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C2 Ep. 27 Eberron Reviewed 5
279 Plays4 years ago
Come join us for another Reviewed as Jeff takes the gang through the latest arc and answer questions from all of our wonderful patrons!
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 Gowman, deviouspoptart, Eðvarð Arnór Sigurðsson, Michael Clark, Eric Witman, and Shelby Johnson.
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Transcript
Introduction & Acknowledgments
00:00:00
Speaker
The following episode is brought to you by the generous donations of Laura Pickron, Darryl Delaney, Darren Katska, Devious Poptart, Irene Villarito, Ryan Royce, Andy Dossett, Danielle Bramhall-Smith, Elizabeth Clark, Eric Whitman, Jessica Smith, Charles Compton, Natasha Rallerson, Richard Cree, The Cam Family, David Scrams, Dustin Troop, Edvard Arnaud,
00:00:25
Speaker
Michael Clark, Rebecca Miller, and Shelby Johnson, as well as all of our generous patrons.
Podcast & Campaign Introduction
00:01:18
Speaker
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Eberron Renewed, an actual play RPG podcast using the Eberron campaign setting and the Genesis game mechanics. I'm Jeff. I'm Phillip. I'm Trevor. I'm Randy. And I'm Eric. And since I'm the one introducing, you probably have already figured out that this is an Eberron reviewed episode where the five of us go and take a look at the last arc and answer some questions from our patrons.
00:01:47
Speaker
Before we get to the questions, quick recap of the arc. All of you guys feel free to jump in when you would like to. Philip, you want to start? What happened to the very beginning of the arc?
Vigo's Introduction & Group Tensions
00:01:59
Speaker
Vigo is the worst. Yeah, Vigo is bad. Yeah, Vigo shows up. We find out he's our new handler. He does not have good people skills. He threatens Aeris and gives us a job. It's true.
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah. And that job had like six parts and I honestly only really can speak to the one that I did. So why don't each of us say what our job on the con was and who we took with us. If you guys want to start.
Mission & Heist Challenges
00:02:31
Speaker
Eris had to hack a display machine, holographic display machine so that it would continue to display an image even after the item it was displaying had been removed.
00:02:45
Speaker
And she went with Milo. Yes, and Milo assisted with his absolute ineptitude at finding the documents he was looking for. So Eris had to find those two. And Posey came in for a visit. It's true. It's true. We once again saw Posey and once again did not get her name. Did not. But we did flatter her a little bit as she thought she had recognized this.
00:03:13
Speaker
They're a rougher game. Trevor, what was your job?
00:03:21
Speaker
The job was to sneak into a, not sneak, I guess we went to a party. We didn't have to sneak into it. But we were trying to, it was, Sana and I were trying to obtain an object from a very important person. Yeah, and then Kath and Sigil and Hob were in charge of
00:03:51
Speaker
moving the thing that needed to look like it hadn't moved. Essentially, there was a retinue of guards surrounding the, I pictured it in my head as almost like a, like an Airstream trailer. I don't know why that worked for me. Because it was, it's got something enclosed and lockable that you can strap onto the back of a vehicle. And yeah, so the object was in there and the projection was coming from there. And so it was me, Catherine Sigel's job to,
00:04:19
Speaker
get the truck moving and get out of there. And that's why it took so long, because it was our job. So yeah, and Eric, we'll go ahead and jump a little bit into a question.
00:04:32
Speaker
or two really, Darren and Kurt both asked very similar questions. Darren asked, are you deliberately pulling mechanics such as flashbacks and just choose your approach without doing the planning from blades in the dark? Or are these concepts part of Genesis, Kurt says, Hey, Eric, sounds like you might have borrowed from other RPGs in this arc, perhaps certain forged in the dark game. How does that work? Could you explain what you kept and what you left out? I figured it might be important before we discuss how we how we played this to know what the parameters were. So I'm just going to talk a little bit about what she changed for us in this art.
Adapting RPG Mechanics
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, early on when the concept of this campaign was announced, Blades in the Dark was a system that a lot of people were asking if we were going to be using because it's all about criminals and gangs and it honestly fits this campaign concept rather well.
00:05:23
Speaker
And I had zero exposure to that system prior to deciding that we were going to be doing Genesis and coming up with this campaign concept. So I started reading through the core rulebook for Blades in the Dark once a lot of people brought it to my attention. And there are some really cool concepts in there. And so I pulled the the flashback style concept
00:05:48
Speaker
to try and streamline a high-style job from there. I'm still looking through it, seeing what other things I would like to pilfer from the system and bring it in. But no, there isn't really to address Darren's question more head-on. This isn't a concept found in Genesis. I know it's something that Game Masters in Genesis have used before. I don't know if they stole it from Blades in the Dark, but I have heard about this concept prior to learning about Blades in the Dark from other Genesis GMs.
00:06:19
Speaker
But yeah, so there's some concepts surrounding the flashback mechanic that are very specific to the Blades in the Dark system that I didn't bring over. And I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to make it work well in Genesis. But yeah, so primarily just what we brought over was the concept of doing flashbacks during a job and left most of the mechanical explanations of that in Blades in the Dark specifically out. So yeah.
00:06:48
Speaker
And I'll be honest, I don't think, I know that I didn't take advantage of the flashback idea nearly as much as I could or should have in this arc. And I hope we get another chance because I know we don't talk about campaign one now for fear, but when we did a similar idea with flashbacks to plan in campaign one, I think we all hit the mark a little more on using those. And it was a very fun arc. And I wish that I'd used more of it. I'll say that for sure.
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think I was over reluctant to give up story points for the flashbacks because we use those so much on our actual primary roles that I was, I think I was more concerned with saving them for people pulling off their heroic abilities and bumping up our roles. And I think that made me reluctant to use it. But yes, I also liked the concept a lot and wish we had used it more.
Heist Execution & Outcomes
00:07:47
Speaker
Okay, so yeah, let's talk about what we did to accomplish our goals. Each of us can do the same kind of like we did with describing what our job was. And then we'll hit the button with Vigo that I'm sure everybody wants to hear more about. And then we'll get to the rest of the questions. So Hobb and Kath and Sigil decide the best way to do this is with a diversionary tactic, a distraction.
