The Adventure Zone - Setup - The Adventure Zone: Amnesty

Episode Date: January 4, 2018

We're moving on to a new game, new genre and new world as we continue our run of experimental mini-arcs! This time around, Griffin's back in the saddle as GM as we play the Horror-Lite RPG Monster of the Week! Join us in this setup episode if you want to hear about this arc's setting, and get the 411 on our new characters. Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointaz

everybody, welcome back to... We're back in the sound game. The Adventure Zone. That was rough for me, so I can't imagine how it was for you. Justin, do you have anything you want to sort of say to... I was just kind of trying to let you do your thing. Oh, damn, dude, that's really solid of you. This is the setup episode for the new mini-arc that we're doing, the next mini-arc, that I'm

going to be running that I'm very excited about, and I'm just so stoked to get started because we're playing a game called Monster of the Week, which was, I guess we should talk about what we're doing in this episode. We're really just going to be talking a little bit about the game, what sort of the inspirations for the setting, and these few episodes that I have prepared are. You guys are going to talk about your characters, and that's pretty much going to be it.

But you all have read the full manual, the full revised edition manual of Monster of the Week by Michael Sands, Right? You all did your homework? Yes. Okay, good. I actually made myself a 10-page, shortened down version of everything I needed to know. A quick reference guide.

There actually is a reference guide. There's a printable reference guide. But that's very cool. No, it's good that you did the, you know, you showed your work. Don't patronize me. In fact, wait, I left my printable reference guide on the printer. So you guys just talk amongst yourselves.

Okay. Well, we're not actually going to be playing any of this episode. That will be for next week's episode. because by the way, we are going weekly for the rest of the experimental arc starting this week. So I guess actually we have an episode. Hope we don't screw it up. Yeah, no, me too. I don't know why you would even say that.

So let's get started. Monster of the Week is a game sort of modeled after appropriately enough. Like Monster of the Week shows like Buffy and Supernatural in which in each sort of arc there is a monster. that a team of hunters has to hunt down. It is a game that is part of the powered by the Apocalypse system, which if you listen to the balance arc is sort of what I based the stolen century episodes on. It is a very, it's sort of like the D20 system, right, that covers a lot of different games like D&D and Pathfinder.

It is sort of just like a broad rule set that you can put a bunch of different stuff on top of to make it fit whatever genre you want it to fit. And there's a ton of very cool games that use the powered by the apocalypse system. I was inspired to do an apocalypse game because of one of my favorite podcasts, Friends at the Table, which has done a bunch of really cool ones in sci-fi worlds and fantasy worlds and all kinds of stuff. But Monster of the Week is sort of this Monster of the Week sort of horror, but like campy horror thing that's going on here. And the basic rule that covers pretty much everything in Monster of the Week and all the Apocalypse games is that whenever something comes up that is not like an automatic thing,

like it's something that is dangerous or a conflict or something that would be covered by like a D&D move. Like, oh, you have to roll a perception check if you want to actually notice that thing. All that stuff is in here, but instead of rolling a 20-sided dice, you roll two, six-sided dice, and then one of three things happens. Either you roll a six or below, and you have fucked up. You have fucked up now, and something goes horribly wrong, sort of at my discretion. I'll be GMing this game. They actually call the GM in this game the Keeper, which is like so great to me that the fiction of the game extends into like out,

out of the game, like Stranger Think Style. So six or below is a miss. A seven and nine is a mixed success where you get to do the thing you want to do, but usually there is a cost. And then a 10 plus is you crush it and you get to do what you want to do. And usually it's just all great. One cool thing to note about getting a bad role is if you get one of those six or below, you get an experience point.

That's true. That's neat. We learn from our failures. Thank you, Travis. Beautiful. This is a game of small numbers for the most part, which is it's something that I think is going to be really, really great for us because we would get lost in the weeds with a lot of the math of D&D. Things like, you know, adding up, you know, 6D10 for 10D6 for a big fireball or something like that. That's not really true here. The margins are much smaller. If like if you land an attack, you know how much damage it does and it's usually like two or three. And that's a bad. I do like that the bonus is like the things that you add to rolls, I think the highest it goes is plus three and the lowest it is negative two. Everybody, to really make this concrete, everybody has seven hit points. End of story.

Everybody has seven hit points. If you lose them all, you die. Like it is a game that I think is going to be a lot more. But not really. I mean, you don't really die, right? Not IRL. Yeah. This isn't like mazes and monsters or whatever the shit.

No, you'll be fine. Yeah, we're not sort. It's called Sorod-U-Malogy. Yeah. I'm glad that we managed to pull three different, if you die in the game, you die in real-life things out there. So it's a rich tapestry. But, yeah, the margins are a lot smaller, which I think is going to be, like, a lot more

digestible, but also makes things like a lot more meaningful. If you get hit by a monster for, you know, three harm, big monster gets its claws in you for three harm, that's almost half your health. You cannot take a lot more than that, or else. things start to get very, very bad. It also, if I read it correctly, does away with a concept of defense. If you are in, if you engage in a fight, you and it goes, even if it goes well, you and the monster are both going to do harm to each other.

So let's get, let's get into that. This game has a, it handles most of its action through what it calls moves. And these, this is, uh, these are eight basic moves that cover more or less every action that a player could take in the game, right? And this is a very conversational game. We are going to talk about the things that happen. And it is only when you all are describing the hunter's actions, when it becomes apparent that what you are describing is covered by one of these moves.

