The Adventure Zone - The The Adventure Zone Zone: Ethersea Wrap-Up!

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

This week we’re answering some questions about The Adventure Zone: Ethersea, as well as talking a bit about our next two (!) projects.To learn more about Urban Shadows: https://magpiegames.com/pages/productsTo learn more about Blades in the Dark: https://evilhat.com/product/blades-in-the-dark/ 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

The chapter of the book closes. Another one hasn't opened yet, but then the authors of the book kick in your window. They smash in through the window and they say, hey, reading the book, huh? Which part did you get to? That's my favorite part of reading any Stephen King book when there's a lock on the door,

and I'm like, yeah, and he's like, how far have you gotten? How far have you gotten? Did you get to the part where the car eats the guy? Anyway, we're here to ask you if you've gotten yet to the part where the car eats the guy in Tas. Ethersea Season 1, and this is everybody's favorite talk show done by the guys who do the actual show. It's the Adventure Zone Zone. And we're all here to talk about. Back again. Please don't hate it.

That's the first thing, I guess. Here, wait, let me rephrase that. Back again, Lovers. No, that's not. That's not bad, too. We're going to talk about season one of Taz Ethersea. We got about a billion questions here. It's been, I will say, a while since we wrapped up. We recorded a bunch of ethersees to have them in the chamber so I could have a bit of time to relocate myself and my family across the country. But I think it's still fresh enough in our gourds. Do we want to save the reveal for what we're doing next? Yeah, we'll talk about the trick. Or else people won't listen.

It's the only reason people listen to this shit. That was my way. Oh, so, so sad. We're hooking them. Hooking them. I love that. Can we, we never do this on T-Taz.

But how are y'all feeling now that we're, you know, about a month and a half out from recording the last episode about finishing up the first season of Ethersea? Well, I think you've answered one big question on off the bat by calling it season one. So there will be more. Yeah, we've always enjoyed it that much.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, but not to me. Nobody told me. Well, we only talked to you when we're legally required too by creative law. I would say I feel it's interesting because this was also the first time that we did, you know, like a quiet year and did the world building together.

And it's interesting to me because I have a similar feeling that I did when we finished quiet year and went into Ether C, which was like there's so much possibility now. Like I feel we've never really done a like chapter like kind of, you know, seasonal. arc with our adventure zones before. And it's interesting because it feels like it was a complete season, but there's so many more things now that I want to do with it, you know?

Yeah, I feel the same way. I'm happy with the way that season one wrapped up and the choices that y'all made and kind of the weird and sort of abstract ending that your characters and the world itself kind of had at the end of that. for a season. Like, it is not hard for me to think of what we could do with a season two, like the ways that we could build off the ways that the world changed and sort of what potential still remains there. That said, I am loving, not DMing. It's a sweet treat every time you get that little, you get the chance to kick up your feet. It's sort of like a boat, you know, like buying a boat

and selling a vote where like the second most fun you have DMing is like that first session and the most fun you have is right after finishing the last one yeah um juice dad how about y'all i really enjoyed it i thought it was a cool world um i realized that i was uh i was starting to come up against my limits of how much mythology i could keep in my head at one time um it was a very it was like it's interesting because we created such a broad world at the beginning, like, it started out feeling very big in scope. Like, it started out with, like, so much to sort of, like, know and keep track of. Um, and that was, it was easier for me once I sort of like just dialed in on the character and like, she only needed to be an expert in the things that she would interact with.

and like, but before that, when it was like, I needed to keep all the, like, secretly, that's part of why, like, Amber always pushed to, like, stay out of conflicts with, like, the government and other authority figures and everything like that is because I had a little trouble, like, remembering how all the politics worked. Yeah, right. So I just avoid, I just said that she didn't like, she doesn't like politics. It got much easier to keep that stuff straight when you all either murdered or sort of led to the unintentional deaths of pretty much all of the city government leaders. Yeah, we cleaned up a lot of excess storylines there, I would say. Just wrapped those right. Trimmed a lot of red tape, so to speak. Well, it was really interesting, you know, we've been playing together for many, many years now.

But I think Ethersea really highlighted for me the difference between the sort of information that Justin and I are. able to hold into our separate heads at separate times. Like, at any given point, I could lay out for you big, broad scope, what's going on, who hates who? Why are we here? Right. But then you said like, yeah, but right now in this scene, what are you trying to do? And I'm like, oh, I don't know.

I feel like dad is the best at keeping all the big picture. Well, dad writes things down. Well, that was the key for me. I kept a Zook. I called it Zook's Log. Now, I just had this notebook and I started right. stuff down in it. And originally it was just to write down names so I could look them up and but it also became a log of, uh, jokes. And, and it is very important because this is the

official record of these seven rules of ether see. Oh, wow. So far. That's so, that's so hard to do like, it's, it's hard for everybody, right? But like, you're really talking about splitting your mind in Twain when you're like, I need to keep the character stuff straight. Like, I need to be my character and portray them moment to moment. But you're also trying to keep all of this character's real world knowledge in your head. And also, the mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons you need to be thinking about. And also, can you please make it entertaining and funny? What I'm saying is we are stunning talents.

