introduced - something you can’t ignore and have to address. Mai, an ancient spirit of a Dragon King was such an elephant - quickly acting as a sycophant to Sola, talking about the First Age, the Usurpation, undermining Autochtonian teaching by telling what Autochton was really like, etc. It’s hard to argue with such Dragon Kings, especially as played by this GM, as they present everything they talk about as facts and first hands accounts very convincingly.

What’s worse is that Mai’s plotline just gets dropped soon after they’re introduced because Sola’s player stopped appearing in the show.

Mediocre audio quality

Since the game was run online and featured eight different people each on their own computer, the audio quality varied a lot from person to person. Unfortunately, the final product had an overall mediocre audio quality - you could hear a number of notification pings being recorded, people talked over one another a bit (at one point the GM muted himself in the game but not on the recording and proceeded to talk with someone about the game while two PCs were talking at the same time), etc. As much as I enjoyed the character of HAAL, the enjoyment was always dampened by a poor audio quality unfortunately.

Out of all Exalted podcasts I’ve covered so far, this one had the poorest audio quality.

Journey quick travel

The old problem of Exalted being a gigantic world while at the same time having many means of quick travelling and skipping through it also made its way to Congenials. It was further compounded by having a Sidereal Chosen of Journeys as one of the main PCs, meaning most of the travel by the group could be done at a rapid pace while avoiding all the problems in between. So while something like ExalTwitch condensed a journey of 4000 miles into a scene swipe, Congenials were doing something similar but also their characters didn’t experience much of the downtime.

Ignoring cult problems

This one has been a personal gripe of mine for a while now. In games like Exalted or Godbound where the PCs have their own cults, they often end up being neglected by their patrons or becoming caricatures of how people behave, rather than being an important part of that character.

Sola was a high priestess in her village before she Exalted. After killing the village’s former god, the villagers decided to worship her instead and followed her from the West into the deep North-East that is Halta. They were quite a lot out of their comfort zone almost living in a squaller, but their main problem was a lack of direction. When presented with this problem characters like HAAL started helping the village out and offering them some guidance but Sola didn’t engage with them or express what she wants out of them at all. It was a bit disappointing, and at least the PCs called her out on it a bit.

The problem probably comes from a few things.

Firstly, the Godbound system that this homebrew was based on really rewarded characters for having a cult. You not only gained more Dominion (power to change the world), but you could also turn it into an army or a big power in the world. Opting not to have a cult was a bad choice in almost all situations.

Secondly, it can also be a problem to play a character with a cult. Some players might like the idea on paper, but when push comes to shove it could be something the player might not be comfortable or enjoy dealing with.

Unfortunately, Sola did not appear in the game after the episode when she interacted with her cult, so that thread was dropped without a conclusion.

Conclusions

Congenials was an interesting Exalted podcast that unfortunately is dragged down by its audio quality. It’s pretty much the only Exalted Actual Play that focused predominantly on non-Solar characters and breaking away from Solar-related tropes. With cherry picking the right players from the ones that played the game, you could have a pretty good set of characters for an interesting continuation of the story. It’s unfortunate that probably won’t happen, but some of the players from the Congenials cast have started their own PodPodCastCast.

Now, onto listening to the other Sponsored By Nobody Exalted podcasts...

Related links:

• Congenials episode synopsis

Equivalent Dice Theorems of RPGs

My group and I have played a good amount of PbtA games (Fellowship, Legacy, Dungeon World, etc.). After getting used to them we did a one shot game of iHunt, which used the FATE system. During the session my GM remarked how FATE is making him roll again to set our difficulty and how he got used to not having to do that in PbtA. This got me thinking - "was that roll even necessary?", which lead me down a math rabbit hole...

Lets back up and start from beginning.

FATE dice rolls

The FATE system uses FATE dice, an alternative set of D6s that can roll +1, 0 and -1:

FATE Dice

To figure out how much you rolled, you take four FATE Dice, roll them, add their results together and add whatever skill modifier your character has. Then that is either compared to a static number determined by the GM for a "passive opposition", or another roll with modifiers for an "active opposition".

The second situation was what my GM remarked about, and when you think about it - you really don't need to have more than one side rolling dice in this system.

FATE Dice are a bit different from the standard dice - their average roll is a "0", and you have both positive and negative 1s on it. The dice is symmetrical - it doesn't matter if you roll a FATE dice or its opposite, the result is the same.

So if you wanted to avoid the GM having to ever roll dice, you would just make the player roll 8 FATE Dice and give them a passive opposition instead and it would be exactly the same roll (4 GM dice turn into the player rolling 4 opposite dice, which in this system is the same as normal dice, therefore 4+4=8 dice total roll).

This got me thinking - could something similar be done in other systems?

Equivalent dice and rolls

After thinking about it, turns out you can do something similar. Here is a more formal explanation of what that entails if you like math, but to summarise it based on D6s:

Rolling a D6 and rolling "7-D6" is the same - you get the same results. Based on this you can turn any versus roll into a single roll by one side that uses all the dice vs a static number.

