Category: Interviews

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This episode’s conversation is one of my favorites so far, it’s definitely full of surprises for me and has some pretty in-depth conversation about role playing games from a gentleman I had no idea was so into rpgs! Our guest today is none other than the creator of the YouTube series Hobby Cheating, the worldwide award-winning miniature painter and hobby guru Vince Venturella. To kill all of your expectations right up front, I specifically invited Vince onto the show to NOT talk about his miniature painting. His entire YouTube channel is dedicated to miniature painting and Warhammer wargaming. I asked him to come on the show to discuss his love of Dungeons & Dragons and I’m telling you, I had no idea what I was getting into. It’s an awesome conversation, we talk about movies and books, oysters, running D&D marathons, how being fired from his first job had a significant impact on his life, we discuss genre-mixing, rpg horror campaigns while playing adolescent characters, writing and publishing his own games, mind-blowing collaborative character creation rules, pump up the volume, being a positive force in the hobby at large, loving the act of teaching and just loving the communal artistic hobby we all share. And all kinds of other stuff!

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Today we chat with Ryan Smith a.k.a. DungeonMapster. On Instagram and Patreon he’s @ dungeonmapster and I’m sure you can infer from his screen name what type of content you might find on his websites. But in addition to illustrating maps for D&D and Pathfinder and other fantasy-based role-playing games, we talk about audio books, world of warcraft, pathfinder versus dnd5e, meeting friends online, playing rpgs online, we discuss tips for running faster combat, the importance of discovering what you like to do creatively, how to deal with players unwittingly murdering your campaign storyline, voice acting during role playing and even making young adults choose what they want to do fo life at the age of 18!

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Today we’re traveling to Berlin! And we’re gonna talk with the King of the Vampires – my words, not his – Bartek Stachurski from Borgnine’s Painting blog. He was great fun to talk with and I’m telling you, Halloween is one of the very best times … to wait until midnight … then head over to his Instagram and web site and revel in all the gory glory of his incredibly cool – and massive! – undead army of vampires and zombies and Shadespire warbands and Blood Bowl teams! Also, the other very best times to head over to the blog is … all the times that aren’t Halloween. Bartek is a master of grimdark and conversions and he also conducts world building and storytelling for his army units and characters. We chat about his tutorials on painting and converting models and perseverance and gamer wives and zombie weddings and motivation and just the pure love of the hobby.

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This episode we dial up Croatia to talk with Ana Polanscak from the Gardens of Hecate blog. Ana is a true artist, something of a Renaissance woman maybe – she sculpts and converts miniatures, she paints miniatures and creates stand-alone works of art, she writes stories and her main endeavor currently is using skirmish games to create a fully immersive storytelling experience. My words, not hers.

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This episode I talk to a dude named Tim and who’s instagram handle is @bonus_action. Tim is an artist and designer and he produces for Instagram and his Patreon materials for use in Dungeons & Dragons, specifically custom magic items, traps and flavor tables. We have a fun conversation about both running and playing D&D, about being new to the whole thing, we talk about being creative and we actually laugh quite a bit during this one. He’s super cool, produces interesting content and has some great insights from his perspective about playing D&D.

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This episode I have a conversation with your friendly neighborhood party nerd! That’s right, Twitch streamer, miniature painter, Dutch daddy insomniac Reiner72! Steve is a fantastic miniature painter, you can check his stuff out on Instagram of course, but to get the biggest bang for your buck, you can catch him a few times a week live on Twitch where he’s gone out of his way to cultivate a decent respectful community that is always happy to have new members. We chat about that streaming life and mental health and anxiety, we discuss airbrushing and airbrush maintenance, brush holder stencil painting, burnout, community building, role playing games and even mixology! I told you, he’s the resident party nerd!

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This week I have a conversation with a guy who is a bona fide adventurer (he might dispute that) and a bona fide artist. He goes by the Instagram handle TheRealBrokenFingers and yeah, that name ain’t facetious. His work on Instagram is Warhammer 40k oriented and he creates massive dioramas, you gotta see ‘em to believe ‘em. He goes out of his way to evoke the gothic grimdark atmosphere of Space Marines in their eternally war-torn environment and on top of his excellent paint work and terrain model-making, his photography is fantastic as well. We talk about sailing the high seas, broken appendages, cinematic photography, world-building with models, chiaroscuro, coffee table books and of course fabricating, painting and displaying amazing dioramas!

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This week I interview the wonderful Shoshie of ShoshiesMinis; she is a miniature painter with a mission and a classical art background. She’s also a highly respected commission painter. She’s super fun to talk with and she’s also great fun to hang out with on Twitch where she chats with viewers and works on whatever personal miniatures she happens to have in her queue at the time. Today we discuss all kinds of things: from Kingdom Death to painting for yourself instead of judges to miniatures as fine art to her tools of the trade, and even pond fishing! That’s right! Catch and release … catch and release, that’s like a motif for this podcast … huh.

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This week I interview the awesome Kelsey Dionne of the Arcane Library. The Arcane Library is a publisher for best-selling Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition third-party content and printable card-based gaming aids. Kelsey is the writer of the Arcane Library’s D&D 5e adventures and it’s her writing chops and layout skills as pertaining specifically to D&D adventure modules that made me really want to chat with her about Dungeons and Dragons and her writing process. One of the things that impresses me about her adventures are the way they are graphically laid out and I would recommend downloading at least the free adventure from the website (Temple of the Basilisk Cult) so you can see what I see while we chat. During the interview we talk about her writing of course but we also talk about Dungeons and Dragons the game in general, how she runs it herself and my favorite section is probably when we discuss “why D&D” … air quotes … and a few topics relating to that like dungeon master advice and some D&D tips for low level players.