00:08:13
Speaker
It's not great that it ends up being two giant people picking on a small warforged, but that's the one that was going to work, you know? Yeah. And Eric, at what point did you decide that the guards were also a warforged? Was it when we decided to take sigil with us or when we decided on this plan? I can't recall. You rolled a bunch of threat on the roll to make the distraction and that's when the decision was made. Oh, that was a result of your threat. That makes a lot of sense then.
00:08:39
Speaker
The fight is honestly not particularly noteworthy. It's, I mean, it's a lot of fighting. It was fun to narrate in the moment, but nothing amazing happened. Um, really afterwards when we were all trying to get that stink and truck around was when we started getting into some real Keystone cops BS. Uh, but yeah, we used, we used sigil as.
00:09:03
Speaker
a decoy almost so they could kind of get closer to the thing they were going to be hacking essentially. And it's what I'm learning now.
00:09:15
Speaker
I don't know if it is more with Genesis than with D&D, it might just be the circumstances of our campaign so far. But the best laid plans just absolutely don't matter. And I know that happens in D&D as well, but I feel like whenever we took the time to plan something, it tended to work out a little better when we were playing D&D than now. But boy, I guess eventually it worked and that's all that really matters. I don't remember that being true in D&D. I think, well, and I will say, I think part of that
00:09:45
Speaker
One function of Genesis, this isn't a bug or a defect, it is absolutely a function of it, is so much more is
Role-Playing Systems & Dynamics
00:09:53
Speaker
taken out of the GM's hands in terms of moments like that. Because if it's D&D, I'm setting the DC that you have to pass behind the screen. And so if you all roll
00:10:07
Speaker
six times in a row and you roll under five and then on the seventh row you all roll at eight I can be like yes the DC was eight fine we're moving on but with Genesis you establish the difficulty through the dice and then you roll and you pass or fail right and and so it's a lot more difficult for a game master to make those calls to keep
00:10:30
Speaker
things moving when it ceases to be fun, I guess, for the type of DM that would make that kind of call. And I guess also just the idea that it is an arbitrarily set number in the first place. You don't even have to lower it. It could be like, if we're role playing well, you could set it low because we push some hurdles out of the way with good role play. And that just doesn't exist in Genesis. Everything is mechanical, I guess, is the big difference. Even like getting extra dice or advantage or anything like that,
00:10:59
Speaker
If you don't have a boost die, or if you don't have advantage to pass a boost to somebody, you're not going to get. Well, that's not necessarily true. Eric could, I mean, there are not, this feels weird. I feel like I'm Monday morning quarterbacking you, but I'm just trying to think right now, what could you do in the moment? And you could, okay, well,
00:11:19
Speaker
I mean, you role played really well, so I give you an automatic upgrade or a boost die or something like that. Or you've tried six times now, you've ruled out some things. So here's a boost die. I mean, so the GM has some levers to pull, but the issue is it's all it's all there on the table. And so the GM can't just go, all right, let's you're good. Right. You did it. Good job.
00:11:47
Speaker
Um, listen, if I want to know why I'm wrong, we go to the discord. Okay. Well, you're not wrong. There's more. Um, but yeah, so that's that's Hobbs whole thing.
Party Heist Details & Challenges
00:11:58
Speaker
Next. Um, I mean, Eris and Milo dress up as, uh, maintenance workers and successfully infiltrate, uh, into the,
00:12:12
Speaker
We dismissed some guys on a lunch break because that's one thing we used a flashback for was that we had worked out their schedule. And so we're giving a couple whoever the maintenance dudes are in the room a lunch break. And it's mostly just the two of us failing a few times and then pulling it off except for the interlude in which we are interrupted by Posey and
00:12:41
Speaker
We were told the name of the dude she came in with, but I don't remember it. I'm sure we did get his name and we didn't get almost certain we got his name. He said the two guys names that you dismissed. Maybe that's maybe that's right or something like that. Yeah, maybe that's what I'm thinking of. Anyway, a dude came in.
00:13:02
Speaker
trying to hit on Posey and we were unhelpful in that endeavor to say the least. Well, and Eris was exposed directly for the first time to Milo's heroic ability. Yes, that's true.
00:13:23
Speaker
started talking to his wife in the midst of this. And she had some information that Milo has no idea how she would know that the runes were backwards work from the other side. So he's a bit puzzled because she seems to know things that he has no
00:13:50
Speaker
idea how she would know these things. Yeah, that was a really interesting wrinkle. Like Kylie knowing things Kylie would know and passing them off to Milo was one thing. Kylie gaining knowledge in the afterlife, whatever it is, and being able to pass new stuff on to Milo is a whole different level of perspicacity. There's a... And then some interesting... Y'all's adventure.
00:14:19
Speaker
I was going to say most of the action was upstairs. Yeah. Trevor, tell us about your party. Uh, well, it went okay and then it didn't. And then, um, it got a little better and then it got weird and then it went bad. And then, and then you kissed Norsin and then Eberron reviewed, Eberron renewed, summed up.
00:14:44
Speaker
Trevor, do you remember? What happened? Are you here? I was giving a summary. It's using my descriptive words.
00:14:59
Speaker
But the important thing is we succeeded through trial and error and some suspect choices like yelling to get arrested basically to distract from Norsen doing whatever he was going to do with Reynard and then
00:15:30
Speaker
I do forget who ended up coming to the rescue. Was it Raynard again? Just smooth talking? With the police? And with the guards? Yeah, you basically told them that you had his drink. That was what you were shouting about and they knocked it out of your hand when they went to go arrest you. Yes. So, it was all that charm, really.
00:15:59
Speaker
Mm hmm. Saved a day. That is kind of Raynard's M.O. So we all succeed. We all make it back to the four sales. Uh, V goes there by himself after hours eating something.