If you subtract the average of 3.5 from every side of the D6, you get a symmetrical die D6Sym with sides {-2.5, -1.5, -0.5, 0.5, 1.5, 2.5}. Based on that, rolling a D6 and rolling "3.5+D6Sym" is the same. While this doesn't help much by itself, it allows you to easily make a statistical analysis of rolls involving multiple dice (since the average will always be 0, so you can easily compare these binomial distributions).

Based on the last one, I did some programming to figure out the statistics of rolling various amounts of dice...

Dice roll statistics

This part is probably the hardest to understand. Basically, it boils down to this:

The goal was to figure out rolling how many dice is "good enough" - when you don't need to roll more dice to get "random enough" results.

The more dice you roll, the closer the results is to a binomial distribution, but there are some diminishing returns. After you roll about 3-4 dice the results don't get much better.

Size of the dice rolled doesn't change things that much beyond making the results more granular. Rolling 5D4 is comparable to rolling 5D12.

So where does this all lead us?

Conclusions

When designing a system, you don't really need to roll a lot of dice - rolling more than 3-4 gets a bit excessive and doesn't improve the probabilities of the roll too much.

When you have a versus roll, you only need to have one side of the conflict roll, while the other would provide a static difficulty. The exact math of a roll can be a little complicated, but it's mostly fixed for any given amount of dice.

If you don't want to roll a lot of dice, you can instead roll fewer but bigger dice to get a granular enough result (again providing you're rolling those 3-4 dice).

So after all that, I can say that the GM never needs to roll dice in FATE - the 4 FATE dice the player rolls should be good enough of randomness in most situations. The rest would be taken care of by a static difficulty for them to beat based on how challenging the enemy is.

The same principles could be applied to a lot of systems. Maybe not something that involves a lot of dice manipulation and tricks like CORTEX, but others - maybe. There is definitely room for some systems designed from the ground-up to minimise the amount of rolls you make (similarly to how Chronicles of Darkness limited the amount of chain rolls).

Related articles:

• Make every roll impactful

Related links:

• Central Limit Theorem
• Reddit threads 1 & 2

Demon City Slickers - an Exalted Podcast Review

I’ve spent the last few months listening through a few of the Exalted RPG Podcasts / Actual Plays and I figured I’d share my thoughts on them with you. There is a good deal one can learn from them, whether you’re making your own actual plays or just gaming in general.

In today's episode, I will cover Demon City Slickers.

Disclaimers

There are a few important disclaimers to get out of the way before we start.

First of all, I understand this was a fan project and should be judged accordingly. I am thankful for the effort the cast has put into entertaining us with their stories, but there will be some criticism of the podcast present.

Secondly, any criticism made against the characters portrayed or how the game played out should not be held as criticism or insults of the game master or the players. Not everyone is perfect and sometimes something doesn’t work out or falls flat in execution. It’s important to keep the art separate from the artist and focus on the former without being disrespectful to the latter.

Thirdly, since I’m also a part of an RPG Actual Play Podcast that features Exalted games, I might be biased towards one interpretation and way of handling things in Exalted that might not agree with how others view and play the game, that’s to be expected. That and some might see criticising other podcasts a conflict of interest or something, so here is your disclaimer.

Finally, there will be some spoilers for the show, it would be rather hard to discuss some things without that...

Overview and minor things

Demon City Slickers is an Exalted actual play hosted by @WhatUpDemonCity. It is a comparatively short actual play that met an abrupt end due to the GM studying abroad and not wanting to support OPP. The game features a cast of four players, with one of them being introduced to replace a vacancy left by another.

The series takes the form of an audio-only podcast with 30-60 minute episodes with minor editing.

From what I understand the cast consists of students that mainly got into podcasting thanks to Swallows of the South, this being their first production.

Player Characters

The game features four PCs:

Mel (m), also known as “Harmonious Melody of the Seven Winds of Each of the Three Seas, Each of the Seven Winds Having Seven Individual Melodies Of Their Own Which Each Sound Simultaneously As The Wind Blows”, a Zenith musician and a sword master who sold his soul to a demon.

Kulak (m), a giant of a Dawn Caste, former pirate turned bodyguard for hire.

Kleefin (f), a dirty forest girl Zenith Caste with a familiar, Steely Dan, a giant fire breathing ostrich.

Leela (f), a sneaky sorcerer / alchemist with a Sidereal handler, Waterfall of Hidden Magics, aka Magi.

General Plot

In South-West of Creation, the city of Se'Arah Ayn is under Realm occupation. The PCs are hired to investigate a slaughter at a local Immaculate Dojo and find themselves in the crossfire of the local demon cults trying to vye for power before the Wyld Hunt makes its way to clean up the town. During the conflict, a mysterious Abyssal with a demonic artefact daiklave appears to further complicate matters…

With eight proper episodes and three flashback episodes, that’s all the plot there was.

