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C2 Ep. 183 Eberron Reviewed 32
508 Plays10 months 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, Charles Compton, Deviouspoptart, Nastasia Raulerson, David Scrams, Elizabeth Clark, Rebekah Gowman, deviouspoptart, Eðvarð Arnór Sigurðsson, Michael Clark, Jerry Theuns, Mark Stanley, and Shelby Johnson.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:09
Speaker
D20 radio, your game is roll.
00:00:47
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Eberron Renew, an actual play tabletop RPG podcast game where we play, but not today. Today we talk about the playing. I'm Jeff. I'm Phillip. And this is going to be a reviewed episode.
Previous Story Arc Discussion
00:01:02
Speaker
It's just Phillip and I today. Pretty exciting. We're going to talk about the last arc a bit and then just talk to Phillip about Dungeons and about dragons. So two of my favorite things. Cool stuff. Well, really just the dragons and Dungeons I can take relief.
00:01:16
Speaker
Yeah, we've picked up on that. As we've discussed. Yeah. Okay, so this arc, and we can obviously, Philip, if there's anything that you want to add about things that have happened since the last time you were on and reviewed, of course. Sure. Well, actually, let's just start there. Do you have anything of note you want to bring up that we may have missed from the fight in delir? It was, you know, Randy and I and Trevor and I, so you can expect not a whole lot of content to talk.
00:01:43
Speaker
Well, I will say I was deeply shocked.
00:01:47
Speaker
when all of a sudden, mister, no peanut butter in my chocolate let me have a cannon on the deck of the ship. That's right, no guns in my Eberron. We weren't in Eberron. Except now. We were in Delir. So I was a little thrown off by that. I was getting ready to like, okay, what are we turning into a weapon here? But now there's cannons, okay. So noted, cannons are fine, even if guns are not. That fight just went really, really wrong.
Chaotic Battle Reflection
00:02:16
Speaker
I have the impression that Eric thought that was going to be just sort of a goofy swashbuckling good time, but nothing went right on in that. That was an absolute mess. Yeah. I mean, the fact that we made it out is honestly a testament to Eric's largess at the end of letting us heal each other and stuff.
00:02:38
Speaker
Right. Well, yeah. I mean, when, when the GM has to, has to invent a way for us to go to a magic hospital where, where time won't count, you know, something's gone very off the rails.
Balancing RPG Encounters
00:02:52
Speaker
Yeah. And of course it was, I mean, it was, you just never know. I don't, I don't envy Eric trying to plan encounters for us. Oh no.
00:03:00
Speaker
with the number and level of talents that we have now and the creativity of you and Randy, I wouldn't do it. And then just the dice, right? I mean, the dice are so unpredictable.
00:03:14
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't run enough Genesis to know how to balance an encounter, but I kind of begin to think there's just no such thing. You're just playing it by ear all the time. Yeah, I really think you have to... I mean, anyone who's DMed a significant number of times has done that. Okay.
Impact of Character Absence
00:03:35
Speaker
that knocks half of their hit points down because I need them gone or suddenly five more guys show up because you guys are making this too easy. And I think that's just how you have to do Genesis. There is no, it's all jazz, which is not for me. Thank you, Eric. Not for me. I mean, yeah, Eric's great at it. Can we stop being nice to him now? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Jerk. But yeah, that fight was wild and it felt like
00:04:02
Speaker
Milo was in his own fight. You were kind of in your own fight. It was it was insane. Yeah, I think I think the fact that Milo got pulled entirely out of the fight made a huge difference in what we can do, because Milo is really quite powerful. Oh, yeah. And so, yeah. And I I have never thought Eris was going to die except in this fight, because we really were at a point where every time she got crit, we would be adding
00:04:31
Speaker
40 to the number that we were rolling. So I I was getting very nervous that that Eris was just going to be straight up killed in this fight. Yeah. And that fight leads to this part. Yeah. The
Healing in a Magical Plane
00:04:46
Speaker
two triumphs. This is the second second session in a row, second of three sessions that we've rolled a double triumph. And I don't know if Eric had that in his pocket. I'm sure he can answer that at the discord, but it was pretty clutch having
00:05:00
Speaker
that idea of yeah take you to I mean I understand like I the idea of like healing in a pocket dimension is a thing that exists but just be like hey I'm just gonna take you to this plane you just met this Claudio guy he's gonna help you out we're gonna go and get you good was a clutch thought on his part because we were all yeah I don't know can we just heal Eris just do something for Eris please because you now have after the healing you still have two crits right
00:05:24
Speaker
I still have two unhealed critical injuries on Aeris. Yeah. One of them is very old. She's been walking around with one from a couple of battles back that just it was just a minor one. So it hasn't been a priority because it doesn't have a lasting effect. Right. It just got her like she got hit again after it. But that was all. But but then the other one, her arm is still all jacked up. So yeah, it's a.
00:05:46
Speaker
Yeah, she's still walking around with two. I don't, I appreciate Aeris's stoicism and individuality, but like, Hob is very tough.
