The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 11/20/24

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Troy and Joe discuss a new Gloomhaven stream, an upcoming Marvel project, and how a split party narrative might have worked in Gatewalkers. We Are Stupid features a bonus non-Pathfinder correction, and in Listener Mail...how much of an AP do you read before you start the campaign? Submit your questions for Listener Mail at https://forms.gle/v5huj25dkVSmkbLEA Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/9WUeT4OXJZE Access exclusive podcasts, ad-free episodes, and livestreams with a 30-day free trial with code "GCN30" at http://www.jointhenaish.com. For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network, the premiere source for role-playing game entertainment. Welcome to Cannon Fodder, a behind the scenes look at the Glass Cannon Network. Yeah! What is going on everybody? Welcome back to Cannon Fodder. It is Wednesday, November 20th, 2024, and I'm your old pal Joey O'Brien. Hey, I'm Troy. Hey Troy. How are you today buddy?

Hey. I had my Archer's first grade concert today and I wanted to run something by you. So they finished the concert and it's, it's like a marathon. Hold on, describe the concert. This is just the kids stand up and sing. They stand up and sing but there's kazoos, there's sign language, there's all sorts of stuff and the theme was, you know, when I was a kid, I guess it's because I went to Catholic school, we did Christmas concerts.

Guess you're not allowed to do that anymore. So they did like, I guess it was basically like a fucking Thanksgiving concert Archer was not having it He's like when we say Christmas like you got an hour and a half I'll explain everybody at school was like cuz it's not Christmas season yet. You look at this They finished with jingle bells and he was into that. But anyways at the end of it they like give them Sound like such an asshole. They give the music teacher flowers and like a couple kids come up and give her flowers. So I said to Sam afterwards, it's kind of weird that they just gave her flowers for doing her job.

Well, you are famously anti-atta boy. You hate an atta boy. Well, you know what? anti attaboy. You hate an attaboy. Well, you know what? Because when I give them out, I imagine the person hearing is like, wow, I really did a good job. Because I don't give them out that often. I don't like it. Right. It's like... But 98% of the time, people are miserable.

What is the show is like? I think it's Mad Men. It's like, I never got to thank you. Thank you with a paycheck. That's the money that I pay you to do your job. Is that mad man? Yeah, I'm butchering the quote. Yeah Yeah, it's just so is like are they gonna flowers so nice like you did all she did was their job That's why they pay her money at the end of the what's your wife's response to that she's like you're terrible Really hard job. I'm like, yeah, imagine she gets paid to do that job. Yeah. Nobody gets me flowers. I'm sure she gets paid really well.

She doesn't get anything to do that job. But now she has flowers that will be dead in a week. You said you wanted to ask my opinion on something. Should this woman get flowers? No, I was like, is that crazy? I mean, obviously it's a bit, but I thought it was funny. I was like, it's not nice. She did her job and they gave her flowers. Should this woman get flowers? No, I was like, is that crazy? Or I mean, obviously it's a it's a bit But I thought it was funny. I was like, yeah

Give you flowers for doing your job. It's funny the PTA though every other week is like it's a national cupcake day Let's make sure we bring all cupcakes in for the teachers national. Thank a teacher day. Everybody said like every time you're gonna thank these teachers It's very very grateful. We're very grateful. Yeah. I don't know. I don't do well with it. I certainly don't keep up with the gifts. My wife is very good about the gifts for teachers.

I prefer to just go in and be very thankful in person. I'm not a big fan of like, here's more chocolates and here's more garbage. I just like to, you know, those parent-teacher conferences and stuff, I don't spend the time being like, how are you working to make my child better? I spend the time being like, I'm sorry about my child. What you do is life-changing for us. So thank you so much. Sam goes all out for the gifts. She's making bread. She's making vanilla. She's like, I'm like, thank God for you. Because as much as I love Christmas, I get very stressed out about gifts. I've got like eight or nine spreadsheets because I like the fact that we got to buy these gifts

for everybody. It stresses me out. It stresses everybody out. But like, I just want to get that done so I can go back to listening to music and drinking eggnog. It's all very stressful. I just heard a bit from, I think it was, I think it was Gaffigan, I think it was Jim Gaffigan did a bit about how being a dad, being a dad is a lot like being a backup quarterback in the NFL, like in the case where you have to step in and do something that normally the starting quarterback has to do. And you come in and everybody's like, ugh, this isn't going to go well. And you feel like completely stressed and totally out of your element. And then when the starting quarterback comes back, you're like, oh, thank God.