Highlights

Filled with determination

During the various episodes the GM mentioned that this podcast is a student production, as well as discussing various problems caused by them going to study abroad and so on. In general, it seems making the podcast takes some determination on the part of the GM and the players, and that should always be celebrated. Even if the show might’ve been a bit rough around the edges, hopefully this drive to express oneself will continue to drive the team forward and into bettering themselves as the time goes on.

Extra editing and custom sounds

It was quite noticeable from the start that the show featured some music and sounds that were added as a part of post-processing. I believe the GM also mentioned that some of that music is custom made by him or his brother, which is an extra touch. While during the run of Demon City Slickers the effects could get a bit overbearing at times, a much more subtle use of the same editing used during Dollywood City Slickers showed more potential. Interesting idea, needs a bit more polish to be great.

Good content warnings

Similar to Swallows, this podcast featured some pretty good content warnings for an episode featuring a burning building. The crew also went an extra mile to create an episode summary for those that didn’t want to listen to the normal episode due to the content. Nice and considerate.

Shoutouts to other podcasts

Even being an upstart podcast, Demon City Slickers did give shoutouts to various other podcasts during its runtime. It was a nice thing for them to do.

Lowest point in Exalted

I think that out of all Exalted podcasts I’ve listened to or been a part of, Demon City Slickers might’ve hit the lowest point for the PCs I’ve witnessed. It’s the end of Episode 4, and the characters are dealing with a fallout of a fire at the police station. During the initial explosion one of the PCs, Kleefin, disappeared (because the player had to drop out). Their familiar, the talking ostrich Steely Dan, barely made it out alive, they were limping. Kulak had a major tie to Kleefin, so they were distraught. They also have gone into the burning building to fight the perpetrators going around killing people and they have outed themselves as a Solar. After letting Steely Dan rest his broken leg on Kulak’s boat, the PCs went to interrogate someone they had captured. After the investigation some mysterious figure warned them not to stick their noses where they don’t belong. When they came back, the boat was being investigated by the Realm police and was basically impounded with Steely Dan there. Mel had to lie through his teeth not to implicate them, gaining some considerable Limit in the process. At the end of the day, the party was penniless, because Kleefen was the character with the money. They were also homeless, because they used to live on Kulak’s boat. On top of that, Kulak has lost an important friend and soon all of his past acquaintances would rat him out for being a Solar. They were also jobless, since they pretty much botched their last assignment of investigating the Dojo. If that wasn’t enough, in a few days the Wyld Hunt would show up at their doorstep, looking for an Anathema to kill. So Mel and Kulak decided to make a shelter in the swamp for the night. They failed the roll and just decided to sleep in an old hollowed out tree.

I don’t think I’ve seen any other Exalted characters being brought so low as these two due to just a conflagration of bad things happening at once. It was a really great moment.

Standing up to OPP

Just like Swallows of the South called OPP on some shady things that came to light, so too did Demon City Slickers take a stand against the company. Heck, they did that in their first episode. As always, it’s a commendable stance.

Criticism

No show is without its flaws, and so we should turn to what Demon City Slickers has committed. Not as an attack on the show or its creators, but as a learning experience on how everyone could improve...

Tambourine-assisted rolls

In episode 1, the team decided to roll their dice into a Tambourine for an extra flair. The experience listening to that was comparable to ExalTwitch using glass beads in glass jars for Essence, a very jarring experience. The microphone picked up on the sharp sounds so well the episode was really painful to listen to. Luckily, that idea didn’t make it past episode 1, otherwise this show would’ve been unlistenable…

Post-processing and audio balancing

While the idea of adding music during post-processing was interesting, the execution was a bit spotty at times. The music volume usually ended up a bit too high, distracting from the dialogue. This was especially noticeable when it was combined with a heavy voice modulation in Episode 4. The modulation by itself made the character barely comprehensible, while adding music on top of it made me miss their dialogue entirely. I only learned what they were talking about during the next episode recap.

Mid-episode “ad break”

This one was a weird choice - with one hour episodes the podcast decided to put in some “ad breaks” and talk about things one would usually mention before or after the episode - shout-outs, calls to action, etc. It broke the rhythm of the play a bit unfortunately…

Anachronisms and not taking things seriously

Part of enjoying Exalted is the sword and sandal mythical setting. Unfortunately, that enjoyment can be ruined by bringing things up that don’t really belong in that world, like “a police investigation”, “cab service”, “a god-given right”, “a burrito fast food joint”, or NPCs named “Jerry” and “Smith”. It didn’t help that a good deal of the game revolved around “the police”...

On top of things, there is taking things lightly, and then there is giving mouth-to-mouth and a funeral to some long-dead fish in a fishing warehouse while looking for clues. It’s right up there with Swallows opening the game up with Godwin ripping his pants and possibly soiling himself after some job of cleaning gutters.

