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C2 Ep. 157 Eberron Reviewed 28
824 Plays1 year ago
We take a look back on the past arc and answer your questions.
This episode is brought to you by the generous donations of our amazing Show Sponsors: Laura Pickrahn, Darrin Katzska, Irene Viorritto, Ryan Royce, Darrell DeLaney, Charles Compton, Deviouspoptart, Nastasia Raulerson, David Scrams, Elizabeth Clark, Rebekah Gowman, deviouspoptart, Eðvarð Arnór Sigurðsson, Michael Clark, Jerry Theuns, Mark Stanley, and Shelby Johnson.
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Transcript
Episode Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
The following episode is brought to you by Darren Kaczka, Deavius Poptart, Elizabeth Clark, Irene Villarito, Laura Pickron, Nathan Stuller, Charles Compton, Natasha Rallerson, David Scrams, Edvard Arnaud, Jerry Thunes, Mark Stanley, Rebecca Gellman, and Shelby Johnson, as well as all of our generous patrons.
00:00:55
Speaker
D20 radio, your game is roll.
Eberron Reviewed: Recap
00:01:07
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to Eberron Renewed, an actual play RPG podcast set in the Eberron campaign setting played using the Genesis game system. I'm Jeff. I'm Phillip. I'm Trevor. I'm Randy. And I'm Eric.
00:01:23
Speaker
And today, because I am the one that's doing the introduction, you know that this is a Eberron Reviewed episode where we go back over the last Ocho episodes and fight with each other about what we all did. So yeah, long arc, let's get into it. This one starts with all of an Eris and Cinder, the new elemental, and trying to get the Octo Arms up and running again.
00:01:50
Speaker
Holy cow, is it really that long back? That is what was happening before the world turned into a bowl, yeah. Good grief. If you two would like to talk about it a bit, it works. Yeah, I spent every resource available to me on not giving Eric the opportunity to turn it all over into Doc Ock. Like, I often work really hard not to just shut down things.
00:02:18
Speaker
But I really have come to like Eris, and I like that Eris is moving towards a healthy place in her world. And I just can't imagine what it would mean for Olive to go insane. Yeah, as bad as it will be for Olive, it will be equally as bad for Eris.
Octo Arms and Skill Challenges
00:02:39
Speaker
And she'll make it everyone's problem. She'll make it bad for everyone else. That's exactly right. But yeah, and once that I guess we're all there because we're all there when the world bowls up, but I didn't have I did Milo assist. I can't remember. Did I think so? Milo. No, Milo wasn't there because that's why the world. No, because Milo passed out. Remember, he was there and oh, he was there and then the end of that scene is when Milo passes out and.
00:03:05
Speaker
the world concaves convex is concave. Sure. Um, yeah. And yeah, Randy and too much greater set Philip were really stacking the deck in favor of olive. And I don't like, I agree. Like I love all it was a character, but it's also.
00:03:24
Speaker
I was talking about this in a conversation I had with someone over on the Geek Pantheon YouTube channel where we're talking about horror games. And I can't remember if we talked after the recording editor if this made it into the conversation we had in the video. But it's always interesting when you have a very overt sort of Damocles hanging over a campaign where it's not a twist. Everybody knows what could happen. And that's just an interesting thing to have as a GM.
00:03:54
Speaker
Part of me thinks, I just wish it wasn't with a character as beloved as Olive, but at the same time, that's what makes it ineffective. If it was hanging over Harbin, it'd be like, eh, okay. That would suck, but who cares? I was thinking about that in terms of, without being too spoilery for campaign one, Dex's brothers.
00:04:12
Speaker
and just one might show up and we just have to deal with it. And that's the same, all of might go feral and we just have to deal with it when it does. Okay, so MiloPass is out and the next we know the world turns into a bowl. And we are in a skill challenge to try to get safely to the tower is where we feel like we need to go because it's the center of the bowling. Which now that I think about it, why didn't we just slide down there?
00:04:42
Speaker
Just find the flattest patch of bowl and slide it. Cause everything had
Character Transformations and Humor
00:04:45
Speaker
turned like vertical. Like it was like folded on us. More like a coffee mug than a bowl. Like it's like fair. I have the visual element for the fellow podcasters here. Obviously not for the audience, I guess. There was one of two things Eric was going to have on his desk, a coffee mug or a Stanley mug. And he was going to say it either way. And they're both there.
00:05:09
Speaker
This is the official Geek Pantheon mug. Check it out at GeekPantheon.com, where you can find all of our merch. He is modeling it to three men who will not, four men who will not be buying it. Actually, I'd love to have a Geek Pantheon mug. I should get that. Anyway. GeekPantheon.com. Yeah, man. I know. I'm going to say it at the end. Various skills. I know at one point, Aris used like knowledge. It's not streetwise, is it? In Genesis. Might be.
00:05:32
Speaker
Yeah, Streetwise is a knowledge skill in Genesis. Okay. She used Knowledge Streetwise because she knows the area. Hobb used Braun. I think Raynard used his, I think, or some like Raynard skill challenges were what can I see to do the smart way down as opposed to brute forcing it like your big. Milo took a nap. And Milo was asleep. We get to the tower. There is a wizard and right. You said wizard, right? Or are we just a magic guy?
00:06:00
Speaker
standing at a table with a bunch of runes and there is three Eldritch horrors as well. Oh, I forgot about the flesh tree as we're going. There are lots of weird things happening, but yeah, the flesh tree was my magnum opus. There were a lot of changes and three big ones were to the three players.
00:06:22
Speaker
and Laura asks, we're gonna go and ask it, why was Eris Zoriath changed so much less drastic than Hobbes or Raynards? If you don't recall, Raynards hands turned backwards like a Rakshasa, Hobbes face moved from his facial area to his chestal region, and Eris's hair changed colors.
00:06:43
Speaker
So Laura wants to know why was that change so much less distracting? And I, I have a guess you were screwing with me and Trevor, but please can meet comedic effect that like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's threes. We got the beep and then subvert the expectation. Yeah. Laura, they continue. What would you have done to Milo if he'd been there?
Raynard's Bow Skills and Mental Adventures
00:07:01
Speaker
Oh, his car would have been gone. Okay.
00:07:05
Speaker
I would like to argue that it's the comedy effect is enhanced by the fact that Eris would be nearly exactly as horrified to discover that her hair had changed. Yeah, Eris might have been most aghast. I guess the big thing is that Hobb could not see what he looked like at any point, so it probably kept him from going into a full meltdown. Yeah. And then last Laura continues, how does Raynard shoot with backward hands?
00:07:34
Speaker
I can't remember if I said that, like, if it made the cut, but I didn't want these things to be mechanical. I didn't like, I kind of hand waved and said, yeah, if your perspective moved to the midpoint of your body and you are somebody who relied on punching and kicking. Hob would be rendered virtually useless, at least for the first like 30 seconds of any combat encounter, just like Reynard couldn't possibly shoot a bow with backward hands. Don't at me, Phillip, but yeah.
00:07:59
Speaker
So it was just meant to be crazy, cosmetic, weird. Did you want my take on shooting a bow with backwards hands? I said, don't at me. Have you seen the James Cameron video? Just going to ask Philip that real quick. I guess the way they shoot bow and arrow in Avatar is wrong. And the guy was like, you'll never be able to shoot like that. And James Cameron turned upside down.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah, you can. I and I've seen some archers who shoot that way, who argue that it's the best way for them to shoot. I feel like puts weird strain on my forearm and wrist when I've tried it, because I've had students ask me about it who have seen Avatar. And so I feel like it puts weird strain on my forearm and wrist. But that's because I'm twisting my hand. If my hand was actually turned upside down,
00:08:45
Speaker
It wouldn't because presumably my tendons have rearranged themselves in order to function. So I would submit that it would be mostly an awkwardness of the hand-eye coordination when you reach for the string of remembering that you have to reach to the other side of the string because your fingers bend backwards now.
00:09:05
Speaker
So it would be difficult but surmountable for Raynard to shoot a bow with backwards hands. I would argue yes, probably more surmountable than having your eyes move to your torso. Or having your hair color changed without your consent. I forgot that my tips was in high school and it was pretty, it was pretty terrible. So I do get it.
00:09:27
Speaker
So the fight, because I listened back to everything today, and a good fight, nothing particularly remarkable happens. I made a joke about pasting a bad guy and Eric was like, yeah, sure, he really turns into paste on you and that was gross. Maybe what you wanted. And we ultimately won by gravity going wrong on the wizard and he just shot up into the air and then splatted down in front of us.
