By Subject|Chronologically

You Want ‘Em By Subject?

For GMs|Design and Writing|Guest Experts|Monica and Rai BS

For Gamemasters, Storyguides, and Facilitators

• Season 1 Ep01: GMing 101 – How to prepare for and run your first game
• Season 1 Ep02: House Rules, the Gateway Drug to Game Design – About house ruling and its connection to design
• Season 1 Ep03: Player Engagement and Trust – How to get these sorry fools to trust you and care about your game
• Season 1 Ep05: Games and the Art of Railroading – Railroading is good, actually, and let us tell you why
• Season 1 Ep09: Tips for Running Long Campaigns – When running longer campaigns, what to plan for, how to plan for it, and how to keep everyone (including you, GM) engaged.
• Season 1 Ep10: Tips for Running One-Shots – When running single- or double-episode games, how to manage your time, how to stay on task, and how to pack a kick-ass story into a limited amount of time
• Season 1 Ep15: Making—and Playing—Great NPCs – On embodying your NPCs with minimal effort, and making sure your NPCs are richly realized and not just a GM mouthpiece.
• Season 1Ep17: Emergency NPCs and Canon NPCs – On dealing with the players unexpectedly latching on to NPCs, creating characters on the fly, and making good use of canon characters.
• Season 1 Ep19: Failing Forward – On the practice of not embarrassing characters after failure, and the importance of partial successes in your game design. Also some math talk.
• Season 1 Ep 21: Tone, Scope, and Power Scale – On making sure your play experience matches your intentions as GM and designer; also balancing rules to achieve the right game feel.
• Season 2 Ep2: How Do You… Play Online? – Some common pitfalls of running your games online, how to avoid them, and humblebrags on how fast both of us can type.
• Season 2 Ep3: How Do You… Surprise Players? – Keeping things secret from your players, how to keep them from getting mad about it, and orangutans… those damn orangutans…
• Season 2 Ep4: How Do You… Bring Diversity to Your Table? – Diversity and Inclusion 101. Some tips on how to avoid accidentally making another “Solemn white folks walk through temperature European forest from inn to inn” game.
• Season 2 Ep7: Cast of Characters: The PC Do-Over – About replacing PCs, and what to do, as a GM, if your players want to change their character or completely redo them.
• Season 2 Ep10: RPG101: Session Zero – What the heck is this “Session Zero” everyone keeps talking about? Why is it such a big deal?
• Season 2 Ep12: RPG101: Safety Tools – Why you should use safety tools, and a few different toolkits we recommend.
• Season 2 Ep17: Tension and Release – How the concepts of tension and release apply to horror and comedy, and how to use these elements to build mood and tone in your games.
• Season 3 Ep2: BXP LIVE! Mediocre Twitter RPG Advice – An inexplicably popular list of “ideas from video games you can use to level up your ttrpg.” The whole thing is baffling in its mediocrity. Let’s discuss it and get spiteful!!
• Season 3 Ep3: Bonus Inexperience: Dealing with Brand New People – Making sure new folks don’t feel totally overwhelmed when they join your game (as a GM) or pick it up for the first time (as a writer or designer).
• Season 3 Ep4: Character Death and Why It’s Not Great – Why you should and shouldn’t include character death in your campaigns in a variety of different systems and situations.
• Season 3 Ep5: Fellas, Is It Gay to Play RPGs? Games with Queer Themes – Our favorite traditional games with queer themes! We also helpfully define both what we mean by “traditional games” and “queer themes.” 
• Season 3 Ep8: The Onyx PathCon Discussion – There were live Exalted Essence playtests happening during Onyx Pathcon?? Monica and Rai break down prepping to run a game and a demo live, from prepwork to design considerations, and so on.
• Season 3 Ep10: The Calvinball Recap – In Calvinball, all the PCs are from wildly varying games, all using different systems and at different power levels… what could go wrong?