Like, honestly, once in a generation. I wanted to say, and I'm curious, this is my big takeaway for the season. This season I tried more than ever to not prepare shit and see where this story took us. And I would say that that led to a pretty challenging finale, like trying to find a way to make it coherent and satisfying in, you know, whatever ways that we possibly could. It was tough trying to figure out a way to do that. I think my biggest takeaway for this season was I love doing it that way. I love the like fully, not fully, but more improvisational big picture storytelling stuff. I do think this is the last season I will want to run that has a mission-based structure.

That has a, obviously that was like the whole conceit of the freelance, you know, you guys are contractors and you get to pick your jobs. And that was, that was very cool. I also feel like it is hard to do that structure with that kind of storytelling and make it coherent. So like I think next time I do run a season, I do not want it to be like you guys taking on different jobs. I like the, I would be curious what it would look like if you all were just on a quest. And how you went about it was up to you. and the way that the path changes is entirely determined by play. Like, I would be very interested how that would go.

I will say, sorry to answer your question because you asked about the more open-ended structure. I will say that it was, the only thing that was challenging about it is, like, you know, when you go into a movie and you, like, read the tagline of the poster, and you like have the vaguest idea of what the movie is. When we were doing these more open-ended things, you know, compared to balance where like you sort of knew that you were doing a Fast and Furious or you kind of knew that you're doing a, an Agatha Christie thing, whatever it is,

we were sort of like having the agency to sort of decide along with you what kind of thing it's going to be was pretty intimidating at first. I mean, it's because it's like, I didn't know what kind of, is this the kind of vibe where like I can kill someone or is it not that kind of, are we doing being sneaky? Yeah, like, you know, having to be open ended like that, I felt like a lot more confident about the midpoint of each arc where I was like, okay, I know what it is. I know what we're doing. Like, let's go from there, which isn't like bad or good. It's just a different sort of, that freedom made for a different sort of challenge.

Yeah, for sure. All right, let's do questions. Travis, did you have one you wanted to lead off with? Yeah, let's just start with the first one, because I like it. This is from a listener who asked how surprised was Griffin when that Nat 1 was rolled. I assume you mean the Nat 1 that dad brought the sallow back with us? Yes. Yeah, that one. Was that planned to be something the party would have to deal with as an endgame threat, or is it something that would have happened without the one being rolled? It would not have happened without the one being rolled. That was like, I had a few of the bigger beats that we kind of touched on in the quiet year set up episodes that were sort of attached to those, that random encounter table. And I wanted the one to be like pretty bad. And for me, that was the sallow. Like for me, that was the way that the sallow comes back. is if you do as bad a role on this board

that incorporates these different gameplay mechanics, then I would hit you with the sallow. I did not think it would be, was that the second role? Was that the second random encounter? Yeah, no, I genuinely, I didn't like that that was happening that because it was like we're just,

we are still, you know, this crew is still coming together and we're still kind of getting our footing with this season. But at the same time, like, there is no way we could have re-rolled that. There is, that would have betrayed, I think, the whole, you know, the whole ethos that we were going for with, with, we didn't fake a single role this season. I feel very good about that. You know what I found really interesting about it? What?

Was, like, we set out at the beginning saying, like, these are just three regular people. These are not, like, three chosen ones. these are not like three, you know, epic beings. And then it was like those kinds of roles were like, well, now hold on, right? Because we had to do all of it like, it came so early and so big. And us dealing with that shit and being tied to it made the characters more important to the stuff. Like, I mean, yeah, there were character choices made and there were stuff that we did. But there was stuff like that where it's like the story is going to move quicker than Griffin had.

planned. There was also an interesting. There was an element of like writing a check about a like pandemic storyline and then like looking at that check and being like I do not have enough finances in the bank to cover this check to do a, because like I don't know. I did not want that especially after it happened and we all kind of reacted to the role and

the audience reacted to sort of the reveal and we're like, Not crazy about a pandemic storyline right now. That's not particularly fun. And so I tried to soften that as much as I could while sort of more focusing on Cambria and that whole element of the story. How was it worded on your chart, on your random encounter chart? What did one say? It said after dad rolls this, then. the ship inadvertently brings the sallow back to Founders Wake.

Okay. All right. Yeah, there it is. And I kind of knew, like, I had this big board that had, like, what the sallow was, this, like, you know, fish evolutionary, forced fish evolution thing. And sort of tying that back into, you know, the Cambrian explosion, which was, you know, the number of people who messaged me and were like, damn, I didn't even know you were a coheed in Cambrian. fan. It was not that was the other thing.

That, that I, you know, had that idea in place, but yes, that was the what was on the actual table. All right. How about another question? Okay, go ahead. I'll do this one really quick. Griffin, did you know that is from Sierra? Did you know that this is where the ending was going from the beginning,

or did it just come to you after a few missions? It didn't, I, nothing came to me, I feel like. It was entirely the choices that the that the boys made. I feel like tying the, I kind of figured out like, okay, blink sharks, what if blink sharks are from like another world and we are like the vestiges that come back and wreck that world? And so they're on a mission to stop us, specifically Amber and have that be the source of the beef,

like stuff like that. But I mean, the ending that Devo had, I kind of came up with between the penultimate episode in the final episode when Travis decided to change something. I was like really racking my mind of like, how does that work? I got my favorite Griffin reaction, which was when my character does something. And Griffin goes, huh. Yeah. And like, then I'm like, oh, yeah, got him.

Yeah, I mean, really all that stuff was pretty late. I did not. I had nothing planned. I really did. And that was on purpose. I mean, we discussed going in. I mean, you told us going in. I don't have this big long, you know, plot line all laid out.

