Players & Creators

Bonus Track 14 - Sneak Preview (Megan Dawson Jaffe)

This bonus track is a sneak preview of next week's interview with Megan Dawson Jaffe.  She is an amazing designer that is also a gamer and puts her skills to amazing use in both the gaming and real world!

If you want to learn more, you'll just have to listen to next week's episode! If you can't wait until next week, then listen to this sneak preview! 

Enjoy!

Episode 21 - On Location: At Dreamation 2018! (Live)

This year at Dreamation 2018; yet another amazing event run by Double Exposure Inc., we recorded a live show with some amazing folks!

 

Shannon Fidler - Who you might remember from Lady in Threads and Destination Penis Island. She talked with us about why she attends Dreamation and she sits on the rest of the show as our special guest co-host! We also totally did not add a tid bit of Destination Penis Island into one of the breaks we took when setting up for a guest! (We totally did.)

 

Josie Kreil - Josie sat with us on For the Love of Tentacles and for some reason decided to sit with us again! She discusses some of her upcoming projects, her first time coming to Dreamation and some favorite gaming stories to boot!

 

Mark Sedlazek - Mark is new to the show and is the artisan responsible for Wolf & Raven Arts! He creates amazing pieces of costuming and pieces using foam! Looking at them, it's difficult to not think they are actually made of the materials they appear to be! He also discusses some of the games he loves and how they inspire his creations!

He is a freelance artist and propmaker from Central New Jersey. He has been larping for about a decade and has been a foamsmith for about five years, creating armor and weapons out of foam. He has started a youtube channel to bestow his knowledge onto others and hopes to inspire other crafters in the gaming community as well as make bigger and better props for games and cosplay. His main inspiration is scifi and fantasy with video games and tabletop RPGs being his main source of visual inspiration, and he hopes to bring more obscure characters to life from less visual games to give them a solid basis in reality. 

 

Ericka Skirpan - She is currently the head storyteller for Project Ascension and senior story staff for Dead Legends LARP. She's been running immersive, theatrical events for over a decade and intense, emotional LARPs for almost as long. She shares alot of these experiences with us in the show.

She has a BFA in theater from the University of Toronto where she was the artistic director for "In the Moment Productions," a theater company dedicated to audience interactive, classical theater experiences. She believes in bringing captivating, emotional, cathartic transformations to actors and audience alike through live storytelling.

After playing Gertrude in 2017's InsideHamlet, as well as participating in the groundbreaking Nordic LARP 1942, (which she discusses with us as well) she is highly looking forward to combining American Freeform storytelling with more Nordic-LARP inspired designs for future projects.

 

Episode 20 - On Location: At Waerloga!

We visited the LARP of some of our favorite folks, Team Waerloga! They were gracious enough to allow us to talk with some of their players to talk LARPing, Waerloga and the mysteries of the universe. Most of those mysteries reside in NJ for some reason.

Interestingly enough, they actually wanted to talk with us! We got some really good perspectives of why players specifically come to Waerloga and why they LARP in general. They also shared some of their favorite battle stories!

They can be found on their Facebook page is you click here!

Much thanks to our guest Nat Mason, Ana Kline and Kait Wheeler! You were all awesome!

Also thanks to Dom O'Sullivan for sharing the info about his LARP, Post Pandemic. If you're in the Lancaster, PA area and looking for a LARP, check out the page and give them a try!

 

Bonus Track 13 - The Group Thing

Your intermediate heroes share some of the new things that Old Man & Skinny Guy are offering to the community as well as more opportunity for you as a listener to make real changes to the show!

We also hint on future projects to come!

 

Old Man Yells at the Sky: Revenge LARPS!

In trying to understand the definition of the term Revenge LARPs, Old Man & Skinny Guy learn so much more than they anticipated. And who benefits from their learnin' stuff? You do!

 

Old Man channels his inner Farva from Super Troopers for the initial rant.

 

We posed some questions to the LARPing community about the term itself and what those types of games actually do for the community. We wound up with more information and input than you can shake a stick at.

 

Much thanks to the LARP subreddit community for their input on this topic, the folks from the Double Exposure LARP Community on Facebook and to Kelvin Ortega; the co-creator and storyteller at Aurum out of New Jersey for sharing his thoughts on Revenge LARPs as well.

 

If you want to continue the conversation, you can visit the LARP subreddit conversation, or join us on our Facebook page.

Our next topic will be about cultural appropriation in games. If you're interested in that topic, let us know what you think!

 

Episode 19 - Scrambled Egg: A Ready Player One Review (movie)

Old Man & Skinny Guy go to the movies! And they were so excited about the movie Ready Player One that they had to talk about it and share that conversation with you!

Major spoilers for the both the movie and the book if you didn't partake of either of them! You have been warned!

Episode 18: Guards, Guards, Guards!!!

Ralph A. Attanasia III is our guest on this latest episode. While he is probably most known from TV's Cake Boss, we've known him for many years through live action role playing.

It's a hilarious, eye opening roller coaster of emotions as we delve into his seedy past and sort through his devilishly handsome present.  If you don't understand what any of that means, it will all make sense (probably not) once you listen to the show.

Ralph has a number of things he dabbles in which we discuss and some we didn't. He made mention of the movie minutes he does on other podcasts such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Minute and the Mogwai Minute. He also has some awesome YouTube videos where he shows cake sculpting techniques from his work with Cake Boss!

Below, you will find some of the things we discussed that we said there would be pictures of.

 Captain K'nuckles

 

Badly taken photos from Old Man of the table top miniature houses Ralph makes. 

 

 

Bonus Track 12: Guess the Guest!

Our next interview will be with a semi-famous celebrity. This bonus track will give you the opportunity to guess who that might be!

Listen to the clues and the rules to figure out who our next guest will be!

 

Old Man Yells at the Sky - Live Action Role Play Games: "Staff" of Volunteers?

Welcome to our new segment, Old Man Yells at the Sky! This a new piece of content where we try to tackle some of the more contentious issues facing the gaming community.

This month, we talk about whether or not LARP (live action role play) games are protecting themselves and their "staff" by following state and federal labor laws. We want folks to be aware that sometimes even a hobby should be following basic FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) guidelines with those who do any type of work at their games.

We would like to note and thank LARP Cynic and the article, LARP and Employment – is my LARP legal? Fan Submission, that inspired this conversation. 

We also want to hear what you think about this topic. You can follow and message us at our Facebook page or email us at oldmanskinnyguy@gmail.com.

As noted in the show, we are NOT professionals by any means and any concerns about the topics addressed would be better asked of a professional in that field.

Next Topic on Old Man Yells at the Sky: Revenge LARPS

Helpful Links:

The Department of Labor 

Handy Reference Guide to the Fair Labor Standards Act 

Non Profit Organizations and the FLSA

 

Episode 17: Dr. Strangelarp or How I stopped worrying and learned to love convention LARPs

Convention LARPs: You either love them or you've never played them. At least according to some. Old Man & Skinny Guy share some of their favorite stories about one shot convention LARP (live action role playing) games and some of the amazing people that run them. Most of the games mentioned ran in 2016.

There are laughs, tears and the whole gamut of emotions. You'll hear about the wonderful folks of Phoenix Outlaw Productions, the game runners of L5R (Legend of the 5 Rings) LARP version, and our friends at Double Exposure, Inc. 

Also mentioned are Lizzie Stark and her book and website about the world of LARP, Leaving Mundania.