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C2 Ep. 70 Eberron Reviewed 13
309 Plays4 years ago
We take a look back on the past arc and answer your questions.
This episode is brought to you by the generous donations of our amazing Show Sponsors: Laura Pickrahn, Darrin Katzska, Irene Viorritto, Ryan Royce, Darrell DeLaney, Jessica Smith, Charles Compton, Danielle Bramhall-Smith, Nastasia Raulerson, The Kamm Family, David Scrams, Elizabeth Clark, Andy Dossett, Rebekah Gowman, deviouspoptart, Eðvarð Arnór Sigurðsson, Michael Clark, Eric Witman, and Shelby Johnson.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Eberron Renewed'
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Speaker
you
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Speaker
The following episode is brought to you by the generous donations of
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d20 radio your gamers roll
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Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to Eberron Renewed, an actual play tabletop RPG podcast where we play in the Eberron campaign setting using the Genesis system.
Meet the Hosts
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However, today we are doing an Eberron review. That's why I'm talking. My name is Jeff. I'm Phillip. I'm Randy. And I'm Eric.
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And at the end of each arc, we like to take a moment and kind of debrief what happened, answer questions from listeners. And so that's what we'll be doing today. As you can hear, Trevor is not with us. We're hoping he can hop in before we're done to it very, at the very least, answer some questions. And if not, we will make sure he does it in the Discord for those of you who had inquiring minds.
00:01:56
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for those of you that didn't, skip it, I don't care.
Murder Mystery Arc Discussion
00:01:59
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All right, so this arc was fun, and I do wanna start, so this arc was a
00:02:08
Speaker
murder investigation that heavily drew from the fact that all of us have a background doing uh mostly community or or school theater but doing spending time in the theater world uh and eric you said that the story faith pretty faithfully mimics a real life tale yes um yeah i mean not the story that the you know the yeah the halfling and the goliath and
00:02:34
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I think it was after we were done recording that this was based off of real life, like old Hollywood 1920s, maybe earlier, because it was the silent film era, about a famous director who was found murdered in his home. And the only thing I had to add to it was a resolution because it's an unsolved crime.
00:03:00
Speaker
So I, I, I was the one that had to come up with, uh, with the, the who done it because life did not provide anyone with that. So, but yeah, a little worse about dogging on the solution so hard. Real mean to that guy. So, but yeah, all the stuff about like the, uh, the younger actress and the mother who was, uh, very against their relationship and.
00:03:24
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the hush tones about the nature of the relationship and the actual like nature of it. And yeah, just a lot of a lot of the side characters were also real based on real life people that were involved in this this story. So yeah.
00:03:39
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Including the doctor that showed up randomly at the crime scene and said stomach emerging and then left And then they rolled the body over and he had been shot. So yeah again Technically correct. Yes. Yes, not not wrong But unlike my story that doctor was never heard from again, it was just some yeah, no idea who that guy was So let me ask did you
00:04:04
Speaker
read this story and then say, I've got to make this an arc? Or did you say I want to do a murder mystery arc? I recall a story. Six of one, like I had been, I, I was like, went down a bit of an like old Hollywood rabbit hole about like the corruption and kind of the intense censorship of the artists and their lives and all that kind of stuff.
00:04:27
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And so I really enjoyed that era and kind of the noir vibes. And so I wanted to lean heavily into that because, you know, we always talk about charm being fantasy New York and those types of stories lend themselves well to that kind of environment. And then it was kind of, you know, I had recently listened to this story as part of that rabbit hole and was like, okay, this is, um,
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This actually has an adventure feel to it as opposed to just a story. Like there's something to figure out here. So yeah, that's kind of how I ended up with this story.
Verla's Arc and Storytelling Moments
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Go ahead. Did you already say the name of the actual victim in case somebody was interested? William Desmond Taylor. William Desmond Taylor. There you go. Yeah.
00:05:11
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I find modern true crime abhorrent, but this is long enough ago that I think it's just an interesting story. Yeah, old, old, old true crime is... Like George Reeves, the Superman actor. That's very interesting. His death is also extremely shrouded in mystery. Yeah. Well, anyway, that was the source of the tale. It was a lot of fun.
00:05:37
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uh, take something in the real world and like, I don't know, put it, put it into sharn, I guess. Yeah. Um, so yeah.
00:05:48
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And I hope you all enjoyed it as well. Yeah, it was a good time. So let's jump into the story. We are approached by Verla with this job. This is, if I'm not mistaken, the first time she's explicitly given us like the kickoff for an arc. It's almost always been Boromar. Yeah. A Boromar. Or Jason. Or Olive. Oh, right, Olive. Yes, Olive was the very first arc, wasn't she? No. Second. Second. Yeah.
00:06:16
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Well, it was whatever the first obligation-based arc was. I don't know what order that was.
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And we are told that a man has died. He is an author. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. There was some serendipity before we found this out in our, in, and Eric always asks us, what did you guys do in the interim since the last job? And Philip's like, Eric probably went to see a play, having no idea. Or Trevor, Trevor said Raynard didn't mean to take the heiress. Trevor did and brought heiress, right. Sorry, pardon me. No, you're good. Trevor's not here to defend himself. Let's say Philip did it.
00:06:53
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Um, and, uh, yeah, and having no idea that this was going through your head when, when that, uh, I mean, when Trevor brought that up, it was like, well, this is fortunate. Cause I have the entire theater scene of lower Memphis plotted out right now for this art.
00:07:11
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And there, there was a moment where Philip like straight up asked, are you making all this stuff up or, um, well, that's right. Yeah. Uh, so no, yeah, that was, that was very serendipitous and a lot of fun to, I mean, it was serendipitous in that I had all the information ready and was able to do something fun, but also it, it was cool that the.
Character Development and Emotional Struggles
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the tone and the setting for the art got set up organically in that way, that there was able to be some level of invested stakes because you had all had just seen a show directed by this guy. And so, yeah, that was a lot of fun. Sure.
00:07:49
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I do want to ask Randy, just real quick, keeping in mind that our last recorded session has not gone out by the time this one will. That's true. How's Milo? Like things are just getting darker. So I, you know, Milo.
00:08:11
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is dealing with a whole lot of things. I think he thinks now people are out to get him for sure. Keeping an eye on him. He still wants to find out. And I think now he's almost certain that he knows somebody killed his wife. He wants to find out who.
00:08:42
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And his magic just seems to be getting a little crazier in ways that he is not expecting.
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I don't know. It's I think he's just trying to hold it together. Yeah. Just trying to keep it together. I mean, the man has not been nor nor should he be. The man has not been the same since the dark warehouse hearing Kylie episodes. So yeah. Yeah, which I get. I'm surprised that Aeris got well appeared to get over that encounter so quickly as well.
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Eris figured out what was happening, like it became clear to Eris what was happening, that some sort of freaky ghost things. Oh no, yeah, sure. Yeah, no, I don't, I guess I should, I should say, I'm not surprised that Eris was able to logic her way out of thinking he, this guy is here, he's coming back, but it still had to have been pretty dramatic. Yeah. And I think for Milo also that,
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the, you know, our game master threw out a whole bunch of stuff that I was sitting there going, yeah, that was probably in Milo's head. Yeah, that's probably in Milo's head. I mean, you're just confirming everything Milo was, you know, would be thinking. All right. So let's get into this
Investigation and Strategy
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mystery. Verla tells us that a man has been killed. He is a playwright. No, pardon me. He is a director, uh, who was working with Aeris' favorite playwright. Um,
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And then she kind of just lays out the array of potential places we can go and we get to just follow the leads. And it was a lot of fun just to say, okay, where should we go first? Where should we go second? Because it was theater, the apartments, and then a list of people that could be found there, either of those places or elsewhere. Yeah. Luca.
00:10:45
Speaker
Oh my gosh, I have them all written down. I don't know why I'm trying to remember them. I literally have everything written down. At the Golden Horn. Casa Faire, Luca, Mandairin, the... What is the name of the... Harold, who we never actually talked to. Nope.
00:11:06
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Marvert, that was the name, but he was, we didn't know about him. We met him when we went to see Sivus at the Diamond Theater. What's up, guys? I took notes. But that was a blast to me. It was just, it was...
00:11:26
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I don't know, it was fun to try to suss out where, cause you know, particularly since Eric and I have played mystery style games together before, trying to figure out, all right, what's he setting up for us? Where can I, that night that there was not Eric and I spent like four hours trying to solve a Sherlock Holmes mystery. He's supposed to take us like 45 minutes. Yeah. I like to think it was because we were too smart. Yes. We're trying to fill in all the holes.
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But so we decided the first place that we needed to go was the theater. Met with Sivis, met Marvert the Tech and Marilyn the ingenue and Clem the mother and Hob was convinced you did a good job of making very few people seem
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Ironclad innocent. Yeah, which has to be done obviously, but you just did a very good job of even like I'm okay not so much not so much Marvert the tech it didn't really seem but even like Grace and George it was just like today hiding now that I thought they were murderers it was something weird
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Yeah well and I mean that's like any like just to share that obsession that I had like when you get into like old Hollywood nobody was a good person like they weren't all murderers but very few of them would be what you qualified moral so I've seen singing in the rain and I believe that was a pretty veracity
00:12:59
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nope that ain't the word. Pretty truthful representation of Hollywood and there was at least one very good person that came off the bus at the beginning and stayed virtuous through the end. Oh okay so I want to know how many of these beats did you lay out? Like did you know if they or when they go to the theater that's when they're going to meet Marilyn?