That's when we get into one of those moves. If at any point during this, you say, I want to kick some ass, which is the name of one of the moves, you've fucked up because you should be saying, like, I take my gun and, you know, I'm doing this. or I get my big sword and I want to ram it through. And then it is my job to say, okay, that's a kick some ass roll. And then we do that. That's one of the things they're really like.

So, for example, one of the moves is help out. Yeah. And you can't just say, like, I want to help out. You have to be able to say, like, this is the action I want to take. This is what I have in mind. And it is governed by, like, logic. You know what I mean? So I can't be like, I want to help out by.

pulling the sun down. If you try to play this like a game that you're trying to win constantly, I do not think it's going to work. If Justin rolls a six and neither of you are like anywhere close to him, but you really want to get him up to that seven, and so you're like,

oh, can I think of some way to bullshit this so that it can help out? Like, no. There are going to be lots of failures in this game and lots of mixed successes in this game. And that's what makes this stuff, like, so, so interesting. And it's what gives this game kind of a sense of danger. I don't think that we're going to get to this point in this mini-arc, but one of the things that I think is cool about this game is players, like, because of how, uh, like, narrow the

margin of error is in fights, for instance, uh, like, death is, like, pretty common. Like, uh, not, not as much as some of the, like, Lovecraftian RPGs where it's like, oh, no, and then you were, you evaporated again. But, uh, but. It is common, and there are systems for retiring your characters and rolling new ones. And then giving that character over to the keeper to use in whatever story and whatever way they want, which I think is really cool. There's also a mechanics for reviving people. There are, yeah, which has a huge cost. If it is a direction you want to go down and you decide, like, oh, I'm not done with this character yet.

I want to keep doing stuff with them. you can do what's called Big Magic, which has like, as is always sort of the folk tale, like a horrible cost most of the time. There's a lot of that flavor. I do love to that there's a, once you get enough experience levels, you can opt to create a second character and play both of them at the same time. Yeah, that would be a little. It's a little much.

Can I read through the actions real quick? Ditto just to give people an idea. Yeah, real, real quick, and we'll give like quick summaries, because this is, it's going to be a lot real fast, but then like take, take, take, you know, He, like, it's literally all it is for the most part. Yeah. So, the first one is act under pressure. This one's great because it covers pretty much a lot of stuff.

I, I, I, I, one thing to keep in mind is the keeper never roll, I will never roll dice in this game. I will only respond to your successes and your failures, and I can take either what are called soft moves, which is, like, establishing a danger that can, like, pose a threat to you. and set you up to sort of take a move to do something to stop that threat, or I can take hard moves, which is like, I hurt you, or I do something bad to you because you have failed somehow. Other than that, like, we don't roll in combat to, like, contest each other. You roll, and if you succeed, you succeed, and if you fail, you fail, and that's literally it.

But act under pressure is that same idea, but, like, if you're in a burning building, or you're trying to sneak through a laboratory, or you're trying to, you know, find the right key to unlock your car while the monster's charging you. All of that stuff is covered under this one move in a really, like, graceful way, I think. And you add your cool score to that, which is not like Foncy Cool, but like keep your cool kind of thing. It could be Fonzie Cool. I guess it could be Fonzie Cool. Hey!

The next one is Help Out, which pretty much just like it sounds, if you want to help another player out, another hunter out, you would roll this. that does not stack. So you can only add one to their role. What's great about that one is if you fail or get a mixed success, you open yourself up to repercussions to like the same. So you can help out, yeah, but you are also exposing yourself to danger, which is real smart. Investigate a mystery,

which is pretty much like your insight checks, your investigation checks. And what's cool about that is what you earn when you get 10 or above or 7 or 9, you earn what's called holds and in investigative mystery the holds will let you ask these questions one hold per question yeah it's codified there are specific questions

you ask like what what can the monster do yeah so it's what happened here what sort of creature is it what can it do what can hurt it where did it go what was it going to do and what is being concealed here this is something really important to understand about this game is that

the pacing of it is going to be different in that most of the time really just the one big monster that you're trying to hunt down. It's not like you're going to be fighting through a dungeon full of skeletons and a bunch of mini-bosses before you get to like a lot of the game is talking to people and investigating and learning the monster's weakness, which is a like actual mechanic. If you don't hurt the monster with its weakness, you can't actually kill it. So like gathering information is the, and setting up your plan is the bulk of the game

because if you don't do that stuff, you will get killed. Like, this cannot be a Magnus Wretches-in-style adventure because Magnus would be destroyed by this stuff. The next one is kicks of ass, which is pretty much just like it's fighting. It's when you... Hell yeah!

It's fighting, but like you talked about earlier, it is fighting with damage on both ends, no matter what. And there are going to be situations where you get the drop on somebody, and so it's not a kicks of ass, you just hurt them. But in a, like, you're hurting me, I'm hurting you. That's a kicks-and-ass role. Um, then there's manipulate someone, which is kind of like a will contest of trying to get somebody to use someone. What?

It's like charisma. I think it's not, it's not particularly useful, I think, to keep filtering these through Dungeons and Dragons. That's fair. Yeah, maybe. It's more useful, I think, to use a fictional counterpart of like, it's going into the, the demon bartender. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's forcing him to tell you. Yeah, that makes sense.