But, understandably, sometimes jokes don’t land and that’s the reality of things. I think the show has improved since those incidents…

The missing PC

It was an unfortunate event that Kleefin’s player had to leave the show, and thus Kleefin had to be written up. However, similarly to Swallows, the problem was further aggravated by one of the remaining PCs having an important tie to them and bringing it up a number of times in the coming episode or two. It’s definitely a problematic part of any show where the cast changes without much warning, but bringing attention to it won’t help the situation unfortunately…

Abyssals are common knowledge, but Infernals are a novelty

The game’s primary antagonist was an Abyssal. The fact that they are an Abyssal and what that entails seems to have been a common knowledge among many NPCs (even though that Abyssal seems to have been a new figure in town) - the various cult leaders knew about Abyssals, a random demon knew about them, the PCs seem to know about them too. At the same time, a demon bringing up that Infernals are a thing was treated as a surprise reveal. The difference between how those two splats were handled was a bit jarring.

Conclusions

While it’s unfortunate Demon City Slickers ended rather abruptly, the podcast itself seems to be moving in a good direction. Their most recent project, Dollywood City Slickers, showed that the podcast is improving, so hopefully we will see more fun content from them in the future. As it stands, their Exalted podcast was an okay foray into the game with one or two standout moments.

Related links:

• Demon City Slickers episode synopsis

Rainbow shields, damage of the gaps, prescribed and ad lib skills

In a lot of RPGs, players have skills, stats or whatever you want to call them that are well defined. Things like Medicine, Nature, Insight, etc. in D&D, or Occult, Drive, Larceny in Chronicles of Darkness. Then there are some games that are more flexible where the players are asked to fill in their own ad lib skills and stats - games like DOGS, Godbound or Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, where you can pretty much write anything in as a stat - "Memory of my dead brother", "Fastest gun in the west", or "underwater basket weaving".

The problem with the latter is the fuzzy boarders each such statement creates about when a given skill should be used, when it shouldn't apply, and avoiding skills that are too broad or too narrow.

Broad vs narrow skill applications

There are RPGs out there that like to break skills down to minutia. In Burning Wheel there are a lot of skills - under Carpentry alone you have Fence Building, Ditch Digging, Carving, Carpentry, Rude Carpentry, Cooping (making barrels), Boatwright, Shipwright, Cartwright and a few more. This creates a sort of Air-Breathing Mermaid Problem, where the game basically forces the GM's hand to say "sorry, you only have Carpentry, you can't carve and decorate what you build and you can't seem to know how to make a barrel". It can also create traps if characters specialise in some skill that doesn't come up that often - "I know you're a master Cooper, but no matter how great that barrel you make will be it still won't help you sail the sea, you need Boatwright for that".

You can run into similar problems in games where players can define their own ad lib skills, but those also sway in the other direction - they can be too broadly applicable. You could have players put ranks into "underwater basket weaving" only for that to come in handy once or twice in the entire game, while someone else makes a stat called "fast" and they want to use it all the time - "I shoot him, but like, fast", "I read, fast", "I sleep, fast", etc. The boarders where such player-defined skills apply are fuzzy - you can't really tell them that because there is some other skill that also works for the situation theirs might not apply. Moreover, players will often skew the problem in their favour just so they can use their best skills - "I make a basket under water and it's so well crafted I can use it as a raft with a sail to navigate the rough sea. It's all baskets, just different shapes."

City of Mist tried addressing this problem by classifying its tags into "specific" and "broad". Most tags on a character sheet should be specific - only letting the character use them in specific, limited scenarios. One tag could be broad - applicable in wide variety of situations.

Rainbow shields and damage of the gaps

While playing Exalted / Godbound with my group we would often reference a "rainbow shield" defence - a power to negate any kind of incoming damage, no matter whether it's physical, magical, fire, electricity, etc. A system that would allow for such widely-applicable defence to exist wouldn't be too fun to play really. Exalted 2nd edition suffered from something like that from what I heard - someone created an optimal way of playing the game called "paranoia combat" that's all about using perfect defence against the high-lethality rocket-tag and outlast your opponent.

In our first round of playing Godbound we ended up being too generous with defences, letting the players counter most attacks with most power sets - "I use Artifice to instantly build a wall around myself to deflect the incoming blow!". As we later found out, Godbound was not intended to work like that - any given Word should only counter a very narrow range of powers that are thematically linked to it. You could use Sea to counter a Fire power, but not say, Sword.

However, the game had a different problem, one which I'll call "damage of the gaps". The system did not have a specified, finite list of damage types. A number of powers did either give you things you could be immune to, or let you specify said immunity - for example, if you had the Word of Fire you had "an invincible defence against flame and smoke". But since "smoke" was ill-defined, we had an argument about whether that Word would apply against chemical fumes and poisonous gasses. Similarly, in the Ancalia expansion introduced an Incendiary Court - fire-golem-like creatures from outside of reality that while clearly having fire-based attacks nonetheless came with a note that their "flaming powers are not wholly of natural fire, and so enemies with invincible defences against fire still take half damage from them". This was probably to prevent players circumventing a big boss fight entirely, but still felt like a weird way to make a power less useful.

In a similar vein you could start splitting hairs on many things - if you are immune to mental attacks and someone uses music or mean words on you, does that count? Where does mental damage end and emotional damage begin? Is a psychic blow magic, mental or physical? Is a laser attack fire, sunlight, or neither? Can I make some very snowflake-y Word that has its own damage type that none of the statted enemies have defence against?