Design and Writing

• Season 1 Ep02: House Rules, the Gateway Drug to Game Design – About house ruling and its connection to design
• Season 1 Ep07: What’s Real When We Play Pretend: Diegesis and Writing Games – Knowing what is real for the “story” and what is real for the “rules,” and how to keep them separate, maintains clarity in your game design.
• Season 1 Ep11: We Need to Talk About Skill Lists – How many skills are TOO many, and how to make your skills/abilities relevant not just to your system but your theme
• Season 1 Ep16: Game Repair and LARP Design with Danielle Lauzon – Danielle Lauzon of many, many projects talks to Monica about repairing game design flaws and the cornerstones of LARP design.
• Season 1 Ep20: Steal Like a Designer – Did you think we came up with all of this ourselves? On best practices using open licenses for publication, and Rai’s love for the Ship of Theseus.
• Season 1 Ep 21: Tone, Scope, and Power Scale – On making sure your play experience matches your intentions as GM and designer; also balancing rules to achieve the right game feel.
• Patreon Preview! Homebrew Jam: Pokémon by the Apocalypse – We try to get as far as we can designing a Pokémon hack of PbtA without any prior planning or negotiation. And actually get farther than you’d think!
• Season 2 Ep5: Hack D&D 5e with Kitty of D&Destiny – Kitty of D&Destiny fame lends us her considerable expertise as we dish out advice on how to hack and home-brew the fifth edition of the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game.
• Season 2 Ep6: Cast of Characters: Why Do We Make PCs? – This is the one where they discuss why people make PCs, the idea that someone always leaves a bit of themselves in their PCs, and also they waste close to ten minutes at the beginning talking about beer. 
• Season 2 Ep8: Cast of Characters: Morality and Other Inconveniences – A dive into Morality Systems (and things that are sort of like Morality Systems). 
• Season 2 Ep9: Kickstarting! With Johnathon Grach – The do’s and do-nots when Kickstarter-ing your project, as told by our our Kickstarter Guestpert Johnathon Grach.
• Season 2 Ep13: Playtesting! With Jessica Hammer – Jessica Hammer makes a return to our show and lends her expertise in the realm of playtesting.
• Season 2 Ep14: You’re Not Punk and I’m Telling Everyone – The history of punk as a genre, it’s subgenera and trappings, and also how to design a setting and system to feel punk as hell
• Season 2 Ep15: How (Not) to Be a Heartbreaker – Breaking down the anatomy of infamous “heartbreaker” games: the conventions of fantasy genre, how to make a unique setting, and how not to reinvent the wheel with your design.
• Season 2 Ep17: Tension and Release – How the concepts of tension and release apply to horror and comedy, and how to use these elements to build mood and tone in your games.
• Season 2 Ep18: Design Goals, feat. Daniella Lauzon – Monica and Danielle Lauzon (Vampire: the Requiem line developer, Storypath systems developer) discuss the importance of goals in your system and setting.
• Season 2 Ep19: Avoiding Orientalism in Martial Arts Games, feat. mndz – Monica and James Mendez Hodes (game designer, developer, friend of the show, and author of this excellent blog) talk how to avoid orientalism and outright racist language in your martial arts games.
• Season 2 Ep20: Designing for All Ages feat. Justin Alexander – Magical Kitties Save the Day designer, Justin Alexander, is here to discuss how difficult it actually is to make games that engage both children and adults.
• Season 3 Ep3: Bonus Inexperience: Dealing with Brand New People – Making sure new folks don’t feel totally overwhelmed when they join your game (as a GM) or pick it up for the first time (as a writer or designer).
• Season 3 Ep4: Character Death and Why It’s Not Great – Why you should and shouldn’t include character death in your campaigns in a variety of different systems and situations.
• Season 3 Ep5: Fellas, Is It Gay to Play RPGs? Games with Queer Themes – Our favorite traditional games with queer themes! We also helpfully define both what we mean by “traditional games” and “queer themes.” 
• Season 3 Ep6: Mechanics Are Inevitable – All games have rules (surprise), and mechanics are just another tool in the game designer’s toolbox.
• Season 3 Ep7: We Can’t Brain Today – How to keep your brain going when you just, can’t. We share our entire arsenal of coping mechanisms. 
• Season 3 Ep8: The Onyx PathCon Discussion – There were live Exalted Essence playtests happening during Onyx Pathcon?? Monica and Rai break down prepping to run a game and a demo live, from prepwork to design considerations, and so on.
• Season 3 Ep9: What’s a Traditional Game, Anyway? – What the definition of “Traditional Game” actually is. Does it mean lots of math? Does it mean a fiddly combat system? Do you have to grow a beard to run the game??
• Season 3 Ep10: The Calvinball Recap – In Calvinball, all the PCs are from wildly varying games, all using different systems and at different power levels… what could go wrong?