Aeris's Distrust of Help
00:05:55
Speaker
And as soon as he gets a critical injury, he's like, we need to go to the doctor. We need to go to the doctor now. Aeris is tougher than Hob, that's for sure.
00:06:03
Speaker
Eris is less willing, yeah, I was going to say it's more stubborn than Hobb is less willing to let somebody, to trust somebody else to mess with her. Right. So we go, we go to the plane of Erian.
00:06:18
Speaker
which I do not know, there may be, is the plane of eerie in a thing or did Eric make that up? Do you? It's a thing, it's the plane of, it's the opposite of Mabar, which we dealt with so much last campaign. It's the plane of positive energy and life giving energy. That means the plane, it would be the plane where you would get healed.
00:06:38
Speaker
Yeah, why would anybody leave? And I don't know. I don't know which came first, the woman or the plane. I also don't know. I don't know whether that was a deep pull from somewhere that I just I just don't know because I haven't read all of the books that Eric's read or if he.
00:06:53
Speaker
created that and I don't know whether we're supposed to draw that like the hobbit woman or half the halfling woman created the plane or she's a manifestation of the plane or an avatar like I yeah I don't know why we were supposed to draw from that exactly but it was it was interesting yeah I mean there's a chance that the reason she had well I mean she had a dragon mark yeah and when asked about it she made it sound like she had to come from shorn
00:07:19
Speaker
yeah so maybe she just had been there the longest so she became the avatar of the plane you know who knows yeah i don't know but her name was irian and she had been there for 100 million years and i did i did do the math thanks to
00:07:35
Speaker
Who was it in the Discord? One second. I'll get there. Maybe. Gus on the Discord made the math way more accessible. I'm not. I do not possess a math brain. And so I was doing a much more difficult calculation than convert 30 minutes to seconds and then just multiply. But if I did the math right, I believe 100 million years in Irian is 55,555.55 years on everyone.
00:08:02
Speaker
So I was way off when I said something in the hundreds. Yeah, that that that's all sorts of like, because it's like, how long has sharn been sharn can't be 50,000. Like it's all sorts of all sorts of weird questions that were probably never going to get answered, raised by by this this halfling woman.
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah.
Time Distortion in Erian
00:08:22
Speaker
And there's got to be some convenient numerology when you do that math and it's 55, 55, 55 point 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5. It was a repeating five decimal. It was kind of impressive. Nice. I can't imagine Eric did that on purpose, but if he did, way to go, pal. Not to cast his version on Eric. He's just like, I don't think he cares to that level. Yeah. But we are, we are healed. There are just nice things happen to us. We're fed our favorite food from childhood. We're healed up. Eris gets two criddles.
00:08:50
Speaker
you against her will almost not against her will because she doesn't agree. But okay, Philip, what besides distrust of strangers, which is a given for Eris, is there a deeper reticence to this besides just a general distrust because it seemed Eris is as we've gotten more into the the depths of things going on with mill hatch industries and just various other things that have happened through our
00:09:18
Speaker
campaign and and you know her accidentally pulling an angel out of out of Aryan and and how did she even do that with like Eris is very very concerned about meddling with planar things I mean she has
00:09:36
Speaker
essentially a pet air elemental, but she captured that in a storm in Sharn. Like it was it was here. She didn't she didn't pull it out of out of out of Serania or whatever the airplane is. She's very nervous about that box. We just got pulled into Doleur and she woke up somewhere unfamiliar. And so all of that combined with a general distrust of strangers
00:10:02
Speaker
And honestly, the food, the idea that somebody raked Eris's memories to pull up food that she should find comforting is like, if we were playing D&D still instead of Genesis, somebody in the crew would have telepathy. It's just like ubiquitous in a lot of fifth edition now. And Eris would punch someone for going into her mind
00:10:31
Speaker
without saying, hey, I'm going to talk in your brain now. First, like I find it deeply disturbing to think about somebody just talking in my brain without asking me first. I agree with that. Yes.
Eris's Telepathic Discomfort
00:10:42
Speaker
Yeah. And so Eris finds it. Violating is too strong a word, but presumptuous for this person to just reach into Eris's memories and create food based on that. See, that's funny because you and I read that differently.
00:11:00
Speaker
I read that as an inherent magic of this place is like a desire fulfillment thing. And that makes way more sense. And that's probably what was intended. But Aeris didn't see it that way. And that makes sense. Which, to be fair, I mean, it could still very much be a, well yeah, but you had to figure out my desires are somehow. Right, yeah. Even if no one here actively did it, it's locked away in the data now. Something, yeah, something is reading my mind right now and I don't like it. The info was in your cloud.
00:11:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. I did not, for a second, think of it though. How'd you know what my favorite food was? Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, Eris has a deep distrust of people that she hasn't let in somehow acting as though they are in. That's why she couldn't stand Cassian. Sure. Cassian, and frankly,
00:11:52
Speaker
I would think that Cassian would have ought to have some better training to to have learned, OK, just because I know you in a different timeline doesn't mean we're pals. Like that that attitude of, well, I know you, you know, that that really creeped Eris out. And so whether Eris actually believes anything Cassian said or not, she decided she didn't believe anything Cassian said and that he was a creep because he presumed to be in
00:12:22
Speaker
and Erez hadn't let him in. See, these are the conversations that you and I should be having more often because I always thought Cassie and Eric was playing Cassie in his like top gun. Like when I get in there, they see my cool tech and they hear my cool story. I'm going to be able to become their leader for a short time. That's just how it's going to be. I'm in, I'm cool. How could they say no to this? I'm in a leather jacket.
