Cynthia Marie, Kai Norman and Ryan Omega invited Kelly Lynne D'Angelo, Native American writer and DnD Personality and Dr. Diana Leonard, Associate Professor of Psychology at Lewis and Clark to talk about the differences between appropriation and inspiration when it comes to roleplaying characters and creating world builds.  In this timely topic, we address considerations of roleplaying an underrepresented group, what to do when you come across details that are not authentic in these cultures, and how our own personal identities and backgrounds shape how we roleplay.  New and present content each week on our Twitch channel twitch.tv/lifeactionroleplay For behind the scenes access, join our Patreon at www.patreon.com/lifeactionroleplay

Life. Action. RolePlay! A LARP Podcast

Appropriation vs. Inspiration in Roleplaying (feat. Kelly Lynne D'Angelo and Dr. Diana Leonard)

On this episode, Dom Zook, producer of the Twitch channel, Saving Throw, joins Cyn, Kai, and Ryan about what it takes to produce a livestreamed roleplaying game show. We cover everything from the technical side, production logistics, and tips on balancing paying attention to the players of your game and to the audience at home.  Dom Zook's Twitch channel is twitch.tv/savingthrowshow Life. Action. RolePlay's Twitch channel is twitch.tv/lifeactionroleplay for their latest content. For behind the scenes content, Life. Action. RolePlay's Patreon is www.patron.com/lifeactionroleplay  

How to Produce an RPG Stream (feat. Dom Zook)

Hosts Kai Norman and Ryan Omega invite Mike Graves from Eldritch Sky Gaming and Spencer Winter to the show to talk about what makes a character that you are creating "memorable" in the eyes of other players.The discussion includes how to work with archetypes yet avoid stereotypes and why creating a character that is "cool and perfect" will be frustrating to play rather than memorable. Also covered in this topic are tips on playing characters with underrepresented backgrounds (racial, gender, or sexual minorities) that are different from the player and how to avoid being accidentally problematic even when well-intentioned but still play that character in your game.

How to Make Memorable Characters

Ryan Omega and Kai Norman invite two guests who play archetypical characters of faith yet atypical concepts in LARP: Vivid Vivka, who plays a crow-fae druid in Twin Mask LARP and Dylan Buchanan, who plays a Telling Visionist priest inspired by Walt Disney in Dystopia Rising.We discuss what attracts people to playing characters of faith and why it can be addictive roleplay to those players, tips on how to enhance conveying spirituality with costuming and props, and why preaching your religion and aggressively handing our pamphlets is one of the least effective ways to roleplay a character of faith.

How to Play Characters of Faith

For today's episode, Cyn, Kai, and Ryan tackle a more light-hearted topic where you had to roleplay a character or plan a LARP or roleplaying game and things fell apart at that moment. So we talk about our epic fails (and how we dealt with them) and our unexpected triumphs when things in our roleplay took a wide left turn! And we did this over drinks. So some of the podcast also didn't go as planned (but decided to keep this in editing!)

Things That Don't Go As Planned

What happens if you no longer find joy in roleplaying or LARP? Is it because your time with the hobby or game is over is there something else happening?We invite back Tessa Thurman to the show as we discuss what happens in our brain chemistry when we experience LARP fatigue (or Roleplay fatigue) and what are solutions to resolve these issues so we can find joy in roleplay again in our games.Tessa Thurman is a game designer and game writer who also runs escape rooms, including virtual escape rooms during the time of quarantine.

How to deal with LARP and Roleplay Fatigue

Bleed, the roleplay concept where emotions you feel as your character are carried over into your real life, seems to be heightened while we roleplay over Zoom during the pandemic. Ryan, Cyn, and Kai talk with our guest, Tessa Thurman, about the scientific and chemical processes in our brain that allow us to feel the highs and lows of roleplay and discuss strategies on how to mitigate those lows from affecting our everyday mood.

Dealing with Bleed under Quarantine (feat. Tessa Thurman)

Outline Storytellers and Game Masters guide their players along a prescripted path. Sandbox Storytellers and Game Masters give their players freedom to do things until confronted with boundaries. How can you tell which one you are and how can you prevent railroading your players, where players are given no options except the story you wrote?Joining us is Kailey Bray, the DM for Damsels and Dice, the Disney Princess DnD game, as we collectively figure out which types of storytellers we are, how do we prevent decision paralysis in players and when we give players a nudge when they take too long?