Let's just see where the story takes us. Yeah, that answers a few questions. There's people who asked about like Devo's alternate timeline shit. Like that was purely, that was in the moment. I had a question about that because from how long out were you intending for Devo to be like the voice, the call and stuff like that? was that like I remember like when we're recording that scene and like the machine was open and I was like, am I supposed to do it? Because I didn't want to do it if I wasn't supposed to do it. But then I was like, I think I was supposed to do it.

I think it was when I was like putting together the last mission. I'm trying to. Okay. So here's we re-recorded I think only one bit the whole season, which I feel pretty good about that hit, right? And it was the, I forget the specifics of it, but it was while you all were sort of investigate, you're doing the murder mystery. And there was originally this scene

where you all went to, like, confront. You thought that Orlean was at the schoolhouse and so you go there and then there was like an explosion, which is not fun. And it kind of just got away from us a little bit. I think the revision for that was this mission where you go to the Coral Tower where Orlean is trying to connect with the, reconnect with the past, which was always kind of his arc for the season. Is it like he made some decision when he was called away that he regretted and has spent time trying to fix that. And so I think that that, you being the voice kind of came out of that revision that realized and like, oh, okay, if he has a thing that he is trying to use it to communicate with.

himself in the past. Like, what if, and we have this whole thing about how Devo is a convincing speaker, like those two things kind of just connected and that was it. Yeah. Amanda asked how much of Devo's section in the epilogue was planned out ahead of time. All those big reveals were figured out on the spot, Amanda. I did not know any of that, except that I do know that Devo is a CERN. Other than that, everything else was like, I'm figuring this out.

Did that keep in the show? You revealed in like the midnight hour. I can't remember if I, did that make it? Everyone else kept referencing it like in my Twitch chat and stuff. So I think so. So about this one. Did Justin have regrets about sending Amber through the portal? I feel like Amber's question of Kudira of did I make a mistake?

Was more like Justin asking Griffin relative to the gameplay choice. Did you have a discussion after the penultimate episode about whether or not to keep that action, similar to destroying the crystal in balance, or was this not enough out of line to consider that? That's from Randy. No, it was like, I was thrilled with that. I mean, it was like, you set up something that is like, this character who has always been sort of like looking out for herself

and in many ways sort of like fearful, you know, somebody who's making it from moment to moment and doesn't necessarily have a heroic instinct. But, like, they were in, she was, like, in the place at the time where her exact thing, her exact lifetime had led up to, like, this moment. The fact that there was, like, she ran out of, she was designed to fight blink sharks. There was a door to a world full of, purpose, right?

Of like, she didn't have the interpersonal relationships with, like, so many people back home where it was, like, as hard of a decision. Like, this is what has driven her, her entire life. So, like, the fact that there was an opportunity to do something that would help others, like, save worlds, but also, like, fulfill her, you know, her individual purpose. I think it was, like, I felt great about it. What I really loved about that was that this was a moral quandary that I wanted to pose to you all in some way, right? Of like making, setting up that this world has been destroyed by this power that came from the vestiges who traveled from, who tried to escape from their world.

Like, if I pose that question to you all, would you make the same decision? And it's so cool to me how there was another factor that came into play at the very end there, right before you jumped into the portal, which is that you realized that if you did not stop Coda, Coda was going to destroy the tower, which was Zooks, right? And so unless I'm misremembering, once you realize, like, if I don't get, if I don't get Cota out of here, then Zooks is going to be destroyed by Coda. you jumped through the portal. And I thought that was fucking rad. Like that was, it's a, it's a less sort of like explicit recognition of like how the relationships between these characters like grew and changed.

Because there was like animosity and, not animosity, but, you know, disagreement is the friction between the characters. But then when faced with like, oh, Zooks is dead if I don't do something about this, well, here we go. Like that was very, that was the highlight of, of Amber's like, I think, growth for, for me. And it, and it says more about the sacrifice coming in that, in that regard to me. I thought, you know, show that Amber felt that she had to do what she had to do, regardless of, you know, the, everybody wasn't like sitting around the campfire,

holding hands singing kumbaya in every episode. I also, and I'm sorry, I always hate, in a sense, I hate talking this way because I feel like it attaches too much like introspection to the work that we do. And I will speak for myself here that like, I don't necessarily love talking about practice in this way because it's sort of like, I don't know, it seems sort of hokey to feel like I should. I like working without a net. I like making a decision in the moment that I don't exactly need. know what happens as a result of it, right? Like I, and I think to a point, and this isn't just as is everything, I think to a point that probably makes me tough to work with sometimes is like I get really creatively

energized by throwing myself into something that like I don't actually have a path forward for. Like that's what gets me pumped. So like when I see an opportunity to do something like that where I don't know the next scene that follows it, like I will very often. you know, head that way because I find it very energizing. You like that fee or baby? Yeah.

I do. I do. I have this question and so did a lot of people. And this is from Buddy and many others. Dad, why oh, why didn't Zooks tell Amber about his interactions with the blink sharks? Well, I have two answers for that. One, I tried to play Zooks as very naive, very impressionable. And I think that became a big part of his character to the fact that he could be so easily swayed or so easily impressed by other people.

And I really tried to play him like somebody who was, you know, wasn't a real deep thinker or devious. I think I tried to play him as very honest. I think I've said it before that when I was, you know, I keep things on my desk as a visual aid to help me, you know, keep the character in mind.

