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Table Top or Table Bottom?
40 Plays1 year ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about all things table top and a bunch of other stuff in this week's episode!
Intro:
- Scott Pilgrim the Game - Subboss Theme
Outro:
- Mario Kart Wii - Coconut Mall
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Transcript
Wildlife Encounters and Refuges
00:00:47
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I am joined by my co-host, as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going great. Nice. Took the dog out to pee a little bit ago. um
00:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, I apparently just enjoy that. I'm not going to add more detail. Well, you know, sometimes you just got to appreciate the simple life. OK, I will say on on today's P adventures, these are on two separate occasions, but I'm going to combine them for the sake of this one P outing. Right. There is something like these like little like very, very small birds. Imagine like I'm almost pinching the air um that we're like kind of fluttering around. It's like very cute to see. You're always outside hearing bugs and stuff. A lot of nature going on more than you expect. Disney princess stuff.
00:01:39
Speaker
Unfortunately with ah Disney princess abilities, uh, there's also like a, a Falcon. Oh. Like it looks like it just fucks up smaller birds type of birds. Yeah. And it was just kind of like chilling in the field earlier. And I was like. let's avoid that yeah we could kick its ass for sure but i don't want myself or the dog getting scratched or bit yeah birds of prayer no joke um we went to i can mention this because people know i'm in pennsylvania but we went to uh canobals not too long ago a couple weekends back or whatever and they have like a eagle refuge where they have like two eagles there that are injured they can't fly
00:02:23
Speaker
Um, they're still gigantic. Like these are, these are the Eagles that literally just cannot survive in the wild, but they could probably like kill a person. if It was a one V one. And it's just crazy to see. um birds are crazy giant fucking wingspan and then knives yeah on their feet they're like evolution gave them hollow bones and they just became more dangerous like that's how you know that they're high tier right like they're fragile if they really are you know and there are a lot of birds out there that have like
00:03:01
Speaker
I was about to say astronomically small brains. I don't know if that adjective means anything really in that context, but very small brain animals. Um, just a hundred percent instinct, but I guess you have to be, if you're going to like fly around and not get hit by a car. So yeah, I feel like that's a good one to dodge. Yeah. birds need to learn about glass a little bit more. That's true. There was the Windex commercials with the yeah the crows.
00:03:36
Speaker
That's where everyone goes. I i think of that. um Cool. Well, I am glad you're doing well. Doing pretty well myself. It's been a little bit spicy for work this week, but I got like a little bit of time to play games and
Board Games: Design and Engagement
00:03:52
Speaker
and jazz like that. So it was nice. nice Got a social get together this, this, uh, weekend. So that should be fun. We'll see. Yeah. Oh, nice. nice
00:04:05
Speaker
As I just i walk around the fact that it's Dave's sort of thing, but that's all right. We'll see if we run into each other there. So I already know you're going to be there. I also know you're going to bring. ah beneath Nexus because it's just in your car. yeah um I had to move it out to make space for um ah art like tables and stuff like that for like a bazaar, but it'll just go back, right? it's It's just the way it is. Not to be played necessarily anymore, by the way.
00:04:41
Speaker
um I know that you were leading into something. There was a comma there and I interrupted, but like the creators of Beneath Nexus, as I believe they're called Silver Clutch Games. I looked them up not too long ago. They've made nothing about this game from Magfest once. They released like a DLC pack for it, which I think was available then and nothing ever again. Maybe they, maybe they have something in the works maybe in the past, however many years, at least five. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see, I guess, but it's an okay game. I like it. Yeah. I've always enjoyed when we played it, uh, except for when I'm like super not sober. And then it's like, Hey, can you sit down and lock in on this? I'm like, yeah, I'll do my damnedest.
00:05:37
Speaker
But I will say for anybody who's curious about it, um pretty easy to pick up, pretty straightforward, has always been a good time. Yeah, it's like a, this is not a review of Beneath Nexus, but it's a a asymmetrical co-op. Well, that's not strictly true. For the heroes, it's co-op, but you play against one character. It's an asymmetrical versus game. One side made up of all of the players, the other side plays the Blightlord. whose power basically scales based off of the number of players. And you could think of it as like Dungeons and Dragons, but only if you really have an archaic view of Dungeons and Dragons where like the Dungeon Master was trying to kill the player characters like actively as much as they can. um So.
00:06:29
Speaker
The thing I liked about it should make more, oh yeah like it is a good idea. And then you could have other just DLC packs for like, Oh, try these other bosses and these heroes type thing. Yeah, it would be really easy to add onto it. I think it's, ah it also kind of addresses one of the issues I have with a lot of tabletop games, which is like they're just. slightly too crunchy, slightly impent too impenetrable to actually pick up and play, which is the reason there are so many games that are like just unopened or never played or whatever, because it's like, I know what it's like to be the host in that setting where it's like, here's a really, this would be a great opportunity to try to get to people to play this game. How long is the session now? It's like six hours. Okay, well, maybe we don't do that. Maybe we just play a card game.