I can just be on the sidelines, ready to go whenever you need me. Anyway, welcome back to the FOD, everybody. We've got some exciting news this week, new streams hitting the Twitch this week and a new, not a new game, but an exciting new announcement about an upcoming show that's going to be new coming up here in the holiday season. We hope, but you're on the FOD. Well, we'll tease things that are never going to happen coming up here in the holiday season. We hope, but you're on the FOD. We'll tease things that are never gonna happen. We do it all the time. But it's all about telling you what we're working on and what we're

hoping and what we're planning and so yeah hopefully that'll come to fruition. And of course we'll talk a little GCP before We Are Stupid and Listener Mail, a special edition of We Are Stupid this week as we include more than just Pathfinder 2E. All right, let's get into the news. Today, we are officially doing it. We're streaming Gloomhaven. Can you believe it? Oh, I forgot that was happening. We're streaming Gloomhaven because we have such a good time doing it every year at Extra Life. We did it this year and once again, you said, we should do this more often.

We always say that and then we wait a year before our next game session and this time I was like, no, F that. We're booking it. We're booking a time. I wrote you and I was like, can you do this time? You were like, no, but I can do this time. Then we're booking it. We're doing it today.

Two o'clock Eastern live on twitch.tv slash the glass cannon. McD Troy and I continuing our gloom-haven campaign. And this is gonna be great because you know, during extra life, we're just kind of having a good time. And the primary thing we're trying to do is raise money for these hospitals. Now, in this case, we actually have to get the work done here. We have got three or four scenarios that we have failed.

We failed all of them at least once. And so we have to beat one of these things. We've got to get in there and beat it. So it's going to be a fun time trying to knuckle down, get our strats right, and beat these scenarios. So that's going to start this Wednesday. And we're going to go again on Thanksgiving week, which is going to be awesome. Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, 10 a.m. Eastern, an early start time.

We're going to play a little Gloomhaven as well. So more Gloomhaven to come, which is really, really fun. I'll come back to Thanksgiving week in a second. News on that front coming. But also I want to remind you or let you know that this Friday, there's another stream happening 12 o'clock Eastern. I'm continuing our Wildermyth adventure, incredible five chapter story with Paula, Mary Lou and Sydney. That is we finished chapter one last week boss fight the whole thing character death, so much fun. And and now we are going to continue that story this Friday at 12 Eastern. So be there live.

It's a great crowd. We had a great time. And yeah, yeah, all good stuff. All good stuff. Oh, by the way, definitely tune in to the Gloomhaven stream today at 2 o'clock Eastern if you can do it live if you're listening to this in time, because we're going to have a pretty spectacular giveaway there. We're going to be giving away a brand new copy. I don't even think you know this. I don't. A brand new copy of War of Immortals from Pathfinder Second Edition.

So tune into that Gloomhaven stream and get yourself a hard copy cover. That's a novel, right? What's that? That's a novel, right? Or is that the EP? No, it is neither. Oh, neither.

It's the source book. It's basically the mythic rules, basically. But it also includes story. Two new classes, right? I believe so. Yeah, I haven't dealt with it. It's so brand new. I haven't even had a chance to dig into it.

But we want to give a copy out to the nation for tuning in and watching Gloomhaven Live. So come by. That's insane. Yeah. That's great. It's going to be awesome. There's a way.

I want to look up these classes now that we're talking about it. I want to say archivist, but now I think I might just be making that up. Oh, yeah, no, I am making up the exemplar and the animist. Oh, the animist. You know, the animist was a backup character of mine in oney for I believe Raiders maybe. Like at one point I had a backup character that was the Animist because that was like a, that was a, not a prestige class, what'd you call it? It was a, that was one of the alternate classes in Onee, in the later days of Onee that I thought would be interesting. I'm pretty sure it's Animist. 90% sure. Anyway, excited to see that. And

yeah, we'll give a copy away. So that's exciting stuff. Let's talk about Thanksgiving week. Thanksgiving week is a little bit of a vacation for us here in house. We kind of spend some time with family, get away from recording and stuff like that. So there will be no glass cannon podcast episode next Thursday, and there will be no Cannon Fodder next Thursday. So Fodder and the Glass Cannon podcast will return the first week of December as we lead up to Packs Unplugged at our live show in Philly. Looking forward to that.

So no Fod next week, but we'll be back the week after. And then, oh, so right around that time, we are planning to record a new Marvel one-shot? Are we calling it a one-shot? I don't know. I mean, it's a one of three-shot. I don't know how interconnected they're going to be. They could all be their own separate stories or they might be connected. I'm not 100% sure yet.