And one of the, one of the things I've got is I've, I've got a, um, a funcopopop of commander data, you know, from, uh,

next generation. Is it an official? Officially licensed Funko Pop? It is a real one, yes. You've sent us unlicensed Funko Poppott. You sent me a Mary Poppins returns Funko Popp. Of Mary Poppins and also Lynn, and they were unlicensed Funko Pops. I felt very guilty.

Yeah. You got them for Henry. I thought those were licensed. Well, then what are you bitching about? Well, we played with them in the bath, and he called them Mommy and Daddy. for a long time. You wish, buddy. Yeah, right.

But, you know, that childlike, you know, I tried to play that childlike. It was funny. We designed these characters completely separately, and yet, you know, there were elements of Zooks and of Devo of, you know, fresh out of the nest, you know, new to the world kind of thing. But I think there was enough difference in those. Oh, yeah. But that, so how did that influence?

it's not telling Amber. Okay. I went back and looked through the Zook's log that I talked about and went back to that scene and I've got written here very clearly, don't tell. And if, I mean, if I'm remembering right, they charged Zooks with killing Amber. Or killing all of the bleached coral. Yeah. And so I don't think, and they instructed him not to tell Amber.

and I think that my first explanation is that he he was never going to do either one of those two things. Right. But he didn't want to violate their trust by telling Amber. My second reason is because the one thing happened in one episode and by the next episode I forgot. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I'm just trying to go back and record.

But I can remember being in the moment of, of thinking that Zooks would think, well, why would, why tell Amber this? You know, maybe it was wrong, but I mean, I just, I just didn't think, I don't think he gave it any credence whatsoever, so it never didn't occur to his, his very, you know, one plain mind at all. I have a question here from Madison. I'm wondering how having an editor impacted the making of ethercy. How much did or does Rachel know about the story?

Do her editing decisions ever affect the course? the story. P.S. Rachel, you killed it. Love the extremely high quality of the editing music and sound effects. That's from Madison Sheeher. So Rachel and I had meetings sort of before the season started to talk about, because Rachel, I think, started shortly before. It was very close to the beginning of Ethersea. And so there was a lot of discussion about sort of like tone and vibe and really granular production level stuff.

of like in past seasons, like, what have been the times that we have used music or sound design in the past, which has been, like, very, very, very sparing, I would say. I mean, having Rachel as an editor for all our shows has impacted, I think, all of the shows very positively in a lot of ways. Here, here. And straight up, like, my sort of workload, like, We had a baby pizza boy. Oh, you beat me to it.

Yeah, I'll never let that one go by without catching it. Also, kind of around the time that I think pre-production or something like that started. The last year has been a fucking blur. Year and a half has been kind of a blur. So the timetable doesn't track a lot. In terms of like story stuff, we didn't really have like meetings about that so much after the, you know, after the quiet year episodes ran. Aside from, you know, Rachel and also I'll say Amanda and Sarah do a lot of like first, first listens, like let us know if the vibe for

something is bad or if there is a story inconsistency or, you know, if we said the wrong name here or there, they are really excellent at giving us the heads up and that so that either we can fix it or they can fix it. But the story was not something. that I really could even give her a big heads up on as we as we went like before we started recording because it was because it wasn't particularly planned. And that's a tall order. I fully recognize like that's not usually how production and post production works on like narrative things. And I I cannot commend her enough for the work that she did. Under those circumstances.

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Roberto asked this question specifically to Travis, but I'm curious, I think it works for all of you. at any point did you, as a player suspect, brother seldom in the murder mystery at the end. It's interesting because you mentioned the one thing we re-recorded. Yes. And I feel like within there was a conversation where Devo like said to Orlean

like there's only a couple of people who would be powerful enough to compel her to do something. And it would be like, me or seldom or you. So where were you? I think there was something like that that I said and like Orlean reacted to it in a way that there was a part of my brain that was like, huh. But also one, we didn't end up using that stuff. So I threw it out, right, of my brain. But then also like, I want to say, and this might be just because of how often a divo squared off against him. I think Orlean is one of like my favorite kind of quote unquote villains from any tas we've done because like I didn't like him

but I also like every time he showed up I'd be like oh fuck yeah right like there was I I loved like his interactions with Devo and vice versa but so I like I never trusted him but there was a certain point of like Devo he was one of like the few people Devo had known all his life. So it was also like a little bit of comfortable to, which is so weird. I understand that. To walk through the sort of seldom revealed. I didn't, I was kind of hoping there would be another scene with seldom where he could

kind of explain. Like obviously, murder is bad, folks. You don't need me to tell you that. But this like belief of, well, if Coda ever finds out where hominine is, like Cota will blow that city out. of this guy. And so it is of the, you know, if he is a whisper, which Travis kind of set up as like the spies of hominine, protecting that information would be of the utmost importance, right? And so if if the hand of guidance was, you know, had found out from this machine where hominine was and wanted to

sort of like reconnect with the flock. And that is why brother seldom did what he did because he was afraid that if Coda finds out where the city is, he will completely destroy it. And all of the, like, you know, in a sense that also live there. I also, as long as we're mentioning things that straight up weren't in the story, Jules asked when the Coriolis crew ran into the buttmunch slash gut punch crew after saving the city from Cambria, it seemed to imply that the gut punch crew had done something significant for the city as well. What were the butt munchers up to during the Cambria arc. Will that be a significant during the second season?