00:12:43
Speaker
know, my sunglasses are large. Yeah, that's just so funny. Yeah, I wondered if while we were doing this, if Eris was going to be angry with Hob for agreeing to without checking with her. I've tried to put a
00:12:58
Speaker
put it out there a little bit that like sometimes Hobbes pragmatism can be a problem. Like we're really hurt. And this guy that just fought alongside us offered to heal us. We're just going, everyone shut up. We're going, you know? So I didn't know if that was going to, but it didn't really come around quite that bad. Well, so I was thinking about that and how mad at what heiress really be. And
00:13:20
Speaker
I think part of it is she has a much stronger, inherent trust of Hob. Like Hob is one of the people that Eris assumes well of.
00:13:32
Speaker
which is a very short list. Secondly, Eris was just barely conscious for a lot of this until some healing got into it. Any anger that she might have been able to manage would have been hazardous to her health.
00:13:51
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. Also fair. Yeah. Maybe I'm going to get it later. We'll see. I guess we'll see. Okay, great. But we, so we eat the food. Iris actually notably does not eat her special food. Correct. Because why give them the satisfaction, Iris?
00:14:06
Speaker
that's absolutely correct man as my as my preteen becomes more of a preteen and edging even closer to teenager i'm seeing a lot of eris in my kit that's not entirely fair and he probably overheard that so or will one day hear it he's never gonna listen to this so we're healed we eat olfin is like
Milo's Critical Choice
00:14:26
Speaker
healed healed yeah which is which is great and we go check on him so this is some milo stuff and we will touch base with randy about it but just for the sake of the recap while randy is talking to irian or milo is talking to irian they come across this idea of hey we could probably stop this magic it may not even been probably it was like i can do it for you here is the consequence
00:14:52
Speaker
no magic will ever work on you again. And that is an untenable consequence in this game. Like you just can't, cause while I am sure that if you wanted to have a very gritty campaign, there is very much a non-magical healing thing you can do with like doctors and stuff, but that's just not Eberron. Right.
00:15:13
Speaker
you know, we use magic to do things. So the idea that no magic would ever manifest its way to working for, it just feels untenable. It feels like you can't play that game. No, that, that like, I thought, I was thinking that's a great idea right up until, wait, no, now I understand. No, that can't work. Right. Which of course, clever on Eric's part to open the door of, wouldn't it be nice to close this magic off? Well, the only safe way to do it is to tell your, your other wife, I don't even know how to,
00:15:41
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. The still living other universe version of your dead wife to stop talking to you. Eric, you're a mean man. What am I forgetting from the episodes? We do. We leave right at the light. It ends with us. Yes, because it ends with us coming back. We land the ship and Eris goes home. But yeah, Randy wanders off with murder in his heart.
00:16:08
Speaker
We've got to stop saying Randy when we mean Milo. We're very good about Eris and Hobb. Way worse about Raynard and Milo. And there is a lot of daylight between Randy and Milo. Not as much between Raynard and Trevor. If you take all of Raynard, remove some of the callousness, and add a little bit of caring more about his friends, and you pretty much got Trevor. You give Raynard some empathy and you've got Trevor. Current Raynard who does actually care about these three other characters a bit. Dial it up a little more.
00:16:34
Speaker
But yeah, this was out of nowhere. Yeah, I was totally caught off guard by that. To the point that I was holding back cackling laughter. No one can surprise me like Randy.
00:16:49
Speaker
when we're playing this game. Like, Philip, you do stuff that's not telegraphed, but it's always like, that's within the nature of the character in-game. Sometimes Randy's just like, and then I think, you know what? I think he just steps on a puppy. But why? Oh, you'll see, it will make sense. And I trust him. Randy would never step on a puppy, but, or Milo, whoever. But yeah, so Randy's like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna have Milo go out and try to find and in cold blood murder Vigo while he's incarcerated.
00:17:19
Speaker
I it was a great it was a great moment for Eric to to play that card. But I'm also sad because I want to know because there's no way Randy set out without some kind of plan. Right. I want to know how Randy intended to accomplish it.
00:17:36
Speaker
unless what Randy wanted to do was get to the jail and just be turned away and like have that, like you need to leave and just have that more, more Milo impotence. Right. You know, to, I don't know if he wants to go further down it. Ours is not to wonder why. That is the, the, a fun thing is I get to experience that along with the listener because Randy does not divulge either. Yeah. He'll just do it. And we want to, that's the art.
00:18:02
Speaker
It was all just the three episodes of healing, unbelievably busy time of year for everybody. We are no exception. So we got together and knocked out as much as we could in a session. We have already sat down and played the beginnings of our next session and it is.
