The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 12/4/24

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

Troy and Joe get caught up on their Thanksgiving break before digging into some big news about an upcoming State of the Naish, the future of Cannon Fodder, and a special AMA event to celebrate the finale of Impossible Landscapes. In We Are Stupid, an examination of the intra-party conflict and theft, plus some broad strokes rules to look out for with PF2E Rituals. In Listener Mail, how do you maintain focus as a GM after a long time in the same campaign? Submit your questions for Listener Mail at https://forms.gle/v5huj25dkVSmkbLEA Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/oFLSk8Z2244 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

You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network, the premier source for role-playing game entertainment. Welcome to Cannon Fodder, a behind-the-scenes look at the Glass Cannon Network. ["The Glass Cannon Network Theme Song"] Yeah! Ha ha ha! What is going on, Nesh? Happy holidays and welcome back to Cannon Fighter. I'm your good buddy, Joe O'Brien.

I'm jigging out of a gingerbread man's skull. Wow, and that is filled with rum. And egg out, apparently. Yep, that's a little morning rum. That's how I start my December mornings. Do you drink every single day in December? Every single day in December? No.

No. No. Most. Most, for sure. But do you have to consciously say, like, you know what? Today I'm not going to drink. Yes. Or 8 o'clock rolls around, or 6 o'clock, and you say like, you know what, today I'm not going to drink. Yes.

Or eight o'clock rolls around or six o'clock and you're like, ugh. 430. Let's be honest. 430, getting towards the end of the workday, just like, how about a little nog? A little like, because also at 430, it is just dark. Pitch dark. Right. Pitch.

Christmas lights are on. Dark. Exactly. And so it just puts you in the mood. You know? For a little, let me get a break from my day-to-day grind at the actual PlayFactory. And you just, sometimes you've got to be like, no. You have to exercise in the morning, and it's only going to ruin it. Dude, it's so hard.

It's so hard. Because I talked about this, I think, at last year's Philly show. It's like, I'm an end-of-year consumer. It's like you consume, you buy more than you need to, more than you have money for, you eat more because you're like, we're going to not spend as much in January. We're going to eat a lot better in January. We're going to work out.

We're not going to drink as much in January. So end-of-year consumer. I talked about this on last week's Gloomhaven stream. We've been doing these Gloomhaven streams. I got this advent calendar. Tim Nightingale, friend of the consumer. I talked about this on last week's Gloomhaven stream. We've been doing these Gloomhaven streams. I got this advent calendar. Tim Nightingale, friend of the show. He posted it every year on his Facebook. And so when my wife was like, what do you want for your birthday? I'm like, I want this sick whiskey advent calendar. So I get a little bottle of whiskey, like about a vial of whiskey every day, some nice tasting glasses. And

it is such a fucking genius system that they have. You get the tasting booklet. It's like a vial of whiskey every day, some nice tasting glasses. And it is such a fucking genius system that they have. You get the tasting booklet. It's supposed to be like a hotel. It's like in day two of your hotel, your concierge brings up a bottle of this. And if you like it, there's a QR code on each day of the booklet as well as on the vial itself. And you can scan it to buy a full bottle of it. And you get a discount if you want to buy that bottle.

If you buy it on the day that matches up with the day that it releases in the calendar, you get an even larger discount. It's fucking genius. It forces you to drink it every single day on the day. You can't be like, I don't want whiskey. You got to have your whiskey because if you like it, you get an even better discount than if you buy it a day later. You'll still get a discount, not the same discount.

Genius, genius marketing move, genius. Stay tuned for some Supercast changes in 2025. You want new legacy? You gotta pay. 30 days of glass cannon joy. That's awesome. Yeah, wow. And how? Could you possibly not have a whiskey every day? You can't enjoy. That's awesome. Yeah, wow. And how could you possibly not have a whiskey every day? You can't.

You can't not. It's just not possible. It warms you right up at night or in the morning or in the morning. Well we took off for Thanksgiving week. We're returning after a nice little break. How was your Thanksgiving? It's great, man. It's great.

You know, it's always – it's a lot. My wife and I tag-team the cooking and we just – we overdo it like we do everything. You know, my wife's an amazing cook but I get way into it. I do the turkey. I do my family's old stuffing recipe. I make this sick pioneer woman chocolate marshmallow pumpkin pie that everyone goes crazy for. Then we just fucking eat Thanksgiving three times a day for five days straight. And I never get sick of it until it's gone.

And I feel horrible. I'm like, great. Can't wait to look like a fucking pig at the Philly show as I just ate 5,000 calories before breakfast. But it was great. You know, it's always stressful, especially with the kids because I feel like I want to like spend time with my family, but I've got these three maniacs running around all the time and Sam's trying to balance it.

So it's tricky, but you know, it was a lot of fun. My brother came up too. What about you? You went to your sister's? I went down to Philly. I went to my sister's. She's an amazing host. I didn't do anything.

You know, I just show up with some desserts and some sides or apps and just like hang out and watch football. I mean, it's just the best. Now on the downside, I get no leftovers. Just don't get them, you know? That's downside, upside, right? And she's very kind.

She'll always offer like, take whatever you want. I'm like, you take the leftovers because they're so banging. And like, you should be able to eat this over the next few days. And so, yeah, it was fantastic. Got to see, you know, small gathering, just my family and my uncle and my aunt. So it was great. And then, yeah, just was, it was fantastic. Got to see, you know, a small gathering, just my family and my uncle and my aunt.