Post-Mission Confrontations & Reflections
00:16:15
Speaker
Oh, Finn's there. Huh? Oh, Finn's there. Somebody had to cook the food. I mean, maybe. But yeah, so we give him the stuff and he gives us the money. Um,
00:16:29
Speaker
And then I try to have a civil conversation with him. And he threatens to kill me. No, we just summed it up again in the review that just dropped yesterday as they were recording this. But basically the point was Hob trying to say, listen, man, don't kill our vibe over here and please don't threaten people I care about, because I can't,
00:16:59
Speaker
Todd never said, because I can't abide that for too long. And Viggo's just not interested in being spoken to with any sort of... He doesn't want to be questioned, and I guess he felt questioned. I'm putting this on Viggo, but I don't care because I don't like him.
00:17:18
Speaker
Well, and the one important aspect of what you said was we could walk away at any time. Like that was one wrinkle of a Vigo that he latched on to in his response. Yeah. And I really think that I think I don't think Eric thinks this way in conversations, but I think there's a little bit Eric thought he might have been checkmating me with listing off all these things that the clan, the clan does for us. It's like, well, yeah, you don't do that at the goodness of your heart. You do it because we work for you and we could all survive without it. Maybe not here, but somewhere like.
00:17:50
Speaker
The only person whose power comes from being close to sharn in this situation is Vigo. So I don't know. But yeah, it really, somebody mentioned it in the Discord and I absolutely, when he said I could have you killed in an hour, like some phrase like who needs an hour or something like that, absolutely crossed my mind. But Hobbs is smarter than I am and would know better than to say that.
00:18:17
Speaker
And then we get to go to another party in the downtime. So anybody else have anything about the main arc that I didn't bring up? Don't think so.
Flashback Mechanic Feedback
00:18:25
Speaker
Okay. Let's do a couple of questions that happened during the run of the arc. So Irene asked, did you find any downside or warnings to the flashback mechanics in a heist? I'm sure if I thought about it, I could think of some downsides, but I really like it.
00:18:40
Speaker
mostly just we didn't use it enough. I think that's was the main thing is we just we were more cautious than we probably needed to be with using it.
00:18:50
Speaker
Well, I think I think maybe the the cost of a story point may be a bit too prohibitive if it were like to strain like it was almost like casting a spell. That's a thought. And that that might make it a bit more accessible.
Character Backstories & Family Dynamics
00:19:03
Speaker
I agree with that. It would just the reason I didn't go with that initially is because it it hit certain people harder than others because Milo strain
00:19:13
Speaker
is a lot more of a valuable currency than Hobbs because Milo has to cast spells as well in order to be effective. So that's kind of was the two sides of me going back and forth between using strain and using story points. But yeah, well, we'll keep tweaking it as we move forward. All right. Randy Laura wants to know how long had keg bottoms been around for? 76 years. Okay. Started by his grandfather.
00:19:43
Speaker
his grandfather Hogan. And then when he retired his son, Olam. And then when Olam passed with a heart attack, Milo took over until it burned until somebody burned it down. There you go. There you go. We don't need that passive voice. So you said it was 70 what? 76 years. 76 years. That's I did.
00:20:12
Speaker
didn't expect that. Pretty cool. You know, also in the family started started by his grandfather. I feel like maybe you mentioned growing up at it once. Yeah, we were talking about it. I think about it. So yeah. Um, okay, also Randy, Richard would like to know, does Milo frequently have moments of depressed imbibing or was he partially and purposefully avoiding Reynard and his solitude and allowed his thoughts to wander to the past?
00:20:42
Speaker
Um, I would say that he wasn't necessarily avoiding Raynard. I would think that possibly earlier he had been sitting with Raynard and that at some point he just went over and joined Hob. And mostly that's because he's known Hob the longest. He
00:21:08
Speaker
values what Hobb has to say, and he wanted to get Hobb's thoughts on reopening, rebuilding keg bottoms. And then while Hobb was off getting food, then Milo's thoughts just kind of wandered. I would say typically if Milo gets depressed like that, it's probably typically in the morning when he wakes up, maybe at night when he goes to bed.
00:21:38
Speaker
So I wouldn't say that it was just, it's a, I wouldn't say it's a normal occurrence. Okay. Danny has a question for Eric. How extensive is Sana's wardrobe? Does she have a few really opulent outfits or a larger amount of flashy yet mid range, mid grade, pardon me, pieces?
00:21:56
Speaker
Uh, Sana actually, unlike Kath, this is one very big distinguishing factor between them. Uh, Sana finds a lot of utility in expressing herself through her clothing, and so she does dress much more flashy, even her more, uh, utility-style clothing, um, like her light armor and stuff she would wear on a job, is still very, some might say loud, expressive, very bright colors. Um, they aren't...
00:22:25
Speaker
They aren't expensive, I guess. Like she doesn't have like 12 glamor weave dresses or something because while she does come from a considerable amount of wealth, her and Kath intentionally left.
00:22:41
Speaker
didn't leave their family behind, obviously, but left the support, the financial support of their family behind in order to make sure that they could exist on their own. And so, yeah, Sana spends a fair amount of her income on clothing, but she doesn't take money from her family to buy really expensive clothes, so. Yep. So, okay, this is,
00:23:10
Speaker
This might be a dumb question. This is one from Jeff. He didn't put it in the Discord, but... Well, can't take it then. It's too late. I missed the cutoff. No. So this... Kath and Sona very publicly work as crime doers for the Boromar clan. They're also very publicly the children of public people. Are Kath and Sona's mom and dads so above this
00:23:41
Speaker
plan stuff because of their status, that it's not even a concern that people know who their family is and things like that. Because you mentioned, I mean, even Boromar, even Satan Boromar's home is not nearly on the level of their parents.
00:23:56
Speaker
So it's something that we haven't really addressed a whole lot of, but like the Boromar family and the concept of the Boromar clan is known throughout Sharn. And so somebody could say that they work for the Boromar family. And, you know, people might assume that they commit crimes, but it's not a guaranteed thing. And we haven't really delved a whole lot into it because the one unity dinner downtime we had, we got to the party with like five minutes left in the episode.
00:24:25
Speaker
But I'll just go ahead and say because I kind of intended for that to come up.
