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Campaign Two Eberron Previewed
300 Plays5 years ago
This week the gang sits down to discuss the future, and reveal some exciting news surrounding the next campaign!
This episode is brought to you by the generous donations of our amazing Show Sponsors: Laura Pickrahn, Darrin Katzska, Irene Viorritto, Ryan Royce, Darrell DeLaney, Charles Compton, Richard Cree, Nastasia Raulerson, The Kamm Family, David Scrams, Elizabeth Clark, Rebekah Miller, deviouspoptart, Eðvarð Arnór Sigurðsson, Michael Clark, and Dustin Troupe.
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Transcript
Introduction & Patron Acknowledgements
00:00:00
Speaker
The following episode is brought to you by the generous donations of Elizabeth Clark, Darryl Delaney, Ryan Royce, Darren Katska, Irene Villarito, Laura Pickron, Devious Poptart, Natasha Rallerson, Richard Cree, The Cam Family, Charles Compton, Dustin Troop, Rebecca Miller, Edvard Arnoff, Michael Clark, and David Scrams, along with all of our generous patrons.
00:00:33
Speaker
D20 radio, your game is wrong.
Special Eberron Campaign Preview
00:00:50
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Eberron Renewed, an actual play podcast set in the Eberron campaign setting. I'm your game master, Eric. I'm Phillip. I'm Randy. I'm Jeff. And I'm Trevor. And welcome to our very special Eberron previewed where we are where we're giving you insight into the next campaign. And the first big surprise that we have to drop is the addition of Trevor. Welcome to the show, Trevor. I'm
00:01:16
Speaker
back yeah you're you're back in the family i'm back in the family i'm back in front of the mic that much is yeah you're you're on eberron renewed for the first time transferring over from the geek pantheon yeah yeah are you excited i hope it goes well it almost certainly won't every time i don't know what to tell you those of you that checked out our dnd arc uh back on the geek pantheon
00:01:41
Speaker
where we had Trevor and Jeff playing through a one-shot. Trevor played tinsel. Just for those of you that may not be able to tell via the voice, this is not the same Trevor that played Draconos. I have encountered a few listeners that were uncertain. So this is tinsel Trevor, not Draconos. This is the crazy Trevor. You can tell the difference because this Trevor is taller. Yes. So podcast listeners. We can never wear the same pants.
00:02:10
Speaker
Not at the same time, for sure. I guess Trevor and I have been spending six to seven days a week together for the last month and a half because of this play. So it's a little loopy around here. Yeah. Sorry. So yeah, we are excited to have Trevor here, but that's not the only big change that's coming to the show. Keen-eared listeners may have picked up or just people that have been listening to the show for 149 episodes may have noticed that the
Switching to the Genesis System
00:02:40
Speaker
the intro to the show was different. Because for this next campaign, we are gonna be stepping away from Dungeons and Dragons. What? Sorry Randy. Randy's standing on the table with a chainsaw. He's so angry.
00:02:55
Speaker
All right, fine. What are we going to do? He's showing us all of his tattoos. So bad. So, yeah, we we for this campaign are going to be using the Genesis system from Fantasy Flight Games. Those of you that listen to the Forge podcast, as we have encouraged you to do multiple times on this show, already know this because never encourage you again.
00:03:19
Speaker
Chris and Ian have been very graciously plugging our show and hyping up the end of our campaign and announced the switch to Genesis. And one of us may be occasionally popping up on the show to talk about converting Eberron assets into Genesis and whatnot. It will not be me. Hey, you never know. No, he hates Ian.
00:03:46
Speaker
No, I know nothing. I just know we're having a mass exodus into Genesis. It already hurts. It already hurts people. Thank you. Thank you for the Bible humor, Trevor. Boy, if you thought Randy was angry before, guys.
00:04:05
Speaker
What are we doing? What is Genesis you might ask? I'm curious myself. The only thing I'm familiar with Genesis is that we did Star Wars. That's what we're doing. Yeah. So I actually I was explaining to you what Genesis was the other day and I came up with a way. So they call it the narrative dice system, which is a really accurate but not descriptive way to say what it is. The way that I described it is picture a a Cartesian plane in your head with X and Y axes.
