Hi, gang!

Before you get into the issue at hand, do take note of the pre-issue announcement. This kind of call-out for players is what started first Gutter Skypes Mach II, and then Monkeys Took My Jetpack, in the first place. Let’s get into some seriously Savage goings-on! You can reach me at blindgeek@lioncourt.com, or our “Monkeys Took My Jetpack” Facebook page.

We’re bringing you our second session of Blue Rose. This is a far more role-play-intensive game than we’ve had in the past. Not to say it’s more dramatic or anything like that; merely that we have yet to engage in combat. And that’s by no means a bad thing; it’s actually quite fun. It’s just different from our usual hijinks.

I hope this podcast finds you well in these testing times. It is my convicted belief that, in the United States at the very least, we have reached a “Corbomite Maneuver” moment, where we have a chance to demonstrate what our high-sounding words mean. Here’s hoping we pass.

And on that more-somber-than-expected note…

Enjoy the issue!

Hey, kids!

Been quite a while, I know, and the reason is given in the opening remarks. Realizing how long it’s been, and how sporadic our issues were even before that, I hope we still have some listeners. If we do, I urge you all to each tell three of your friends that we’re back, or that we exist if they didn’t already know, because this is a great time to start listening. We’re beginning a new campaign!

As explained in the opening remarks, this issue contains our first session of Blue Rose: The A.G.E Game of Romantic Fantasy. We’re hoping that since we’re podcasting current game sessions again, your feedback will intensify, and we can re-forge that feedback loop we had in days gone by.

I thought I’d covered everything you needed to know in the opening remarks, but I forgot one thing, so I’ll include it here. Moondog’s and my characters are bonded. While he was on a wright of passage of some sort, he found me in the forest and saved my life. More detail is given about the bonding during the game, but that’s what we knew when we started. So now, you know as well.

By all the deities, it’s great to be back!!!

By the way, if you’re wondering what that thing at the beginning of the podcast is supposed to be, the answer is: I have no idea. It’s just some random bits I found while looking for other random bits, and I found when I put them together, the result made me laugh. Feel free to shrug your shoulders (hopefully after laughing), and move on.

Enjoy!

Greetings, salutations, and hello!

Here we are, with our fourth and final session of Truth & Justice, from Atomic Sock Monkey Press, wherein our heroes finally come face-to-face with the issue’s titular character. Show notes are sparse this time around, because I want to get this out as quickly as possible, especially since it was scheduled for last week.

Download here.

And enjoy!

Hey, kids!

Well, here we are, back again, with another session of Truth & Justice, that superlative game of super heroics from Atomic Sock Monkey Press! Never has it been easier to create the makings of your very own comic book stories. All you need is T&J, your imagination, and two six-sided dice you can crib from any board game you’ve got in the deep recesses of your home.

I could wax nostalgic about the T&J game all day long, but you probably want to get on to listening to the issue. Probably much easier to do with this handy-dandy download link.

Go forth, True Believers (Hey, ya think that’s trademarked?)…

…and enjoy!

To quote the great man himself: Face front, True Believers!

Today’s issue finds the Jetpackless Gentlemen (and lady, natch) continuing our tabletop tomfoolery with the second session of Truth & Justice, that great game of smashing superheroics from Atomic Sock Monkey Press.

We at MTMJHQ had some personal loss which set this issue back some, and I appreciate your understanding of that; I don’t anticipate months between issues on a regular basis. I plan on coming as close to a biweekly release schedule as time and sanity will permit.

I’m curious to know if any of our listeners are benefiting from the breaking of each issue into chapters. I started doing that so you could easily navigate straight to the game, should you not be in the mood for our banter. I don’t know how widespread the ability to navigate chapters has become in the world of podcast players. My own player of choice, Overcast, supports them, but if this is a rarity, perhaps we should return to the practice of putting the pre-game banter at the end of the podcast? Feedback is strongly encouraged and appreciated. Thank you.

All right! Enough of this update! It’s time to download and delight in the derring-do which is being doled out in this alacritous issue.