Because the game had no finite and well-defined list of damage types, you either have to make one yourself before the game starts, or possibly have to argue about this kind of damage of the gaps...

Conclusions

While being able to get creative with skills and powers can be fun, having things that are well-defined and concise can help everyone at the table know when something is applicable and avoid the problems of things being either too narrowly or too broadly useful.

Gaming and solving the fun out of RPG systems

Over the last few years my group and I have played a number of systems that had mechanics you could game to get XP or other advantages, or had some of their mechanics boil down to a solvable math problem. Both of those situations ended up detracting from the experience, either drawing more attention to themselves rather to the game being played, or just being bland mechanics.

RPG mechanics as math problems

The first category of mechanics are essentially math problems - mechanics that for any given situation have a correct solution on what to do to maximise your outcome.

oWoD Automated Fire

First one of these is Automatic Fire from Vampire the Masquerade:

This attack basically gives you a lot of extra dice to a roll, but makes the roll Difficulty higher. It's basically a move you want to use either when you need a hail mary, or the Difficulty is already so low it doesn't matter much. For other scenarios, whether or not to use this move would require running the numbers, but there is still a definitive yes or no answer to whether using it is a good move or not. Figuring it out for certain however requires some complicated math of using your AnyDice-fu.

DOGS Growth

DOGS presented a similar math problem to its players when it came to Growth.

DOGS is a system in which you have stats that take form of multiple dice of a given size - "3D4", "4D6", etc. When you undergo Growth, you get to either increase the number of dice for a given stat, or increase the size of those dice - so from "3D4" you can go into either "4D4" or "3D6". Turns out there is an optimal way of progressing through those dice to get the best result on average:

So for example, 3D6 gives you on average 0.5 higher roll than 4D4, while 5D8 is better than 7D4 by 5 whole points on average. The game doesn't explain those concepts to the players and it's simple and abstract enough that these things shouldn't matter, but for a problem-solving player it's a solvable mechanic.

Mouse Guard and optimal combat

Mouse Guard is a system with its own little combat / conflict engine that relies on picking actions (Attack, Defend, Feint and Manoeuvre) and seeing how they interact with one another. Attack lowers opponent's Disposition (HP essentially), Defend heals your Disposition, Manoeuvre is a way to get an advantage on next rolls, while a Feint is like an Attack with caveats - if played against an Attack, Feint does nothing, but if played against a Defend, Defend does nothing.

During our first game of Mouse Guard we soon learned that this setup creates a simple First Order Optimal Strategy - just always Attack. Attack vs Attack or Defend gets you closer to resolving the conflict, Attack trumps Feint, and Manoeuvre often isn't useful enough to trump dealing damage to an opponent. Attack, Attack, Attack!

FOO (First Order Optimal) Strategy

Towards the end of the game this has ended up being such a simple and optimal strategy that for our next game of Mouse Guard we had to switch the rules to give Attack a hard counter not to devolve every conflict of any type into "press A to win if you press it faster than your enemy".

Cortex and marginally useful SFXs

Recently our group picked up the modular system Cortex. We only played a few sessions of it so far, but one thing that stood out to me was how "starchy" (boring) some of its special powers were.

First of all, Cortex is another mixed-die system that puts a big emphasis on making pool of dice and manipulating your dice. So if you're Iron Man, you can have say, Eccentric Billionaire at D10, Ganius Scientist at D12 and Mk1 Iron Man Suit at D6 and roll those all together to do something.

On top of that, one module you can use in Cortex are Power SFX (special effects). Those are some extra powers your character can use that are tied to a Power Set that can alter the game a bit. So for example you can be Tony Stark with Iron Man Power Set, and one of your SFX could be "Immunity" where you spend a Power Point to negate a specific attack, simple enough.

However, a lot of those SFX are boring dice manipulators. For example - Focus lets you take two dice and turn them into one bigger die. Boost lets you shut down one power to increase the die on another die. Dangerous gives you an extra small die to roll, but changes the size of other dice. Multipower lets you use more than one dice from a given pool but they all are decreased a step or more. Versatile lets you split one die into two or more smaller dice. The list goes on.

I've ran some numbers and a lot of these powers are marginally useful. Say, turning 3D8 into 2D8+2D6 with Versatile gives you an average roll that's 0.42 higher, but gives you 0.45 smaller Effect and 0.2 more Hitches. Without going into what those are, those numbers are marginally useful. Sometimes the numbers increase marginally, sometimes they decrease, but from what I've seen it's not a big effect overall.

Unfortunately to get those numbers I had to spend a few hours programming and debugging a Cortex dice simulator. It's hard to make an informed decision as to whether a power is useful or not without a chart, and trying to play a game well that's filled with unknowable probabilities would just be the case of blind luck.

