About The Bear’s Grove Podcast
The Bear’s Grove is a podcast, of about 30 minutes in length, that encourages adult-level discussion of roleplaying games as a storytelling art.
Yeah, yeah, yeah - that’s the tagline, but what does it mean?
“Adult-Level” = means that we are all adults here. We had some stuff on kids and gaming in the earlier podcasts, but that is being moved over to the new podcast for kids and gaming, Dragonkin.
“Discussion” = We talk a lot. Sometimes at you, sometimes between ourselves, sometimes with you directly, either on the podcast or in email or blog comments or in our forums! We like feedback. And we listen to your answers.
“Roleplaying as a Storytelling Art” = Roleplaying isn’t just a fun pastime, it is also something that can be elevated to the level of art. And there are a lot of really cool things we can talk about vis a vis storytelling, roleplaying, and art, and somewhere in between. Anything that improves a roleplaying game frees it up to create art. It is both a medium and an artistic tool. How cool is that?
The podcast is produced, written, and many times voiced solely by Sam Chupp, save for guest columnists or interviews. The Bear’s Grove Podcast is a Fireheart Foundry production.
Podcast Colophon
The podcast is recorded using either a using either a Logitech QuickCam (in early episodes) or a Samson C01U studio USB microphone in most of the later episodes, with occasional use of a Logitech USB Premium 350 USB headset. Audacity is used to record and edit the files, which are then written to MP3 format using the LAME MP3 codec. The files are hosted at libsyn.com with a feed is burned through feedburner.com. The site was originally hosted on the Blogger platform at bearsgrove.blogspot.com, but now we use Wordpress on a server hosted by 1and1.com. Sometimes you’ll hear recordings of telephone conversations, which are done via Skype using HotRecorder.