A Geek History of Time - Episode 319 - White Wolf Part VIII Just When You Have All The Answers, Ed Changelings the Dreaming

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

We were saying that we were going to get into the movies. Yeah, and I'm only going to get into a few of them because there were way too goddamn many for me to really be interested in telling you this clone version or this clone version in the early studio system. It's a good metric to know in a story arc. Where should I be? Oh, there's Beast. I should step over here. At some point, I'm going to have to sit down with you

and force you, like pump you full of coffee and be like, no, okay, look. And are swiftly and brutally put down by the Minutemen who use bayonets to get their point across. Well done there. I'm good Damian, and I'm also glad that I got your name right this time. I apologize for that one TikTok video. Men of this generation wound up serving

the whole lot of them as a percentage of the population because of the war, because of a whole lot of other stuff. Oh yeah. And actually in his case, it was pre-war. But, but you know, I was joking. Did he seriously join the American Navy? He did. Fuck. This is a Geek History of Time. Where we connect Nurgery to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock, World History Teacher, Middle School Level, Northern California Where we connect nursery to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock.

I'm a world history teacher at the middle school level here in Northern California. And this weekend marks, or yeah, this Friday just passed, marked the end of a quarter where I'm teaching in my district. And so I had no fewer than five students come up to me to let me know on that day that, hey, Mr. Blalock, I just finished this assignment. Can you grade that for me? The assignment was one from a month ago mm-hmm and You know, I I had to remember that I'm not teaching high schoolers. I'm dealing with sixth and seventh graders. So I don't I

Don't I don't have the liberty of just laughing in their face. Yeah Unleashing the sarcasm the way I wish I could but but the urge to look them flatly in the face and go oh Right the assignment you didn't give a shit about for three weeks Now you want me to jump on and get graded right now How about no? Like, yeah. So, I mean, anybody who's ever done any teaching knows what I'm talking about. And this really isn't, you know, any kind of new story. But that's that's part of what I had going on this week. How about you? Well, I'm Damian Harmony. I'm a US history teacher at the high school level up here in Northern California. And I think we also had a quarter end. And interestingly, I have a very similar experience, except it's with adults, and not the parents. Other teachers trying to help a kid, which is great. I love that. The bigger the network, the better. But the kid straight up like hey if you just write your name on something and turn it in you get 50%

And I was like oh That's not how I do things Don't tell him that because then he'll think that that's gonna override the thing in the syllabus that he signed Because hope is a dangerous thing. And so I explained, no, I don't grade things to give kids points. I don't assign things so that kids earn points. Points are not something I give a shit about. I put grades on work to let them know where they are in terms of mastery

so Do not tell a kid to Maximize his points by Strategically turning in this and that so that he can get over some imaginary hump. I don't pay attention to my students grades at all At all and I tell them this regularly I'm like, I'm not the one that has to graduate. You do. And if grades matter to you, then you will make them matter. But I use them as a tool to communicate. This is why I don't accept any incomplete work. Because I cannot communicate

to you how close to master you are, if you do not complete the assignment. Yeah. The amount of adults Yeah, the amount of adults who have also bought into this commodification Aspect of what we do. Yeah to the point where getting the treat matters more than doing the trick You know, it's it's that same old argument that before I was asked like I think last year You know, well, what what do you do to incentivize the kids to do the work and get their points I'm like the I don't understand the the points are supposed to be the incentive you guys have already gamified this I can't teach them for the love of learning so I have to rely on this bullshit thing of points that does not exist in nature So there we go. So it just you know, the progress is an uneven And uneven thing. Yeah on a uneven and unsteady march in multiple directions. So yeah

So yeah, and then I did have a kid turn in an assignment That he had plagiarized and he asked me well well, like, because the quarters ending, so I need to get this in. I was like, oh, okay, cool. And then I looked at it for seconds and I was like, oh, okay. Okay. And and I dare say that plagiarism comes when you commodify the fuck out of grades to the point where they cease to be a communication tool and they are instead for points. Yeah, so yeah You you have you have certainly created an incentive for plagiarism at that point. Uh-huh. Yeah, so yeah, it's anyway, oh Yeah, we're trying folks. We really really are trying now. We need someone else to yeah In the meantime yeah, don't you like take me away to a different realm where? Everybody knows my name, and they're always glad I came I Can't do that, but I can bring you back to the world of darkness which close enough

I don't know you know based on where we're living right now It's still escapism. So yeah. Oh, hey. I'm here for it. Yeah Let's see. We've done werewolves. We've done vampires we have done Mages yes It's just been those three right Yeah, yeah, okay And a couple of those took well all of

those took multiple episodes a couple of them took multiple multiple episodes yes because I spent an awful lot of time going into lore and and kind of the background of you know like how how we've perceived them and how the tropes have evolved yes and rightly so yes and I'm not going to be doing that with this episode because At this point the world of darkness started to become

Very heavily self-referential oh Okay Like how AI grabs sources created by AI yeah? self-referential oh Okay Like how AI grabs sources created by AI yeah? Yeah, yeah only not shitty Oh, okay good well only not at least there's that yeah There but but it became it it the the materials every game that came out still it The the materials every game that came out still Stood on its own you could oh so another facet of this world. Yeah, okay

yeah, every one of them was a new facet of the setting and Every one of them like if you wanted to you could get your friends together and say okay Look, we're gonna pay we're gonna play a race the oblivion Chronicle we look, we're going to pay. We're going to play a race, the oblivion, uh, uh, Chronicle. We're going to, we're going to play a game centered around rate. Um, and you know, you could play it straight out of materials taken only from race, but within those materials, now we're starting to see more and more references to as we all you know Statements of as we all know in the world of darkness You know you you're probably at this point wondering how vampires feel about all of this. You're probably wondering

How does this knock on against you know? Cepts, you know septs of Garou and and you know, etc. Oh, okay so like with each new thing, it's it's almost the Brave New World model of Here's a new source book a new facet of it. And by the way, here's how the others relate to it Yeah, okay. Yeah, and there's and there's more and more of that happening in materials and So After mage the next game to be released is wraith the oblivion

Okay, I was hoping there'd be something with the fae but cool. Well, that's that's on its way. Oh, okay Wraith comes first. So we've had as you already mentioned we've had vampires. We've had werewolves wizards and Now we have ghosts. Sure. And the idea behind Wraith was that your character was an either recently or not so recently deceased spirit. Do they come with a handbook for the recently deceased? I wish. But your ultimate goal as a player, as a character in Wraith, was to move on. Really? Yeah. So you had objects that anchored you to to the world and they were referred to as fetters they were they were the chains holding you here in in

Undeath and and it were preventing you from moving on to the great unknown Okay, real quick. Um, you know, one of my favorite shows is being human the American version Yeah, the ghost Sally is trying to find her door Yeah, moving on it's the same thing like yeah. Okay now obviously there's Plenty of literature out there about how I mean fuck I can think of like Chinese mythology of like if you are not buried at home Your ghost wanders this realm lost. Yes, so you can't move on, you know So you can't be near so like this is not a new new thing of no the ghostly plane being the liminal space between Life and the finality of death like the next stage.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, there's, there's, I mean, it's a, it's a kind of a universal like Jungian kind of archetype within, within human cultures that we all have these ideas about what happens when what's supposed to happen to your soul when you die goes wrong. Right. Right. And you know, you, you are trapped here in, you know, not, not really able to directly affect those around you or not, not able to speak to those around you, but, you know, unable to move on to your final reward or final punishment or whatever. And in Wraith, this turned into a conflict between the part of a, between the part of a, of a soul, part of a character that wanted to let go, that wanted to move on.

