Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
C2 Ep. 21 Eberron Reviewed 4
284 Plays4 years ago
Come join the crew as they sit down to talk about the latest arc and downtime episode!
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, Jessica Smith, Charles Compton, Richard Cree, Danielle Bramhall-Smith, Nastasia Raulerson, The Kamm Family, David Scrams, Elizabeth Clark, Andy Dossett, Rebekah Miller, deviouspoptart, Eðvarð Arnór Sigurðsson, Michael Clark, Eric Witman, and Dustin Troupe.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
The following episode is brought to you by Darryl Delaney, Ryan Royce, Darren Katska, Jessica Smith, Irene Villarito, Laura Pickron, Eric Whitman, Deavius Poptart, Elizabeth Clark, Danielle Bramhall-Smith, Andy Dossett, Natasha Rallerson, Richard Cree, The Cam Family, Charles Compton, Edvard Tharnoff, Dustin Troop, Rebecca Miller, Michael Clark, and David Scrams, along with all of our generous patrons.
00:00:37
Speaker
D20 radio, your game is roll.
Hosts and Podcast Context
00:01:16
Speaker
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Eberron Renewed, an actual play podcast set in the Eberron campaign setting. My name is Jeff. I'm Phillip. I'm Trevor. I'm Randy. And I'm Eric.
00:01:31
Speaker
That's right. And there was a pause because I forget what to do because it's been a while since I've done this. This is not an actual play episode. This is one of our look backs at the arc we just finished. So this is Eberron reviewed. We are all here today, which is great. So let's talk about the last
Visit to Boromar Headquarters
00:01:47
Speaker
arc. It begins with us.
00:01:50
Speaker
finding out that we are going to go to Boromar headquarters for the first time as a group. Milo had been there before. We said it was possible, but not likely. Hobb had. The other two certainly hadn't. But it was a big deal. It was a big deal for us. And it was also a big deal for I just lost his name. Garfun. Grum. Grum. It was also a big deal for Grum.
00:02:14
Speaker
Yes, grum, also not super pleased. There was a really weird health inspection side plot that I somehow got wrapped up in and it ended about how you'd expect in that situation. That was a lot of fun. It was funny. I did not know what to do. I think I ate a raw cabbage and walked out.
Job from Satan and Clarifications
00:02:33
Speaker
But what we find out when we get to the deeply weird, which we will talk about, bore of our headquarters, is we've got a job and the job is first given to us by Satan.
00:02:44
Speaker
with a D, but then elaborated upon by Vigo, leaving us very unsure what we were supposed to do once we got on the trade. What we did know is there was some information. It was not Milo's fault. It was not Milo's fault. There was some information, there was some research heading to, not to Linta, where was it going? To the LD reaches. LD, that's right, LD and reaches. Heading the LD reaches and we had to stop it from getting there. That was what we knew for sure.
00:03:12
Speaker
Also, a quick point of order real quick just to retcon a bit of info that was discussed in that section of the adventure that I want to walk back. Satan's wife's name is actually Mela. I got his daughter and his wife's name flipped around in my head. So moving forward, if it ever comes up again, Mela Durrasco Boromar will be who we refer to as Satan's wife. So just a quick point of order that I wanted to point out.
00:03:38
Speaker
Speaking of retconning point of orders, Hob is seven foot six, not seven foot. Anyway, moving on. I realize he had to be at least a foot taller
Leaving Sharn and Travel Anecdotes
00:03:47
Speaker
than the next tallest person in the crew. So yeah, so we go, we get on the train, we get literally on the train, and then we find out that some people don't like Hob, and we have to fight them, and it goes poorly for a long time. The warforged comes back, it sucked, it sucked, it sucked.
00:04:08
Speaker
Uh, we finished the job. So, uh, you all left sharn for the first time. I mean, that was, uh, also kind of a big thing. So, you know, it, it, it was, but also like we, like I've been to Idaho because I've been in there in an airport there, you know, cause we did leave sharn, but we were certainly on a train the whole time and heading straight back.
00:04:28
Speaker
Yeah, and you didn't you all didn't do anything. It was like in high school when I went out into international waters at one point and said I had traveled internationally. Like, yeah, I technically left the country, but I didn't do anything. So when I was in seventh grade, I got an amazing opportunity to to go to Japan as part of my town's sister cities program. And for some reason, all of us, we were seventh and eighth graders, so like 12 and 13 years old. And for some reason, all of us just started immediately calling America the states as soon as we left the country.
00:04:55
Speaker
Man, back in the States, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like what a weird performative, dumb seventh grade boy thing to do. Anyway, I think we're talking about D&D or Genesis, whatever we're doing. I don't know. But yeah, we do get the job
Train Job Mission Roleplay
00:05:13
Speaker
done. The job once we get in the dang car actually goes relatively smoothly. But part of that was because I was so over playing that I enacted my hero's ability and wrecked some clowns.
00:05:27
Speaker
We got our first really seriously ominous threat from Reynard. Thank you, Reynard, for the, what was it that you said? You said, we're told you're not necessary, or you're told you're expendable, so please just don't say anything. Something to that effect. Yeah, something like that. It was very, it was very good. And then we go back, we don't learn anymore about what happened with Grum. Oh, I didn't finish that. Grum was seemed concerned because if they're coming straight to us with jobs,
00:05:55
Speaker
we cut out that middle man, he loses his cut of the take. So we don't know, there's no resolution to that yet. We haven't seen Grom again, but we know he wasn't back at the foresales when we made it back there. Yeah, then we have our downtown episode where we went back and addressed more deeply what could be an uncomfortable subject, and I want to talk about that a little bit. Maybe at the end of questions, Snow would really ask any compound time episode questions, so I have some. It could be an uncomfortable subject, especially for, I mean,
00:06:24
Speaker
for lack of a better five white guys talking about race relations is a fraught. Yeah. For so or white guys. Oh, well, yeah, you've been you've been a part of some of the other sessions where it's been bubbling. So you've been around. That's that's that's true. There a podcast of five white guys. But we will get into some of that later.
00:06:50
Speaker
Let's go ahead, and I do not want to skip over the opportunity for you guys to say anything about the arc. Obviously, we'll have more time as the questions come through, but there's anything that really stuck out to you guys about the last envelope. So it's beside the fact that they were torturous for me, which we'll get into. Yeah, there were some questions about the torturous nature of the dice rolling, so. Yes, there were. Man, man, boy, it sucked.
00:07:16
Speaker
Let us jump into questions then. Yeah, it was a fun train fight, so.
00:07:22
Speaker
Look, I had fun playing. I did get really frustrated. It was not over anything other than the dice weren't working and what are you gonna do but throw your headphones down and walk away for a second. Which I
Community Engagement and Discord
00:07:34
Speaker
did do. I would like to mention if you would like to ask us a question for a review, you can do so on our Discord. The privilege to ask a question at all is just simply being a patron which starts at the $1 level.
00:07:48
Speaker
Um, you can join the discord regardless. You do not have to be a patron. I want to make that clear, but to get a question on, you have to be a member at the $1 level. But if you go a slightly higher level to the QA tier level, you get first priority essentially. So that is how we will be doing the questions. So let's jump in first off as, as is right and good. Laura has the first question.