Um, then there's protect someone, which pretty much. much just out like it sounds like is preventing harm and but in doing so you take the harm yeah or if you fail you make things much worse for both of you yeah the collateral damage in these these these uh moves is like so tasty um and then the last one's use magic well there's also read a bad situation read a bad situation which is like uh you know feeling that something's off and like your spider sense is tingling a bit use magic is neat because there's like a bunch of different like effects you can do with magic like enchant a weapon or uh it's not like a list of spells it's like a list of things you can kind of do with magic like restrain an enemy it's very sort of like very sort of broad effects that you can do which then you have to describe when you are casting this magic and like like every other move there are really really interesting ways that this can go horribly, horribly wrong if you roll

poorly, which I guess we're going to get into when we start playing the game, because at least we'll definitely roll poorly. Oh yeah, I guarantee we'll roll poorly. So those are the moose. Whenever we're talking about what we're doing, it's one of those things.

On top of that, there are different what are called playbooks. And these are tantamount two classes in other RPGs, where there are these archetypes that are modeled after, like, the kind of characters you expect to see in one of these, like, shows like Buffy and Supernatural. And there are some really, really cool ones in here.

I won't go over the ones you guys did, but, like, there is the divine, which is, like, somebody with, like, holy origins, like, maybe a literal angel. there's the expert who's kind of like the Giles, the Flake, who is sort of like the, I don't know, the right sort of comparison here, but like, you know, the weirdo in town. It's the lone gunman from the X-Files. Yeah, sure. Like the initiate, who's a part of the secret order, the monstrous, who's actually half monster, the mundane, which I think is the most interesting one in the game, because it's somebody who doesn't have powers, but they have like, moves that help the other players out when they get, like, kidnapped by the monster. It's, like, the Xander of the team, which I think is really fun.

So there's a bunch of cool ones, but let's talk really quick about your characters. Or should we talk about, like, the world first? Well, my character's named Magnus Burnside. Okay, great. Is a fighter? Why don't we talk about the world first? Yeah, I think we talked too much in our last setup episode. I think we might have talked too much about our characters.

rather than letting them. Although that said, we didn't have a ton of time to, like, get into a lot of the backstory stuff. That said, we're going to, because we had this question during the Adventure Zone Zone, when we did that at PodCon, and it got me thinking. The question was something like, do you think that it harmed something

that you had your characters way more fleshed out for way fewer episodes than you did in balance where, like, their evolution was sort of more natural? And I think there's a middle ground there and that middle ground is like, I don't want to know everything about your characters. I don't want to. In fact, at this point,

we have not all talked together about our characters at the same time. There may be things that we need to, like, workshop here in this episode, but I don't, I don't want us to over-extend ourselves. I just want to know, like, broad sort of things about your character. What inspired you to make this character

and, like, what we absolutely need to know about them before we get into the first episode. Ditto, why don't you give us the setting? Yeah, so I want... And also the tone. Give us the setting and the tone. Yeah, the tone is like really... In talking to you guys about your characters, I feel like I've been sort of impossible

in talking about the tone. Because I... You may be listening to this and thinking that I'm wanting to do like a straight up and down like horror story. And that is not really what interests me about this game. So the game is going to take place in a... fictional ski town on the eastern edge of West Virginia in the Monongahela National Forest. By the way, did you guys know it's pronounced like that and not Montengalia?

I thought it's Montagalia. Well, there's a Montagalia County in West Virginia, and that's where, like, Morgan Town is. And apparently they just like spelled it wrong once, and we're like, cool, that's the name of the county, but it's Monongahela. There's real quick, I don't want to go too deep down the rabbit hole, but there's a real place in West Virginia called Green Bank. It's where there is a thing called the Green Bank Telescope. which is actually the world's largest, like, movable radio telescope.

And it's in West Virginia. And it's in this thing called the United States National Radio Quiet Zone, which covers a pretty actually huge section of West Virginia and Virginia and Maryland where you, like, there's like five radio stations for the whole area, and there's restrictions on Wi-Fi. And this idea of this, like, highly advanced sort of thing in the middle of very, very low population area of West Virginia was really interesting to me. So Kepler's kind of close to that.

304, baby. That's not, I'm trying to get started. It's also the 681 now. Yeah, there's a lot of actually different area. Shit. So Kepler is, like I mentioned, a ski town, but in the fiction of this story, it's kind of like a, that part of the

once thriving economy of Kepler is now like dying off because of snowshoe, which is another actual town of West Virginia that is more like resorty and nice and people now go there and not Kepler. And so like that part of the economy is kind of fading away. And so the residents of Kepler kind of banded together to try to find some way to keep the town alive. And there's lots of different ways to do that. Like it's a very, like it's a very pretty, very scenic place. And so there's there's hiking trails and stuff like that. But there's also sort of a,

part of the population that in an effort to save Kepler sort of turn it into a crypto-zoological destination. There are real places in West Virginia, and Justin, I feel like you have more experience with this, where it's just like, oh, come on down to, you know, the Sasquatch Zone. Come on down to, there's places. Well, Point Pleasant has the Mothman. The Mothman. Larry Mothman.

There's a lot of, like, crypted activity. And I feel like that's interesting in the causes for her so interesting. but also what if it was all real? And that is sort of what this story is loosely going to be based on. I have a lot of stuff here about like the geography of Kepler. It's a ski town. There's like a finicular connecting like the top side of town where there's like logic. Finicula?