Enjoy!

Welcome back, gang!

To inaugurate our second season, we are giving you a Jetpack Flashback, with the old gang—Josh, Moon Dog, Nikki, Pat, and myself. This was recorded just after our Funkadelic Frankenstein game, brought to you as Jetpack Flashbacks on this podcast way back when. I give you, from April 19, 2010, our first session of Truth & Justice.

If you’re in the market for a rules-lite supers game, and really liked the mechanics you were able to glean from our Zorcerer of Zo sessions, or even better, you bought the game from listening to our podcast and liked the PDQ system, you’re going to love Truth & Justice. It uses the same Prose Descriptive Qualities system, tailored to fit the comic book feel. We’re very proud to bring this to you.

And we’re also very proud to be back.

So stop reading and download this issue. As the late, great Stan Lee might say, it will make a True Believer out of you!

Enjoy!

Hey, gang!

This is going to be a quickie, because I want to get it out there and have to leave forthwith, posthaste, and fast even! Maybe I’ll come back and fill in links and such, and give proper written babbling to this issue. In the meantime, here’s our second session of Icons, wherein our Paragons are drawn into a web of inter-dimensional intrigue, the likes of which they’ve never encountered before. Will the walloping Whirligig, the badass Biohazard, and the marvelous Mr. Disco be enough to fend off the nostalgic nightmare of… The Sugar Hill Invasion?

Download and find out!

Yes, for those in the know, it’s *that* Sugar Hill Invasion–the Improbable Tales adventure for the Icons superheroic role-playing game. But let me explain.

In This Issue:

To kick off our Monkeys Took My Jetpack Stan Lee tribute, we go back to July 21, 2014, when we took the newly-released Icons: Assembled Edition for a spin. Having just come from a one-shot where we did our best to emulate a fictional ‘80s Saturday morning cartoon, I could think of no better start to our tribute than to give you our rendering of Improbable Tales: The Sugar Hill Invasion!

The Cast:

BlindGeek: GM
Josh: Whirligig
Thunderstep: Biohazard
Trilobite: Mr. Disco

A few things to note:

First off, although the adventure was published quite some time ago, it could still be run today, so I want to remind you that this and the next issue of Monkeys Took My Jetpack contain total spoilers for the adventure. If your players listen to this podcast, they’ll know things you most definitely WILL NOT want them to if you run the adventure. Adapt, improvise, and overcome!

Second, my group did have some issues with the rules (or more accurately, the rules presentation) of Icons–at least, as we understood them. I thought about editing out the discussion, because the last thing I want to do is offend any fans (or in some cases, designers) of the games we play on this podcast. I ultimately chose to leave most of it in, because were I a game designer, I’d want to know what players of my game were thinking of my game as it unfolded at the table, or have a chance to help for future reference. Given this session is four years old, and Assembled Edition was new when this was recorded, clarifications and/or changes may have been made, but either way, these were our thoughts at the time. As you’ll hear, we still had a blast playing the game.

Thirdly, as always, we welcome your feedback. Thoughts on how rules were handled? Different experiences you’ve had with this particular Improbable Tale, or Icons in general? We’d love to hear from you. Just go to our Facebook page and leave us a comment. You’ll hear back. Promise.

Okay, True Believers, enough babbling from me! Go back to the top, click that download link, and…

…Enjoy!

And thanks a lot, Stan. Without you, even indirectly, this wouldn’t have happened.

“On Earth today, it’s Thanksgiving. If the crew has to eat meatloaf, I want it to look like turkey. And if they have to listen to a podcast, I want it to be Monkeys Took My Jetpack!”
–Capt. James T. Kirk … sort of.

This issue comes in a bit short, but goes out no less enjoyable for it. It’s got everything you’ve come to expect from the Jetpackless–humor, action, compelling characters, a great game, and so much more!

It’s our third and final session (so far) of the Cartoon Action Hour: Season 3 series, Wasteland 2010.