00:08:10
Speaker
And it's one I had as well. What is with the butcher shop at Boromar HQ? Is that a power move, a side gig, or they just really like fresh
Butcher Shop and Humor
00:08:20
Speaker
meat? It was deep, I said it in the episode, it was deeply weird, the description of, so Satan, the leader of the, the patriarch of this clan, was just like slow butcher and a cow. And not in the way one might normally, where you divide it into chunks and then work down. It was like he was sculpting something from whole cow.
00:08:40
Speaker
Well, go ahead. It reminded me and part of the reason it seemed so dark to me and maybe other people don't have this. If anybody's ever read the preacher comic books, there are some like I would not suggest a Google image searching preacher slaughterhouse or preacher meat butcher or anything. None of us sound like good Google searches. Genuinely.
00:09:02
Speaker
The main antagonist owns the local abattoir and genuinely disturbing imagery in that book. So that is what happened to me. That's part of the reason it was so off-putting for Jeff. Go ahead, Philip. Sorry. I think what made it really weird to me is like Laura's question says, why what is up with the butcher shop in the Boer marriage? There's not.
00:09:22
Speaker
A butcher shop. We were just in the foyer and the dudes butchering a cow. Like, that's what was just so bizarre to me. That's a good point. I interpreted it as there's a front, but no. Yeah. Yeah. You all walk past reception. You got you all got taken back to another room where I mean a front as in a. Oh, gosh, it's not a legitimate business out of which the mob operates, but it's it's not that.
00:09:47
Speaker
That is a very good point. If there was a lemon tree growing out of the middle of my living room floor, no one would be like, hey, what's with the orchard? They're like, why is there a tree in your living room? Right. Yeah, I mean, it was just I I wanted to do something striking to make Satan seem immediately threatening and put the party on their heels without being overtly antagonistic towards the party. And I was just going to say that
00:10:16
Speaker
me playing Milo and apparently having some sort of a relationship with him and not being entirely sure what that was. I really felt awkward to me to figure out how does Milo respond to this guy? Yeah, that's a solid point.
00:10:36
Speaker
Yeah, so I thought that like very evocative of Game of Thrones and other other forms of media where.
00:10:49
Speaker
It just always feels very dominating when a character is butchering an animal while talking with another character. The person that's doing the butchering always just feels completely in control of that situation. And so that's where I landed and what I wanted to go with to really give Satan that
00:11:10
Speaker
that feel because you all have had a lot of interactions with Vigo. And so I wanted to do something to elevate Satan even more beyond the Boromar members that you've already interacted with. So. Well, it definitely made me start thinking of like, what is Milo in his relationship with him? And how does Milo feel about him? Is Milo comfortable or does he feel threatened? I wasn't sure how to react.
00:11:38
Speaker
I'm sure, and we can explore this in fiction, but I'm sure Milo has gotten, with as long as Milo's worked for the clan, Milo's gotten pounds of meat gifted to him. Milo definitely has a free subscription to Boromar Steaks. Like holiday presents are just bundles of meat wrapped up with Satan's name on a card. Yeah, I love that. Honestly, that's the only thing...
00:12:05
Speaker
That's the only part of that I think that Hob thought was a good thing about getting closer to Satan was like, I'm gonna get on the beach right now.
00:12:15
Speaker
Unrelated to the podcast. Well, pangentially related to the podcast. You mentioned it on the podcast, so. Say what? I mentioned it on the podcast. Irene asks, I think Jeff needs to elaborate. I almost said my pronouns because they're in my Discord tag. I think Jeff needs to elaborate on his Taser adventure. I wouldn't call it an adventure. I mean, the whole story is this. I've had a friend named Brad for the last 20 years. One day he and I were in the same room as a Taser and that's pretty much it.
00:12:44
Speaker
And well, you know. Shortly after, I was probably 25 or six. And Brad and I were both, who's genuinely a great person and has really been one of my closest friends for 20 years.
00:12:57
Speaker
We're a part of an organization trying to develop more youth resources in our town. And at one point we had some police officers come and speak with us and somehow, now this was not a projectile sort of taser, this was a stun sort of, you know, like shove it into their side kind of taser thing. Not cop grade, I don't know why it was there, but it was there and I got tased. I'm not gonna pretend I put up a fight, but I didn't ask for it either.
00:13:30
Speaker
Anybody else want to talk about a time they were maimed by their friends? I don't have any, fortunately. So I don't think I've ever been maimed by my friends. That honestly, Philip, that surprises me a bit with the sword fighting background. It's never very least like just taking a real good knock from a practice. I mean, I've had my thumb split open, like the knuckle of my thumb, not the pad, but the knuckle of my thumb. But that's that's very superficial.
00:13:51
Speaker
There's video somewhere on the internet, but good luck.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I wouldn't call getting tased by a non-law enforcement taser maimed either. It was just unfortunate. Does the musical maim count? No. No. Nope. Never been maimed. So. Hey, guys, Trevor's still here. Oh, I retract my statement about Trevor earlier. Griffin Rippet, big dog over there. Darren asks,
House Rules and Game Mechanics
00:14:25
Speaker
Given the way things played out during the train job, are you considering any house rules to help with the mechanics better match the tone of fiction everyone is aiming to achieve? My answer in the Discord was I plan on ignoring all despairs, but evidently that's not allowed. I mean, you could ignore them. Eric would make sure that they did not get ignored. I guess I don't have much to say about him anyway. I just have to do what he says.
00:14:53
Speaker
Eric, I mean, I feel like this is mainly for you. I suppose we might collaborate if we need to do, but you're the arbiter of this. I found this question really interesting. I would love for Darren to elaborate in like the DM's Brain Trust channel and the Discord or something, because I don't know if the mechanics betrayed the tone of the fiction that like, because Disbears can manifest in a number of ways. If we were playing a super gritty, grim dark
00:15:17
Speaker
horrible campaign, then, yeah, somebody would have gotten stabbed and left in the street to die with that number of despairs. But people got knocked off the train. People had their knee blown out. Hobb tried to kick in a window and went flat faced against it. It was all really kind of high camp, high adventure shenanigans, I guess, for lack of a better way to put it. Because the only way that it
00:15:47
Speaker
potentially betrayed the pulpy tone of a train fight is that you all failed a lot more than like Indiana Jones would have in that scenario just to pull a modern pulp hero out.
00:16:03
Speaker
But no, I think that that was the system working as intended. And in five sessions from now, you all are going to roll seven triumphs in one session and just waylay everything in sight. So, no, I don't think there's any tweaks that need to be made currently, in my opinion, personally, but that's my answer. But I would love to have that conversation with Darren or anybody else that wants to have that conversation over in the Discord.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's fair. I think that one of the one of the cool things, I mean, they're called the narrative dice. One of the cool things about it is you can make a triumph or despair or advantages or whatever as big or as small as the situation requires. You know, a triumph in a persuasion check is not going to result in the roof getting ripped off the building. A triumph of persuasion check might just be like, yeah, like you don't even need to try anymore. Whatever you tell them, they are going to believe you until this encounter is over.
00:16:58
Speaker
So as far as the tone, I think that's easy. Now, as far as the thwarting the goals of the players, that's just that's just dice, baby. That's yeah, I mean, that's just role playing games. I'm sure if we were to go back through campaign one, there were sessions where you all rolled seven natural ones in a given session. So, yeah, I mean, I.