00:09:49
Speaker
Mechanically, he was already dead. Sure. Because Eris unloaded everything. He changed my hair, Eric. Toby was going to be putting her new neighborhood in danger. But if the hair color got you there, then great. And at the end of the episode, Milo wakes up and
00:10:08
Speaker
heiress blames him
Wizard's Motives and Reality-Bending Aftermath
00:10:09
Speaker
for everything that happened because the smoke coming out of the table looked the same as the smoke coming out of his head because it was the same we all know that it's fine irene does ask though there's two questions about this episode real quick that i want to ask irene asks eric what was your inspiration for the world fold in highwall this is this
00:10:25
Speaker
a series of episodes and encounter occurred backwards, I think, to my normal workflow in that I started with the motivation of the bad guy, because I knew this one to be just a one off. We had, I think, scheduling issues. Randy wasn't going to be able to make it. I think this was in the wake of the tornado. And so we were all still reeling from everything. And so I just wanted a session that was going to be a nice diversion. And I thought, what would?
00:10:54
Speaker
a crazed conspiracy theorist look like an Eberron, like somebody that was like full on. And what would that conspiracy theory be? And so I landed and he muttered about this in the episodes that like the morning was an inside job kind of thing. And like it was fake. It wasn't real. Some elites. He's a morning truther. Yeah, he's a morning truther. Some elites wanted to have their own little pocket utopia where they didn't have to deal with
00:11:22
Speaker
Yeah. So I started with that assumption and worked my way backwards about, okay, what would that look like? And then what would his plan be? And then what would be the results of it? And I knew that I wanted to put Highwall in danger because it's A, where Harrison, Milo were, and where Raynard and Hob were headed.
00:11:43
Speaker
And also because people have grown to care about this place, but I didn't want it to be like destroyed at the end of the arc. So yeah, that was the, the inspiration was just what would be a fun, interesting thing to do if you lived in Sharn and inverting the world in some way is where I landed. Yeah. All right. And then last Kevin asks, what kind of conversations are happening around the bent reality incident in high walls and how did it affect the rest of Sharn? I am wondering if the rest of Sharn noticed also.
00:12:12
Speaker
so people are freaked out about it like it it was something unprecedented but thankfully the fixer and her cohorts swooped in and saved the day so aris's folk hero-esque stock has gone up but yeah i mean they're
00:12:31
Speaker
They are terrified that something like that happened, but they also saw the mush of a man in the courtyard of the guy that caused it. So there's not a whole lot of fear of it happening again, if that makes sense. And it survived, right? Yes. Yes. Additionally, just to address Irene's second question of will we get to know what that wizard up to in some other way? No, honestly, like it was no. Yeah, we killed him. We can't ask him. He did. It's true.
00:13:01
Speaker
And we begin the next episode with what Lila was going through while we were doing this.
Alternate Realities and Character Reflections
00:13:07
Speaker
He goes on a little adventure in his mind while he's asleep. And it begins with him just realizing things are weird. He's, Eric or Randy, how long did it take for you to, cause it took me a second to realize, oh, I'm between these planes. Or was that explicitly said eventually, I think, but.
00:13:25
Speaker
Yeah, Eric said it at some point, but I think I started putting two and two together. And I think I was there about the time he said where Milo was at. And so once Milo realizes that he can just hop where he wants to go in his state, he hops to a room with a woman in a bed who snaps awake.
00:13:46
Speaker
It's like, I don't think I hopped there on purpose. I think Eric sent me there, didn't he? Yeah, you rolled a despair, I think. Yeah, that I think you're right. I missed because I was going where I wanted to go. I was checking on things. And then all of a sudden I was someplace else. And so the first thing is Kylie wakes up and some is it.
00:14:14
Speaker
Cassian and the daughter that come in, is that right? No, it's some unknown figure and the daughter because Cassian is elsewhere. Yeah. Oh, sure. Cassian's with who we see in a minute. And if one of you wants to take it for a minute, this was y'alls until the other three Yahoo's show up.
00:14:32
Speaker
Yeah, I will just say for my part that the Kylie waking up thing, what was a result of some kind of dice roll, whether it was a triumph, despair, a bunch of threat. And because I came up with that on the fly, I was thinking what could be something interesting and distressing to Milo. I was like seeing Kylie. And then if we have Kylie wake up in some capacity from her state, what does that mean for Milo and all this kind of stuff? So that just seemed like an interesting
00:14:59
Speaker
Porthole to allow him to see through briefly before then shunting him off to somewhere else. Yeah, but he didn't actually see Kylie though He saw his daughter Well, Kylie was in the bed though Okay, I didn't I don't guess I remember her being in the same room Yeah, she was she was in like a hospital bed and woke up and the daughter rushed in Okay, that's what it was. That's right
00:15:25
Speaker
I would argue he saw a daughter, but you could say his daughter, I guess, if you want to. Hey, Milo's daughter. Yes. From a genetic standpoint. Yeah. And then he does get kicked off to where he was always planning, or Eric was always planning to have him go, because we were all hiding there in wait with characters to play. And I can't remember, Randy, did you know who you were about to meet? I can't remember if you were in that conversation. No, I had no idea. I was just like, what in the world is going on?
00:15:56
Speaker
Because when he goes to the next place, there are four people there. Two of which he recognizes Cassian and Anne Aris.
00:16:08
Speaker
And the other two, he doesn't. Some of you might recognize one of them as Dex from campaign one, and the other one was E, short for Evie, short for Evelyn, but forget that immediately. That was a great line. I love it. It was very funny. And Trevor nailed it in one. There wasn't any weird like it was. Okay. Yeah, please defend yourself.
00:16:30
Speaker
Yeah, and when Eric started describing the people, I was in my head, I was going, that's Dex. I was like, I knew immediately, that's got to be Dex. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. I wasn't trying. I was trying to make my first line very obvious who I was. I didn't think that I was going to get the Drakeer Returns pop from the audience, but I like to think maybe a little bit of something.
00:16:58
Speaker
I would love for Trevor to tell us about Ivo. I would love to hear more of the biggest unknown entity with a hot pink claw mark tattoo on her forehead. Yeah, I just wanted to do something different and create a character that wasn't as. Stupid and self assured, that's for sure. Yeah, and I definitely wanted to. I think I know it is confident, but definitely to a fault.
00:17:27
Speaker
and in a dumb way. And so I wanted to do something a little more straightforward. Sure. And she was fun. It was it was really good. So those four talk about another mission they're going on and they talk about a drow and
00:17:47
Speaker
I made a decision that my decks, this decks, okay, is that campaign one trickier or is it just a trickier? Or can you tell us, do you want to tell us? It's a world hopping drought. I don't know why you always given a name to this person. I did not give a name to this person. We made it pretty clear for you who we were killing everyone you love and things like that. It's a really specific, weird threat.
00:18:12
Speaker
backstory behind it is very simply that Eric sent a text to me and Philip and Trevor asking if we would play these characters and of course I was immediately in to getting to put on the cowboy boots one more time and the only directive that we had was I'll give us a topic to riff on for a little while but before Milo leaves one of you has to tell him don't kill Solomon Calloway.
00:18:35
Speaker
And we almost did not do it. Because I thought it was great that one tried and Cassian stopped him so the other one could try. And then the way that Eris just flippantly threw a, ah, don't kill Callaway right before he popped out of existence was fantastic. Yes, I did not get to, Milo did not get to stick around to ask any questions about that at all. As in? Nope.
Character Motivations and Evolution
00:19:00
Speaker
And if you had, we would not have had any answers because that's all inside of Eric's head. Obviously we can't know why you can't kill Calloway. So Laura asks, how was it playing alternate versions of your characters, especially after not playing Dex for so long?
00:19:17
Speaker
I'll go first. It was a lot of fun playing Dex again. I went back and listened to a couple of campaign one episodes to try to get the voice and the attitude back in check. Funnily enough, the first episode I decided to listen to was one where I'm in disguise almost the whole time as a little boy and a storm lord, so I had to find a different one. I was like, just don't pick a thorn episode. I had a blast. I would love to revisit Dex again, frankly. I don't know how we would. I don't think it makes sense, but he's fun to play. Call me if you want me in your one shot. Don't call me.
00:19:45
Speaker
I was playing other Eris hates other areas. How does Philip feel about other areas? So it was. So we have this reality where there's two different versions of this person and both of them are going. Obviously, there's a lot of versions of this person because infinite worlds theory and whatnot. But where the two versions that we know about both go by Eris, which.
00:20:09
Speaker
has to have just been a slip of the tongue of forgetting that's not her proper name when Eric first introduced the problem. But it created an issue for me because I'm inevitably going to think way too much about this. And Eris calls herself Eris for some very specific reasons. And.