00:07:20
Speaker
or something with simpler rules, right? um But the community kind of betrays themselves in this because whenever like big kickstarters come out that like have these massive campaigns and complexity and stuff. Like people flock to it. That's what happened with gloom haven. Yeah. I think the people who really like those types of tabletop board games, I mean, obviously like if you've played your basic stuff, what you're looking for is more complexity. Yeah. So for them, perfect. Definitely the target audience, but
00:07:54
Speaker
If you were the target audience and you're having guests over and you're like, all right, can you guys unwrap that stuff over here? And I'm like, get out the rule book. And then you need people to actively pay attention for 20 minutes and they have the attention span of 30 seconds. You're like, what? And how do you try to do that as well? I've been on both ends of it. It's a, but after you've done the first run through with that group of people, it becomes a lot easier to have that start up like, Oh, Hey, do you want to play a quick game with this? You're like, Oh yeah. I know the rules, I know that's played, and done. Yeah, we had a, I'm gonna call him out, a special guest, Justin and Rachel. We we played Gloomhaven with them, myself and and my wife. A special guest, Jenny, actually. Everybody, we know everybody much chev on the podcast. But we went over to play Gloomhaven. It was a great time.
00:08:47
Speaker
It was a fun game, enjoyed it. We even like got to the point of unlocking another like playable class, which in that game is like, it's literally boxed up the figure the mini is. oh And so it's like, Hey, when you reach this milestone, um, open the box that's marked with this symbol or something like that. Right. So there's a little bit, uh, little bit of what's in the box. What are we unlocking? pizzazz, which is, which is like excellent. It was a fun time, but it took like all day, which was fun, but it did take all day. Very exhausted by the end. And then we never played again. Do you know what really kneecaps it? Yeah. Uh, like, let's say you go over to a friend's place. You're like, Hey, oh let's meet up after lunch. We'll, we'll play this game. And then if it keeps going, like we'll take a break for dinner and then we'll keep playing after you have dinner.
00:09:38
Speaker
Nobody wants to fucking play. Even if people are having a good time with it, they're just like, I've now stopped playing. I don't have the urge to start playing again because like I've eaten. I'm i'm tired a little bit. It's been a couple of hours. ah um
00:09:55
Speaker
yeah Yeah, I I still remember when we used to play Lord of the Rings risk. We played it in my parents basement with a couple of friends and we had like a several hour session. We're like, OK. We'll leave everything here and we can play again another time. Yeah. Never happened. um But the board stayed up for like two weeks. Yeah. There's I think they actually had it for Gloomhaven. There's like a company called Broken Token and they specifically designed storage for games that are basically better than whatever medium the game came with. So it's like if it's a bunch of pamphlets and tokens and stuff, then it'll have organizers for it and things like that. And I believe for Gloomhaven, I could be incorrect, but I think they literally were like, OK, you could like slide things in here to maintain the state of
00:10:48
Speaker
Uh, where it ended. I might be wrong, but who cares? This is a podcast. We only, we don't need to be having the save States for board games. Yeah. It's a cool idea, but yeah, the underlying problem is still kind of there. It's tough to get people together for D and&D every time or like things like that. If you're not literally kids in middle school living on the same block um and even in a digital age, like we're adults now, it's tough to sometimes always make it. um So cancellations and things like that can happen. Or you can be like me and just be too lazy to actually finish preparing stuff. But, um, yeah, it's, it's tough. We used to have really long sessions, like six hour long D and&D on like Saturday or Sunday. Oh, I remember. Yeah. I was so burnt. Yeah. People were, myself included, absolutely just so exhausted by the end of it, but like so many people stuck with it. It was, it was crazy how long that went, but.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah, not for everybody and also like, unless it's a one-off, not something that I could do anymore, right? Like I couldn't play Gloomhaven weekly for six hours. No, it's it's hard enough to allocate time, let alone allocate ah recurring time. Yes. Thank you for being here on the podcast today, Jacob. That's all the time we have. Quick 11 minute in and out episode. But no, like it's, and this is one of the things that you've allocated time for, but yeah it's very difficult to have that many things for larger chunks of time yeah because people just have lives.
00:12:36
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, like the, the, the fewer people, the easier it is to kind of pull it off.
Challenges in Organizing Tabletop Sessions
00:12:40
Speaker
Right. Are you, like are you implying genocide? who ah Fewer people, the easier it is. All right, dude. Well, I'm just saying that sometimes you're like, how many people wanna play D. So people have the opposite problem. ah Sometimes you wanna host something and nobody wants to like participate right or it's tough to find that group. Other times it can be like, okay, who would be interested in doing this? And then like eight people may respond. right And the internet is full of horror stories of people who tried to run games like this with too many players. yeah And um I know almost no one
00:13:22
Speaker
Oh, actually, I'm gonna have you guess first. um Do you know, which is actually implying that it's not a guess, do you know what the recommended number of players for D and&D is? Fifth edition, just D&D. Four. Exactly correct, yeah. It's literally four. I didn't know of no groups that actually run with four players. Everybody has more than that. And it's like, if you have more players, there's more likely someone's gonna have someone come up. Yeah. Like that's going to cause a cancellation. Our podcast record occasionally gets pushed back. Sometimes you have to hard cancel it and there's two of us. right This is a small Venn diagram overlap. Yeah. It's obviously the more people you have, the more complexity, especially with scheduling, but even like a social aspect. I mean, I know D and D is obviously structured. Um, but I think of like, Oh, when we go out to dinner with people.
00:14:19
Speaker
Like, Oh, we're all going to this thing. I'm like, okay, I'm going to be sitting next to maybe three or four people tops. who I can talk to. Right. Because our other people are far enough away so that it's either inconvenient or I just straight up can't hear them. ahha And it's just, I prefer small, smaller gatherings usually because it makes just so many things easier. Yeah, it is kind of funny when the seating arrangement, you're like, I would like to have a conversation with that person and logistically it just doesn't make sense right now. oh It's a, it's a kind of funny, funny issue to have, but yeah.