Finicular. Benicula. Finnicula. Tris and are making a lovely binicula joke. Okay. There's a cable car. Joke is a very strong Yeah, and I have to warn you,

here's a little spoiler, it's not the only binicular reference I'm going to make in this episode. Wow, wow, more to that. Well, I have to make sure not to even come close to setting you up for that. But yeah, if you've ever been... So anyway, the celery socks at midnight,

and... If you've ever been to, like, a ski town, like, imagine that, like, kind of small... I don't have, like, an exact population of mine, but, like, sort of alpine... Alpine... Two people. Like, Alpine.

Alpine-inspired architecture, but just, like, not very active. Like, there's probably some shuttered Swiss-inspired chelets that just, like, nobody goes in anymore. There's also an inn in this town that is going to be kind of the focal point for the story, but I won't go too much deeper into that. But to circle back to, like, the tone, I wanted to tell a story about, like... Griffin, you can't just tease me like that. Let me know there's an inn in this story. There's a very... Very faithful in.

Well, these sexy details you're trickling out. Hold on, guys. The new Starlog magazine just showed up. Front page covered. There's a end with a question mark on it. Tell us more. I could say more about the end. I just didn't want to spoil.

No, I can't handle it right now. Griffin, I need to get on my blogs. We're having a lot of fun speculating over here. I wonder what Mark Hamill says about the inn. Back in the 80s, he was like, it'll never be an N. I'll never do an N. I mean, it doesn't end.

We've told our story. It's had an ending. That's it. I wanted to tell a story about, like, community and sort of rural communities and the banding together that they sometimes have to do against, like, actual real forces, whether it be, like, predatory entities trying to take advantage of them or, you know, ruin their town. but also have that be like, what if monsters was that? So that is kind of, obviously it's like also kind of an idealized rural life.

Like it's, I want this to be a very nice community, a very good community. Because I also think that in putting monsters in that particular kind of community, like, it gives you a little bit more to fight for. Not necessarily Bedford Falls, but, you know, get in there. Is the town itself a little spooky, like Twin Peaks? Or is it like... Maybe in the way that Twin Peaks is spooky, which is to say that I think if you just look at Twin Peaks and you remove all the music and all the cream corn from it, like it actually looks like just a nice place. There are lots of pine trees in Kepler, so I guess it maybe has that in common with it. How much cream corn?

I mean, the good kind, just regular cream corn, not garment bush. Are there poplar? Are there poplar trees? in Kepler? Mostly pines. Mostly pines. Because Poplar are the most popular in Kepler, I was going to say. Oh, Jesus. You were going to say that. Then you still did. Oh, I did, didn't I? There's also

like a biome diversity. Like there's, you know, a ski mountain and the Menongahela Woods on the edge of town and the Greenbrier River to the south. A biodome. A sort of biodome, if you will. Also,

Pollock Shores not there, is he? Uh, maybe. Also, the U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone gives me a way to write out cell phones. Yeah. From the story, which is going to be, I think, sort of helpful for creating. I feel like a lot of stuff back in like, Buffy days would just be like, oh, well, just call them. And now all the dramatic tensions go. Yeah.

Uh, so yeah. Oh, shit. How am I going to play Solitaireica? Yeah. Well, you can play that just without, you know, a same. He's got download it before you go. Oh, good, good, good, good. I, by the way, because this is a former ski town, I'm profoundly disappointed that none of you made, like, a snowboarder, bro, named, like, Jake Coolice, who just came here to carve shit up.

Well, it's not too late. You can create NPCs, dude. Oh, yeah, I mean, Jake Coolice is going to be there, episode one. To the extreme! That is it. That's a really good Jake Coolice impression. Thank you. There's a lot more, but I do not want to, for the first time, like, I used one big wordpad document to organize everything for balance, and now I'm using Scrivener.

So it's like I actually, I feel like I have the whole world at my fingertips, which is very exciting, but I don't want to go too much deeper. Because I think that we should talk about your characters now. Who wants to go first? I will. Okay. I'm going with the Crooked. The Crooked is basically a criminal, a former criminal. Sort of the, it doesn't have to be a criminal.

It's sort of like the shady, rogue-like class. What's his face from Fringe? Yeah, Peter. Peter, who maybe has, like, been a con man in the past or maybe straight up a thief or something along the. those lines. Right. Yeah. Well, my character is, um, is Edmund Chican. It goes by Ned. And, uh, Ned, uh, owns a, uh, a roadside crypted museum, kind of a tourist trappy kind of, uh, kind of place. Uh, it's called, uh, he's named it the cryptonomica. Crypto. That is.

Oh, Dad, that is like fucking, I feel like I just ate a big spoonful of honey listening to that. That is the tastiest shit ever. He hasn't lived here very long, but he's lived here for a couple of years. I think he's, and when I picture him, I'm picturing probably the greatest actor who ever lived, and that, of course, is Mr. Brian Blessed. he's kind of a big guy I mean kind of a barrely

kind of Did he play the Ghost of Christmas present? He was King Volko on Flash Gordon Oh of course Oh of course There's literally nothing I'm going through this IMDB

Folks listening at home Trust me I'm on your side I'm going through the IMDB Trying to find Oh he was in the he played boss NAS Well wait that was a big alien though You couldn't really see him I don't think.