00:13:22
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not at the hotel or not the apartment, not at this, not at that. When they meet Marilyn, Clem will be coming in quickly after or were you or was this a sense of wherever they go first, Marilyn's going to be there, wherever they go second, you know, blah, blah, blah. It wasn't really even that it was like I knew the various places that people would be and, you know,
00:13:45
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when you all went to the theater and said, well, let's see if we can talk to some people who just got out of the show. It's like, okay, this would be a good opportunity for them to meet Marilyn. Not necessarily this is where the quest marker is to meet Marilyn. So there are other places that you could have gone to talk to her just based on the own logical leaps that you all would have made. I think the reason Marver came across as like the most genuinely like
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I don't know, decent person in that there wasn't a great deal of dimensions because Marvert was improvised off the cuff. Like Marvert, the tech was like, oh, OK, they want to talk to a couple of people. Who can I come up with? Marvert, that excellent name that I just came up with. So.
00:14:33
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So yeah, there there was always and you know things like Casa fair Casa fair was not intended to be in the golden horn, but you all I think rolled a bunch of advantage or a triumph and was like, okay One of your leads is going to be where you are to make life easier for you kind of thing. Sure. Um Where did you come up? Where did that name come from? Oh
00:14:59
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Yeah, just wondering. I, it may have been based around the name of the real life like head of Paramount that went into William Desmond Taylor's house and cleaned stuff up before the cops could get there. I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but I actually think that was one that I just kind of
00:15:18
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It sounded like a fantasy old... It was that Venn diagram of if there was an old Hollywood in Eberron, Casa Faire sounds like a name of a person that would have been around back then. Fair enough. So yeah. It's a weird Spanglish for nice house, which I like. Yeah.
00:15:41
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Or some, I don't know, I'm sure there's some language where kas means something, and it is an event. Just gonna be described that way. We meet Marilyn. We meet her mom. Hob doesn't take to her mom because her mom doesn't take tob.
00:16:00
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i don't know if hob ever actually thought she was the killer but he definitely wanted to uh inconvenience or more by asking more questions but i'd love to talk and we don't really see the um fruition of it all until the very end of the episode the tag that philip added but i'd love philip if you wanted to speak to
00:16:21
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what Eris was feeling when she realized where they were from. Does Eris have a strong feeling of, I don't want to say familial, because it was a country, you know, more than I feel familiar towards somebody I meet, another person even from Oklahoma. But
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I think what I'm getting at is Eris is Kyron, but she had these things happen to her that made her separate from Kyron. Yeah, I mean, not not in a national sense, like you say, but, you know, you might feel an affinity for someone you met from Oklahoma if Oklahoma had been destroyed by an atomic bomb.
00:17:13
Speaker
Yes. And you had managed to be out of the state when it happened and you encountered someone else. In that sense, there's an element like that. It's definitely not national. Eris feels absolutely no affinity and feels
00:17:27
Speaker
Frankly, a great deal of entirely unjustified disdain for the Chiron royals and particularly Orgev. And that has absolutely nothing to do with my feelings about Orgev from campaign one. It's something I decided about Eris. It's just I have a lot to work with because of campaign one. But I almost said something. It would have been like a huge spoiler for anybody who was listening. I almost just tossed it out there. Boy, oh boy.
00:17:54
Speaker
Right. That's all that's all I'm saying. Yeah, and I and I Philip don't like him. So that's, that's not too bad. Anyway, we haven't really got to explore that. And so I'll leave that alone other than that Eris. Eris, more or less feels like the the royals let them down in ever so many ways. So not a national sense, but in a sense of
00:18:23
Speaker
You and I kind of both survived this thing is there's a sense of that. Sure. I think what it was kind of a lot of really rapid calculation because I
00:18:38
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I had either forgotten or never encountered in my perusing of the extremely dense Sharn sourcebook that Eric and I both have. I had not either not realized or just forgotten that there is a Kairan, there's a displaced Kairan community in Sharn and I had certainly forgotten that it is a literal ghetto in that it's a walled off
00:19:04
Speaker
Community like that. And I'm sorry. Is it gray wall or high wall? High wall. High wall. Gray wall is another thing. Gray wall is a city in Eberron. It's just a different country. And red wall is mice. I know that one. Red wall is mice. And I mean, and other woodland beings. Who's got the time to say it all?
00:19:32
Speaker
Um, yeah, so I kind of did some quick calculation in my head of why, why is Eris surprised by this place? Why hasn't Eris been here? Um, and I kind of decided it was
00:19:52
Speaker
You know, Eris got out due to a variety of weird circumstances by being taken in a raid and then rescued by Ulfin. And so I think Eris has gotten, I think Eris has a little bit of a unjust pulled myself up by my bootstraps kind of feeling about where she's managed to get.
00:20:20
Speaker
That has started to go away as she's Come to accept relying on others occasionally and so I think seeing the Conditions that this person that she was really really irritated by Was living in because I think this is definitely the first time Eris has gone into Highwall Seeing what it was like in Highwall. I think Eris realized That she's actually remarkably lucky in her circumstances
00:20:51
Speaker
You know, I mean, yeah, she repairs slot machines for a at a casino that's a front for a mob and occasionally does crime. And yeah, she lives alternately in the upper room of a bar or in a nest in the corner of a classroom. But apparently there are people
00:21:17
Speaker
from Kyra who haven't got that. There are people from Kyra who are worse off than that. And so I think it just made her feel a little bit aware of her own fortune. And not really knowing what to do with that is what
00:21:41
Speaker
caused me to at some point in the in the arc say that Eris stays up the rest of that cleaning graffiti off of a wall because Eris is absolutely the person not a person you know obviously is not a person that we're going to see try and empathize well with someone but there's a thing that is in disrepair I can fix it and so that's Eris's way of exercising the
00:22:11
Speaker
It's not quite survivor's guilt, but a sense of, I don't know, unease with the fact that she's done quite a lot better than some people who got out of Kire. Yeah, sure. When she started cleaning graffiti, I was like, I absolutely can empathize with the
00:22:40
Speaker
I need to do something to not feel impotent right now. I can certainly clean some graffiti. And I apologize. It kind of, sorry. And it kind of, that's what kind of spawned the, Oh, Hey, I bet this would be an easy, easy place to tie in to, um, the thing with olive because Eris and olive
00:23:04
Speaker
even pooling resources aren't going to be wealthy. And I assume that acquiring real estate in Sharn is expensive, but it's probably not expensive in Highwall. You're not exactly building new neighborhoods, are they? Right. And you can tell me if you if you did, did you work in why she decided to go there that night? Was that just to apologize for the kind of crappy behavior of her friends?
00:23:32
Speaker
Uh, yes, I... I and Eris probably hoped that there was a way she could turn this into... And because I've treated you differently, you're going to give me more information than you initially gave me. And then Eris got there and felt crappy about that impulse.
00:23:58
Speaker
And I later got really mad at myself because an obvious way to serve both needs would have been for Eris for me to flip a story point and say, and Eris notices through the door that something in the house is broken and so can offer to fix it, which would have been a way to maybe pull at that thread a little more while also exercising the fact that Eris feels crappy about all of this.
00:24:26
Speaker
Uh, which is a great segue to the next episode where that exact thing happens. Oh, is that why you, uh, the idea was in my head. Yeah. The idea was in that in my head because of that. Yeah. Uh, I am going to jump to the next episode, uh, essentially giving short shrift to the murder mystery here. So let's recap just a little bit of what we know at this point.
Unraveling the Complex Murder Mystery
00:24:49
Speaker
Uh, Billy Taylor is dead. A doctor pronounced him dead from a stomach hemorrhage. Turns out that he was hemorrhaging because of all the knife wounds. Um, and then we know some, some players, we know that he was working with Luca for a show at the diamond theater that Civis owns. Uh, Marilyn is his ingenue minty and Clem is her mother who.
00:25:15
Speaker
has unspecified problems with the relationship which i assume was left for us to get to try to fill in blanks and either get suspicious or not of one or more of them yeah um so love it um which one of us did get quite suspicious of her um i still think she might have done it um all right
00:25:40
Speaker
And then we also know in Billy's life that he's recently changed personal assistance valets. Yeah So that's that okay, but we never worked out why either we never learned why that was either cuz we didn't ever learn We didn't ever go and talk to that guy. Was there was there a hard and fast reason why Eric? Are we gonna come with all? asked Luca about the Him saying next time I see him. I'm gonna kill him and he's doing money. That's right. It was his old valet That's what it was valet been and they found a pawn shop slip where he had written
00:26:10
Speaker
Billy's real name as the signatory as kind of a the intention is I found out your secret so leave me alone and don't pursue this or I'm going to reveal it right is why Billy was so worked up about it so
00:26:28
Speaker
All right. So the next day, we decided this time to go to the apartments, which is the Golden Horn, where Billy lived. Most of the characters did it to investigate the murder. Aris also did it to check out the real estate. There's an apartment. There's an apartment available up town. Soon vacant. Yeah. Vacant. Vankant. That's not a vankant.