So it was great. And then, yeah, just right back up here and getting ready to get back to it, getting ready to head to Philly because it is show week. Let's get through it. Let's get into some news. We're going to talk GCP episode 61 of campaign two, tiny little we are stupid from professor Eric even in a massive role playing week, professor Eric chimes in and of course a little bit of listener mail. So let's start with the news.

It's show week and we're heading down to City Winery in Philly this Friday night. Friday night, 730 Eastern sold out show at City Winery. One of my favorite shows of the year. It's always awesome. I don't think this year is going to be any exception considering where we are in the adventure. It looks like it's going to be like multiple deaths, right? I mean, that's what I'm assuming.

Multiple deaths. That's what I'm going for. You guys are about to receive a text today to talk about the Philly show. Oh dear. An ominous like prepare yourselves emotionally. You always get these texts from me. We've got our group chat, which has been oddly silent for weeks, because we don't record Gatewalkers anymore and we haven't seen each other in two months, so it's like very quiet.

You're all going to get this ominous text. Yeah, it's going to be pretty heavy. We've got a fireball about to explode to kick off. Oh, right, Philly. And then just, you know, this – I think this whole episode show is just going to be very, very – a very, very interesting kind of transition, right? You've got as deep as you can in the Mysterium at this point. You have entered the soul and you're fighting the keeper. The keeper.

You're fighting the keeper,, this angel of death. It's obviously like everything else in the Mysterium is all sorts of fucked up from whatever Lows did. You see this vision of Lows. You hear this voice again that you've been hearing ever since the indie show last year. We've been in the Mysterium since January. It seems like it's all coming to a head. You've reset the wards, the bells are ringing outside.

You know you can now walk out once you succeed. So this is like an interesting transition episode, but I don't know if everybody's going to make it out of there. Yeah, I don't know either. We'll see as that comes. It also can, you know, lines up every year with Pax Unplugged, one of my favorite cons of the year. Yeah.

We'll be popping by there. We don't have a presence at the con this year from a business standpoint, but we'll try to be walking the floor a little bit on Friday morning and hopefully a little bit on Saturday. It's, yeah, hopefully we'll run into you there, you know. If you're coming to Pax Unplugged. You're talking to me or you're talking to the niche? No, the royal, the niche. Hopefully we'll run into each other.

Hopefully I'll run into you there. Yeah, hopefully we'll see you guys there walking around. We don't have a booth there, but we're going to be hanging out. Are we sharing a hotel room or did you get your own room? We're sharing a hotel room. Your wife? I was always like, maybe he'll be with his wife or with a family. No, I asked her to come down and she was like, nah.

Well, she really wants to come to the show, but can't because of childcare reasons. Yes. And I was like, Well, why don't you bring the kids down so we can take the kids to the con like we did last year. And she was like, pass. Hard pass. Hard pass. And then I asked the kids like, do you want to go and they were like, nah, I was like, God damn it. Wow. So we'll see. We'll try again next year. I think that like, just kind of get a little bit older to get super into it.

I don't know. We'll see. Maybe I'm just bad at passing on the love of the hobby. We're staying at a different hotel that we've stayed at for like the last six years. And why? Well because the other one, the prices got jacked up. And this dude, it's a fucking great hotel. And I'm hoping that unlike the one that we normally stay in, it has the Hallmark network.

I had to watch it on my iPad like a weirdo. Just going to lay in the room watching Hallmark movies. That's what I normally do during the relief. I go to the market. I stop at the con. Go to Reading Terminal Market. Yeah. I watch Hallmark.

We got to go to Reading Term Market, get a cheese steak again. Oh, oh. You know, as I drive out, I always drive to Pat's and grab steaks to bring home. Yeah. I do it because they're open at like – they're open 24 hours, I think. So I'll show up at 9 in the morning, grab a couple of cheese steaks, drive them a couple of hours home. It's Dash's birthday on Saturday, so I got to get the fuck out of there. But I'm excited. Happy birthday. Here's a four pound cheesesteak.

Here's a cheesesteak. I don't want it. I don't want it. I don't need anything you make for me. Philly show's been sold out, dude, for months. Months. Crazy. We should have made sure we were going to do two. Great nation, the Philly area. And that encompasses all of New Jersey and Delaware and probably

even down to DC people are coming up. I'm very psyched for that show. It's a great crowd and it's Christmas, so that's going to be awesome too. Can't beat it. Can't beat it. Let's get into the chunk-tacular news. We got some, this is going to be a chunky FOD. We took a week off and so we're a little backloaded here.

Let's get chunky. We got some State of the Nation news as we look forward to 2025. We've got some cannon fodder news about the status of cannon fodder in 2025. And of course, like to sprinkle in a little Impossible Landscapes news. Finale aired last night. The finale? Wait, it did? Of Impossible Landscapes aired last night, but I can't say anything.

Wait, it did? I didn't even know aired last night, but I can't say anything. Wait, it did? I didn't even know it aired last night. It aired last night. Oh, because we're recording this. It hasn't aired. Before it aired. I was like, wow, how did I miss that? You're good at this.

I can't believe you can't wrap your head around this magic of recording a couple days in advance. Every day of Christmas, you like my googly eye? Every day of Christmas is just, it all matches together. I got the Polar Express tonight. My head's in the clouds. You got the Polar Express tonight? Yeah, dude. Oh, that's amazing.