00:04:34
Speaker
Wait, one axis is success, one axis is success and failure, one axis is advantage and disadvantage. And you can land anywhere in there on any role. There is no binary. You can succeed, but bad things happen. You can fail, but good things happen. And of course you can succeed and good and fail and bad. And so literally every role can be any combination of those two axes. And it really makes for a way more exciting, I think it's more exciting gameplay.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's much more cinematic. It's much more focused on storytelling, which I know people listen to actual play podcast for a variety of reasons. Me personally and a lot of people that I've talked to enjoy the story moments more than the three hour long combat sessions that high level D&D graces you with on a regular basis. And so.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's a decision that was made well before fantasy flight games announced the discontinuation of the role playing game department. But the foundry where fan generated content is made is still thriving and presumably not going anywhere since that's just free money for fantasy flight games.
00:05:53
Speaker
So, I mean, the system isn't being produced by the company in longer, but it's certainly not a dead system. Grab your dice while you can. Yes. So it uses specialty dice. Those of you that are unfamiliar, I have dice, Trevor. You don't need to sweat it. But those of you unfamiliar with Genesis, we're not going to spend a whole lot of time going over the system itself simply because here on our network we have
00:06:23
Speaker
Three shows I can think of off the top of our head that specifically discuss the Genesis system. And then you also have Order 66, which is dedicated to Star Wars, which is also the narrative dice system. So Dice Pool, Don't Despair, The Forge, and Order 66 are all great resources to learn about the system. Or also go get the PDF of the core rule books or physical copy.
00:06:50
Speaker
because it's a great system and I would encourage anybody and everybody to at least try it out. And if you want to hear what play in the Genesis system sounds like, Dice for Brains, Dice Pool, and Order 66 have all had some actual play on there. You have to search back a bit now in the Order 66. It was a one-shot that we did. If you want to hear us play the narrative dice system, you can do that. Well, hopefully you do. Buckle up. About a month from now after the one-shot's over.
00:07:19
Speaker
And obviously this decision was not made lightly. We know a lot of people found us because they like Dungeons and Dragons. And so if listening to people play a different system doesn't appeal to you, we totally understand. You've probably already turned off the podcast as soon as we announced it, and I'm just talking to the air. Wait, no, come back. But this was a decision made for, I would say, the health of the table.
00:07:47
Speaker
We were all kind of getting a little bit fatigued with Dungeons and Dragons. I emphasized we are doing this campaign in Genesis because we're not committing to becoming a Genesis actual play show. When this campaign is over in three years or another timeline,
00:08:06
Speaker
We're just gonna solve everything with fist one. What did I sign up for? Yeah, you didn't realize. I'm gonna be dead by then. Probably. That doesn't bode well for me. I believe we are also making this change in large part because of what you guys are about to hear about the campaign.
00:08:29
Speaker
Um, which the way we're going to do this campaign, the idea that that Eric and we have sort of signed on for is one that D and D would really only support at a very low level. Um, whereas it's going to work a lot better with the way that character progression and Genesis works as opposed to the way that character progression in fifth edition or any edition of D 20 works. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you can't be, um,
00:08:59
Speaker
There's no such thing as small time level 15. Right. Yeah, it doesn't exist. You're a god at that point. And yeah, one one nice thing about Genesis is the fact that threats virtually every threat always stays a threat to the players. You become more powerful. You can deal with things quicker, but you never hit a point where you have triple digit hit points or even 50 hit points.
00:09:23
Speaker
like you do in D&D. Yeah, I mean, I remember when we played the Star Wars that it seemed like I was always in fear that something bad could happen and I could go down. Yeah, at any given time, you're only three to five solid hits away from going down. Yes. Yeah, I mean, in our second adventure in Eberron Renewed, we took on like a grip of Warford.
00:09:49
Speaker
in the one shot we almost got taken out by bats. Yeah so this is but I don't want people to be scared because I know some other actual play shows have gone to like powered by the apocalypse or some other systems that just don't
00:10:10
Speaker
aren't suited to actual play formats or perhaps have a harder time. Genesis is really well suited to storytelling, is really well suited to having a cinematic flair. It's also really easy. I mean, yeah, in the same vein, I listened to a podcast that switched to the game system was Monster of the Week. I'm not sure what the rule mechanic system they used was.
00:10:34
Speaker
but they'd say things like, all right, roll cool, or roll this, and they never explained what they were doing. Is it a D6 system, is this, is that? With ours, or with Genesis, it's literally every roll has the same six words. All right, that's two failures but four advantages, or whatever. And so it's really quick, if you've never played it or don't even wanna learn it, you don't need any background on what the system is to understand it while you're listening to somebody play it.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah. And there's a lot of overlap. There's some new system or new skills like skullduggery that's used for like criminal activity. Right. There's there's there's different words, different words. But but it's I mean, you could say role perception and I could say success and advantage. Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:22
Speaker
So so we think it's going to be a smooth transition for everybody involved, including you all. And this will be after the after the one shot that we do to give me time to prep and write up the story.