00:18:18
Speaker
Well, let's just say the action continues from where we left off, you know, like a narrative might.
Phillip's RPG Journey
00:18:23
Speaker
All right, Phillip, a couple of questions. I asked Randy these, and I believe I asked Trevor at least a couple of them, but we've never really like in passing a little bit, but we've never really talked about them. I'm sure on the knowledge check you guys.
00:18:34
Speaker
I mean, I haven't listened to the Knowledge Check for a couple of years. It hasn't been the Knowledge Check for a couple of years. That's what it is. But how long have you been doing this? When did you start D&D? When did you start Genesis? D&D, I started in fourth edition, 2000.
00:18:49
Speaker
eight I think because I think Eric convinced me to I was extremely reluctant. It was like this is a this is just a facet of of being a nerd that I had never gone into like video games all sorts of books comic books movies you know.
00:19:07
Speaker
been a big nerd for a long time, but this was just a facet of it that I'd never, never done, not for any particular reason. And I was pretty skeptical about it. Me and Eric and some of our friends, we played a lot of RPGs online and things like that. So I was kind of like, why, why?
00:19:24
Speaker
was kind of my question. But I drove along with him and another friend to a game store and they bought the books. I invested no money at all and read the book on the way back and was a little more convinced by the time we got home that this could be fun. And so we played a little bit that summer and then
00:19:47
Speaker
not for a little while. I don't remember if it was maybe a year or a year or two later that we got our we got a big campaign going for the first time. So I have been playing for about 15 years and DMing for almost the same amount of time. Yeah, so that and then Genesis, I became aware of Genesis through the Star Wars RPG because Eric
00:20:11
Speaker
bought that and was just wildly excited about it, and so he started running a Star Wars game for just a little while that I played in, and then obviously played more of it once I started going to Gamer Nation Con. Lots more Genesis and got more experience of it. I've actually, I think, never run any Genesis. I think I've only ever played Genesis. I've certainly never run Genesis, so I gotta admit. That's very cool. So then,
00:20:38
Speaker
almost six years ago. Actually, at this point, maybe six, over six years ago. Eric asked you if you would be interested in being on, you know what, I need to stop. Which came first, Knowledge Check or Eberron? Because TGP was first. And I was on the little D&D thing we did on that before we did this one, but I can check this. I'm not actually 100% certain. I kind of want to say the Knowledge Check, but that,
00:21:07
Speaker
but I'm not sure. No, I think we started the, I think we started Eberron Renewed first because a lot of times Eric and I would schedule recording the knowledge check in person because I was up here to record Eberron Renewed. So I think Eberron Renewed started first. Actually, Eric asked me to run Eberron Renewed is what happened.
Eberron Renewed Beginnings
00:21:28
Speaker
That sounds about right. And I said, no, I run a lot of D&D and
00:21:34
Speaker
It was we started this the same year that our daughter moved in with us. And so, yeah, I just said no. And then he he said, OK, what about playing? I was like, and that I was I was obviously down for playing. It didn't take a lot of convincing to get me to play. I'll happily play D&D most of the time. Someone asked me. So that didn't require a lot of convincing. I went round and round on what I would play as I do and as I've as I've talked about before. And there were a lot of
00:22:04
Speaker
a lot of conceptual iterations of Barrick before the person that we actually got. And boy, he'd have had a better life if I'd made some of those earlier choices. So I checked. The first episode of the Knowledge Check came out one month before the first episode of everyone renewed. But there was a big space between when we recorded and dropped that first episode. So there is a chance that we could record them all on that weekend.
00:22:30
Speaker
That's possible. Yeah. So yeah, that's yeah. I refused to run it and then agreed to play. Who else is going to be in it? Do you remember your brother's roommate from 15 years ago? He's going to be in it. Kinda? I think his name was Jeff. Yeah.
00:22:47
Speaker
and a guy you've never met named Trevor, he's fine. So tell me a little bit about the conception and building of Eris.
Character Evolution
00:22:55
Speaker
So it's not where he's landed anymore. At one point, Eric had a notion for campaign three, which he's definitely not using, so I don't feel bad talking about it.
00:23:05
Speaker
where the thing that was going to connect all the characters was going to be the war is that everybody was going to play a like a veteran unit. And when he said that, I got I got really mad at myself because I was like, oh, my gosh, Eris would have been ideal for that. She'd be like the you know, the kid who's like the mascot, the mascot of the unit that just sort of like hangs around.
00:23:27
Speaker
But no, my original concept for campaign two was to play a hobgoblin. And I had kind of this idea of a hobgoblin who dresses like he's on Peaky Blinders.
00:23:41
Speaker
Okay. So, you know, flat cap, a smokiness cigar. A real snaz gunk thumb. Yes. A smokiness cigar, walking around in a tweed vest. I think I built a mini for him at some point. And fighting kind of a street brawler type. There's been a character concept I've never quite gotten to work out because it's very hard to make in most mechanics.
00:24:04
Speaker
of kind of the Jason Bourne thing, someone who fights with whatever's at hand. And so that was kind of my idea, is to build this guy as a brawler. And then you started talking about Hobb, and I started thinking, this is way too similar. We're gonna have two big silent brawler guys. And if there was a bigger party, there's something very fun in that, like street brawler and martial artists.