00:20:33
Speaker
So it was trying to think of what's a different enough version of this person to be amusing, since you can't just have someone who's you can't just have Aeris with different hair color and it be fun in a multi in a multiverse thing. Like something has to be fundamentally changed about her. And so what I landed on
00:20:59
Speaker
was a version of Eris that was never rescued from the Dachour. A version of Eris that remained the Dachour's protege. Which is why I described her in the item, exactly how I described it, because it's been a long time, but any more distinctly Dargul style and that sort of thing and gave her a slightly less. Street rat accent and
00:21:27
Speaker
And so forth. The place where I got hung up with it and had a hard time was I would imagine a version of Eris that remained with the Dachua to be less chaotic than. The Eris we know and love or tolerate and. But. Part of Eric's mandate was the idea that Dex and Eris were two of the more chaotic
00:21:55
Speaker
members of this lighthouse team and I never quite figured out how to mesh that those two things because I was gonna play this character for 15 minutes at a certain point you've put too much thought into that yes but I did put too much thought into that and that's probably what caused me to just entirely forget that I was supposed to tell Milo not to kill Callaway because I couldn't I was trying to mesh the
00:22:20
Speaker
Eris as a much more of a product of Dargul Society, of the very hierarchical Dargul Society and Eris who just disregards rules and orders. I don't know something. Anyway, that was where my mind was from it. Did I enjoy it? Yes. I think I had a headcanon way of making that work too.
00:22:43
Speaker
This person knows that this person in Milo's world is named Eris and she didn't want to further break his brain. So she's like fine for the next couple of minutes, whatever. That would also make some sense. But I would imagine that character work, but I would imagine that a version of Eris that still goes by Zey or something else would be equally.
00:23:08
Speaker
uncomfortable learning details about her other lives. I will say that this is just the beauty of when you as the DM take a thing that is a plot point and hand it to some of your other players for a sequence like this and what can occur and this is not me dogging on you at all I'm just like because I think it's hilarious but in my brain the don't try to kill Callaway line was very think what you will about the
00:23:37
Speaker
the movie and the overarching cinematic universe, but like the flash showing up to like Bruce Wayne, like time jumping up, talking about Lois and like, you got to like, and so that was in my brain, like this like last second, don't try to kill Callaway. And then it was just this very, oh, don't kill Callaway. It was like, awesome. That's on brain. The message got delivered. Yeah. Hey, no, like I said, I'm not dogging anybody. I think it's hilarious, but it would be a much colder Eris. And so Eris,
00:24:07
Speaker
does a job in that world, but I can't imagine that she feels like grave sorrow at the idea of some reality caving in on itself because it happens apparently. No, it does. It's got these places we haven't seen. But this is why Eris, our heiress hates the idea of this other heiress is because that means that if she decides to believe Cassian that the
Internal Struggles and Tower Escapes
00:24:37
Speaker
Only two versions of herself that she's aware of both go by Eris, which means that in all versions of the worlds, the worst thing that happened to her still happened. There's not in her mind a version of herself that is just enjoying a happy life with her family. It's a candidate, baby.
00:24:58
Speaker
Yeah. I don't think that's the point of Beyond the, of Across the Spider-Verse. I will say, I didn't put a lot of thought into it, but in my head, my Dex went through everything. This Dex went through everything my Dex did. With some obvious exceptions. With one important obvious exception. Yeah, it was a copper dragon instead of a silver one. This Dex kept his promises.
00:25:18
Speaker
Let's move on. I want to hear Milo's perspective on seeing this whole gathering and like the craziness and being told not to kill Calaway. What? Why are you laughing at me? I'm laughing at Jeff. Me and Jeff are having a moment. I would say, first of all, Randy was just like, what the heck? I was trying to figure out how to react. How would Milo react? What would Milo be thinking?
00:25:44
Speaker
And I felt like I was stumbling my way through the entire thing. And I think Milo has accepted what Cassian had told him as being true. It just made sense. Okay. He knows there's a voice you've been hearing in your head. I don't think I ever said anything to him previously or he knew that.
00:26:11
Speaker
So he knows that and then he tells me who the voice is. So Milo buys into it. This is real. And so there is this other Kylie and who did have a child and that Milo is the one that died. So I think in some sense he's still processing all of that.
00:26:36
Speaker
And then, you know, Cassian had made that offer like you could come here, you could come to this version and be with Kylie potentially. So there she is. There's a child that the other Milo and her had together. And I think from my perspective,
00:27:04
Speaker
Milo and Kylie always wanted to have a kid and it just never happened. And now, so he's thinking, is that a potential family? And then he got to see that potential family. So it was just, I think Milo's just trying to process a whole lot of stuff in his head still. Plus with all the magic garbage that's gone on with him, it's just
00:27:29
Speaker
He still has insanity, but for how much longer, Eric? How much longer? I don't know. To say, not to mention that all the crazy magic madness that goes on with Milo is caused by that potential family. Yup. Yup. Milo wakes up and there's a quickish conversation. And then we, it was really neat.
00:27:54
Speaker
All of us that were listening to this episode got to hear what it sounds like when someone has their first conversation with a human.
Dynamic Combat and Underground Exploration
00:28:02
Speaker
His character, Eric, played this book collecting weird beard. Hey. Hey. I am not wrong. I will admit, I was so thrown that I don't think I got a good grasp of what was going on the first time. I wasn't joking about being a little blacked out.
00:28:22
Speaker
Is a perfectly nice man. OK, I still don't know what exactly was going on. I will not. I will not contest his niceness, but you can be nice and still just a real awkward dude. That was completely wild because suddenly Eris found herself the socially competent member of a conversation and just no idea how to play that role. I thought it was guiding force in an interaction like it was deeply. It was deeply.
00:28:52
Speaker
Terrifying to her insecurities. Is this what it's like to talk to me? I wonder if that's what it felt like you Eris chose compassion for all of the ways that she responded So maybe that's is that part of it or yeah It was just that the Eris doesn't know how to talk to people really very well and lots of people have lots of patience with the way that Eris expresses herself and She's self-aware enough to know that
00:29:16
Speaker
I guess if I were to make an assumption about Eris, it does make a little bit of sense that the people she would be able to show grace and compassion to are either her best friends or complete strangers. Yeah. Because if someone wronged her once or is just a little annoying that day, they're not. No. Very funny conversation. It was hilarious. It was a lot of fun to play that character because I
00:29:41
Speaker
I read Rick Rubin's latest book, The Creative Act, and he has a quote in there about this philosophy of as soon as you apply a label to yourself, then you are limiting your capacity for creativity.
00:29:58
Speaker
And I wanted to take that notion and just crank it till 15 of what would it look like if you just took that concept and made it untenable. And that's where Eamon's personality came from of this weird philosophical, like, I want to be a sculptor, but I'm not going to learn how to sculpt. That way I can truly like understand the essence of sculpting. And can I just, I took that quote from a book and just ran three miles with it and ran into a wall.
00:30:26
Speaker
Yeah, he wasn't objectionable at all. He was just really awkward. But it was fun. We all end up together at the cauldron, finally. And Raynard makes it so weird with Sauna. Eric gives Raynard a perception check. He says, listen, Sauna's just trying to have a normal freaking night. And Raynard walks over and goes, remember how there's a guy in your living room? Your sister's on the warpath and she's got a guy in your house? Defend yourself, Trevor. We needed to know.
00:30:57
Speaker
It's my favorite thing when I have you all make a perception check to understand someone's emotional state and Reynard's the only one to pass it. That's like my favorite running gag of this campaign. Is Reynard having to be the one to- A charm comes in, baby. I feel like sometimes we do have to say, Reynard, Trevor has a lot of social grace. He's good at picking up on clues. He's a fantastic person to have a conversation with.
00:31:22
Speaker
rain artisan moral. I just want to make sure you guys know to separate the two, listener. I'll commit to a character.
00:31:31
Speaker
but so funny and then we take off we decided we gotta go it's time to go and the next episode boy that was three of eight episode four we go to the cogs we get in there we have a shadow stalker that Eris has reprogrammed essentially and we decide to follow it to the lair and
00:31:52
Speaker
At one point, there is a chasm in the path that we have to get past. I almost killed Milo, because apparently a giant strong man can't throw a tiny halfling over a two-foot crack in the road. We see some shadow stalkers. We know what they can do.
00:32:09
Speaker
We are concerned about it. So Randy uses his triumph to kill some Dask guys. He says, what if a couple of ne'er-do-wells show up and the Shadowstalkers chase them instead? And they did chase one of them because they didn't have to chase the other because they put a hole in his face. It's true. Real quick, Shadowstalkers, all you, correct?
00:32:32
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Did you pick a step block for stuff or did you just build them? Like obviously I do. I tried my hand at building them this time around instead of stealing them. So they were great. They were fun. They were tough, especially fun when they left us alone for as long as possible. Oh, we did have I may have mentioned it in passing. We did have some confrontation at the beginning of this episode, just while we were standing out in the street, just airing some grievances with each other.
00:32:58
Speaker
mainly Eris to Milo and then Eris to everybody when she reminds us that we're giving away some secrets and that guy can definitely hear us. Yeah. But we find the shadow stalker goes in, we find where to get in, we tunnel through and the episode ends with
00:33:16
Speaker
Ygric goes down and then Hob follows him, sees this swirling purple vortex that becomes a big deal for the next couple of episodes. And then Hob explodes like he sat on an airbag. And that's the end of the episode. Anything promoting Caltrix buried into the floor is one of my favorite like trap ideas that I've had. I don't know if I stole them or subconsciously, but I was really pleased when I came up with those.