00:26:58
Speaker
A couple of things, I mean, I think Milo's, this is, well, this is where, yeah, Milo's CSI-ing was really quite good. It's clear that Randy knew what he was doing as far as looking for evidence more so than maybe some of us did. Like me and me.
00:27:21
Speaker
Yeah. Milo got to show that maybe there was some intelligence there after all. No, it was, it was, it was good. And also, I mean, just like anything with this game, it's a combination of having a good thought and the dice going your way. Uh, and thankfully they did for Milo. Um, and, and we'll get back to that, Randy, or if you'd like to talk about it more, um, we also meet two new people, Grayson, George,
00:27:48
Speaker
Was the eavesdropping thing just a means to get her in the scene or was it also to give suspicion or like, why did you decide to have her eavesdropping? Which you could have very well been missed. We had to do a perception check to catch it. I think I was the only one that passed it.
00:28:06
Speaker
She's the nosy neighbor, you know, uh, of that hall. And, uh, important, like if Rose had gone your way, she did have pertinent information to the night of like, she basically saw somebody shortly after they heard that weird noise that they mentioned leaving the apartment. And so she did have information if
00:28:25
Speaker
the dice would have gone your way to provide, but they didn't. And so she was kind of cagey and talked more about her career and the height of the doctor and all that kind of stuff. So there was some additional pieces of the puzzle that she had.
00:28:43
Speaker
But yeah, I just like she's a fun, interesting character, also based off a real life person. And so yeah, I, but yeah, she could have gone totally unnoticed if you all hadn't passed the perception check to notice that somebody was listening in to what you all were doing. And thank goodness, because she was fun. She and George both.
00:29:04
Speaker
So yeah, in the order of the episode, Eris and Hob go to Grace's apartment. Eris ingratiates herself. I guess Hob helps. He provides a ladder. It's true. And yeah, they get some information. I mean, they do learn that they're both also theater people, which I thought was fun.
00:29:25
Speaker
essentially good the the fan art I really want like the art I really want from this arc is Hobb Standing there patiently as though he's done this many times before while Eris sits on his shoulders to fix a light bulb
00:29:41
Speaker
That's such a cute image to my head. There's one of two options for what Hobb is doing. He is either watching her work and being like, this is fun, or he's just fully carrying on. Like, she does this. Let's keep talking, Grace. Let's get into the separation.
00:29:58
Speaker
And essentially, she provides a little better chronology. She gives us an exact time that she heard a thud outside. She also describes the doctor, right? Because she did see him. Yep. Describes the brown hair, the pockmarks. Or does Ace describe the pockmarks?
00:30:13
Speaker
Someone else described the pockmarks because we went back and asked Grace about it. She confirmed some of the... I realized dark hair and beard did not paint the word picture necessary for a unique person in a crime scene. I need something else to just... Yeah, dog, that literally rules out one fifth of our podcast. 80% of us have dark hair and some semblance of beard.
00:30:40
Speaker
I guess not Trevor as much anymore. And then yeah, the remainder of the episode is Milo and Reynard investigating. So Randy, what were you trying to do when you started? And I guess I should say Randy missed the first two episodes and this was his first time jumping in so he learned all this stuff pretty freshly and jumped right in and started investigating the apartment.
00:31:10
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I remember who it was, but either a character or Eric just told me when he was, you know, giving me kind of what had happened that the police had been there and looked around and concluded that nothing was missing, I believe. And as I had Milo look around, well, I mean,
00:31:38
Speaker
It looked like, okay, something may not have been missing, but the place had been gone over. I mean, the place was messy, so that made Milo curious, like, okay, well, what were they looking for? Maybe if they didn't find it, maybe Milo could. Or maybe Milo could find out something they missed and decide and deduce that, hmm, they probably did take something.
00:32:04
Speaker
So that was Milo's thought process, just to look, you know, to basically double check the coppers to see if and what they may have missed. And I think initially he wanted to determine, I guess, which way the body was lying to determine if, you know, he was coming in and got surprised or he was leaving and got surprised. I don't know what that man necessarily told us, but he just wanted to know which way is the body lying.
00:32:34
Speaker
Well, it did reveal that his arms were up when he was stabbed. So either he was in duress or hugging somebody. Yeah. So, but that, like I say, Milo is just wanting to investigate, double check the cops. Yeah. Awesome. And I actually found out quite a bit. I think, uh, Raynard discovered that the knife was missing. Mm-hmm.
00:33:03
Speaker
And I think Milo pretty much figured out everything else that was missing. Yeah. You learned everything useful that we learned at the apartment. Yeah. Literally everything that ended up mattering happened while, uh, heiress and hob were changing labels with an over couple. So sorry, away from heiress and hob while they were, that's important. Um, then there's ace. Then there's a twist.
00:33:34
Speaker
And yeah, so and the episode ends and we start the next episode with Randy.
Suspect Confrontation and Story Impact
00:33:45
Speaker
Was it, it's not, I mean, it's not thought of it because it's not what it pulls. And this is like a net that grabs and holds, right? Yeah.
00:33:53
Speaker
And then, yeah, we pull him in and it's just some kid and he's an idiot and he doesn't know what he's doing and he's in over his head. And I bet that happens a lot more often than we portray it. Uh, I bet kid in over his head happens a lot more in the world of petty crime than we have portrayed so far in this podcast. Yes. Yeah. So I've watched The Wire and it's like constantly going on. Um, but no, he was a fun character. Had some great little jokes and us getting to riff back at him. Um,
00:34:22
Speaker
We may see Ace again. He is now a member of the criminal underbelly of, of Sean. So, aspiring member of the criminal underbelly. I mean, he's doing it. Yeah. He is under the belly. I mean, you know, he's sub belly. What are you gonna say, Randy? I mean, he, he had the picture, right? Yeah. He had the photo, the picture, not the photograph, the picture. That was what he was there to get in fact. Yes.
00:34:52
Speaker
So he had done his job. He just didn't count on. He didn't count on. Yeah, he just didn't count on somebody else being there. If my Postmate goes and picks up my meal, but then does not bring it to me, they have not done their job. If your Postmate got accosted by four skilled, angry, dangerous people, you'd probably be a little forgiving of them for not getting your Dunkuccino to you. Hey.
00:35:25
Speaker
It brings to mind an interesting question that I did not think about. Billy still has this picture in his place.
00:35:34
Speaker
So despite his abandoning, which makes him a real trash bag, he had some enough affinity for this either woman or child or both to keep a photo, unless he thought he looked really good in it. I guess it is a possibility. But that almost humanizes Billy a little bit, which is nice, I guess.
00:36:00
Speaker
All right, let's, let's, let's, let's rip through this. So we decide that we are going to, um, we eventually decide that we are going to just try to sit on the, uh, civis enclave and wait and see if the guy shows up to, I guess we decided to, to ensure that the photograph or picture got taken to the enclave to be delivered. And we, did we flip a story for you and roll a triumph one way or another, we found that guy was there.
00:36:30
Speaker
Yeah, it was two triumphs. It was two separate triumphs. One. Yeah. One got us the the person who was supposed to pick it up, pick it up like a person does come along, but they saw us. That was that was stealth checks. That was stealth failure with a bunch of advantage. I think Randy rolled two triumphs on a check like a single that that summoned the the summons, the doctor. Yeah, because we had we had the half elf woman who has shown up when we failed our stealth check, but we had enough advantage to say,
00:37:01
Speaker
We see who sees us essentially. And so we began pursuit and then, yeah, Randy's double triumph conjured the not a doctor. And Eric had learned his lesson after.
00:37:15
Speaker
two chase sequences ended prematurely by having them only start a short range band away to have the doctor be medium range band away. So that begs the question, which I think I'm using that phrase incorrectly. Man, I'd said something about being begrudged in the discord and I think I used it wrong and it's really rocked my world. Do I really know what I'm saying most of the time? Because I'm not sure that that's what begs the question means, but here I am saying it anyway.
00:37:42
Speaker
If we hadn't rolled a triumph and dictated the doctor there, was there another place that you had planned for us to find the doctor, or were we going to find out it was the doctor but not fine? What was your original, and this comes up, this is actually a question, let me find out really quickly who asked it. It's Richard, Cree. One of his questions is, how much of the story did the crew skip over by using triumphs? And I think that this is a way to address that, since we did just,
00:38:11
Speaker
We apparated the doctor with a triumph. Yeah, so, I mean, you all going to stake out the Civis Enclave was not something I'd really fleshed fully out as being something that you all would want to do until, and halfway through the conversation with Ace, it was like, okay, it would make sense for them to go do this. But I, you all didn't skip over a whole lot of the,
00:38:41
Speaker
the story per se, there was obviously, like I said, more to learn from Grace and Harold and Eddie, if you would have been able to track him down.
Character Insights and Narrative Depth
00:38:54
Speaker
So there was lots of bits, but you all got the whole story, I guess, just some additional appendices that are left behind by the triumphs and all that kind of stuff.
00:39:08
Speaker
Um, but my, I guess intended, uh, spot for the doctor was going to be in lower Dura where he had like hired ACE. He was going to be, uh, shacked up down there, kind of waiting a couple of days to leave town to make sure all affairs were tied up. So yeah. I mean, in a face would have gotten away. Yeah, sure. Trying to follow him. Yeah.
