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Friends at the Table chat:

 

Is anyone else finding this current season a real drag? I loved Counter/WEIGHT once it got going, Marielda was fun... but I don't really care about any of the characters or conflicts in the current game in Hieron. I didn't listen to the first season because the audio quality wasn't great, and this seems like a sequel to that, so I don't get any of the callbacks. I am tempted to drop it until they start a new campaign. 

 

(I am wrestling with the sunk cost fallacy! Also I don't really give a shit about fantasy)

 

The Adventure Zone chat:

 

I started listening to TAZ a few weeks ago to get my actual play fix. I'm enjoying it! A few too many situations are resolved through combat, but it's really just a vessel for jokes. I think Griffin really gets into it and wants to emulate FatT at times, but the others just want to put on a good show. Travis really shines in TAZ, whereas sometimes he's not as quick off the mark in MBMBaM. 

Edited by Atlantic

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I am a little bit down on this season of FatT. I'm enjoying it a lot, but it's a significant drop from the highs of season 1 (my favourite season). I think the story has gotten heavy with all the mythology and backstory building up. I had kind of hoped they might be building to an ending. But it seems like they just finished this season, with more threads to continue. 

 

If it helps though, I suspect they'll start a new campaign soon. I do recommend trying 1. You can skip the first few episodes if you find the quality manageable after the first few, ropiest episodes.

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I still vastly prefer FATT to TAZ. The players invest in their characters in a way that just plain doesn't exist in TAZ. Except Griffin's NPCs, which is, like, okay, whatever. TAZ is, like you say, a vessel for jokes. I love it. But FATT is interesting and insightful. Also Austin's just a really good DM, in a way that Griffin doesn't even approach. It makes the world and consequences of player choices feel like they actually matter.

 

The sound quality in season one gets better. I can't believe how many people I've told this at this point, but it's only shit for a few episodes. Then it's bad, then decent, then good.

 

If you want a good balance of jokes and actually good DM'ing, go listen to Campaign. It's a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire actual play. I don't give a good goddamn about Star Bores, but it's a fucking good podcast and... campaign.

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I second all of what Twig says. Despite being a bit disappointed with the current season relatively speaking, FatT is still my favourite podcast.

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All that said, I think if I'd skipped season one, I probably would not be enjoying this season even half as much. There's... a lot more than callbacks. This is a long-lasting story with significant character development. Yeah, you get to skip over the first X number of episodes where Ali really figures out her character (Hella) and that's kind of a mark against season one's earlier episodes, but you also miss some very important super key events in and leading up to Nacre that shape the character she plays in this season. Though I think they did do a recap at one point, I'm not sure if it really captures the moment.

 

Same with Hadrian. I found his character extremely boring at the start, if I'm being honest. But some Shit Goes Down that made me care so much more about him near the end of season one.

 

Throndir, too, this season I don't think you'd have any idea what his motivations are without some important shit from the first season.

 

I mean I could go on...?!

 

Also Nacre (sp??) is just a really goddamn great arc all around. Also That Word-Eater though!!

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@SuperBiasedMan @Twig

 

Aw man, that's like 30 hours of post-fantasy actual play podcast that you're going to make me make myself listen to now. I already listen to too many podcasts and now I listen to too much of too many podcasts.

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I finally listened to the episode of The Flophouse, and it's absolutely hilarious. I was put off of the show by the ads on other Max Fun shows, but it turns out that their voices are less annoying and there are far fewer songs than I was led to believe. The fact that I basically never watch movies turned out to be a non-factor after all!

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They didn't just launch it they released it all at once! D:

 

First episode is already gripping me hard though.

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I did not listen to the first season of Serial because the subject matter didn't interest me. The second season started of more interesting, but I got a bit bored towards the end. Shit Town is really fascinating, though! I'm glad that they released all of the episodes at once, since while I probably can't listen to multiple episodes in a row, I think I will go through this in the next couple of weeks.

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Yeah, it's a very weird and brilliant story. It helps that John McLemore, the instigator of the reporting, is absolutely fascinating. I'm about 4 episodes in, and despite the story's chance in tack, I can't help but be curious about this story's arc.