No, but if you look at Brian Blessed's IMDB, he's a great character, and that's kind of what kind of Ned is. So Ned has this... Big Bussy Beard? Big bushy beard. He was Colonel Gonville Toast on Toast of London, Trow. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we'll go with it. That's nothing to so many people.

He plays the voice of Santa Claus in the amazing world of Gumball. You all know, you all know? Brian Blessed. He's Grampy Rabbit on Peppa Pig. Okay. Big, but you avoided the question about the big bushy beard. Yeah, let's go with Big Bushy Beard. I mean, I'm just looking at pictures of Brian Blessed.

He doesn't not have a beard in any of them. He's the voice of Clayton in the Disney Tarzan. Okay, we're done talking about Brian Blessed's story Korean. Right, blessed. Now you know what he did. And so Ned has this museum all about cryptids, the cryptids in the area. And that's all I'm rather to say about him right now. Just to, because I do want to talk about the playbook.

So the playbook gives you basically a couple more moves, usually on top of the basic stuff, but they are very situation-specific things. Right. So which there are, for the Crooked, there are, like, crime backgrounds that kind of give some flavor to your character. Like, Ned is a grifter. Okay. I was assuming he wasn't an assassin, which is one of them.

there is a there is a certain level of of uh sham built into this right sure museum thing uh not that it wouldn't be useful but it may be full of all kinds of helpful stuff but he doesn't know it i love that that when you told me this angle like that is what stood out to me is like the best shit is there's a guy who runs a curio museum that he thinks everything in it is bullshit when actually some of it is real. And that's kind of what's going on with Ned. He knows all about it because, you know, it's not like they've got a lot of entertainment options. So he's actually read every book in the place and he's looked at all the stuff. He just doesn't believe it. And he doesn't know what's what's powerful or not power. I also love, like I talked about like Kepler

has these different sort of things that people are doing to try to keep the town going since nobody really comes there to ski and stay in their resorts or anything anymore. And I like this idea of like there are some people in town who are just like come to kepler we got a beautiful river trail you can walk down and you can hike through the the woods and rest up and one of our nice places and then there's also a group of people who are like we got bigfoot and the friction between those two who are like hey uh can you please stop telling everybody we have big foot because we're trying to get people to come and hike in the woods and stuff like like the people who probably work at the roswell art museum yeah like come on we got you guys shut off yeah um so

there's also moves. Every class has like special moves. I got, I got one I picked. I want a driver. Driver, okay. I want him, I want him to be a driver because I figured there are going to be times maybe where we need to travel, maybe not much. But I had this, I've already figured out. I want him, I want him to drive a 1958 Lincoln Continental Mark 3. I'm going to happen. You know I'm going to have to Google that. I'll Google it because it is the most trunk space of any American-made vehicle in history. Oh, Jesus Christ, this car. So I'm looking with all this trunk space to haul gear.

Is this a drop-top? Yeah, they came in both a hardtop and a convertible, ragtop and a hard top. So we can figure that out. But I want him tooling around in this gigantic car with this humongous trunk to haul stuff in. Okay. And according to the game, since I get to pick out two vehicles... You do get two vehicles if you go with driver. I have a second vehicle.

And so I... He's going to have an alpinea superclass. Uh, 1.2. It's got a 12 valve engine. 1.2 what? It's one... Gigachertz. Of power.

PVTs. This is a snowmobile that has three... It's a snowmobile that has three seats on the back, which is... It has three seat. It hauls a three seat trailer and has three seats on the main thing. It goes up to 40 miles an hour. Jesus, Jack. Why didn't you just get like an invisible jet? So he's got these two vehicles. I figure he can do a lot of tooling around and be the chauffeur. And the other one I really wanted to go with was artifact. Okay. Yeah, I think that makes the most sense. The thing is, if he has an artifact, he just doesn't know it. He doesn't know that it. So this is a magic artifact and you get to basically build it from a list so you can. give yourself protective armor or a skeleton key that opens any magically sealed lock. It's like a bunch of different effects, but you don't know that it does these things probably

at the beginning of the game. In keeping with Ned's story, he does not know. That's very good. You know, that it has the power. This is a, I think, this is going to be like, I feel like a really, this is the character that has me, like, excited for all the different ways to have you interact with, with, like, this feels the most, like, lived in, you are a resident. of this town and there's like a lot of different

like friction and stuff between and you and the town like I think this is going to be really cool So just remember just visualize Peppa Pig's grandfather Yes Travis you go next My character She is a spell slinger named Lady Flame Well what's her real name?

Well her real name is Aubrey Little She is a magician Lady, pronounce it, is it Lady Flame or Lady Flame? It's the Lady Flame. Okay. You know, I'm trying to look at it as much more magical. It's not, you know, she's the lady. You basically, Travis wanted to play a magical one, and so he picked the most magical class

and made it the most magical magic. It could possibly magic. This is Travis's repressed, like, desire to use magic in a game, sort of manifest. Anyway, she runs the local pet salon. Well, so she is a magician up and coming. Like a stage magician? Yes, stage magician. I was really hesitant about allowing you to do this because, again, like, I wanted more grounded characters in a more real world feel.

But then I remembered when we were at Max Funkan East in that resort in the Poconos, there was a magician who, like, was playing in the lobby. Like, I feel like that's not that weird when somebody's on the starting circuit that they're not doing big show. they're playing in the lobbies of hotels and stuff. Also, her style is very, like, goth, punky magician. And I think that my concept for it is that it's a little off-putting to people who expect, like, a female magician to be kind of in, like, tights and a sparkly vest, you know? Yeah.