00:24:31
Speaker
their parents really don't have a huge understanding of what they do. And it's just very much like, oh yeah, we work down in this district with like casinos and restaurants and we just do odd jobs around there and hop from job to job. And so that kind of half truth of we're freelancers and then they don't elaborate anymore. So yeah. As far as your mother knows, you're little Johnny nicely or whatever it was.
00:24:59
Speaker
So yeah, their families aren't largely aware of what they get up to. And I mean, once again, it's just the differing news cycles on different levels of the city. In your part of the city, sure, yeah, people probably see Sana and Kath and go, oh, those are a couple of Boromar people. But up in their family's part of town, that's not going to be common knowledge. Like, they're not going to know who Boromar's people are and who aren't. So yeah.
00:25:27
Speaker
All right. More from Danny. Thank you. Thank you for the question, Jeff. I don't think that do not encourage that guy. All right, Trevor. Danny asks, how does Raynard reciprocate reciprocate in his relationship with Kipling? Does he have a favorite low budget, high class way of hosting fancy coffee or something? Or does he not reciprocate these little favors he pulls and is slowly burning out his bridge and contacts with the upper crust world by being all take and no give?
00:25:57
Speaker
Ooh, that is a deep question. I feel like you might not be able to answer the second part. That might be an Eric question. Well, I would say there is a lot more take than there is give.
00:26:10
Speaker
You mooch. But I would say probably smoothing things over by being like, I have tickets to a show this weekend. You're going with me. You know, just more like small gestures like that to kind of keep it more like, yes, welcome to our friendship. It happens. Rather than like, here's a big favor in return for what you did for me.
00:26:35
Speaker
Right. Okay. Richard asks, when Reynard rolled the despair and triumph, given that Erik did not reveal the effects of the despair right away, could Reynard had used the triumph to declare himself immune to the despair's effects, at least for a round or two? In other words, I feel like if Erik had mentioned that the despair was Norse and being at the party, the triumph could have been that he didn't recognize Reynard, given all the chaos going on in the lab during that job. Or would that have counted as nullifying the spirit of the despair and so would not have been allowed?
Party Complications & Character Reactions
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, not to give just too short of an answer, but the whole threat of Norse and being at the party is that he's going to see Reynard like there's if it's a guarantee that Norse and doesn't recognize Reynard, then there's no threat of Norse and being there. So I would have said that, no, that that kind of offsets the despair through a triumph. And so, yeah.
00:27:27
Speaker
Did we, am I remembering this right? Did we use a tramp to slow down his noticing Raynard? Like to buy time, I think. From him getting over there, he got distracted by Kipling for a while. So, yeah. Yeah. And so that's totally fine. And it kind of goes with what Richard's saying of offsetting it for a round or two. And that's fine. But something like Norsin doesn't recognize Raynard would have taken the punch out of the despair.
00:27:56
Speaker
I believe that was also my second triumph and despair that I rolled. I think that's true. It is true. The dice were wild in this arc. They really were. But wild in both directions, unlike the train job where they were just wild. Much like in the last campaign where we rolled a natural 20 and then a natural one in close succession, we didn't use one to nullify the other either direction. It's more fun to...
00:28:24
Speaker
augment than to cancel out or nullify. Yeah. Okay, Laura asks, Are you ready to turn Vigo into the campaign's big bad evil guy after him threatening our beloved Eris? So and directing every listener is uncontrollable rage at him. She was quickly feel I feel bad that the threat to hob is not like
00:28:43
Speaker
Oh, Laura doesn't care about my characters. Never has her. Right. That's right. I forget. Maybe it's that no one thinks Hob is actually in danger from vegan. There is that.
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah, I will say that Laura was disabused of this every listener's uncontrollable rage pretty quickly. We were like, I mean, he's a bad guy. He said bad stuff. I don't know. I don't know. I don't get it. Yeah, Vigo had his partisans. Yeah. And some listeners were like, yeah, you don't talk to your mob boss that way. Which I will maintain that Hobb did nothing wrong.
00:29:20
Speaker
Well, I'm sure I think Hob was way more insubordinate than Harris, frankly. Harris said, I hear you just fine. Anyway. So, Eric, I guess the idea I would argue the the reduced episode that came out after this question was asked by answers a lot of that question. I mean, all I will say is this
00:29:49
Speaker
And I said this in the Discord when people were talking about Viggo's lovely speech he gave at the end of the arc. This is one rare instance where I intended for the listeners to hate an NPC and they hated them. So no, the reaction was expected and I mean, you'll just see what plays out with Viggo in the future.
00:30:15
Speaker
Can I ask an unrelated or a tangentially related but bigger than this art question? Yeah. Of all the NPCs you created that were disliked, which one was the most surprising to you that it was disliked? Elodrin. Elodrin. Yeah. Yeah. Barak's dad from campaign one. Yeah. The hatred that he gets, I still find confounding at times. So
00:30:41
Speaker
Anyway, moving on. Context of that introduction probably had a lot to do with that one. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, proceed. If you're worried about campaign one spoilers, just skip through the last 20 seconds. Nope, that's not going to help. I just like the idea of doing a spoiler warning after the spoiler. Seems funny. I'm wacky that way. Forget the last 20 seconds. Crazy Jeff. I don't think it was asked, but it was asked.
00:31:10
Speaker
There was a point because I mentioned the discord there was a point that I had to look away from Eric was doing his thing talking like a dummy or whatever. I don't really pay attention
00:31:22
Speaker
But no, when he said I don't like your tone or watch your tone or something like that, Eric pointed into the camera and I was looking at his screen and I had to walk away to preserve my actual friendship with real Eric because that's a trigger thing for me. He didn't know about. He had no idea. But like the pointing in my face actually upsets me greatly, regardless of context or person. I think if Ferris did it, I'd be fine.
00:31:52
Speaker
But so I like, I really did. I was like, okay, this is, I still like this game.
00:31:59
Speaker
I had no idea what anybody's reaction in the moment was when I threw out that entire spiel because I was just looking straight down the lens of my camera. So yeah, that was a lot of fun. That was a fun moment to play out. That was a good one. If in my head when Hobb sat down and started talking in the back of my head, I was going, what are you doing, Jeff? No, don't do this. What? No, I don't want to do this. No. And then ran with it. Darren asks, can the campaign handle a falling out between the PCs and the board of Mars?
