The Hackensack Hack 'n' Slash: Rotating GMs with Garrett and the Bucket Buddies [S4E4]

In this week's episode, we chat with Garrett about highly effective cult leaders, a curse of potential unkillability, and a table of players that rotates GMing duties (and systems!) for each campaign. This was a really thoughtful conversation about short game sessions, building shared ownership of the world, and what it means to be a GM. Plus, three of the other members of Garrett's table shared their perspectives with us as well! 

Garrett has a wealth of knowledge about TTRPG systems. Here are some of the systems that Garrett mentions in this episode:

• Swords Without Master
• Ars Magica
• Nitrate City
• Masks
• Monster of the Week
• Spire: The City Must Fall
• Dungeon World, which we heard about from Prim
• Blades in the Dark
• Boondock Cartomancy
• Lasers and Feelings, of which we played a very fun hack called Radical Catgirl Anarchy
• Kids on Bikes

We hear about a LARP gone wrong in this episode. To hear about LARP gone right, check out our interviews with Andrew (who told us about Legacies LARP) and Rex (who told us about Gothic LARP). 

Garrett also publishes TTRPGs! Check out Garrett's Itch page for some fun creative GMless games, and also this (now-closed) Kickstarter for another system now under development.

We also hear from some other members of the table! They're also extremely knowledgeable about TTRPG systems:

• Jason mentions Monster Hearts, Dungeon World, Questlandia, Girl by Moonlight, and City Planning Department. 
• Jared mentions Always/Never/Now and Blister Critters. Jared publishes TTRPGs too! Check out Jared's Itch page for solo journalling games, micro games, and missions for The Company.
• Chris mentions Uranium Chef and Alas for the Awful Sea.

A special thanks to Jason, Jared, and Chris for taking the time to share their experiences! We're very grateful to all of you for seeing a surprise email from a stranger about your home TTRPG game and still taking the time to record some audio for us. We reached out to all of the Bucket Buddies, but didn't hear back from the rest by release time. 

(Also, we checked out City Planning Department after we heard about it from Jason. We liked it so much that we'll be playing it in a episode later this season with a special guest! So an additional thanks for that recommendation.)

Thanks to Ruckgar of Orc Style for providing this week's intro!

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music.  You can also listen to Reilly's DJ sets on Mixcloud.

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