Also, for the second season of Ethersea, would you consider setting it in another contingency plan than Founders Wake, e.g. homine flying city or the Delmer City in the mountains. Okay, those two things are connected. I have not talked to you through about this, so this will be fun. One of the, like, potential storyline things that I had sort of on the vision board was the Delmer Necropolis, right? when the world falls, the Delmer like build a city inside of a mountain. And so there was this one mission that you all did not choose at the beginning.

I think it was the alloyed menace. And it was there's all this metal, all this scrap metal that keeps like showing up in this spot. And it's your job to go find out what's going on there and destroy the, you know, big beast or whatever that keeps armoring itself with this stuff. that metal was coming through like underground like cave rivers like sonotes from the delamere necropolis they are trying to like escape but keep getting like smashed up in this in this sonotes they try to escape and so like i thought that one potential arc could be finding a way to get there which could have been like a like incredibly dangerous surface expedition to the mountains. And I don't even know what that would look like. But you all didn't take that mission and they did. And so I had this idea of like, is there some way that at some point during the season,

if we need some vine to swing to where you all get brought in, like the gut punch has done great work to reconnect us with our kin. But it just never happened. And now I think things have kind of moved on past that chapter in Founders Wake's history. And so I think in a second season, we'll definitely want to touch on what happened with those other cities. But I think the butt punch missed their window. Justin Travis and Clint, did you find yourself starting to conceptualize your characters during the quiet year gameplay? As the world and its inhabitants were being fleshed out, or did you start that process?

process after the prologue was done. For example, did Clint know he wanted to play a Brian R as soon as they were introduced and how long after creating old Joshy school for psychic blink shark fighting did Justin decide it would be his character's alma mater. For me, I will say, and I think we all agree that that Quiet Ear was a blast. We loved playing that game and creating that world. And just so you know, going in with any kind of intentions in that to massage things into what you want. Does not work. I had, it just doesn't because of the way the game plays and because you're, you know, it's turn-based and people are coming up with their own ideas. The only thing I thought going in was I really

wanted to play a war forged. I started reading about war forged when we were doing graduation. And I knew I wanted to do a war forge. It wasn't until we got into this whole. realm of it being underwater. I realized, wait a minute, how is that going to work? A war forged underwater. So I kind of put it to the back of my mind. And Griffin, you even cautioned us, don't start coming up with characters. Yeah. Until we're done with quiet year. I said that, but also when you started talking about this idea of like coral suits, the magic court. I was like, oh, fuck yeah. Like dad's on, dad's on some shit. And at that point, when we started talking about the magic infused coral.

I said, okay, there's a material that might work. And so that was tucked in the back of my mind. To be honest with you, I even went so far as to say M-Prasand-5, I thought, hey, that'd be a cool character name. You know, to go with that because, you know, it was going to be Phineas and five other. Iinar. Right. So and five made sense. But, you know, I really try very hard

not to, because it's not possible. It's not possible to steer quiet your end to anything. Juice, what about your part of the question? About a Joshie school for I just thought that was the I, that place seemed

the most interesting to me. I found the idea really funny and I like the idea of, I like the idea of someone making up something and then it having like devout followers 25 years later. I think that's, I think that that's really powerful. Well, it also let us keep Joshy in the picture in a way that was right delightful. For me, for me specifically it was delightful. Yeah, I always love scenes between Joshy and her. For Devo, it was a combination of like two card flips in Quiet Year that I got of like one was like a traveling,

a troop of performers comes to town and then like the religious leader comes to town that brought the hand of guidance and so then I started thinking about like what if there was a child of a member of the

like traveling troop that ended up being raised by the church and like I forgot about that element of it what I forgot about that element of it the Devo was adopted from the traveling true. We never really

circled back to that really at all. Yeah. And a lot of, just because I don't know if it was ever clear, Devo's mom was with him for like seven years at the church and then one day disappeared and the rest of the time raised by the church alone. Just because I think that there was

some time, I remember saying at one point like for 17 years or something and then seeing someone would be like, isn't he 23? I'm like, oh yeah, yeah. Sorry. That timeline was weird. That was why. there's a lot of questions. I want to try and knock them all out in one sort of broad thing,

asking to share like the random event table and like a campaign setting book and like all of the sheets that we use to track ship stats and vendor inventory and all that stuff. And I want to say that for the, I know a lot of people asked about the random event table. I definitely want to keep using that. So maybe someday, but not. I don't want to share that right now because there's a lot of work to come up with a hundred things. Some are bad, huh?

Some are quite bad, yeah. Well, now you got have some duds on there, right? There's some real stupers in there. I will say that the ship, like, worksheet is available at bit. At bit.ly slash MFD for MaxFund Drive, MFD 2020 bonus goals because it was a max fun drive bonus goal for this past drive. So if you want to see all that stuff. And there's a lot on there.

There's a lot of, I think it's also got like the different vendors and all that stuff. But I don't think anything else is ready for prime time yet. This one was for me and I didn't want to miss out on it because it gives me an opportunity to dunk on myself. How did you end up coming with some of Amber's Lingo? Did you have specific words they came from or were they off the dome? Guppie, I get, but what about Kappa or Klaspur? That's from Ori they, them. I thought it was a fun idea.