Interviews and Guest Experts

• Season 1 Ep14: Interview with Sandy Pug Games – Liam Ginty of Sandy Pug games talks to us about Americana, and writing inclusively in infamously exclusive settings
• Season 1 Ep16: Game Repair and LARP Design with Danielle Lauzon – Danielle Lauzon of many, many projects talks to Monica about repairing game design flaws and the cornerstones of LARP design.
• Season 1 Ep18: DINOSAUR PRINCESSES! with Dana and Hamish Cameron – Dana and Hamish Cameron talk to us about Dinosaur Princesses, and writing gender-inclusive, kid-friendly games.
• Season 1 Ep22: THE METAL WORLD INTERVIEW – Nick Zachariasen of Maniac Clown tells us all about his TOTALLY FACE MELTING GAME THAT USES D12s!
• Season 1 Ep23: Rosenstrasse with Jessica Hammer – Dr. Jessica Hammer of Unruly Designs sits down with Monica to talk about Rosenstrasse, a game of love, survival, and resistance in 1930s Berlin. Also, Monica’s stunned, reverent silence.
• Season 2 Ep1: Ken Spencer of Why Not Games – Ken Spencer drops in to have a chat about Rocket Age, Imperial Jupiter, and unfortunate dragon design choices.
• Season 2 Ep5: Hack D&D 5e with Kitty of D&Destiny – Kitty of D&Destiny fame lends us her considerable expertise as we dish out advice on how to hack and home-brew the fifth edition of the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game.
• Season 2 Ep9: Kickstarting! With Johnathon Grach – The do’s and do-nots when Kickstarter-ing your project, as told by our our Kickstarter Guestpert Johnathon Grach.
• Season Ep13: Playtesting! With Jessica Hammer – Jessica Hammer makes a return to our show and lends her expertise in the realm of playtesting.
• Season 2 Ep18: Design Goals, feat. Daniella Lauzon – Monica and Danielle Lauzon (Vampire: the Requiem line developer, Storypath systems developer) discuss the importance of goals in your system and setting.
• Season 2 Ep19: Avoiding Orientalism in Martial Arts Games, feat. mndz – Monica and James Mendez Hodes (game designer, developer, friend of the show, and author of this excellent blog) talk how to avoid orientalism and outright racist language in your martial arts games.
• Season 2 Ep20: Designing for All Ages feat. Justin Alexander – Magical Kitties Save the Day designer, Justin Alexander, is here to discuss how difficult it actually is to make games that engage both children and adults.

Monica and Rai Bullshit for 30+ Minutes

• Season 1 Ep04: War Stories, vol I – Reliving the, uh, not-so-glory days, when men ate Elemental Bolts and wizards stank of feces
• Season 1 Ep08: Our Favorite Systems – In which we get all starry-eyed over our current game crushes.
• Season 1 Ep12: Listener Mail and GenCon Wrap-Up – We get message! Main screen turn on! —What happens when players and GMs have different expectations? How does chronic illness impact running a game? And assorted GenCon nonsense.
• Season 1 Ep13: War Stories, vol II – Remember that one time you didn’t know how to make an effective character, and the GM just sort of snickered and let you do it all wrong? So do we.
• Patreon Preview – the Bonus Bonus Experience Experience – Monica and Rai have a casual discussion about books, the YA category, their Redwall fursonas, and anime club.
• Patreon Preview! MORE Bonus “Bonus Experience” Experience?? – Monica and Rai talk about their favorite cliches in storytelling and gaming.
• Season 1 Ep26: Happy Birthday to Us! – We’ve been recording for a year, let’s talk about it! And let’s share the plans we have for the year to come.
• Season 2 Ep16: Metatopia 2019 Wrap-Up – BXP went to Metatopia together! We attempt to summarize the things we played, but mostly talk about the things we ate.
• Season 3 Ep1: It‘s Season Three Already?! – Monica and Rai catch us up on what they’ve been up to (mostly Seasonal Affective Disorder and writing under NDAs, has Monica told you yet that she’s the lead mechanical designer for Exalted: Essence?), and look ahead to the bright and shiny year of 2020! What will be left of it, anyway, after the world ends, haha, right?? Right?? hahaha!!! I’m okay!!!

You Want ‘Em Chronological?