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ep.3 spoiler

the opening, with Reed's breakdown really emotionally effected me. More than I would have expected

ep. 7 spoiler

the part about mercury poisoning was such a compelling analysis that was hinted at a tiny bit before and it was maybe my favorite part of the whole show

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On 27/03/2017 at 4:01 PM, Badfinger said:

I finally listened to the episode of The Flophouse, and it's absolutely hilarious. I was put off of the show by the ads on other Max Fun shows, but it turns out that their voices are less annoying and there are far fewer songs than I was led to believe. The fact that I basically never watch movies turned out to be a non-factor after all!

 

The Flop House is good! All of the Max Fun ads are terrible and do a poor job of capturing the enticing parts of each of the shows. The best episodes are the ones where they watch a film that ends up as "good-bad" in their final judgements, especially the ones that are completely crazy. They all have a deep appreciation of movies, but they have wildly different tastes. Someone has been keeping track of their recommendations, and once you know that Dan watches whatever, Elliott likes old movies, and Stu likes schlock you might find something you like.

 

You will in time come to love Elliott's letters songs!

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On 3/28/2017 at 4:04 PM, jennegatron said:

The teams behind This American Life & Serial have launched s-town https://stownpodcast.org - a supremely moving and effective feat of investigative journalism. I highly recommend it!

 

It's so good. God what an amazing creation.

 

It feels totally at odds with what is expected from podcasts. That includes Serial, which has surprises in it but fundamentally remains about the thing it claims to be about entirely. S-Town feels novelistic; it tells a story that is what it needs to be as it unfolds, rather than sort of delivering a promised product. Ultimately it's utterly non-gimmicky; it's a beautifully told and reported portrait of a life.

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1 minute ago, Chris said:

 

It's so good. God what an amazing creation.

 

It feels totally at odds with what is expected from podcasts. That includes Serial, which has surprises in it but fundamentally remains about the thing it claims to be about entirely. S-Town feels novelistic; it tells a story that is what it needs to be as it unfolds, rather than sort of delivering a promised product. Ultimately it's utterly non-gimmicky; it's a beautifully told and reported portrait of a life.

 

You're totally right, and I'm so pumped that other people are enjoying it too. I listened to the little intro that they put for it on the Serial feed and Sarah Koenig used 'novelistic' to describe it too. I think it's beautifully fitting for a story about a complicated person, as all people are complicated.


I'm constantly struck by the feat of telling the story in S(hit)town with such grace and honesty.

 

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1 hour ago, Atlantic said:

 

The Flop House is good! All of the Max Fun ads are terrible and do a poor job of capturing the enticing parts of each of the shows. The best episodes are the ones where they watch a film that ends up as "good-bad" in their final judgements, especially the ones that are completely crazy. They all have a deep appreciation of movies, but they have wildly different tastes. Someone has been keeping track of their recommendations, and once you know that Dan watches whatever, Elliott likes old movies, and Stu likes schlock you might find something you like.

 

You will in time come to love Elliott's letters songs!

Most of the actual seconds of the letters songs are bad, but man some of them go to some dark places.

 

It's less that I think they have different tastes or I wouldn't like the movies, it's more that I really just don't actually watch any movies. If I have my choice I can always find something to do that's not a movie or a tv show.

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On 3/30/2017 at 10:51 AM, jennegatron said:

ep.3 spoiler

 

  Reveal hidden contents

the opening, with Reed's breakdown really emotionally effected me. More than I would have expected

 

 

So I took this recommendation to heart and got through 5 episodes of this on Sunday with my SO as we had a lot of driving to do - such a good show!

 

Both my wife and I felt the same way about this spoiler.

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Not even just as a podcast - this one of the most compelling pieces of media I've ever experienced. S-town hit me hard in the feelings!

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Just now, xchen said:

Not even just as a podcast - this one of the most compelling pieces of media I've ever experienced. S-town hit me hard in the feelings!