Not that there's anything. I mean, that is a specific style of, it feels weird to, like, slam that anyway? Oh, I'm not at all. It's a specific, like, way of. performing. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so, uh, she's, yeah, so she's kind of, uh, goth punk kind of look with just a sick undercut. You know what I mean? Just a really cool like pompadour undercut. Her hair is amazing. She's got some facial piercings in there. Yeah. Really cool. Really badass. We should make one one thing kind of clear is that, and this is something that we talked about,

I don't know where you are at on it now, but this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, like, pilot arc is kind of going to be like, uh-oh, my magic is real. Like, yes, absolutely. Currently, she does not know that she has access to any kind of actual magic. So her magic is all like slide of hand. She specializes in like pyrotechnic slide of hand of, you know. So like Joe, with the like just lighter fluid shooting out over somebody's shirt. So basically what I pictured was she has like these gloves that very much like the flame alchemist.

in Full Metal Alchemists, like have, you know, kind of a flint kind of thing so she can snap her fingers to make. So basically, there's a reason for this. One of the moves of the Spell Slinger is tools and technique. So you have four options, consumables, foci, gestures, and incantations. And you have to have access to three of them or you take a penalty to your manager. Yeah, your spells get fucked up. And this is a really elegant way of doing something that we never did in D&D, which is in D&D. You remember there were like somatic spells and like verbal spells and you had components and you had different.

Like this is that same thing, but boiled down to like, oh, you can cast it, but if you don't have one of your things and you'd take a penalty to it. So that's why like her gloves are her foci. Okay. I'm into that. And like the consumables are like the flammable liquid and, you know, certain like, like shavings of very flammable metal, that kind of thing. And her gestures are all of the things that she has worked in, the flourishes, the side of hand, all of that.

So I'm basing what will eventually be her actual magic around those same things. Cool. She is a, her combat magic is blast based. Okay, I wanted to talk to you about this. So you get to basically build your main combat spell when you go as a spell slinger. You went with blast and fire. And I think you did that just so you could get the most damage out of your. your attacks?

That was just my style of like, well, because it's also very, so the different attacks have different qualities. And so, like, hers is obvious and loud. And that just made the most sense to me of, like, the character I was building. And also, right now, especially I was thinking because she's going to have so little control over it, fire magic inherently has a lot of glitches and stuff that go with it, of it being very dangerous. It spreads and, yeah.

This is, keep in mind, every time Travis, attacks. with this stuff, he's going to roll, and him basically creating a controlled explosion of fire every time he attacks, if he ever fucks up, is going to put a huge flaming arrow in my quiver that I can, and fair warning absolutely will use against you guys. Yeah, so basically, I'm trying to think a lot of, like, a character in which, like, entropy and, like, chaos springs forth, like, both in personality and in her combat. style. I'm also very into dropping a character like that into a quaint, rural, like, town. I think that, again, there's, like, some friction there that I think can be very cool. I think we'll have to

work to make sure that it never gets sort of, like, tonally weird. Yes, absolutely. Well, my thinking was just to justify it, I think that her family is not necessarily from the area of Kepler, but like somewhere in the Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky region. I'm thinking of this character as sort of the audience surrogate, at least in the pilot, and that she's the only character as far as I know who doesn't live in Kepler and is not from Kepler. And so like I can introduce the town to the audience through Aubrey. And most importantly, I think, is that her traveling companion is a 10-pound New Zealand rabbit named Dr. Bonkers. All right.

And what class is Dr. Bonkers? Dr. Bonkers is a white rabbit with red eyes very much like Benicula. Okay. Excellent. Ah, there it is. He's of the wronged playbook. Yeah, he's, his whole family was murdered by vampires. He's monstrous.

Oh, don't give me that. I'll use that. You know I'll use that. He is a formerly a laboratory experiment that rabbit that she rescued through. semi-questionable means, perhaps. All right. And Dr. Bonkers, his first name is Harris. Dr. Harris Bonkers travels with her now.

And there's nothing special about him other than the fact that he's awesome. I'm going to make the rabbit something. Maybe someday. But right now, he's just Dr. Harris Bonkers. I'm going to give the rabbit superpowers. Okay. Well, he has a PhD in philosophy. Justin, you want to start talking about your character and interrupt Travis?

Yeah, so my character's named Duck Newton, and he is The Chosen. Justin, you're so fucking good at naming characters. That's very good. I tried so hard. I went with the Lady Flame, and I was like, ah, got it. And then you're fucking Fig Newton or whatever. Duke, Juice Newton. Duck Newton is, Duck's his nickname.

He's the Chosen. And Griffin initially sort of tried to ward us off of this. because... Yeah, there were two playbooks I didn't want you to use, and it was the Chosen and the Wronged, because the Wronged was so grim-dark. Like, it literally is your family's murdered, and so now you're this rebel without a cause,

and that feels way off-tone, but... Yeah, so Duck's a... The... The Chosen, but he... The thing about Duck is he didn't, I guess. He started having the, when he was a younger man, he started having sorts of visions and nightmares that sort of led him to what his sort of like destiny was to fight back some unnamed evil. And he, he ran from that destiny.