00:14:57
Speaker
Still worth it though. Recommend tabletop games. um and And dinners with friends, yeah and yeah. And dinners with friends, both good. um Both good, especially if it can be a smaller audience. um Because I don't know if you know this. But in a lot of tabletop games that exist out there, ah you can a lot of time can pass before you next do something, especially like in combat. You probably have no experience with that, but that's literally like the top complaint.
00:15:32
Speaker
that I have with games like this sometimes is it's like I did my thing. Hopefully I had a good, you know, response, a good action, whatever. And the next time I will need to do anything is 20 minutes from now. right So that for me is the worst feeling. yeah And I've had it across multiple mediums. Obviously D and&D was one of those when I tried a couple of times, but The way my brain works in games, even going back to like Settlers of Catan, which is probably the board game that we binge the most around high school era or early college is.
00:16:11
Speaker
I've thought about what I've wanted to do on other people's turns. So when it's my turn, I will do the thing. right Whereas other people, it's like it's like going to a fast food place and you get up, it's like, hey, what can I get you? like Then you look up at the menu, you're like, oh, ah let me... What were you doing earlier? hu Yeah, i would I would like to... fully jump on the bandwagon, but I know that i at times I've also been guilty of it where I'm like, I'm literally playing basically a martial character, which to the uninitiated is like, you use weapon, right? Maybe not a lot of decisions to make. Um, and sometimes it still comes around to my turn. I'm like, huh?
00:16:55
Speaker
um Like which of these enemies is most injured or whatever, you know, like things that I definitely could have solved beforehand. But it it comes as a side effect, actually. It's both a cause and a side effect of the long rotation in turns. Because like, you can, i I appreciate when people, and myself included, solve what they're gonna do when their turn comes up, speeds everything up, awesome. But if you have to wait 20 minutes, That cached data man may no longer be relevant, right? You might need to reevaluate. I just start to check out and then I start getting frustrated with everything yeah because my natural world order that exists in my brain is not playing out in real life. That's fair. I think like it it is interesting. This wasn't something I anticipated being the topic.
00:17:51
Speaker
but like I know that that's frustrating for you and it's one of the reasons like D and&D didn't work out. um But that was why one of the reasons I was super surprised when you really latched onto games like Divinity or Baldur's Gate. Because they technically, although it is much accelerated, maybe that's the sole and only important factor, but there is downtime where you're just watching what other people are doing. So defend your stance, explain yourself. So, I mean, there definitely have been times in my various divinity, two or three stuff where I'm like, Jesus Christ, make up your mind and do a thing. Um, cause I think sometimes people.
00:18:37
Speaker
I mean, to be fair, like the way I built my character in those games is typically one trick pony in comparison to somebody who has a lot of options. Right. So I don't have as many options to evaluate. So I'm just doing the one thing. um
00:18:54
Speaker
But yeah, it's definitely faster. There's also like a visual component that makes it a little more engaging. Right. um You can look around the battlefield and things like that, even when it's not your turn. Yeah. Like there's other things you can be dealing or you can maybe help somebody decide because again, you have that visual thing. But also it's just, it's infinitely faster. And also typically when I've done those games, I think we at most had three people for a campaign. Right. Yeah. Whereas typically I've just done co-op for those games.
Balancing Creativity and Structure in Tabletop Games
00:19:28
Speaker
It's actually interesting because the um You mentioned something. I wonder if this is part of the ah the alchemy That makes it more manageable, but you said like contributing paraphrasing um to Just put words in your mouth contributing on other players turns basically like working towards you're like, okay Well, you could do this or you could do this or if you do this I'll do that. Yeah, and what's funny is like that's actually like Somewhere out there, the ideal for a D and&D campaign is um some people hate it because metagaming quote unquote, but engagement is always more important than metagaming. In my opinion, it's like if you have people who are playing the game and having fun, that's always better. But.
00:20:12
Speaker
I haven't seen that emerge to the same extent and that narrative space or in that like theater of the mind or even grid based space and the way that it does in video games. Like Baldur's Gate encourages that kind of and group. Thank when you're taking actions and stuff like that more than I have seen in D and&D. Yeah. I think, I mean, obviously a lot of people are, very creative and very thoughtful about stuff. And other people just do not have that as a inherent trait or skill set. Um, it's like, I can have a conversation with somebody about something like theoretical and then like basically put some pieces together.
00:21:05
Speaker
But there could be some things that I'm a little less close to where as they're describing it, I'm like, Oh, I might need somebody to re-explain or have it conveyed the information in another way that might make sense to my brain. But what's nice about having visuals and like a video game is. You don't have to try and describe all of the traits of the goblin you're fighting. You're like, there he is. I'm going to click him and see. Yeah. Like the, there's not really a large gap between the information you want and getting that information. Right. And it's very gamified. It's all presented to you. You can look to see line of sight on something. You're like, okay, that's really helpful.
00:21:51
Speaker
I mean, obviously that probably wouldn't exist in the same way in tabletop, unless like you actually have a ah physical layout possibly. Yeah. And like sometimes you do, but it's less frequent, definitely less frequent than you usually operating in a 3d space is not something you want to do in a 2d tabletop. Let me just throw that tidbit out there for everybody. like It gets real rough. Yeah. But they're five feet high. Okay. So my arrows can go. uh-huh once you're dealing with parabolic arcs and stuff like that just retire it's it's done yeah even though it's technically not true um the easiest way to do it is just be like distance is distance horizontally regardless of vertical height so it's like oh yeah they're 100 feet up in the air but they're 20 feet horizontally in front of me i can shoot 20 feet so i'm gonna hit them right it's
00:22:47
Speaker
Maybe not in that extreme case, but yeah, um This is why i'm easier to do in a video are they next to me? I stab them Yeah, one thing that i'm thinking about now is um I guess for table like dnd specifically using that as the example. Yeah, um Close your eyes for a moment. Jacob and audience you can play along. Um You can't see you anymore dave Shit You are in a dark room. Okay There is a door to the north, right? So I've given you two pieces of information, right? Now that's pretty much your scope, right? That's your whole work. You opened your eyes, you son of a bitch. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm going back. But like that's your whole world that you have access to, right? Yes. Now you might say, is there anything else in the room? And maybe I'll put in a chair or a key and that will kind of materialize there for the sake.