00:24:31
Speaker
in the same way that, well, I guess, Luke Cage and Iron Fist in Marvel Comics. Just talking technique, like it's the suit. Yeah. So there's something very fun about that in it if we aren't half the party. And so when you start talking about Hobb, I was like, okay, I don't want to do this. I still want to do something with the goblin concept because I've always found that I've always found Keith Baker's take on goblins as not just
00:25:00
Speaker
creepy little evil things. Very, very interesting. And so I still wanted to do something like that.
Cultural Connections
00:25:04
Speaker
So I was trying to think how do you connect someone to a goblin culture without them having to be a goblin because I didn't want to play a goblin. Randy had played a goblin in the last campaign and I didn't want and my interpretation of a goblin would have been so wildly different from Randy's. Sure. I didn't really want necessarily fight. Yeah.
00:25:21
Speaker
And I didn't want to like I didn't want to spend all of the all of the Eberron reviews talking comparisons between my goblin and Booyah. Sure. And so I didn't want to do that. And I had never played an artificer and I really like artificers. So that's kind of how I landed on artificer and the idea of a goblin. And then kind of maybe the day that we recorded or the weekend that we recorded the finale of
00:25:48
Speaker
or I guess the big reviewed. The weekend we recorded the big reviewed after campaign one. I...
00:25:54
Speaker
I had kind of worked out the notion of playing someone who was a Chiron refugee and who knew about goblins and knew goblin culture because her home had been overrun when the goblins rebelled and seized control of that part of Chiron. And that I thought was really just because it would be fun to play around with goblin slang and yet not be a goblin. And I liked the notion of someone
00:26:21
Speaker
with a conflicted idea of the goblins, a liking for aspects of their culture and art, but also a grudge, as it were, against them, essentially.
00:26:36
Speaker
So that's that's kind of how it evolved. The last thing to evolve and boy, did it take a long way into the campaign was the voice. I had a lot of difficulty landing landing the voice and it kept trailing around in different directions. And I tried to come up with a bunch of different ideas for the voice. I worked. I worked the voice a lot harder.
00:26:57
Speaker
than with Barrett because I just fell back on an accent I knew I could do. And it took a long time into the campaign before I felt like the voice was finally getting somewhere where it was easy to listen to and easy to maintain throughout that session.
00:27:09
Speaker
I've found that if you just barely change the way you talk, you still do the voice wrong about half the time. I get hob wrong more often than right, but that's great. That's very cool. Yeah, I didn't think about it until you were talking. We really didn't talk about campaign two characters until there was a very clear end point in sight for campaign one. Whereas we've been talking about campaign three characters since, how long ago were we at Fuzzies and talking about it like a year and a half ago?
Campaign Duration Surprise
00:27:36
Speaker
Well, you know, not unlike campaign one, it's quite a long time ago that Eric said that he could kind of see the end in sight on campaign two, but then he keeps being creative when we roll triumphs. And so if he ever feels like the campaign is dragging, which I don't, but if he ever feels like the campaign is dragging, he's got no one to blame but himself. Yeah, no, it had to have been in the late 90s, early 100s that he was like, guys, I really think this one's
00:28:03
Speaker
Like I didn't expect it to go this long, it's really winding down. And here we are at episode 182. Or three. Pretty great. Okay, we have some questions. And Philip, if there isn't anything that you would like to address that is within the realm of D
Community Invitation
00:28:20
Speaker
&D, all right? Stay off your soapbox about, I don't know.
00:28:23
Speaker
dogs in sports.
00:28:42
Speaker
Well, fill up eventually. I believe next week is, or next to reviewed is Eric. So couldn't get that one in your, uh, in your, in your heads. If you would like to ask a question, you can do so on our discord. Our discord is accessible for free. All you gotta do is go to any one of our other social media pages and find the link for it. You can find those on Facebook, Twitter, Tik TOK, I don't know. Google plus. What else do we,
Improvising Characters
00:29:04
Speaker
okay. We actually have Facebook.
00:29:05
Speaker
Twitter slash x Instagram and tiktok and you can find us at the geek pantheon and you will find a link our merch store is the geek pantheon calm you also find a link there as well as all of our merch so and that is where we have our questions for our reviews get asked there so Laura would like to know Philip how much detail did Eric give you before you started role-playing as aces patron
00:29:28
Speaker
I would love to be able to go back and just reference a message he sent me, but he told me in person because I got there before everyone else, and so he told me in person. But the answer is almost nothing. I didn't actually even know that I was going to be encountering Ace. I knew he wanted me to play a devil.
00:29:47
Speaker
And I think he may have given me a type of devil from the Monster Manual. It was the one that, you know, it was like a horned devil. It was like the standard looking one. But as far as the personality or what exactly I was supposed to get him to agree to, very, very little. He kind of just threw me the ball.