00:17:24
Speaker
it can be arduous and like I walked away from that session exhausted on Jeff's behalf. I walked outside to let the dogs out and Miley was out there and was like, and I told her what had happened and they're like, they rolled seven despairs and Jeff rolled four of them by himself and it's just, the game threatens to hit a point of exhaustion at that point if you don't know how to power through and keep the despairs
00:17:49
Speaker
interesting because if you just keep piling on the person that's rolling a despair over and over then that gets old really quick so you have to find different things to do. I don't know that I would I mean you are the the uh keeper of your own emotions but I think that you could justifiably say you were exhausted from having to give us despairs that didn't destroy the game for us like yeah it was a bummer for me to keep failing on things but you were the one that had to figure out okay what's a despair that won't
00:18:15
Speaker
throw off the train this time or, you know, so I get that. And I think in a scenario like that, especially in the type of game that we're playing where you all are on a job and trying to accomplish a thing, I never want the despairs to take the agency away from you all that, okay, you have failed the job because of a bad dice roll.
00:18:36
Speaker
I want to continue ramping up the severity of the situation and the obstacles in front of you to where that choice becomes more and more tempting of like, listen, things have just got we have to run away now, like a tarrasque has just burst out through the base of sharn. We have to go. But I never want to take that agency away. So something like
00:18:59
Speaker
the train like bucking and just knocking you all off and leaving you in the dust. Like I don't want to ever do something like that because that just seems mean, I guess. So. But and this kind of plays into the next question, like Hobb gets knocked off the train and gets less. So the next question is from Irene, what would have happened if Hobb totally botched the second check and just completely fell off the train?
00:19:26
Speaker
Jeff would have became in control of Kath, and the party would have had to make the decision to hop off the train to go make sure Hob was OK or finish the job. Because Hob's not going to die from that fall. It's a train traveling 20 miles an hour. I was going to say, yes, I would have happily taken control of Kath, but I also would have asked if I could flip a story point. And there's a hand cart, and can I just roll bra on a bunch of times and see if I can
00:19:53
Speaker
Maybe catch up. Well, I mean eventually smack in the back of the train if it gets decoupled if there's not another person there Yeah, I didn't help keep it together. But if it doesn't play out that way Yeah, and that that would have been a possibility also there a ton of things could have happened if hob had botched the second check That were in the back of my head when I asked for that role. Yeah
00:20:10
Speaker
And, you know, that was the thing. It's like even knowing that even when Eric upgraded the check to require me to roll potential despair, I was never afraid that Eric was going to send me flying off the train because there are a thousand other things. And the other thing is a despair is and I think we've been playing this way as a despair is universal. Just because I roll the despair doesn't mean it necessarily happens to me. It could happen to the environment to affect all of us or to affect
Downtime Episodes and Structure
00:20:37
Speaker
me. But
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah, and we kind of saw that with the the train decoupling. Well, I guess that was Eris's shot. But in the the downtime episode, which we'll get to, you rolled it, you, Jeff, rolled a despair that I recall affecting Paris. So so, yeah, no, the the the despairs are designed to be not tied to the role that triggered it, I guess. Sure. Yeah.
00:21:03
Speaker
Eric asks if Raynard hadn't stopped the train from uncoupling, what would the next steps for the crew have been? Athletics checks to jump. I mean, I mean, it would have been increasingly difficult to I had bought a I had bought us a round before it was going to decouple. That was my next move was to go down and stop the train from decoupling. I bought that round with with advantage specifically so that I could keep shooting at the Ram for one more round. Yeah, I guess Hobb would have
00:21:32
Speaker
continued to hang impotently on the side of the train. Which would have gradually slowed down. Yeah, then I would just dislodge myself, I guess. Take all the time I needed. No one does ask this, so I'm going to jump in here since we're talking about bad things that happened on the train. Milo sure did get knocked out.
00:21:55
Speaker
None of us. Nobody seemed to care initially. What I didn't realize was that Milo was just the breaching tip of the iceberg of bad things that started to happen to us at that point.
00:22:10
Speaker
Yeah, because I was like, oh, no, it's OK. There are three people behind me. I really need to hit the ramp. Right.
Challenges Without a Healer
00:22:17
Speaker
But then I fly off the train. Eris gets mad. Rainard runs away and suddenly Milo's just rolling around on like some sort of ragdoll. I assume all of blood. And and it's just not how I saw it going, but I only can control Hobb and barely that apparently. Well, I mean, we've had we've had a number of fights where people have gone down and frankly,
00:22:41
Speaker
Almost none of us are equipped to do anything about it in the middle of a fight. Like, we don't have a healer, except maybe Rick, can Bard's cast heal in this? Okay, so Raynard is actually a healer. So, you know, but. Hey, Trevor, Trevor. So he could have done something, but. You might want to write that down. So I guess Eris assumed that Raynard was part of the team and that he might take care of it.
00:23:13
Speaker
You were very wrong, my friend. She was. Yeah, I think at this point, I think that like. Go ahead, Randy. I was going to say, you know, Milo was unconscious or he would have been very hurt by Raynard because he doesn't know that Raynard just he finds out later, but I was going to say he knows. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm sure he definitely knows.
00:23:42
Speaker
That leads very well into Eric's next question. How did Hobb feel about Reynard continuing the job after he fell? I assume Eris told Hobb in animated nature what had happened. And I think that Hobb would probably be more upset about the fact that Reynard left the whole party than he would have been if the whole party had left him hanging on the side of that train to try to get the job done.
00:24:10
Speaker
I don't know if that is a, I don't think that is a, not nihilism, which were just self-denying thing for him. Like it's whatever, I'm whatever job needs to be done and you guys need to be safe. Or if it's just a, look, one of us is already out. Let's not, he certainly wasn't personally angry at Raynard and wouldn't be. He's already, I mean, he and Raynard for whatever reason that we haven't really sussed out yet. We will, stay tuned. He and Raynard have a strained relationship
00:24:39
Speaker
And it may just be personality clash, you know, we haven't really talked about it. But I don't think that once he found out about it, Hobb was necessarily upset that Reynard had left him, particularly because he was ostensibly to do the job. But I think he would have been upset that
00:24:56
Speaker
especially once he found, when I'm sure it was, Aerys was like, and Milo was dying, and Raynard ran away. I think at that point, I've been like, that son of a, you know. I do think it is telling and not saying that Aerys would include this level of nuance in her anger-fueled description of the situation. Raynard hopped to the next screen, said, let's go, realized nobody was coming with him, and then came back.
00:25:23
Speaker
So that's true. He did. And yes, Hobb definitely doesn't know that unless Raynard told him and save the day. Harris had it. Yeah, Harris leaves that entirely out of because Harris just assumes that she would have taken care of that. And Milo did talk to Raynard about it a little bit.
00:25:42
Speaker
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. We did have that brief discussion. Yeah. Yeah. I think also been talking to Raynard about it. I think Hobb or Hobb. Pardon me. I think Milo has a legitimate grief with everybody that was on top of that trait. But I also think Milo has been in enough. I don't want to speak for his character. Milo has lived long enough that he's not petty enough to act on it like some of us might be.
00:26:10
Speaker
Or he might be. Maybe we'll find that out down the road. Probably true. This might have been the start of Milo's conversion into the big bad evil guy of campaign two. It's just going to be a little bit petty. It's going to be entirely in the form of pranks. Like Milo is now going to start a prank war against. That's that's his vision. Oh, boy, if that was the truth, Hob could be persuaded.
00:26:39
Speaker
Okay, well, continuing on with this idea of how do we deal with all this, Laura asks, I assume this is for Philip.
Eris and the Ram Encounter
00:26:49
Speaker
I'll take a shot at it though. Can you talk about Eris' emotional state when she was going after Ram? Angry.