00:33:39
Speaker
It's really fun, and in the home game we have where I play a caster, I play it on, if we ever have time to booby trap, I'm stealing that, so just go ahead and expect it. Okay, so the next two episodes are all this big fight. A lot of stuff happens. First thing we realize is the episode just starts in initiative, and Hob goes first, punches one of the shadow stalkers into the vortex, and we figure out what the vortex does.
00:34:07
Speaker
It goofs you up real good and it teleports you to somewhere else in the, and then Eric, you said you had just like a random table. If anybody fell in the vortex, they got rolled on and they ended up where they ended up. Very cool. Oh, I got a crit. I was like, why didn't I put Raynard Heels Hobb with an exclamation point to say way to go Trevor. I got critted on.
00:34:24
Speaker
and the first thing Rainer did was heal me. You're bleeding out. We kind of get the impression, actually Eris gets the impression, I don't know if she shared it, but she realizes that this vortex is not Vorigoth's doing. He found this space and that kind of, that made it a little less intimidating to me that it could turn on, that's where I started thinking, oh, it could probably turn on him too. Something we can do there. The platforms are moving, we have a lot of talk about maybe Olive can do something to neutralize that, so we pass a triumph.
00:34:52
Speaker
her direction, turns out no, but that's okay, we learned things. And at one point, when Vorigoth raises his weapon and fires it, I asked, was that a Fletcher? And I should have kept my mouth shut because all that did was let everybody listening know that they figured out quicker than me who this guy was. I said the words.
00:35:17
Speaker
Hobgoblin Artificer, 600 times. And I'm so self-centered that I did not think of any of the other characters or their backstories.
Confronting the Duchour and Combat Outcomes
00:35:28
Speaker
I just thought, let's find a big guy. Phillip, when did you know what was going on?
00:35:35
Speaker
No, is not quite. I wouldn't say I knew until we didn't know until it was. Yeah, the Fletcher at the point that it was a Fletcher, I was like, OK, this is what Eric's doing. I started suspecting when we got the story from the war band.
00:35:52
Speaker
that we got this hobgoblin warlord who makes and invents things and they found him on his own. And I remember how we left the offshore in that flashback. And it was definitely that point that I that I suspected. That's what Eric was doing. And I really went back and forth on.
00:36:16
Speaker
And I still, I mean, I never had to decide. So it was fine on to what degree Aeris could put these things together because.
00:36:26
Speaker
that would, of course, be something that she would bring up. And I didn't really want to know if I was right until Eric was ready to reveal it. And so I just decided that if Eris has any suspicions, she doesn't want to speak them out loud and summon them into the world. And yeah, it was I'm glad I liked the way the reveal happened. It was a great episode button and everything.
00:36:52
Speaker
I appreciate you letting me tell my silly stories. You're welcome. I would have ruined it if I had put it together. I probably would have ruined it, and then I went, oh, shoot, you probably need to cut that. I bet we don't need to. Sorry about that. I spoke out of turn. But our listeners are smarter than me, and a handful of them, I'm sure, already knew. Here's how I describe the rest of this episode of my notes. Milo goes invisible. Raynard falls. Sana saves. All the fails. Go and grade. Yeah, Raynard went down. That was your first time to go down, right?
00:37:21
Speaker
I believe so, like completely yeah. Yeah, like unconscious zero pinpoint. Seriously, I'm hiding behind something. Usually we don't have ranged attackers, but whoops. Yeah. Is this the episode where we learned that Reynard doesn't wear any armor? This is the episode where we discovered.
00:37:39
Speaker
No, I think I got a hint. I think I got a hint about it. That actually hasn't. I don't think that one's dropped yet, actually. Oh, okay. Sorry, my bad. Yeah. I had to do that a few times. I was taking notes. I was like, that has not come out yet. Backspace, backspace. Yeah. For full disclosure, we've recorded three episodes of The Next Dark already. And so I'm doing my very best not to spoil things. I'm sure Eric will delete it if I accidentally mess up.
00:38:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's pretty much what happened. The rest of it is a fight. Things stay pretty much the same as far as the environment. They changed in the beginning of the next episode, but it's just the it's the du jour. He yells something girl. And I think it's just maybe it's damn it, girl. Yeah, it's just damn it, girl. OK, he yells damn it, girl. And at that point, the only people that hear it, I think, are Eris and Olive. No, it was a lucid. No, just Eris. OK. Eris tells Olive later on.
00:38:31
Speaker
But it's clear that the sure is formidable and also that the Forge and the Vortex are going to really goof us up if they feel like it. Milo goes invisible, which is almost like Granny knew he might not be able to make it to the next recording. It was prescient. Milo took a trip to Santa Fe. What can he say? I hope you loved it.
00:38:55
Speaker
And that's episode five. Episode six begins. I believe episode five ended with the Dutch word yelp. The reveal. At the beginning of episode six, as things get more unstable in the vortex area, the platforms start getting wilder. They begin to rise, is that right? Rise and fall in addition to spinning. We keep going. The fight continues, I don't know what to say, the fight continues. It's pretty, Hobb tries to punch things when he can. Eris, actually though, you do roll a fear check and fail, right? Eris is mechanically scared.
00:39:25
Speaker
Aris has no points in discipline and her willpower is two. So Aris rolls two green on fear checks and that I have left that alone because I just I think that fits her character very well. So yeah, Aris fails this and very mercifully only has a setback.
00:39:45
Speaker
on this because we had to come up with something in the midst of it because the rules don't really define what a flat failure is. I think it was a, I think it was a great in the moment call by both of you. Philip did a great job of elucidating how Iris feels. I think the setback for everything because yeah, of course.
00:40:00
Speaker
Yeah, and I wanted to touch on this is something that I'm trying to do more in my games in general, but this was a good. I think the first time I had actually executed, as I mentioned, having a conversation with somebody about running horror based tabletop RPG games, Tom from the YouTube channel, No World's Bar. Go check it out. But he talked about the fact that
00:40:20
Speaker
often times when you have something where it's a mechanical like in Genesis where there's a mechanical thing called a fear check where it's like figuring out is your character scared of something that can a lot of times create frustration from a player perspective because it feels like the agency is being taken away from them like they have rolled the dice and the dice say your character is scared right now even though you might be like oh but my and so anyway what how Tom handles it and how I'm trying to do it moving forward is like
00:40:49
Speaker
The failure of the fear check dictates the mechanical disadvantage of the player character, like what they're going through. But I was very intentional to allow Philip to describe how that manifests in Eris. So Philip still has the agency of how Eris is responding to this presence being around her, as opposed to me saying, you're scared, you're sweating, or whatever. For any GMs out there that have run into that issue before, feeling like,
00:41:14
Speaker
sometimes your players can get frustrated. I feel like that's a really good tip to let your players describe the emotional state and the dice can determine the mechanical effects of that. Okay. I like that. We've played together long enough that I, yeah, I don't mind when the dice go against what I think is right for my character. That's part of the game. But when it's, this is just fundamentally doesn't feel right. Yeah, I think that's great that you've got some leeway on that.
00:41:39
Speaker
At one point I get a triumph and Eric's so it'd be fun. What if you go through the vortex and land by the Duchour? We'll find out at the beginning of the next episode what Eric was trying to do to me. And did we just crit and crit? I think by the end of this episode, we'd had three crits on the Duchour and one on a shadow stalker, maybe another. Yeah, we rolled a lot of triumphs. The dice were very friendly. Yeah, and actually we rolled more triumphs than crits. We used some for some other stuff too, I believe.
00:42:05
Speaker
It was a lot of fun, and also very difficult. This was a hard fight. Yeah, it was. And Olive goes down, or nearly. Yeah, towards the end. This episode, however, ends with Eris getting hit, and I put the spare. I forgot the fence which was over that many fights. Yeah, and falls into the vortex end of it. Yes, I did.
00:42:29
Speaker
We begin the next episode by fighting out what happens when you fall through the vortex. Eric says, and I quote, your body and mind are torn apart and put back together. 10 wounds, 10 strain. No. Yep. Yep. 10 strain would have ended me at any point because I have used so much strain when I fight. I would have gotten some back from story point flipping, but man. So, yeah, Eris. It put me within exactly one of going down on both sides. Like I had one wound and one strain available.
00:42:59
Speaker
Yeah, we talk about it, but we don't talk about it a lot. Because of soak and because of the nature of combat in Genesis. Dex at one point, I probably have 130 hit points, like legitimately. Hobb is the toughest guy in this group. I have 14 wombs. Yeah, it's that much more and I think I have 12 strain. I'm guessing I need a lot of soak.
00:43:21
Speaker
That's what I do have a ton of soak I have 10 soak. Yeah, that's that that's where it's so describes the Eris Because the way we did the gauntlet is that we treated it like cybernetics. It increased her brawn
00:43:34
Speaker
And Eris has 13 hit points or wounds, but Eris is not nearly as tough as Hob, having four soak from her armor. And so, yeah, that's it's very different. And I like it because it means that you're never not concerned about wounds. Yeah. Yeah, because even so with tin soak, there's maybe five times this whole campaign where I've gone that just doesn't get through. Yeah.