 

Yeah, I've found it really powerful because it seems so fundamentally honest and true. Even though I didn't grow up in poor environs, some of my mother's side of the family were clannish farmers in Nebraska and Iowa and my dad's side were a generation from white trash out of central Texas, so I was around a lot of people who remind me of McLemore and the people with whom he surrounded himself. My grandmother had a tenant in the duplex she owned whose son and grandsons probably hung out in whatever equivalent of Black Sheep, Inc. there was in southern Oklahoma. They always brought a weird mix of fresh game and cheap store-bought junk to Thanksgiving, and then I'd get to watch the son get to work on a cut of turkey or deer with his five-odd teeth. I miss them.

 

Anyway... Yeah, Shittown is a wonderful work of storytelling and a testament to the depth and breadth of the human experience.

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I finished S-Town at the end of last week. It's an exceptional piece of work - I can't stop thinking about it. 

 

But there are aspects of it I find troubling. I wonder what other listeners have made of the points raised in this Vox article - 'I’m not convinced it should have been made' is way too strong, IMO - but it's one of the few critical readings I've seen which attempts to engage with some of the ethical problems posed by this kind of media.

 

Is there something exploitative about S-Town - and does that matter if the end result presents such a compelling vision of the human experience? I really don't know. People used to have this debate about Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood', and I'm not entirely sure a definitive answer is possible. For my own part I can't help but wonder how I would feel if a journalist descended into my life and held up every secret they could find before an audience of millions. But perhaps that audience would find my secrets so compelling that the net benefit to humanity would be worth the momentary embarrassment of the individual.

 

On a different note: I was amused to see that a journalist for The Guardian rocked up in Woodstock the other day and failed to discover anything much of note - though he did get a pretty good picture of the Feed Me belly guy. 

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I loved how organic, natural and evolving the storytelling in Shit Town was. It did not continue to pursue narratives that didn't have anything in them, and went where it needed to instead.

 

Regarding the running theme.

I was happy that, in the end, the podcast wasn't about this totally corrupt shit town, where rich people's kids can get away with murder and everyone is a neo-nazi, but about people's regular old shit brains (which, of course, are affected by your surroundings). The discussions with Tyler and the cousin were especially revealing. Both were immediately ready to think the worst of each other and interpret the other's actions in the worst possible way, thus constructing an even worse picture of the other in their head leading to even worse interpretations, and so on and so forth, in a classic vicious circle. Multiple people expressed their views that there was something very suspicious about John B. McLemore's death, despite everything pointing to a simple suicide, just because obviously other people are greedy and evil. I see this all the time, on a much much smaller scale, despite not living in what could in good conscience be called a shit town, with people coming up with more and more outlandishly cynical explanations for ridiculous petty things, such as why people are not replying to their emails or sending in reports they were supposed to. When they finally find out that the person has actually been on a sick leave, and is not, say, trying to sabotage the project the other person is coordinating by withholding the reports, they are genuinely surprised, and take this as an exception to the cynical norm. It is really depressing.



 

I was actually quite taken aback by how potent a metaphor (although, it feels weird to call it a metaphor) the mercury poisoning was for this type of shitty cycle. Judging by the symptoms, I would think that the more and more poisoned you get, the less and less you care about further damage you are causing yourself.

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I have been recently trying to expand the perspectives of my politics podcasts and recommended What A Hell Of A Way To Die https://player.fm/series/what-a-hell-of-a-way-to-die
Its a podcast hosted by three veterans who are politically on the left. Rarely do I hear politics and military topics discussed by lower level soldiers and even more rarely from a lefty soldier perspective.

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I thoroughly enjoyed S-Town despite it depicting a fairly grim reality. I do often wonder what parts were left out from the hours long phone calls.

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GiantBomb cast, GiantBeast cast, Dev Game Club, Ign Xbox Podcast Unlocked, Beyond, Game Scoop, IGN, NVC, Major Nelson, 8-4 play, Kotaku Splitscreen, Rebel FM, Shall We Play A Game, Game Informer Show, Gamespot the Lobby.

 

Non-gaming related Transporter Room 3, IGN Anime, IGN Dragons On The Wall, Alt F1/Shift F1, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History

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