Setting & Storyline: Sharn's Underworld
00:11:37
Speaker
So at this point.
00:11:39
Speaker
We're going to kind of give you all a bit of inside a bit of a preview teaser to the campaign to come. Obviously, we have some one shot things that we're going to be doing in the interim to give me time to prepare. But we wanted to give you all something to start thinking about, potentially asking questions on the Discord if you're a member of our Patreon, that kind of stuff.
00:12:01
Speaker
So we're going to kick things off talking about the preview to the campaign with the setting. What part? Obviously, it's Eberron. Name of the show is Eberron Renew. That's not change, right? So, yeah, we are going to try to tell a much smaller story this time around.
00:12:22
Speaker
And what I mean by that, the best analogy I've been able to come up with for the Marvel fans out there. The first campaign was the Avengers. We're going for much more defenders this time. So naturally, the the setting that we're going to go with in Eberron for this very kind of gritty, down to earth, smaller scale story is the city of Sharn.
00:12:51
Speaker
Specifically, the Lower Memphis Plateau is where the party is going to be based out of and starting. Those of you not familiar with the intricacies of Sharn. Trevor. Yep. I mean. It's.
00:13:15
Speaker
lower obviously indicates it's further down in the city, which means it is lower class. The rich people live up in the high towers and the further down you get, the more rough and tumble the city becomes. Specifically, the Lower Memphis Plateau is categorized as a rowdy entertainment district. So you have
00:13:35
Speaker
theater district, red light district, taverns, residential districts as well, but very seedy, but not rundown. Of all of the kind of rough and tumble areas, this place is prospering. It's doing well.
00:13:54
Speaker
And yeah, and we're going to during our session zero where myself and the players sit down to hammer out the specifics of the campaign and where we're starting off and how the characters relate to one another. Yada, yada, yada. We're going to go deep into the lower Memphis Plateau, that section of the city and create some locations that are familiar to them. So we're not going to have not everything in here is going to be
00:14:22
Speaker
from the source books. We might add a whole other section to the district, certainly adding some extra businesses, things like that. But yeah, I mean, it's a very interesting section of the city with like the burning ring, which is a gladiatorial fighting ring that travels throughout the district of the city.
00:14:47
Speaker
There's a theater district, as I mentioned, that is doing really well. And casinos. But yeah, it's your rough and tumble city section of the city. Going for very much a.
00:15:05
Speaker
I don't want to say Old West because that's not the genre that we're looking to play in, but it's very much that like poorly regulated, non lawful entities rule the roost kind of thing. Times Square in the 70s. Yes. I mean, almost almost cyberpunk, just with a science fiction side of it. Yeah. And just to kind of tease out a little bit of
00:15:33
Speaker
The situation that the players are going to find themselves in. Just so you all can. Put the pieces together as they're describing their characters at a very high level here in a second. Essentially, the PCs are going to start out as members of a small time gang that operate out of the Lower Memphis Plateau. This gang will come up with an interesting name and organization for it at Session Zero. We haven't come up with that yet.
00:16:03
Speaker
But the important part is that this gang, like many criminal organizations, they must pay tribute and answer to the Boromar clan, which is one of the largest criminal organizations in the city of Sharn, headed up by the Boromar family of Halflings. So influential that even a member of the Boromar clan sits on the Sharn city council.
00:16:30
Speaker
So very powerful entities. So while this is something that's been communicated with the players and something that I was fearful of when I first came up with the idea, but just to reiterate to all the players here, you all are criminals.
00:16:45
Speaker
But the only crime that you do that's protected is what Boromar approves you of doing. So if you all just decide to go be serial killers killing City Watch all over the place, Boromar is not going to help you out there.
00:17:01
Speaker
So, yeah, that's that's kind of a high level idea behind the starting point of this campaign, kind of going complete opposite of the last one. You all started off as cops in the last one. Now you're starting off as criminals. So I'm still going to end with everybody.
00:17:19
Speaker
Didn't I kill everyone in the last one? That was two ago. Two ago. Sorry. You were indeed responsible. Yeah, I did that.