00:39:38
Speaker
We get the doctor, he explains what he did. I had an uncontrollable giggle fit after learning why this person had done what they did, and it took a while for me to come back down. It just seemed so... There have been dumber reasons murder has been committed in real life, so I'm not saying it's an outlandish idea that this would happen. I'm saying,
00:40:04
Speaker
Just the mental gymnastics that the doctor, did we ever get his real name? I don't think we did. Our quote unquote doctor had to go through to think this is how I will help these women, or this woman and child really blew my mind to the point that I wasn't really sure how to proceed for a while. But yeah, we,
00:40:31
Speaker
get a confession essentially which is of course the only way that things work in murder mystery entertainments because trials are long and boring uh and expensive and confessions are pretty quick and concise and tie things up with a bow so um I'm trying to figure out here I've lost my notes and part of it was I mean you go back to the I did I didn't have to I chose to as an elective take uh noir genre as an elective as part of my degree and
00:41:02
Speaker
insurance fraud, specifically life insurance fraud, is such a common thing that people do in that genre. And so that's kind of where that leaned of like, okay, well, it like,
00:41:14
Speaker
Sure, Sharon has life insurance. Why not? Or the estate or whatever. Like Billy works in entertainment, so probably has a nest egg that he's sitting on. And so they expose that he has this family, kill him, his estate goes to next of kin. And yeah, so that's kind of the path I went down was in the noir genre, killing people for financial gain is a pretty common thing. And so that's where that came from.
00:41:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:41:44
Speaker
And he was pretty resolute. I mean, he was like steadfast and didn't seem to have any type of remorse. He was like, this is how it is. It's how it's going to be. And I'm fine with that. Yeah. He had no doubt that what he had done was the right thing and the right way of going about it. Yeah. Which, which Hobb was annoyed. I think I even vocalized it at one point. Hobb was like, I guess it's my job now to make sure that these people get their money because I'm going to have to tell this cop why you did it and who they really are.
00:42:14
Speaker
You're just going to go to jail and no one's going to listen to you because of the whole murder thing. I do want to back up. I messed a whole section where we actually went to Luca's house. We went to the home of Eris's heroes. I don't know if that's true, but someone that Eris greatly respects, admires, and enjoys the work of. She had a lot going on. Lots of weird things. She really did. That was dense.
00:42:38
Speaker
Yeah in fact I kind of wish I'd re-listened to that episode or I guess it was two halves of episodes before right now so I could kind of go into it but obviously she was in mourning and that came across pretty well but she just seems like a real weird lady
00:43:01
Speaker
I mean, I know those creatives. She's artistic. Right, right, right. The things that stick out are, I mean, obviously she had been doing drugs to cope with something. But her house, now, was her house kind of covered in weird art or was it just the one painting that really caught Hobbes eye that was like a gruesome battle scene? No, the painting that Hobbes eye featured Goliath's heavily
00:43:27
Speaker
But no, I mean, she just has art and just memorabilia is the wrong word, but items from the last war, like that seems to be a big focus of her mind and she surrounds herself with the last war. And so, yeah. And where is she from?
00:43:51
Speaker
He didn't get that. We didn't get that. So she could be from Kyre and that could be part of why or who knows. I mean, I know the last war was everyone, so you don't have to, but Kyre sure was the, changed the most as a result of it. Yeah, she just, I mean, she just seemed, she was deeply sad and we've not,
00:44:17
Speaker
met a character this campaign yet that just seems to be fully melancholic like that we did in the last campaign but almost always it was because the literal weight of the world was on their shoulders including the pcs we all got a little that way uh at one point or another um and so it was interesting i i
00:44:37
Speaker
I guess I can't imagine a reason for her to become a regular part of this, these people's stories, but I'd love to learn more about her personally.
Closing Thoughts and Future Storylines
00:44:47
Speaker
I'm sure Aeris would think it would be great if she became a part of a more regular occurring. Well, Hob's got that audition. Hob does have an audition. Stay tuned.
00:45:01
Speaker
No, I mean, she is a dense character, even in the source material, without the additional stuff that I kind of layered on top, she is a very, she contains multitudes, I guess. And so it's, yeah, it was fun getting to play, obviously she was in mourning for Billy's death, but, and fun may be the wrong word. It was an enjoyable experience getting to play a character that just, like you said, was melancholic, but not,
00:45:28
Speaker
due to a, like, they weren't overwhelmingly sad because of a recent thing. It was just kind of years upon years upon years of getting them to this place. And so, yeah. Now, okay, and I apologize, you just said, so she's, she's candid. She's from source material. Yes. Yes, she is. Okay. Is she the only person we met this arc that is? The golden horn
00:45:55
Speaker
is, yeah, and Man Dyran is, because I mispronounced his name and said, there's no way that's the actual name of this person in the source material. And then we found the Man Dyran pronunciation. But I think those two are the only ones from like the Charne City of Towers book. Yeah, so. OK, awesome. I guess this is just more of my own knowledge right now. This is not going to be interesting.
00:46:23
Speaker
It, are they brought up in the same way, like where the, where I finally found out about Savia and Savia is where it's just kind of a blurb talking about the area. Yeah. And she's like Golden Horn, his apartment, run by a dwarf named Man-Dyran. Yeah. Luca has a full on section about her, like a little subsection. Um, but yeah, Man-Dyran is just literally a name in a sentence, like Golden Horn run by this guy.
00:46:51
Speaker
We contact Verla, we tell her what we know, we find out we're not getting paid, and we go our separate ways. And I loved the, kind of each ended our own way. I wish Trevor was here to talk about why he decided to have Raynard go busking. I thought that was pretty wonderful, honestly.
00:47:12
Speaker
But, and of course, Philip, Philip didn't, Eris and Olive went to Eyewall to check out the real estate, right? Yep. And that's where we left off.
Exploring Character Histories
00:47:28
Speaker
Pretty great. Eberron reduced is next. Yeah. Flashbacks. Randy, tell us about the first time Milo used his magic and why you chose that as your scene
00:47:42
Speaker
Oh, I will say this. We do have a question from Irene. Let me find it. Give me one second. Here we go. On the topic of reduced episodes, how much discussion goes into the scene and characters off screen? I will say for mine,
00:47:57
Speaker
I told Eric what I wanted the scene to be about, what point in Hobb's life I wanted it to be. He decided who else was gonna be there, and then the crew decided, as he kind of described that little bit, who they wanted to play. And I think that was kind of the way it went. At least the assigning of characters and stuff, that's the way it went with Phillips and Trevors and Randy as well. The way it went with Trevors because there were a certain number of characters that needed to be in the scene.
00:48:25
Speaker
With Eris's, there was a little bit less because Eric was going to play the the Dashur and Olphin. And so we needed sort of extras. We needed players in the crew and that kind of thing. You need crew idiots. But we didn't have two crew idiots. Yep.
00:48:49
Speaker
But, but yeah, with, with Trevor's, we definitely did have characters that were offered and we kind of took them. Well, and I think for both Trevor and Randy's with, uh, Hob and Aeris's, you both had pretty defined, like, this is what I would like to explore. Whereas with both Trevor and Randy, it was much more of a, like,
00:49:11
Speaker
them and I had a conversation kind of like, what makes sense to explore? What would be fun and interesting? And so I think Randy and I were first on the call, I think, and chatted for a bit before everyone else got there about what scene we were going to do for Milo. Yes. Yeah, we bounced a couple ideas back and forth. I guess my thing was, and I think we talked about this, that, you know,
00:49:35
Speaker
Milo's quote backstory, I mean yes he has a backstory but it's pretty mundane up until
00:49:46
Speaker
Up until the fire, it's irrelevant to who Milo is now. Exactly. Yeah. So it's like. Outside of the fact that losing his past life motivates his current life. Yeah. I mean, that's. Well, and one additional wrinkle was I have made a decision that I don't want to canonically portray Kylie yet. Like obviously the ghost apparition Kylie is a different thing.
00:50:12
Speaker
So that kind of also hamstrung Randy's brainstorming of like, well, something without your dead wife, please. Who was, by all accounts, the center of your world before the fire. So yeah, that was also an interesting goal. And she's definitely, I don't know, a work in progress, maybe? Yeah. I'm not even sure. And I think that's what makes it kind of interesting
00:50:43
Speaker
to have that aspect. And this was not, I said earlier, the first time Milo did magic, this is not the first time Milo has performed magic. Cause like he pulled his wand out expecting magic to happen. This is the first time that it manifested itself with this new power. Yes. Yes. In such a way that, I mean,
00:51:04
Speaker
I think Milo had done some magic. And for the most part, if it went wrong, it was minor. It wasn't that big of a deal. And this is the first time when it was like, oh my gosh, what just happened? What did I just do? And I also, as that played out,
00:51:31
Speaker
And that bad guy got hit and, you know, and Hob was right there. I was like, Oh, okay. I can play off. Milo could have killed Hob. And then I thought, Hey, wait a minute. This could actually also be the first time Milo's actually ever killed somebody. So I went with that as well. I thought it was great. I thought you, I thought you played it extremely well. It,
00:51:58
Speaker
It definitely did a lot for setting up why Milo is proud of and hesitant and scared of all that stuff, his magic and what's going on with him and stuff. It really was great. And then Hob had his, and it was fun playing opposite. You guys did great characters for that, the three of you.