00:26:57
Speaker
No, I'm so eloquent as ever, Philip. Eris mad. Eris mad. I don't think that's an unfair answer, though, like. No, that. Yeah. Raise your hand if you've never had so much anger that you really don't think of anything else. Yes. And I think that's that's where it is. So. OK, so I've
00:27:26
Speaker
Eris is like 20, but you all may have observed that, you know, emotionally and in her reaction, she's somewhat younger than that. And this is a really normal trauma response as you get a little regression. And another very normal one is you have an emotion, you don't know what to do with it, so it's anger.
00:27:50
Speaker
Yeah. And that's and that's Eris is she has a feeling she doesn't know what to do with it. So it's angry. More to the point as far as the Hobb thing when she's going after Ram.
00:28:05
Speaker
Hobb is, I've expressed this, Hobb is the sense of felt safety to Eris. So for Hobb to fall off the train was tantamount in Eris's mind to coming back and finding the four sails had been burned down. Noted. I really need to get more out of Philip. Guess I'm going to kill Hobb.
00:28:34
Speaker
That is a great nuanced answer. Okay, Richard asks, and this one led to a decent amount of discussion on the Discord as well that I think we'd be remiss not to touch on some of the ideas that were thrown out there and attribute them if you want to scroll to that part of the Discord, Eric. I'm sure you had some ideas you wanted to throw out, but I feel like attribution is nice.
00:28:59
Speaker
Richard asks, during the train fight, you mentioned that party NPCs were tricky in Genesis due to the GM using player side story points. Have you ever considered letting the party control the NPCs during initiative based encounters? This would allow the players to decide when or how the NPCs act and whether or not to spend a story point on their roles.
00:29:21
Speaker
would you give the power? Do you think a reasonable sidestepping of you not knowing what to do or feeling conflicted about story points would be just to let us control the NPCs during cost?
00:29:34
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, it real quick, I'll just run down the the ideas that were thrown out that like, well, Devious Pop Tart said, Do you just want Philip to play multiple characters again? But Richard was thinking more like a consensus where everybody kind of
00:29:54
Speaker
figures out what an NPC would do, in this case, Kath during the train fight or doing a different player controls a specific NPC. Jeff is always Kath, so on and so forth.
00:30:08
Speaker
or having the players actually do the physical rolling and you are making the decision as to whether or not you're going to use a story point for their role. That was another option. And then there was some more discussion in the DMS brain trust, but that's a much more active channel, so it would be harder to trash all that down. Sure, of course. But I know some people posted screenshots from the Genesis Core Rulebook about how the GM should be using their story points
00:30:33
Speaker
for any NPC they're controlling. So I should be using my story points to bump up cats roles if if I want to. Because it's not adversarial, like I'm not holding on to mind just for the sake of getting you all to roll despairs. But I think. The my my reasoning for not allowing the players to control NPCs in combat because Richard in his
00:31:03
Speaker
His follow up response said, I would still control them during normal role play and you all would control them during combat. And coming out of campaign one, I think that's a fair distinction to make. That's very much what we did with Orianna a lot of the time. But I have an index card with every PC's like motivations, their strengths, their fears, their flaws, everything right there so I can look at it quickly. And I also have Cathson and Sigils.
00:31:31
Speaker
and Tasha's stuff on the card as well. So at any given moment, I know how they would respond. And a lot of that stuff I'm not wanting to share like it's it's intimate parts of their background and things that play into their character that I want you all to find out. And
00:31:52
Speaker
And we are all collectively and me, just as much as anyone else, attempting to ensure that roleplay and combat are not two separate entities in this campaign. That while combat is happening, roleplay is happening. And so having Jeff can control Cath, for example,
00:32:14
Speaker
I I just don't want to have to like jump in and Jeff says, well, I'm going to run after this person. Be like, well, actually, Kath would do this thing because that just is kind of deflating for a GM to tell the player you're doing it wrong. So don't screw up and pretend.
00:32:29
Speaker
But no, you know, you're absolutely right. I totally agree with that. Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. I don't want control over any of these NPCs. And not and it has nothing to do with me playing two characters. I enjoyed playing two characters. It gave me something else to do. It was fun. Yeah, no problem with that at all. But I don't want to have to think about.
00:32:48
Speaker
I mean, Orianna was a different thing because, frankly, you kind of half created Orianna specifically as Beric Sidekick in the same way that Cassian for Dex. And so that was a very different thing. I felt a lot more comfortable with that. If you just handed over Gerald or Rickard to me, I wouldn't know what to do with them. I'd have been happy to play Gerald.
00:33:12
Speaker
wouldn't have trusted you with him. Anyway. Oh, a truth on my sword and a fella on it. So all that to say, I think that what we the measure that we have made compared to early sessions of this campaign and issues that we ran into in campaign one is we're limiting the number of NPCs that come along to where I'm controlling one person in addition to the other
00:33:37
Speaker
the bad guys, quote unquote, bad guys. And and I'm only controlling one allied NPC. I think the the step moving forward is just going to be if you all want a story point spent on their check, you all can say so and spend one of your story points to influence their check. And if not, we'll just roll as normal kind of thing. So I can't properly remember.
00:34:00
Speaker
I'm anything anymore, but I don't recall you ever spending a story point to make an NPC's check more difficult either. Because that would be I don't think so. That's the only place where I go. Well, no, hang on. If we can't make if we can't make balance it out, then. But if you haven't been doing that, I'll say I've not thought that. But I do.
Story Points and NPC Control
00:34:18
Speaker
I kind of like the idea of.
00:34:20
Speaker
if if it comes down to like Kath's turn and this is the thing that needs doing and it's Kath's turn to do it and we're like, you flip a story point, you give us a trick. Yeah, I think that's totally fair is, you know, if we're all in agreement. Yeah. Or a plurality if Phil is holding out for some reason. There's only four of you, so. I think we would have a majority. I don't think we could get a plurality without a majority in this situation. No, you're right. I said all in agreement and then I flipped it to.
00:34:50
Speaker
three of them or two of the four of one of them is me. If we don't have a quorum. Yeah, there we go. OK, so the next question is from Darren, who I said, I said that like I have derisive feelings towards Darren. I have derisive feelings towards this question. I think Darren is fantastic. OK, Darren, Darren, a long time patron and listener and supporter. Darren asks, sorry, Eric.
00:35:20
Speaker
How did you get so quote unquote good at coming up with ideas for despairs?
00:35:28
Speaker
Well, thank you for acknowledging my skill. Honestly, a lot of it is editing. We cut out a lot of dead time and I am just as suspect at humming and hawing over what to do as anybody else is. I just have the benefit of being the editor so I can make myself sound really good and really cut those pauses to make it sound tight. But no, I mean,
00:35:57
Speaker
The one time that I really felt like I did a good job, if we were just in a table playing, was in the downtime episode with the hob rolling the despair and the red cloaks coming up to Eris. That one came to me pretty quickly as people were just kind of talking about different horrible things like the building falling down on them. And I was like, nope, I know exactly what needs to happen.
00:36:20
Speaker
And that's just a muscle. Like, I mean, I've been doing improv since middle school because I'm a theater nerd. And so that that muscle is strong in me. And I do appreciate you didn't say that in a braggadocious way. Did you know that having done improv for 20 years is not something to brag? I said it shamefully. I have a confession to make. Guys, I don't know how to tell you this, but I've been doing improv since.