00:44:01
Speaker
Eric shook his head when I said that he did not give me the tools to build this guy. No, that was shaking my head at myself for giving me the tools to build that guy. Fair enough. So the next major thing that happens is Olive starts to lose herself is the way I think we all interpret it. She gets fire in her eyes. This time, nothing comes of it because of some misfortune that falls her before she can go again.
00:44:30
Speaker
but it was concerning to Eris. I think Hobb saw it, but it wasn't concerned because he didn't know what was going on. Yeah. Hobb just thinks that's more magic. Yeah. And the thing that happened to her is a result of the fight. Like Olive became very reckless in her approach, which was how it manifested or I guess rather cinder was rather reckless in their approach. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the closest person to you's hair is smoldering. You tend to lose your focus a bit.
00:45:01
Speaker
At some point, Eric said beam footage that got a lot of traction in the discord felt like I should mention it. And then all of takes a vortex ride and lands right next to the sure. And then Eric tells us I've been getting notes that my fights aren't dynamic enough. And we were like, baby boy, you've done it. Also, just as an aside, disagree. I think you make really good dynamic fights. Thank you. I want to both.
00:45:29
Speaker
acknowledge the ramp up of this one after you got that critique. Oh yes, this one was absolutely like crazy and delightful. The only complaint I ever have about combats Eric runs is when circumstances keep me from getting to punch. And that ain't Eric's fault. Okay, so Philip rolls a 99 on a crit that's going to be plus 30 and it's what happens.
00:45:52
Speaker
And then Eric, I think I had a second. I think I had an extra triumph in there, too, to add an extra 10 to it. It was it was a lot. We had a lot of. Oh, yeah. Because you asked what's one forty nine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had a lot of hurt to put on him. What? No, it was earlier in the last episode where his mirror mask shattered and we. That was the first crit. That was where we. That was where we found out who he was. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, mirror mask. Great movie. If you really hadn't seen it. Go check it out. Read my Neil Gaiman. It's a workshop.
Escaping the Vortex and Post-Battle Decisions
00:46:20
Speaker
But it worked really well because the way Eric ended up describing moment was based on what he intended the dash or turn to be, which is that he was going to strike at all of. And that that really worked because my problem that I was having is I'd always known that Eris would be. Conflicted about fighting the dash or.
00:46:46
Speaker
And we see we get into Eris's conflicted feelings in the next episode. But in this case, it had never occurred to me that the situation would be one where if we met the dash or and had to fight the dash or it would be because we ambushed the dash or. Sure. And so I had this kind of, I don't know, trouble figuring out what Eris was trying to do and what Eris wanted to happen here.
00:47:15
Speaker
And so Eric, the just the dice, creating a situation where all of fell into danger really gave me a narrative solution to it, because otherwise I was just like an hobbit gone down and that. That helped as well. So between that and all of being an obvious mortal danger that. A lot that sort of pushed Eris over the edge with the narrative. And so, yeah, we just.
00:47:45
Speaker
crit him back into his own forge and burned him up. Yeah, all right. It was fantastic. And it was I can't think of the right term. I didn't take enough literature classes in college to know what the term for just like
00:48:03
Speaker
It built to the exact right place it needed at the right time. Both of the major vendetta fights, the right guy has gotten the kill. Pretty fantastic. And while there is metagaming in Genesis, we really didn't like.
00:48:18
Speaker
Yeah, we really didn't have to set this up. No, and obviously it's like he's trying to attack all of it's obviously Eris's turn. We're all going to back off, but it was beautiful. It was wonderful. I think that's the best thing about Genesis is initiative is that in moments like that. We can, without really metagaming, because this is just how the rules play, we can say, oh, it's got to be this person's turn.
00:48:45
Speaker
Yeah, and we do that a lot. Raynard just got shot. I think Raynard has to go. Eric tells us all out loud that he forgot. Yeah, I was so mad at myself. He was supposed to be subtracting 20 from all of those crits the whole time. In my notes, I have L-O-L. I was so proud of myself when I was designing him. I was like, they crit so much, I'll put Durable 2 on him to help mitigate that a little bit. And then I just forgot about it the second the combat started. I have to, and that would have been... Oh yeah, Eric done that.
00:49:14
Speaker
It would have been 20 more minutes to the fight. Probably if he was still, unless Hob and Kath were able to get to him and actually do some damage, that might have shortened it, but it still wouldn't have, it still would have linked them the fight. This gets the kill. Phillip calls his friends schmucks to their faces. And while all of it erris, check each other out, make sure they're okay.
00:49:38
Speaker
the vortex, the forge destabilizes further. And now it's actually trying to draw us into the center platform. And we realize it is time to hoof it. Cheese it. To cheese it. I wrote different words in my notes that I won't say, or we'll get an explicit tag.
00:49:57
Speaker
The next thing I wrote was, oh, it's a Frogger game. And I didn't get it. I did not understand how to get out of this thing. And I felt like such an idiot listening back. Because Trevor immediately figured out what needed to happen. Philip figured out really quickly what needed to happen. And I was just like, oh, go push a rock. It was another skill challenge. Raynard and Sana did the thing that got most of us out of it. Eris did the thing that got one person out of it.
00:50:20
Speaker
What is that? Is that a talent where you can just you have one small important thing on you when you want it? Oh, is it? Yeah, it's what I took a long time ago. It was like.
00:50:30
Speaker
I can't remember what it's called, but it was one of the ones that I used to get a career. There were a couple of talents I took very early that just that were just to get a career skill added that I felt like she should have that weren't included in the career that I used. But it came with this thing that I never do, which is once per session, I can just produce a small, useful item from somewhere.
00:50:53
Speaker
just find it essentially. And that was very helpful here. Yeah. If this is the only time you ever use it, it will have proven its utility. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did the same thing. I took a couple of, I took a couple of random things to get at like a tier three talent that I wanted real bad and had the XP to get. But we do get out and we, we go to the next episode. It starts with what makes sense. Eris wants to
00:51:20
Speaker
drink away some tension and maybe some memories of the night altogether.
Emotional Journeys and Relationship Growth
00:51:28
Speaker
I wanted to debrief with the players first, because it was really clear to me very early, very quickly that your characters, understandably, were quite willing to let Eris and Olive just take some time to work this out. And so I tried to come up with a situation in which
00:51:48
Speaker
Eris could go somewhere and have the opportunity to debrief with player characters first so that everyone at the table was just sitting around watching me and Eric have a conversation. Sure. And that's nice. And I know everyone that listens has probably has people they play with. But as I just knew, if Philip says I'm going home, don't go. If Philip says I'm going to the bar, Hobbes going with Eris to the bar.
00:52:12
Speaker
And all, and Eric knew that Olive probably wouldn't show up. Like just, and I appreciated that because I also know that Eric is smarter than I am and a better speaker. And if you had gone to Olive first, I would not have had anything good to say to Harris as odd. He was like, let's just drink and forget about it. So I appreciated that. Eric still had plenty of good things to say for himself because I didn't exhaust it.
00:52:38
Speaker
Oh, Reynard came in clutch with a good little sentiment there at the tail end. That was beautiful. Good. Yeah, on take two, it was great. You don't have to pull back the curtain, Trevor. You can just take the cup. That's what reviewed is for pulling back the curtain. If I'm being honest, I don't. I enjoyed Hobb having this conversation with Aeris. I enjoy getting to play that with Philip and with Trevor. Listening back to it, it was very awkward for me to listen to because I was like, oh,
00:53:08
Speaker
Like, these are real things I've said to friends in bad situations before, and I'm just dropping them on the podcast now, things that people have said to me when I've been in hard times before. And I guess it's part of, I feel much more comfortable as Hobb than I do as Dex, and feel more comfortable talking to Eris than I did to Barrick as Jeff. But I just listened back to it, and I was like, all right, win some places. Let's move on. Eris and Hobb are more emotionally honest than Barrick and Dex.
00:53:36
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, Bex, Bex and Derek. That sounds like... That's the alternate world, Bex and Derek. Derek and Bex are definitely a Premier League footballer and his girlfriend. But yeah, I think it is the fact that they're unguarded around each other that made that an easy scene to go. Yeah. No, that was like...
00:54:02
Speaker
I enjoyed getting to air the things that the feelings that Eris has about the Dashur and about the Dargul society. It just in general, like I referenced a lot in these eras, having very mixed feelings about what she went through. And so it was very nice to finally get to express them in fiction as Eris instead of just into them as Philip.
00:54:31
Speaker
And it also did, it went a long way towards marrying two kind of disparate ideas that Eris has had, which is her fondness for the culture that she learned while enslaved. And it's difficult for those of us who have not been in that situation to understand how that could at all be possible. And I think he had a long way for Eris explaining, you don't understand. He also raised me.
