Intro to Saving the Game

I am a big fan of podcasts. I have hour upon hour of physical labor which allows me to listen to my mp3 player while I go about my day. I also happen to be a Geek, and I am a Christian, although that part is not happenstance. My plan is to show you, the reader, a world of Christian Geek podcasting beyond the Central.

Today, I want to introduce you to the “Saving the Game” podcast. Their tagline being: “Grant, Peter, and Branden as they discuss tabletop role playing games from a Christian perspective” although, as of Bonus Episode 5, Branden is no longer with the show. (I find it hard to imagine he will stay away permanently, though)

Saving the Game has over 60 episodes; most, if not all, under an hour. The episodes come out about twice a month. I’d say that the main focus of the show is what I would term “story telling games”. Mostly good old fashioned pen and paper (and dice) role playing games, but there is crossover into other media.

Rather than blathering on, I do have a tendency to ramble, I asked the guys a series of questions so that you can learn more about them from their own words.

 

1:How would you label your show?

Grant: "A niche within a niche." Seriously. We’re a Christian podcast about tabletop roleplaying games.

Peter: “At least two more nested niches below Grant’s assessment. ;)” (More seriously: roleplayers (1) who are also Christians (2) and listen to gaming podcasts (3) and want to combine their faith and their hobby (4). Maybe this is why we tend to get along so well with our listeners. By carving out such a specific piece of territory, we may have inadvertently created the perfect means of finding people who share our interests and perspectives! (Although that’s also demonstrably not ENTIRELY the case.)

2:What are your favorite topics?

Grant: Any topic where we get to use the stranger-than-fiction events of history as examples or inspiration. Like King John Plantagenet of England (you know, the nasty one from our Robin Hood stories) losing England’s crown jewels and most of its treasury in a river. Or Lisztomania.

Peter: I like topics where we get into deeper historical or theological depth, particularly when Grant and/or one of our guests knows a lot about something I only have passing familiarity with.  

3:Who does most of the talking on your podcast?

Grant: I do, to the point where I edit out big chunks of what I say (especially if I'm repeating myself) to give Peter proportionately more airtime.

Peter: I’ll take his word for it, because I feel like I can get pretty rambly, too. Some of that is my tendency to be more elaborate and flowery in my speech and writing than Grant. In fact, you can even see that in our responses to these questions. You’ll also notice that while Grant may talk more, whenever we write stuff, I just bury him with my word count.

4:Do you like interacting with the listeners?

Grant: It's basically the best thing ever. EVER. Every time a listener sends us a message, or posts in our Google+ group, I rejoice, because these awesome people are talking to ME! Our listeners are fantastic people, and they really provide the impetus to keep the show going.

Peter: Yes! So far 100% of my interaction with our listeners (and I’ve met 3 in person, 4 if you want to count a guest host who also listens) have been very positive experiences. The online interactions have all been fantastic, too. For whatever reason, we’ve been blessed with an extraordinarily nice group of folks as listeners, and I really treasure that.

5:You are a geek, tell me, how do you ‘own’ it?

Grant: I'm writing this with forty separate shelves of books behind me in our library. Five are stuffed full of classic literature, to the point of straining the particle board. Five are overflowing—literally—with nonfiction works on every topic. Fifteen are densely packed with sci-fi and fantasy.  We have a special shelf for books bound and published before 1930, a shelf for graphic novels and comic collections. My wife has five shelves full of drama and costuming material. Theology has a shelf. Mythologies from around the world have a shelf all their own. Anne McCaffrey, Terry Pratchett, Robert Jordan, and Branden Sanderson had to be given shelves all their own. Roleplaying games have a shelf (and it's about to become two.) Mysteries have a shelf. Children's books have a shelf. And none of this is enough shelf space—we're double-stacked in several places, and there's stacks of new books on the floor that we need to catalog and shelve. We had to ask for a barcode scanner for Christmas one year to make updating our LibraryThing list easier. I'm no longer allowed to have a library card because I forget to return books and accidentally shelve them. My wife and are bibliophiles, is what I'm saying.

Also, I do this podcast about Christianity and roleplaying games...

Peter: I’m typing this on a computer I built myself from components. I’m surrounded by magic cards. I have an entire bookcase full of gaming books not 5 feet from me. I have boxes of comic books and MORE gaming books in my closet. Over half the books in the bookcases (and there are several of them) in my residence are some kind of geekery. I work for a bookstore. I’m taking classes to get certified in IT security. And, as Grant said:  I do this podcast about Christianity and roleplaying games...

6:As a Christian how do you ‘own’ that?

Grant: Not publicly enough! I'm terrible at being an everyday, public witness for Christ. But I don't shy away from talking about faith and theology anymore, and I'm slowly learning to approach decisions with my/our relationship with God in mind first and other considerations second.

Also, I do this podcast about Christianity and roleplaying games...

Peter: I try to live it, which is often hard. Some of the ways I do that (with varying levels of success) include being a compassionate, listening ear, trying to stay up on theology, doing volunteer work with the local food pantry (mostly on computer stuff) and doing the podcast.

7:You get a Star Trek replicator, is there a meal you get more than any other, or do you branch out and try new things?

Grant: New things most of the time—I'm generally pretty epicurious—but there's gonna be a lot of pasta and parmesan cheese as a snack. Also I'd probably die of coronary diseases in, like, five years.

Peter: I’d probably go through a decent number of things, too. I’m kind of a half-hearted paleo/low-carb eater, so there would be a LOT of really high-quality meat dishes.

8:What is your favorite color?

Grant: Octarine.

Peter: I don’t have a favorite specific color, but I tend to favor blues, grays, and black.

9:Are e-sports sports?