00:30:08
Speaker
and trusted me to improvise most of the info about that NPC. I knew the basics of what of the of what plot point Eric was trying to achieve. And that's really it. All right. I really enjoyed that character. That was a lot of fun. Yeah, it really. And I know because you've not seen this show, I feel comfortable saying that because you wouldn't have even unintentionally the kind of luch the way you were physically doing it helped with this visualization. But there's a character and I think I mentioned this already.
00:30:36
Speaker
in a cartoon called OK KO there's a bad guy that's he's a man with a snake for a head in a business suit and
00:30:47
Speaker
His name is very funny. It's like puddles or blossom or something very cute, but it was, it was just that guy. Anyway, so Laura continues. They want to know what was your guess for what happened in the episodes that you missed since who told you not to listen? It may have been me. Honestly, I don't recall. Eric told me not to listen. Eric told me that you said I wasn't supposed to listen. I think is what it was.
00:31:12
Speaker
For those who aren't, these are the episodes where Raynard goes on his special mission with Randy and I's other characters, but it wasn't there for him.
00:31:21
Speaker
Yeah. We'll see. I had, I had no notion of what the premise of the episode was going to be. Like I knew it was going to be, you know, Reynard gets up to something in the morning, but it honestly never occurred to me that they would, that it would have anything to do with his dad. I assumed this was going to be some sort of like sitcom episode starring, starring Reynard and a couple of tangential characters. I think I knew.
00:31:47
Speaker
that you were going to be playing someone connected to Verla.
00:31:52
Speaker
Randy, please. Randy. Randy. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I knew someone was playing. I knew that one of Verla's, some contact of Verla was, was involved. So I thought that what was going on was entirely different. And you had sent me a picture of the double triumph that I guess produced this, this possibility. Right. And so I kind of thought Reynard had done
00:32:17
Speaker
something that was going to cause an enormous amount of trouble for the group and that Eris was going to be really mad about. And so the goal was get that to be organic instead of planned. The idea that what had happened was Reynard had seized an opportunity and been entirely successful. That did not occur to me.
00:32:40
Speaker
Obviously, that's not what was supposed to happen. We were all expecting heists and hijinks.
00:32:50
Speaker
in the room. I wish you had been there for that because all of that happening that way. I wish I could say it was a few minutes that Eric and Philip or Eric and Trevor were talking about. Is this something to do? So boy, that was fun. All right. We have some questions from Kevin. Kevin wants to know, Philip, how has it been playing a war orphan former slave with severe emotional trauma and PTSD?
00:33:16
Speaker
Is there anything you would have chosen differently in hindsight? How much control did you give? Yeah. How much control did you give Eric with Eris backstory? This sounds like an indictment of Eric because I took such a different approach previously. I gave Eric almost no control over Eris' backstory. I went the exact opposite direction of Barrick where I gave Eric. In fairness, I didn't give Eric a lot of control over Barrick's backstory. I gave Eric a lot of control over the pact.
00:33:39
Speaker
I I tend I am inclined to overthink backstories.
Eris's Trauma and Growth
00:33:45
Speaker
I usually fight that by creating some loose ends and giving those to Eric. In this case, the loose end and it hasn't come up. And frankly, I'd be astonished if it came up now because there's just so much going on. The loose end I gave was that Eris does not actually know whether her little brother died or or not. Like she has no confirmation of what became of her brother. I forgot she had a brother.
00:34:09
Speaker
Okay. And there's so much going on. So it doesn't come up a lot. So I didn't give Eric a lot of control over backstory. Would have done anything different in hindsight. I might have sat down with, well, so we didn't really have much of a concept of how Eris came to be in Sharn until we were doing session zero. And when we introduced Ulfin,
00:34:35
Speaker
I sort of jumped on Ulfin as the idea that Ulfin as a pirate had taken the ship that Eris had been on and we of course played that in flashback. I probably, part of it was I was very uncertain of it and I was uncertain how much Eric would want to mess with it but if I could have done something different I might have sat down with Eric and just given him or talked to him about
00:34:56
Speaker
what the relationship between Eris and the Dashur would be like. Because we just didn't have any planning on that, and I didn't have a clear idea. And it would have been nice for me, I think, because it would have been... When Eric finally started pulling the card, started playing that card, it would have been good for me to have sort of prethought, how is Eris going to deal with this? Because I feel like, especially the beginning part of that arc, I am...
00:35:22
Speaker
kind of inactive because I was trying to figure out how does Eris as she is now feel about this and how do I how do I play that other than Eris kind of shutting down because that's bad for our format so that yeah that would have been that would have
00:35:43
Speaker
made it easier for me to roleplay that revelation. But otherwise, I'm pretty happy with the backstory I came up with. It's been an interesting character. How has it been? I mean, I enjoy playing Eris a lot. I think she's a blast. There's an aspect of pressure to be careful and respectful of trauma that I don't have.
00:36:09
Speaker
as a person in the same, in the same way, perhaps on a slightly larger scale, but in the same, the same kind of way that when, I don't know, we don't do campaign one spoilers. Yeah. Something happens, something happens with Barrick that created a situation for Barrick that we were very, very careful about. And you probably know what it is if you listen to campaign one, but kind of in the same, same vein as that. Barrick develops what would be in a non-magical world of disability.