00:32:29
Speaker
or is working for them baked into the format of the game? This plays a bit into campaign one not in a spoiler sense but just as a reference point. I have learned and grown a lot as a DM slash GM since campaign one and there were some I guess some points of
00:32:50
Speaker
character involvement that were structurally integral to the campaign, to put it a certain way. Some characters were load-bearing. And so if they were removed, the campaign couldn't really continue the way that I foresaw it. Nothing in this campaign is load-bearing. This is totally modular. If there's a huge falling out between the PCs and the Boromars, I have contingencies for that. If the Boromars and the PCs become more integrated with each other, I have plans for that. So no.
00:33:18
Speaker
I would dare say the campaign can handle anything happening right now at this phase. Obviously, the further we get into it, the more that's going to be unlikely. But yeah. And I have no idea what we're like. It could go anywhere as far as I'm concerned, too. Like, you know what I mean? As a player, like. All paths are viable, which is kind of fun. But to answer Dan's question directly, yes, the campaign could handle a falling out between them.
00:33:44
Speaker
I would say at this phase, like up until this point, working for the Boromars was baked into the format of the campaign, because we have to establish the world, but yeah. Okay, so let's jump into talking about the reduced episode, or downtime episode as we call them, around the microphones, I guess.
Downtime Episode & NPC Interactions
00:34:04
Speaker
It's not a table anymore. It's several disparate tables. We are invited to a party at Satan Boromar's house.
00:34:12
Speaker
and it's something none of us have experienced before. Raynard does not prepare us properly to go there. But essentially the downtime episode was us meeting some other people who work for the Boromars, all of whom were far more pleasant than our boss. Well, maybe not far more pleasant. The scavenger lady that Raynard and Milo chatted with actually didn't seem the coolest, but everybody else was pretty great.
00:34:40
Speaker
I mean, is that her fault? Is that the way that conversation went, her fault? No, no, no, no, absolutely. At first, it seemed like she was a problem, but it turns out she may just really have a problem. She seemed really snooty and snobbish.
00:34:55
Speaker
Uh-huh. And then when it turned out that she didn't dislike you because you weren't an elf or the, or which is kind of what it seemed at first or whatever, when it was clear that she thought you were a Boromar and has a problem with the family, I was like, Oh, well that is a horse of a different color, isn't it?
00:35:10
Speaker
And then, yeah, she became a much more sympathetic character as she got more annoyed at Raynard being drunker and drunker, nicer and nicer to Milo and Sana. Yeah. And there's there's just it. Every downtime episode kills me because there's there's so much in that party because every group was fully fleshed out and has a full story to them. And so it just it there's so much left to to discover about all of the characters that were at that party.
00:35:38
Speaker
Except for maybe Mira. You all have a pretty good beat on Mira. I absolutely could have spent two more hours at that party. Yes, I wanted to talk to you, all of them. I'm starting to wonder if this campaign doesn't become our quest to become socialized just so we can have a bunch of party episodes.
00:35:54
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I mean, uh, there were, I think four total groups at that party and you all touched three, right? Three of them skipped the, the Ravens. You didn't talk to, we did the peer lads and the, by the way, are those names, the goals and the peer lads and the Ravens are those you or are those cannon?
00:36:15
Speaker
Those are me. Okay. Yeah, everything when I think of them. Everything outside of Satan, mala and a lira, the actual like, Satan, his wife and his daughter, right? Those are canonical. Everything else to that party was all all me. So
00:36:37
Speaker
Yeah. The reason they call themselves the goals almost made me laugh. It's great because it works. It's dumb because it works. I'm not going to reveal how long I sat there trying to think of how to get there, but it's longer than it should have been. Next time we have an opportunity to introduce ourselves, Aeris is definitely going to call us the sills somewhere between.
00:37:07
Speaker
Oh, but we did find out that we're black lamps. So that's something. Yep. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Which are different than dark lanterns only in semantics. Yep. There was an arm wrestling contest that came to a draw. Mm hmm. Harris Harris had some awkward conversation, which can really just describe any time Harris has conversation. But with the warforged who was trying to be nice,
00:37:37
Speaker
Explain to those of your co-hosts who don't know what you meant, the part they gave away or whatever gave up. So at the beginning of the last war, there were literally just five nations. Okay, so you have a Khair, Breland, Onder, Karnath.
00:38:04
Speaker
And as the war goes on and the main belligerents got exhausted, would it be fair to say colonial people, Eric? Yeah. Groups that had been subsumed by the larger nations. Yeah.
00:38:24
Speaker
Separatist factions form, and towards the end of the war, as the War Exhaustion kicks in, there are a number of rebellions.
Eris's Backstory & Warforged Perspectives
00:38:35
Speaker
So Drowam breaks away from Braland a few years before the war ends. Kire, as Largo becomes independent from Braland, Kire breaks in three
00:38:50
Speaker
with the goblinoid mercenaries seizing control of Dargun and the Valinar elf mercenaries seizing control of Valinar, and then of course Kire itself is destroyed by the morning. My background for Eris
00:39:08
Speaker
is that her family lived in the southwestern portion of Khair that was eventually overrun by the Dargul Rebellion, and that is where this was captured and became a thrall.
00:39:27
Speaker
and spent the remainder of her childhood. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed Eric giving me a moment to talk about Kyra because I haven't really gotten to with Eris because she's been walking around in a Kyran flag for a long time and it was fun to get a moment to do that. The reference there is from Eris's perspective because again, Eris does not have a nuanced perspective on a lot of things. From Eris's perspective,
00:39:54
Speaker
the army should have come riding to the rescue and saved her and her family and didn't. From a more nuanced, higher level perspective, there's 8,000 different reasons for that, but it doesn't matter to Eris that there are 8,000 different reasons for that.