But yeah, we're recording it next month and that's going to drop. I mean, who knows how long it's going to take? Maybe January? Doubtful before the holidays. These shows always take a long time. Because it's in studio with me, running you, Matthew, Skid, Sydney, and Nick. The Marvel, the Marvel Five.

The Marvel Five, the Marvel crew. We've been working with Marvel for months to put together a package for another show, series, however you want to put it. And we've come up with something that's going to be really fun for us to do, to start shooting in a couple of weeks here and to continue shooting in 2025. So very much looking forward to that. And I hope, hope we could put something out, you know, right around Christmas. But the post-production details that on Marvel's end are something we totally can't control.

And so we'll see once their people get a handle on it. And approvals take a lot of time because of red tape and stuff like that. So if it doesn't come out till January, we'll keep you posted. You know, follow our socials for updated news. But just letting you know, more Marvel is coming down the pipes and we're very, very excited.

All right. What else? Anything else? Anything else news Newswise? I don't think there's any breaking news. We've got a lot of news, but there's just things are still, we can't say it yet. I think next year, you and I were just talking about maybe like, maybe a mini State of the Nice just to drop all of this info beginning of December with the tour and other big things going on. Mid December. Yeah, but we're not ready yet. We're not ready yet, but I think by second week of December, hopefully, somewhere around there,

we could schedule a little mini State of the Nation and let you guys know what our plans are going into 2025, because some things are changing! And very excited for those changes, but we're not quite ready to announce, So stay tuned for that. All right, back to the GCP. Not a lot to talk about honestly with this episode. We're going to get on to other stuff quickly, but I just wanted to touch base with you as we finally get out of this lethal combat situation and have an opportunity to actually talk to Sakuachi. Move the story forward a little bit and level up, which is great. We get a chance to level. We get a chance to get a sense of what Sakuachi is doing there. This quest to find a living God this quest to find a living god. And what's happening in the city with all the labyrinthine, whatever. It is still a little bit vague, obviously, but we are moving in the right

direction here in terms of understanding more about who this person is. It's very weird to meet an NPC and just be fighting with them for like three or four straight episodes without getting a chance to talk to them. We finally get a chance to sit down and find out that his people are under some sort of imminent threat. Perhaps that imminent threat is Osoyo, maybe. We don't know. It was never named to him by his people. It's kind of an interesting mystery.

This book opens up, I'm asking from a GM perspective reading into, so this book opens up with a kind of a mini encounter here that is not too deadly. It was deadly in our case, but that was because of previous decisions lingering over from book one, but like a little mini combat to raise the stakes, say that Raiders are after this guy or something, whatever they're doing there, and he is on a separate quest. Did you change anything about how it's portrayed? Is what happened what you expected? We sort of fight, rest, and then he tells us his story. Is that sort of the flow of the open for book two? Yeah, like I said, I don't know if it was last father or the father before like had you not chase that hobgoblin I'm pretty sure I would have let you rest and

Level up in the observatory. Yeah in the observatory and then once you got outside Narthakeza and her crew would jump you, basically. I think that's what I would have done. I mean, who knows? There's a lot of factors that depend on how that fight was going. But that was my gut said that based on where you guys were at, you were going to hold off and then go deal with that encounter. As written, it has them circling the building, but just waiting to see how that first wave

does. You guys don't know that. In my eyes, they chased Sakawachi into the building or chased him and then maybe this first group found – I think he's in this observatory. Oh, the door is locked. He must be in there. They're bringing out the door. You guys appear.

And so there could have very easily been some time before those others found you. But where you didn't choose to rest, I figured that group was outside and jumped you. So anyways, yeah. You know, I mean, I think that it's so reasonable. So like I was thinking, now I know more because of episode 16 that I did not know before. What I know now is purely from a meta standpoint, well, actually it's not purely meta. It's actually more narrative than meta, which is like, you said you'd allow us to rest. I'm thinking, well, that's just very generous.

Because if one guy came running out and was like, they're all in there. They're all beat up. One of them is down, but I can't beat them myself. Come help me. Pardon me. Why would they not all run in there? Like you're just being like overly generous

is like my first take on that. But then with stepping out into the city and seeing what's actually happening here, it is absolutely within the range of outcomes that even right outside the observatory, they don't find it. Like the raider runs out and gets lost among the buildings and they don't have a way right in. And I love that from a design standpoint because it truly gives the GM freedom to say, okay, they're already at the observatory and they can just run in or even if they were just a block and a half away, they can't find their way there. And now they're going to get jumped in the middle of the city later.