00:54:59
Speaker
Yeah, and which I think children of abuse of poems as adults feel those conflictions that same Yeah, and I hope for any of our listeners who have been through much more terrible things than I've ever been through that it came across as honest and not just as trying to
00:55:19
Speaker
use it for a character thing, like that it came across dealing with it in a way that felt real and honest and authentic, at least in some way. That's what I was have been trying to do with Aeris. So it would be dishonest to say we've done hundreds of episodes of a deep podcast and we haven't used character trauma for development. Right. But we are trying to be. Respectful about it.
00:55:44
Speaker
And I think, I thought that was beautiful, the way Eris spoke in both that scene and the one with Oliver beautiful. But before we get to Olive, wouldn't be Eberron Renu if me and Trevor didn't do something stupid for a minute. This is nothing but amazing. So as Eris leaves out the window, we leave out the door, and what is her name? Why did I not write it down? Nessa Moonshadow. Moonshadow. Moonshadow, okay. Nessa Moonshadow was there. And Hob and Rainard,
00:56:13
Speaker
really get in touch with their essences and their essences are being morons. Hob not being interested in romance doesn't get what's going on. Rainard not being experienced with romance doesn't get what's going on. We are terrible to this woman who is only trying to help Rainard and somehow that endears him to her enough that he gets a date at the end. We don't need to go into a lot of detail. Some people like dumb people.
00:56:38
Speaker
Boy, I'm crossing my fingers, I hope that's right. It was fun, it was stupid, it was funny. I like goofing around with Trevor and Eric, so it was a fun day. I think it was a nice way to switch the tempo. There's nothing wrong with the tension break, absolutely. No, I agree. It gives some really fun liberty to it. And no, I get where Ness is coming from. She will never feel inadequate. That's so funny. And I don't know why it makes me so uncomfortable.
00:57:04
Speaker
Like we've improved together before, like in front of the most experienced performer on the podcast. I just can't handle it. I don't know why. I actually, I do want to say I meant to bring this up earlier.
00:57:20
Speaker
Throughout all three of these sessions, Eric does a spectacular job of cutting around genuinely uproarious laughter. We were screaming laughing for a lot of the time for all three of the sessions that make up this eight episode arc.
00:57:35
Speaker
Sometimes you catch, it just starts and he kills it. And so that's very fun for us, or for me, the air back too. But man, we were all killing each other. It was a blast. The game's fun, guys. Game's fun. It is. Reynard's a ladies man. Hob's best wingman and sharn. And it's time for Aeris and Olive to have a real conversation. I guess they had seen each other already in this episode. Like it wasn't the first time they've seen each other since it was over, but they did not talk. So. Yeah, no, it was just.
00:58:06
Speaker
I really liked the simplicity of the conversation. It didn't want it didn't need to be rehashing everything Eris had said to Haben Reinhard. It's entirely possible that Eris has said some of those things to Olive before. And I liked the simplicity of it. I really liked the little vignette it ends on of.
00:58:34
Speaker
all of nudging Eris and Eris putting her head on her shoulder. I don't know. It was a sweet little moment. Yeah. It was really nice. It was really sweet.
00:58:45
Speaker
That is where we end the episodes. That is where we end the arc. We will be back next week with more, but before that, we have a few overarching or unrelated questions. One actually related one, Trevor, Kevin wants to know if Reynard being oblivious to flirtation is a choice or something that happened organically and how sheltered was he prior to his familial exile that he can't seem to interact appropriately, even in vaguely romantic situations. And then he writes, I may have overstated that a bit. I don't think you did, Kevin. I think you nailed it.
00:59:14
Speaker
Okay, one, that's just how I act. So I not to that extent, but I'm fairly oblivious when people are flirting with me. I just think they're being nice. So I wanted to take that experience to just make it something
00:59:33
Speaker
heightened and more funny. So. Job well done. Yeah, it was great. Absolutely. It's hilarious. Okay. Was there more to the question? Sorry. That was a long question. I think you got it. He asked if Raynard was sheltered as part of his upkeep. Oh, I don't think it was sheltered. I think it was just selfish.
00:59:56
Speaker
Well, and I assume that how to act towards people that can't do something for you is probably not part of his formal education. Very fair. Okay. So general questions. First off, Irene says, not actually a question. This is not Comic Con Irene. Come here with your comments. No, this needs to be said. I think it's very kind that she said it. Hats off to Eric for some extraordinary dynamic combat and challenges in this arc. And I completely agree. It was a blast.
01:00:23
Speaker
And a barrage. It did not stop and it was great. Nope. Okay. Jump into the discord. If you would ever like to ask us questions about the arc or whatever you would like, please join our discord. You can find a link on our Facebook page and various other places on the internet. I will list them all later, but it's at the Geek Pantheon pretty much everywhere. All right.
01:00:42
Speaker
Oh, I already did that one. Okay, Liz wants to know, have you folks been trying out any other systems? We got the Pathfinder 2E1 shot. Should we expect more one-offs like that? Hopefully, scheduling's hard, especially when you're trying to get guests to come in and do stuff. Yeah, we'd love to, but it's also summertime and people are traveling and doing stuff, so schedules, but yeah. Yeah, we're trying to cook one up. We really are. We've had talks. We'll do our best.
01:01:08
Speaker
Let's continue. How have your character goals changed from the beginning of the game to now? Have any of your main priorities completely changed or been dropped? I would say Eris's are fairly overt. Eris is the core thing about Eris is she's not primarily operating from fear anymore.
01:01:35
Speaker
that that was really where I started Eris, is that everything Eris does is to make sure that she is personally secure. And that's not really so much her motive anymore. In terms of her goals, yeah, I mean, her goal has shifted external. It's not become just about herself. She's had that
01:02:02
Speaker
cool little experience during the theater murder arc of discovering Hywall and realizing that she's not actually the saddest, most distraught person on the planet and that other people also feel things. And so that has shifted her objectives and goals a lot more. I think probably the most obvious way in which that's manifested is the conversation with Goldor, where it's just, okay, let me go down everybody's wish list. How can I solve their primary problem?
01:02:33
Speaker
So yeah, that would be my main observation of how Eris has changed her goals. I wouldn't say Hobbs had any necessarily changed, like fundamentally changed goals or priorities that he can elucidate, but he's definitely no longer keep your head down, do your job, take care of your friends guy, like keep your head up. I wouldn't say he's at do good yet.
01:02:57
Speaker
But he's definitely do less objectively bad. And I think one of it, if I were to say he added a goal, I think that make sure these three are okay, when this is with whatever done means, whatever over means, I think.
01:03:13
Speaker
At least my read on Hobb is the GM, is he's hit a phase of not do good, like you said, but he's certainly in a prevent harm phase. Like he's kind of like Batman, like Batman prevents harm. He doesn't necessarily do good. And I think that's where Hobbs at, if that makes sense. I think Hobb has a better parameter for who just needs help and who needs a butt kicking than the Batman ever did. Yes. No, I'm not saying he's Batman. I'm not taking issue. I have some very hot Batman takes me a little bit too care.
01:03:43
Speaker
a really cool mask. And gadgetry like we could tell you wouldn't have to put a shirt on to have a utility belt. I'm just absolutely not everywhere a mask, but he might wear a utility bandolier with a little bow and a cape.
01:03:59
Speaker
utility ban. Okay. Yeah. Planning. Yeah, that's what it is. Hobb has realized that the way he's been going has been good for him, but only him. And part of the blood of old thing is you don't do a lot of thinking about other people, but he's made these inevitably made these wonderful friends that he actually cares about. And he's at the very least going to make sure they're okay. That was I'd say Milo
01:04:24
Speaker
Of course, his main goal was finding out if his wife had been killed and it was not an accident and taking care of that problem. And that has occurred. Do something about it. And that has been resolved. There's still an ongoing goal of trying to control
01:04:54
Speaker
the magic that comes out of him and he's beginning to wonder if it is possible at all and so that's an ongoing quest for him get this magic under control if you can and if not he's just going to lean into the mad to the mad scientist vibes and seek world domination yep yep and i think right now he and some of these goals have just
01:05:23
Speaker
happened that way due to the gameplay. Right now the goal of his is to somehow try to keep the clan together and try to help Satan's vision of it to come to fruition. Yeah.
01:05:48
Speaker
Has Reynard changed fundamentally? He quit drinking. The goal of staying sober is a pretty good goal. Well, I think becoming a lot less selfish, helping friends and helping, I don't know, reaching toward things that aren't necessarily just for himself. So maybe a lot less murder, too. That doesn't feel true. I still like the murder, but
01:06:15
Speaker
trying to cut back not the Russian ones streamlining who we murder okay and then Liz's final question in this section is what goals and maybe backstory stuff do you hope to be able to address in game before the end of the campaign I'd love to have an organic not at all stilted reason to explain Eris's name I'm trying I'm not setting that as a goal for anyone else but
01:06:42
Speaker
It's not like we can't discuss it in the final Q and A if it comes to that, but it plays into the last question. I think Hobb is at a point where his backstory has become nearly irrelevant. He has changed from that blood oval acolyte that he was so much like it would rock his world. If somebody came back, if that happened, it would be or would make sense. But as far as what do I want to see from his backstory coming back? I don't know that there is anything at this point.