00:23:42
Speaker
of the game, but a lot of that other space is just kind of null and void. So basically my context of the game or the scenario that I'm in is really just what's being provided to me. right Like if it's a like a trees there, I might pick a random type of tree and that's what it is, right? yeah But and maybe it has specific type of branches that might come into play or something like that. but you're not really evaluating all of those possibilities because again, you're just in that room and you know, there's a door to the north. Right. Door to the north. We got a chair. We got a key. We got a tree. I'd like to check the tree. The tree is growing keys. They all have fitting for different key holes. Oh, I opened my eyes, but now I'm just staring off into space. See, like this could work. I also kind of like the impromptu, uh, impromptu role playing. I've done it like on and off.
00:24:40
Speaker
Uh, like very occasionally and just like discord, you just like, if it gets real quiet in a room full of people for something, like sometimes it just happens in discord and it's fine, but you're just like, you find yourself in a damp cave. anyhow what Okay. Um, ah but yeah, it's, do you, do you agree with what I'm saying as far as, yeah, picturing it, the gamified version versus. tabletop as far as like ah the co-op interaction. And yes, if you do this, I'll do that. And it really, I think that the vague description can work really well as long as the spotlight's kind of on one person, but as long as as, as soon as more people start to get involved, if they have different pictures of the world, then it gets difficult to reconcile those pictures, which I think is probably what you're describing. It would be difficult for those pictures to relate to each other and help each other out and stuff like that.
00:25:35
Speaker
um That's another part of it I wasn't thinking of, but it's very true. Whereas if it's a video game, you're playing a video game. You don't have to abstract any of that stuff away. um it's It's right there in front of you. so I think that's fair. I do think that, and this is more time on this topic than I wanted to originally spend, but um it's turning into the tabletop episode or the role-playing game episode.
Dynamic Narratives in RPGs
00:26:02
Speaker
but Um, I am curious if certain factors can mitigate that like engagement across turns. Some games do that a lot more than others. Um, and I know I want to back up your argument actually with one game that we tried to play, you weren't involved with this one, but it was city of mist where the core mechanic, I'm not going to go into a bunch of detail here. Oh yeah. The core mechanic was basically you are a super powered individual and you had a bunch of cards.
00:26:30
Speaker
that basically would have different tags on them. And each card would be like, um maybe it's like ah might or something like that. And then you'd have like super strength would be a tag on that card or whatever. Um, and it could just basically be these aspects. And the idea was when you wanted to do something, you would be like, I want to use these three tags. I'm going to use, uh, my super strength and my ability to, uh, meld with concrete and my telepathy to do this. Right. And on paper, you're like, that's really cool. That's like, that's like writing a book at the table, but.
00:27:13
Speaker
We had a player, and I'm not going to name them, but like we had a player who really didn't jive with that style of like dynamic narrative and always coming up with what you want to do based on these criteria. criteria Um, and it would have benefited a lot for that person to either have absolute true freedom to just say, like, I just want to like punch the wall. Don't tell me, like, don't make me pick what tags are relevant for punching the wall. I want to knock a chunk of concrete out. or make it a video game, right? Just have a punch wall be an action you can use. um Yeah, there's there's certain people who, again, will thrive in that creative space where you can give them a blank piece of paper or just have them close their eyes and they can make stuff up and roll with it. Other people are less creatively inclined and they need some direction or something tangible to go off of. Yeah.
00:28:15
Speaker
I, I feel like I'm a little bit more on the tangible side. I think it's worth the start. I think like there are a lot of games that support that more too. Um, where it's like, this is, this is going to be closer to like a tactics game or a war game or something like that. And I actually, ah to to to again, back you up on that. I find that I also enjoy that. If there's going to be more than just a few players, I actually really like the, I'm playing this as a video game. where ranges matter. I see the target. I know what my character can do. I know what other characters can do. We need to work together to overcome this or something. But a lot of it is...
00:29:02
Speaker
A lot of those games don't necessarily optimize for cooperation on other people's turns. City of Mist actually did to their credit, although we stopped playing after like the one and very brief ah story. um And that was also, other people were good with it, but I was 100% ready to drop it because there was a core issue with that game too. but um It's changed the game. if you If you're the creator for change for a City of Mist, that's the reason we stopped playing. Change the game is ah too much. um but
00:29:32
Speaker
ah I think that would be ideal for keeping engagement active at the table is like, if your kit of tools that you, your player character has could assist with other people's turns and other people could assist with your turn and maybe you can decide to work together, like use your actions at the same time, right? Like there should be. I want to say like friend actions or like add on actions. So like magic, the gathering has a mechanic where if you're attacking with a creature, you can basically. Oh, my God, I forget what it's called. But basically you can tap other creatures to boost that creature's power. Yeah, it's like a. Spirit bomb, um right?