Character Introductions
00:17:29
Speaker
So so, yeah, we can go ahead and go and speak about character choices and who who the the cast of characters for this next story are going to be. So who would like to go first? I haven't put a ton of ton of ton of work into this one.
00:17:46
Speaker
I am going to be playing a Goliath monk. Think about what would be super rare to be seen as in the criminal element in Sharn to be a lone Goliath trained as a monk, but here we are. I mean, I'm not going to get deep into the backstory. I'll just say there's a reason that he's a lone Goliath, no longer with his clan.
00:18:11
Speaker
But he's held on to enough of his heritage that he kind of petitioned to get a nickname because that's something that's very important in Goliath clan culture is the nickname. And it's based on, you know, your traits and what you do. And because he's his new clan is this gang and because the only thing he did for them for a long time was enforce debt. It means that we get to pick his nickname. They called him.
00:18:37
Speaker
This is not his real name, it's about right off the name he's gonna go by, but his nickname from the gang is The Collector because he is so big and he is so, he's just so strong, guys. He's just so ripped and strong and he's just full of muscles and just, he's so strong and big and ripped. He's gray. He's got 20 abs. He's got back abs. Hey, you know what goliath anatomy's like? I have 20 abs. That's fair.
00:19:06
Speaker
But so, all I will say about him now, or the most I'll say about him now is he is...
00:19:15
Speaker
very non-communicative to the outside world, but very much, it still waters run deep. Among his inner circle, he's talkative, he is a big part of the group in that way, but very little is said besides grunts and punches to the outside world, at least for now. I'm sure eventually I'll break that one. Awesome.
00:19:48
Speaker
I could be the leader in, but not the front man. I'm just teasing. Um, okay. I'm going to be playing a middle aged halfling, maybe slightly, slightly older than middle age possibly. And he's going to be a sorcerer whose powers have just awakened.
00:20:16
Speaker
by some reason that we'll go over with Eric on maybe how that might happen. And maybe he doesn't know how his powers have awakened, but he, uh, I don't know how much to say Eric. It's like, what if I say, and if you, if you don't like it, we can put a marketing. Shame you in front of everybody. No battery. Um, yeah. Okay. So,
00:20:45
Speaker
At one time he owned a tavern that burned down, killing his wife. And he got knocked on the head. He, she was upstairs. He was downstairs. He got a beam fell on his head and knocked him out. Somebody pulled him from the fire. So he still lives. And the bump has probably caused a little brain damage.
00:21:11
Speaker
And he will sometimes say things that maybe don't make sense in the middle of a conversation or sometimes refer to his wife as if she's still alive. Okay. Sounds like a bummer. And oh, and uh, yeah, upon your approval, Mr. Game Master, he was running numbers out of the, his tavern. Okay. He's a bookie.
00:21:38
Speaker
For the, you know, beholden to the Boromar, how do you say it, Boromar? Boromar, yep. Okay. Caught fire, he doesn't know how, who, what, or why.
00:21:49
Speaker
OK, awesome. Real quick, I just want to give you all Jeff. I asked everybody to send me their character concepts so I could get started on the conversion. And Jeff's was the first one that I began to tackle because Goliath monk sounded interesting converting the monk class and the Goliath race, since there's no corollary in the Genesis system for either of those. There's already a well, they're not called halflings, they're called gnomes in the Genesis system, but
00:22:19
Speaker
Yeah. Anyway, so those of you familiar with the Genesis system can appreciate this and I'll be on Forge to go into detail about the thought process behind all of this. But the way the magic system works in Genesis is
00:22:35
Speaker
so indescribably different than Dungeons and Dragons. It's much more narrative and freeform. So as opposed to having sorcerer type of magic, wizards type of magic, warlock type of magic, rather than having all these different schools of magic where you have lightning bolt, acid splash, fire bolt, all of these things.
00:23:00
Speaker
It's all just called the attack spell or the barrier spell or the augment spell and all of these things. And there are ways that you can augment the spell. So you can say, I'm going to use the attack skill and I'm going to add blast onto it and I'm going to add fire onto it and increases the difficulty of what you need to pass in order for it to succeed. But that's how you would cast fireball. For example, is to add blast and fire and then your attack spell would create a blast.
00:23:28
Speaker
And set things on fire. And so would it be fair to say the distinction between like, since it's still everyone, the distinction between like a sorcerer and a wizard would just be how you learned the magic as opposed to how it acts for you.
00:23:46
Speaker
Yes, exactly. They would both tap into the arcane skill. But, and that's where this being a narrative system comes into play, Randy's sorcerer is going to describe how his spells happen.