01:07:11
Speaker
I'm happy with forward onward from Hobb. Yeah. I'm not sure how Milo feels about actually having a keg bottoms at this point. I think most of all the things that have been centered around Rainard have been about backstory. So I think we've touched on a lot of that. So I don't know what else would pop up. I think the more exciting things are the new things that are happening.
01:07:40
Speaker
All right. Laura would like to know, when do we get to hear the story of how alternate timeline Eris got her and everyone she loves threatened? Did I say in the episode or did I only think that when Eris references him threatening her and everyone he loves jokes on him? I feel like that was said. Did I say that? OK. But it also doesn't mean he didn't say it to her. I know. Yes. No, obviously that happened. I just. It feels like the answer is just one of the times they saw each other because Drakir does that to people.
01:08:10
Speaker
Yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean they weren't working together either. Like, because Drakir threatened Thorin plenty of times while they were working as close allies. Yup. And I don't. This is the answer is I don't. Undescript world hopping drow. TM copyright. To be fair, Laura did not call this drow, Drakir.
01:08:34
Speaker
or is just curious about the occasion where this happened. Really, the answer to when Eris got her and everyone she loved threatened is every time we had a conversation with Vigo. That's also true. Oh, and then Laura's last question in this section. What's the Eris, all of ship name? I don't know. Both their names start with vowels. That's really difficult because it's like oilis. That's horrible. Eliv. Yeah, I don't know how to. I got no idea.
01:09:03
Speaker
Orys sounds like a disease or like some sort of like antelope that lives in the steppes of Asia. It's gotta be air love. Air love? Yeah. Is Zay easier? Not really. Yeah, I don't know. We'll take suggestions. Sure. Yeah, let us know in Discord. I got it. Yeah, this is not the way it works. You tell us what the ship name is. We don't come up with that stuff. Yeah, I was gonna say that. Give it a break.
01:09:33
Speaker
We're not the ones shipping people. I'm not going on archive of our own and writing fanfic about my thing. To be clear, I'm not going on archive of our own and writing fanfic. Sure you aren't. I'm not creative enough. I've never tried, but I know I couldn't do it. A new member of the discord who I forgot to ask what they would like to be called. So I'll go by their discord name of keep on rolling.
01:09:54
Speaker
Asks, they've been really enjoying hearing about how Phillip and Eric discuss Ari's motivations and Kyber shards. Does that same dynamic exist when the roles are reversed and everyone renew? Do you find yourself having those same types of conversations, Eric and Phillip, about Eric's intentions and actions? I'm going to read the whole thing and just let you answer. If so, how does it influence your gameplay? And then similar question for the rest of the cast and how much discussion goes on in terms of character intentions.
01:10:18
Speaker
I feel like we had a lot of conversations at the beginning of the campaign about who Eris was and her backstory, all of that, but I have.
01:10:31
Speaker
other than things like when I took the mind of its own thing and made the turns the skiff into Tasha and stuff and big giant things like that that were going to be significant. I don't think I've I don't think I've had anything that I felt like I needed to give Eric a particular heads up about. And hopefully, Eric, I have not sprung things on Eric that he's.
01:10:56
Speaker
God, man, Eric, Philip, give me a heads up. But yeah, so I would say probably not as much. Here's what I might be about to do. But we did have a lot of those conversations at the beginning, probably more than we did about Ari. So it was probably just more front loaded. Yeah, I agree with that sentiment with for me. Eric and I have a lot of conversations during the building phase. I want to make sure that
01:11:25
Speaker
does this backstory work in what you're wanting to do? Because obviously, if I was something that would not have ended up with these three people, we need to fix that. One time I texted him, I was like, hey, this talent seems real broken. You sure you want to make this an option for me? And he was like, yeah, you're right. Don't do that. That might have been in a different game, but regardless. As far as intentions and stuff,
01:11:45
Speaker
I keep thinking I build like real trophy archetypal characters. So I feel like the intentions when I'm done building the character are pretty clear, but then that keeps getting subverted by the other people that I get to work with on the podcast. Cause that's what you do when you improvise together. So no, I don't have a lot of talk about intentions, goals, things like that, because I like to see what Eric will throw.
01:12:07
Speaker
I've heaped a lot of praise on Eric in this episode and I don't regret it because I talk a lot of crap but he is actually a friend that I care very much about and am constantly awed by the things that he comes up with. So I don't want to hamstring Eric's potentially better ideas by saying but what if this or but I'd really like to this because I also know that Eric will try to give us things that we want within reason when we ask because he wants to have fun playing. So I'm happy to
01:12:33
Speaker
put myself at his mercy, right up until I have no idea. I love to see where Eric is gonna take my characters. I like to just say, here's my background. Here's what's going on. Let me know if any of that's not okay. And if it is, you do you, boo. And I'll be happy.
01:12:55
Speaker
And I love it when Randy calls me boo. So I'll do it once at that point. And occasionally I might send him a message and say, hey, this and what about that? What do you think
Character Inventory and Interpersonal Dynamics
01:13:05
Speaker
about this? And sometimes from those conversations back and forth with Eric, other things emerge. And I'm like, yeah, that sounds good. Let's sure, let's do it. Yeah. But I like giving the GM that ability to
01:13:24
Speaker
just play off of my character and surprise me with stuff. It's no fun if you build a character and you tell your GM, and here's what I want to happen, and here's what I think should go here, and I want to get from point A to point B like this, and that's no fun. Don't ever do that to your GM. Give them some freedom to have fun with your character and surprise you.
01:13:48
Speaker
I will say I speak with Eric more about our home game actually that I do about this one as far as my character and stuff. Part of that reason I think is because comically enough I'm the veteran player at that table. And also because Eric cuts the brakes when he's DMing the home game. A lot of wackier stuff has been going. I think he's play testing. We have fun.
01:14:10
Speaker
Okay. Um, I do want to say I feel, and I feel like most, the most conversations I have with anyone in this campaign has been with Randy in terms of ongoing touch points. And it's because, and this is something that I think I've spoken a bit about on a personal level away from the microphones, but I do want to just bring it up because it's relevant to this conversation. I've grown a lot as GM since campaign one.
01:14:36
Speaker
And Randy is we joke about Milo being this campaign's barrack, but I feel like I'm doing with Randy what I should have done with Philip and campaign one of doing check ins of here's what I'm thinking. Here's like progression for the character and how it plays into the campaign. And I feel like I did a very poor job of that, like with Philip and barrack.
01:14:58
Speaker
in terms of how I was managing campaign and campaign one. Sorry, Philip, that you had to be my growing pains. But I feel like I'm doing a much better job with Randy and Milo this time around doing check-ins. And here's the craziness. Are you cool with it? And we'll talk through stuff to find a place that we're both happy with before we actually put it in the game. Yes. So are you saying I'm in for a real cushy time when it's my turn next campaign to be the tragic character? I would be well taken care of by my DM. But.
01:15:27
Speaker
Ophelia would like to know, and I fear I'm about to embarrass myself, what is the current count of magic items in the party's possession and what do they do? Okay, so I'm looking at my character sheet of actual magic items. Eris has her Artificing Cyborg Gauntlet, which enhances her Artifice and Mechanics abilities
01:15:57
Speaker
and has the ability to effectively break an enchantment or do major damage to an object. But that depletes it over overcharges it. She's got the Fletcher. She's got the hand Fletcher that she made for Rainard, which he snubbed. She has a retractable blade in her other in her bracer, on the other hand.
01:16:24
Speaker
that she stole from Sharon Watchguard. And she's got the little spray of dart launchers on her cyborg gauntlet. I suppose Tasha would count as a magical item to a degree. And then I have a talent of wall crawler that I represent by claiming she's created magnet boots. She's got the portable hole thing and the little teleportation pucks.
01:16:51
Speaker
which I think is everything. I've made more things than that. She's made some acid and poisons and things like that, but that's probably not. So that's my estimation of stuff that Eris is carrying. Okay, Milo has his wand, which is essentially the cross brace of a stool and is powered by the smoke coming out of his head. He's got a
01:17:20
Speaker
cloak that he wears that absorbs some damage and some gloves that basically let you regain health or strain and they're depleted upon use.
01:17:38
Speaker
That's cool. I remember those. There is an ice staff of some sort that I believe Raynard has. Hob doesn't have much. Hob has his gems from his time at the monastery that keep his wraps, his wrist wraps closed.
01:17:57
Speaker
on those. I know what you call them. They're not butterflies, are they? Like the pronged bandage wrap clips? Yeah. Butterfly. Okay. They're mounted to those. He's got his harness that tells him where things be. And he has his gloves and imbued tattoos that make him punch gooder. And I believe that's it unless he got like a bagel holding and I forgot about it, which is definitely in the role of possibility. Oh, the goggles. Harris has goggles. There you go.