00:30:19
Speaker
You're basically channeling all of that into take my energy, one thing. Um, but if you had that as like a resource for like, Hey, a round of an action, you can help somebody, but you only have like one, you can't help two people. Yeah. And I mean, like, Oh, I'm going to shoot them with an arrow. I'm going to throw a fireball in front of your arrow. It is now fire infused. Yeah. And technically this is this plays exactly into City of Mist, but I'm done with that. There were other issues. They did that part well. D and&D tries this. They have the help action where you're like, describe what you do to assist what another player is doing. And you can use it in combat too to be like, oh, I'm basically distracting this enemy. So the next person who attacks gets advantage. But the issue is most of the time,
00:31:08
Speaker
just providing another player advantage is not super interesting, and it's also mechanically inferior to doing your own thing yeah to try to like deal with the enemy. The one example where that wouldn't be the case is you're you're going up against an enemy that's hard to hit, so you're statistically likely to miss, and they're statistically likely to miss, but Maybe they have a better shot than you do with advantage. They have a higher two hit or something like that, whatever, but it's kind of boring, right? It's not as detailed as what you're, the one example you gave of like, oh, I'm going to like throw a fireball in front of the arrow and imbue it or something like that. Like that's not generally a D and D thing. Um, and it's kind of like not designed to be necessarily.
00:31:57
Speaker
Um, I don't think it needs to be specifically that, but like for myself and people like me to have something of that is more engaging yeah for that quote unquote downtime as turns are going around the table. Um, cause yeah, if, If I've done my one thing that took 10 seconds and I have to wait 20 minutes to make another 10 second move, I will not play that game again because I'm not getting a direct time payoff for what I'm investing versus what I'm getting out of it. Yeah. Like you can still have fun with the people at the table and for like what's going on overall. But for me, I'm now just listening to an audio book. Right. Yeah.
00:32:45
Speaker
I think that's fair. I think like a lot of these games basically require active waiting, patience and skill. And, you know, to a bunch of people fall to different degrees of how good they are, how much they enjoy active waiting, but like it's never going to be the most engaging thing. at the same time I know that there's a gameplay cost if you're like if you give people in one of these types of game the ability to constantly interrupt each other's turns technically that would slow things down even more yeah so it's like it's not it's not an easy solution necessarily but
00:33:23
Speaker
I mean, just to to note some of the things that have been done to improve this is um some games allow you to, i think I think it actually works this way for Lancer, which is a mech game, is you determine um after each enemy turn, basically, who the next player's turn will be. And so it's literally just like the players decide one of their individuals to go. And then the GM takes the turn of one of the enemies and then the players go. Then the GM takes the turn of one of the enemies. Like they can't pick the same character. So it's like, you know, like just important clarification. You only have one active player rescue is in the dog. Alex here in the lawn.
00:34:09
Speaker
That wouldn't help at all. if if It was literally like, oh, yeah, we're just going to have the boss continue to make attacks against you. And you're one super optimized player is the only one that gets to play. It's not like that. You still have to make your way through the list. But yeah, I still like that more because basically at each time, like, oh, enemy turn is done. It's like, all right, gang, what are we going to plan to do? Yeah. It promotes that discussion, that plotting phase before you take an action. Maybe it makes more sense for Dave to run in and distract them. Yeah, exactly. Or maybe, oh, somebody has a good shot at hitting an enemy from a distance type thing.
00:34:51
Speaker
And it contributes to numbers the team play a little bit like for for what's going on at the table because like that game has mechanics like electronic countermeasures or like targeting assistants and stuff like that. You might be using a support frame type mech where your main function is helping out someone else, but you can make that call in the moment like, okay, I don't think it makes sense for me to use my support abilities here. If someone else has a great idea, they can go ahead first. But if that situation comes up, maybe an enemy barrels through a building and destroys it and is right in front of you, you can be like, hey, I would like to go because I can drop a shield, right? So you're more actively engaged. I'd like to move away from the enemy, please. Yeah, exactly. You can be more actively engaged. And for players that want to be responsive,
00:35:39
Speaker
Like um if you're an archetype of player that falls under like healer, sometimes you want to be responsive. um It's kind of funny because it's not explicitly stated, but one of the benefits to being like a cleric in D and&D with low dexterity is usually you go later in initiative and video games have done this like forever because like if your healer goes first and then you get hit, what are you going to do? Right. So it kind of like solves that problem too. For the players that for one reason or another doesn't have to be healing, would rather stand back, see how the situation unfolds and then react to it versus the proactive players. It's like, I'm going to face check this. Let's see if they're in the bushes. I'm going to do it too. them
00:36:28
Speaker
ahha I never actually thought about that as far as turn order in healers. I guess it has just been baked in enough. And now when I was like, this is working. I never actually sat down and think about it. Yeah, it can it can be bad sometimes if you like you get critical initiative um as ah as a healer in some games, even D&D and the indian stuff. so
00:36:55
Speaker
I will say the the one time it's beneficial is if you're playing Final Fantasy 10 and you're facing off against Seymour. First time you fight Seymour, even though he does it through several different fights, but basically he has like a, I'm going to hit the whole party magic attack, yeah but the magic type rotates. Yeah. So you put your buffs on like. Uh, or shield ahead of them each time. And that's the type of game that would give you some tools to mitigate that too. Right? Like maybe you haste your healer or something like that. So they, they go faster. I don't remember. I don't know if that haste exists in that game, but I know. Yeah. Haste, haste, aga, haste. I don't, I don't remember what the middle evolution, haste, haste, a raga, whatever. He's there. Um,
00:37:45
Speaker
um arrow. I don't know. Yeah. But yeah, it is. It is interesting. There's a lot of ah there's a lot of thought that goes into some of these things. And I will say I'm just closing my thought, closing my thought on D&D. I have played a ton of D and&D 5e and people have played tabletop games. I probably have as well because it's the most popular one by like a mile. Um, but if you do it enough, you start to see these issues where you're like, I kind of want to play a game that has a little bit of less of this and a little bit more of this, a little bit less waiting 20 minutes per turn, a little bit more tactics, a little bit more engagement. Um, maybe you need more zero G that's what Lancer's for. Well, I think.