I liked the idea of, you know, anytime there's like slang in a fantasy world, I feel like it helps it be more lived in, you know, stuff like the Mandarin and Serenity or like the adaptations of Earth profanity that you see on like Battlestar or stuff like that. Like I think that that is a lot of fun. So I started doing that with her and it was like the absolute height of arrogance to think that I would be able to like keep track of that

and implement it while I was recording like is absolutely unhinged. So it kind of fell by the wayside. Is the point that I'm making? I don't think that's fair. I don't think it did. I still think about like Kella Si Guppie, like Kepa. Claspper is the best because claspers, do you want to tell what a claspur is?

Claspers is a shark penis. That's it. That's it. That's what a claspur is. It's a shark penis. Kela Sye is probably nonsense. I don't know. But Sye, I am certain, came from Gunslinger.

Is where like that part of, you know, you don't get to choose what parts of your brain make up. words for you. So it was gunslinger day that day, apparently. And I brought in Scythe that. Kepa sounds like keep up. That's, and that's why that one is the way it is. So, yeah. I had intended for that to be much more robust and filled out, but it, then it became, but I ended up. I know. I think, I think it was perfect the way it was, because it was like seasoning, rather than the things. Like, I never had trouble keeping up. Too much. Too much for pika on the sandwich. Right. Exactly. I think. I loved that part of Amber's, like, role in the story.

Cool, I'm glad to hear it. So this is a question, because I wanted to talk about in the Cambria arc flashback, did Griffin and Justin know that Justin's character would be the Saboteur ahead of time from Katie? Probably the, probably... What are we talking about? Remind me. This is the flashback where...

Yes, dad played Phineas and you and Travis played, like Phineas's associates and you go to Cambria's city in the bottom of the sea. Oh, so we're going to talk about this. I told Justin he was the saboteur before we started recording and so tried to like back channel

with him during that arc which in retrospect is a bad idea because it basically led to keeping Dad and Travis like purposefully in the dark in a way that we have not done before nor was a way that I think

they knew was possible. Yeah. We had to stop at one point because like, Dad was a bad fight. It was a bad. Dad was doing, uh, dad was trying to like hold it together with the like narrative stuff that we knew that Phineas had to do. Travis was playing his character and like trying to like,

uh, have an impact and be this like very, um, coherent character. character and those two things were kind of at odds with what Justin and I were doing, right, which is inherently they were at odds because Justin was trying to fuck everything up. And I was trying to encourage both things to happen while not giving away Justin's thing. It was straight up like it was we got to the end of it and it was one of the worst, I would say, play experiences we had had because nobody. really felt like they were getting a fair end of the stick. Like we weren't playing, we aren't playing the game or recording the show in the way that we always had. And so while I think that it is conceptually a neat idea, I definitely would have done it differently if we could go back and do that bit again. I think it ended up being a really important object lesson in like the difference between like understanding the difference between like player knowledge and

character knowledge, right? Because I think that's the thing that we ended up getting to is like, I think the reason it was hard to do both those things at the same time is that without that connection, without the player knowledge, we couldn't facilitate the story that was trying to happen. You know what I mean? Yeah. So like, I think that's what we ended up talking about is like, I think it ended up being a really cool kind of story concept and I was playing this flashback. and oh man, I love everything from them, like, running to the ship trying to escape on. Yeah.

He's like some of my favorite shit. Which is, I think when we had to stop and be like, okay, so here's what's happening. We have to, we have to, that's what the secret. I think around the time that the reveal happens is when we had to kind of stop and say like, okay, so here's what me and Justin have been doing, been having sneaky ticks in the background. Yeah, it really, this is such an, like doing what we do, especially. with TAS is such an exercise in trust and like trusting your collaborators that like everyone's working towards the same thing and that you're going to be generous when you need to be and

I feel like that completely with the best of intentions if it hits so bad because it felt like a betrayal of that trust like yes we were not all creating something in the moment but we're rather trying to lure two people into a trap that we had created outside of them. It's actually, it's actually unhinged. Yeah. Pretty, pretty demented actually. It would be equivalent to if we were recording my brother, my brother, me. And I just started chanting a thousand character long series of numbers.

And it's like, well, this is the show now, I guess. Okay. Did we join in or is it pick our favorite number? Is that the one where I did the Ted Lassau voice? I don't know. Is that what you were doing? You did kind of do a Ted Lassow voice for that. Yeah.

You tell me. Well, then I enjoyed it. Okay, good. Can we talk about, we have a few questions here about the, like, character relationships. And I'm curious how you all felt about it because the relationships between, specifically, I would say Devo and Amber was definitely more contentious than we have had in past seasons and Zook's there as a kind of like almost peacekeeper mediator like we've we've not had that before but at the same time I don't know that we've tried to play characters like the three

characters you all played this season and I'm curious like what what your thoughts on that experience was like and like how how those relationships kind of turned out with Amber and Devo we came to that conflict fairly late and the in the in the arc i think and the source of that was this i found devo personally from my perspective to be so like like very annoying like very frustrating to be with and like a frustrating who's always like shooting his mouth off and and like doing things that i found very frustrating and then when I sort of like casually expressed this to Travis, he was like, well, yeah, that's like what I'm doing.

