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The second season of Friends at the Table ended today (or was it yesterday). I listened to most of the last episode while on a bike ride today. It was a weird semi-public way to feel both really entertained and increasingly sad.

 

Also:

 

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Ooh, I need to get started on that then. I'd love to start the third season (there's going to be one hopefully?) all caught up.

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Ooh, I need to get started on that then. I'd love to start the third season (there's going to be one hopefully?) all caught up.

 

The seasons (at least so far) have been independent of each other, with different characters, settings, and game rules. I'm not sure what their plans are for season 3, but I don't think it will be a direct continuation of season 2. I could be wrong...I'm still listening to the last episode. It's super long.

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This week's guest on my show wrote code for satellites, made a game every week for a year* and created a game jam on a train and called it the Train Jam because of course! Checkpoints #38 with Adriel Wallick - declandineen.com/checkpoints

 

*this is my favourite game from that year. It is painful and true if you've ever tried to make something - http://msminotaur.com/gameaweek/week9.html

 

**also sorry that my cheap plug interrupted the flow of the chat! 

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Yeah, I know that, but there are certain in-jokes that develop over time that I appreciate in series like this. Also I am crazy and have to listen to them all.

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That finale was top notch. I wasn't sure how it would go, and I really questioned multiple sections of this season but it really came together so well I love the whole arc of the story.

 

I think season 3 might be returning to Dungeon World, but I'm not sure. They haven't made any specific declarations about it, but Counter/WEIGHT was originally intended to be an interlude.

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When I asked Austin on Twitter, he said that Season 3 would return to the setting of Season 1 at least, so I presume that means they'll be playing Dungeon World, although maybe they'll switch to a different system.

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Hieron?

Oh yes! The only name I remember is Duckberg. Maybe I should re-listen to catch myself up for the new series.

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Just finished the Friends at the Table Season Finale. Good stuff. Keep it wavy.

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This week's guest on my show wrote code for satellites, made a game every week for a year* and created a game jam on a train and called it the Train Jam because of course! Checkpoints #38 with Adriel Wallick - declandineen.com/checkpoints

 

*this is my favourite game from that year. It is painful and true if you've ever tried to make something - http://msminotaur.com/gameaweek/week9.html

 

**also sorry that my cheap plug interrupted the flow of the chat!

Lovely episode Declan, you two had a great rapport going on. Fun listen.

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Just Unsubscribed from 2 Dope Queens I just cant stand listing to Phoebe Robinson do that supper annoying high pitched drawn out syllable thing anymore. Is it supposed to be funny? 

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I just got to the finale of Friends at the Table. I don't know what I'm going to do when I'm caught up. It'll be like when I caught up to The Adventure Zone. D:

 

Of note: I love the fact that they made a character based on Riff Raff, who already basically looks like he could exist as a Shitty Dude in a cyberpunk future.

 

Screen%20Shot%202013-10-03%20at%2010.23.

 

Lazer Ted is hilarious. Austin does an amazing Riff Raff.

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Lazer Ted is hilarious. Austin does an amazing Riff Raff.

 

I was going to make note of all of Lazer Ted's jobs so I could add them to the COUNTER/weight wiki. Then I forgot about it.

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I can tell you haven't listened to a Riff Raff album!

 

 

PS You spelled "Lazer" wrong!

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On the Polycount forum, someone plugged their podcast called Game Dev Unchained, which has a lot of interviews with game developers, and included in their archive are interviews with both Chris Remo and Steve Gaynor.  Chris Remo talks a lot about the history of the Idle Thumbs community specifically, which as a relative newcomer I enjoyed a lot.

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I'm making my way through the Counter/WEIGHT arc of Friends at the Table and just got up to the appearance of Lazer Ted.

Lazer Ted is so great.

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Austin announced they're gonna do a steampunky style short adventure for 12 (iirc) or so episodes, so they have a shorter campaign to show off as an example of what the podcast is all about.