00:24:01
Speaker
in the way that the sorcerer spells would happen, as opposed to a wizard casting arcane whatever. So that pretty much opens up any spell I want to do then. Yeah, it's it's all. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of cool. Yeah. So anyway, I say all of that to describe how Key is going to work. I was interested in this.
00:24:25
Speaker
So tell us more. So there will be a talent that you will take, which is for D&D people, a feat, like just to use the easiest language, but a talent that allows you to cast augment on yourself using discipline instead of divine slash primal, which are the normal casting abilities for that.
00:24:51
Speaker
And for any additional effects that say use ranks in this skill, it will be your resilience. And then for Flurry of Blows, there'll be another talent that allows you to spend too strained to perform an extra brawl check on your turn. So, do you hear that everybody? I'm playing a caster. I got an augment spell. Get off my back.
00:25:14
Speaker
And then for the Goliath, it just makes him so ripped, just so big and strong. Just ripped and big and strong. Okay, so- You're probably not wrong. I'm not. And you know he's ripped and big and strong because he only wears the Antarvesa. He doesn't wear the other parts of the robes. The what? I don't know the terms. I believe it's pronounced Antarvesa. It's basically the skirt portion of a Buddhist dog's robe.
00:25:45
Speaker
So these are the Goliath starting ability scores, like you all are smart, you can do the conversion from strength, dexterity, intelligence, let's actually call it intelligence, but go with me. Philip is familiar with creating stuff for Genesis, so watch his face when I'm about to say what I'm about to say. You start off with a brawn four. What?
00:26:13
Speaker
Braun 4, Agility 2, Intelligence 1, Cunning 1, Willpower 2, Presence 2. And then your Wound Threshold starts at 8 plus your Braun, Strain Threshold 10 plus Willpower, your two special abilities, Sturdy as a Mountain, you start off with one Rank in Discipline,
00:26:36
Speaker
and stone-headed you add one setback die to all charm checks. Now the way Genesis works that's not like Jeff's character does not neatly need to start with a one in intelligence. The way Genesis works is you start with a pool of experience points 85 in the case of the Goliath
00:26:54
Speaker
which is a little low to reflect the fact that you start off with a foreign brawn which is not normal. And so you can spend that to get your intelligence up to two or three or whatever you, however smart you want your character. Yeah, I picture him smarter. Yeah, so that will be where you spend it. They're cutting one of the two, yeah. So anyway.
00:27:14
Speaker
Um, that's just kind of a preview on, um, what the characters are going to look like. Um, Jeff's is the only one that I've done this work on. Um, mostly because I was still waiting on firmness from, um, and I've also worked on, uh, some of the aspect of Phillip's character, but we'll get there when we get there. Um, so my halfling has a name already, if you would like to know that. Yes, it's good.
00:27:42
Speaker
His name is Milo Kegbottom. That's fantastic. It's so good, right? That's such a Randy name too. I love it.
00:27:52
Speaker
Milo keg bottom. Like beer belly, but keg bottom? Yep. No, he just calls him drag. Thick boy. Ah. Thank you. I'm going to pretend Philip Bob was for me. I liked that. No, that was. I approve of that one. That was good. It certainly was not for thick boy. Oh, I wasn't listening to you. That's very true. And it certainly isn't for the pun I had in my head. I was trying really hard to pretend that didn't happen. Yep. OK, so.
00:28:23
Speaker
Trevor or Philip, either of you care to go next? You're the game master, you pick. Philip, go. Eris is a Chiron survivor. She survived somewhat unconventionally.
00:28:48
Speaker
She survived because well before the morning, she was captured in a raid by goblins out of Dargun and spent some of her youth as a slave in Dargun before escaping in a somewhat unconventional manner also. She lives in Sharn as a unlicensed mage rite.
00:29:19
Speaker
I, when I started reading about the menses plateau and found all the, uh, there were a bunch of casinos and that the Boromar clan own most of the gambling houses. I was imagining her doing repairs on magical slot machines. She is, um, still fairly young in her twenties. And.
00:29:50
Speaker
kind of flighty and defensive. Her indebtedness to the Boromar clan was not her intention when she came to Sharn, and so it's a life that she is somewhat stuck in as opposed to
00:30:15
Speaker
a life that she has selected. She's not a criminal mastermind or anything like that. She carries around very distinctive awesome crossbow. This is Eric's opportunity to talk about the heroic abilities mechanic if he wants to or else put a marker in not.