You know what I mean? Like that is, it is a feature not a bug. So what I did then was like allow the personal annoyance and frustration that I had with Devo to manifest through Amber. And like it took me way too long to sort of pick up on what Travis was doing with Devo. And that, you know, it's also a trust thing. I probably should have just like tried to buy in a little bit more earlier on. But like, that is certainly a, you know, why we came to that a little bit later is just because I didn't exactly pick up on that

from the beginning. A lot of the Devo frustration with Amber is, I saw Devo very much as like an exposed nerve kind of thing. And Devo just really needed, or not needed, wanted a mother figure approval thing, especially coming off of his relationship with the hand of guidance. And that is not Amber's deal at all. No. Yeah. So Devo started to get frustrated that Amber wasn't getting.

giving him what he needed. It was, I think, this thing of, like, they're just different people. And I actually really like that. Let me make this clear is, like, that frustration, at least for me, never extended, like, into the way me or Justin or dad or anybody was playing it, right? I think it was just like, we, from the beginning, we never determined, like, why are these three people together? It was almost like, well, we were all just in the waiting room at the same time.

and they worked well together in that, like, the jobs got done in some former fashion. But, like, I think that these people felt more like co-workers than some of our past teams of people did. And I kind of really liked that. Like, yeah, there's nothing wrong with it. Yeah. There's no, I, at the same time, I understand people's, uh, the folks who did not rock with that. I have not, okay, I have no patience for the people who like used it as a springboard for, you know, armchair psychiatry on our familial relationship.

Ew, people do that. I have no patience for that. I get not wanting to listen to a show that has that friction, right? There were times for me as the GM where that friction would serve as narrative friction to like, you know, there were times where I felt like you all were not necessarily working together to forward the mission because this friction existed between your characters. But at the same time, like, yeah, that is, that's how friction works, right? So like, I get, I understand the people who did not necessarily enjoy that part of it. But it, like, anybody who thinks that it was something more than that or some reflection of our,

the way that we make this show together like could not be, I would hope you would give us a little bit more credit than that at this point in the game. We were raised back to us folks. If we ever have personal problems, you will never know.

Never know. Get the Hubble, get the world's strongest microscope. It does not matter. You will not see it. Will we see it in each other? perhaps not. I don't know. What chance do you have? My wife doesn't know how I feel half the time you're going to get through your headphones.

Okay. In narrative, and as, you know, since this is a storytelling podcast, I mean, we have to, I think we take it on ourselves when we embody these characters. You know, I think if it's all goody, goody, everybody gets long, everybody's holding hands. I think it gets boring after a while. The whole, the word is conflict, and there has to be conflict in a story. Now, you may not like interpersonal conflict, but to me, I think that was a defining, I mentioned it earlier, the fact that, yeah, we weren't all best buds, but when it came

time to make a decision about the welfare of the others in the group, I think that gave those decisions more impact. I think it made it, you know, me more. And this is the season where I think that that tone makes the most sense. You have taken the remnants of humanity and, like, force them all to live in a very small place. I think that the friction existing this season is, is, it tracks. I also think, at least I won't speak for the other three, but for me, I was playing this as a much longer kind of game. And I think inspired by Quiet Year, where, like, I wasn't trying to rush.

like any kind of character development or inter character development. And like if there had been a moment where the tensions between, you know, Devo and Amber had come to a head, I think we would have played it. It just didn't happen. But it also then provided for me when we got to like the end of season one of this thing of like, I'm going to kill a god, one, to stop magic. And two, so I can get more blood to open this thing so that Amber and I can finally figure this shit out.

Like that was like Deva's main driving goal is like, yeah, I want to save Amber, but mostly because like there's unresolved shit we got to figure out. Right. To me, it's not done. Like that's the tension is part of the inspiration for continuing the action. Season two, I don't have like that planned out necessarily. I do think you guys keep saying, Daniel says you keep saying you'll return to ether C at some point but with different characters. Does that mean you're treating Ether C as more of an anthology series? series where each season we learn even more about the world just through the eyes of different

characters like yeah i i think that that's i think the world changed uh during the first season and the you three will play different characters in that world dealing with those changes yeah um but it will not be a fully standalone thing but that said like i have not even begun to figure out like what what that looks like and well since zooks got turned into gigantor i guess So I turn more into like a like a Eva unit like mecca shit, which I'm also. I think and I don't want to speak too much on this because we haven't had these conversations much internally. But I feel like think less of think less about what this means for Ether C specifically because I think this is a better reflection of like how we want to think about these words. worlds, like, going forward.

Like, we've made quite a few of them this time. And I don't think we necessarily want to start from scratch every single time we start a new arc. Right. So the idea that these are worlds we can return to rather than, you know, this sweeping epic that we do and then land perfectly and then never... Never return to again. Return to... Until we do the graphic novel adaptation until we do the end of the breakfast. Cereal, the toilet paper.

And so for the next season. and we'll be doing all Sherlock Holmes is and one of those Sherlock Holmes is a fan player for 85 episodes. We don't have ETHRC season two planned out. We do have the next two things that we're doing settled on and one of those things already fully recorded. So before we get into that, the lead-in is we're going back to weekly.

There will be a live show next week, which I think is just us too. So fun. That we did at San Diego Comic-Con. Y'all, the one that, the live show that ran this week was the Gorgon-Ramsey one that I literally have ejected from my mind. Yeah, completely forgotten. So I saw Lucas Haspen Hyde's art for it. And I was like, oh, shit, yeah, okay. Of Bobby Mind Flay and, yeah.