And the part that wanted to cling and revel in wallow, maybe not revel, but wallow in whatever the powerful emotion, whatever the feeling was that had you tied here, whether that was anger over something that happened, anger over the way you died, anger over the way you were treated by someone, or if it was sorrow and loss that you could not let go of or whatever. And so every character around the table

actually played two roles and this was this was the the new kind of this the new spin this is what well yeah this system so every player around the table wound up playing two roles right you had your character which is your race and you had the specter of another player Of another when you create yeah, so when you create your character in race at least in in race the oblivion Geist is a whole other thing that came out later sure but in wreath the Oblivion Your your character is torn between the desire to figure out how to move on and

the desire to simply end to to to self-destruct and Your specter is that self-destructive urge Okay, so at the table you are gonna be playing your character, right? somebody else at the table is gonna be playing your specter and The specter is going to be saying things to you like When when you're interacting with an NPC or whatever, uh, your specter might jump in and go, they don't believe you.

They're never going to believe you. Nobody ever has believed you. You know, why, why, why are you, why are you even trying to talk this through? Just, just kill them. Just, you know, that kind of thing. It's, it's, it's somebody role playing the dark urges of your character from across the table and The the threads That your specter would would tug on Or something that you as the player would determine when you're creating your character you and the storyteller would be like, okay

So this is this is my character's backstory. This is who he, who he or she was in life. This is, you know, what happened to him. This is how they died. And these are the things that are going to be there. You know, this is going to be their dark side. Okay. And so this is very, very advanced, very grown up level role playing when it's, when it's done the way it's supposed to be.

Now, obviously, you know, how this gets done at different tables is going to be different. Of course. And, you know, you hear about tables where it's like, yeah, we really didn't do very much with role-play inspectors because nobody was really comfortable with that. Like, you know... Yeah, there's got to be a fair amount of trust there, but also it's an adversarial system. And it's an adversarial system that's kind of subjectively based on rules. So like, if I, it feels very similar to like playing in the schoolyard.

Well, I have lasers in my eyes. Well, I have a shield. So it's like, I whispered to you, you're not good enough. You never were. And, I have a shield. Well, I have so it's like, you know, I whispered to you You're not good enough. You never were and that's why you drowned and it's like, yeah Yeah, but this matters more to me like yeah, where do you go? You know? Yeah and and you know when you as a player made certain choices there there were mechanical ways that that affected your ability to resist what your specter was saying. And there were circumstances under which your specter could wind up taking

control. Your dark side takes over and you act on all of those negative impulses. And, you know, and so the game Wines up very much being a meditation on trauma Yeah Trauma the role-playing game. Yeah, really in a big way. Yeah now how 90s can you get? It's worth noting that you know, this is 94

and I'm trying to remember I didn't have the chance to look at it up or I did have a chance to look it up. I lost my notes. But this is this is the same time period during which we see the crow. Yeah. And so, you know, this is

you know, there there is a very self-conscious kind of edge or edgyness That that has kind of been in the background of World of Darkness stuff up to this point, but this is where it really Really comes out and really reveals itself. Yeah. And Wraith did not do well. Wraith Wraith is one of only a couple of properties out of the world of darkness that did not get carried over. I'm going to get into this later, but in in 2004,

White Wolf basically rebooted the entire world of darkness, turned it into the Chronicles of Darkness. OK. And a lot of the metaphysics got changed. You know, I know the most personally about the way mage changed and the whole backstory behind that shifted. Um, and Wraith went away, um, basically because the concepts and everything that was, that was built into its cosmology got scrapped and it

turned into there were ghosts still but it was the concept was was very different and and built around a different kind of set of themes and so Wraith the what I had to say in the episode about vampire you know remember is that you know vampire was supposed to be a horror game that was really about moral horror. Right. And it was, it was more advanced, emotionally mature level kind of role playing. And Wraith is kind of the same way way coming from a different direction. It's it's you know, everybody at the table has to have a lot of trust in everybody else at the table. And you really have to be committed to the psychodrama that's involved.

Right. the psycho drama That's involved right and that's that's demanding like if you are a gaming group that also Happen to be you know improv Artists, you know actors kind of thing then like this could be something you all could eat up with a spoon, right? Sure, you know, but if you're a crew of 15, 16 year old high school students, you know, the, just, just because of your neurological development, you know, having the level of confidence and trust in yourself and each other to really make this work. Well,

and having the life experience enough to have had enough traumas that you've been able to process and therefore drawn, like that, no, that ain't happening at that age. You know, I would also point out that like, in addition to the crow coming out around that time, so too did gargoyles, the cartoon. Yeah.

And there's just kind of a different kind of darkness to both of those and one of them's a Disney cartoon but there's a different kind of darkness to to those as compared to other kinds of things that were dark like the darkness that you get in werewolf and in vampire, there is something smoother to the lines. Whereas it's almost like with Wraith as a concept, it's almost got like, you know how like when you'll take a picture at night and you can set your setting to like get rid of noise or create noise reduction.

And so it softens the photo. Yeah, this what you described sounds like it's got a lot of noise in the picture like the Darkness is grainy. Yeah, whereas there's a Eroticism to vampire. Yes, there is a manipulation to vampire Whereas Wraith is again, you're kind of pounding each other in the head with trauma yeah, whereas like werewolf there is a a is again, you're kind of pounding each other in the head with trauma. Yeah.

Whereas like, werewolf, there is a, a, almost a Bacchanalian feel to it, a releasing feel to it. Yeah. There is. The darkness is more just in the excess. Yeah. Not, not built into like the graininess of the night. Yeah. Yeah. Not, not built into like the graininess of the night. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then in mage, the,

the, the emphasis is not on so much the darkness as it is on the power. Yeah. On, on power and paradigm and belief and, and that kind of stuff. And here the theme is very much one of pain and responding to pain. Yeah. Like one of the, one of the example characters in, in the rule book, like the here's, here's how to create a character. Here is an example, is a young man whose wraith has one of his, I want to say it was his left hand, has nails driven,

multiple nails driven through his hand. Yeah. And in order to get out of the building, he was haunting. He he he in order to to break that particular feather enough to be able to have the freedom to be a player character. He he had to player character. He had to stigmatize you know, disfigurement or, or scar or alteration or something in that kind of same way. Right. And so, yeah, this is, this is very heavy and you know, could very easily fall

into unexamined edge lordiness, you know, for the sake of it. And so, you know what, it did not take off. Sure. I remember going through the process of creating a character with a high school friend of mine. I was I remember I was home on spring break or something and we were planning on and never came to fruition, but we were planning on, you know, having a game. And I went through the process of creating a character and the whole time I was doing it, I was thinking, this just feels like a drag.