We got the tree last night. We're talking about doing it next year. We're talking about Polar Express next year. You got to do it, man. Whippany, New Jersey, it's closer to you than it is me. Yeah, we have to drive like two hours in traffic. But dude, it's the fucking best. I'll let you know because we have to buy like two hours in traffic, but dude, it's the fucking best I'll let you know because I thought we have to buy the tickets in July. Yeah, I know it's like way in advance

All right. Anyway, let's get to To the news talk talk to me about state of the nation. This is something you've been kicking around some you've been thinking about As we look forward to 2025 content schedules content plans. We always kind of change things at the start of the new calendar year. What are you thinking about, State of the Nation? You're going to talk to the people, Troy. Yeah, I wanted to do it last year, and then just based on a bunch of different reasons, we couldn't do it.

And then I think I didn't do it till January, maybe even February, March. I can't remember. But I feel like going into the new year, there's just a lot of stuff going on. I mean, one major thing that really needs to be announced before the holidays. But as you and I have been talking in our meetings, we're like, well, there's just a lot of stuff to talk about.

We can always do it on fodder, but the state of the nation always draws a nice big crowd. Why not have an end of the year, state of the niche, year in review, but also looking ahead to what looks like a pretty fucking exciting 2025 with a lot of fun changes and evolutions, I think. We're thinking about two weeks, in two weeks, like the week before Christmas, maybe Wednesday the 18th. Stay tuned to social media or maybe by next week's fodder, we'll be able to announce an exact date. I should be able to lock myself in by then. I want to jazz it up.

I want to make sure I have some slides and shit. Some animated graphics. Some animated GIFs. GIFs, GIFs. So anyways, that's- Give GIF debate on the state of the nation. I feel like we got to do a little Christmas state of the nation state of the state of the Christmas nation Love it part of the news of that not not to

Hopefully there's a little bit more information at the time a spoiler is coming up Yes, state of the nation spoilers coming up very light spoiler and that's cannon fodder related So let's talk about cannon fodder cannon fodder is a show that has gone through so many evolutions. So many evolutions over the years dating back to its first airing as a companion to episode 55 of Giant Slayer. 326 episodes of Giant Slayer was episode 55 that cannon fodder was first born as a companion to that campaign. It has since gone on a hiatus, come off hiatus, been live, been not live, had guests every week,

not had guests every week, been video, been audio only. It's been in every sort of evolution rendition and there's going to be some new versions, I should say, I could say, of Fodder next year. So essentially what you need to know right now, if you love counter fodder, you like listening to it on the GCP feed every week, that is going to change next year. And next week is really going to be kind of the last episode of fodder in this exact, I don't want to say in this exact format because you and I are definitely getting together and talking about stuff. But like, just the weekly FOD in this format

is going to change. And the way it's gonna change is not, it's going to become a different show, it's going to sort of, we've been working on a plan to disseminate its central elements into different ways of engaging more with the niche. Right now, we just kind of engage through listener mail, excuse me,

and it's just not quite enough for me. So we're coming up and developing some ideas for how we can get you guys more involved as part of what would be kind of cannon fodder, but then also disseminating this information to more people and in a different way. Part of it's going to be within Gatewalkers itself. Part of it will be through Discord and through social media and stuff like that. So you guys will see and recognize its pieces. But the weekly show that you hear now next week is going to be the last app for a little, for a hiatus, maybe forever, but we don't really know. Can't always find its way back from the ashes. Right, exactly.

Certainly under the name Cannon Fodder, you're not going to see that in January. We can say that safely and for sure. So as it develops, we'll keep you posted. Stay tuned to the State of the Nation for Troy to maybe have some more details about new and upcoming shows, programs, what have you that we're going to be rolling out as Cannon Fodder sort of disseminates into other things on the network. Disseminates isn't the right word. Disseminates?

Yeah. What's the right word? It's the word. It sounds like dis- Disintegrates? Disintegrates into something else. Disperse, no, not that. Disseminate is like to talk about something. To talk about something, yeah. But there's a word. What is the word?

It compartmentalizes and splits up. What's the word for that? It like becomes... It's a dis. It's a dis word. Disperse. It could disperse. Disperse.

Yeah. Colin. Let us know. It's going to drive me nuts. Write it in the chat. Yeah, write it in the listener mail. It'll never be on again. No. We'll figure out the word and get back to you. It's going to drive me nuts. Write it in the chat. Yeah, write it in the listener mail. It will never be on again.

No. We'll figure out the word and get back to you. Let's talk about Impossible Landscapes before I move on to Glass Cannon Podcast, Episode 61. We had the finale last night. Not going to say anything about it, but it wrapped up a three-year campaign. So it's big news. Big news here internally for us.