It gives you a lot of creative freedom for how to approach that encounter. So now it makes a lot more sense to me about why we could have gotten arrest if we didn't follow that hobgoblin out into the city. I mean, the other alternative is like Barnes follows the hobgoblin out there and gets lost. Never finds, doesn't find his way back. Yeah, I thought about that in the moment, you know, because we're recording and I'm like running through possible scenarios. Do I just have Barnes get lost and da da da da da?

And I just decided to have it be a a let's just get back into the combat. But there was a lot of different ways that could have played out. It would have been interesting like how Barnes get lost and Barnes not be there for however many episodes or show up later. But it's I was like I started to think of the logistical problems like I said Matthew going to bring in a new character for five or six episodes or is Matthew just going to sit there and be silent until Barnes reappears? Am I going to create this whole Barnes side quest?"

I'm like, let's just do a fucking combat. After meeting Dronof and Janna, it's pretty clear they've figured out how to navigate the city, but there's no reason to believe these Hobgoblin raiders have figured that out. They very easily could have gotten lost. In the end, in hindsight, everything worked out great for you guys, relatively speaking. Now is the time to catch up with Sakowatchee. You know that he had some sort of connection with the lele, but you don't really know what

his story is and his story seems to be- I thought that we were going to be meeting an academic who had been working at this observatory for a decade or more that was like constantly watching the stars. This is a very, it's a twist. I really did not see this coming that we're in the middle of some sort of corrupted or whatever it is, corrupted or magically. We don't know what's going on. However, there is, it is interesting because part of what I was thinking is like,

did you just try to move the story along quicker by having us find his companion and these initial members of some tribe, some local tribe easily without having an encounter in the city. Now I'm realizing that could have been the encounter in the city is the North Kesa fight. That was it. We just did it early. Now moving around, we can find them a little bit more quickly. This is all coming to light. I don't know. I think if I was running it, you know what? I know that I would have let Barnes get separated from the party. I'm just kind of into it now. I'm into exploring that. The tricky thing is I'm a Delta Greenhandler. It's different. Like it's hard. I think it's like, I know, but I'm saying it's hard to run party split story in P.F.2E well.

You know, at a certain point, you just gotta force them back together. It doesn't really work, which is a shame. You'd have to, like, rewrite things in a big way. Yeah. But to me, it's fascinating story to be lost and alone. For sure. You know, I really, I was in the moment, But to me, it's fascinating story to be lost and alone. For sure. You know, I really, I was in the moment because I'm not like, hold on, let's stop recording

for a minute while I think. Sure. I'm just trying to like keep the tension going because you guys are tense. If I pause, we lose that tension, you know. And that's a lot of times why we don't pause to look something up because like, I feel like we've got good tension and conflict. If I really grind things to a halt, it affects the quality of the performance, it affects the quality of the show.

That give and take, it's just a feel thing in the moment. I was really racking my brains as Barnes went out there like, what the fuck should I do? But there's a lot of logistics of how many episodes are we recording that day in the studio? Is Matthew going to have time to roll up a new character and then am I going to like, how am I going to have that character just come upon them in the observatory? Who is this person? Are they a gatewalker?

As I started to look at the stack of questions before me, I was like, ah, just get into the combat. But it's certainly way more interesting to have Barnes be separated. And now it feels like a lazy answer, but there's just a lot of logistical things that affect this type of show versus a home game where I had to make the choice that I made. But man, it really would have been fun. And something I'd love to do is just have a character fucking disappear. And we don't know.

We don't know. And maybe we check in with them. We see what they're doing and we don't see them again until book three, who knows? There's a lot of different ways you can do it. I mean, we did it in Giant Slayer. We did it in Giant Slayer. I mean, I loved it.

I loved creating a new character and playing a new character without having the old one be dead with actually just not knowing where the old one is. It's the best, yeah. It's so fun. It's so fun. It's a great way to build backup characters without explicitly building backup characters.

Just give your character a timeout. Moving on to the level up, what are your thoughts on Barnes's class feat selection? Such a dick. I'll fuck it with Troy. We recorded that episode six weeks ago maybe if not more. Yeah. And he has no idea what boy in his class he was. Also I couldn't tell you two classmates. I don't know anything about PF2E characters. With monster abilities you know all about those.

Monster abilities? We can talk. No it was great getting to level up. We're not going to go into any detail here because I'm not with the players. I'd love to talk to you about the players, you know all about those. Monster abilities, we can talk. No, it was great getting to level up. We're not going to go into any detail here because I'm not with the players. I'd love to talk to you about the players. But I think in the episode, we do a pretty good job of walking through our thought process and why we landed on the things that we landed on.