Like, you know, I am. And, and the, the group of friends that were they were really excited about doing this were all you know massive huge fans of the crow and They were they were all thinking of it with that kind of paradigm and you know doing all that kind of stuff And I was looking at all the materials going I Don't I don't I don't see I mean I see the influencer. I see the relationship, but I don't I I don't know yeah so I was I was not terribly disappointed when those plants fell through I have to admit and

so that's that's Wraith which again is and I'm gonna want to highlight this it's a meditation on on trauma and it's a meditation on pain It's a meditation on the struggle between Cling to those things and self-destruction and letting go So like you could kind of argue there's a there's a Buddhist subtext if you really want to look at it that way I was gonna say it's more nihilistic than anything. Oh Yeah, there's there's potential for it to be very nihilistic than anything. Oh yeah. There's, there's potential for it to be very nihilistic. Yeah. And so that's, that's 94 and then in 95, uh,

Changeling the dreaming came out and so Wraith kind of operated in parallel to the rest of the world of darkness, but because of the nature of how ghosts worked or how rates worked. Right. It'd be really hard to have anybody else interacting as players together with a race or have, you know, a vampire at the table with a bunch of rays, it just kind of would be hard to do. Changeling, very clearly and very explicitly fit in with the rest of the world of darkness in a way that like whoever your table goblin was like, you know, the one, the one character or the one player at the table who is the You know chaos Spirit. Yeah, you know

They they could take the the the changeling book and they could build a character and they could immediately hit the ground running with They would they'd have a hard time playing with a lot of vampires because vampires are literally toxic to changelings Okay, and I'll get it and I'll get into that but um like oh, yeah, no you got you got werewolves Yeah, you can have a changeling show up. That's no problem Mages mages will be happy to have a changeling around because a changeling doesn't believe in consensual reality and so you can get vulgar and they're gonna help you you know and so where so the themes of I already went through what what the themes of the other games were right the

theme of Changeling was kind of introducing hope punk into the themes of the other games were right the theme of changeling was Kind of introducing hope punk into the world of darkness so I could play a muppet Kinda yeah You know you could you could figure out a way to make it work yeah, right? But like maybe not in physical form but in mentality yeah spiritually totally Okay, and so in a in a the way changeling worked is they took the idea out of Celtic tales of change things right the

original stories were that a changeling was usually a child, but, um, it could be an adult who had somehow the, the, the actual person had somehow been kidnapped by the fairies and a, a, a facsimile had been left. The changeling had been left in their place. And, um, by the way, the lore podcast, uh, which I've referenced before in this series, did a really great episode that referred to a trial in either the late 1700s or the early 1800s in which a husband was put on trial for the death of his wife. And his defense was that he believed his wife had been,

had been taken by the fairies that he hadn't killed his wife and killed the changeling. Oh, wow. Oh, it's, oh, it's an amazing, it's, it's an incredible tragic story that gets into, how the economy of Ireland was changing at the time. And, you know, in the specific case, the wife had her own independent income and the husband was stuck in a situation of, like many men at the time, being chronically unemployed. So there's that kind of power dynamic. And it's incredibly compelling. It's an amazing story.

That's cool. Highly, highly recommend it. Yeah. Um, so in any event, um, you know, the stories were that, you know, person physically gets kidnapped in a, in a, in a changeling it's left in their place. a changeling gets left in their place. In changeling, the idea was that the world had become too mundane for changelings to easily survive. So in mage, you have quintessence, which is the stuff of reality, right? The raw power of magic. And then you have quintessence, which is the stuff of reality, right? The raw power of magic.

And then you have paradox and those two forces cancel each other out. If you have to, if you're carrying around too many points of paradox, you can't, you don't have the oomph to make stuff happen. Sure. To simplify in changeling, a similar dynamic exists, but it's between glamour mm-hmm and banality Okay, and I mentioned a minute ago that vampires are toxic to changelings It's because vampires exude banality

Because they're dead But they're dead they don't have a soul they don't have a spirit all right and so glamour Is the is the power of dreams it is the power of imagination? It is the power of creativity Mm-hmm banality is It is the power of imagination. It is the power of creativity banality is Boredom on we Hopelessness humdrum ho hum I could totally see that being a vampire because they're immortal

Yeah, there's that too. Like there's no lust for life. There's just hunger for life. Mmm. Yeah precisely. Yes And so as a as a changeling if your glamour gets too high You you turn on you you kind of wind up you go a little mad And you wind up not totally being able to connect to people in the real world Cuz you're sure you're living you're literally existing half in a in a realm of imagination possibility as opposed to what's really here mm-hmm and

If your banality gets too high you stop stop being a changeling. You just become an ordinary human. And so you blended for too long. Yeah, you've essentially lost your lost your sparkle. Yes. Yeah, yes. And so you, you have as a changeling, you have two souls in your body, you have as a changeling, you have two souls in your body. You have your mortal human soul and you have your fe or your changeling spirit that is riding shotgun. Like you, you still have the same basic personality. You still have the same basic values when you are kind of shifting between these two worlds. And as a changeling, you are always able to perceive the dreaming, which is think of the Fisher King and the reality that Robin Williams' character saw all the time.

That heightened magical realism kind of level of reality. That's a good visual metaphor for the dreaming. And so you exist simultaneously in both of these worlds, and you can kind of shift between the two of them. And when you're in a place that's full of other changelings, you're all interacting with each other as changelings. And it's you're essentially're existing in the real world while you are able to perceive all of the fantastical, magical, otherworldly shit that's kind of going on that ordinary people, you and me and every other mortal, we are weighed down by our banality and so

we don't see it. Okay, Sure. And so, um, doing just in the same way that a vampire has to spend blood points in order to do vampire stuff as a changeling in order to, uh, utilize your, your magical abilities, you have to utilize a glamour. You have to spend glamour, which means you have to figure out how to get more glamour and you have two ways of doing it. And the way that you are better at accomplishing it is determined by whether you are seely

or unseely. Oh, which are of course taken from Irish mythology. Sure. And for those who are unfamiliar with the term in Irish folklore, which is what the the original root book of changeling was built primarily around very heavily in You know northern European Celtic kind of fairy lore the Sealy courts were the Fair Folk who were The summertime. Yeah, they're associated with summertime light Kind of like nice mischief Uh, yeah more more more benevolent mischief. Um And warmth and light right and uh midsummer or you know spring and growth and all that kind of stuff

The unsealy were the winter half of the year. And more like deception based and darkness, deception, darkness, manipulation. They were the ones that were more likely to, you know, uh, carry you away and kill you. Right. You know, a fay that we're going to eat children were going to be unsealy. And so the way this works in the game is if you are seely, you get glamour by fostering it in humans. You help people frolic. You look out at a rainy day and go, you know what?