I'm very excited about it. But it wrapped up a three-year campaign. So it's big news, big news here internally for us. I'm very excited about it. The players are very excited to have completed this story. Those of you that are already finished the finale and are listening to this, I hope you loved it. But we are, I am going to hop on to Discord and do a little AMA next week. I feel like it's going to be great. We used to do a little AMA next week. I feel like it's gonna be great. You know, we used to do a

debrief. You know, I used to write these debriefs where I would go behind the scenes of the game and stuff like that. And I stopped doing that for various reasons, a lot of which is like on this long form campaign, I couldn't put out a lot of behind the scenes stuff and changes that were being made because the players were still in the midst of that story that investigation. Well, now that story is over and I can feel free to lay out anything any questions you have and walk all through it Hopefully gonna have some fun guests. This is gonna be next Monday December 9th at 7 p.m Eastern on discord. So this is gonna be a discord AMA. It's not gonna be streamed live on twitch or anything like that You're gonna have to be

You're gonna have a basic Naish membership to hang out and be part of the AMA. We're going to set up a Discord stage. You're going to be able to send in your questions, maybe even come up on stage, talk about the campaign questions you might have. And yeah, hopefully we get some players there to chime in as well. But I will definitely be there. 7pm Eastern Time, Monday, December 9th, a Impossible Landscapes finale AMA on Discord. Please, please be there and hang out and let's have a great time.

Oh, one more little tidbit to put on a save the date. I'll talk about it again next week in Cannon Fodder. People have also been asking about the blood of the wild Christmas party the blood of the wild Christmas party returns This year and that is gonna be on Friday, December 20th. Yeah, Friday December 20th 8 p.m. Eastern live on twitch So save the date for that a lot more info on that next week possibly. Oh Okay, we got a lot going on. I got a lot going on. It's the holiday season.

The holiday season. It's the holiday season. And yeah, we got a lot going on. So let's dig into episode 61, Before Little We Are, Stupid and Listener Mail. Episode 61, phenomenal episode from your perspective, in my opinion. I think you did a fantastic job of what is, when you boil it

down, a very difficult thing to do. Episode 61 represents the true start of a campaign essentially, right? Of this part of the campaign, of a chapter. But it's done in such a way that like the way this book started was not the traditional starting of a book. You're harried, you're in combat, all you're doing as a GM is stat blocks and trying to figure out how to navigate Matthew's insane decision making. Once that's over though, you have the cooldown and you have to actually introduce the story of this part of the campaign and you also have to

transmit communicate to your players Disseminate to them essentially what their next options are Here's where the adventure goes and I'm not gonna railroad you I'm going to give you some options as to what to pursue next as part of this growing mystery. I think you did a masterful job of it. I'm going to skip to the end, to close to the end, just to give you an overview, listeners, of what I sort of narrowed down to what ended up being revealed to us.

We're sitting in this camp with the Smiling Wolves. We meet their leader, Matt's very cool, very interesting, dynamic, multi-layered character in my opinion. And we get a, and through that and Sakawatchi and Sakawatchi's friend, Amora, what's her name? I can't remember. Inamora? Inamora.

We understand more about their missing friends. And what it all adds up to is, boils down to, I should say, is three main things. We can go to the camp of the Hobgoblin Raiders who initially attacked us, find their home base and take out their leader. We could- Enuma, sorry. Enuma, sorry. Yes.

Go to that Hobgoblin Raider camp and take out their leader. We could investigate some people that were seen in the marketplace in Skywatch that are unidentified. They were seen by some smiling wolves. From afar, the smiling wolves did not engage because they were nervous. And they were speaking to someone that was wearing the same type of clothes as Sakawachi and Onuma. So they think like, if your friend may have made friends, but we were outnumbered, we didn't go there.

Could be one of them. Yeah. So all of these are leading to hopefully Sakawatche's people, but you help me, we help you sort of thing. Right. And then one more. One of Sakawatche's people also was seen walking out of the borders of Skywatch,

leaving the city. And also one of Mat Matt's Smiling Wolves also walked out at a different time, maybe after this person perhaps, and also has not returned or has not been seen again. So we can leave the city, we can go to the market or we can go to the Obsidian Path, Obsidian Oath, Raider Camp and take out the leader. With these options in front of us, we have to, we end the episode essentially. So what I want to kind of hear you talk about Troy is just how you disseminate these things. What is your approach when you see, now, were there more options than you gave us? Did you give us all the options the adventure gives us?

You know, what was your approach to not overwhelm us all at once and make it seem inorganic in how this information is being communicated? Yeah. I mean, I don't want to say if there was more or less because that could give away information you're not supposed to have, but I feel like three is a good number, right? So there was more. Well, I just feel like three doesn't seem overwhelming. Exactly.

I think as a GM, when you're in that sandbox situation Sometimes it's nice to narrow down the choices for the players Give them a few less choices give them choices, but a few less it'll help it Choices get made you spread it too far. You have one person One member of the party each wanting to do a different thing now we can't, how are we gonna vote on this? Everybody's split, is it, you know? So anyway, continue. Yeah, you know, like this is not my favorite stuff to prep.

You know, I really, it dogs me. I don't like doing it. I procrastinate doing it because it's so open-ended. Prepping a dungeon, it's so, even if they're non-linear, you know what's gonna happen in each room. You know what I mean? If there are non-social encounters, you kinda gotta learn the monster,

you gotta learn the hazard, you gotta understand the shape of the room, maybe come up with a game plan. You prep that, it's pretty black and white. But prepping these things where there's so many- Like an NPC camp. NPC camp and you've got these other NPCs that you're with and you're trying to find other NPCs.