00:38:37
Speaker
The two solutions to that is one, uh, the people who really care about that stuff made Lancer, right? Or they made some others spin off in that space yeah because they're like, I need a new system that works for me. And I think will be fun for other people. And then the other solution for that is having a good play group. that meshes together. That is true. Because for any game, whether it's D and&D or something else, if you don't have people on the same wavelength of how much time we want to spend, how seriously when we want to take this or something like that, yeah just having everyone's motivations or why they they're there to play.
00:39:19
Speaker
Um, just matching up makes it a lot easier because everyone's working towards the same goal versus everybody working towards separate goals and then frustrating the other people. Yeah, man, as you're saying this, it's just, it's going straight back to likegainst like it's as it's just flashbacks. Cause like, I think I made that mistake, like. there I call this a mistake. You can run it, but I would only run it with people who already are comfortable role-playing. The tavern start, right? All your people are just in a tavern and then you don't give them any immediate reason to work together. You just trust that the players will find through organic role-play some reason to become an adventuring party. Terrible, terrible. Do not drop that on people. I did it too, but like do not drop that on people.
00:40:10
Speaker
um There's, you can say there's other issues with the system, but the way the fate system does it, as I think honestly just the best way, and I've seen it in other systems as well, it's like, all right, we're at session zero, we're like making our characters and stuff, go around the table and with the person next to you, explain how your characters know each other, explain what they have in common or whatever, right? Like how do, why are they working together? and it literally forces you to at least
00:40:41
Speaker
with a person to your left get to know Yeah, on the person to your right, which rotates through, right? So everyone gets included some reason in the fiction that they're already working together. um And that's how you end up with like detective duos or like, um ah like, brother from another mother, twins, basically, that agree on everything or whatever, right? There's so much you can do there. We are the brother's parents. Yeah, exactly. um
00:41:13
Speaker
And you're doing it outside of the role playing context. So you haven't applied that pressure of like, no, no, you're in character. It doesn't make any sense that you're actually related to this person. You would have known that. Right. I think it's, it's definitely a balance of having some type of structure so that people do not have to kind of just free ball into the void of role playing. Um, cause like, like you're saying with the Taver thing, it's like, and go, the person who's just playing is like, what, what, what am I doing? What should I do you can do? What do I do with my hands? You have infinite possibilities. Just pick one of them. Uh-huh. What would I even, and yeah, that doesn't really work for, I would say actually a good chunk of people just being given the unlimited options type space. Yeah, um you need some constraints to kind of filter it down. Yeah. The most creative space that you can provide for someone for world building is not actually an empty void for them to fill with their own thoughts. It's you give someone a thought.
00:42:20
Speaker
and then you allow them to um expand from there. And it's just like like like, for instance, be like, all of the gods are dead. What killed them? right Like, there you go. There's a hook. You could build an adventure off that. Yeah, maybe you did. that's and That's an excellent answer to that question. right It's like, maybe, your player characters are the reincarnations of people who did slay the gods. Maybe they have the potential to become the next gods now, but they just don't know it. Right. Like there's so much you could do if you just start with that. But Jake, you're almost make me want to role play and play D and&D. Yeah. Well, I don't run that campaign, so you can, you can, you can take that idea. But yeah, it's, uh, uh, it's very funny.
00:43:15
Speaker
there was ah This actually reminds me of a brief aside. I'm just going to tell this because it was a very, very funny story. I want, I want somebody who's listening to just put timestamps of all the times. Jake's like, all right, we gotta, I'm going to stop. i know i And then we're at two hours. I can't even remember exactly where it came from, but I'm so if i'm sure it was popular enough. Maybe someone will will remember, but there was a campaign where the entire existence of the campaign was within the, um, the mind of some super eternal deity, right? Like.
00:43:49
Speaker
their characters, what their characters are doing, all of their their plans, all of their goals. It was just in like the curiosity box of some god, essentially. And they developed a kind of impromptu goal to meet this god, which is you know kind of funny, um and also cast a spell that would cause the God to forget about one of the characters and they accomplished it. It was like this legendary save, like amazing role, all of them working together and stuff. And they're all like high fives around the table and everything. And literally all they did was just remove one of their characters from existence. They just had that as like an impromptu goal and they ran with it. um I just, I love that. That's great.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah as i've always said, um, if you're a manager or something else or a dm ah You really just gotta You have to give people a nudge in the right direction, but then trust them to Do stuff. Yeah There's a lot that feeds into that as far as like preparation Not preparing does your system require maps?
Video Games vs. Tabletop RPGs
00:45:05
Speaker
Do you have any idea if they go to the city instead of the the the goblin cave but like I mean, obviously there's a lot the DM actually does have to do. But I mean, as far as you don't want to micromanage. Yeah. Hey, you're in this room. I hear all the things in it. There's nothing else outside the scope of this and really constrain it down or just being like. Yeah, you guys figure something out and I'll I'll wing it from here.