 

I know the internet at large ain't a big fan of steampunk, but I like it when it's done well (Dishonored!), and I have all the faith in the world in Austin's GM'ing and all the players'... playing. It's gonna be goooood.

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I'm excited for that! I have a soft spot for steampunk (because I liked it as a teen), but there honestly aren't many popular examples that I think "do it well" at all. We need another one!

 

I think a reason why the internet generally poo-poos steampunk (besides an oversaturation of the stuff in the late 00s) is that, unlike cyberpunk, it's mostly an aesthetic genre and not in and of itself based on any big ideas or themes. Austin & co can certainly shore up that deficiency I have no doubt.

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Steampunk is just as much about ideas and themes, but much like cyberpunk, the aesthetics are the most immediately graspable elements.

 

And unlike cyberpunk, steampunk is much easier to make it look ugly. Gears everywhere!

 

EDIT: Saying this made me think a bit and I'm all the more convinced it's (mostly) true! Steampunk probably/definitely did have a more aesthetically-grounded origin than cyberpunk, but boil it down to the basics and they're not too dissimilar. Cyberpunk is about dystopia through technology and corporations, and steampunk is about dystopia through industry and war. Cyberpunk's dystopia is more subtle, but maybe also more terrifying, than steampunk's. Cybperunk trends toward, well, science, and steampunk, especially lately, trends toward magic. The latter is kind of a bummer, but not always so.

 

Of course, then again, more and more entries in either genre sidestep or even completely ignore the idea of a dystopia, so it's hard to say if that's even relevant in this day and age. I think that's the most interesting thing about these genres, however, so I'll continue to believe, until I'm dead and rotting in the ground, that it's an integral piece of the puzzle!

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Steampunk is just as much about ideas and themes, but much like cyberpunk, the aesthetics are the most immediately graspable elements.

 

What are they, though? I didn't mean to say that all steampunk fiction lacks in ideas or themes, but I'm not sure the genre itself has any intrinsically. On the other hand, I think cyberpunk does.
 
Cyberpunk is like a direct response to utopian science fiction: the underlying premise being "what if future technologies don't solve our problems but exacerbate them?" The basic premise of steampunk seems to be "what if technology in the 19th century developed a bit differently and/or was magic?" which isn't quite as heavy. Steampunk can adopt the ideas/themes of the historical setting it's modifying, but historical fiction is hard and it seems like most of the time people don't bother with historical specificity (or they get it grossly wrong). Maybe that's the real problem there.
 
Obviously they're just genres, and any given work will work on its own terms regardless of how we categorize it. I'm just trying to piece together why cyberpunk has so many interesting examples but steampunk has so few.
 
EDIT: I posted this without seeing your edit. Whoops.

EDIT AGAIN, THIS IS A DUMB WAY TO USE A FORUM BUT I DON'T CARE:

I didn't consider that Steampunk was necessarily dystopian like cyberpunk, but I like that interpretation. Now my preferred (albeit somewhat charitable/theoretical) definition of steampunk is: cyberpunk-style pessimistic speculative fiction, but from the perspective of someone from the 19th century. This definition has the benefit of explicitly including famous proto-steampunk (H. G. Wells).

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I literally just edited it in, I think probably as you were posting, so, you know, that's my fault. I should've just made a new post hehe. Anyway I think my edit neatly addresses your question, although you might end up disagreeing with me in the end. :P

 

EDIT TO YOUR EDIT RE MY EDIT:

 

Yeah I definitely am all about including H.G. Wells in a list of steampunk ancestors. I also like the idea of seeing steampunk as the equivalent of cyperpunk from an older point of view. Cyberpunk was, after all, a reaction to growing fears of technology and corporations taking over the world. Fears that... arguably are already coming true, or just plain true. Steampunk is just "what if history took a different path and we didn't recover... but sometimes with dumb magic or clockwork zombies I dunno, leave me alone, I'm a hypothetical quote".

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