00:52:24
Speaker
It was the perfect foils for Hobbs, the beginning of Hobbs becoming who he is now, honestly. Establishment, establishment, establishment. Like, oh man, no, not anymore. That was a lot of fun. I was trying to be annoying. That was fun. Pitch perfect. That was a good time. My spark is clearly bigger than yours. Dude, you're weird.
00:52:48
Speaker
You know there's not a literal fire. When I listened back to it, I actually never laugh at my own jokes because I don't find myself funny. But you know it's a metaphor, right? Like, are you in pain? It made me laugh when I heard it, and that never happened. I was like, ooh. Is this pride I feel? So dumb that he does not know. Yeah.
00:53:11
Speaker
It was a good time. All right, I got to scroll way back up. So let's do some questions. I want to say one other thing, one other thing real quick about at least when Eric and I did the Milo bit. I mean, it just amazes me how Eric can just mix stuff up on the fly. Because I mean, there was it was just, hey, what about this? Let's do this. What do you think about this? OK, I will do it.
00:53:35
Speaker
Okay, let's get the crew. Here's what's gonna happen. And it just goes. Good stuff, Mr. Eric. Okay, look, I'm gonna let that slide this time. But we cannot praise Eric every episode, or otherwise it will be an untenable experience to spend time with him. Well, it's already that anyway, so I mean, it doesn't matter.
00:54:00
Speaker
I think that's rude. I love Eric. Yeah, I don't want to ask questions to myself. So unless you guys want to know something about Hobbs thing, we're going to move on. There's a question in here about it. We can attack it there. Okay, so let's go to some questions. As I have said in the past, and we'll continue to say,
00:54:24
Speaker
every one of these, on our Discord, you have an opportunity to ask questions about the ARCs, or not about the ARCs, honestly, just asking us questions, which is quite fun. You can access our Discord for $0. All you gotta do is go to thegeekpantheon.com and click on the link, or find somebody who's in the Discord and ask me to give them a link to give to you. There's several ways to do it.
00:54:46
Speaker
All the social medias also have the link on it. Does Facebook and Twitter do? Okay, great, great, great. All of those are at the Geek Pantheon. We'll deal with that again later. But yeah, so we put out the call for questions and we have some and we're just gonna rock it down through them. Now I will say I opened the floodgates a couple of reviewed sessions ago and I said, you know what, just ask us questions. That's fun for me too. And so the first few are just that. Here we go.
00:55:12
Speaker
Laura is continuing her plant party asking what plant do I'm assuming this is probably addressed at me But if you guys would like to answer what plant do you wish you have but don't? I'll remind you money does not actually grow on trees
00:55:27
Speaker
I don't do plants. I wish that I lived in a climate that would let me grow outdoor ferns because I think ferns are very attractive, but I don't. Yes, I would love to be able to grow my own citrus tree. I miss having a pear tree. My dogs loved eating pears. Yeah, I need to plant a peach tree in the backyard. They grow great in Oklahoma.
00:55:49
Speaker
Um, as far as indoors, there's a plant called a croton that is a beautiful, very cool, like party looking plant. And it just, it requires way too much light than I can do in my house. So there you go. It's also very crunchy in salads. We have plants in our house. They're all my wives. I know not what any of them are called. Not, I like plants, but
00:56:14
Speaker
I would never go out and buy a plant unless it was a flower for my wife. He would steal one, but he would not buy one. Exactly. Okay, Liz asks, what character did you think would be the most adept at an investigation arc versus who actually proved to be most effective in play?
Cultural Foods and Personal Tastes
00:56:33
Speaker
I think it's pretty clear that in the investigation, Milo is most effective and in the questioning, Eris was. And I
00:56:45
Speaker
I mean, with the way that Philip plays Aerys, it's a real crapshoot if she's going to be good at questioning or if she's not. So I would not have guessed that just because it's either going to be feast or famine with Aerys' interaction with other people every time.
00:56:58
Speaker
So it's probably reasonable. Yeah. Yeah. And it's frankly remarkable that Aeris's form of questioning really rendered much of use to us. Like the dice were very friendly with Aeris's initial questioning in. What's the first theater owner's name? Divas. Divas. Divas. Divas's office. Yeah. Divas's office.
00:57:28
Speaker
that Eris is being a complete heel. The listing device and the cigarettes and we left all that stuff out. You exude confidence, people will respond. And apparently that's what cigarettes do. My one failure with that whole weird arc of Eris just leaning into
00:57:54
Speaker
Uh, it detective dramas, uh, is I failed to acquire a fedora at any point. I kept looking for a point where I could spend some advantage to say, and there's a fedora on the hat rack. I tried to play hob because I thought this would help. This is how he would do it. I tried to play hob. I think he came across as just chasing the shiny thing.
00:58:17
Speaker
Right now, this second, I don't trust you. And then tomorrow, when I meet somebody else that I don't trust, they're going to be my prime suspect. And then later, I'm going to realize this is actually my prime suspect. I didn't want Hob to be good at it because I didn't think they would necessarily be. My deal was I was like, okay, Milo, you're supposed to be intelligent.
00:58:41
Speaker
Let's see if Randy can pull this off for you. Put it to the test. Let's put it to the test. Go Milo. Alright, Liz continues. Will Eris be expanding her handy ma'am business to other renters? Handy ma'am, I like that.
00:59:01
Speaker
Uh, sure. It's okay. It's weird. Just narratively because Eris obviously works for the Boromar clan and obviously, um, so it's, it's a little bit. Yes. That sounds really fun. And that sounds like something that Eris would be delighted to start to just get paid to have just fixed things randomly. Um, not randomly, but you know what I mean? Uh,
00:59:32
Speaker
outside of fixing slot machines at a casino. But also Eris seems like the sort of person who would just decide, you know what? I spend way too much time sleeping. And just go for it. So yes, if people started to offer Eris money to fix their stuff, she would absolutely go and improve their stuff. Great. Noted.
01:00:03
Speaker
Yeah, no, that makes sense to me. I don't know what her Yelp reviews will be like after she improves their stuff, but. All right. Uh, if I'm scrolling down correctly and the question and answer tier, next question is from Becca and she wants to know what is our favorite like cultural food? I'm assuming, uh, not our, not our own traditions or something.
01:00:28
Speaker
If I were told to make a menu of some of my favorite meals, I think that it would be overwhelmingly Korean. I love bibimbap, I love galbi, and then really getting into Asian Pacific Islander food, like some fish curries from Indonesia, or pardon me, not Indonesia, the Philippines, and like
01:00:55
Speaker
Like, I guess it's, you know, Samoan food, like, like coconut rolls and things like that, but I've been really getting into that area of food. I'm big into Vietnamese food. Um, a meal consisting of a bowl of pho and a banh mi, like I'm, I'm doing, I'm doing all right at that point. So I'm, I'm a big fan of, of that personally. This is not.
01:01:20
Speaker
international, but it is, it definitely has a culture to it. It's definitely barbecue. I was gonna say, Phillip just smokes food. That's all you need to fill up. Barbecue is definitely a cultural food. Absolutely. It's definitely an amalgam of, like most American cuisines, it's an amalgam of various cultural things. I would argue that having grown up in Kansas City and now living in Texas, it is your culture.
01:01:44
Speaker
Yes All you had to do was do an internship in North Carolina and you kind of hit a wall Yeah, yeah, I did I did miss I did miss out on like Eastern Eastern style but yeah, that's it
01:02:00
Speaker
i think that might be my favorite i love that mustardy vinegary see i and i don't i guess it's much more tangy or or sweeter sauces has been my thing what'd you randy there's so much sugar on the ribs that i'm with phillip barbecue i love barbecue and barbecued anything just about and i like it
01:02:20
Speaker
Sour vinegar. I like it sweet. I like all of it. I will say. I love burn ins. More probably more on on the point of what what was meant to be by the question. I spent almost a month in Costa Rica right after I started teaching and I'm
01:02:46
Speaker
I'm not sure which variety of Latin cuisine you'd call that, but I really, really enjoyed the food, like to have a traditional breakfast, and I like most cultures with a native cuisine do. And the food there was just...
01:03:05
Speaker
just outstanding. Everything came with really tasty rice and of course it's tropical so there's just the best fruit ever.
01:03:18
Speaker
one of the best things I ever ate, Cuban. And I can't remember what it was called. It was a chicken. It was like cut up and shredded and the ends of it were crispy and it had like lime juice on it. Oh my gosh. That was, so if any of our listeners know what that's called, I want to know. Say it for my own personal edification. Eric can cut it out if he wants to. What's in it? It's shredded chicken.
01:03:46
Speaker
Okay. And when they cook it, it's like the ends of it get crispy. Okay. And then it's got like lime juice on it. And I don't know what kind of spices they cook it in, but almost like a chicken carnita. I had it when we were in Miami and oh my gosh, it was so good. And I cannot remember what it's called for the life of me. And I swore to remember what it was called because I loved it so much.
01:04:16
Speaker
I will say this, because if anybody was hoping to hear a non-popular, maybe, regional food, since barbecue and the Pan-Asian are pretty well-trawed, check out North African food, especially like the Maghreb, like Libya, Tunisia, Morocco. Get yourself a shakshuka if you are not allergic to eggs, and you will have a good time.
01:04:43
Speaker
I will say Rose had a project one time where she was supposed to create a dish from a different part of the world when she was in first or second grade. And the country she drew was Kenya.
