Author: Aser Tolentino

Aser is a visually impaired attorney and assistive technology instructor that started playing RPGs shortly before the podcast's founding. He ran our games of The Strange and Night's Black Agents, and is an advocate for accessibility in gaming. His gaming interests tend towards mythos horror, investigation, espionage, and military role-playing games.

Aser’s New Year Aspirations

Aser Tolentino #

As we look forward to a whole new year, I can’t help but glance back at where we’ve been and marvel at how far we’ve come. 2016 marks the third year of podcasting for The Redacted Files and RPG gaming for me. A little more than a year ago, I took my first steps into the world of GMing, and since then, well I’ve tried to keep busy. Now, with a few sessions under my belt, a new job and an impending marriage, I have to wonder what I want to accomplish this year. And here’s what I’ve come up with.

  1. Spend More Time in the GM Chair
    Megan and I like to trade off GM responsibilities pretty regularly, but lately I’ve been slacking as Beyond the Threshold and Not so Strange have struggled with scheduling issues. This year, I hope to start a new campaign with a new game (open to suggestions on which) and trying some new systems out. It’s not just a matter of sharing the load. In the next year, I hope to stretch my legs a bit and push my boundaries in the sorts of games I run and what moods I can work with.
  2. Read More Games 
    I have (the opposite of) loads of free time. But I think in the new year, I want to read more games. This helps build an understanding of new ways to do things and can even prompt thoughts on how old ways of doing things really work well for you after all.
  3. Go to Gencon
    Megan and I have had a long-standing desire to go to Gencon. This is for a number of reasons, ranging from it being a chance to meet a lot of friends from around the Internet to seeing the hobby and industry we’ve invested so much time and passion into in its most tangible manifestation. We currently have plans to attend and even run games this August, so stay tuned.
  4. Produce a Scenario Worthy of Publication 
    Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’m not looking to have anything in a major sourcebook or anything. I do think though that Megan and I have managed to come up with a few good stories in our hundreds of hours of actual plays. So I want to put forward the effort to produce something concrete from all that free form creativity. We’ll see what you can accomplish with a budget of almost nothing. 😛

So those are my aspirations for this year. I won’t go so far as to call them resolutions. Let’s meet back here in a year and see how I did.

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TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 12, Call of Cthulhu

Aser Tolentino # # #
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas
My GM gave to me,
Twelve Cthulhu’s calling,
Eleven Strange cyphers,
Ten Sandpoints pillaged,
Nine scary monsters,
Eight prior worlds,
Seven heroes slashing,
Six Fiascos foiled,
Five TPKS!
Four ships still flying,
Three Green Boxes,
Two Draculas,
and a Final Girl fleeing to safety.

A man tries to shoot himself in the head as a shoggoth tries to grab him

Well, how can you have a podcast about mythos horror gaming without playing Call of Cthulhu? You can’t: so here it is. We’ve played 6E and 7E now, with Horror on the Orient Express stretching past 12+ episodes already.

This granddaddy of investigative horror gameplay has made a huge contribution to the history of gaming and continues to offer the same promise of thrilling child and appalling botches that has made it a hit across generations.

Listen to our Call of Cthulhu Episodes
TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas

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TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 11, The Strange

Aser Tolentino # # #
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas
My GM gave to me,
Eleven Strange cyphers,
Ten Sandpoints pillaged,
Nine scary monsters,
Eight prior worlds,
Seven heroes slashing,
Six Fiascos foiled,
Five TPKS!
Four ships still flying,
Three Green Boxes,
Two Draculas,
and a Final Girl fleeing to safety.

A view of the Strange with pieces of different recursions peeking into it

We have had a lot of fun putting our own little twist on The Strange. This weird setting of infinite possibility has served as the playground for some of our favorite characters and whacky situations. Whatever happens, we’ll always have Prague.

The great thing about The Strange is that it can take you anywhere you want to go, so naturally we crammed Cthulhu in it. He felt right at home.

Listen to our Strange Episodes
TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas

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TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 10, Pathfinder

Aser Tolentino # # #
On the Tenth Day of Christmas
My GM gave to me,
Ten Sandpoints pillaged,
Nine scary monsters,
Eight prior worlds,
Seven heroes slashing,
Six Fiascos foiled,
Five TPKS!
Four ships still flying,
Three Green Boxes,
Two Draculas,
and a Final Girl fleeing to safety.

A fighter stands confidentally while in the background a group of goblins run through Sandpoint

Who would’ve thought it’d come to this: we played Pathfinder. After a year of staying away, we dared to run Rise of the Runelords, and we had fun doing it. We’re still doing it, and may well be doing so for the rest of our lives. Well, maybe not. We have to get back to 7th Sea at some point…

Pathfinder is popular for a reason, and we’ve had fun delving into that power fantasy as our heroes smash their way through goblin hordes and giant tribes.