And otherwise, I'm going to leave it at that because I feel like we have recorded past this point anything that I continue to speak about with what happened at the end of the episode and these people that we've kind of walked into, I feel I could just give away stuff accidentally without even meaning to. I was worried about that too.

Yeah, so I'm just gonna kind of leave it at that and we'll be back in two weeks and we'll have a lot more detail about who these strange, rough-looking, tough-looking customers are, as you put it. The wildlings beyond the wall. The wildlings beyond the wall, in a way, yeah. All right, let's see what Professor Eric had to say about this largely

non-combat episode in a little We Are Stupid. Where is it? There we are. Are we stupid? We are stupid. Are we stupid? Uh, no. Stupid! This episode is brought to you by Dragon Ball Legends, the ultimate Dragon Ball experience on your mobile device. Dragon Ball Legends features action-packed, anime action, RPG gameplay with Goku, Vegeta,

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She took a fear. Yes. And that was silly or something. Was it silly to do? Here's what Professor Eric says on the topic. Now Professor Eric has listened to this more recently than you and I have, and I feel like it must have come up in the, I believe it came up in the context of Sydney saying that she's taking it as part of the Oasis spell sage dedication, sky sage dedication. So he says regarding the cantrips and ranked spells from the Oasis spell sage dedication,

quote, each of these spells must be from the divination school, unquote. With schools going away in the remaster, this can be a bit tricky, but fear was not a divination school." With schools going away in the remaster, this can be a bit tricky, but fear was not a divination spell. Maybe that is the source of people mentioning this. True strike slash sure strike now in the remaster is a divination spell and could still be a strong candidate for a magus, especially as it doesn't have the manipulate trait so it wouldn't provoke on its own. Force barrage was evocation, not divination, pre-remaster, obviously. That's an evocation spell.

That's all Professor Eric said on the topic, so we got to go back to Sydney, look back at this and be like, hey, if you're taking this as part of your leveling up your Oatian Sky Sage, you can't. You're going to, you're going to be something that at least previously was under the divination. Yeah, which would work for sure. Strike. It's his suggestion. Sure.

Strike is a phenomenal spell. I think for a, for a magus, it's a one action spell that then allows you in your two action spell strike to roll twice and take the better result on the attack. I mean, it's phenomenal. So I think that's definitely the way to go. Sydney, I understand, I appreciate where Sydney was coming from. Sydney was trying to proc her own fear feet where she gets temporary HP whenever anyone around her is feared or suffering from fear. So I, but I just don't think it synergizes that. Or I don't think it's legal to use that spell in that case. Also, also on Sydney, why do we always, we always get extra notes on Sydney's level ups. Come on, Sid. No, this one is not anything wrong. It's just remember from professor Eric, dirty trick

does require a free hand. And Asta is often two handing her Katana. It's a free action to drop the hand but then needs she needs to spend an action to re-grip it. It does feel like a good choice for some options, but you need to keep track of your hands. So that's a good note and I'll let Sid know about that. Okay, this is a good one. Quote from Professor Eric, quote, there was a lot of chatter about the critical fail on treat wounds on Zephyr and how it should have killed her, not taken her to dying three. Are you aware of this? Yeah, because they do. Do you recall that I was just treating wounds like on the opposite side?

And didn't read the rules for treatment. I was like, I rolled a natural one on Zephyr and she was dying two, I think. Two, yeah. And so, took her to dying three. And some people are like, that should, your critical failure should have taken her to dying four, but it doesn't work like that. Correct. So to quote Professor Eric, there was a lot of chatter about the critical fail.

They are wrong. You guys got this right. The relevant line is, quote, if you take damage while you already have the dying condition, increase your dying condition value by one or by two if the damage came from an attacker's critical hit or your own critical failure. The critical fail by Ramius was neither an attacker's crit nor Zephyr's own critical failure. So it would still only increase by one.

This also makes sense because if a regular failure doesn't do damage, a critical failure should not be increased by two. Even on a regular fail, you don't deal any damage. Yep. So that is, just put that to rest. And that's it. I mean, that's it for We Are Stupid for that episode. Obviously, there wasn't a lot going on.

