viddyviddy

You damn kids these days with your XBox360s and your smart phones and your technological cocoons from which you pretend to have a social life despite any actual interaction beyond a "Like!" or an amusing meme.  Back in my day, if you wanted to play a game, it had to exist in a physical manifestation!  Oh, those were dark days, back when we were forced to walk uphill, BOTH WAYS, just to have the chance to play a tattered game of Monopoly.  We lived for the days that the Game Wagon would roll into town just for the chance to find a Uno deck with most of the cards still in it.

And we liked it!  We loved it!

But now brighter days have returned for table top gaming.  Nerd Messiah, Wil Wheaton, has a YouTube show all about them called TableTop.  BoardGameGeek can point you in about a thousand directions that all lead to great games.  Thanks to this newfangled Internet, people with cool ideas can get their games funded through Kickstarter and send them straight to the people who want them.

All you have to do is know how to play.  That's where, go figure, the How To Play podcast steps in.

Relevant Links:
How To Play Main Site
Support the Show!
Episode Archives

How To Play podcast doesn't throw up any smoke and mirrors when it comes to its premise:  each podcast covers a game's rules and gives a thorough explanation on how to play.  Host Ryan Sturm takes it upon himself to explain a veritable plethora of games to his audience.  A teacher by trade, Sturm's language and method of introducing and explaining each piece of a game are clear, understandable and obviously thought out.  There is a good deal of effort put into How To Play and I think it pays off really well.

Content Rating:  Clean, and tagged so in iTunes.  It's a bit funny to imagine this show with explicit language though.  "JUST MOVE THE #&$*@ PIECE, IT'S NOT THAT HARD!"

Average Episode Length:  I don't want to give you the normal median time for How To Play.  It really depends on what kind of game Sturm is describing.  Simple games require less time, while more complicated games take more time.  You can probably judge the intricacy of a game just by checking the episode's time. 

Drinking Game:  Pick one of the following words, and drink each time it is used:

• Dice
• Card
• Hand
• Banker
• Board

  That should get you there pretty quickly.

How To Play is a podcast of great use to anybody who has ever tried to learn, or teach others how to play a game.  This is a great way to break down what can be daunting instructions (I'm looking at you, Fantasy Flight) and lists of errata into a functioning rule set.  If you have trouble explaining rules, How to Play can help you by either teaching you how to teach others, or you can just play the episodes for your friends while you set the game up.

On top of that, you also get to learn about strategies for how to win each game.  Uh, you don't have to let your friends listen to that part of the episode if you don't want to. 

Music:  A little guitar music that I believe is performed by the host.  Very nice!

Release Schedule:  Monthly, with more episodes if there are expansions to a game that are covered.


Unintentionally Good Part:  Honestly, I really like the guitar music.  It's calming.

Unintentionally Bad Part:  If you don't have, or are not interested in a particular game that is covered by an episode, you're not going to listen to it.  Shortens the library of possible episodes considerably for me, but this really isn't a fault of the podcast in the slightest.  I just need to buy more games!

Unrelated rating:  Three top hats out of three scottie dogs.

Gentle Reader,

The time has finally come when I am forced to realize that my podcast-listening habits have fallen into a rut. My listening device is currently packed with 24 podcast that make up my standard listening rotation and that's fine for me.

But that's bad for me as well. It is easy to fall into habit when it comes to things you like. I can listen to a single podcast several times over, and with a big enough backlog of episodes a single podcast can keep me sustained for a week. There is little motivation for me to seek out new podcasts.

Which is bad, because, y'know. This whole "podcast reviewer" shtick would end pretty quickly if I just reviewed the same podcast over and over again.

The Internet is a big place when it wants to be, and trying to discover new podcasts to listen to can become an infuriating game of hunt-and-peck. A lot of podcasts unfortunately fall into a "Quality, Regularity, Entertainment: Pick Two" category. If you manage to find something that is relevant to your interest there is a highly likely chance that they either only have 10 episodes, or it sounds like they were recorded on Xbox live headphones.

There's iTunes, yes, and you're sure to be able to find all of the top podcasts that are currently sweeping the headphones of the nation. Sticking to their most popular podcasts will most likely reward you with a slew of high-quality, highly entertaining podcasts.

But A quick Google-ing brings me to these directories:

Podcast Directory

NPR Podcast Directory

Podbean

Podseek - After clicking around for thirty seconds, my path brought me to a podcast about book making! Neat!

So I want to know, reader: where do you find your podcasts? Do you have some secret cache of forums that keeps you in the know? Word of mouth? Podcast review sites that aren't mine (you hussy). Give me some new hunting grounds so that I can find new and untamed podcasts to review for you. Let me know where you go!

Please?

This is a blog about podcasts.

Podcasts?

Yes, podcasts.

Um, what?

According to almighty Wikipedia, a podcast is:

"a series of visual or sound which allows files which are distributed over the computer by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers."

All right, I'm listening.

No, you're not. And that's the problem. From what I've experienced in my attempts to share information about podcasts with friends, family, and anyone too polite to tell me to go away, is that there is an overwhelming apathy surrounding podcasts. There is a wide world of alternative media at the fingertips of anyone with a decent Internet connection and no one cares. An entire spectrum of entertaining and informative content exists, but no one can be bothered. It appears that video did indeed kill the radio star, if by radio you mean podcasts, and by video star you mean cute cat macros.

That metaphor seems to have escaped you.

Sorry. Really, all this blog is intended for is to stir up more interest in podcasts.

What do podcasts have to do with me?

Take a moment and think of your hobbies, political views, your music collect, a favorite genre of books, websites that make you laugh, the stories you love to hear. Whatever you like, however you like it, there is a podcast out there that has your interests in mind.
Tell me, what do you like?

Oh! I like cooking!

There's a podcast for you.

I enjoy learning about history. And current events. And grammar!

You've got it, nerd.

...Porn?

Is this or is this not the Internet?

Nice. So where do you come in, viddyviddy?

I'll be providing as reviews for as many podcasts as I can shove onto my iPod. The intent of this blog is to provide both the novice and well practiced podcast afficianado alike to unique, interesting, and entertaining podcasts. Let me know what interests you, and I'll try and find a podcast that can relate! Go find a podcast you like, write up a review, and I'll post it on this blog!

Seriously though, there are really porn podcasts?

Stay the hell away from my computer.
This is going to be a wonderful adventure.