One way or another - the stat-focused SFX and similar mechanics can be one of two things - either boring because they don't change much about the roll, or having an optimal way to play it, in which case you're not engaging with the mechanics, you're solving a math problem. Either way the mechanics become irrelevant because they're either "use them always", "don't bother with them ever", or "use them under specific circumstances". Since Cortex is based on complex math with no glaringly obvious answer, I honestly can't be bothered to use these SFX.

Honourable mention - Exalted, Paranoia Combat

Honourable mention in this category should also go to Exalted. I won't elaborate much on it since this section is already getting long, but there are two things that are worth mentioning that make this epic game of sword and sandal capital H Heroes boring: Paranoia Combat and Minuscule Incremental Charms.

Paranoia Combat was a strategy from 2nd edition Exalted where the optimal way of winning the Rocket Tag combat was to turtle up and play in the most boring way possible.

Minuscule Incremental Charms were special powers you could buy with XP that would give you just small bonuses to rolls or change tiny things that were rather boring in themselves. Things like Triumph-Forged God-Body that gave you double-9s on Athletic rolls instead of double-10s, or Wyld-Forging Focus that started wyld-shaping at a higher phase. All of those were such small tweaks that they might not be worth the mental load, and weighing their effect vs XP cost would be a small math problem in itself.

Gaming mechanics for profit

Most RPG mechanics that you can game for profit I've come across were focused on being able to farm XP, or at least streamline the way you earn XP. While not a problem in itself (who cares if the party got more XP if they're having fun doing it - you're not competing with anyone), it can start to become a problem when it draws too much attention away from doing things in the game and having fun and onto "brrrr the number goes up"

Chronicles of Darkness - punch me in the face for XP

I've covered this one before in the "Punch me in the face for XP - the failure of CoD beats system" article, so I won't repeat much here. Basically, in Chronicles of Darkness you can basically earn XP by being beaten up a bit at the start of every scene, and some systems like Mage the Awakening 2nd Edition even call out a similar way to farm magic XP.

In a similar vein, the systems also let you earn XP by a number of other ways, like turning fails into botches. This can create some animosity between players when someone is invested in some scene going well, while other players are there to mess things up just to farm up some extra XP - "I failed to impress this character, I opt to botch it instead and make them hate us. Too bad they knew something about your lost sister, guess we'll never find what they knew!".

DOGS - Growth vs Consequences optimisation

Another entry for DOGS, this time about maximising the rate at which your character growths, as opposed to optimising how they grow.

DOGS is a system where you Grow when you suffer Consequences as a result of a conflict you had. To become stronger, you have to get into conflicts, get beaten up a bit, etc. However, Consequences can also have lasting effects if they are bad enough - if you roll too high on them, you may even have to step down your stats, essentially netting you zero, or potentially giving you some net negative sessions. Once again, there is a mathematically optimal way of playing:

Which is basically to get a 3D4 Consequence - it has the best chances of being a net gain. You get such small Consequences by essentially keeping non-violent in conflicts, which to an extent is a "mechanic as a metaphor" for the system.

Mouse Guard and farming Checks

Mouse Guard is a system where you grow your character by practice - aka the more you use a skill, the better you get essentially. As with any such system, the first way of farming it is by doing things all the time, which can encourage you to hog the spotlight. This can be a bit of a problem, but then there is more.

The game is broken up into two parts - the GM turn and the players' turn. During the GM's turn (which lasts about half of the session, not "a turn"...) you can earn "Checks", which you spend during the players' turn to do things and make rolls. You earn those Checks by using your Traits against yourself ("I am Small, therefore I have problems lifting this large log!"). You can use a Trait against yourself once per roll, which means the more you act and roll on GM's turn, the more Checks you can earn to act more during the players' turn.

Moreover, during a conflict you can easily earn a lot of Checks if you play in a very boring way. Essentially, during a conflict you pick actions to take - Attack, Defend, Feint and Manoeuvre. When you Defend, you essentially try to recover your HP. Since the conflict only ends when one of the party's HP goes down to zero, if you turtle up you will be rolling for a long time, letting you earn Checks for every roll. In a lot of cases you can also earn a lot more Checks during a fight under specific circumstances - breaking a tie in enemy's favour or giving an enemy more dice in a vs conflict. So if you play like a turtling asshole and have enough dice, you can in theory earn a lot of Checks.

This strategy has one counter though, Feinting makes you unable to roll Defend. You can try anticipating it though by throwing an Attack that trumps Feint into the mix to make your opponent have to Defend and recover. It's not perfect, but it can work...

While that turtle Defence is an extreme example, I have played in some sessions where a less extreme form of Check farming was involved, which later resulted in pretty neat things being accomplished during the players' turn.

Conclusions

There are a number of games out there that rely on math obscurity to give a sense of depth or agency. However, solving the game mechanic from a mathematical sense is only so fun, and once solved the complexity is replaced with an optimal way to play the game, which isn't fun. Making the math behind it harder is not making the choices more meaningful, just the decisions harder to make informed. Try pruning such mechanics from your game if possible.

Similarly, there are games that can be exploited by players to gain some disproportionate amount of XP and what have you that detract from the game by rewarding boring play.