00:36:46
Speaker
So, yeah, but it's just about trying to find the interesting the most interesting thing to do with the pieces there that are in front of you. I think an issue that a lot of game masters in in Genesis run into is trying to come up with something that's worthy of a despair or players try to come up with something that's worthy of a triumph. And it simplifies it so much. I feel like if you just look at the the quote unquote pieces on the board, what's in play right now?
00:37:14
Speaker
And how can you turn it up? And so in the case of that downtime, it was like, well, wait, the red cloaks are like just mercilessly killing people in this crowd. Eris has drawn a weapon in the crowd. Of course they're going to come after her. So so stuff like that. I mean, obviously, the first despair Jeff rolled, it was like, well, he gets knocked off the train because why else do you have people fight on a train? Right. That's why that's why they made trains thrown off.
00:37:41
Speaker
So, so, yeah. No, they found that they can move and they're like, well, I guess we may as well put people in them, too. Yeah, just look at the things in play and think about how you can either. Manipulate them for the benefit of the party in the case of a triumph or to the detriment for a despair and don't get hung up on making it applicable to the role. I see that happen a lot when I'm at tables and I have a tendency to sometimes do it to where like
00:38:10
Speaker
I hear it so much when I talk to new people about this system. I was in the Eberron discord talking about Genesis a while back and somebody said, yeah, it's just it feels weird when you roll a triumph on a perception check. And it's like, well, it doesn't have to be you see super duper well, it's not a crit. It's you roll the perception check and something amazing like you come upon a chest full of healing potions or like it can be something totally random. So that's been something that's that's hamstrung me is
00:38:37
Speaker
Because, and I don't even think that was the case when we were doing 20s and ones in the last campaign as being major events. Even then, because it was the same dice, in my head, it was like, it's got to relate to this thing. And that's a crutch, or not a crutch, a hindrance that I need to get over personally. I do want to say two things. One, I'm just joking about improv. I think it's a great, in fact, like half the podcasts I listen to are like world class improvisers that I wish I had the skills of.
00:39:03
Speaker
Uh, good, good improv is phenomenal. What I was doing in college was not. That's a good point. I should have thought of that. Eric would never be in a good improv. Um, the other thing is, uh, of course I think I actually, I do think that Eric does a great job coming up with disparities and triumphs. Uh,
00:39:20
Speaker
far better than any of the triumphs I've come up with, certainly. And also, I don't think that there would be nearly as much having to edit the quibbling as it were if it weren't for the fact that we keep rolling the dang things and you gotta keep coming up with stuff. Like, I had no problem coming up with a triumph because I only roll one this whole campaign.
00:39:37
Speaker
And I will say one thing, Eric takes all of his hemming and hawing that he cuts out and he reinserts it in front of Randy, who's always exactly just right immediately. And Eric just has a thing where he just wants Randy to. It's because everybody loves Randy and it's because they're trying to balance it out. Everyone loves Randy too much. Eric regularly mentions how much everyone loves Randy, and I'm starting to realize it's bitter, not congratulatory.
Character Death and Backup Plans
00:40:08
Speaker
Didn't even tell him about the last downtime episode we recorded. Richard asks, do all the players have backup characters prepared in the event of another despair-a-thon? That's an easy answer for me. No.
00:40:29
Speaker
Nope. Eris is my backup character. I had an entirely different character, but he was a big gruff guy. And so when Jeff told me about Hobb, I'm like, nope, this is going to be boring if there's two of them. I do appreciate that because I had no other ideas. And Eris is a great character. No, I'm very happy with it. But I will say no. I don't have a backup character made because I will not need one because if I have another four despair game, I will quit the show. Please do not hold to that policy. No, of course not.
00:40:59
Speaker
Um, I honestly, I, I, you know, I don't necessarily believe in the woo woo things, but I haven't rolled up another character because I desperately hope I won't need one. I'm having so much fun playing hob that even it like, if something happens where I do necessitate another character, you may have a Jeff list session where I mourn for a minute and try to come up with another character because I'm really, really liking playing hob. And I think he has a lot more potential.
00:41:28
Speaker
hindsight being what it is and knowing what I did with it and it wasn't as much as it could have been. Hobbes definitely has a lot more potential for growth and change and interesting things than Dex ever did. And he was a magical creature. He was literally called a changeling. Yeah. Yeah, didn't do that much, did I? Oh, we don't have a campaign one. Trevor, do you have any backups to Raynard?
00:41:51
Speaker
Not unless you guys want Liza Minelli to come on and do her best. Is she available to play with us? That's my backup character.
00:42:03
Speaker
Trevor's two voices are Posh, British, and Liza. Those are his only two voices. I don't not want that, but I don't necessarily want that instead of Raynard. Well, and so to address the core of Richard's question though, rules as written in Genesis, there is one way
00:42:25
Speaker
A PC can die without the player's consent. And that is rolling 151 or higher on the critical injury table. You do that. I'm sorry. Your Kappa is dictated. You're dead. Outside of there's no like some people house rule if you hit your wound threshold in negative or something, but there's no death saving throws in Genesis.
00:42:49
Speaker
So barring a hundred and fifty one critical injury role, in which case there will be a stun silence at the table and the episode will probably just end there and we'll see you all next week. What is the game state where that is even possible? You have to have multiple crits, crits already, because each time you add up credit ads tend to the role or a highly vicious.
00:43:12
Speaker
Yeah. Vicious plus five or something. Yeah. Gotcha. Or a combination of the two, obviously. I mean, it just doesn't happen. It's real hard. It's real easy to go down, but it's real hard to die barring some sort of environmental thing with us. I mean, if one of us falls off the front of the train and lands on the tracks in front of the train, we probably.
00:43:32
Speaker
But and there's another like the I think the next crit above that is like you will die the next round if you don't heal this critical injury. So so there is that possibility, but you have a chance to stop it. Anyway, having said all that. Unless one of the players has come to me and said, I have a really cool idea for a backup character, I feel like my character has kind of grown stale, I don't want to force anything. But when the moment is right,
00:44:00
Speaker
I think it would be like come up with a really good dramatic fitting death for this character. In that instance, I would wait for a despair or a double despair or something like that and and then have that dramatic moment play out. Additionally, if somebody said, hey, I just want my character to retire or something like that, that's also fine. But yeah, it's going to be a conversation prior to the session in which it happens.
00:44:28
Speaker
that a PC will die unless it's on the critical injury table. So, yeah, it's it's different from D&D in that way because you all are supposed to be the big dang heroes and big dang heroes don't die in a train fight by just getting knocked off the train. Right. So so, yeah. So so just know if a PC does die, it's not my fault. So so, yeah.
00:44:57
Speaker
All right, Richard asks, it's a good question.
Episodic Nature of the Campaign
00:45:01
Speaker
This is a really good question. Yeah, this was solid, solid reviewed spread. Yeah, a lot of the sessions in this campaign seem to run long and then wrap up quick. Whereas the first campaign seemed like a single narrative where each session encounter ran as long as it needed to without any rushed resolutions for the sake of time.
00:45:19
Speaker
Is the system change, or is the systematic change due to the switch to Genesis and its focus on sessions? Is it a natural change due to the need to encapsulate each arc into three episodes in a downtime? Or is it a narrative choice intentionally designed to make this campaign feel more like an episodic serial or a little of all three? And if I may, I want to add, or I want to say to this at the outset, I don't disagree with this assessment, but I think it's exacerbated by the last arc and last downtime.