00:40:14
Speaker
Well, and saying that to a Khairan soldier, especially, it's like, I am a product of your failure. Yeah. And to clarify the people to Eris, I think we didn't get a chance to discuss it because we desperately needed to move on with the episode. But Eris,
00:40:31
Speaker
Eris is really fascinated with Warforged and with House Canis in general and with all of their creations and finds the Warforged really awesome. That's why she's really fascinated by Sigil and doesn't specifically
00:40:49
Speaker
so much blame the army as the government would be more clarity into her position. Then we go, we see Satan, he offers us meat and that was Sattlesworth. That was just so funny. I don't know why it was so funny, but that just killed me. Meat of
00:41:14
Speaker
uncomfortably ambiguous provenance. I don't know. It's some animal the Druids have. I've decided it's an Oryx. He did say bovine. So at least we know it's of that family.
Vigo's Role & Future Improvements
00:41:29
Speaker
And he explains to us that he basically is like, yeah, I know Vigo sucks, but he's our guy that sucks. And now he's your boss. So do what he says. And if he gets too terrible, I guess let me know. Run it up the chain.
00:41:44
Speaker
Yeah, give him time to to groom him further. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's what it is. It's basically he's saying we're going to try to fix Vigo. Please bear with me. And then he says something pretty interesting to Milo as we're heading out when he says, hey, we're going to talk about rebuilding soon, making you whole again, which is pretty rad. We also got some level of.
00:42:10
Speaker
I don't want to hesitate to say commitment. We got positive noises about getting something done about Sigil's apartment building. And I am going to, one way or another, even if it's just background, Hob, I just forgot that Savia's on the city council. Hob would have actually absolutely said something to her. So that'll be a channel for it as well. Yeah. Yeah. I forgot about that too.
00:42:40
Speaker
because I don't know that he has any sway at all with Savia. He is compensated for a position, but I assume they have to like each other at the very least. So yes, we did get that. There's got to be some kind of trust. You're a bouncer at her club, so. Yeah. So all that to say, as far as the Vigo stuff, like. We don't know. We don't know. I would say we don't know.
00:43:11
Speaker
And I mean, the next, so, so the first question is, uh, Eric, this TV's pop tart, Eric, I'm curious on your take on the pacing for the V go aftermath. If you're in your seat, your options were to have it addressed quickly or let it linger for another arc or so before giving Satan the chance to meet with the crew to address the concerns. What was the deciding factor to have that resolved in this downtime episode instead of one further down the line?
00:43:35
Speaker
He wanted for me to keep talking to him, so he... No, the reason to have the meeting with Satan was to allow the party and the players to know that there are members within the organization that are supportive of them and their efforts, because the danger of letting that scene with Viggo linger too long
00:44:00
Speaker
is making the characters and to some extent the players feel like they're operating within an organization that there's no future and there's no floor. And so they just kind of have it fall out from under them and it becomes
00:44:16
Speaker
Potentially disengaging. I think we had a lot of moments. I we keep referencing even though we said in this campaign We weren't there were a lot of moments in campaign one where I wasn't cognizant to To that and just kind of had a whole lot of negativity that lingered for long stretches of time and so I wanted to
Campaign Narrative Threads & Timeline
00:44:35
Speaker
not totally balance things out because this is in no way resolved at all. This is an ongoing story in this campaign of the relationship between the party and Viggo and Satan and the rest of the family's role in that. And so I don't want anybody to think that this was putting a bow on that
00:44:54
Speaker
on that scene with Viggo and like okay well uh satan took care of it um but that was the reason why i didn't have it linger for a while because the other thing to remember is you all get our game every week and get to engage with our game every week we do it
00:45:13
Speaker
once every five to six weeks. And so it feels a lot longer for us between these arcs where... There was a legit month between the Milo and the Habibigo conversation and the Satan proclamation. Yeah. Yeah. So they had plenty of time to have it linger. And if I were, say, hypothetically, let it linger for
00:45:37
Speaker
two arcs between reviews and downtimes and recording cold opens. We're looking at potentially close to three months before the players get any kind of resolution with that. And so that that's part of the reason for it is just a behind the scenes production reason as well. So, yeah. OK, Liz asks, are the players expecting any sort of repercussions from Vigo? Are you going to prepare in any way if he gets petty?
00:46:05
Speaker
I assume that Vigo's response to receiving a dressing down from the head of his house is, those jerks got me in trouble. That seems to be exactly who he is. So I assume that he's going to come in next time irritated at us because he got in trouble. Yeah. My guess is it's going to be several more interactions with Vigo before he realizes that middle management with
Vigo's Impact & Player Perceptions
00:46:35
Speaker
talented underlings whose main motivation is disliking them is not a safe place to be. It's true, especially if you're going to continue to eat at our restaurant without any kind of security. I'll say that I didn't express this to Eric. I don't think maybe maybe right before we did the reduced, like there was a part of me that was like, but he's our handler, too. Like he's going to be in every arc now and he sucks this much. But I mean, I think that
00:47:06
Speaker
Yes, I'm expecting repercussions from Vigo. Yes, I think that we will be able to handle it until it turns sinister because he seems... I mean, you use the word petty. That's exactly what he is. His repercussions are going to be something that will make him feel better immediately with no regard for how this is going to play in the long term, it seems. Because am I wrong, Eric? He's not qualified for this position, right? He's a hothead born on third base.
00:47:36
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he doesn't have so. So typically speaking, it would be somebody like Grum who had been in your all shoes and done this work and eventually hit a place where they didn't want to be in the field anymore and then would become a handler. Whereas Vigo, it was much more. You're a member of the family and we need something for you to do so. As far as preparation for it, I don't know how we could. We're just going to have to deal with what comes and if it gets bad enough.
00:48:06
Speaker
I don't know, knock him off a tall tower. I don't know. Eric wants to know, have Kath and Sana ever run into Vigo before in their work and what are their thoughts on him?
00:48:20
Speaker
I mean, Cath and Sana have been working for the clan for a long time. They were probably aware of Viggo well before he became Ural's handler, and their thoughts on him would be the same as anybody's thoughts on a person like that. They don't like him much. But they also understand that they're, especially now more so than ever, their gold comes from his pockets, essentially. And they...