00:30:35
Speaker
Okay, so heroic abilities are something that were introduced in Realms of Teronoth, the setting book for the RuneScape setting for Genesis. And everybody will get to create their own heroic ability. It's kind of an iconic thing that your character can do. So, for example, I mean,
00:30:59
Speaker
Connected your character seems to know everyone or at least everyone who's worth knowing and basically it allows you to find out valuable information once per session. Influential six cents hard to kill where you just gain plus 40 or soak which means you're hard to damage.
00:31:18
Speaker
But Phillips that he's going with is the signature weapon, a heroic ability where you get to create a weapon that sticks with your character that you can essentially level up, improve over time. And is just generally awesome without getting into too much of the minutia of the system. But do you want me to describe the weapon? I've known the weapon was for a long time.
00:31:47
Speaker
Go for it. Put a marker in case you absolutely hate what I'm about to do. All right. If it's a gun, no, it's not. It's not. OK, not a firearm. OK. OK. No, no. Hear me out. You're going to like this. I promise it's so Eberron. It's the most Eberron thing I've ever come up with.
00:32:08
Speaker
OK, so it's a good choice. I always thought with all of the magic and mechanics in everyone, there's got to be. There's got to be a way to design a bolt thrower like a crossbow bolt thrower without the the stringing like without the prod and the spanning the crossbow. And here's what I come up with. It's. You you take a small.
00:32:38
Speaker
air elemental bound into a dragon shard fitted into the weapon and use that to create an electric magnetics charge that launches projectiles.
00:32:49
Speaker
OK, so that's a rail. It's a rail cannon. Yeah, it's a gun. Yes, but not a. Which I believe is where all the baggage of a firearm. Yes. No, it is. It doesn't it doesn't render like traditional fantasy armor moot. No, I've been. I spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not Eric was going to object to this.
00:33:11
Speaker
Before settling on it. I think I like it. Yeah. Philip has been a part of the game that I've run where somebody used firearms and he saw how profoundly unhappy I was the entire time. I think I was in on that, too. Yes. Yeah. OK. Pulling back the curtain, Philip let me know pretty early on that he was thinking about playing an artificer, which is iconically Eberron and needed to be transitioned into Genesis.
00:33:39
Speaker
Um, so Philip and I had many conversations, uh, brought in, uh, Chris and Ian from the forge to consult because we're creating a new magic skill and Philip and I were grossly
Adapting Classes to Genesis
00:33:49
Speaker
overthinking. It turns out, um, for, for a long duration of our brainstorming. Um, and here, here's what artificer looks like right now. Obviously none of the things that I've described so far, Jeff's Goliath and month class have been playtested. Um, so it might be horribly broken and we might need to change it.
00:34:09
Speaker
You over my dead body when you change it. So the artificer, just for those of you that maybe enjoy our show but aren't super familiar with Eberron and you hear us use the term artificer because there wasn't one in the last campaign, here is the description out of the Eberron campaign setting just real quick, just so you all know what I mean when I talk about what an artificer is.
00:34:34
Speaker
Masters of unlocking magic in everyday objects, artificers are supreme inventors. They see magic as a complex system waiting to be decoded and controlled. Artificers use tools to channel arcane power, crafting magical objects. To cast a spell, an artificer could use alchemist's supplies to create a potent elixir, calligrapher's supplies to inscribe a sigil of power on an ally's armor, or a tinker's tools to craft a temporary charm. The magic of artificers is tied to their tools and their talents.
00:35:04
Speaker
So a lot of thought and effort went into this. And then Chris said, keep it simple. Try to try to not break the system when you're creating this. So essentially, we've created a new magic skill, which is artifice. Artifice skill can use the following spells, augment, barrier, conjure, curse, dispel and utility.
00:35:33
Speaker
But the kicker from a narrative standpoint, because you don't codify this kind of thing in the rules. Artificers can only cast on objects, not creatures. So if you're casting augment, it's not on your ally, it's on their armor. If you're cursing somebody, it's not the bandit, it's their sword. Conjure doesn't summon a creature, but you can cast it on a suit of armor to bring it to life to fight as an ally on your side.
00:36:01
Speaker
So that's the notion behind the Artifice skill. I know some new spells have been introduced in the additional material like Rimsil Teranoth, Expanded Player's Guide. I need to look at those to see what can be folded in because I know that some of them can. But yeah, so I think actually Expanded Player's Guide only introduced new spells. Teranoth introduced new skills.