I got to play all these fucking characters like this is where, like this is right up Skids Alley. I mean he loves this. He's got a new voice for every single one of them. Like to me it's just I'm trying to, I don't enjoy doing that. I like, I'm just trying to think about like how just I'm trying to – I don't enjoy doing that. I'm just trying to think about like how can I keep this clean? How can I keep this neat and clean but also give the sense that like there's a lot of

people here. You know what I mean? And honestly, doing – playing a lot of Call of Cthulhu has helped ease my suffering a little bit because I don't worry about too much. I just think about the broad strokes. I know that maths is an important person. I know that Sakawatche and Enuma are important. I want to make sure I have them fleshed out enough so that you feel like you're creating

some sort of relationship with them and then just be ready if you guys latch on to something I say about like another person is making meat and you're like, I want to talk to that guy making meat. I don't have anything prepped for the guy making meat and you're like, I want to talk to that guy making meat. I don't have anything prepped for the guy making meat, but if something I said triggers that, I just got to be ready to flow with that. And that's either going to be a silly role play, like I'm just going to do something silly to make you laugh,

or I'm going to, in that role play, try to bring you into something else in the story. Give you some other information. And sometimes both. But for the most part, I try not stressing too, too much about it. I try to actually prep less. I just want to understand the big topics, make sure that I get Matt's personality across, make sure that you're strengthening your relationship with Sakawatchi so that you have a reason to

help him go find his friends. Also create this sense of foreboding. Like, okay, it seems like you can trust the smiling wolves now, but can we? Like, it's just a lesson. Keep them guessing. A lot to balance, but I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, I thought it was great because I felt like – now, there are things I didn't like that I'll get into in a second. Yeah, please. Now, there are things I didn't like that I'll get into in a second. But I feel like the overall approach is a really good execution of the way I would approach

it because I also do not like these situations as a GM. An NPC market, an NPC camp, and it just makes me sick to my stomach. I feel so nervous to prep it because you feel like you have to prep all these people. I think a good shorthand is, and you've said this essentially, but I'm just going to narrow down the concepts a little bit. First thing I do is I look at what is the ultimate story objective here? What are we trying to communicate? In this case, I think what we're trying to communicate is one, shared interests,

right? Things that can line up with the PCs so that they don't feel like mercenaries per se, no pun intended or no coincidence intended, where they don't feel like they're doing something for money, but also where they feel like they're advancing their story while also advancing somebody else's story. Figure out, you know out that that needs to be communicated, what the actual missions are that the PCs get to choose from, and then pick one NPC to flesh out. In this case, it would be Matt. Don't worry about all the other people in the camp. Even if some of them are detailed in the adventure, just sort of play that by ear and be loose

with it. When the PCs do approach an NPC that you did not prepare, just some random person in the camp, the best way to approach that is try to think in your head really quick of one word to describe a personality, right? Happy-go-lucky or positive or creepy or sullen, whatever it is. Just think of one word and then just play that one thing while using it to just give them information on the mission, more information that they haven't gotten yet. Maybe something that they actually needed to roll over knowledge for but you didn't

make them because you're just like, this is an interesting way to get this out. Or you could just be silly, get a laugh and let them know like this person doesn't know anything. You know, those are two ways to go about it. But if you're not comfortable thinking you can make people laugh, then use that person to communicate some more information about the potential. You know, oh, I overheard so and so talking about, you know, somebody left the city last night. Right? Like, that's all you have to say.

Who said that? Oh, and then you point to an NPC you know and say, talk to them, whatever. Yeah, I think that ultimately, you don't need to prep everybody. You just need to prep what are the three decisions you're going to give the PCs by the end and use wherever the PCs go to get them that information. You don't have to force it down their throat. And that's why I think you did a really good job with it. Felt organic. We talked for a while just among ourselves. And then Sakawachi strolled over.

Right around the time you felt like this role play has kind of come to an end. Yeah. The characters talking around the campfire thing has kind of played itself out. So I'll have Sakawa come over now and say, hey, so we were talking to Mats. We think that they might be hiding something

about one of our, seeing one of our people. And that creates interest. Now we want to go back and talk to the NPC. So yeah, anyway, it's a challenge, I think, for any GM. Like you said, Skid loves it because he can just embody these people. But I definitely find it challenging and it helps me to boil it down to quest objectives

and then back from there, figure out how I want to play the NPCs. Yeah. I mean, for me, it's just as a perfectionist, it drives me nuts to prep because I can't prep it the way I can prep other things. So I just have to leave it up to chance and trusting in our group's ability. But I do find that there's a lot of artistic satisfaction that comes from that. The more that I do it, the more that we do it. It's just like just leave it up to the – have trust in the group, have trust in yourself

to just kind of see what happens and not try to plan everything down the same way you would plan an encounter. Every time we do these and it works out well, it continues to build confidence both in me and in the team that we can just roll with it. You'll see in coming episodes how this issue continues to evolve with my prep for it, or lack thereof. All right, cool. All right, let me get into the things that I don't really

like, and this is going to be kind of over the top, tongue in cheek a little bit. So there's a point at which we're talking to Hubert, and he takes up like 10 freaking minutes talking about not understanding what gruhastha is, all that. And it's an interesting role play. But I'm listening to it and I'm thinking, like, what are you doing, LaValle? Like what's going on here?