00:48:48
Speaker
They have worked too long and too hard in this business to let their personal feelings get in the way of of their their safety and their livelihood. So that's exactly how Milo was looking at it. It's I mean, it's safe to assume we all had had some interactions with
00:49:13
Speaker
before this, right? I mean, because he's around. And we know that Hob's been his bodyguard, so Ayres probably met him. The wonderful thing about Vigo as a character though, and this is just pulling the curtain back a little bit even further. I made Vigo up on the spot. Like when we were recording your cold open and you came up with the concept of what you want to do, I was like, okay, I just have to create a really obnoxious nephew.
00:49:39
Speaker
of the family, and he's become this much bigger part of the campaign than I think I ever anticipated, which is one wonderful feature of just tabletop role-playing games in general, is this character is now a vital part of the campaign, and when I was planning the campaign before we started, I did not have the name Vigo written anywhere. Yeah, I bet you didn't plan on making him our boss right after you told us all he was a big racist either, did you?
00:50:06
Speaker
I'm interested to watch the scene you play with yourself where Sigil and Viggo have to have a conversation.
Whimsical Campaign Elements & Character Futures
00:50:15
Speaker
Danny asks, is the car named after Tasha of cauldron and hideous laughter fame? Boat. Yes.
00:50:28
Speaker
There you go. Oh, she, she is. I have decided that she is. Yes. I remember when you came up with the name. Yes. You were cycling through. Yeah. I ran through three or four before it landed on something that was just easy to say. I think I landed on several things that I liked the sound of, but we're just going to be obnoxious to make everyone pronounce over and over again, because that's usually my process. This is garble four. No.
00:50:55
Speaker
Carble Thor is going to be a thing now. I'm going to build a garble Thor. It's not garble Thor. David, Dan, can we move on? Yes. And I have some thoughts on.
00:51:09
Speaker
who Tasha is, the original Tasha is in Eris' mind. I have no idea who Tasha is. Well, I, Philip, have several ideas of who Tasha probably is in Eberron, but I have no idea who Tasha is in the Eberron that Eric is the GM of. But I have some thoughts as to who Tasha is to Eris, which have not had any reason to come up. So I will leave that alone for now in case it does have an opportunity to come up.
00:51:40
Speaker
Okay, Danny asks, this is for all four of us. I love this question, by the way. Good job, Danny. Danny, she asks, I won't ask where, but which of these four protagonists see themselves in five years and which are struggling to see themselves even next week. And I think she's talking about the characters, not the players. Shoot straight. Feels like a toss up. If I'm reading this question right,
00:52:11
Speaker
She is asking, are characters considering their futures or expecting to survive to see them? I would say Milo is. I mean, Milo's making plans to rebuild. He's been in the family, involved with the family for several, several years. I mean, just life goes on for Milo.
00:52:36
Speaker
As long as Hobbes immediate needs are met and nothing that he cares about is his imminent threat, he does not really consider the future much. He is a creature of the present. That's really it. I mean, he doesn't, he doesn't, he considers the future in so far as these are things that need doing. He does not consider the future in so far, like he's not considering whether he's going to one day be the handler. He's going to move up in the Boromar clan world and
00:53:05
Speaker
Grom's gone after an unfortunate accident. Well, yeah, or just, you know, the continuing to fail up. It does happen because it goes to somewhere else. And then, you know, so he's that that's not he's not on a track for anything. I think Eris.
00:53:25
Speaker
tends to not think very far ahead. I think that's fairly clear in her behavior that Eris doesn't put doesn't think too many steps down the line. I think she makes a number of assumptions about that. She'll be fine, but I don't think she has. I think she has long term plans.
00:53:54
Speaker
in mind. I mean, made lots of jokes in the last arc about Eris contemplating ways to murder Viggo. Eris probably has several daydreams about ways to murder Viggo and maybe even has some of them sketched out hilariously in her workbook, but has no like, the daydream would not then contemplate what would the consequences be of Viggo's murder?
00:54:24
Speaker
Well, I love the idea that Eris is at that perfect cocktail of like late high school, early twenties of like thinking you're going to live forever, but having zero plans for what to do with that time. Like, oh, you can do that well into your thirties. Trust me. Um, but I mean, also, it's also true and I've tried to play this. It's a little tricky to play this in a pulpy game.
00:54:53
Speaker
Eris is not brave. Eris can be reckless and Eris doesn't necessarily think about the consequences of her actions, but Eris is not brave. So, you know, yeah, Eris
00:55:09
Speaker
Eris might daydream all sorts of really elaborate and entirely plausible ways to cause the death of Viggo to look like a horrible, tragic accident. But she's not Drakir. She wouldn't then take the next step of, ah, excellent. Now I've solved it. Let's do it. Well, as you can all imagine, Reynard just lives moment to moment.
00:55:31
Speaker
Um, day by day, what's the end goal? Drink by drink. Yep. So, I mean, of course there's the, uh, the daydreams and the hopes of rising to wealth again, but there's no real plan to get there other than pick pocketing and, and doing the jobs. So. Okay. And.
00:55:54
Speaker
Last two questions are, Laura asks, Philip, would you go into more detail about the decorations on Aeris' coat as per the wonderful artwork recently released? And Irene asks, where does Aeris do her shopping? Is there an Eberron equivalent to Hot Topic? So, Philip, if you would speak on Women's Fashion for a moment, please. Have we talked about the wonderful art that we got to release? On and Eberron review? I don't believe so. I believe it's just been posted on social media and in the Discord.
00:56:22
Speaker
Yeah, we have a wonderful piece of art that is on the Facebook group, or, I mean, it's kind of buried in the Discord at this point, but that you all can go check out of our intrepid crew at a Sharn City Watch lineup having their visage recorded. I want to know the scenario of that because I'm imagining them bringing someone, and the person's like, well, all of them, of course. Yeah, yeah.
00:56:51
Speaker
Typically, lineups are people who look similar, meet some sort of descriptor. My favorite about that is I gave that description to the artist and then sent them the rundown of all of their personalities. Obviously, I gave a much more detailed description of the three NPCs than the listeners or even in some cases, you all have yet to uncover. I love that she had Sana giving a thumbs up at a police lineup.
