Theory From the Closet

A punk perspective on tabletop RPG’s, their theory, and design.

19
May

Show039: Interview with Ralph Mazza

by clyde
Interviews, Shows

Show039: Interview with Ralph Mazza

Here’s the second, or third interview I did at Forge Midwest. This is with the other creator of Universalis, Ralph Mazza. We talk about Universalis, Robots and Rapiers, plus Blood Red Sands. We also discuss how we believe that folks aren’t paying enough attention to covering who gets to make decisions in a lot of Indie games. All the interviews I did at Forge Midwest were without any notes or prepared questions. That will be fairly clear in this interview as there is more rambling than usual, but I still think it’s a good interview. There’s also Tea.

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    Are you using loose leaf green tea? It tends to make much greener tea than the stuff in bags.
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    Hi Jack,

    No, I'm not. I didn't realize that was an option. Is that why those small Asian Teapots have a bunch of little holes leading to the spout, to keep the leaves out of your cup?
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    As an expert on warm beverages I can help you out. The Japanese tea you are familiar with is called Macha and made from whole immature dried leaves ground into a powder. You are drinking a suspension of green leaves, so it is green. The other tea is called green and the leaves are green, but the liquid is not because it is the color that the water absorbs from the leaves.

    If you get Macha it will be green. Personally I find Macha to be more flavorful than other green teas.
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    Hi Joshua,

    Thanks, I'll see if I can dig some Macha up. Tea is kind of new to me as I spent about 13 years being caffeine free. Being ignorant I didn't realize that not all tea has caffeine, although now I drink mainly caffeinated tea. I also tend to drink it cold. Heh.

    Also I hadn't come across your podcast before. Your itunes link on your site, causes itunes to tell me that your podcast is not available in the American store. I imagine this must mean you're overseas somewhere. Anyway, I'm presently requesting all your datas from your server.
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    Loose leaf tastes better; if you steep the tea briefly and then remove the leaves you can get a clear tasting green tea off it. Or if you don't use many leaves. Me, I take a pinch and drop it in the bottom of the cup and leave it in while I drink it - this gives a slightly bitter green-brown tea.
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    Heh...6 comments...and they're all about tea.

    I guess next time I'm going to have to come up with something more controversal to talk about :-)
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    I tried to get you to stir up some shit. Heh. I wouldn't worry it was a good show. You might like this:

    http://rpgpodcastreview.blogspot.com/2008/05/th...

    Doc has had some bit of criticism of some of my past shows, but not this one.

    I haven't really built the site as a good community builder, as I'm much better at wrecking communities than building them. I worry that a real community built up around the podcast would end up with me frustrated and throwing away something I really enjoy doing, because of my frustration with human interaction.

    What I'm trying to say Ralph is that reception of the show can't really be judged by comments, as I haven't figured out how to build the kind of interaction with folks who listen to the show, that I want yet. This is actually something I've been planning to address via the show....
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    Hey Clyde, My itunes link does not work due to technical crap that always seems like a day or two away from getting straightened out.

    Once again I must say that I am a hot beverage nerd. I order most of my beverage online from www.specialteas.com they have macha and it is expensive but you use 1/4 of a teaspoon per cup so it lasts a while.

    My favorite beverage is a drink called mate (mah-tay). I like it because you keep adding more hot water to it and one charge will last all afternoon.

    To give you some useful feedback. Your show is excellent, whatever it is you are doing, keep doing it. Your show is interesting and entertaining and it has practical content. Personally I dislike GNS theory, but your take on the subject has always been well approached.

    My only criticism is that your show does not have the title, album and genre info filled in. My MP3 players need that information so I have to fill it in by hand every time an episode comes out.
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    Hey Joshua,

    Thanks. You should hear my thoughts on your show soon. I must say I feel like a card, since I met one of you folks at Gen Con, and after listening to your fourth episode found your business card in the stack of cards I got at Gen Con.

    Can you give me more info on what you are using? All my shows are tagged by everything I look at. I'm very careful to make sure it's exactly the same, even preserving my mis-capitalization so there's no difference. It should say, "Show00x: whatever" for the title, "Theory From the Closet" for the album, and "other" for the category. I think I only screwed it up once, all the other 40 shows are exactly the same.
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    I use Ziepod but have used Juice and others in the past. I also double checked by downloading one of your episodes directly.

    Out of all the episodes only 3 have any track info. (26, 27 and discussions 1 if it matters)

    As for meeting us, I don't remember half of the dozens of people I meet at conventions, so it's no big deal.
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    I'm betting those got edited on Windows, as I use a windows utility to record Skype. Normally I edit in Linux. I'll have to look into updating that version of Audacity and see how that works.
 
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