Grant:  Absolutely they are, and watching e-sports evolve and grow (especially in their relationship with streaming services and individual entertainment talent in these games like imaqtpie and Voyboy)  is fascinating. I am a big e-sports fan and have been for a while—I follow the NA and EU League Championship Series, the NA and EU World Championship Series for Starcraft 2, various Hearthstone tournaments including the HWC, and I'm geting into (and playing!) Smite, because the Smite World Championships were amazing. There's actually an Innroads Ministries clan in Smite that Mike Perna created!

Peter: Who the what now? (I don’t follow e-sports OR traditional sports. I’m lame that way.)

10:Marvel or DC?

Grant: I actually don’t much like any of the A-list superheroes from either company. However, DC published Sandman, Hellblazer, and Planetary—three of my four favorite comic series ever, the fourth being Hellboy—so I’ll give them the prize.

Peter: DC in the comics, Marvel in the theater. But I also like a lot of the stuff Grant mentioned. Planetary and Hellboy in particular are amazing.

11:Can you disprove a negative?

Grant: Logically, no. And I’m pretty sure that little detail from my college logic class is responsible for 25% of the debate in comment sections everywhere.

Peter: What Grant said, only it’s probably more like 33-50%.

12:What is your favorite fast-food or ff joint?

Grant: Burger-Fi. Ate there on a trip to Myrtle Beach with my wife and daughter, and it was awesome. Any fast-food franchise that serves local craft beer can’t be beat.

Peter: Tommy’s, a local Italian Beef/Gyros/other heart-attack-on-a-plate chain.

13:Can you give 110%?

Grant: A little bit at a time.

Peter: Not mathematically, but I spend a lot of the holiday season in “overdrive” at work.

14:What is your biggest obstacle to podcasting?

Grant: Time. Time to edit, time to learn editing techniques, time to research topics—all of that comes out of time I could spend with my family, or doing things around the house to make my wife happy, or reading, or gaming, or ... well, you get the idea.

Peter: Originally, it was self-consciousness. It took me a LONG time to get used to hearing my own voice on recordings. Now it’s mostly just trying to keep up with Grant!

15:Star Trek or Star Wars?

Grant: It's a false dichotomy—love them both, they both have flaws, etc.—but I have wonderful memories of watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with my parents growing up.

Peter: It’s a false dichotomy; I’ve enjoyed them both, and they’ve both driven me absolutely nuts on at least one occasion, but I’m not a rabid fan of either. If you nailed me down to a favorite space IP, I’d probably say Mass Effect, actually.

16:If you could have any automobile, what would you take?

Grant: The getaway car. And only slightly more seriously, the second generation of self-driving cars available to consumers.

Peter: Depends on whether the rest of my life would shift to accommodate it. Some of the stuff I think would be fun (a Tesla Roadster or a Dodge Challenger) would be too expensive to drive and/or insure for me. On a practical level, I’d probably just go with a late-model Subaru Forester or Ford Taurus X: my wife and I have to haul a lot of stuff for her crafting business, so something with capacity is essential, but I don’t like big SUVs. The center of gravity is too high and the gas mileage is lousy.

17:Take your choice, too hot or too cold?

Grant: Too hot. I live in the South; I'll deal.

Peter: Too cold. I live in northern Illinois, so I’m used to long, cold winters and I actually like them.

18:Pepsi or Coke?

Grant: Cheerwine. Or Due South Roasters' homemade ginger beer, for that extra hipster cred!

Peter: Diet Pepsi.

19:What, aside from your podcast, would you like the readers to know more about?

Grant: Tabletop roleplaying games. Too many people think video games have made the hobby obsolete, or never get into them because they are in many ways an ‘inherited’ hobby—passed from parents to children, or friend to friend—and no one introduces them to the hobby. But there’s no other medium like them. Nothing else permits so much freeform creativity in a group setting, with adventure and excitement wrapped around fellowship and collaborative storytelling.

Peter: In addition to what Grant said:

1. Derek White and Adam Hamilton, my two favorite United Methodist pastors, albeit for different reasons. I know Derek through the show, and he is the quintessential “man after God’s own heart,” plus he loves geeks deeply and wants to minister to them so much it seems like it almost hurts. Derek is also responsible for my “to read” pile swelling with theology books. Adam Hamilton is my favorite theologian producing material today, and his sermons are part of my weekly podcast rotation. I’ve become a much more mature and well-adjusted Christian based largely on his material.

2. The Bodhana Group: Although if they listen to the podcast, they know about it. Jack Berkenstock’s wonderful non-profit is working on a manual for making tabletop RPGs into a legitimate and deliberate therapeutic tool. It’s the sort of thing I wish Gary Gygax could have lives long enough to see.

3. InnRoads Ministries and Mike Perna: Another nexus of Christian Geek culture, one of the places we’re syndicated through, and a gold mine of fantastic content. Mike is passionate about his ministry, about geeks, and about God, and his enthusiasm, much like Derek’s, is infectious. Be sure to also check out the Facebook group.

4. The annual Sojourn anthology, put out by Fear the Boot. Yes, I’ve been published in the first two volumes, but it’s also a really great place for a new author to get their start. Laura Anderson, the lead editor, is an absolute joy to work with. Dan Repperger, the man in charge, is a good guy beyond all reproach. Also, the selection of stories is phenomenal. I’m working my way through my author’s copy of Volume 2 now, and it’s really good.

20:Do you think 20 is an appropriate number of questions for an interview/survey?

Grant: That number is entirely inappropriate, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

Peter: Sure! It’s a nice, round, traditional number.

Links for this post:

http://www.innroadsministries.com/wordpress/category/podcast/saving-the-game/