Like, are you just buying time because you don't know, like, what to do next in the adventure? Are you trying to, like, extend this out, like, keeping Hubert, you know, being silly around us? Or are you, like, I'm trying to delve into Brother Ramius's knowledge of his deity. Like what's going on? What's going on? I'm trying to get you to talk about why this is important to you.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like that's what he's doing there by Hubert sort of being very, you know, atheistic in his approach. Like why would anyone worship a goat? It kind of gets you to, maybe you haven't even thought about these things yet. To vocalize. You know, atheistic in his approach, like, why would anyone worship a goat? It kind of gets you to, maybe you haven't even thought about these things yet.

To vocalize, yeah. So like why, why he did this? You know, a lot of people, they grew up Christian and you ask them, are you Christian? Yeah, yeah, I was baptized Christian, I grew up Christian. Well, do you go to church every week? No. Do you still believe in God? I don't know.

Like you just kind of were given it. Is that the case with Ramius? Was he just – he was re-raised, grew hostin, raised grew hostin and then was like, do I go to college or I join the monastery? And then I get into the monastery. I think that making you think about those things, I can use Hubert as like a vessel to have you role play a little bit more about Ramius' why. I think it's easy for clerics to be like, I worship Desna.

Any other questions? All right, let's go on. Anybody need healing? Here's my butterfly. I think it'd be more, it's more interesting to have you kind of, even if you haven't fully thought it out, start to think about those things. And so I can use an NPC to get you to do it.

Yeah, getting down to PCs wise is a very important thing for a GM. Especially in this adventure. Yeah, especially in this adventure where that's been lacking a little bit. And the, whatchamacallit. And also, pointing out and exploring the nuances of faith is very important.

Everybody's faith is very different. So kind of like fine tuning that and getting a handle on that is great. Another thing that I didn't like is the, and this is again, just me being picky, a little tongue in cheek. This Barnes and Oster steving battle shit. It drives me fucking nuts. Hate it. Hate it.

With a passion of a thousand suns. And I, I mean, it takes all my energy. Passion of a thousand suns. It takes all my energy. It's a thousand. It takes all my energy not to tell Francis. Cut all of it. I fucking hate it. I don't like it.

I don't know who out there likes it. You know, there might be some people. Fucking 70% of people that listen to this love it. Other people are you and I. But I mean, I don't know. I'm fighting my fucking tongue. This is what I imagine all other actual play podcasts. So maybe we need more of this nonsense.

I think it's so dumb. I think I can see people, listeners having so much fun with it, being like, this is hilarious. This is awesome. I'll give it one benefit. One positive that I'll give it is like it builds relationships, which is something that has been struggling a little bit in this adventure. It can help with that, but I'm sitting there as a player and I'm just like, rep this up. I just want to get on with our story that is interesting and not rolling dice against each other and stealing stuff.

I hate stealing too. I hate inner party stealing. Hate it. Even if you're just trying to be funny, I hate it. Now compare something as benign as this to Sir Will and Della and the Demon's Blood. A lot of people didn't like that, but holy shit, is that's Blood. You know what I mean? A lot of people didn't like that, but holy shit, is that interesting. You know what I mean?

Like that, to me, look for those moments. Now, if this silly game evolves into something else, great. But at its heart, I feel like it's too surface. Like, find a way to go deeper if you wanna do something like this. Otherwise, it just feels like, I don't know, silly, silly role. Obviously these are our friends we're shitting on. But I should be still like it.

You and I just don't like that shit. We're being a little, we're definitely being over the top. It's not something that- They have no chance to defend themselves. Right, and plenty of people like that play style. And plenty, like you said, of more than our audience that likes it, then doesn't. Like I totally get that.

People find it fun and funny. I'm just being honest. Like, as a player, I sit at the table. And it's not the kind of thing that bothers me enough that I have to say something. I don't need to say anything. But I just am sitting there like, can't wait till this is over. Because mainly, because the episode is long, and it's a long episode. And I'm just trying to get to the story. Like, I just want to get to the story. These diversions are sometimes extremely important to develop character. This one just didn't feel like one of those. Didn't feel extremely important to develop character. But yeah, anyway, just throwing that out there. Yeah, I can't even verbalize what fully why I hate it. But you and I are the same page. Just like, yeah, cut out this child's play. It's just a gut reaction. Yeah, and and like I said before it's not just about Matthew and Sydney

It's also about it's it's also more about Asta honestly like it's the Nester effect I hated being with Nester sometimes as a character even though Nester's a very interesting character I'd be like I hate being with a thief thief you can't trust in your own party. It never was fun for me. I never had fun with that kind of character. Eris and Ethel, right? That went too far. When it started or the buildup to it and then obviously the sex scene that happened, was

that this year? Like, huge. Afterwards, huge. It was amazing. And then we took it too far. You know, it kept going too long without any evolution. Do you know what I mean? It was just, it's continued without, it has to evolve. It has to change. Otherwise you just kind of, you're starting something and it has to go somewhere. So maybe they'll take it somewhere.

