In this episode, we talk about how to best use lying and secrecy in your games.

The secrets of this episode:

  • Wayne’s d100 joke was originally Lyal’s. It was also originally funny.
  • Wayne has never seen Goodfellas, and Lyal has never seen Family Guy. This actually won’t seem like much of a secret after you listen to the episode.
  • Chris initially had a joke where he said the episode was about fantasy. Get it? It was a lie. It’s no secret why this “joke” never made it in.

In this episode, we debut Pantheon Pandemonium, where we look at a specific pantheon and discuss how to incorporate it into your games. For our first installment, we talk about the spirits of the voodoo religion, the Loa.

Also in this episode, Wayne reveals a shocking secret about his dad.

At a certain point, it may sound like we’re joined by a surprise guest host. It’s just Lyal’s spot-on Haitian accent. The man has a gift.

Warning: Chris returns from the dead. (This joke would probably work better in a episode about Romero zombies.)

Another Idle Red Hands first (for us, at least)! We debut Mashups, where we blend different elements to make new(ish) game settings. In this episode, we add twists to fictional and historical settings.

It’s an extra long episode (or as the Japanese say, plus alpha) because we had so much fun doing the first two mashups, we decided to do a third one. How much fun they are to listen to is up to you. The consensus is that the first one is the weakest link (or as the Japanese say, the red-headed stepchild).

Corrections:

The Hyborian Age is set after Atlantis sank, not before. Kull is part of the Thurian Age, not the Hyborian Age, and is actually from Atlantis. Both were created by Robert E. Howard. Lyal has since turned in his Conan Fan Club card.

Kirk Douglas was a contemporary of Burt Lancaster, not Kurt Russell. Yes, Lyal again. He refuses to turn in his Kurt Russell Fan Club card, however.

Jason Straham was in Crank, not Crash. Chris was going to turn in his Jason Straham Fan Club card until he was reminded that it was the only one in existence.

No guest stars this episode; we stick with the Holy Trinity of Lyal, Chris and Wayne. (Did you see what we did there?)

Rather than focus on specific faiths, myths and rituals in this episode, we look at how religion, in general, would impact your game setting. This includes the tendency to tie faith to power and the idea that “science is the new religion”. We also discuss whether it’s fair to spring setting and rule surprises on players.

We hope to revisit this topic in the future because it’s so big.

Although we talk about religion, we manage to not offend any world faiths. Chris does cost us our creationist listeners, however.

In this episode, we look at the morality and motivation systems in Dungeons and Dragons, Palladium, World of Darkness and DC Heroes. We discuss whether they work for their games, whether they’d work for other games, and whether we need systems like these at all. There’s also a great tip on how your lawful good character can be a cold-blooded torturer and still stay true to their alignment. No kidding.

For those of you that thought that episodes 0 and 1 were okay but could have used more Wayne, this episode is for you.

The topic for episode 3 is alluded to at the end. Unfortunately, we lost the episode. The “experiment” is a series of mini-campaigns we have planned to explore different genres and systems. We’ll discuss these in future episodes.