We will see if there will be more in future weeks for our friend, Professor Eric. But I have another one. I've got a We Are Stupid little bonus from Jussie, J-U-S-S-I, not sure how to pronounce your name, I apologize, from Helsinki, Finland on Get in the Trunk. Get in the Trunk, we are stupid. Get in the Trunk? Yes, apparently, and I do remember this, I do recall this, I missed somebody suffering

temporary insanity for taking five points of sanity damage in a single blow. I would assume that this is pre, there's some spoilers. Well, I would assume it's pre where you are now. Where the characters are now, it is not relevant. If you're talking about a role that happened earlier in this season, then yes, you are correct. And I did quote, say at one point, that that is a Call of Cthulhu rule in Delta Green, you suffer these when you hit a breaking point. And Justy's correction is in DG, you do take a temporary insanity when you lose five more hit points. And as soon as I saw this statement, I remembered it because I actually did this in another season of Get in the Trunk.

I think it was season two, season one. No, it was season one of Get in the Trunk. It happened to Mrs. Not Mrs. O'Lady. It happened to Dr. Lyra Westover. She took five points of sanity damage and had to fight or flee. That's what it triggers. You have to roll a luck roll if you fight or flee. And she fled. And I remember that whole scene. Yes, I did once know this rule. I forgot it and misspoke stating that that is a Call of Cthulhu rule, but that is incorrect. Thank you for the correction. Josie said that they GM both systems and can often get the two confused between Dr. Green and Karl Cthulhu.

Dude, I had a little weird stupid moment that was just, I misread something from the book. This might be interesting to GMs. When Sakawatch was talking about the symbol on his hand, I just had misread it. His grandmother grabs the back of his neck and imprints it on there. It's on her hand. She imprints it on the back of the neck. But I already said it to you and got the reaction. I'm like, it's just not important for me to redo this and be like, hold on, hold on. It wasn't on his neck. It's on his hand because it really doesn't matter. It's the other way around. You just said it again. Yours too.

It wasn't. It wasn't on his hand. It's the other way around. You just said it again. It wasn't. It wasn't on his hand. It's actually on his neck. Right. As written, it's on his neck and not his hand, but I already said it at that point. I'm like, okay, well now that's canon. So like if you're working with a pre-written adventure and you get something inconsequential like that wrong, you don't need to strike it.

You just kind of roll with it and now it's on his hand. Right. Don't double back. Yeah. Those cases, it's just like hands. Right. Don't double back. Yeah. Those cases, it's just like that is embedded in the player's mind. You'd be surprised how quickly those things take root. Don't try to uproot them. Just let it go.

It's also more interesting because then his is in a different spot than some of ours and you know, it's because mine's on my neck. They said a lot of people's it's on their neck. So that's probably why they wrote it that way. But I think it's interesting that it isn't. It's much more interesting that you guys share that symbol. That's the crux of this. The location of the symbol is not important.

Right. Agreed. Okay. Let's take it to the niche for a little listener mail. To the niche. Sing us in, niche! It's time to listen to mail. You gotta get your broken phone in time and listen to mail.

It's time to listen to mail. It's time to listen to mail. It's time to listen to mail. It's time to listen to mail. It's time to listen to mail. It's time to listen to mail. It's time to listen to mail. It's time to listen to mail. It's time to listen to mail. It's time to listen to me You gotta get your bro on the phone in time And listen to me You gotta cue that f**k-a-ditty

Shhh Guess who's back, Troy? Guess who's back? Back again? I don't know Jerry the Hater from Norway He's back! back again. I don't know. Jerry the hater from Norway. He's back. Dun, dun, dun.

Dun! Nobody in Norway is named Jerry. It's kind of held up a weird backwards E. Telling you, just using a fake name because he doesn't want to be identified as the hater that he is. Wow. No, of course I am landing on pretty thick.

Jerry the hater, as he put it in his. Jerry the hater as he put it in his response. Just wanted to say, hey, sorry, I'm not a hater. I love everything you guys do. Just thought that this might be something that you're doing because of bringing in new characters. He does say he concedes some of our points, but disagrees with others, but he's not going to go into it because he's not interested in creating an ongoing argument. He just sent a very nice message about how much he loves all that we do and how he's

been a fan for a very, very long time. Thank you, Jerry. Then right at the end, he says, please accept my apology for my tone, if nothing else. I did not mean to come across as a hater. Then it's signed signed Jerry PS. That's totally my real name. It was funny though. We were like, nobody in Norway's named Jerry.

Come on. You're attacking us under a pseudonym. No, thank you, Jerry. We appreciate it. Always good to have those discussions though. I mean, it created a lot of discussions in the comment feeds was great. That's why I love those kind of questions even if they make me angry. It's fun to do.

All right. Thomas from Salem, Oregon writes in with a question for Troy. He mentioned now, you know, this is this is past now we know we're at episode 60 here things have passed that the immediate danger has passed but the question still remains. He mentioned that Gatewalkers could end in a TPK, and if so, he'd start a new adventure path. My question is, are you already prepping the next adventure? I assume that's an easy no, but the follow-up question is...