I think we ought to just go dance in the rain. Right. And you know, convincing your friends to go out and go do something silly. Right. Like that is you're going to get, you're going to get a point of glamour for doing that. Having a friend who is an artist or a writer and, and you know, encouraging them and, you know, encouraging them and, you know, getting them to daydream about what they're going to do and, and, you know, think about

all of these things. You are fostering their, their dreaming. And by doing that, you gain glamor. These, these kinds of things are, are as a Sealy changeling, that's how you're going to get glamour. As an unseely Faye, you're going to get it by reading it from people. And that means you're going to be just sucking it out of them. You, you are going to be the, um, dark mirror of the manic pixie girlfriend boyfriend, you know, who completely destroyed their life. Right?

Right. You know, you, you, you so chaos, you don't so creativity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you, you so desperation not not Bomb ass death city. Yeah. Yeah, you you are a psychic vampire. Mm-hmm, you know And so, you know most player characters are going to be Sealy

right, um, and your conflict in Changeling are going to be, uh, intra-fe, you know, uh, court kind of politics. They're going to be, there's also a kind of a class conflict element between what are, what are kind of considered commoner fe and, and kind of more noble groups of fey. So the Scytha, for example, you know, the tall, fair folk are the nobles of changeling society. And knockers and fauns and other groups are the commoners. Right.

There's an interesting conception of trolls in Changeling. Trolls aren't, at least sealy trolls, aren't lurkers under bridges and snatchers of travelers. They are the warriors and bodyguers of snatchers of travelers. They are, they are the warriors and bodyguards of the Scytha. Okay. And so they're, they, they envision themselves as, you know, they're, they're still very big. They're still very, you know, physically powerful, but they're, they're a night and, and bodyguards and that kind of stuff. And so it's very whimsical and it's very campy in a lot of ways and it really rewards gameplay really rewards imagination and a certain dose of silliness and this kind of stuff.

And changeling is where the world of darkness creates its own counterpoint. You're not, you're not fighting against the oppression of the technocracy by, you know, going out and, and, you know, having a philosophical fight. You're not going out and committing acts of eco terrorism to stop Pentax. You are helping individual people reconnect with their imagination and their wonderment at the universe. So you're a therapist. people reconnect with their imagination and their wonderment at the universe. So you're a therapist. Kind of. Yeah. Kind of.

So it like to put this into D and D terms, vampire is very much about like kind of nobles fighting each other. Yeah, or yeah, and and so I mean in many ways that's you know warlocks and paladins Okay, yeah Werewolf is clearly druids Yeah, druids. Yeah, you're a rangers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I would say rogues also fit in with Vampire, okay And then you get to mage obviously

It's wizards is spell casters all the way down. Yeah, yeah You get to Wraiths and you move on and then you get to You get to changeling and it's it's bards. Oh Bards all day every day. Yeah, a thousand percent. Yes. Yes I mean, it's kind of yeah people people talk about you know, you hear people refer to I want to play D&D with the all Bard party, right? Right. Yeah play changeling. Just I'm just gonna tell you right now. Yeah, like Scooby-Doo, you know, yeah, you can Changeling just I'm just gonna tell you right now. Yeah, like Scooby-Doo, you know, yeah, you could yeah You can you can you could certainly put together a D&D party of all bards and go, you know run through the Forgotten Realms I I personally would have a lot more fun as a storyteller

Running a game of changeling with those same people and be like, no, no, it's still an all bard party, but here's the way that's going to be expressed. Right. You know, and and you're all going to be seeing who can out flounce each other. Right. And and it's it's there. There is this heightened, heightened pitch to to the way Changeling kind of kind of operates on an emotional level, which makes sense based on the material. And what's really remarkable is if you look at the books themselves, Changeling is a huge departure From the earlier games in that it is bright yes, and and there are like cobalt blues and golden yellows and bright crimson reds You know and and you know, there are these incredibly vibrant bright colors that, you know, um, make it really distinct from the,

you know, uh, everything is a dark shades of crushed velvet, you know from vampire Or the you know, everything is is mud sticks and blood of werewolf Half-torn clothes. Yeah half-torn clothing, you know flannel flannel for miles and in in mage It's a long robes. Well looks yeah, you know dark academia meets cyberpunk meets you know

Just you know it's it's all The palette is very is is muted and the color value is is dark Yes, you know and now then you pick up the changeling book and oh, yeah Yes, you know and now then you pick up the changeling book and oh, yeah No, we just upped the brightness to 85 right the vibrancy is yeah really high. Yeah Yeah, and the color saturation is like we broke the dial You know and so

The the kind of So the kind of reference material that you look at for Changeling is Shakespeare's comedies, you know, much ado about nothing, you know, or trying to think of another one off the top of my head, but if you want to have a serious changeling game you look at Romeo and Juliet sure, you know if you want to have a serious Wraith game You you look at Well, you can't have a Wraith game that isn't serious No Well, you can't have a Wraithkin that isn't serious. No.

So, you know, but the in Changeling is high art. And if you don't play it that way, you, you, you pay for it. Like it, it encourages you to be, you know, over the top. Right. And you know, uh, and the very nature of the universe that you're inhabiting is over the top. So yeah. Um, is over the top. So yeah.

And, and I really loved the book for Changeling. Absolutely. The trouble was I was never able to find a group to play it with. Sure. Mostly because of when it came out. And, you know, my, my, my college friends were more interested in major werewolf and trying to articulate to them like now, I'm pretty sure if I could find my changeling rule book, I can think of two or three of my friends right off the top of my head that if I handed them book they'd be like so okay when are we when are we doing this right you know now because they've they've gotten to a different

headspace you know yeah and I'm probably in a head space where playing it with me would be a lot more entertaining cause I'm a lot less full of myself than I was, uh, when the game first came out. Um, so, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's an in, well, not an inversion yet. We're not there yet but it it is a Kind of a funhouse mirror Held up to the world of darkness and it's like yes, there are werewolves and yes

the world is in it is in terrible shape, but Humans are the key to getting us out of it Because humans still have the capacity to dream which is kind of a carryover from the way the traditions in mage view humanity they go humanity has all this potential like if we can unlock humanity's potential we can you know we we can fix all this shit, right? But it's it's a it's a more clinical Kind of kind of view

It's it's it's not centered on wonderment and joy in the same way And it's it's not centered on imagination in the same way, okay With with changeling it is no no That's the whole point act. Yeah the fact that we can Encourage humans to think of You know pink tigers with rainbow wings is Is the key to fixing everything yeah, we've already won. Yeah. Yeah It is the first game that has genuine optimism

In its DNA, right And so like I said, it's it's and So like I said, it's it's hope punk. Well, the world of darkness I've noticed in in mage. What are the two things you have to balance? Crime uh-huh and paradox, okay and The vampire it's your blood and Well, you have to you have to watch your humanity. That's what it is. And regaining and keeping your blood

pool. Right. Threatens your humanity. Yeah. And when you're playing werewolf, there's a similar balancing act. Yes. You have your rage stat, which is your I'm going to go berserk now and fuck people up. Right. You have your rage stat, which is your I'm gonna go berserk now and fuck people up right you have your gnosis Right stat, which is your connection to the umbra in the spirit world

So in all of these yeah, it could go disastrously wrong and You would lose all that makes your character special and cool. But at the same time, you have to keep that shit tempered. Yeah. In Changeling, the worst that happens is you become one of the humans that the Changelings love. Mm-hmm. Like it's an inherent optimism there.