00:45:50
Speaker
Uh, yeah, last downtime, meaning the family dinner, because obviously we had so much fun prepping for the family dinner that we really did have to buzz through it on the downtime and downtime episodes are single episodes. It had to go that way. Yeah. Yeah. This this arc, that fight went so pear shaped that by the time we got around to the job, it did feel like it went fairly. It felt like it went fairly quickly, but I don't think it felt rushed. Not to me at least. Yeah, I didn't cut anything from the job. Um.
00:46:16
Speaker
necessarily, but I felt that at the end, I will say. But again, I understood exactly what had happened is when a fight goes that pear shaped, it just takes forever to get through the fight. And not to diminish not to diminish Richard's question, because I agree with him. It certainly has. And I just don't remember the other arcs. They could absolutely have felt that way as well.
00:46:37
Speaker
So occasionally, I know I've noticed we've had to do that, but it's been time. But again, I my guess Eric can express what his view is from my perspective. My guess is that it's mostly option C, that we've been kind of going for a episodic serial feel rather than a giant epic.
00:46:57
Speaker
Oh, see, I was thinking it might be option D that you and I gave Eric so much crap for how long the arcs got by review time that he is absolutely keeping it to three because he doesn't want to take that much crap from us. All I said is we need to do a reviewed after every three episodes. I never said I was really happy to say we should made arc reviews. What I said was.
00:47:17
Speaker
9 episodes again, dback, thanks a lot, thanks for nothing. I'm gonna listen to them all tonight I guess. I definitely whined about that too.
00:47:29
Speaker
To answer your question, yes, it is. So option A, it being a systemic change due to Genesis, I would treat sessions like sessions. If we had to do a six episode arc, the stuff would reset when we got back together to play for episodes four, five and six of that arc. So that's that's not that's not part of the issue. Part of it is
00:47:59
Speaker
Well, so part of it is me having a lot more really fun ideas for things that I think are going to be goofy and silly and take up 10 minutes of airtime. And then before you know it, we've been dealing with these health inspectors for 35 minutes. Um, and, and so I was trying, yeah, it was great. You jeopardized the four sales in front of the four people who spend all their time there.
00:48:26
Speaker
But yeah, I'm trying to set up a little narrative threads throughout the the world, making it feel lived in. So having health inspectors show up to the for sales as we like saw kind of not the culmination, but definitely a step up in the tension of the consistent protesters that we've seen outside the war forged housing, trying to include these little things that that can grow and expand or can be totally forgotten if nobody cares about it.
00:48:54
Speaker
Um, and sometimes that stuff goes long and then the fight goes pear shaped. And then all of a sudden we've been recording three episodes for almost five hours and it's like, Oh my gosh.
Adjusting Downtime Episodes
00:49:05
Speaker
Um, or we're recording a downtime episode and I look at the timestamp and wear it an hour and 50 minutes. Um,
00:49:12
Speaker
And in the downtimes, yeah, it's just we can't make those more than one episode. Otherwise, they're just an arc. And and that's something that we're really going to try to avoid. We are examining the downtimes and tweaking them to make them maybe have a little bit more room to breathe. But I. So, yes, right now, the campaign does feel very episodic and very serial because we are
00:49:42
Speaker
I feel like in the same way that for the Star Wars folks out there, the same way Rebels season one felt very episodic and serial. You're setting up the chessboard. You're putting all the pieces in place before the game is afoot kind of thing. And so we're establishing the world. We're establishing the tone. We're establishing these characters because I want you all as an audience
00:50:04
Speaker
before anything starts that has a longer narrative feel, I want you all to care about Eris and Milo and Reynard and Hob and Cath and Sana and Sigil and Ulfin and everybody. So I wanted to take some time. I wanted to take some time
00:50:28
Speaker
Unlike in campaign one where it was like, OK, here's all the characters. This kid is missing and now we hit the road and the game is afoot. Trying to let this campaign feel a little bit more.
00:50:42
Speaker
I don't know. But yeah, it is... Oh, go ahead. I would say I, for one, love the tone shift. I love the more episodic feel. I agree. It's so much more fun to sit down and play knowing there's an element of self-containedness to the episode we're about to do. The amount of
00:51:05
Speaker
like weight that I feel when I sit down to play this right now is just so much smaller campaign one. It was not frustrating. It's absolutely the wrong word because I don't know how to describe it. I always had fun playing campaign one. And I always felt like we put out a good product, but there were times where we would do a full session and not necessarily feel like we'd accomplished much of anything. And it never felt bad. I always had a blast, but it was like,
00:51:33
Speaker
Well, I sure would have liked to have done the thing we talked about doing two months ago. Whereas this one, yeah, every, and I think that might also lend to why the endings feel rushed because we accomplish the job every episode. And that feels like it should have a falling action. It feels like it should have a denouement at the end of it. And it always just, it's kind of, we've been here for almost five hours. So the denouement is we take the thing back to the person, get the money and go eat.
00:52:02
Speaker
And that's not a bad thing, but I felt the only time I think I felt like it was rushed was that the train one where we had done, you know, all that stuff had happened. And then it was like, had a little trouble getting into the, the, into the car. And then once we got in the car, it was done. I was like, well, that was quick.
00:52:27
Speaker
I think of it like I tend to think in terms of Firefly with this campaign and you think of Firefly and they go and do the job and the amount of time we spend after the job is done getting paid is maybe five minutes. I mean like the second job with the box. We carried that all the way to the negotiate the pay with the dude that we were delivering the box to but
00:52:53
Speaker
I mean, I don't mean I'm not suggesting I'm not trying to sound denigrating on this, but does anyone really want to listen to us go back to? What's his face? Who gave us the box in the first place and let him know it's delivered and then also watch us go back to Grum and watch Grum count out our pay that I think we're. I'll say this, I do want us to go back to that guy, a venge, an orphan, right? That was often no runs the for sales. Oh, that's right. Ulrich.
00:53:22
Speaker
I think Ulrich is right.
Recurring NPCs and Empathy
00:53:24
Speaker
Regardless, I do want to go back to him again because I did like the dynamic we had with he had with. Oh, he was very fine. Yeah, I would like to get another job from him, Eric. I'll say I'll say this also. I did always give Eric crap as we got into longer and longer arcs. And I didn't really mean it.
00:53:44
Speaker
When we inevitably start having to do greater than three episode arcs in this campaign, I will more than happily do them because just like last time, I'm having a blast and more playing is more playing. And I do not actually care about having to do more for the review episodes. Maybe I should have said that a year ago, but. Oh, I still think we should do the reviews every three episodes. I don't hate that. Regardless of whether we've finished an arc.
00:54:06
Speaker
Haldan was his name. Haldan, thank you. There is someone named Ulrich though, right? There was an Ulrich in the last campaign? Maybe it was in the last campaign. I think so. Haldan. And again, to go back to the Firefly thing, yes, having some people we get jobs from regularly who become sort of personalities in the show is very...
00:54:25
Speaker
again with that sort of feel. Yeah. Laura asks, and we touched on this, as a follow-up to Richard's question, is the plan for the campaign to stay more episodic or are there going to be more long-term plots once you get into the groove of things? So, yes. If I may take a shot at it, because I think I know the answer.