Yeah, and then starting after that live show, starting on, I believe, September 1st, we're going back to dust. Yes. We are doing, we have five episodes, an episode zero set up session, and then four episodes of dust with guest star Erica Ishii. Yeah, episode zero and one are going up on the same day. Yeah. And I don't know how necessary. I mean, it's up to you if you want to listen to zero or not. We set up our characters and remind everybody the rules of urban shadows.

Yeah, I think you can start with one. Yeah, well, I have to listen to. What else you do? If you don't like listening to this podcast, then why do you listen to this podcast? You know what I mean? Yeah, so we're doing four episodes of that, dust. It's already recorded, it's done, and frankly, I think it's top notch.

It's pretty fucking good. It's good, really good. Can I say who I play in it? Yeah, go for it. I play Indrid Cold. The Mothman is in this one. The worlds, the lines are blurring. My fucking ultimate, ultimate dream.

Yeah. Of the Taziverse. Yeah. I gotta come up with the better. name for it's all happening it's very fun we're i think we're all playing new characters except for juice yeah just it plays augustus parsons yeah what about the cat sphere because the the the real connective tissue is cat saleswood yeah so it's call it the the phila the alchemism the phileneum oh that's good this very last question is from uh sierra justin the people need to know will you gm

please pretty please i think it would be very fun even just a short arc you can take things fairly seriously, but on the surface, are always looking for a joke, and I think it would be so amusing to even just do a one-off where the finale is like a punchline. You'd be so good at it. That's from Sierra? And so many others. Okay. Are you convinced him? Yeah.

Sierra, we've been trying forever. You did it. I'll do one after that. Well, you didn't ask that kindly. You know what I mean? I'll do one after dust. Like, I'm very, like, know what it is and everything. I'll just do it after dust. It's fine. and we've Yeah, tell people characters. No, no, I don't want to tell them

what it is. I mean, I'm not going to tell what it is. What? Tell them what game system. Yeah. Okay, okay. It's, uh, it's, we're going to be playing Blades in the Dark by John Harper.

Thank you, Travis. From Evil Hat Productions. Thank you, Travis. Blaze in the Dark, if you don't know, is a game about people who do crimes and do nasty things. Like, the player characters in this game are called scoundrels.

Like they're bad, they're bad people and they do bad things. And this game is set in a fictional theme resort that is in scope exponentially larger than anything in our world. It is a massive theme city, if you will, a theme city state full of different theme parks within it. in much the same way that in Disney World you have like the Animal Kingdom and Epcot and things like that. These are massive theme parks within this city. It's all run by one family and think like

maybe there's a Westworld area, maybe there's a fantasy area, all that kind of stuff. It is a world that is replete with the ultra-rich who are there living out their incredible fantasies and our characters will be people who are just below the surface of that, who are trying to carve out a bit for themselves in this world. It's called steeplechase. That's the name of the park and the ark,

and it's going to be nasty. It's going to be, I have felt a little bit hemmed in by the fact that we started with like incredibly noble, decent heroes. And I feel like if there's one thing that's sort of like being consistent arc to arc with limited variance is that we have basically decent people who we are following. And that may end up being the case here. I'm not sure. But there was an irreverence to early balance where it felt like you could just kind of murder people.

And it wasn't like a big deal. and I want to push people out of that comfort zone. I want to push these three out of that comfort zone and start to get into a little bit of the old nastiness as we used to say in college. So it's going to be a nasty story about nasty people in a fantastically beautiful world that none of us could ever afford.

So that's steeplechase, and it'll be coming after Dust Part 2. And Blades in the Dark is a brilliant system, like heist game system. It's weird that we've never done it before. It's so on brand for our stuff. Yeah. I wanted to say real quick to you before I forgot,

Urban Shadows is the game system for dust. It is written by Andrew Madero's and Mark Diaz Truman. It's by Magpie Games. And it is incredible. One of my favorite ones do ever exist. So that's it. A month of dust and then on to Steeplechase, which will be a bigger season.

I don't think juices. I don't know that we've talked so much about the scale of it, but it is, we are not. 23 episodes. That's if you get the season two pickup, right? Yeah. Well, if you pay for all the bonus. Yeah.

We have some, a lot of times it says there's like 27 episodes, five of that is just like behind the scenes. And there's some web exclusives that you're only going to get. Yeah, make it. All right. That's, that's it. For this edition of T-CAS says,

I want to say a huge thank you to everybody who got into Ethersea. season. It's, it was, uh, I, I, I've never been so invested in like a world we have created as quickly as I, I was with this one. And, uh, I'm so proud of it and, uh, really happy with how it turned out. And thank, thank you all for listening and for listening. I wanted to say something real quick for it, because I don't know if we'll do a T-Taz, uh, like, soon. Um, but I just want to say how excited we were to work with Eric Ishi on dust. Yeah. Um, if nothing else, like, it already makes it one of my favorite things we've done. And it was just so nice to work with somebody who, like,

responded to my emails quickly and, like, answered character questions. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. Here it is. Here comes that. Is that real fight? That real fight that we talked. This is it. Remember, what's our safe word word? The fighting's too real.

Thanks, as always, for listening to us. You know, with these two new things coming up, if you enjoy Taz, this is weird. We, like, never talk about this, but if you would like tell some people like hey you know remember you've said the list of that podcast a bunch and you said it's not for you well they're doing something different maybe you'll like that you know what I mean like just that helping spread the word about the show would really appreciate it yep so if you enjoy it you know please do that all right thanks everybody thanks for listening see you next time Thanks. Bye.

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