Like you're either like fabulous and then some or Or you're like, oh, oh well, I guess you know effective character death is I'm one of the ones that changelings love Yeah, you know, that's that's yeah, there's so much more optimism there. Where's the other ones? Like if you lose the thing that makes you special you are there you are now every other character's food You know, yeah, whereas with this it's it's different or you lose your your wizardness But this is like you again you become the thing that changelings revere Yeah. Yeah, so that makes sense that it's you know much more in the DNA Yeah, yeah, and so

That's 94 mm-hmm Or sorry, that's 95 rather and then there is mummy that comes out and Let me guess you're between resin and gauze Yeah, I'm not I'm not gonna go into Really any detail on mummy. That's the one where like you have to defeat the others in a rap battle There you go, yeah, yeah, that would be good nice But there there were a couple of other kind of niche games that came out

Mummy Promethean In Promethean you are some variation on Frankenstein's monster. Oh, okay You're a stitch together golem of some. Yeah. Yeah, and that that got into Oh, very very big questions of you know, what what makes you human? What is your you know, what? You know, you are a human version of thesis is ship. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then, and then in 99, um, the, the last game to be released in the original world of darkness is hunter, the reckoning. Okay. And it was released in 1999 as a year long event that white wolf referred to as the year of reckoning Okay

and so in in hunter You are a human who Has been given by forces that nobody understands. You don't know where this comes from. And different hunters have different theories that range from the very basically religious to the absolute wackadoodle conspiracy theory side of things.

But wherever it comes from, you have been imbued. And that is that is the term hunters used to refer to themselves the same way that vampires call themselves, you know kindred and Werewolves call themselves Garu hunters call themselves the imbued Mm-hmm, and you have been given some kind of fragment of Some kind of Call it divine power. Okay.

And that has woken you up to the reality of the supernatural and your character's initial adventure in Hunter is the story characters initial adventure in Hunter is the story of when you witnessed a werewolf attack and realized no shit those are werewolves. And or one of the examples in the rule book that a woman or it was either in the rule book or in one of the supplement in the rule book that a woman or it was either in the rule book or in one of the supplement books for it A woman riding the subway very late at night At first thought she she was witnessing a young woman

Being bothered by her boyfriend. Mm-hmm, and then she looked up and me and then she looked up and Alien looking letters just suddenly appeared on a billboard or not. It was one of the advertisements in the subway car that said something like They consume you And she blinked and looked down and then realized the young woman she she was seeing was not being Bothered by her boyfriend. seeing was not being bothered by her boyfriend. She was being fed on by a vampire.

Oh. And the girl, by the time she made this realization, the girl was already dead, but the vampire looked at her and she made eye contact with the vampire knew it was a vampire and the vampire was able to tell that she was no longer a normal human. And she reached into her purse to grab something and, you know, pulled out a, you know, knife that she carried, you know, because she was paranoid to begin with. It's kind of what you figure out as time goes on. But she grabbed the knife that she carried out of her purse and her power as one of the imbued manifested itself and she was able to use an ordinary knife to kill a

vampire. Okay. And so as a hunter, as one of the imbued, you have some special trick that, and as you, as you learn more about your, your own powers and as you hunt more supernatural stuff, your, your abilities evolve and what your abilities are depend on kind of what your personality, what your Jungian archetype was before you were imbued. So you could be somebody who you can grab a Swiss army knife and in your hands you can turn a Swiss army knife into a blazing hot in in your eyes It looks like it's a flaming blade right that can hurt

werewolves and vampires and whoever all ghosts and whatever you may instead have the ability to You know when you perceive someone or something is supernatural you can touch them and walk away and They leave a smoke trail behind that only you can see sure Another one of the abilities is if you are a martyr You are able to take on

the wounds of others Okay, so when one of the other when one of the other members of your group gets gets hurt You can touch them and you can take on that hurt sure So, you know if you had a hurt sure so you know if you had a self-sacrificing flagellating personality before becoming a hunter congratulations yeah it's a physical

thing right right and as time goes on these these abilities develop and you know become more more complex and so like as a martyr later on if I'm remembering correctly you have the ability to like you can touch one of your one of your Comrades take two or three health levels of their damage And then the following turn you have the option to if you can run up and and grab somebody You can then transfer that to them

you know that kind of thing and So there's a really heavy they live vibe Involved because yeah, additionally You are able to read this alphabet that nobody knows where this alphabet came from hunters Like several of the source books are formatted in a way. That's so nineties, it hurts where like the info dump that they're giving you as the player is from hunters on message boards. Oh, like talking to each other. Right. Right. And arguing with each other. And, you know, like, you

know, I saw, I saw these, these, uh, all of a sudden I saw these symbols, you know, written on the wall, you know, and like, I know this is what they mean. Do they mean the same thing to you guys? And well, yeah, that's, you know, or, you know or or it was you know what tell me what is what does this symbol mean right and then for people argue about it yeah well no everybody agrees everybody agrees oh yeah no they all what are they arguing over well they're arguing over other stuff like like the only good is a dead that yeah, yeah You know we need to like one one the same woman that you know Woke up witnessing the vampire attack on the subway Makes the case that what we need to do we have these abilities what we need to do

You know in order to pursue a war against the monsters What we need to do is we need to hire ourselves out to the underworld. I understand the real enemy is the vampires, the real enemy is the skin walkers and whatever, but we need money to fund this. And the way to make that money is gonna be you know We're gonna have we're gonna have to break some eggs and make this omelet right? And you know others you know arguing against that is you know no we've been given these powers to defend humanity

That's a betrayal of what we're supposed to be doing. You know those kind of arguments Arguments about where do these powers come from? Sure, okay, but not arguments over the hobo code. No the hobo code everybody agrees on the hobo code Yeah, which which is part of the mystery of the game and Now what's interesting is so this is 99 Hunter the reckoning and in

2000 shortly after under the reckoning and in 2000, shortly after Hunter, the reckoning, um, white wolf came out with their own, Oh, how did this, what genre would I use to describe it? Their own kind of sword and sorcery role-playing game, okay called exalted And that one yeah exalted was Based on the idea part of part of the core concept of exalted was this is the Legendary prehistory of the world Like in the very first pages of the first rulebook for it

said you have been told that you know the world is this many million years old and you've been told that all of these things happen through these scientific processes and all this kind of stuff and gray-faced old men have been telling you these lies all your life because before this world there was a world of magic and high adventure and you know and there were people within this world who were granted power by the unconquered son and his wife the moon and they were exalted. Okay. And so in the exalted role playing game, um, you are one of the exalted of the sun. The sun has given you some fragment of his divine power.