00:54:50
Speaker
If you think about Firefly as an example, maybe if you think about one that maybe ran longer than 12 episodes or whatever, one of my favorite things always has been and will be in perpetuity are the really fluffy hour long turn your brain off shows that used to air on USA, like Psych and Burn Notice and White Collar. Those three in particular were so good at
00:55:12
Speaker
every episode was self-contained and you could walk into one episode and watch it. But the first eight minutes and last eight minutes or wherever they put them in there, there was a string that could be seasons long to keep you engaged. And I feel like that's where we're leaning. I very much equate it to, depending on your favorite flavor of TV, whether it be X-Files, Grey's Anatomy, Scrubs, like you have,
00:55:42
Speaker
these mini stories that might be an episode long and then you have other stories that are a season long and then you have the overarching character arcs that are the entirety of the show and the people around them and how they're influenced. And so the long term plots might be much more personal
00:56:01
Speaker
Then campaign one was and it might be more about saving a person rather than saving the world. But yeah, we're going to keep the episodic structure, or at least that's the intention as of right now. So we've already kind of see that we can already sort of see that in campaign two because you've got the forgive me, Eric, the the anti war forged group.
Warforged Tensions in Eberron
00:56:25
Speaker
That group, that's been an ongoing thread. It hasn't been an entire arc about that yet, but it's popped up here and there. The nature of our employment by the Boromar clan has been an ongoing arc. Interpersonal stuff. One presumes this thing with trick is not resolved.
00:56:48
Speaker
Uh, and so may come back around. So I think we've kind of already got these threads that are running through the episodes. It's just that it's not.
00:57:00
Speaker
Game of Thrones. It's not every episode is following the whole big arc like campaign one was where it was every episode we did because the world was on the line. Every episode had to be more or less about that. Right. With a few exceptions. But well, and without giving up the goose too much, I if I had to borrow a
00:57:27
Speaker
a single quote from any media property to surmise my mentality when it comes to structuring this campaign. It would be from Iron Man 3 with Tony Stark saying, you create your own demons. And so a lot of the story arcs are going to be informed by things like the trick story arc, like I present a thing.
00:57:46
Speaker
It goes a certain way. And then I continue to build. I'm putting the train tracks in front of the train 20 feet ahead kind of thing. There are some very long form things that like I have planned and written out and ready to go. But a lot of this stuff is going to be defined by the players and your characters and what happens. And and I think that makes for a much more
00:58:11
Speaker
a personal campaign for the characters and the players alike. And and especially in a system like Genesis, you have to do it that way with the presence of things like triumphs and despairs, because one triumph can send your multi-session plans completely out the window. There's there's a great thing in the the Genesis like starter adventure before they'd even publish the core rule, but they did a Terranov mini adventure.
00:58:40
Speaker
And I was listening to an actual play. I forget what show it was of people playing it. And they saw this like band of bandits up on the road ahead and they made a perception check and the character that rolled rolled a triumph and said, Oh, yeah, the bandit there, the orc, because they were playing an orc. That's my cousin. It's like. OK, yeah. So you know, these people, you've met them, you've met these bandits. And if you had planned a huge thing around this group of bandits, that's all of a sudden chucked in the bin and you have to roll with it. So.
00:59:10
Speaker
So it reveals stuff about our characters. I didn't know Eris had that in her when we started the downtime. And then I rolled the triumph and I got in on a red cloaks frequency instead of the watch. It did not occur. I did not know where that conversation was going to go with Eris. I didn't know that's what Eris was going to want to do. Or there's would be that callous about that. So.
00:59:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. The nature of this system makes that kind of big giant planning tricky. Yeah. I mean, if Eric had kicked an entire campaign off and the linchpin was something Jeff said about Hobb when he was creating him, it already would have been destroyed. Right.
01:00:00
Speaker
For example, one of the big things, now this wouldn't be something to carry a campaign around, but one of the first things I thought about Hob was that he's going to be practically mute unless it's just with his friends. Well, that lasted for half a month. Just simply because, well, one, I am who I am and two, I realize, no, Hob would also not care to be selective or quiet around people that he could smash into the ground if he had to. So that's kind of where that, which turns out he can't to anybody ever, but he still thinks he can sometimes.
01:00:30
Speaker
Um, and then the last question we have before, uh, I have one or two and then we wrap up. Um, Laura asks, Philip, did Eris give a name to the Fletcher? And if she didn't kill his name, the answer to the second question is emphatically no.
01:00:48
Speaker
I'm sorry, I'm not mean about it, but I'm just not gonna give the, I'm sorry, Jeff should probably actually read the question. The second half of the question is, if she didn't, can we the fans name the Fletcher, please?
01:01:05
Speaker
We love our listeners. Yes. We hate giving up agency. That's especially me and Philip, both of us. Yeah. Oh, man. Later, when later, we'll tell you a story about me and Jeff and agency over things about our characters that's been going on recently. It's.
01:01:29
Speaker
I mean, right, no, it doesn't have a personal name. The elemental that's in the Fletcher is like an air moat, which is like the elemental plane equivalent of a beetle. I mean, it's such a small creature as to be barely, you know,
01:01:51
Speaker
Not really truly sentient. And so it's not like Tasha, where she's not naming so much the ship as she is the creature that is now powering the ship. And. Yeah, so I mean, it's it's it's the Fletcher Mark two. Yeah. I will say I am not averse to having some fan named things. You know, I
01:02:22
Speaker
Here's what I think would be great. Listeners, throw out some names. Eric has to come up with all these names. Throw some names out there. Not characters, not like we did with Barash at, but just like some good names. I'd love to see them. Eric's staring into the camera now. This can- I love how Jeff's solution is. I don't want to give up HZ over any other thing of mine. So how about you all take over Eric's agency? Eric has an algorithm.
01:02:45
Speaker
has developed a sophisticated algorithm for naming characters, and it's given us Norsen Millhatch. Jeff, why would you mess with that? We've got for every Norsen Millhatch, we get a Garnoth Ickletorn, OK? No, that wasn't part of the algorithm. I was going to say, for every Norsen Millhatch, you get a TARDIS Vittithers, which is just not rolling off the tongue.
Listener Involvement in Naming
01:03:06
Speaker
It was not aesthetically, it was not aesthetically nor kinetically pleasing. I did not like saying TARDIS Vittithers.
01:03:16
Speaker
You know what, listeners, have a talk on the Discord. You can have a name, you can name Hobbs staff, whether or not it ever gets said out loud outside of me, acknowledging that the listeners have named Hobbs staff, I cannot promise, but you can name Hobbs staff. If you say staff you make staff face, I'm going to boot all of you from the Discord. I don't care how much money you paid us.
01:03:43
Speaker
Uh, okay. I do want to, I do want to touch on, uh, it's actually less, the more I've thought about it's less a question for the crew and more something that I would like to just, uh, put out there. The fact of racial tension or speechial tension or whatever it is between organic beings and the war forged is a fact of Eberron.
01:04:06
Speaker
that would be exacerbated in an urban area, and it's something that we would be remiss not to feature, talk about, have in our game.
01:04:20
Speaker
I already mentioned we are five people who have lived our entire lives with the privilege of looking like white guys. With the caveat, I am very proud of my native heritage. I worked forever in tribal education. That's important to me, but I would be lying if I said I don't look straight up white and have walked through my whole life that way. What I want to say is we are going to do our level best to treat these things with sensitivity, but with veracity.