Season 1

• Ep01: GMing 101 – How to prepare for and run your first game
• Ep02: House Rules, the Gateway Drug to Game Design – About house ruling and its connection to design
• Ep03: Player Engagement and Trust – How to get these sorry fools to trust you and care about your game
• Ep04: War Stories, vol I – Reliving the, uh, not-so-glory days, when men ate Elemental Bolts and wizards stank of feces
• Ep05: Games and the Art of Railroading – Railroading is good, actually, and let us tell you why
• Ep06: Dealing with Garbage Players at the Table – Keep discomfort and bad behavior to a minimum, save your game and your players.
• Ep07: What’s Real When We Play Pretend: Diegesis and Writing Games – Knowing what is real for the “story” and what is real for the “rules,” and how to keep them separate, maintains clarity in your game design.
• Ep08: Our Favorite Systems – In which we get all starry-eyed over our current game crushes.
• Ep09: Tips for Running Long Campaigns – When running longer campaigns, what to plan for, how to plan for it, and how to keep everyone (including you, GM) engaged.
• Ep10: Tips for Running One-Shots – When running single- or double-episode games, how to manage your time, how to stay on task, and how to pack a kick-ass story into a limited amount of time
• Ep11: We Need to Talk About Skill Lists – How many skills are TOO many, and how to make your skills/abilities relevant not just to your system but your theme
• Ep12: Listener Mail and GenCon Wrap-Up – We get message! Main screen turn on! —What happens when players and GMs have different expectations? How does chronic illness impact running a game? And assorted GenCon nonsense.
• Ep13: War Stories, vol II – Remember that one time you didn’t know how to make an effective character, and the GM just sort of snickered and let you do it all wrong? So do we.
• Ep14: Interview with Sandy Pug Games – Liam Ginty of Sandy Pug games talks to us about Americana, and writing inclusively in infamously exclusive settings
• Ep15: Making—and Playing—Great NPCs – On embodying your NPCs with minimal effort, and making sure your NPCs are richly realized and not just a GM mouthpiece.
• Ep16: Game Repair and LARP Design with Danielle Lauzon – Danielle Lauzon of many, many projects talks to Monica about repairing game design flaws and the cornerstones of LARP design.
• Ep17: Emergency NPCs and Canon NPCs – On dealing with the players unexpectedly latching on to NPCs, creating characters on the fly, and making good use of canon characters.
• Ep18: DINOSAUR PRINCESSES! with Dana and Hamish Cameron – Dana and Hamish Cameron talk to us about Dinosaur Princesses, and writing gender-inclusive, kid-friendly games.
• Ep19: Failing Forward – On the practice of not embarrassing characters after failure, and the importance of partial successes in your game design. Also some math talk.
• Ep20: Steal Like a Designer – Did you think we came up with all of this ourselves? On best practices using open licenses for publication, and Rai’s love for the Ship of Theseus.
• Ep 21: Tone, Scope, and Power Scale – On making sure your play experience matches your intentions as GM and designer; also balancing rules to achieve the right game feel.
• Ep22: THE METAL WORLD INTERVIEW – Nick Zachariasen of Maniac Clown tells us all about his TOTALLY FACE MELTING GAME THAT USES D12s!
• Patreon Preview – the Bonus Bonus Experience Experience – Monica and Rai have a casual discussion about books, the YA category, their Redwall fursonas, and anime club.
• Ep23: Rosenstrasse with Jessica Hammer – Dr. Jessica Hammer of Unruly Designs sits down with Monica to talk about Rosenstrasse, a game of love, survival, and resistance in 1930s Berlin. Also, Monica’s stunned, reverent silence.
• Patreon Preview! MORE Bonus “Bonus Experience” Experience?? – Monica and Rai talk about their favorite cliches in storytelling and gaming.
• Patreon Preview! Homebrew Jam: Pokémon by the Apocalypse – We try to get as far as we can designing a Pokémon hack of PbtA without any prior planning or negotiation. And actually get farther than you’d think!
• Ep26: Happy Birthday to Us! – We’ve been recording for a year, let’s talk about it! And let’s share the plans we have for the year to come.