All right. And so as a solar exalted, depending on what angle your gifts take, you know, whether you are a Dawn cast or a Twilight cast or whatever, you know, you are a warrior or a prophet or a, you know, legendary thief or a learned one magus kind of thing. Sure. And so you have these in Cree, you can pick from a laundry list of possible, you know, supernatural tricks that are all tied to your skills. So you may have the ability to, you know, awaken your divine spark and

Encourage soldiers in a way that untrained untrained soldiers can become an army of you know shock troops in a month and You have you know, if you're a Dawn cast you're you're one of the warriors and your you you can cut through a company of enemies in a few blows, you know, kind of massive, the theme of being given this power in order to, in, in exalted, the enemies that you were created essentially to fight are, um, the,

the semi coherent spirits that come out of essentially fairy who come out of the edges of reality so we all agree in the center of reality right here we all agree on how things work the farther you get away from civilization the more mutable that gets the less agreement there is the less agreement there is So like it is it is essentially exalted becomes the prehistory of the world of darkness Okay and In in that process you you Could come to the conclusion which I did and I think, I think this was the intent, is hunters are the exalted being reawakened now that, you know, the world is careening toward its end and the unconquered son and the other gods have reached down and they have exalted mortals again sure yeah and so over the course of between 1999 and 2003,

everything that was coming out for the world of darkness was pointing in this direction of the final nights, the Ragnarok, the Ascension War. And the game went through a couple of, all of the games went through a couple of all of the games went through a couple of editions the mage game in in the penultimate edition of mage all of the masters in the world disappeared we don't know where they went anybody who was of a certain magical power level or above has just gone away. And so now all of the most powerful wizards in the world are, you know, still students. They're not, they're not, there are no more powerful masters anymore. What are we

going to do? How are we going to, how are we going to make this happen? You know, in werewolf, you know, we're careening closer and closer to the Ragnarok and The situation is becoming more dire more and more Cairns are being overrun and destroyed You know and and it's all of this all of this development leading to you know, the end of the world is nigh and then in 2004 White wolf And in 2004, White Wolf had a series of events where it was like, okay, so here's how you can bring all of these Chronicles to an end, close out, figure out how your end of the

world goes, what happens. And then they released Chronicles of Darkness, or Chronicle of darkness, which was, as I mentioned already a little bit earlier in passing, was a re conceptualization of the world of darkness. And they re released most of the gamesquerade became Vampire the Requiem. And the roles of the different Vampire clans shifted and changed and the backstory of where the first vampires came from shifted and got changed. A werewolf became werewolf of the forsaken. So things are winding down.

Yeah, there's, there's, there's, there's much more of a kind of fin to sickle feeling from the beginning with this new, new setting. Mage went from the ascension to the awakening. Okay. And the whole entire backstory of where mage's come from and how they interacted with human society and all of that changed. Um, it, they, they wound up also completely redoing, uh, entropy, uh, as as a as a sphere

And change some stuff they introduced a new sphere of fate So all the stuff that used to do with entropy of like oh, yeah, no coincidentally the lock was just open That's not entropy anymore entropy is now decay And what you're talking about coincidence and all that stuff that's now fate that's it's okay thing and then hunter I I personally feel that the change that happened in hunter what was the best one because hunter the reckoning became hunter the vigil and all of that supernatural who do went away in hunter the vigil you are an ordinary person you don't have any supernatural abilities the one thing you do have is you are

actually for whatever reason you are actually aware that no no, the supernatural exists vampires are out there and Because of your knowledge because of your You know whatever your exposure to it has been for whatever reason You are not subject Your one gift is that you're not subject to the veil. You know, you, you see, you can see things for what they really are. And it is a much more grounded, um, less consciously edgy game of, uh, uh, hunting the hunters.

And for me, the experience of playing it is a lot more relatable, a lot more fun. Because you are human. Whatever it is that you know how to do you know how to do it and you know There is more More emphasis on your Holding on to your moral center as you are fighting against The the shadowy and the monstrous and the and the whatever And

Playing that game is a lot feels a lot more Relatable for lack of a better word. And the stakes feel higher because you don't have any easy buttons. You don't have any tricks. And so it also introduces more of a more understandable, more realistic kind of culture surrounding who hunters are. Because the high concept kind of idea of hunter the reckoning had all of this, you know, attachment to it of, well, this is this is this new phenomenon and we don't know where it's coming from. There's all this mystery stuff and all this room for, you know, conspiracy theory kind of ideas and you know, is it aliens? Is it, you know, what is what's going on?

And that was that was cool and kind of entertaining. But I found it a lot more. I personally found it a lot more fun to have it be like, well, OK, after you've been doing this for your first couple of adventures, you and you and, you know, the other folks you're you're doing this with maybe get contacted, you know, in the course of law enforcement investigating, you know, the string of murders that you just solved You know one of the law enforcement agents, you know hands you a card and says the next time you see something like this Give me a call and

You know the card has no FBI markings on it because the card isn't for his FBI phone Right as you know, you're, you're now, you've now been introduced to a larger world, you know, and there is, there is an established culture. There are, there are groups that work together and have their disagreements and have their rivalries. And, you know, maybe you encounter them, maybe you join them, maybe you're like, no, we got our thing going. You know, it, it felt like a more built world.

Okay. And you know, like, like you were saying a couple of episodes ago, um, you know, the, the idea of, you know, being an ordinary person or the kind of, you know, democratic feeling of, you know, being a person in this setting and having adventures as a person is more of what you can do in hunter the vigil Over over the reckoning, you know because the reckoning again depends on this whole high concept idea Okay, but like even even with that you are still You have a sixth sense that

Kind of lets you know that people are gonna sneeze that's about it Like it's still pretty yeah, you know pretty mundane. Yeah. Yeah, but but this one's even less so like Yeah, yeah, this one this one is is more more grounded and overall in the newer world of darkness and in the chronic of darkness, they introduced, um, a new, a new kind of, uh, a new system for everybody. That was, that was one of the things that linked all of the games was you, you had a, a morality stat kind of similar to humanity in the original vampire.