Outline vs Sandbox Storytelling. Which one are you? (feat. Kailey Bray)

With the current quarantines in place, there has been a couple of questions most LARPers are afraid to ask: What will the future of LARP look like? Will things ever return to normal?Joining us for this topic are Garrett Hallows, the Head of Story for Twin Mask, and Fabienne Miskelly, one of the producers for the Twitch channel, Scabby Rooster, to talk about the adaptations current LARPs need to continue making roleplay accessible, including an in-depth discussion on the different virtual LARPs taking place in Discord and Tik-Tok. We also speculate what Physical LARPs will look like when we are cleared to interact socially again in physical spaces.    

The Future of LARP (feat. Fabienne Miskelly and Garrett Hallows)

Cynthia Marie, Kai Norman and Ryan Omega welcome Mikey Strange, a storyteller for Twin Mask LARP and the puzzle maker for Aetherhaus Academy on the Twitch channel, Scabby Rooster. Cyn takes the host helm while Mikey, Kai and Ryan all talk about how their methods of creating puzzles and using puzzles in their storytelling. Mikey shares where his inspirations for puzzles come from, Kai explains in detail his favorite puzzle, the Einstein Puzzle, and Ryan talks about his favorite storytelling puzzle as a one-shot mod.

Making Puzzles (feat. Mikey Strange)

Ryan and Cyn are joined by Krystina Arielle, Jordan Raskopoulos, and Sharang Biswas and together, they were all part of #RealityRP, one of the featured events for DnD Live 2020. Sharang and Ryan were two of the five narrative designers and Krystina, Jordan and Cyn were three of the ten performers.Reality RP was a comprehensive roleplay event that included roleplay on Instagram, discussions on Discord, twine adventures, the audience finding clues on the DnD Live 2020 website, and a live-streamed reality programming elimination event.Here the designers and performers talk about the event, all the behind-the-scenes that people didn't see on live video and their favorite moments from the three-day game.

#RealityRP from DnD Live 2020

Kai, Cynthia and Ryan invite Greg Tito, the Senior Communications Manager for Dungeons & Dragons, to talk about his D&D event of the year: DnD Live! Greg talks about the history of DnD Live, how the event showcases a different way to play and upcoming things about #DnDLive2020! Ryan, who is one of the Narrative Team/game designers for DnDLive2020, will also talk about the development of #RealityRP which is a mixture of Reality gaming, LARP and canon DnD characters, and his experiences directing the intro videos for Dungeons & Dragons.

Dungeons & Dragons #DnDLive2020 (feat. Greg Tito)

Ryan, Cynthia Marie and Kai invite their friends, Shea Gibbons, the new Head of Story of Dystopia Rising: Northern California, and Ezekiel Bradshaw-Little, from the Community Management Team for Twin Mask, to talk about using costume, props and physical movement to enhance your characters.This audio track was taken from the live talk show of "Life. Action. RolePlay!" on the new Twitch channel: twitch.tv/lifeactionroleplay  This has been edited to tighten the track without removing the original content.

Visual Storytelling (feat. Shea Gibbons and Ezekiel Bradshaw-Little)

From our second live talk show of Life. Action. RolePlay! We are honored to bring back Jason Carl, Storyteller for LA by Night and Brand Marketing Manager for the World of Darkness. We talk about roleplaying in this time of COVID and how the World of Darkness, and roleplaying and LARP in general, are affected by it. We took questions from the live chat and answer them here.The podcast has been edited from the live broadcast to remove long pauses or live broadcasting issues. To catch live episodes of Life. Action. RolePlay! Tune in to the twitch channel under http://www.twitch.tv/lifeactionroleplay!

World of Darkness: Roleplay and Community (featuring Jason Carl)

Ryan, Cynthia Marie and Kai did their first livestreamed talk show on their new LifeActionRolePlay twitch channel and invited the audience to ask questions live!For the first live talk show, the topic "How to Roleplay" is kept general enough to involve people from beginners to veterans, and also address multiple roleplay scenarios from LARP to tabletop to livestreamed games.The show has been edited to reduce pauses or stray noises.If you want to support the Life. Action. RolePlay podcast and Twitch channel, go to our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/lifeactionroleplay!

How to Roleplay, from our first Live talk show!

A podcast about all things LARP (Live Action Role Playing) and other details about life with hosts Ryan Omega, Cynthia Marie, and Kai Norman

hubhopper

Life. Action. RolePlay! A LARP Podcast

hubhopper