Or in other words - if you are designing a new game system, try asking a math nerd or a game developer to break it. They might do the math and show you how balanced your system can be, and you can guide your players to playing the game well with that math as well.

Related Articles:

• Categories of XP Systems
• Meat and potatoes of RPG powers
• Manage your game's mental load
• Punch me in the face for XP - the failure of CoD beats system
• Net negative sessions

Sins of RPG Actual Plays

So you want to do a TTRPG Actual Play / Stream / Whatever? Here are some things to avoid and tips on how to make your content enjoyable for your viewers.

I'll try providing examples of various do's and don'ts if I'm able. These are meant to be for educational purpose only, and are not meant as an attack on the linked materials. It takes a lot of effort to produce high-quality content, a lot of these are amateur recordings, and everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes a good-sounding idea can turn out to be poor in execution, etc.

This advice can also be very specific to recording / streaming and might not always be applicable to normal games. So while you might learn about a thing or two that could be useful regardless, take things with a grain of salt.

As for my qualifications, I've been a part of a weekly RPG Podcast for about four years now, and I've listened through a few actual plays with a critical ear.

With all of that out of the way...

Don't name yourself after specific games

I've seen this one a few times - the group would enthusiastically name themselves based on a specific RPG system, or their first campaign and later it would be hard to rebrand once they move onto a different system or campaign.

ExalTwitch for example still doesn't seem to have a parent "brand" after that campaign ended and they switched over to Changeling: The Streaming. Both names are also very system-specific. As I understand their RPGClinic used to be a separate show by the same host, meaning that's three different "products" without an umbrella way to refer to the group.

Swallows of the South similarly leaned heavily into their campaign name, and now they are running their second game, Arms of the Tide, still without some other name to call themselves.

On the flip side you have groups like RollPlay, which has done shows like Swan Song, Far Verona, Mirrorshades, etc., each falling under one parent entity, while being its own show.

Overall sound quality

Probably the most important part of any actual play - sound quality. It's the most important thing to get right. If you don't have a clear audio, people might not have the patience to stay for anything else.

There are a few key things to look out for:

1) Eliminate background noise. Nobody wants to listen to things like loud fridges, fish tank aerators, computer fans, etc. Some of it can even be nauseating to listen to for a longer time.

For example, check out this Colonial Marines Actual Play. Skip to anywhere during the episode, listen for a few seconds, then pause and notice that humming sound just go away. That's one example of background noise you want to avoid.

Luckily, programs like Audacity let you remove some of this noise. We start all of our episode recordings with "30 seconds of silence" used for this purpose and it helps a lot.

2) Use push-to-talk, but avoid "on/off" sounds. If you're connecting for an online game, you will have to choose whether to use push-to-talk, or other microphone activation methods. Push to talk is generally the best since it's more deliberate - you know when you're on, and you know when you're off.

However, sometimes when you use push-to-talk, you might be creating a crackling sound when you start and stop your microphone. For an example, check out this episode - about 4 minutes in onward whenever Gary / Mirage talks, you hear the snap on snap off sounds, and that's really annoying. It's probably due to an analog push-to-talk, but it's something worth looking out for regardless.

3) Audio clipping. This is especially important when you're talking into some headphones - if you talk too loud, especially with some extra software audio boosts, your audio will clip and sound just awful. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see this video:

#1 - your gain is too high

4) Set your microphone up correctly. You can be talking to your microphone from the wrong side, you could have a wrong type of microphone for your needs, or you could even be recording from a wrong microphone (especially relevant to laptops with built-in microphones!). In general, watch this video:

5) Don't put your microphone on the table. Find a way to set it up somewhere where you won't be rolling or putting your things, ideally on some boom stands / arms, maybe even in a shock mount. Otherwise your audience will get the experience of putting their ears to your table and hearing every tap, slide, roll, etc. like they'd have their ear to the table itself:

42:55, putting down a cup in front of the microphone...

6) Disable notification sounds. We all have some sort of notifications that bug us every now and then - Discord, Slack, Facebook, other websites, system sounds, what have you. You don't want to have those on your recording - they are not only distracting, but can also make your audience think someone is messaging them. Disable all of those when you record.

In our Congenial S01E04 the first 20 minutes are an example of what to avoid.

This should cover the basics, now for some more advanced examples...

Audio balancing - music

If you want to add music to your game, make sure it doesn't overpower your voice audio. People are here to listen to your stories, and the music should be secondary. This can be especially problematic if the song in question doesn't have a consistent volume but swells over time. For an example of this, check out Demon City Slickers Eyes of Stone, Fists of Jade: Episode 3, 10 minutes in.

Audio balancing - voice

People have different default speaking volumes - some talk quietly, while others project their voice, especially when they get excited. You should compensate for this so that more or less the sound level of everyone recorded would be on a similar level - you don't want to have one person be too loud while someone else is too quiet for comfortable listening.

This could be achieved in a few ways. First of all, if you are recording an online game, you can usually adjust individual volumes and balance things that way. If you are recording in person, you can achieve something similar if you have multiple microphones, each for a different person and balancing their levels.