00:36:27
Speaker
So anyway, that's where Artifice is at right now as a skill, basically. So, yeah. Okay. Last, but certainly not least.
00:36:45
Speaker
Okay. Um, so we have talked very, very briefly, but landed on, um, the rogue class. So I kind of have two different paths I'm thinking about taking.
00:37:01
Speaker
One would be a human who came from a lot of wealth and decided to leave it. And has a little bit of a, I don't want to say Robin Hood complex because he definitely doesn't give to the poor but definitely targets the rich because he hates that.
00:37:22
Speaker
Lifestyle I mean he's poor now, so he doesn't get some of that. He's keeping it and the other The other Path path you said it earlier. Mm-hmm. I know the other path. I'm thinking of taking is an elf specifically a Christmas elf no No Specifically a high elf that was
00:37:54
Speaker
kind of kicked out for taking advantage of his family's wealth, but still very much wants to live that bougie lifestyle. And so he kind of, it's a thief. Not kind of, he is a thief. He's a super thief. Trevor's living out his champagne wishes. He's just redistributing wealth. He's not stealing.
00:38:21
Speaker
OK, well, very cool. Excited to see which path you end up going down so we can get to work. But that's where the campaign kind of sits. Anything else that you all want to discuss? Any questions you have for me? Like I'm not I'm just I'm pumped to get back into that. I really I like role playing games.
00:38:44
Speaker
but the I've only played well that's not true because I played at the cons but like really sat down and played Genesis one time and I don't want to say that it was more or less fun than straight up d20 style game but it
00:39:02
Speaker
it's certainly more flexible. I know this is weird coming from the guy who always talks about how he never knows what to do when he rolled a 20, but the opportunities for that sort of flexibility are so much more fun.
00:39:21
Speaker
I just, I keep going, whenever I explain the game to somebody, or the system to somebody, I always go back to that time in the one shot that we did, where I rolled like three failures, but like six advantage. And so I totally missed the person I was shooting at, but I blew up something behind them and killed them anyway. I was like, heck yeah, that rules, I love this game.
00:39:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I I want to reiterate, this isn't us like kicking D&D to the curb and being like, we hate the system. It's just like when on order 66, Chris and Phil had an episode where they were describing like switching from a D20 system to at the time Star Wars.
00:40:05
Speaker
And they described it kind of perfectly in that like sometimes you just want to have something other than a hamburger. Like sometimes you want to have Kung Pao chicken and it doesn't mean that you hate hamburgers now. It's just you want to have something different. So so I think that's just kind of where a lot of us are at is we just want to do something different. Except for Trevor. He was enlisted at this and. But you'll find me adorably lost.
00:40:33
Speaker
Yeah, we figured Jeff might be too competent this time around in the early stages, so we needed to bring in somebody else. Oh, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled. But no, we're excited. We're excited for you all to go on this journey with us. Obviously, we're not starting next week. Jeff in the near future is going to be running us through the kids on bikes one shot.
Future Content & Listener Engagement
00:41:00
Speaker
Do you want to talk about that at all or?
00:41:02
Speaker
I mean, sure, I'll say this. The Kids on Bikes game system is what it sounds like. You play as kids who are in a sort of situation where they're independent enough that they can get on their bikes and go investigate something weird. It's the Stranger Things, Goonies, Monster Squad style of storytelling. It's gonna be set.
00:41:26
Speaker
I've the cool thing is that we're gonna we're gonna create the town and the setting together in in the first session but it's you know it's somewhere in America between like the Great Depression and the and the 90s is really it's all wide open to be anywhere in there once you break the 90s then cell phones come in and
00:41:44
Speaker
and and it's just not the pagers you know well sure um uh but everybody plays everybody can play anything uh there are you can play an adult uh randy's already told me he's gonna play like a child like under teen so we're gonna have to figure out a way to make it makes sense that he pals around with you guys i'll go older you know your babysitting or little brother or something it's pretty easy but
00:42:08
Speaker
Nobody cared that why Marty McFly was hanging with Doc Brown. So, you know, it's fine. Well, that is another one of the fun things. And I've never played a game like microscope or anything like that. But one of the fun things about it is is one of the questions I ask the table at the very beginning is what are absolute truths of this world? Like, what is it? And you can say things like no one ever thinks it's weird if an adult and a kid that is not related to him are just having a conversation.