Season 2

• Ep1: Ken Spencer of Why Not Games – Ken Spencer drops in to have a chat about Rocket Age, Imperial Jupiter, and unfortunate dragon design choices.
• Ep2: How Do You… Play Online? – Some common pitfalls of running your games online, how to avoid them, and humblebrags on how fast both of us can type.
• Ep3: How Do You… Surprise Players? – Keeping things secret from your players, how to keep them from getting mad about it, and orangutans… those damn orangutans…
• Ep4: How Do You… Bring Diversity to Your Table? – Diversity and Inclusion 101. Some tips on how to avoid accidentally making another “Solemn white folks walk through temperature European forest from inn to inn” game.
• Ep5: Hack D&D 5e with Kitty of D&Destiny – Kitty of D&Destiny fame lends us her considerable expertise as we dish out advice on how to hack and home-brew the fifth edition of the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game.
• Ep6: Cast of Characters: Why Do We Make PCs? – This is the one where they discuss why people make PCs, the idea that someone always leaves a bit of themselves in their PCs, and also they waste close to ten minutes at the beginning talking about beer. 
• Ep7: Cast of Characters: The PC Do-Over – About replacing PCs, and what to do, as a GM, if your players want to change their character or completely redo them.
• Ep8: Cast of Characters: Morality and Other Inconveniences – A dive into Morality Systems (and things that are sort of like Morality Systems). 
• Ep9: Kickstarting! With Johnathon Grach – The do’s and do-nots when Kickstarter-ing your project, as told by our our Kickstarter Guestpert Johnathon Grach.
• Ep10: RPG101: Session Zero – What the heck is this “Session Zero” everyone keeps talking about? Why is it such a big deal?
• Ep11: RPG101: Table Etiquette – Wanna know the REAL way to win at tabletop RPGs? All you gotta do… is be nice, ya dingus! 
• Ep12: RPG101: Safety Tools – Why you should use safety tools, and a few different toolkits we recommend.
• Ep13: Playtesting! With Jessica Hammer – Jessica Hammer makes a return to our show and lends her expertise in the realm of playtesting.
• Ep14: You’re Not Punk and I’m Telling Everyone – The history of punk as a genre, it’s subgenera and trappings, and also how to design a setting and system to feel punk as hell
• Ep15: How (Not) to Be a Heartbreaker – Breaking down the anatomy of infamous “heartbreaker” games: the conventions of fantasy genre, how to make a unique setting, and how not to reinvent the wheel with your design.
• Ep16: Metatopia 2019 Wrap-Up – BXP went to Metatopia together! We attempt to summarize the things we played, but mostly talk about the things we ate. 
• Ep17: Tension and Release – How the concepts of tension and release apply to horror and comedy, and how to use these elements to build mood and tone in your games.
• Ep18: Design Goals, feat. Daniella Lauzon – Monica and Danielle Lauzon (Vampire: the Requiem line developer, Storypath systems developer) discuss the importance of goals in your system and setting.
• Ep19: Avoiding Orientalism in Martial Arts Games, feat. mndz – Monica and James Mendez Hodes (game designer, developer, friend of the show, and author of this excellent blog) talk how to avoid orientalism and outright racist language in your martial arts games.
• Ep20: Designing for All Ages feat. Justin Alexander – Magical Kitties Save the Day designer, Justin Alexander, is here to discuss how difficult it actually is to make games that engage both children and adults.

Season 3

• Ep1: It’s Season Three Already?! – Monica and Rai catch us up on what they’ve been up to (mostly Seasonal Affective Disorder and writing under NDAs, has Monica told you yet that she’s the lead mechanical designer for Exalted: Essence?), and look ahead to the bright and shiny year of 2020! What will be left of it, anyway, after the world ends, haha, right?? Right?? hahaha!!! I’m okay!!!
• Ep2: BXP LIVE! Mediocre Twitter RPG Advice – An inexplicably popular list of “ideas from video games you can use to level up your ttrpg.” The whole thing is baffling in its mediocrity. Let’s discuss it and get spiteful!!
• Ep3: Bonus Inexperience: Dealing with Brand New People – Making sure new folks don’t feel totally overwhelmed when they join your game (as a GM) or pick it up for the first time (as a writer or designer).
• Ep4: Character Death and Why It’s Not Great – Why you should and shouldn’t include character death in your campaigns in a variety of different systems and situations.
• Ep5: Fellas, Is It Gay to Play RPGs? Games with Queer Themes – Our favorite traditional games with queer themes! We also helpfully define both what we mean by “traditional games” and “queer themes.” 
• Ep6: Mechanics Are Inevitable – All games have rules (surprise), and mechanics are just another tool in the game designer’s toolbox.
• Ep7: We Can’t Brain Today – How to keep your brain going when you just, can’t. We share our entire arsenal of coping mechanisms. 
• Ep8: The Onyx PathCon Discussion – There were live Exalted Essence playtests happening during Onyx Pathcon?? Monica and Rai break down prepping to run a game and a demo live, from prepwork to design considerations, and so on.
• Ep9: What’s a Traditional Game, Anyway? – What the definition of “Traditional Game” actually is. Does it mean lots of math? Does it mean a fiddly combat system? Do you have to grow a beard to run the game??
• Ep10: The Calvinball Recap – In Calvinball, all the PCs are from wildly varying games, all using different systems and at different power levels… what could go wrong?