01:05:05
Speaker
I mainly because again, first or second grade did a whole bunch of research into Kenyan food and we made some really good stuff. I would have to look back up for fear of horrifyingly butchering the words, the names of the dishes we made, but it was really good. Yeah.
01:05:21
Speaker
Oh, kimchi's the bomb too, if it's me, right? Very good. All right. Well, I think you've learned- We can talk about food all night. It better get back on track. Well, we don't know about plants. We do know about food. Okay. Darren asks, how much of the last arc was informed by your real life experiences in the theater? Can you give any specific examples? Thanks. One time I killed a guy.
Theater Experiences Influence Storytelling
01:05:42
Speaker
I did stab someone in the theater one time.
01:05:46
Speaker
I think there was one point during the arc, I mentioned like the resiliency of someone due to having to deal with theater people all day. And I think that's a shared experience we can all attest to. It does build up a certain level of resiliency to people's bull crap.
01:06:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, while it was the frame of the narrative, there wasn't enough like actual theater nuts and bolts for me to really say I pulled from anything other than just, I love live theater, enjoying it, participating in it. And so it was fun to, it was just kind of fun to know what, you know, I don't know, Jack about organized crime, but I, so I can't really play in that space. But if we wanted to talk about, you know,
01:06:30
Speaker
ballasts and flies and if we wanted to get into that we could have and it would have been a good time. But yeah, I will say right now my most amazing real life experience in theater was this weekend when I got to watch my kid do his first, I guess, pretty much, you know, supporting lead role, had a solo at the end. It was really good and great and wonderful. I'm gonna just say that out loud to the world.
01:06:53
Speaker
Okay, Jerry asks, if your character for Magic the Gathering colors, what color or color combos would they be? I think Milo would be white and struggling with black.
01:07:13
Speaker
Okay, I will say based on this chart for anybody who doesn't know, planes and swamps for you magic people out there that aren't sure about what the colors are. And according to this white represents peace through order and black satisfaction through ruthlessness. So I feel like you chose the right team there. Yeah.
01:07:30
Speaker
I do see on this chart, there's one leg of this pentagram that just says profanity. So that might be mine. But when I played, I love to play blue when I played. It is the midpoint between the green and black, which is harmony through acceptance and satisfaction through ruthlessness. I don't know what this stuff means. I don't mean to not take it seriously. I'm just, I'm wholly unfamiliar with the
01:07:55
Speaker
the meaning of it all. Although, I would say just looking at these buzz words, and pardon me if this means I'm a bad person, but the red color here says freedom through action, which is something that I'm really trying to get into personally through more direct activism and things like that. So I'm gonna say I like that one right now.
01:08:17
Speaker
Eris is probably red-blue. Perfection through knowledge fits her obsession with gadgetry. Freedom through action is certainly an element of how she deals with her lingering fear. I mean, none of the rest of them work. She's not ruthless.
01:08:42
Speaker
and also not particularly satisfied. She's neither orderly nor peaceful. She's not harmonious, nor is she particularly accepting. And probably not except by her very, very patient friends deeply accepted. But I'm just now noticing that the buzzword for the midpoint between freedom and perfection is in fact creativity. So that fits Iris pretty well.
01:09:08
Speaker
I know back when I played many many many moons ago I don't know if it's the same or different now but like each color also represented like red is like the mountains and I remember like fireballs and lightning bolts and
01:09:23
Speaker
associated with that color and green is the magic I remember as well yep green were the forests um black swamp white plains uh blue was the water I believe I think the one time that I played I played with a blue and white deck if that is anything and I yeah and do you know it's gotten a lot more a good combo
01:09:45
Speaker
I know it's got a lot more lore now and so there's like settings within it that have connections to the colors as well. Well Jerry and I know that we have several other big Magic the Gathering fans that are listeners that are in the discord. I hope that anything we said works and makes sense.
01:10:05
Speaker
Okay, question for Randy from Jerry. Does Milo have children or did he ever want children? And if that is something you would rather not elucidate for fear of messing something up in the future, feel free to say that. No, I would say no children. And I think with Milo's occupation and running a bar on top of that, I think he was just
01:10:35
Speaker
I think Eric said it earlier, his world revolved around his wife. I mean, he was just enjoying her. That's children just weren't on the menu. And for some reason, I think that the bar. Exactly. And, and just when I think about Kylie and how
01:10:59
Speaker
How that relationship kind of began and got started with her, whatever her background would be that Milo never really knew. I just kind of don't picture her as saying, yeah, let's have kids. All right. If that makes sense. Sure.
01:11:16
Speaker
All right, the next one down, I'm going to alter it just a little bit. Jerry, I hope you don't mind. The question is, if an ER movie were made, what actor would you like to play your character? But I think I like the idea of, let's the four of us group cast the party.
01:11:30
Speaker
including the NPCs for, for Erock. Sound good? I don't necessarily have any, uh, we will, we will operate under the, uh, the Darby O'Gillis slash Robbie Coltrane rule of I don't need to be by the actually the place hop doesn't need to be seven feet. And the actor that plays Milo doesn't need to be three feet. Um, for Eris, I would pitch.
01:12:00
Speaker
So I don't know. I'm never very up with who young and upcoming actors are. So assuming any of these actors young. I would be delighted to see Aubrey Plaza play Eris. Yeah. I think yeah. I think Zoe Kravitz would be an OK Eris. Zoe Kravitz would be a pretty good Eris. That's also a good casting.
01:12:30
Speaker
Can you tell me something she's in? Well, she's in the new Dear Evan Hansen movie, but she's, I mean, she's been in a ton of stuff. She was on a season of Justified. She was in Booksmart. Who is she in Booksmart? She's the one that's not Beanie Feldstein. Is that her name? She...
01:12:50
Speaker
Hang on, I'll find something. Okay, is she the main character or the main character's best friend in Booksmart? She is one of the main characters. She plays, okay, Amy is the name of her character. Oh, and she's on a season of justification. Yes, okay, that intersection works. Yes, oh, yes, she would be a hilarious heiress. That is a good casting. Gosh, for Hob,
01:13:18
Speaker
It's hard for me not to be saying, just thinking big guys. It would be hilarious to watch Dwayne Johnson in my brain. Dwayne Johnson as Hobb would be really, really delightful. And not just because he famously plays a character called Hobbs. Right, fair enough. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
01:13:40
Speaker
You know who would be, again, we'd have to follow the Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid rule. But I think Michael Pena would be a great hob. Yeah. Because he can deadpan it when he needs to. He can be sarcastic when he needs to. I was about to say Idris Elba for the same reasons. I was about to say Idris Elba too. OK. Yeah. For the same reason that he can he can play really dry, really well. But he can also switch to intense menacing like. Mm hmm.
01:14:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And even without being big, both of those guys, it doesn't look like you want to get punched by him. No. I think Idris Elba would pull off bald better than Michael Pena. Fair. Probably true. I mean, is Sigil mocap or is Sigil?
01:14:32
Speaker
Surely Sigil's mocap. If Sigil's an outfit, it's going to look goofy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like they're there for Andy Serkis. Right. He's the first person to ever do mocap. I don't feel like I have. I don't feel like I have a clear picture of of Catherine and sauna on your. No, you're good. On that same vein with Sigil, I actually like
01:15:00
Speaker
Doug Jones, is he the one that does? Sure, yeah, actually I like that better too. He's Abe and Hellboy. He was very good as, yeah, that's a very good guy. And he's got that filled and yeah. A lot longer than. Yeah. What about Michael Shannon from Milo Randy? How do you feel about that?
01:15:20
Speaker
Man, I don't even know who half the people you guys have been talking about are. I'm sorry, you're right, Randy. And for Milo, I want to go back in time for Milo, and I want Marlon Brando on the waterfront to be Milo. Okay. Young heartthrob Marlon Brando? Okay. I was about to, I was, when you were like, I don't know who these people are. Oh, they got makeup. They got Roy Clark, Randy. They got Roy Clark makeup. I was going to say Peter. There's this upcoming guy called Clark Gable. Yeah.
01:15:49
Speaker
yeah on the waterfront though man he just goes through all the emotions
01:15:54
Speaker
I think I think my pitch for Milo is like the like if every actor that has ever existed is a circle and Marlon Brando on the waterfront is here. My actor is like the opposite side of the circle because I was going to say Peter Capaldi is. Oh, now I see. I know who that is. There you go. I can see that. I can. I can see that. Non-Doctor Who in the loop. Peter Capaldi. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Now, Raynard. I mean, with with Raynard, I just like
01:16:24
Speaker
Tom Hiddleston is what's in my brain half the time when, when Raynard's doing anything. I mean, Tom Hiddleston works. Yeah. You know, it's funny you said Capaldi, cause I had David Tennant in back of mind for him as well. Yeah. Specifically in Fright Night. Yeah. The kind of Lush David Tennant. Yeah. David Tennant would be funny as him too. Yeah. And then for our half sisters. Um,
01:16:53
Speaker
I'm trying to pass them as a pair now because the chemistry is so important. Individually, Kath, I think Michelle Rodriguez would be a decent pick. She would fit that role well. I'll tell you what, not Gina Carano or Ronda Rousey. I'll just put those out there for you real quick. What are their ages?