And, you know, your, um, your, your capacity to relate to other people, your capacity, you know, it essentially worked very much in, in a way similar to humanity, no matter who you were, much in a way that played to your... You picked a character flaw and a character virtue, and you could pick a way of doing something that would appeal to your character flaw. And if you did something that way, you could regain a point of willpower really easily. Right. But indulging in your character flaws

had the potential to lead to you becoming a worse person. Right. Yeah. Like, there's you. Oh. Sorry. Like, there's... Whereas if you... Oh, sorry, I thought the audio cut out. There's a similar mechanic to that in the Avatar, the last Airbender role-playing game. Okay. Each character has essentially a thing they need to keep in harmony right but if you want to get boons then you'll drive yourself a little bit out of harmony and further

and further down that road and then but then if you go too far you you essentially because it's based on the cartoon you essentially get exhausted and you're you're unable to do any more bending. You're spent. You are, you know. So character death is very difficult and you kind of have to all agree upon like, yes, I want my character to die because people didn't die in that series, you know. But there's still like this balance that you have to keep.

And at the same time, by wobbling out of balance, that's where the role playing happens. And that's where cool shit gets rewarded. And then you got to work your way back eventually and stuff. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In kind of a similar way. And, and, you know, for each of the different games,

you know, you have guidelines on, you know, at morality, morality 10, you are a saint morality zero. You are irredeemable, right and so you know in werewolf a lot of morality stuff wound up having to do with Abusing spirits or being you know betraying, know, betraying the values of your tribe kind of stuff. Um, in vampire, you know, um, it would, it would, uh, you know, be how, how far do you drain somebody when you feed, right? Feeding on a human was something that would be risky if your morality was above about a six, you know,

you know, and then in Hunter, it was no, the guidelines that we give you in the basic world of darkness rule book about mortals. Yeah, that's, it's the same thing. Right. You know, in, in mage morality turned into something that was about hubris Makes sense to you know If you use magic for a trivial reason, right? That's a morality test If you use magic to harm someone that's a morality test And so you could use, uh, willpower to, uh, well now I'm trying to remember

how the mechanic worked, but essentially you could, you could kind of power your way through a certain number of morality tests, but after a certain point you would become emotionally exhausted and you wouldn't be able to do that anymore. And the way to regain your, your resources would be to act based on your virtue as opposed to your character flaw. Right. You know. Um, and so it, it was very useful in that generation of, of world of darkness games.

It was very useful that, you know, everybody, everybody had that going on and, and you know, so there was, there was kind of a common language sure that had been that had not been there in the same way with with the first first iteration of the world of darkness and so we can kind of see the the understanding of the writers of kind of, you know, where their audience was. We can see the differences in inflection between the two settings kind of happening

as we're moving from the 90s into the 2000s. from the nineties into the two thousands. And since then, uh, white Wolf wound up kind of falling into company kind of went up falling apart. Um, onyx path, which is a company founded by a bunch of people who were originally from White Wolf. Onyx Path got a hold of the intellectual property for all the stuff for the world of darkness, and they have now been releasing a reimagining of the original world of darkness. And so the Chronicle of Darkness stuff has now gone by the wayside.

And they have updated kind of the mechanics they've they've made things a bit more modern in terms of you know still uses something still uses storyteller system it still detends but you know the nuances of kind of how it all works have changed and many of the mechanics have altered. So like the way blood points worked in the original game has been scrapped. And now it's more... what's the word I'm looking for? It's it's less You know one for one. I am tracking these points that go away and whatever and it's it's a bit more Organic and a bit more role-playing

Focused yeah, it sounds more holistic and less parsimonious Yeah, yeah, I like that. Yeah, It's less that you're trying to game the system or you're trying to systemize the game and more as a collaborative storytelling. Yeah. And, you know, so they have now they have come out with the re-release of they have come out with the re-release of Vampire. They've come out with a re-release of Werewolf. Mage is on its way, but they haven't, they haven't, it's not on shelves yet. Um, and one of the things that White Wolf became well known for

over the course of the development of the world of darkness was, um, being very, uh, over the course of the development of the world of darkness was being very, current for lack of a better word, but being very referential to things in the real world. And in some ways this was awesome. In some ways this turned into a problem because you know every major faction in the world had Somebody were multiple somebody's in it who were secretly Magi or werewolves or vampires or whatever?

And and kind of you know the the capacity of ordinary humans to fuck the world up Kind of got overlooked in in a lot of ways And so that was that was kind of a problem and They worked very hard to try to be representative But It was still a bunch of game writers in in mid-90s that were doing this stuff. And so we see a whole lot of tropes showing up in the representation that they did.

You know, examples of, you know, in Vampire vampire the stereotype of members of a certain clan of vampires the bruja you know having latino and and black characters who were from criminal backgrounds right um you know and and not not having that be portrayed in a But not having that be portrayed in a, not in a caricature of those racial groups kind of way, but like, you know, still this is a negative set of stereotypes being used. You know, the goal is to try to, is to try to have more representation, but you're fucking it up kind of, if that makes sense. And then in Changeling, they introduced, you know, very folk from different cultural traditions you had, you know, like Asian and, and Native American stories being represented in,

in the kinds of Faye that you could play as time went on. Um, and then, uh, you know, mage we kind of already talked about it. A couple of the, couple of the, of the traditions were, well, yeah, we're wizards, but we are Asian. We're wizards, but we are, you know, Egyptian, African, whatever. Right. And you know, okay, great, but we're still using tropes for this that are not great. Um, and so that problem kind of reared its head again

There was a lot of controversy when the new vampire game came out The people who were contracted to write it wound up including references to things happening in Chechnya and other other parts of Europe particularly mm-hmm that in Chechnya and other parts of Europe particularly, that were seen to trivialize the real world suffering of marginalized groups. And it kind of came out that the people, they hadn't really vetted the people that they hired to do the writing and the the edginess of what White Wolf was known for doing tipped over into this is kind of and well it was the one example I'm thinking of was talking about the the disappearing and murder of

LGBTQ people in Chechnya and it being you know it you know well this is this is a vampire thing this is something that the simi she clan or whoever it was is behind and whatever whatever it's like yeah this sucks I mean you kind of see the same thing in in cyberpunk games where the Yakuza are one of the main antagonists like you know or I Mean it feels like a step above but still a bear barely a step above. I don't know I don't know if I can distinguish but From Oriental Adventures. Yeah, it's a shuffle. Yeah, you know, it's I

Mean, yeah. Yes, it's better. No, it's not better. No, it's not Yeah, you know in the in the original werewolf Universe, you know in the original world of darkness in werewolf You know, one of the things that came up was that there were members of the get of Fenri tribe who were Nazis like you know within we didn't we're kinful one of the things they had was you know they got they got they got a white supremacist problem in this tribe right and like why do you have to and why do you have to mention why why does that have to be there? Well, what what year was that again? Do we do it? Do we?

90 werewolf was 92 yeah, I mean Nazis were not considered a serious threat at the time even even though you have things like Ruby Ridge and things like you know, they're so fringe that it's easy to make fun of them, you know, it would be like Like well, we were we were looking at um, Brave New World a while back, right? Yeah, and he included the Unabomber Like it's it's you know, you're grabbing fringy stuff because it's not a real existential threat Whereas reading it now, it's like, mm. You know, like the game Scion uses the same system. They had a World War II part of it,

because yeah, because you could moderate, or whatever her name was, the spirit of Russia, and stuff like that. And it had a section of like, you know, it was World War II, the Japanese pantheons really happy with what's going on for a long time of it. And then the Norse pantheons also super stoked. And like there's an explanation of like, you have to understand that, you know, their morality is different than ours.