That's a complicated answer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you could answer that. And then the follow-up is, how much or how long do you spend prepping for a new AP? How do you go into new AP? How do you start shopping, basically? That's a good question.

I did not start prepping a second AP. I did casually glance at the Paizo APs, what was available, what was coming up, just out of curiosity. We would say for the record real quick that the reason he didn't start prepping a new AP because of a potential TPKs, we had said, sort of decided like off air that there would be some weeks off if that happened in order to prepare the new adventure. We wouldn't be going in the next week so we wouldn't have to be prepared with a new adventure one week ahead of time. That's why he wasn't preparing. Anyway, continue. I have run sessions of the Glass Cannon podcast, not Campaign 2, but Campaign 1.

I notoriously didn't read the entire adventure path of Giant Slayer. I just read them book to book as we went along. But I started books without even finishing the whole book. Like I just don't, I don't need to read everything before I do it. I feel like if I get a sense of what's happening, everything that I need to know, everything that I think the heroes are about to do, that's enough for me to get going. I just – I don't find it super helpful because I also forget about things to read everything in advance. It's nice to do it. I did it with Gatewalkers. I was like, let's try this. I certainly did it with Time for Chaos, which was a bear because Mask of Nyarlathotep is fucking 900 pages long and I – textbook size.

So like I read that and like going into each season, I reread the chapters that I thought would be relevant before I actually started my prep. So prepping Call of Cthulhu is way different for Pathfinder. I find Pathfinder 2e to be exceptionally easy to prep. The harder things to prep are open-ended role-playing stuff. And sometimes I'll overly prep it, other times I'll under prep it and just kind of have bold strokes ideas and then, you know, create characters on the spot. And I always find that that works out better.

But if there's certain things that I want to get across and certain information that needs to be disseminated in a certain order, I'll heavily prep that. But like if you told me we were going to TPK this coming Thursday and we had a recording on the books before the – like within at least two weeks, I could start a new adventure path. I don't think I need to like spend a lot of time prepping Pathfinder. 2E is just – it's really, really easy. I find the mechanics especially for encounters and counter prep

It takes so much less time than it did in first edition and foundry is a lot of the reason for that, too You know everything is a finger finger click finger click a click away fingertip click away You click with your fingers like an old 1940s steno? I don't know what I was trying to say. But yeah, if I had two weeks, I could start a new AP. Two weeks would be great. I could do it in a week. I'd prefer to. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. I wouldn't be too juiced to start in a week, but I think two weeks is fine. I certainly don't need to read an entire AP to start running it.

I think that the GM having some degree of knowledge of the players is not bad, you know, to have your kind of a limited foresight as to what is happening. It helps you focus on the here and now. It helps you not have too many plans. If you read, let's say it's not even a huge one. Let's say it's a three book AP. If you read it through to the end, there is a danger of seeing and envisioning what we psychologists call a memory of the future,

where you feel like you already can see what the PCs are going to develop into by the end and how they'll fit into the end story. And then even subconsciously through a bias, start edging things that way. And, you know, that can be dangerous as well. So knowing the information, yes, it's that's a good thing. But it comes back to that with great power comes a great responsibility thing. If you know all of that, you also have to know how to forget it and be in the moment with the characters focusing on only what's right in front of them and letting what happens happens even if it feels like it could throw off the ending you envisioned so that you could you have plenty of time to rebuild that, you know, as you go. Yeah, and every pre-written AP requires a different approach.

Every book, every section of each book requires a different approach. I think back to Skercatlus Camp. I really needed to get a good sense of all the shit that was going on so that I could appropriately foreshadow. When you first climb that mountain and look down into the valley and see that, I want to be able to mention some temple looking shit so that 40 episodes later, however long it was when you infiltrated that temple and fought like a priest of – I can't remember what it was or not for us. But anyways, I want to be able to know those things so that I could properly foreshadow.

So reading ahead is important in that sense. But it's not germane to what the players are actually going to see in the first couple episodes. You know, think about it. We could do... Well, think about Skir Kotla's tomb and the entire camps on top of that mountain. What in the ship do you need to know about that mountain during the orc invasion of Trinnell? Right.

You know, nothing. Nothing. No. No. You don't even learn about the giants until you find Screed's letter that he was working with some hill giant. And even then, it's not until part three of book two that you infiltrate that giant camp. Yeah.