He avoided it at all costs. He wanted to, he was scared, basically. And he, so he manifested some sort of, you know, whatever abilities you want to call it. But he decided not to use them and instead became a park ranger at the Monongahela National Forest. And he sort of decided to make a quiet life doing that. So that is where we sort of find him when the story begins. The Chosen has some, like, I want to be clear when we're talking about the Chosen and that I do not want to set up a... This is why I didn't want to do The Chosen.

I don't want to set up a dynamic between your three characters where Duck is the Chosen One Hero of Legend Buffy while everybody else is Duck's supporting cast. Right. That's certainly how it's designed. That is how it's designed. And I'm not interested in that narratively or... Like, I don't think it's fun for you guys, sort of as, because then you are literally, you are supporting cast members in this, which I think is, is not a cool way to do this, this show.

That said, the system is, is sort of flexible enough that I was able to, to not bend the roles and to sort of make a character that, like, fits this, I think, but is not, um, uh, you know, the chosen, just keep in mind when we say the chosen, it is a, it is a name of the class, not necessarily. narratively power. I'm thinking about it this way. You were chosen by something.

And I kind of have an idea of what that could be just in the world fiction. Like, I have an idea. But that doesn't necessarily, that doesn't mean that you are the only thing that matters. You know what I mean?

Duck's not the chosen. He's a chosen. He was chosen. Right. Because he's like a high school football. Ball Star and somebody was like, hey, you're going to come play in the NFL? And he was like, no. There's some really, we haven't, I like this idea of a chosen this is like, no, no thank you. I mean, that's very, very, very cool from like my perspective, because then I have ways of like

trying to tempt you into, because I, this is, I don't think, we talked about this, not going to be like an ongoing, like every episode, Doug's like, I don't know. Like, this is a story about this coming to, to a head. I want to talk about the moves really, really, really fast just to like highlight a couple of them in Ducks like category because this is like this is what sold the game for me were the playbooks and the special moves because they are so perfectly tailored to hit this this genre and try to take the things that you like love about the characters in in this monster of the week genre and turn them into game mechanics so like the chosen has a move called the big entrance where you make a showy entrance into a dangerous situation and if you roll really good

everybody has to stop and listen to your speech. Like, it's a way of, like, setting up different scenes in the way that you want them. I didn't pick that one. Okay. That sounds like a lot of pressure. It does sound like a lot of pressure. But there's stuff like you get a thing called Destiny's Play Thing, where at the beginning of each mystery, you roll some dice, and on a success, you get, like, a vision of the future,

which is like, you know, dreams, like Buffy's dreams of like, which I think kind of stop being a thing after like season one or two. But, but yeah, there's some really, really, that's the kind of flavor that I love. That's a, that move rolls against a skill called Weird, which is basically like magical stuff in this world. And to sort of set the table considering where he has been and what has been happening, I actually gave Duck a negative one skill in Weird. So your visions aren't gonna be the best.

So the visions aren't great because he's like been purposefully out of touch with this side of himself. Yeah, that's cool. Can I just say one more thing about this game that I love? Just to like sell the game. As I was reading through it, the different classes is up, as someone who's like grown up and like fallen in love with all of these different like Monster of the Week kind of shows, like literally every class I, one, they give great examples for, but two, like every class I read and was like, oh, I'm, I was like, oh, I'm, like, I'm, like, I'm, like, I'm, like, I'm. I want to play that. Oh, I want to play that. And like, the reason I went with Spell Slinger is that, like, one of my favorite books, you know, is like the Harry Dresden, the Dresden files. Which is also they list this in, in this book as an inspiration. Exactly. And so, like, I saw that and I was like, oh, shit, yeah, this. And so, like, it's just, it's, it's such a love note to Monster the Week. I mean, obviously. But in a way that's, like, I'm so excited to play and match the touch.

tone of that and the feeling of it. And like, I'm really excited about this. Now, here's my question before we move on. And I don't know if this is something we want to do in the first episode or not, but there is a mechanic for history in the game. I'm not, this feels like for people sitting around a table playing it, not for a podcast, which is not to, I don't mean to sound like I'm diminishing that. It's, it's that, I mean, we can talk about this absolutely.

Now, the pushback I would have against that is that I do think that it's worth coming to a consensus on the relationships of these characters because I don't necessarily want to do another story where we're starting. Yeah. Okay. That's a good. That's probably, then this is a good middle ground. I, I, I would assume that you all don't have a relationship with Aubrey, just because you're not from here necessarily. Well, I was thinking that maybe I, when, when he was talking about fire, uh, I was thinking that it might be fun if maybe Aubrey has tried to use the forest to practice before and, uh, duck has had to chase her off. So he has like a little bit of a relationship there.

And I thought that was kind of fun, but I don't know if that like jives with you, Treff. No, I think that were, let's say that it was like, on her way to Kepler, like she camped out in the forest one night and was practicing and duck came and reprimanded her

and made her dump out her beer, a thing that has happened to me before in a national forest. So you're controlling on your real life experiences. I watched it, y'all. It was so sad. Because being drunk and campfire. Chavez had this grand plan about camping by himself for like a couple days.

And when we got there, he was just like dumping out a beer while a Ranger looked on disapprovingly. It's like, you could tell like, oh, you're not going to be out here for the long haul, huh scraps? It was not great. You called me to come up the first night. It gets real dark and scary out there, y'all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, I like that. I'm curious what the, because you all, do you live in, does Duck live in Kepler?