However, if you want a cheap solution that we used for our one microphone setup, here it is. Use distance to the microphone as a way of adjusting volume. Put the microphone on one side of the table and sit the quiet people close to it, while the louder people should be seated further away from it. This will have a similar effect as the other options while costing you nothing.

Avoid sharp sounds

A personal pet peeve of mine. Sharp sounds pick up REALLY well on microphones, so if you're doing things like putting glass beads in a glass bowl, rolling dice on a glass table, eating food on plates with utensils or using a tambourine for a dice tray, your audience will hear that really well, to the detriment of everything else.

On a similar note, if you're using music in your games that are on the higher pitch spectrum, make sure to play those a bit more quietly and don't play it for a prolonged period of time.

Examples of what to avoid:

• Demon City Slickers Eyes of Stone, Fists of Jade: Episode 1 and the "tambourine-assisted rolls" - every time a roll is made it's painful to listen to.
• ExalTwitch Day Eight, 2:11:00 in - the GM plays a character that talks in whispers, their theme song however has a lot of very long, vibrating, high-pitched notes. Couple that with audio balancing that might be a bit off and have the character be in the scene for awhile and your listeners can get a headache (I have!)
• ExalTwitch Day Eleven, 1:06:00 in - the cast uses glass beads for essentially mana points and they keep them in glass containers. Usually everyone is very careful about moving them, but sometimes you move a larger amount and hear the glass-on-glass noise. This one is not a particularly bad example, but I couldn't find a better illustration. Imagine what a careless group might do in this setup with dropping more glass beads into glass.
• Our Amp Year One S01E05 - 21:30 in one of the players decides to microwave some food and then proceeds to eat it during the recording with utensils from a plate. The microphone picks it up quite well. The episode also features a player being sick or having allergies and just inhaling it in sharply, which is also rather audible.

Songs with lyrics

Humans are good at picking up human speech out of even loud environments. What is harder though is picking up one person talking over another. For this reason it's best to avoid playing songs with lyrics in them - you will be drowning your own self out with these. Generally save those for your intro / outro and use them very sparingly during the game.

After-effects

Sometimes you might want to spice up your recording with some after-effects. While these can be nice if pulled off well (see Swallows of the South Prelude: Episode Six, 27 minutes in for a good example), they can be a detriment if you sacrifice clarity for the effect (see Demon City Slickers Eyes of Stone, Fists of Jade: Episode 4, 23 minutes in for an example of an effect that makes a character illegible). Try erring on the side of restraint unless you know what you're doing.

Anachronisms

One part of enjoying an actual play is getting immersed in the game and its world. This is especially important for heavily stylised games like Exalted, Warhammer 40k, or Legend of the Five Rings. One surefire way of breaking that immersion is introducing things that don't belong in that world, or even clash with it - anachronisms.

Swallows of the South Prelude Episode Four gives a good example of this around the 19:53 mark, where in a sword and sandal setting of Exalted characters use the threat of a bad Yelp review on one another...

Bringing up the missing PCs

It's somewhat expected that some players will miss a session every now and then or have to leave the game entirely. Sometimes you know in advance and can plan accordingly, while at other times you won't know until after the fact, that's just life.

The problem arises on how to deal with the missing characters plot-wise. You could try to explain why they're away, write them out in-universe or the like, or just ignore the issue entirely. The latter is our default go-to choice as it keeps things simple and moving and avoids one issue that tends to drag some games down - character bringing up the missing PCs.

Demon City Slickers Eyes of Stone, Fists of Jade Episode 03 is the first episode after one of the characters, Kleefin, leaves the show. That marks the start of the trend of Kulak, another one of the PCs, reminiscing about his missing friend and bringing the fact that he's missing to the forefront of multiple episodes.

A similar situation happens in Swallows of the South, when after Prelude: Episode Three Rizzo gets written off. For seasons Godwin keeps bringing him up, how much he misses him and how much he doesn't like the new PCs that were introduced in comparison to his missing best friend Rizzo. This ends up alienating another of the PCs, Ariston, for no reason of their own. By the time Rizzo comes back, another one of the original characters gets written off - Ajax, which also doesn't help the situation.

In general, unless you have some some good story to tell about the absence of a character, it's best to not bring them up too much if at all. Asking "where's Poochie" is usually not an interesting question for the audience if there is no actual answer.

Name drop your characters a lot

This one is especially important when you're starting a new game, but is a good rule to follow most of the time. Name drop your characters, a lot. Use them when talking to a PC, use them when describing what your character does, etc. Eventually people will learn the names and learn to associate them with your voice, but it takes awhile, especially if someone is new to your podcast and doesn't know the entire cast yet.

The first episode of Congenials for example does a poor job of this - even though I know some of these people, it still took me an episode or two to be able to tell which character someone is playing and who is doing what.

Conclusions

There are a lot of things to get right when it comes to making actual plays. Listen to your material with a critical ear, listen to other actual plays to pick up their slip-ups.. Learn from the mistakes and aim to improve.