Let's plan Rascal Reading Club season 2

Psst, the first season of the Rascal Reading Club is now up on YouTube! Hit, smash, stomp, pulverize, or leap off the top rope and body slam that subscribe button. If you've never tuned into the show, this thread of Bluesky might help you figure out which episode you want to dive into.

Alright, we're gearing back up to record a new season of Rascal Reading Club and you get to pick the subject. We tend to wander into different parts of a game but it's good to start with a clear slice as our subject. GMing advice was a great place to kick off because it's a topic with almost unlimited depth. Here's my suggestions for Season Two:

• Settings: This is a continuation of GM advice in many ways because it's almost always GM facing. We'll be talking about what makes a setting exciting, what makes it easy to run, how to integrate players into settings, and more. We'll try to do some classic settings, some new ones, maybe even some rules for generating your own. But this might be a lot of reading, so also consider...
• Character Classes / Playbooks: If we do this, we'll pick one particular class or playbook from a game and explore how the design influences play. We'll talk about how worldbuilding is embedded into character creation, the appeal of different archetypes, how playbooks interact with each other, and so on. I'm imagining it's going to be both players (rather than GMs) but also design. I think of this as a high risk, high reward option because nobody has really done anything like this.
• Player Advice: This is also a natural move after our last season. Which games have a good player advice? Do they give generic advice or do they focus on how to play that particular game? We might even read a book that is just player advice like Play Unsafe by Graham Walmsley or The Ultimate RPG Gameplay Guide by James D'Amato.
• GMless Games: One of the ideas that came out of last season is we'd probably find some pretty interesting GMing and player advice in GMless games where that divide doesn't exist. This is another high risk, high reward option because we could go anywhere. While I expect we'll focus on games with characters and stories, we might talk about worldbuilding games or other weirder spaces if people nominate / choose them.

To vote, just drag and reorder the topics so your favorite ones are at the top. It's ranked choice.

Voting is open for a week!

If looking at the categories gives you some cool ideas for games that should make it into an episode, sound off in the comments.