Maybe they'll evolve it, but like start bigger and then you've got a bigger swing to evolve. And if this is the kind of thing that builds a Barnes and Osta friendship, like over a long period that makes them tied together emotionally, that's good. That's great. But yeah, for me, it's just a combination of two things I don't like. Silliness that diverts the story for too long without a point,

and inner party stealing. I fucking hate stealing potions from people in camp while they're sleeping or like, oh, we just got a treasure hall and like, I don't tell the party what the treasure is. Oh, stop it. Stop it. Stop doing that. Don't ever do that in your games. Don't ever do that in your games. All right, let's see what Professor Eric thinks as we get to a little wee. Ah, stupid. We are stupid. Thanks, good buddy, Nick. Professor Eric right off the bat says he hates the Barnes and Osta thieving guy. No, that's not true. Professor Eric always being the professor tends to take a little bit of a He actually did talk about it. He did talk about it. He said I know you've had successes with these stories in the past aka

Nestor I felt this one was completely safe and was fun But it's still beyond a simple bet over a rune Of course if Asta was to steal for example Barnes mirror right before you know Like they went into a fight trying to be funny that could be disastrous. Yeah, right He says I'm curious if you all think it would just be a fun topic to riff on. What allows it to work without destroying the party or derailing the AP? I think we just did that. We kind of just had that conversation, you know, showing you what we like and don't like about it, where its potential lies, where its potential falls, faults lie.

It can go a lot of different ways. But yeah, Professor Eric definitely pointed it out as like, this is something gaming tables deal with, right? Like there's a thief in the party, or there's some inter-party conflict that does not seem personal between the players. It really does seem genuinely like they're playing their characters and they feel like there might be some conflict here to explore. That's fine, but you got to be very, very careful because at the end of the day, you

are playing a cooperative strategy, tactical strategy game. And you don't want to really upset people by getting their character killed while you're goofing around. They're just something to think about. And then the last point on We Are Stupid is rituals, which we brought up in this episode, did not do a ritual, but we started the conversation with Asta having this lucky coin ritual. I believe it's called Lucky Month. Lucky Month. Lucky Month, yeah.

And asking if Brother Ramius could become the primary caster in this thing. So a couple of things to point out before we get to listener mail on rituals, should this come up in the future. It sounds, to Professor Arcee says, it sounds like Asta is being allowed to already know it and to teach Ramius slash Ramius can refer to his books. That sounds great to me. And all seems within the rules. He says secondary casters are required for these things and not optional. Success on secondary casters is a no op. What am I missing? Success on secondary casters is a no-op. I don't know what that means. Not a bonus. Remember, oh, this is important. Remember that multiple critical successes don't stack. Multiple failures don't stack. A critical success can partially cancel out a failure.

And then he says, in general, rituals that require multiple secondary casters are more likely than not to lead to a penalty on the primary check than lead to a bonus. That makes sense because a failure is a penalty and a critical failure is a big penalty. A success is no change, which I guess he means by no op. Then a critical success is the only way you get a benefit or a bonus. This is interesting though. The DCs. Usually rituals leave DC off their write-up. The general rules for rituals outline the primary check is usually a very hard check

for a level DC to double the spell rank. So lucky month is a level two ritual. You use a level four DC 19 plus the very hard adjustment, which makes it a 24 DC. The secondary checks are a normal DC for the same level. So the secondary checks are DC 19. This is all being done after the next episode where we will dig into this a little bit and we will not get this part quite right. Everything else is pretty much dead on, but we will not get quite right.

The very hard adjustment to the DC, which I went back and looked at the player core and that is correct. It says as part of rituals, just in general, it says generally they're very hard upgrade to the DC for the level that they are. So that makes sense. Anyway, if you hear it and you hear us not get that right, we know it now, but we didn't at the time of recording. Yeah, so that was it.

Obviously heavy role play episodes, not a lot of listener, not a lot of we are stupid. Let's move forward to listener mail. It's time for listening to mail. You gotta get your brain off on it. Time for listening to mail. You gotta cue that fuck-a-ditty. Good buddy, Nick! You're the best. Thanks for the song. Let's get to James in New Zealand who asks, very simply, we've had three very good seasons of Get in the Trunk doing the Impossible Landscapes campaign and after such a long and awesome

campaign will we get a debrief at the end? Boom! Asked and answer James. I'd really like to know the GM and player thoughts after such an amazing three seasons. Well, thank you, James. I appreciate the kind words and your question. James from New Zealand, Monday at 9 or 7pm Eastern time, which is probably going to be ended end up being like 10am Tuesday your time, something like that. So keep an eye out and join us please on Discord. Now remember, to join it, you have to be a member of the niche, you got to go over to Supercast, you got to get there through our website to

join the niche.com. They basic membership for you know, front level lowest tier membership will get you into the Discord and into that stage if you want to join us. And heck, you could even get brought up on stage and talk. I mean, it's going to be a really fun open forum AMA on impossible landscapes. So please come by. You know, and also if you for any reason haven't joined the Niche, we're still doing the 30 day free trial.

You could sign up for the 30 day free trial with the code GCN30. You can sign up for the free trial with the code GCN30. You can sign up for that membership, listen and then cancel if you don't want to listen. Although that'd be kind of foolish. So much content. Yeah, that's true. I mean, so many of the listeners of Get in the Trunk are already NACE basic members. That's what you get at that tier. You get this podcast. But perhaps you watch on YouTube and you're not a member of the NACE yet. That's fine.

You can get this 30-day free trial and join the AMA. That also means, for those of you that are like a little bit behind and are on the Discord already and everything, get caught up. You've got, what, six days now, five days, to get caught up and finish so that you're not spoiled and you can come and hang out at the AMA Monday, December 9, 7 PM Eastern.