00:57:16
Speaker
Yeah, we did it. And just so we've said it, the artist's name, I don't know her her name, but she can be found on Twitter and Instagram at I believe it's in a cola e n e c o l a. She is the artist that made our piece. And I'm sure I'm at her Twitter right now. And I don't see our picture. But if you scroll down, I'm sure it's there. And I know it's on her Instagram. So you can see there as well.
00:57:46
Speaker
All right, so go ahead and her commissions are open if you're looking for an artist to do any work. There you go. And Jeff and I can express that she is extremely patient and tolerant because Jeff and I had some very, very particular ideas about what our characters looked like. And she was and Eric was extremely patient and indulgent of our the word I was going to use. Specificity. Specificity. There we go. Sure.
00:58:16
Speaker
Anyways, yeah, one of the last things that I asked for in the court in the course of this was for her to add a bunch of patches to Eris's coat. And so then, of course, once she did that, I had to come up with what they all meant because of course I did.
00:58:44
Speaker
So as to going into a little more detail on some of them, some of them I don't necessarily have or want to share all the detail of because kind of what I've done is hung various aspects of things I've learned about Aeris on some of these patches.
00:59:04
Speaker
Um, and so some of those things have not come out in the game. And so I don't necessarily want to go into all of them, but, um,
00:59:17
Speaker
Laura, I got a little clarification from Laura. She was specifically asking about the rainbow patch. So obviously the rainbow patch would mean something different in Eberron. And so I started sort of complaining what that would be. So I decided that rainbows are associated with the traveler who is the sovereign of change and artifice and travel and deception.
00:59:43
Speaker
and decided to the degree that Eris prays, which is not much, it is directed at the traveler because the traveler would certainly be the most relevant of the sovereigns in Eris's difficult life. So when Eris
01:00:06
Speaker
awkwardly throws a prayer out, it's directed to the Traveler, so that's why that. One of the patches on her arms is the unit insignia of her father's army unit, which I have made up the name of the 4th Kalazart Fusiliers. She has epplet buttons that have a Prochiron Lieutenants rank.
01:00:29
Speaker
Then I think the other one was, Laura specifically asked about the unicorn, one of them I identified. I posted this under the Facebook post, so if you want to see a breakdown of all the patches, you can find it on our Facebook page in one of the comments there.
01:00:43
Speaker
Um, one of them is a rearing gold unicorn against a background of flames. Uh, I have not established what that one is associated with yet. I just, it sounded like something Eris would like, but essentially Eris is whole out the garb and wardrobe is bought at either military surplus stores or whatever the ever unequivalent of hot topic is. Apparently there is one cause Eris definitely shops there.
01:01:11
Speaker
But I'll leave it to Eric to come up with the Eberron, the Sharn name for Hot Topic. But yeah, there are other other patches. She's got a patch that she's had made that's the insignia from Ulfin's pirate flag from back when he was a pirate. And she has bits of armor from a hobgoblins armor from the war and a patch for the Hounds of Balkan, her favorite band.
01:01:40
Speaker
and a patch from the sharn red cloaks which apparently she knows something about just based on that reduced episode but we've not established in fiction how she knows that or what she knows about them so i'll leave that alone until we've had a chance to establish something in fiction so mostly a lot of this is not necessarily things where i have a lot of deep
01:02:01
Speaker
background on all of it. Some of it is associated with her father's service in the war, everything. Eris's outfit is a mix of things she's owned since she was a kid, things she's bought, nicer things she's bought with a little bit of money that she makes, or stuff she's bought at thrift shops and army surplus stores. But yes, to Irene's point, Eris would wear a nice dress and combat boots.
01:02:30
Speaker
I think Eris probably only owns one pair of shoes, and it's the big tank boots that she wears. Yes, so that's. And to just answer Irene's question quickly, it's fiendish subjects, clothing and accessories. Did you just make that up, or was it something, or did you find something in Charne? Because I know there's a ridiculous number of stuff out there. Just made it up, so. Lovely. Fiendish subjects, that's, of course, outstanding.
01:03:01
Speaker
writing it down. Well, now that we've gotten the most important bit out of the way, I think we have time to close up the mailbag. Thank you guys. Do any of you have something, any last missives or jabs that Eric, anybody wants to take?
01:03:18
Speaker
Yeah, please do. I thought Eric was wonderful as this arc. I really enjoyed the NPCs that we got to meet and I want to interact with more of them. Eric's regularly wonderful. I agree. It's just, I like making fun of him.
01:03:34
Speaker
No, that's fine. I do, too. I just thought this arc was a particularly good one for NPCs. Well, thank you. Oh, none of them were a Norse and mill hatch, but, you know, still trying to chase that one of the names. I mean, the name is really all that selling it on Norse. And we haven't really met Norse into enough of a degree to to say whether he's an interesting person, but he's got a fabulous name. But I kissed him. That's true. That's true.
01:04:03
Speaker
if you would like to get involved more with the show. What is wrong? For some reason. You can do so by joining our Discord, the link for which the easiest way to find the link is on our website, thegeekpantheon.com. We have a Facebook group, we have a Twitter handle, we have an Instagram presence. Those are also all at the Geek Pantheon.
01:04:26
Speaker
If you like what we do and want to support us in one way, you can do that on Patreon, slash the Geek Pantheon. We have tiers as low as $1 and up to, I believe, $45 a month for various levels throughout, including access to Eric and Philip's DM's spell book, which has tons of information, including the Eberron Genesis port, if you're interested. So with all that out of the way, I would just like to take a moment to thank you all for listening. We really do appreciate you. And with that,
01:04:54
Speaker
I am Jeff. I'm Philip. I'm Trevor. I'm Randy. And I'm Eric. And we'll see you next time because Jeff had it with us. Oh boy, let's just take it with the I'ms. Okay. I'm Jeff. I'm Philip. I'm Trevor. I'm Randy.
01:05:23
Speaker
And I'm Eric. See you next time. Bye.