Yeah. Okay. So I think duck and Ned. And wait a minute. And is duck a forest ranger? Did you say? So he's not going to have that much, I mean, right? I mean, wouldn't he be at the station most of the time?

What do you mean? The forest station. I mean, yeah. Yeah, no, but he lives in California. And then you have to worry about like if you're not there, it's deforestation. Jesus, Travis. I think it's fun if he and, if he and Ned are friends. I think that that's something we didn't have.

I would love that so much more than they kind of dislike each other. No, I think it's kind of like they're complimentary people, but I think that like it makes sense that they would be friendly. And I think that brings a nice dichotomy because if if Ned is kind of a shady, somewhat crooked character and Duck is the is kind of an authority figure, it has kind of a nice feel to it. I would like to play with knowing, I mean, I think it's interesting, right? Because this game has this mechanic of everybody knows each other, which is weird to try to force into it. But I do like this idea, especially considering that Ned has some sort of shady background.

I don't know what the connection is yet, but if there is something where maybe in his previous existence, Aubrey has encountered him before... If you like that and dad likes that, let's do that. and literally stop now and don't say anything else to try to like firm it up, but you know something about Ned's history that maybe you don't even know, but you know it. Like,

I think that could be something great. I have a little something too, and this might not be something you may want to, I don't know if you want this in there, but what if something in the cryptonomica triggers Aubrey's powers? I mean, something triggers Aubrey's powers in episode one. And there's a, big thing that I haven't really talked about yet. That is sort of like the reason why monsters

are here. That is probably going to fill that need. But I mean, it's all connected. Like the things in the cryptonomica are also kind of from this source. Also, Justin, do you want to talk about the cool connection we thought of for the cryptomomacah? You also have my weapon. The chosen gets a weapon. And you have my weapon. And I, and I maybe I gave it to you because like, it seemed like the safest thing because you deal and stuff like this. Hyde in plain sight. Yeah, that you could sort of keep it

you know, safe for me. This is a big thing for the chosen that you like build a weapon from a form and a business end and a material. And I don't know if Justin's firm that up yet, but I love the idea. Oh, yeah, I did. What is it?

It rules. What is it? What? Okay, I guess we don't have to talk about it. No, no, no, no. You want me to tell you about the weapon? No, no, no. To wait to the show. We'll save it.

Okay, shit, because I just thought of, like what had been my plan for Aubrey and the thing, okay, I have a way to connect Ned and Aubrey that I will tell Dad about later. Okay. I'm going to show Dad the video of my weapon after. Okay. There's a video. Okay.

So I guess I think that's about it. I think that's all that you really need to know. If, if, if, I think the playbooks are free, a free resource. If you are interested in Monster the Week, you can go check those out and sort of get an idea of, like, what the different stuff is. But I'm really excited about this game. You can read ours in about five minutes, if you're interested in a little more context.

You can read the playbooks for our characters. Yeah. Just the three of ours. It's going to be really, it's going to be, I'm really excited about it. I'm nervous about it because there's a lot. I cannot prepare as much as I prepared in balance. The game will not work if I try to make things follow a path

the same way that I kind of tried to make it do in D&D. This is a game where things are going to go wrong constantly. and we all have to like improvise together to figure out where it goes next, which is cool for me in a like, it's not going to be as hard to prep this stuff, but it's also going to be a little bit tougher to make sure that things have like satisfying conclusions and cohesive narrative arcs and stuff like that. But I'm so, so, so excited to get started, which is going to be next Thursday. Yeah, anything else you all want to talk about before we hop off here?

Well, Dr. Harris Bonkers attended. Vassar. Okay. Hats off to Michael Sands, by the way, the writer, the creator of most of the week. And our friends at Evil Hat Productions, who also were involved with the fate system, too. Yeah. Yeah, it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful game. And there's a lot of really, really cool powered by the Apocalypse games that I was interested in doing.

But this one seems like such a, like, this one seems like. Maybe we'll dip back into one of those. Yeah. It would be nice to not have to start from square one every time mechanically. I actually, I was telling Griffin before we recorded, I really like this system. I might end up doing my arc in it. Maybe not Monster the Week, like a Power by the Apoplip style system. If you didn't love the Stolen Century, I would encourage you to give these episodes a shot

because while I did try to model those rules after that, it was not nearly as fleshed out or codified as these rules are to wit. I didn't necessarily do a great job handling, like, mixed successes, which is a really interesting thing in this system where, yeah, you get to do the thing, but there's a cost. In this game, like, the costs are laid out and very, very interesting. There's a lot of more ways. That's one of the things I love, because, like, the investigative situation, right? You can't just say, like, you can't ask, like, why is that you had, there are specific,

there's this, like, loose specificity to this game that I really love. And it is perfect for what we're trying to do. Like, it's perfect for playing a game, but also creating a story that you are presenting to other people, which is such a tricky needle to thread. And as much as I love D&D, like, that was a thing that we bumped into a lot because those rules are not necessarily made for, what, like, third person presentation to other people. But I think these rules are going to fit that a lot better. I think it sounds awesome. I can't wait. Let's start now.

All right. No. It's a dark and stormy night. It might be, but you'll have to wait until next week to find out. All the shit was so creepy and weird. Everything was really weird. Things got stranger and stranger. Bye, everybody.

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