So, you know, keeping your focus narrowed is good. For me, I would say I have the luxury as a partner with Paizo to just get access to these PDFs and just read them quick, which is great. But even with that access, I think the main thing I would focus on if I was choosing an AP is the beginning. It's like the first book has to grab you. The initial thing has to be very interesting to you and your players. If you hear that it gets weak or it

doesn't end strong or whatever, like don't worry about that. If you start strong with your players, you're gonna end up with a great campaign. You can always adjust and change anything you want. But if the setting, the concept, the hook at the beginning is not what your players are into or not the style you wanna play, it's just gonna go nowhere. So I don't think you have to worry about,

I wanna make sure I read all three books before we start and make sure I like the whole thing. I wouldn't worry about that. If you like the beginning, then get started because you can always adapt and change as you go. I mean, these things are also written in such a way that like you could at the end of a book, you could always just stop and go play a module if you want to with these same characters.

Like they all have an arc. They all have a beginning and an ending. And yeah, you could piece them together however you want. It's interesting. I did. I had this fun idea, but I don't know if I want to talk about it because maybe I'll do it someday. But I did have this really fun idea. Okay.

Yeah. I was like, about to say it. I'm like, actually, this might be a good idea. So I'm going to hold on. We'll say it. Yeah. It doesn't, you can take as long as you want. But at the end of the day, like, just get started because people will lose countless

hours prepping. Just get playing. Get it out there. It's never going to be perfect. Learn as you go. And don't, there is a great danger in overprepping. There's less danger in underprepping because the players don't know what's going on behind the screen. You know what I mean? If you're like, fuck, I don't know how to run this monster. They don't know that unless you tell them you don't know how to run that monster. You know what I mean? Just create a challenge for them. And if they start calling you on it,

they're like, wait a minute, that's not how that works. Be like, oh shit, you're right, let's just take that back. But yeah, just get playing. I was talking to Jared about this the other day actually, in the just get playing, prep less, sort of idea. Having your monsters prepped flawlessly and running them really effectively is good. That's not a bad thing.

However, if you find yourself a little unprepared for something that PCs did and you need to throw something their way, and that could be the form of a monster or it could be the form of a hazard or a challenge, right? You got to climb a wall. You got to get over a pit. You got something that you weren't expecting them to have to face. And now, you know, you worry about going through the rulebook trying to find a stat block or a way to make this challenge work or whatever it is. I was talking to Jared about this the other day, it was just like, don't overthink these things. PF2E, I feel has built an amazing, I think it's a fantastic, structure of balance that makes it extremely easy to wing things based around their DCs by level. I mean, it's really straightforward.

It's like you take the DCs by level and any hazard, any kind of challenge you throw in front of them, you can immediately come up with target numbers for target DCs for any number of challenge you throw in front of them, you can immediately come up with target numbers, for target DCs, for any number of challenges, whether you want that to be of a similar level with the PCs, or you can make it a little harder, a little easier, totally up to you. Same thing with monsters. If you don't have anything about them, but you think they might have claws, it's just

like you know that the two hit is always going to be right in the range of 10 less than that AC or Right DC or right around or among the players You know what their two hits are you should have their character sheets Just base it off of that like if you don't have the exact numbers and just get rolling and the players will never know It's just great. It's a really easy way to To get into those situations now should you know, do you want to do that every encounter? No, but when you're stuck, you don't have to stop everything.

Now, where I do think you might have to stop things, and I appreciate that, is what you said, Troy. It's like, when you enter into a role-playing sandbox, and it's like you're talking to key personnel in the story that are supposed to give you key information to a pre-written adventure, yes, you might need to be like, I need a second. There's nothing wrong with that 100%. But generally those are not times of great tension. So like, you're not going to lose anything by getting those right by slowing down. But when you are suddenly ambushed by a monster,

you weren't expected to the tension is rising. Like, don't end it all by being like, I need to go study this monster stat block, just start rolling dice and see you know see if see if you hit I mean it's it's pf2e put a structure in place it's all in the gm core for this kind of stuff check it out if you have one table on your gm screen it's that dc by level I don't have it on there but if I did put a table on there that's the one I would put me all right that's going to do it for this week, guys. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. We hope everybody has a fantastic Thanksgiving next week. Remember if you're here, if you're hearing this early, check us out live on Twitch, 2

p.m. Eastern Time, 11 a.m. Pacific. Today we're playing some Gloomhaven. Going to be fun. Big giveaway, War of Immortals. Then on Friday more Wildermyth with Joe and the girls so come and check it out on Friday at noon Eastern 9 a.m. Pacific and then no fodder next week so now we say goodbye and happy Thanksgiving we're thankful for all of you have a wonderful holiday and we'll see in a

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