01:17:17
Speaker
Like, are they 20s, 30s? 20s, 20s, definitely. They're younger. Ooh, what about for sauna? Feel free to... Okay, so, again, actress' names. I'm just thinking Kath, I feel like the important thing with Kath is the physicality. Yeah. Is the ability to throw down, because we don't see Kath
01:17:43
Speaker
Well, I realize that Cath has been dealing with a pretty intense emotional thing. We don't see Cath emote very much. Cath is mostly... is mostly gonna throw down.
01:17:53
Speaker
Um, so I think Michelle Rodriguez works in that sense. Trying to sing. What about the name? Uh, Zoe Saldana? Is that her name? Yeah. Yeah. She's a good one. Gamora. Yeah. Yeah. That's another good one. Mm-hmm. That's a good one. I already know what she looks like green. So there you go. And thinking of her from like the losers where she's actually like, I mean, no, she fights in green as a galaxy, but like it's more grounded in the losers. Yeah.
01:18:19
Speaker
Doesn't she have a pit fighting scene? Or is she just at the pit fight and somebody else is fighting? I don't remember. I don't remember. What about Kate Mikuchi for sauna? Small, mousy. She's delightful. But has a presence, like. Yeah. You know who that is? I know her face did not know her name. Yeah, that totally worked. Yeah. And kind of that intensely.
01:18:48
Speaker
optimistic and bubbly personality. I think that's part of it is that, yeah, there's the bounciness to it. Well, let's just get Garfunkel and Oates to just be. Oh, you know, who would be a good. Cath is Raya, um, see horn from better call Saul.
01:19:13
Speaker
No. Okay. Well, I mean, she plays Kim in Better Call Saul. She was on a couple of seasons of Scrubs. She was on Whitney Cummings' show. She's just a, like, cool, no-nonsense, or all of her characters she's played. I don't know her personally. Have been kind of like, no-nonsense, crack a joke when they need to, bust a head when they need to kind of people. Yeah, sure. Totally.
01:19:39
Speaker
That was fun. Yeah. We also had a bunch of names. You guys can each pick your favorite ones or or tell us which who you think should play each other. And it's going to sound like we rattled them off just off the top of our head really quick in the in the final cut of this. And I just picked on the waterfront because it's my favorite movie and I thought Marlon Brando was incredible. Yeah. Sure. Fair enough.
01:20:00
Speaker
Okay, Jerry wants to know who put nice in the episode title for episode 69. For some reason, people seem to think that it was me. It was not. When I said in the Discord, they were like, it sounds like something Jeff would do. And I was like, I would never. It's not that I would never make that joke. I would never put in the extra work to title the episodes and upload them.
01:20:17
Speaker
That was Eric's thing. Okay, question for me from Darren. Jeff, were you inspired to include the blood of Vol in Hob's backstory based on any characters or events from campaign one?
Character Beliefs and Philosophical Choices
01:20:30
Speaker
Yes and no. I was not necessarily inspired by Daedric Benar being in our campaign or the Green Dragon itself. It was more the idea of I knew that I was gonna have Hob be apostate.
01:20:45
Speaker
and it felt like that was the... How do I say this?
01:20:50
Speaker
the blood of vol seemed like the least damaging psychologically to apostasize from. Does that make sense? Like, if you were a member of the Church of the Silver, a monk of the Church of the Silver Flame, and then left that all behind, it would probably mess with you for a lot longer than leaving the blood of vol's ideologies behind. Is that track or am I talking crazy? I think that's reasonable.
01:21:18
Speaker
I like that. And even though I do constantly say God when I mean the kind of internal divinity thing, I do actually, I do like that as a philosophy for a fictional religion. Or a real one, I don't give a crap. If you think that the internal is divine, then I say, as long as you recognize that everyone's internal is divine, I say go for it. Okay, Eric, Jerry would like to get an update on Sigil working on the schema if there is one.
01:21:47
Speaker
Sigil is still working on the schema and it's going, uh, I mean, last we heard from them was them talking to Eris and saying, I have some stuff going on that we should probably talk about soon. I think that was the last time it got brought up. So Sigil has made some discoveries, some things that are concerning to them. And when the story will present itself to allow it, we will talk about it.
01:22:16
Speaker
All right, great. Eric and Phillip from Jerry. So I know it's something with manifest zones, I think, but how exactly does Eris fly Tasha if she isn't part of House Lirander? If Eris and Tasha leave the shard manifest zone, does that mean the airboat no longer flies and Tasha gets stuck as a bird?
01:22:36
Speaker
Geicab's function because of the Sironia. Am I right? Sironia. Manifest zone that Sharn sits on, which basically means it's the same reason that Sharn can be so tall. Because there's lots of magic infused into the towers. Why there could be a floating island above the city. Right. There's gravity functions differently in. Yeah. Because the plane of air is close to the material plane here.
01:23:04
Speaker
Uh, before I stuck an elemental in it, I'd have said absolutely not in terms of can Tasha fly outside of Sharn. I don't know exactly what the answer is now that there's an air elemental in it. Yeah. Uh, I borrowed time flew all over Eberron with, with an arrow. You had a, you had a pilot who was a member of house Lirander to do that pilot. And I mean, the, the concept with House Lirander being
01:23:34
Speaker
being in charge of transport, it's not actually that no one else would be able to pilot an airship, it's that House Lirondar has designed, well with the help of the other houses, designed a device that lets a person with the mark of storm pilot one of these big air elemental based ships. They're
01:23:57
Speaker
you know, Eris has figured out another way to do it. Yeah, it's it's not that it's not that the magic is so precise that there's no way to do it without without the mark. It's that the only way that is currently mass produced requires the mark.
01:24:18
Speaker
All right, awesome. From Irene, Phillip, how much did you prepare to play Gregor, who is Hob's roommate at the monastery that was thrown in as an afterthought? Deeply. I played at Method. Yeah.
Character Identity and Academic Success
01:24:33
Speaker
I sat down that morning as Gregor and refused to be referred to in any other way. Witten lived with Jeff for a week just to get a feel for being roommates with him. Unfortunately, Gregor died and Hob got straight A's that semester.
01:24:48
Speaker
Oh man, there's a movie callback. Yeah, right. That movie was awful. It was just terrible. And then Irene asked her question about how much discussion goes into reduced. Yeah. Oh, and then our last one in the QA tier before we jump to the other tier.
Educational Challenges During COVID-19
01:25:04
Speaker
Jerry wants to know how everyone's day has been. And for those of us that are teachers, is school still going good? I mean, nah, man, it's not. We got kids out and teachers out all the time for COVID protocols. I would say it's not going great. I'm I would agree. Ditto. Mine's going pretty well. We've actually not had a lot of absences or anything like that. We've had a few and we have we have
01:25:32
Speaker
think that I'm aware of we have one staff out right now and maybe five kids so our our year has not been substantially impacted things are going pretty well on that specific front
01:25:47
Speaker
Yeah and ours is impacted also because you know kids didn't really do school last year and we have tons of kids that are so far behind. Yeah now that there is that. I will say so because I teach a neurodivergent population I it's me a co-teacher and a classroom assistant
01:26:10
Speaker
And so when we have other instructors out on quarantine, one of us gets pulled so we don't have to bring a sub on campus, which I fully agree with. It's not great, but I agree with the idea.
01:26:24
Speaker
And so that makes it very difficult. Sometimes I show up thinking I'm teaching for an hour in the morning, and then I have to stretch that or come up with more material to fill three hours. And it gets, it gets difficult, but I still love my job and think that it's important. And so that is good enough for me. My day was good though. That was also asked. Day was great. Love, love, love a good Monday.
01:26:52
Speaker
All right.
Character Evolution Over Time
01:26:53
Speaker
Eberron reviewed questions channel now and we begin with Ophelia who asks, how have your characters or Eric, the NPCs changed now that you've been playing for a while? Uh, for example, Hobbs lighter touch. Um, I.
01:27:14
Speaker
Hob is a completely different character than I anticipated originally. I thought Hob was gonna stand in the background, look scary, speak occasionally, and fight ferociously. And he's turned out to talk a lot and not fight very well. Like I really thought that he was just gonna be a big scary presence in the background that I could just kinda
01:27:43
Speaker
I don't know, not talk much. On a radio show? Well, okay, let me say this. Hob was going to have a, I think I said this at the very beginning, Hob was going to have strong relationships with the party when it was just them he was going to feel comfortable talking and a rich inner monologue to share at those points. But during encounters, he was planning on taking a backseat and just looking like the muscle. Did not pan out that way.
01:28:12
Speaker
I finally feel comfortable with Eris' voice, which has taken me a really long time to really land on. I mean, Eris has changed. She's not, like, substantially different than I imagined she would be, like the character I thought up once I did.
01:28:39
Speaker
is who she still is. She has developed as a person primarily in the sense of she's not a loner as she kind of was when we started. She's more comfortable with people and more willing to build relationships with people. Sure. Milo's...
01:29:08
Speaker
definitely changed from what I initially thought and I think probably a large part of that has to do with when I took the ensorcelled talent.
01:29:26
Speaker
and with his scar and with basically what the talent says about your features noticeably change. And I thought, well, that might take him down maybe more of a darker path that I intended. But then I thought, well, maybe that'll be something a little different for the party to have to deal with.