And while we acknowledge that the Nazis are terrible to them. It was just conquering and it's like Yeah, still shitty same group same same same group people, you know writing things and with the same kind of voice so I'm not surprised. Yeah And so there was there was a big big Shake up big controversy over it The people there was a big announcement the people responsible for this have been sacked You know which okay good And so like in the new

edition of werewolf The get of Fen read do not exist as a tribe they're not they're not part of the lore anymore they've been eliminated just because you know the writers now looked at it and went do we really need to have this here right like I mean I get what the idea behind it was before but is there another way we could like touch on this theme without it being awful? Maybe. Right.

So, you know, and so the evolution of the universe is moving with our understanding of things, you know, as our own universe in the world we're living in, you know, moving along. So it's an ongoing process, as it should be. Yeah. And, you know, I think I think in the long run, what what the world of darkness is probably going to eventually be probably going to eventually be most remembered for is the way that it approached more mature ideas, whether it's about, you know, morality, whether it's about humanity, whether it's about, you know, philosophy and paradigm and faith or, you know, defiance or hope or whatever, you know, the, the level of thought and the level of emotional investment, was a big step forward.

I won't necessarily say up, from where the game landscape had been prior to these games. And now a lot of the things that we thought were revolutionary when the World of Darkness brought them into the mainstream, brought them up, They are now kind of taken for granted in more modern, more recent kinds of games. And we're seeing Dungeons & Dragons itself evolving kind of in response to this. You know, the level of representation involved, the level of collaboration that is called for. When you look at the newest Dungeon Master's Guide, it is much more collaborative

than competitive. The original first edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide is written in a very clinical kind of way and is these what the rules are and you as the Dungeon Master need to be, you know, enforcing these rules and making your keeping your players on their toes and doing this and that. The other thing and it's not explicitly combative, but it's a far cry from explicitly collaborative. And now it is straight up, no, you're all telling a story and your job as the DM is

to play this role as the narrator and the plotter and all of that. And I would point to the generation of games that the world of darkness represents as a big reason for that shift in the mother of all role-playing games And And that's that's what I've got. So that's a hell of a lot. Yeah, so Wow, um, well, let's see. What have I gleaned out of these last eight episodes? Um, Well, it's I didn't think this would go this long

Yeah, eight. Yeah, what if what have I done? Well, what you've done is you need to fucking finish your master's degree so you can run some of these games Like this plus like, you know The various ones notwithstanding within this The last game system you talked about scene yeah riffs Also like there's some like okay you got me interested Throw me in a one-off, you know?

So yeah, get your masters done. I'm working on it. Yeah, just from a selfish level. I'm fine with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do like that they treated it like an approach that was a multifaceted approach and interestingly enough that fed into other games that were developed. Again we interviewed Matt

Forbeck and he kind of did the same thing. The world evolves through your source books. Yeah. And you know there's there's kind of a beginning and an end point to the story and with with this one, there was not only like multi-facets, but then multi-editions that move the story along. Yeah, some of them tickled my fancy, some of them didn't, as one would expect, like as it should be. I do like the courage that they had in trying different shit. And at the core, they still had kind of a similar, if you've played one, you can get along in the others. Now we've just added this twist. Yeah. You know, like you got to keep that balance line in balance. If you do too much one way, effective character death and too much the other

way, effective character death. And then it's like what kind of Role-playing game. Do you want to play that will help dictate? The genre they're going with and and I think that's a very clever approach It's proof that there used to be a world in which D&D didn't have The absolute lion tiger and bear share all at once where you could you know find people who would be willing to play other systems yeah so that's that seems to have ceased to be by and large yeah I and that's fine because things evolve and I'm okay with that but I do like that there was a explosion in the market in the 90s of like, try this type thing.

Oh, you like this genre? Well, here's a system, it's not very good, but it's a system and it's that world. And then, oh, you don't like that? And then here's White Wolf comes along with like, or World of Darkness rather, comes along with a Thousand different versions, you know

So no, it's cool. They tried. Yeah, so Well, what do you want people to read? what I'm going to recommend is Go out and look for swords and devil tree by Fritz lieber it's the first first published collection of stories collection of stories of Fafard and the grey mouser and the city of Lankmar and it is sword and sorcery The two main characters are a hoot It is a product of its time. I mentioned this when I was when I was talking about wizards and I talked about the two wizard kind of Sponsors of the two title characters. It is a product of its time. Keep that in mind as you read

But it is an awful lot of fun and so yeah, I'm recommending that partly because I'm thinking I want to talk about Sword and sorcery as a genre Coming up cool. Not just the masculinity in it, but not just the masculine in it. Although that's certainly an aspect Okay, but yeah, how about you? Um, oh god. It just left my head It was a movie. I wanted to recommend this time. Um, I Think oh Christ now I remember okay. Um

Not a comedy or anything, but I think it would be fun for people to go back and watch The Thing. It is a very interesting horror film. Watch the Kurt Russell one, although I'm curious about the newest iteration of it, and I've seen the oldest iteration of it, which I liked. But the Kurt Russell one, really, really good. A lot of body horror involved Wilford Brimley is Masterful and how much he does not give a fuck in that movie He is only there for the paycheck and he thinks the whole thing is stupid and it actually adds to the film

He didn't do it on purpose, but there you go. But but yeah, but it works in the right, right Yeah, he was much more faithful in but yeah, but it works in the right right? Yeah He was much more faithful in it to doing a good job in cocoon Then he was in the thing but yeah, but yeah, no, I recommend you watch the thing I think it's a it's a good film and it's yeah, it's got things changing shape in it. So there's that yeah Cool, where can they find us? changing shape in it. So there's that. Yeah. Cool. Where can they find us? We can be found on our website at wubba wubba wubba dot geek history time dot com. We can also be found on the Amazon podcast app, the Apple podcast app and on Spotify. And wherever you have found us, please take a moment to give us the five star review that you know we deserve and be sure to hit the subscribe button and where sir can you be found?

Let's see you will have missed the May 2nd show at the Comedy Spot at nine o'clock of Capitol Punishment but you can still see the June 6th and the July 11th show. Both very important shows for us at Capital Punishment. So please come on down to the Comedy Spot at 9pm. Get your tickets online. Go to comedy or saccomedyspot.com. Go to the calendar section and find Capital Punishment. 15 bucks gets you in the door. You also want to bring some money for some merch because we got some banger merch. And come and watch our nine year anniversary show. Nine years? Yeah, nine years. Holy cow.

So yeah. So yeah, come check us out. The whole crew will be punning, spinning that wheel, and it will be a lot of fun. All right, awesome. Well, for a Geek History of Time I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock and until next time keep rolling tens.