01:18:25
Speaker
I've got the dagger. I've got the necklace that slightly alters the appearance. I've got the aforementioned freezing staff thing. The owl goggles. And then do the arrows count? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. I know the ones that the things Aeris made would count. I didn't know if the ones, the other ones I have.
01:18:52
Speaker
If the arrows aren't magic, they are marbles of engineering. I think that's it. I think that's everything. And then the others have things as well. I guess we also have several magic items that we don't carry around, like stuff we stole from Milhatch and took off the Tashur and that kind of stuff. So sure. The transport or teleporters. Tasha is Tasha is an elemental when she's in a thing. Is she a magic item? That feels reductive. The things that she drives are magic items for sure.
01:19:20
Speaker
Ophelia continues another question. You've done a couple of romance slash interpersonal plots in both campaigns. Do you have a particular way that you handle them in terms of out of character planning? I guess that Phillip enjoys a certain amount of ballgounding, which I had to look up for anybody else who doesn't know what that means. I guess it's a UK centric term I saw. But it's romance style of relationships in role-playing. How do slash would you approach it with your other players?
01:19:46
Speaker
awkwardly. I have played two explicitly aromantic characters. So I'm going to sit down, sit back and let you guys who have done it before talk. I do enjoy a relationship based focused style of role playing when I decide I want to get to know a character. And so
01:20:07
Speaker
romantic or otherwise. I have I enjoyed getting to know who Paula was in the first campaign. But honestly, I say the relationship that mattered most to me as a player ended up being Beric and Orianna outside of the core group. And then, of course, in this one, the relationship that matters the most to me and Eris is, of course, all of I. Yeah, I like the approach, honestly, me and Eric have never
01:20:37
Speaker
sat down and talked about those relationships in terms of planning them out. They've gone organically. Eric and I have known each other so long that I think it's pretty safe to say we are able to pick up on one another's what we're trying to do pretty well. And so it hasn't really required planning if I knew Eric less well and if you know your players less well or if you just aren't sure, I would certainly
01:21:04
Speaker
recommend having conversations outside of the game. Eric and I don't much just because there has yet to be a situation where. Our read on a relationship is not. Clear to each other, I think. Yeah, that's great. Eric, everything you want to add about on the DM side of it? Yeah, I just what Philip said, like we've never really done intentional planning, just picking up on
01:21:34
Speaker
vibes. And I think that, generally speaking, I don't think I would approach it much differently. I didn't talk to Trevor about dumping Nessa Moonshadow in his lap, but it's one of those things where oftentimes I'll present something to a player and their player character and see how they respond, see if they bite, and if they do, great. If not, just like any other plot hook, it's okay. Cool. Moving right along.
01:22:03
Speaker
Even if that's even if it's a reoccurring NPC just like a person might put out feelers to somebody they're close with and if there's no reciprocations Okay, cool. I'm gonna be a grown-up about this and just move on so Yeah, I think it's much more paramount if you're doing with another player if it's a player-to-player Romance thing that you should be communicating frequently and often about
01:22:27
Speaker
But yeah, DM to player character, I'm less concerned about that generally, especially with the players that I play with, because I tend to be very.
01:22:39
Speaker
I almost
In-Game Locations and Craft Projects
01:22:40
Speaker
said I tend to be very overt, but that's not entirely true because there have been times where I've subtly thrown something out there as an NPC. The player didn't pick up on it. And I was like, OK, cool. But like in our home game that Jeff referenced, I will have like NPCs like overtly wink at player characters. And it is run the gamut from them winking back and being like, oh, yeah. And other ones going, no, not for me like that NPC, but just the idea of romance in general being something that like discuss them.
01:23:08
Speaker
So, you know, you throw out bait and see who bikes. Yeah. In that home game, I play a bard who I started out as this kind of these people are all game to be whatever. They're a different group of people. So I like this Lothario kind of thing I tried to do. And I mean, it's like, this sucks. I don't want to play this guy anymore. Just I was like, I like her and him and her and the session too. I was like, yeah, no, not anymore. I just want to make money. I do want to say, because I said it just clippantly earlier, I said that I played two aromantic characters and I want to be
01:23:38
Speaker
Since that is an actual way that people identify, I want to be clear. While I do see Hob towards that ace arrow into the spectrum, Dex was just not in romantic situations. I don't want to, because he obviously, if you go back and listen, was not aromantic. We're booyah on the other hand. Kevin would like to know why is Hob and the rest of the group concerned about returning to Savia's other places, but not other known places like the Forest Sales and Milo's family home.
01:24:06
Speaker
I think Milo is concerned about his family home. I think maybe things have gone on in the background that haven't played out in the story yet, but they probably will.
01:24:27
Speaker
Part of the reason that Hob has stayed away from Savya's is because Savya is collateral damage if it happens, and being on the city council and the Beaumars having
01:24:39
Speaker
a stake in the city council as well. It just was easier for Hobb to say, I'm just going to pull myself out of this situation. The four sales, that's probably not honestly a dangerous place for them to go if they're all four together or seven together. Yeah. And Milo's home is Milo's home. If he's there and one's Hobb there and my top there, Hobb's going to go there. Irene would like to know, Trevor, where can we find your tour dates? Just go ahead and drop those out there.
01:25:04
Speaker
I post them like monthly, basically. So at the beginning of the month, I'll post for the entire month and on Instagram, the T H E P A T Y B O U R E Y, or Facebook, Patty Bure. They're more permanent on Facebook. I think I just posted with my story on Instagram. All right. Couple of questions. Just shoot me a message. Yeah. Also.
01:25:31
Speaker
Yeah, you're welcome to drop them in the Discord, my guy. I think everybody would be happy to know if you were coming to a place near them. And then, where's that Q8 here? There it is. Last two questions from Becca. She would like to know, what was your favorite craft project, something you made or put together like painting, clothing, videos, et cetera? Go ahead, Eric. Favorite thing that I put together was probably the gaming table that we had when I lived in my previous house that was way too big to fit in this house. So yeah, that was a lot of fun to put together.
01:25:59
Speaker
One of mine would be something I some things I have made it to help with some magic effects. And I will not go into detail. Because a magician magician never reveals his secrets. That's right. Dumb ones do. But anyway.
01:26:20
Speaker
Mine's all home improvement related stuff. I really enjoy doing it and I tend to be pretty proud of it when it's done. I did hand poured concrete countertops and rebuilt my cabinets a couple of years ago for my kitchen and very proud of it. I sew. So things that I sew and embellish. Mine would be miniatures. Usually that's the main thing. Occasionally some terrain that I use in my home game. I recently put together
01:26:46
Speaker
One that I think is pretty cool. I'll show the guys, but you don't get to see it because you're this is not a video thing, but it's this very cool guy riding a Wyvern. But what I learned to do in this one is to use magnets to make it so the guy can be removed and then put back that glue.
01:27:07
Speaker
So I learned how to magnet a person onto their mount, which is if any of you listening are war gamers, you learned to do that two days after you learned to paint. But I
Summer Treats Debate and Session Wrap-Up
01:27:17
Speaker
never needed to learn to do that. And then I got some magnets and decided to try and I feel proud of how it worked. All right. Last question, rapid fire. I even wants to know your favorite summer treat. Ready, go. And I just love when watermelons in season. Ice cream. I love a margarita.
01:27:36
Speaker
Fair enough. And Arnold Palmer. Alright, you're all wrong, it's snow cones. If you'd like to get involved, please join us. Snow cones are garbage. Huh? Hate snow cones, so much. What?
01:27:50
Speaker
You probably go to one of those bad places that puts like an inch worth of syrup in the bottom of the cup. It's lightly flavored. Get us out of here. If you want to get involved, please come find us. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Friendster at the Geek Pantheon. Eric does fantastic DMing videos on YouTube. You can find those at the Geek Pantheon. Philip DMs, our sister program on YouTube. Search for the Laughing Tree and you'll find Kyber Shards. Eric is a player in that one.
01:28:16
Speaker
Philip does not do drag. Trevor already mentioned his dates. And I'm actually going to be streaming on Twitch as soon as we end this call. So if you're listening live, stop it. Get out of our house. Philip, what do they have to donate to the Patreon to get you in drag? Five million dollars. Absolutely no one wants that.
01:28:38
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. I do want to let you guys know. I'm sorry I'm talking so fast. We're trying to get out of here for Eric's sake with the editing. But this will be the last reviewed where I can guarantee you everyone's going to be here. We're going to switch format a little bit and we're going to go to either the DM and myself or one of the characters. You probably won't know until the arc is over because I don't want to give away if it's like a
01:29:01
Speaker
We're going to have Randy on, because that huge thing that happened at the end of the last episode, I can't. But that's how we're going to be doing it from now on. Obviously, the last one we are going to all be there for, because that would be wild to not be. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll catch you next week. I have been Jeff. I'm Phillip. I'm Trevor. I'm Randy. I'm Eric. Good night.