00:36:35
Speaker
Yes, yeah. And we were very lucky to have some listeners reach out to offer some resources and I was able to have some conversations with some people who actually have the real world, the real non-magical equivalent. They were going to give me some good feedback on role-playing it, which was great. With Eris, I have
00:36:58
Speaker
through both my educational background and through the process of becoming an adoptive parent, a whole lot of training in trauma informed care and trauma informed education. And so I have
00:37:11
Speaker
done a lot of reading and research and other things about young people and trauma and about childhood trauma, particularly and some of the ways it can manifest. And so I really I have enjoyed the challenge and I think have done well, at least in a way that I'm relatively satisfied with, of making making war orphan not be
00:37:37
Speaker
automatic Batman. I didn't want to do the comic book edgelord stereotype with Eris and so having some educational background of it and having some education in
00:37:52
Speaker
what it's like and different ways it manifests made it really easy to to know how I wanted it to manifest in Eris. And, you know, at the beginning part of the campaign, a lot of that was her predominant trait is is every every emotion, every every large emotion turns to anger. It was kind of the
00:38:13
Speaker
because that's a very common one with childhood trauma. And then also just a sort of intellectual immaturity. Eris is brilliant, but intellectually immature. She's got some very real arrested development, things like that. And so having the opportunity to sort of represent that in a way that I think is better than just making her all edgy and emo,
00:38:40
Speaker
has been a fun challenge and I have enjoyed it and I really like getting to grow Eris over the course of the campaign in the ways that we've gotten to. And you can tell some of the nuance that sometimes it feels like Eris is like, I don't like pushing everybody away, but my safety is way too important to me to not
00:39:03
Speaker
stay back. There's a good nuance to it. It helps that you've played her. From the beginning you said, she's not going to be this way to everyone. She's going to let people in. Like a real human. Right. Yeah.
00:39:17
Speaker
Kevin continues, you know what, I'm just gonna go, the remainder of the questions are from Kevin for the listeners. We're just gonna go through. How dependent on Olive is Eris feeling at this point? Kevin gets the impression that she is her tether to some semblance of normalcy. I think Olive is Eris's most healthy relationship. Olive doesn't, Olive is gentle with Eris, but doesn't treat her with kid gloves anymore.
00:39:44
Speaker
Olive will tell Eris, in the same way that Hob can sometimes, will tell Eris when she's behaving unreasonably or when she's making too much of something or when she's spinning out and Eris can hear it. And so I don't know if dependent is the right word anymore. Definitely was at a certain point. I don't know if dependent is the right word anymore, but Olive is definitely Eris's most normal
00:40:08
Speaker
relationship. And I would say that one of the biggest growth aspects of Eris is that when we met Eris, the people that Eris sort of let in, primarily just Hob, but the people that Eris had sort of let in were kind of people that Eris could hide behind.
00:40:26
Speaker
And which is why her her instinct when anything went wrong was let's let's run. Right. At this point, because Eris has started to accept the idea of of home and and community, to a certain extent, found family that all those things her relationship with Olive is kind of inverted in a little bit more protective.
00:40:51
Speaker
Olive is this normal relationship and it isn't really that Eris is afraid that Olive
00:40:57
Speaker
can't protect herself, although Eris would be devastated if Olive was truly hurt, as we saw with the Dashur encounter. It's more that having Olive as a normal-ish relationship, as normal as two mad scientists living together can be. Having Olive as a normal relationship is so, so huge to Eris
00:41:23
Speaker
that that's what she's protective of. She doesn't want Olive to go become a swashbuckling adventurer criminal because that that will mean that she has conversations with Olive that are like the conversations she has with Raynard and Milo and Hobbs sometime that aren't conversations that people who live healthy lives
Eris's Life Aspirations
00:41:47
Speaker
have. Right. Right. People in normal relations with each other don't talk the way we do.
00:41:53
Speaker
Yeah. So that relationship is enormously important to her. And yeah, to to her her concept of normalcy. And honestly, Eris's goal at this point has switched to get to a place where I can quit and this can be normal. Like Eris's goal, Eris's goal is to get out.
00:42:12
Speaker
of her current day job because what she wants is that life with Olive. And not that she wants to like ditch all of her other relationships, but she would. But it would be really, you know, she'd really like to just, you know, meet Hob for dinner and go watch Hob in the ring and not also go commit any crimes. I like that for her.
00:42:38
Speaker
Yeah. All right, Kevin continues. Does D&D Tasha slash Zebilna sligdwiv? Sure. Kevin's getting extra credit for the multiple. This would be she of the infinite cauldron and the hideous laughter, the witch. Does she exist as part of Eberron lore by any name? And is she a personal hero of Eris?
00:42:58
Speaker
So in a few different blog posts, Keith Baker has presented some different like when that around when that book came out, Keith Baker on his blog kind of talked through some ideas for if you wanted Tasha to exist in D&D as originally written. No, Tasha is a forgotten realms character. But if you wanted Tasha to exist in D&D because, you know, the spells exist in D&D,
00:43:19
Speaker
Then what are some ways you could and he introduced a few different ways for Tasha to possibly exist in D&D. And I initially didn't have any ideas of this, but someone I want to say, I can't remember who I don't want to guess now. Somebody asked a while back whether Tasha, the boat slash air elemental was named after Tasha, the witch. And in the middle of the Eberom reviewed, I decided yes.