01:04:51
Speaker
but we could very well screw up, and I am willing to be the person that you guys contact to let us know if we do something in bad taste accidentally. I promise anything we do, if it comes off in bad taste, it is unintentional. We are five people who are doing our level best, but if we misstep, please let me know so I can bring it to everybody. We can make it right how we need to. I just wanna put that out there that we are willing to
01:05:21
Speaker
course correct if we make a mistake. I don't want you guys to think that we went into that Eric would have gone into this being a occasional subplot without understanding that we're going to do our best to be sensitive and proper about it. This is partially to just allay any concerns you guys might already have like, okay, they're delving into some stuff they may not be able to talk about. Well, so
01:05:43
Speaker
Well, and to just piggyback off of that and touch on things from my perspective, I am being very intentionally aware of the things that I bring up as a game master in this game, and I am utilizing a lot of great resources
01:06:01
Speaker
including having conversations with people who do not listen to the show, who do not have any skin in the game of my feelings and saying, hey, this is a thing that I want to do. I want to have this dynamic with the warforged in sharn.
01:06:17
Speaker
What and they are people who who live these experiences and and can give me an informed take on how to do it the best way I possibly can. Obviously, once again, we're improving here. So everything that Jeff says, yes, please, if if I say something in the moment, please let me know. But everything from the warforged dynamic to
01:06:43
Speaker
Sigil's pronouns to the nature of Kath and Sana's parents' relationship, all of that stuff has been vetted by people who live those experiences, and I'm trying my best to make sure that I handle it in a way that is appropriate and kind and empathetic and all of that, but also from a place of being as informed as I possibly can be. So, yeah.
01:07:06
Speaker
And I honestly, we're not saying all this right now to cover ourselves for later if we do mess up. This is a we want you guys understand we're being as intentional as possible. And we're trying to keep this podcast and the community at large, a safe place for you to disengage with as much crap as possible and and listen to some fantasy for a while. And I just feel that we would be remiss in doing that if we weren't
01:07:30
Speaker
open to criticism about this particular side and piece of it. I guess it is a standard analog for racial animus, but this would be any marginalized group that feels like we may have misstepped, of course. Anybody want to end on a joke? Whoops. I have a thing I would like to go back to because I remember...
01:07:56
Speaker
The question Laura asked about Eris's emotional state, and I told her that'd be a great review question because she asked it just in the regular thing. And I remembered why I said that because there was one other thing I wanted to mention there. I was also trying to be conscious of the fact that Eris is absolutely terrified of the Ram because of the weird morning mist thing that Eric did during the cage fight episode.
01:08:24
Speaker
And so it's not just Hob, it's this nightmare monster took Hob down. And so I just wanted to go back and throw that out there. That's a good point. Yes. So that's not a joke, but it's lighter, which I think was what you were looking for.
01:08:43
Speaker
I have said in the past that Hobb doesn't carry grudges, but I think we might see a character development. OK, I I want to ask I'm going to go into listener mode real quick because this question did not get asked. And I want to know Eris or not Eris, we just got a lot of Eris emotional state. I want to know Raynard's thought process mentality, emotional state perspective when that happened. Like I. Yeah, Trevor.
01:09:14
Speaker
when Raynard went to go finish the job? Yes, when you did the thing that we all talked about. I was like, I've done some controversial things. Most of them get cut, though. So in that moment, playing as Raynard, I really felt like Raynard believes we all went into this knowing there's going to be some aspect of danger to the job.
01:09:40
Speaker
And that the point is the jobs we take are the jobs we need to finish. And I did consciously move forward in this downtime that Raynard kind of stood up a little bit for Sigil and felt for Sigil. And I wanted to show that when it comes to business, that's Raynard's, when it comes to the job, that's Raynard's
01:10:08
Speaker
path to take is the job. And when it comes to something personal, he's going to be the person to be okay stepping out of, you know, like saying, no, that's someone I care about or someone that cares about me and I'm going to stand up for them or do what I need to do for them.
01:10:23
Speaker
So in a moment, I was like, this is the job. This is what we're hired to do. This is how I'm gonna get money. So it was selfish, but at the same time, also thinking we all signed up for this, the knowing there's danger to, to what we're doing. Gotcha. So
01:10:44
Speaker
I mean, I think that makes sense. I think that I mean, I think Phil or Phil, I think Trevor played it just fine and right. Obviously, the characters would be a little bit annoyed. I want you to know that, Trevor. Yeah. No, I know. I totally understand. I want to say Milo and Randy's feelings are deeply hurt. All right. Well, anyway, this is fine.
01:11:15
Speaker
Thank you everybody for listening. We will be back next week with the beginning of a new arc. Eric, do you want to tell us everything that's supposed to happen in the next one?
01:11:24
Speaker
I'll let you know day of because I'll figure it out. All right. Thank you so much, guys, for listening. We appreciate you guys hanging with us. I'm really happy with where we've been on this new campaign and in the direction it's heading, though, nebulous seems fun. So I'm really excited to go on this journey with all of you.
01:11:45
Speaker
If you want to do more than just listen to us talk for an hour a week, you can get involved at Facebook, at The Geek Pantheon. We also have a Twitter and an Instagram with the same names. Eric puts up DM tips on YouTube at The Geek Pantheon and has recently begun streaming on Twitch at The Geek Pantheon. Right now he's going through Baldur's Gate 3 and then I think after that it's Mario Tennis. And then- Oh, is it really? I assume Jeff was just thinking something else. No, no.
01:12:12
Speaker
No, he's improv Philip. Yes. And yes. And you didn't hand you just said yes. We are doing a regressive tour through systems. He's doing Baldrigate now. He's going to Wii Sports, then Mario Tennis and then Pilot Wings and then California Games for the NES and then Space Invaders for the Atari. That was twenty six hundred. Anyway, we're going to get the hong.
01:12:39
Speaker
If he can find the system, he's been looking for one that'll hook up to a stream deck, his stream machine. Yeah. And then I'll start doing board games once I get out of video game territory. You're going to have a video on Twitch of Eric playing hoop and stick. I would watch that. That would be hilarious. I'd watch it just for when it got away from me. I had to chase it down the hill.
01:13:01
Speaker
Anyway, he is streaming on Twitch at the Geek Pantheon. I feel like this episode turned really mean in the past 10 seconds. Oh, Eric, don't act like you wouldn't want to watch me try to chase a hoop down a hill. That's funny no matter who you are or no matter who's doing the chasing. Anyway, and then we do have our Discord. As far as I know, the easiest way to find our Discord is in the links on the web page, which is thegeekpantheon.com. There will be a link there.
01:13:27
Speaker
Discord's open to everybody, but if you would like access to all the channels that does, or more channels that does require patronage on Patreon, also at the Geek Pantheon. As low as $1 to get access to some of the things, one more than that is $2, and that gets you into the DM spell book where Eric and Philip place all their black magics.
01:13:47
Speaker
It's true. It's true. Yes, that's true. And it goes up and on from there, even to the point that we started a new one shot monthly game, one shot slash board game night slash something that you play with at least one of the of the hosts. And that one is is available
01:14:05
Speaker
It's $25 to join, but we have thrown around the idea if we get enough interest of doing single month, I want to get on in this game and play this game things, which is maybe more reasonable or doable for some of you guys. If you find out that Eric's running Honey Heist and you've always wanted to play it and it's worth $25 to you, let us know and we'll figure out a way to get you into that game kind of thing.
01:14:29
Speaker
Having said all of that, we look forward to talking to you next, playing the game to you next week. I'm Jeff. I'm Phillip. I'm Trevor. I'm Randy. And I'm Eric. Do you guys ever get jealous at how good I am at handling these things?