00:42:34
Speaker
or even says, hey, why don't you come around to the backyard? I'll show you this thing. Like, there's no inherent danger in that in this world. We can say that. Yeah. I mean, unless, of course, that it all turns out to be the bad guy. But let's say as a PC or one of the ones I listened to, one of the inherent rules was Carter got a second term.
00:42:52
Speaker
I don't know why that was important, but that was what they said. I think we all know why it's important. Well, I mean, it played in later. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so we get to do things like that. I'm really excited for it. I'll explain as far as like how the gameplay works and stuff when we're actually playing it. There's no reason to go into that.
00:43:12
Speaker
I'm very scared and nervous to run a game. So this should be fine. Yeah. And I do want to say I know that we kind of addressed at the top when we were announcing the new system to some other shows and resources you could go check out. If you all want a Genesis primer, for lack of a better term, like me and anybody else on this episode, like sit down and just give a very high level discussion of what Genesis is.
00:43:41
Speaker
I mean, you could let us know if you're a patron in the Discord or on the Facebook group, if you think that would be helpful. We're not going to do it as well as the other resources that we've appointed you to. But we can certainly give it a shot if there's enough of a desire for that. So yeah, I'll sit down and I'll write down something real in depth about how Genesis works. You heard it here. Jeff will take the lead on that. So anyway.
00:44:08
Speaker
Um, anything else, gentlemen? I don't think so. No. Nope.
00:44:16
Speaker
Oh, a lot of things, but they'll come up later. I'll say this. I know a lot of people myself included who can be really intimidated by backlog. If you've had somebody who said 140 episodes, I know. Well, maybe it might be time to hit them back up over the next couple of months to get back in with campaign two, especially since while it is unclear whether this will be a continuation of the timeline that began in the first campaign.
00:44:45
Speaker
this could be the same ever on we're not sure yet eric hasn't totally decided but it will not require any knowledge of the previous campaign to enjoy this one that much is certain even if we do decide this is a continuation of the same timeline you're not going to be lost if you jump in here so that's a promise we can make new listeners yeah they made
00:45:05
Speaker
There may be a, I don't know, reference to, you know, Thorin or Drakir or something because they are still alive, but it's not going to ruin things. Well, and the nice thing is if you have a friend joining up for the first time and they hit a reference that they're unclear of, just because, like you said in the last review, we don't give it enough shout outs, there is a wiki, Eberron and Crude, that if we mention, if it's a continuation like
00:45:32
Speaker
I don't know, a reference to something. They can go search it there and get the context or at least what episode that happened in if they want to go listen. So that's a wonderful resource that we have for our listeners. And thank you to Laura for doing the lion's share of that work. OK, well, thank you all so much for listening.
00:45:53
Speaker
We if you want to be part of the conversation surrounding this episode and kind of the anticipation towards campaign two or discussing the kids on bike one shot head on over to the Facebook group, the Geek Pantheon. We are also on Twitter and Instagram at the Geek Pantheon and those accounts are starting to get active again. So you might want to actually go check them out.
00:46:13
Speaker
We also have a patreon patreon dot com slash the geek pantheon with a wonderful community of patrons over there that support the show and get to hang out on our discord server for all of our patrons, which is a lot of fun to hang out with them and talk about the shows and what happens and get their questions about the show. And when we have ever on reviews, we they they kind of get front of the line service when it comes to getting their questions answered.
00:46:42
Speaker
We also have a YouTube account, youtube.com slash the Geek Pantheon. The final stream for the end of the campaign went up there in video format and there's going to be more content happening on there in the near future. So keep an eye out for that. If you aren't subscribed, head on over there, hit the subscribe, hit the little bell icon so you get the notification when a new video goes up.
00:47:06
Speaker
And yeah, that's all I've got. We are also probably part of the D20 radio podcasting network. It's not all I've got, I lied. And we are probably a part of that network with all sorts of wonderful shows, including, as we've mentioned a couple times in this episode, the Forge podcast. With us launching into the Genesis system, we cannot recommend that enough. Also, as I referenced earlier in this episode, you might also find things out about this show before we've told you.
00:47:35
Speaker
Once again, nothing but love for Chris and Ian. But yeah, go give them a listen. They have a lot of great insight on creating stuff for the Genesis system and playing in the Genesis system and all kinds of stuff. So yeah. Thank you all once again so much for listening. I am your game master, Eric. I'm Philip. I'm Randy. I'm Trevor. And Jeff goes last. We'll see you next time.