Gweek 038: Puzzlejuice Pigs

Gweek is a weekly podcast where the editors and friends of Boing Boing talk about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff.

My hosts on episode 38 are Dean Putney, Boing Boing's coding and development wizard, Boing Boing alum Joel Johnson of Animal New York, and Dannel Jurado, a software engineer from Peru who's working at Etsy and, by Dean's description, "is deeply ingrained in 8 bit music, geek culture, craft and software."

Below is a list of the things we talked about in Gweek episode 38. (Sure, you could just click on the links below to learn about them without listening to the podcast, but then you will miss out on the mind-blowing insights we shared in the episode.)

If you enjoy Gweek, please rate it in the iTunes Store -- thanks!

Johann Sebastian Joust in Yerba Buena Gardens "basically like high-tech tag. Each person has a Playstation Move controller, and the object of the game is to jostle other people's controllers so that you're the last man standing."

Playing Dungeons and Dragons via Skype.

A new Jim Woodring T-Shirt in the Boing Boing Shop!

After doing all sorts of cool stuff for Gawker Media, Joel is going to Animal New York.

Joel reviews the book, Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens.

Dean digs LibriVox, a site where volunteers record public domain books into audiobooks.

(Here's A Princess of Mars, read by Mark Nelson)

Joel recommends Conan Doyle's The White Company (free on Gutenberg), "about archers from England who go to France to wage war and plunder ... it comes off like Jack Vance."

Mark reviews the graphic novel Pigs: Hello Cruel World.

Joel saw two movies this week: A Dangerous Method (and Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Sabina Spielrein, "the beautiful but disturbed young woman who comes between them") and The Rum Diary (based on Hunter S. Thompson's autobiographical novel).

Mark told Joel to read Gonzo: the Life of Hunter S. Thompson, which consists of anecdotes culled from interviews with 120 of Thompson's acquaintances, beginning with his childhood in Kentucky and ending with his death in 2005 in Woody Creek, Colorado.

Roots, by Danimal Cannon. Cannon wrote: "Every song on this album was composed using a Nintendo Gameboy DMG-01 running the homebrew software LSDJ. If you download the album I've also included the .sav files so feel free to learn my tricks, remix, or whatever!" Dannel also runs a cool music blog.

Joel gives his first impression Hero Academy, a free, turn-based RPG strategy game for iOS. He also excited about news of an X-Com revival.

Dannel recommends an iOS game called Puzzlejuice, which is a bit like Tetris with the added challenge of having to spell words using tiles with letters on them.

Dean loves his Fujitsu ScanSnap sheet-fed document scanner

• [Mujokan]

  Pleased enough to recognize the pic as http://i.imgur.com/6ZO2g.jpg

• [Stefan Jones]

  Looking forward to it.

  For playing D&D by skype, it would be cool to have a distributed secure app which players could log into, and which would simulate die rolls. You pick a die type from a menu, select the number to roll, and hit a button to start. Everyone logged in would see the result.

  I’m listening to Gweek 36 right now!

• [Lachlan Musicman]

  Not seeing it in the iTunes podcast list despite a refresh?

  • [Gaelen Marsden]

    Not in my RSS feed, either.

    • [murgatroid]

      Ditto.  Episode38 has never appeared in the RSS feed.

  • [murgatroid]

    Ditto.  Episode 38 has never appeared in the RSS feed either.

  • [Lachlan Musicman]

    I was able to get it by searching for Gweek in the iTunes store, then clicking on the “free” button next to the particular podcast name (as per title above). Annoying, but functional. Death to iTunes.

• [Dallas McNally]

  We’ve been recording our AD&D-over-Google+-Hangout games: http://vimeo.com/album/1747378

  There is a community of people called Constantcon who play drop-in D&D over Google+ Hangouts: constantcon.blogspot.com

  If you start connecting with RPG players in Google+ then you will also see many spontaneous proposals for Hangout games.

  @Stefan Jones – There are chat rooms that support dice rolls (e.g. the Dragonsfoot.org chat) but nothing compares to actually rolling a die. We just trust each other.

• [David Aked]

  I play remote D&D with a few people (I GM it).  I have players all over Australia.  (From Perth, to Sydney to coastal remote areas and myself in the nations capital of Canberra)  May I recommend a FREE tool that I use?  Maptool.  Google it.  It’s a method of creating map boards, dice rolls, battle maps the lot.  It’s not just D&D.  It’s open enough to support almost any game (GURPS, D&D 1st ed right through 4th ed).  Further, it’s relatively low bandwidth, so good for those players that are in remote dialup places (YES..  It is possible to use on dialup and have a good result)

  I am NOT involved with the creation nor do I gain any profits from this tool in any way.  I’m just a DM who uses this tool and Ventrilo to run my games and I have found it fantastic.  My players love it.  From advanced players to the novice 1st game ever player.

  We don’t use the dice roller built into the game (That can even support you putting all your +’s and -’s in and it will calculate it for you.  You can send it a 5d6+5 and it will give the final result).  We just like the rattle of dice.  Besides, when you have some nice hematite dice, you gotta use them.  :P

  No doubt lots of other tools exist.  This works for me and I find it easy to use.

• [Gayle Turner]

  My husband and his siblings play D&D using GoToMeeting. It has video conferencing that lets you show 6 webcams at the same time. Plus, it has screen sharing so you can put a map on your screen and then everyone can draw on it. 

• [David Aked]

  Very amused that the comments have zero’d in on D&D.  I think you may have to do more discussions on how your ‘remote gaming’ went.