Listen to our Pathfinder Episodes
TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas

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TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 9, Fear Itself

Aser Tolentino # # #
On the Ninth Day of Christmas
My GM gave to me,
Nine scary monsters,
Eight prior worlds,
Seven heroes slashing,
Six Fiascos foiled,
Five TPKS!
Four ships still flying,
Three Green Boxes,
Two Draculas,
and a Final Girl fleeing to safety.

An eye peeks through a hole in a door and is full of fear

While not the first Gumshoe game we tried, Fear Itself may very well be the scariest. We’re not hardened wet work artists or seasoned investigators of the unnatural for this outing: we’re regular people with ordinary lives. So basically, we’re screwed.

When you throw in the Book of Unremitting horror, and Megan’s love of tormenting Aser in one-on-one games, Fear Itself has quickly become a TRF favorite.

Listen to our Fear Itself Episodes
TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas

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TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 8, Numenèra

Aser Tolentino # # #
On the Eighth Day of Christmas
My GM gave to me,
Eight prior worlds,
Seven heroes slashing,
Six Fiascos foiled,
Five TPKS!
Four ships still flying,
Three Green Boxes,
Two Draculas,
and a Final Girl fleeing to safety.

A view of the Obelisk of the Water God with much of the landscape showing

The first game we decided to play after the podcast started, Numenèra has been one of our favorite systems since we created our first characters. We’ve run a whole campaign in the Ninth World since then, transitioning from a published adventure to a story of Megan’s own creation. In a real sense, our growth as a podcast can be tracked through this one line of episodes: from a single-track recording of our play through of Devil’s Spine through a multi-track recording of Megan’s own dungeons.

Finding the sort of sweet spot between rules light story gaming and tactical-focused adventuring that we find particularly appealing, Numenèra has brought us a world that is easy to dive into and provides wonderfully strange landscapes and technologies to explore at every turn.

List of our Numenèra Episodes
TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas

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TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 7, 7th Sea

Aser Tolentino # # #
On the Seventh Day of Christmas
My GM gave to me,
Seven heroes slashing,
Six Fiascos foiled,
Five TPKS!
Four ships still flying,
Three Green Boxes,
Two Draculas,
and a Final Girl fleeing to safety.

An image of Avalon with the queen and two men near the sea

The best part about growing the podcast has been discovering new people to play with and the interests they bring to our little assembly line of madness. When Patrick from our Tuesday night gaming group brought up the possibility of running 7th Sea for us, we couldn’t say yes fast enough.

A game that feels very much ahead of its time, 7th Sea entertained us with its focus on dramatic action beats and story. It’s a setting we’ll be returning to in the future, count on it.

Listen to our 7th Sea Episodes
TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas

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TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 6, Fiasco

Aser Tolentino # # #
On the Sixth Day of Christmas
My GM gave to me,
Six Fiascos foiled,
Five TPKS!
Four ships still flying,
Three Green Boxes,
Two Draculas,
and a Final Girl fleeing to safety.

Text reads

Ah Fiasco, what can we say about you? It’s the game that introduced us to a lot of TRF’s first additions to the cast, in games that are sadly lost to history. Perhaps equally important, it emphasized to us the ability for rules-light, GM-less games to create colorful stories that are simultaneously absurd and yet oddly memorable.

We’ve played a couple mythos-related play sets through the history of the podcast, and are always interested in finding more that might generate an episode or two in the future.

Listen to our Fiasco episodes
TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas

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TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 5, Trail of Cthulhu

Aser Tolentino # # #
On the Fifth Day of Christmas
My GM gave to me,
Five TPKS!
Four ships still flying,
Three Green Boxes,
Two Draculas,
and a Final Girl fleeing to safety.

 

Man standing in the gloom looking at a corpse

There’s actually only ever been one total party kill on TRF: the scenario Castle Bravo for Trail of Cthulhu. As to be expected from Brian, Phil and Aser though, it’s not achieved by half measures.

Using the core clue mechanic central to the Gumshoe system to guarantee narrative progress, Trail of Cthulhu ensures that your intrepid band of investigators will make it to that payoff at the end of the adventure where the true horror of the situation can finally be revealed. Whether the PCs found all of the other clues along the way determines how well that last scene plays out for them: in Castle Bravo, we found most of them.

Listen to our Trail of Cthulhu episodes
TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas

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TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 4, Firefly

Aser Tolentino # # #
On the Fourth Day of Christmas
My GM gave to me,
Four ships still flying,
Three Green Boxes,
Two Draculas,
and a Final Girl fleeing to safety.

Firefly podcast logo

Okay, this is a bit of a cheat. But much to Aser’s chagrin, it turns out the game he’s GMed the most is for our sister podcast: Firefly Podcast.

Seeking to duplicate the thrilling heroics and interpersonal dramas of a crew living on the edge using the Cortex Plus system, the Firefly RPG is among our favorite narrative-focused games out there.

Check out Firefly Podcast

TRF’s Twelve Days of Christmas

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