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah. You know, what's funny is like, I agree with that a hundred percent. Cause that is the strength of tabletop role-playing is you're not playing a video game, but it is also literally not what you do in a video game, right? Like a video game is all about closed walls. um It's just the well-made games like divinity, Baldur's Gate. They have so many options that like you don't feel constrained by the walls. It still absolutely feels like you could do whatever you want. um Even if your options really are just go to town, go to the goblin cave, you have all of these ways to interact and go about it. So. um Yeah, you have the strengths.
00:46:19
Speaker
Baller's Gate 3 is such a good game. Really? I have to mention it again for anybody who hasn't checked it out. It's so good because again, I tried D and&D. I've liked D and&D as a concept. I like the lore, the universe, all that jazz. Because again, high fantasy. Kind of my jam. Even though I don't read anything by brain and sound. Yeah, doing drugs and reading books does not count. What do you dream about drugs mainly?
00:46:51
Speaker
Lost my train of thought, must be the drugs. Yeah, you were saying you you like high fantasy. It is your jam. You like D and&D, but this is leading to a butt. And it's a big butt. Oh yeah, it is. um
00:47:06
Speaker
Yeah, something with Baldur's Gate 3, because it was so polished and immersive, it was Just really fun to get into it to where I wanted to try and not break the boundaries, but like see what you can get away with. Right. Which is where you get some fun things to try, like, oh, let me push an enemy off a ledge. Will they die from falling damage? Yes. um Right. Or do you go down to where they fell later? Right. Exactly. Yeah. It's these other things where
00:47:44
Speaker
Again, you really just want to give players the tools and a motivation and then let them try some dumb stuff as well. Right. Because obviously it's really fun to play like a really polished game like Halo 2 and go through the campaign. It's also fun to maybe just harass one grunt and see how far you can progress them to the campaign. Right. Or like just making your own goals outside of the game. I mean, we kind of talked about it before, as far as I'm forgetting the actual verbiage for the phrase, something gameplay.
00:48:25
Speaker
um Not immersive gameplay. Not that tangential. Core gameplay, gameplay loop. um It's definitely something in the gameplay, right? Could you use it in a sentence? No, I'm just kidding. What's the definition you're aiming for? ah Basically something where, like, let's say the game is Halo 2, right? Yeah. But for you, you really get out of the game, oh, I want to just break outside of the boundaries. And that's what I do in multiplayer for shits and giggles. Gotcha. Like emergent gameplay or? Emergent gameplay. Yeah.
00:49:02
Speaker
yeah Allowing for emergent gameplay, I think, is yeah key for something like that. We still have not had technically an immersive sim episode. And it's so difficult to define immersive sims, but a lot of that core DNA is what makes like divinity and Baldur's Gate really good. It's like technically, technically you could absolutely call them immersive sims. Like they have different ways you can approach problems. You can have stealth, you can have conversation, you can find your way around enemies. Like it's it's all there, um but it's ramped up so high that it feels like
00:49:42
Speaker
almost dumb to compare like deus ex, um, human revolution as an immersive sim compared to like Baldur's Gate 3, right? Like deus ex your choices were like talk people, sneak through vent, shoot your face. It has to be a event. Yeah, it has to be event. Yeah, pretty much. Um, and so like, if that's an immersive sim, this has to be, but, um, Yeah, I don't know. It's, it is really
The Success of Baldur's Gate 3
00:50:15
Speaker
cool. This is just turning into another, uh, Baldur's great, like, love fest, but that basically is like, there are so many upsides to playing that versus just playing D and D. Like the content's prepared. It's in front of you. You can play with however many people you have.
00:50:33
Speaker
The voice actors are absolutely excellent. Like in my D and D game, like where I'm playing as a player, I play as a gnome robot, essentially, right? You want to know what my voice is for my gnome robot that I play, who's like an artificer and he uses like. a light crossbow that's been retrofitted to shoot energy and all this stuff. It's literally my own voice. I tried some different things when I started and I realized I wasn't comfortable with where they were ending up, so I just talk as myself.
00:51:04
Speaker
And it's not as satisfying as people who pull off all these other voices and stuff and like credit to them. But even the people who use their own voices and their sessions, they're not pulling out Baldur's Gate 3 performances, right? Like, it's incredible. So, yeah. Man, Baldur's Gate 3. Great game. Are you sad that they didn't hire you as a voice actor? No, no. okay Because again, my my voice would basically just be my only normal voice. And I don't know what character that goes to. It goes to me, but I don't think it goes to other characters.
00:51:42
Speaker
um I had ideas for news to cover for this episode, and it's absolutely not that. This is just the talking about tabletops and some other stuff episode. um But I had a piece of news that related to Baldur's Gate 3. So that's the one I'm going to cover since we we're talking about it. What do you got? It's not even a piece of news. It's a fact. ah But apparently the concurrent player count for Baldur's Gate 3 is still like over a hundred thousand players. Which is crazy.
00:52:15
Speaker
Like that is so many players. And is there any type of any type of is there actually any game that rivals that statistic? Well, I'm sure if we like look up player counts, which I could do, um, let me see, sit top player counts. But the thing I was going to mention as the follow-up was that there are a lot of games that do not rival that, notably like, uh, uh, Concord, I think at peak was like a couple thousand players or something. Wait, did Concord come out?
00:52:50
Speaker
Uh, it either, they had, it they had like their, their open beta weekend or whatever. Nobody cared as it I saw a trailer for it. And I was like, Oh, guardians of the galaxy. And then that was it. Um, Oh, here we go. Top sellers is not, what I was looking for most played. Wow. There's a lot of people playing banana. That's the NFT game. Uh, that's kind of depressing to see. Path of Exile really up here, number seven. Elden Ring is number six, which is crazy. That was the other fact I was gonna mention. We didn't actually talk about it in the episode, but like, um Armored Core, seven. Seven, six? Six, right? Armored Core is six. Six, yeah. Shadows of Rubicon.