00:43:47
Speaker
was the answer. I went I did yes and for a for an ever reviewed question. And since then, I I now know who Tasha is in Eris's understanding. And yes, Eris admires and reveres Tasha. Tasha is not a is not a frightening witch that might kill you in Eris's say. Well, she she could be, but not in a bad way.
00:44:16
Speaker
in Eris's perspective. So yes, and I'll say more in the great reviewed if I don't get a chance to talk more about it, but I kind of want to like save it up in case somehow I get a chance to have Eris go off on a fangirling about Tasha moment, just because I think it would be funny. Nice. Yes, is the answer to your question, and I will go into more of that in some future reviewed or possibly in character. Very cool.
00:44:41
Speaker
I will say just because I think it's kind of neat in my Eberron that I run, I ended up making one of the archfey in the lotus is Tasha just because the mother of invention or queen of invention or something is one of the archfey. And then later I was reading about her. I guess that's her cannon lore if she becomes archfey in the Feywild. So I felt pretty good about that. I was like, yeah, that's great.
00:45:05
Speaker
I walked my way backwards into something that didn't suck. All right, Kevin continues. Eris and all this conversation about the shoulder injury seemed to imply incorporating the claw marks into a tattoo. Do you have any ideas about effect or design? And will you share them? I added that last bit. I haven't plotted out because Eris's current need is to make her arm work all the way.
00:45:30
Speaker
And unless another opportunity arises to have someone magically fix it, then Eris will go at it from an artifice perspective. Eric actually made the tattoo way cooler because he was describing it as just sort of pale. And at first in my head, I just thought, that means you can't see it very well, because of course I am a pasty white boy. And so if I had a scar on my shoulder that was just really, really white,
00:45:58
Speaker
That would not be very noticeable. But of course, Eris has more dark, darker, olive colored skin. And so then I thought that's really rad looking to have that high contrast, almost white claw marks on her shoulder. And so will Eris almost certainly work some cool tattooing into that? Absolutely, yes.
00:46:20
Speaker
Will it be magical? I don't know yet. And do I know exactly what it looks like yet? No, not yet. There are as much as as much as an art project appeals to Eris. She's not actually sure she's capable of tattooing her own shoulder. So she would probably need to find someone that she trusts to draw on her. Sure. Rainer will do it.
00:46:38
Speaker
Just kick me. Yeah. So I have not, there are other problems Eris needs to solve in the aftermath of that fight regarding her own wounds and dolphins before she gets to that. So yes, almost certainly that will happen. No, I don't have a design yet. All right. And Kevin's last question, I should have done this one earlier, so you got the last one.
Prophecy Detail Overlooked
00:47:00
Speaker
The last question is for me. He asks,
00:47:02
Speaker
Jeff, when suggesting Milo take over the clan, did Hobb forget the prophecy implied no heir of Satan should take over? I mean, I don't know if Hobb did, but Jeff did, man. That's the answer. You're right. That is a very important, serious thing that we're going to have to address in the game that I just forgot about in the moment. Philip definitely forgot, but it wouldn't make any difference because Eris, again, as much, not because Eris doesn't believe in prophecy, but because Eris is bullheaded.
00:47:28
Speaker
and and this was brought up by Cassian and nothing or no this was brought up by yeah it was I don't remember who it was no it was Dora not Durga Dora yeah this was brought up by Dora and Dora made Eris very uncomfortable and so Eris has scrubbed anything Dora said out of the realm of truth yeah fair Hobbes thing with that also has always been it would be nice if we can also stay within the parameters of this prophecy has kind of always been his idea like
00:47:57
Speaker
It's of least concern to him, but it's still enough of a concern to him that the Milo thing feels preferable to the Laura thing, and that's where his head's at right now. But you're right. I mean, yes, in the moment, Kevin, I just beefed it and had forgotten about the prophecy. I wasn't looking through my notes.
00:48:17
Speaker
I don't take great notes, and the ones that I take don't get opened up as often as they should and read through. So I'll just cop to the fact that I beefed it. But now that you've reminded me, it will be brought up when it's appropriate. You guys have probably noticed a bit of a pattern of that sometimes. You mentioned something I've forgotten, and it magically shows up in the next session after you've brought it up in the Discord. All right, well, we're about hitting an hour, which is
00:48:43
Speaker
Long as we've gone for a one-on-one review, so thank you, Phillip. We will be back next week with an episode we've already recorded, and I think it's a pretty good one. I think so. In the meantime, please come get in the Discord. It's a very active, I mean, daily, multiple messages, big, fun, nice group of people. We've got all the rules you want to see about being kind, so I promise you it is an inclusive and good space to come and join if you would like to. It is. Other than that, we'll catch you next Friday. I have been Jeff.
00:49:13
Speaker
I'm Philip. All right, thanks guys for listening.