Magical Influences and Internal Conflicts
01:29:51
Speaker
It's like, there's this dark shadowy stuff coming out of Milo's head. And I just thought it kind of maybe fit well with whatever's going on with Kylie. We hadn't yet gotten around to working on his hallucinating conversations with his deceased wife. Yes.
01:30:19
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, he's just kind of developed as we've played. As all of us have so. I think in terms of the NPCs, the only one that's really gone off path too much is Kath because of what has occurred in the campaign and her familial life. Sigil is largely who I anticipated them to be and Sana as well. I guess we see a bit more of Sana's like
01:30:51
Speaker
protector instincts because of what's happened to Cath. So yeah, I guess those are the only big deviations from what was initially intended, so. You know, and I intended Myla to struggle with this magic. That was always the intent to, you know, not understand how it quite works, trying to master it.
01:31:16
Speaker
And then it's, now he's on top of that, he's having to deal with it, you know, becoming a little more morbid than it ever has been. So that's been a definite change. Awesome. Raynard quit drinking. Yeah. I, obviously Trevor probably has a much better answer about Raynard's rich inner life, which I do believe is in there, but he quit drinking.
Humorous Play Matches for Characters
01:31:42
Speaker
Jerry asks,
01:31:45
Speaker
If your characters were a play, what play would they be? And for Eric, because he needs more questions to answer, pick an NPC. And he says, if need be, we expand the category to musicals. You know what's funny is I have no idea what play Hob would be, but I did think of, while we were doing this arc, I did think of the sort of play that if, if Aeris talked Hob into a play, to come and watch one, I know a play that Hob would love.
01:32:13
Speaker
I really think. I think Hobb would love to watch Mollier's imaginary invalid. I think that he would very much enjoy a farce. I think he would very much enjoy the butt of the farce being a overly confident man who thinks he's sick when he's really not because he's being gaslit by his whole family. What play would he be? I don't know. Something from Beckett. Beckett did a lot of asceticism.
01:32:44
Speaker
That's all I got. Milo would be. From the from the first play I was ever in, one flew over the cuckoo's nest. All right. Kind of makes me I don't know. I know the names of maybe 10 plays that were written after 1700.
01:33:12
Speaker
Eris would be Five Lives by Luca Ciara. There you go. Sigil would be the adding machine. Okay. Okay, Becca wants to know what is our favorite idiom or saying. I wish that I'd looked at these before so I could have quick answers to this. If a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its butt a-hopping. It's a pretty good one. Busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest.
01:33:41
Speaker
We're just saying southern colonialism. Laura wants to know if you could meet one celebrity or famous person, who would it be, living dead or fictional?
Historical and Fictional Figures of Interest
01:33:50
Speaker
I'd love to meet C.S. Lewis. Malcolm X. I'm gonna just pick the easy answer and say I would really love to have met Jarrah or Tolkien. Yeah, come on man. Because we're an hour and 40 minutes into this recording. Yeah.
01:34:08
Speaker
I don't have the mental energy to go further. Mark Hamill seems like a really cool dude and he would be fun to spend time with. Mark Hamill does seem like a really down-to-earth cool guy. I have no idea. I think Sandra Bullock would just be fun to hang out with. Yeah, there you go. I think Sandra Bullock would be a blast to hang out with. I bet I'd have a really good time spending an afternoon with the Green Brothers too. I'm not a huge fan of their books, but I just like them as people.
01:34:37
Speaker
Yeah. Same with Ryan Reynolds. He catches a lot of crap, but he catches a lot of crap because he's really likable. He's kind of... Vince Lombardi. There's one. I would like Vince Lombardi would be cool.
01:34:51
Speaker
So, Leppard brings up that House Fiarlin has a hand, and I don't know how big of control, personally, she seems to, over entertainment theater. So, why, Eric, was there a reason? Was it just we were so jam-packed with other stuff, or it didn't really fit with the theme of a murderer who'd done it to bring that part into it? Like, what? I mean, there's every possibility that they were investigating it, and they were operating in the background while you all were doing things.
01:35:21
Speaker
It wasn't part of the story that we were telling in the session, so. Sounds good to me. Richard Cree, in addition to the question earlier about the triumphs causing an easy path.
Managing Mystery in D&D vs. Genesis
01:35:33
Speaker
How do you feel, Eric? How would you compare running a mystery in D&D versus one in Genesis? Assuming that you've run a mystery in D&D, which I guess we kind of did first campaign, just not quite as, quite as who's already. Yeah.
01:35:48
Speaker
No, I read this right before we started recording and I really liked the question because I do think that Genesis lends itself really well to this because
01:35:56
Speaker
through advantages and triumphs, you all were able to get information that were on threads that you weren't pulling. So like Mandiran spotting Luca on the way out. Like you all didn't question Mandiran. You didn't like investigate what he had seen or if he had noticed anything, but I had that in my back pocket that that was a conversation you all could have. And so when you rolled a bunch of advantage on something, it was like, okay,
01:36:23
Speaker
as you leave, Mandiran remembers, oh by the way, so it makes a lot easier to run a mystery honestly because it's easier to inject information that the party may not be actively seeking out that is helpful to the mystery and to the investigation. Whereas with D&D, with the
01:36:42
Speaker
more like binary pass fail nature of rolling a d20, at least for me as a dungeon master, can run into more issues with you all not looking in the right place or roles not going your way. Because even if you fail a perception check to find a clue at the scene of the crime, if you roll a handful of advantage, well, you didn't succeed on that. But this person over here has information for you. And so it's actually it makes it a lot easier
01:37:11
Speaker
to give you all a path forward than D&D inherently within the mechanics would allow. So, yeah. Awesome. That rolls pretty well into Leppard's next question. Was it difficult to keep us from being locked out of reverberation by failing checks? Yeah, and that comes up a lot. Yeah, and that's very, very much the same thing of like, you all failed plenty of checks, just like you succeeded plenty of checks, but you rolled enough advantage
01:37:39
Speaker
for information to come in from alternative sources. One thing I wish I would have done going back, and this is if we, if I ever get the opportunity to run a mystery again. Um, and, and this becomes harder with you all seeing the roles. It really requires a lot of the players and I would trust you all to be capable of this. I'm just saying as advice, like out there for other GMs, you have to really rely on your players to separate what their characters can know and trust versus what they know and trust.
01:38:05
Speaker
you all roll a bunch of advantage, you should absolutely be getting false leads. Like you should be finding things and subscribing meaning and value to it that does not lead anywhere, um, with, with that kind of thing. So, um, so yeah, no, I assume you meant threat there. Yes. Threat. Sorry. Yeah. Rolling a bunch of threat causes the opposite advantage of with advantage. Oh, here's some additional things that you weren't looking for threat. Here's some things you weren't looking for that don't actually mean anything and are actually going to slow you down. So, um,
01:38:36
Speaker
and finding the balance of that. But no, I think Genesis really allowed for the lockout of information due to failed checks to be mitigated quite a bit.
01:38:45
Speaker
All right. And that also does a pretty good segue into our last question, which I did not say for last because it's for me, it just happened that way.
Ease of Learning Games: D&D vs. Genesis
01:38:55
Speaker
Jerry wants to know, so he says, during campaign one, Jeff, you were the new guide to RPGs learning 5E. It was easier to learn 5E or Genesis. And which system do you think you would prefer to run games for? And you guys can fully correct me on this because I am still fairly new to both.
01:39:10
Speaker
I think that D&D is harder to learn, easier to finesse, easier to game, easier to stack things, things like that. Like Genesis, you've really got to flex your narrative muscle, whereas D&D, it's all right there in front of you as a player. Now you have to figure out what you can do when and things like that, but I feel like D&D was an easier game for me to learn because I could learn
01:39:39
Speaker
The lower entry point for D&D. That's a big hurdle for a lot of people making the switch from D&D to Genesis is how much narratively is required of the players at any given moment compared to D&D in the traditional way the game is played. Which speaks to which one do I think I prefer to run games for? And I've only ever run one shots and I've never run anything in Genesis, but here's the way it looks to me from the outside.
01:40:05
Speaker
D&D, when you're running a game, you plan at 10,000 feet and you run the game linearly and tight. Genesis, you plan and play at 10,000 feet because the narrative dice mean literally anything could happen at any time. D&D, you succeed or you don't, you fail or you don't, you see it or you don't.
01:40:28
Speaker
Genesis, the but or the and adds a level of thinking on your feet that I don't think good. So I think for running games, I will stick with D&D until I really feel confident in my narrating by the seat of my pants stuff. So there you go. All right, yes, this has been a long record and will probably be a long episode.
01:40:57
Speaker
It was the long arc though. I mean, it was our first six episode arc and lots of questions.
Conclusion and Community Engagement
01:41:02
Speaker
Anyway, thank you all for listening.
01:41:05
Speaker
As I mentioned earlier, check us out on all the socials. Everything is at the Geek Pantheon website, geekpantheon.com. Please come jump on the Discord. We do have a good time. Make sure to check out our YouTube channel, both for Eric's DM videos and our other actual play, Kyber Shards, a video podcast, actual play, using 5E, set in Eberron, GM'd by Philip, and played in by Eric.
01:41:32
Speaker
I believe that's everything we need to plug and we all look real tired. So goodnight fellas, I've been Jeff. I'm Phillip. I'm Randy. And I'm Eric. Thank you so much for listening guys. We'll catch you next week with a new arc.