00:53:38
Speaker
Fire's Rubicon. Shadows of the Year Tree. There you go. um they They sold, ah I think it was like three million copies, which was really good. And Shadows of the Year Tree literally sold five in like three days. It was just insane how well that game's done. I still think a lot of people hopped on the armor core train, myself included, no because of FromSoft. But Elden Ring was so widely praised and received that everyone's like, Oh, hell yeah. More of this. So it does not surprise me that it sold really well. Cause again, um, I see like a bunch of my steam friends who like, I played Dota with who were like, you have to think about checking out own ring. I'm like, you should. Yeah. But like, I don't know them of having a history of liking those types of games.
00:54:29
Speaker
Right. Um, even like another friend of ours who I won't name for your secrecy sake, but they were interested in checking it out. And I was like, Oh. Again, awesome. Did not think that was your bag, but I'm glad that it has reached, it has touched you as well. That you may, that you too may be saved. Uh-huh. Yes. Um, I'm looking at these for comparison. So as of the recording, the peak today players for Baldur's Gate three is 81,000 people. well Um, this beats out. Actually, wait, can I not, this is not sort by
00:55:07
Speaker
by daily players. Okay, there we go. I was like, this beats out. And I was about to go down the list. And then I saw the thing that was right underneath it had a higher player count. So I'm like, what is this? How is this being organized? alphabet ah Yeah. What does this beat out? Beats out TF2. More people playing Baldur's Gate than TF2. And people have always been playing TF2. Yeah. um Path of Exile has a lot of players. It's doing really well right now. Good for them. um Beats Out Dead by Daylight. That's a multiplayer only game. So, you know.
00:55:43
Speaker
um I was about to say ties. And then I looked over and it's like Baldur's gate. Yeah, that makes sense. It doesn't make sense. Uh, this is technically steam. So I don't think this counts, but, uh, overwatch too. That's 45,000 versus 77 beats warframe. Um, beats hell divers. It's kind of crazy. Anyways, I can go through the list. It beats destiny too. Like there, there's a lot on this list that Baldur's gate is beating right now. And most people are playing that as a single player game.
00:56:16
Speaker
Yeah. That's something I need to do at a point. and I started but with people because of the kind of that D and D aspect where I have my own RP character and somebody else has theirs and how they're going to interact. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. But if you play single player, you can just go like absolutely for broke and be like, we are going to just have the most optimized nonsense. I like throw it at the wall the things on YouTube of like, uh, like it's some YouTubers were like, all they do is like go squad deep with their buds, uh, similar to whatever that, uh, channel is that does, um,
00:56:56
Speaker
Is it team dark side? They do like monster hunter stuff where they all have the exact same weapon set. Gotcha. Something like that, where you just have like a little army of gnomes and that's your group. ah ah You could definitely do that in that game too, but yeah, the tabletop games are fun. Try them out. Try stuff that's not D and D. There's a lot of cool stuff out there.
00:57:23
Speaker
It's all on itch too. Just by the next bundle, you'll get like a hundred of them. Oh yeah. I remember the last time I did something like that. It's like, Oh, you have access to like a thousand things. I'm like, Oh, and then a lot of them are just like PDFs for like tabletop things. I'm like, I, I'm not going to play this. ah i actually I wanted to mention one other one, because there's one that I'm tracking. It's not out yet. It's still in development. But it's developed by MCDM, is the the ah developers for it. And it's basically, they've played D and&D their entire lives and they wanted to make something else. But it has things that solve the D and&D problems for me, like um resource builders and expenders on characters. so like
00:58:12
Speaker
as you're you're doing things, it's powering up a resource pool that you can spend for like big powerful effects and stuff like that. So not every turn feels like the same. And then like as combat goes on, everything is becoming more and more deadly. like You are basically powering up to the point where things will resolve one way or the other. to specifically avoid the, Hey, we just started combat. Let's just call it now because we only have three hours left in the session and we're not going to finish it by then. Right. Um, and like, I like to see that there are, there are people out there that are trying to resolve those problems that are ADHD infused generation, like, uh, just cannot handle when it comes to traditional role-playing games.
Future of Tabletop Games
00:59:00
Speaker
So future looks bright.
00:59:03
Speaker
Just got to give some creative people caffeine. And they'll solve the world's problems. That's all it takes. And Larian's going to make a different game. A lot of people, myself included, would have been really happy if it was more Baldur's Gate 3. But I think it'll be better if it's not. So. I think it's going to be Armor Course 7, as in RPG. Larian just picks it up. I mean, I can't say it would be wrong from Soft to give them the shot, given their track record. um but it would be very funny. It would just be like disco Elysium as freaking mechs.
00:59:42
Speaker
But yeah, that's that's the episode.
00:59:50
Speaker
I've lost energy. good tell I think I'm, I think I've exhausted the topics and everything else would just be like, Oh, we're actually going to start looking through the the news and happen this week. Not this week, uh, last month, but maybe we would just do that next week or something. We'll see. Um, I know that people save themselves for us when it comes to news. Like they're not paying any attention to what happens in the industry and they just get that info here. So I think that's fine.
01:00:21
Speaker
but if you have a viable source. Exactly. We're the most viable source. um But if you would like to be a viable source, you can send in your scoops to soapstonepodcast.gmail dot.com or you could join the discussion on Facebook. I don't know if I would get news there or not, but facebook dot.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Goodbye.