Our cast includes:

BlindGeek: GM
Josh: Zolgar
Moondog: Lady Mistra
Trilobite: Bogg

I can’t say enough great things about Spectrum Games in general, and Cartoon Action Hour in particular. Even if this series doesn’t strike your fancy, there are many published series to pick from, and the rules provide detailed, in-depth guidelines for creating your own. If you have a nostalgic bone in your body, you can’t go wrong by picking up this game! We will be coming back to this game, possibly even this series, at some point.

So with that, whether you “officially” celebrate Thanksgiving today as we do in the States, it’s never a bad idea to take stock of what one has to be thankful for in life. I know I speak for all of us here at MTMJ when I say we are so thankful for you, our listeners. Whether you give us feedback on our Facebook page, or whether you are part of the silent masses–or even the silent few–we appreciate each and every one of you. As someone who subscribes to many podcasts myself, I recognize how time-consuming it can be to listen to all of them. The fact that you choose to devote your time to our friendly little AP podcast is never unnoticed, or taken for granted. Thank you so very much.

Oh, one more thang before I close this entry. It is with heavy hearts that we of MTMJ acknowledge the passing of the great Stan Lee. Any and all knowledge I have of comic books is owed to Stan Lee. It’s no accident that I tend to model my writing style after his, at least in some part. I prefer to think of it as homage rather than imitation, but I’ll let others make their judgment. I’ve been a Marvelite through-and-through since I was a kid. As of this writing, there’s no consistent and/or reliable method for the blind to enjoy comic books, so I got started watching the 1968 Spider-Man cartoon. When I eventually learned to use a machine called an Optacon which allowed me to read print, one of the first things I did was pick up a comic book. I even remember what my very first book was: Marvel Team-Up: Spider-Man with Cloak and Dagger. Because the machine just provided me with tactile representations of shapes and left interpretation up to me, I was able to feel the way comics are laid out; the way speech bubbles and thought bubbles felt; the weird letter-outlines used for writing sound effects like WHAM!, BAMF!, and SNIKT!. While I couldn’t tell what the illustrations were, I still did my best to follow the stories. As wonderful as current OCR technology is, I still miss the hell out of the Optacon. OCR doesn’t handle comics well at all. Still, I loved reading comic books while it lasted, and I have Stan Lee to thank for that, and so much more. We will be paying tribute to Stan with our next several issues, so I hope you’re in the mood for some superheroics, cuz we’re gonna be delivering in spades!!.

And with that, go forth…

…and enjoy!

Hey, gang!

I know, I probably should’ve put this up yesterday morning, that having been Saturday morning, which is so apropos to what’s about to come your way, but what can I say? Life.

This issue brings us the second session in our Wasteland 2010 game, and while it was a blast to play, I almost feel I owe my players, you dear listeners, and the people of Spectrum Games a heartfelt apology. My fellow players have assured me that they had fun and I’m being overly hard on myself, and I probably am… but I wish I had known the rules better; I wish listening to this session didn’t make me grind my teeth in frustration at what I consider some … oh, I won’t go so far as to say railroading, but definitely having a heavier hand in the direction of the plot than I usually like. I also wish I was better at keeping track of what was going on in-game while I tried to keep stats and rules and such straight. And I wish my dialog didn’t feel so forced.

All this is not to fish for compliments, and it’s not to say the game sucks. Neither is true. What it *is* to say is this: Any new GM, and even many seasoned ones, can say with assuredness that they have experienced one, perhaps even all, of these things at one time or another. If you are new to the hobby, or haven’t donned your GM hat in a while, you can have these challenges and still make it through, running a fun game. These just show that you have room for improvement … and really, doesn’t everybody? That’s what life is all about. Bettering ourselves.

So enough self-help and psychobabble from me. Click that above link, pour yourself a heaping bowl of sweet, sugary deliciousness, top it off with some ice-cold milk, and get ready for action! Comedy! Wisecracks! And then the game will start! Seriously, above all…

Enjoy!