Now, why did you do it at 7 AM? just because you're mad at your wife and you want to punish her by making her put the kids to bed herself? 7 p.m. Eastern. I'm not sure if you – are you not aware of how amazing we are at bedtime? You guys are really good at bedtime. We crushed it. We crushed it when they were babies and now they can just – they go brush their teeth, they go lay down, they turn their light off 30 minutes later after reading, and we never go up there again. It's amazing. It's a bed time. It's a zoo, man. It's three maniacs. They all want to stay up as long as humanly possible. They all have their own separate bedtime ritual. That's why no one has ever put our

children to sleep besides us for the past six plus years. and they all have their own separate bedtime ritual. That's why no one has ever put our children to sleep besides us for the past six plus years. It's a dangerous thing to get into. I know. To be beholden to these rituals that are not comfortable for you. It's like – My wife and I, our ninth anniversary, wedding anniversary is next week and we want to go out on a date. So her folks are going to be in town. We're going to wait till her dad's here and we'll put the kids to bed and then we'll leave at 830 to drive an hour somewhere because we can't, it's just the kids won't, they're used to us. We'll take that bandai off but it must be nice. It must be nice. I mean, I don't know. It might prevent me.

We've got our host of issues. But one thing that we've always done well around here is bedtime. Bedtime has always been one of our strong suits. So yeah, it's actually, I want to start it earlier so that I don't feel like I have to end it at a certain time. If it's going and fun and everybody's still engaged, I want it to be able to go late.

So I wanted to start it early. Also, I know there's a lot of listeners like James in New Zealand. I know there's a lot of international listeners too. 7 PM is still very late in Europe, but like at least it gives them a chance if they want to tune in at midnight, you know, hang out for a little bit.

But I didn't want to start it at, you know, two in the morning Europe time. So yeah, started it a little earlier. Maybe I'll pop by late and immediately ruin the mood. That would be very Roger of you. But it would get a good laugh. It would get a good laugh. All right, one more question and then we'll get out of here

from Bevo in Michigan. This is going back a long ways Bevo, thank you for your patience here. But I dug up this one especially as we get into, we've been talking a lot about Gatewalkers, we've been talking about pros and cons, and now we're talking about entering a whole new chapter, the difficulties and challenges that come with introducing so many new concepts to an already existing campaign that already has its own threads. You're just going to add more and more and more to it. Bevo from Michigan says, I've heard Troy talk before about having ADD. What

sort of advice can we give for staying on task and getting through a long campaign book as a GM? What are the things you do to stay interested in your own campaigns over long periods of time? First of all, I don't have ADD. I might. But I think you have some level of it. I think we all do. Yeah, I don't have ADD. I might. But if I said that. I think you have some level of it. I think we all do. Yeah. I certainly do.

But yeah, no, if I have said that, it was tug and cheek. Because there are people that legit suffer from ADD. Right. You shouldn't put yourself in that. Yeah. Me neither. I wouldn't put myself in that category. But how do I organize?

You know, I really don't. And it might be just because we have so much going on. I kind of compartmentalize everything. I have to in my position because I've got the business side and I've got the creative side and the performer side. I don't really think about Gatewalkers until it's time to think about Gatewalkers. Usually that's one to three days before we record next. We record on average twice a month.

The rest of the time I'm not really thinking about Gatewalkers and then when I dive in, my prep is really just based around what I think we're going to do at the next session. I'm not thinking too, too far in advance. Maybe some things will come up like, oh, that's an interesting idea and I'll jot it at the end of my word doc just as like a thing or I'll think of like, oh, that would be something really cool to do in the final episode of Gay Walkers. And so I'll jot that in my thoughts. But like for the most part, I'm not thinking too far in advance. I'm just kind of rolling with it and rolling with what the players do. This next section in particular. You've also said, sorry to interrupt, but you also said that you don't read, you know,

in Gatewalkers you happen to, it was a three book EP, you just happen to have the time because you knew the way it went. But dude, I don't remember what happens after Skywatch. And so like you don't try to keep reading ahead. I think part of the way you stay interested is by just reading what's next and not focusing on such a big long thing that you feel like you have to point to at any given moment, always teasing the upcoming ending and stuff like that. No, just focus on what's novel and fresh in front of the characters each session. Yeah, like for Strange Aeons, I would just prep

one floor of the Mysterium at a time. If I thought you were going to go into the next floor, I would prep the beginning of that floor. Then once you went to that floor, I'd prep the rest because I just knew that like prepping that floor is going to give me enough material to work with. So I really dive deep into that floor and not think about like, oh, what are they going to do when they get to the next floor? So right now I'm very focused on everything that's happening at Skywatch. But at the same time as I was giving you guys those options, I was like, man, I hope they pick this one over this one because I'm better prepared with this option than I am

this one. So as much as I prep, even I feel like I'm not fully prepped for everything. But I have the benefit of if you guys are like, we're going to do this, I can ask you between sessions, what do you think you're going to do first? We're going to do this. I can ask you between sessions, what do you think you're going to do first? We're going to do this. I'd be like, give me a second. I think you recorded both of those on one day. And I can't remember what you guys decided.

But I do remember being like, I'm going to need some time here just to look at that. Now, if I had, if that was the last recording of the day, then I've got weeks to think about it. But I'll still wait till the fucking night before to look at that. Now if I had – if that was the last recording of the day, then I've got weeks to think about it but I'll still wait till the fucking night before to really dig in. But yeah, I don't really think big. I just think small. I try to really think about everything that needs to happen in where they're at and

then just let the rest unfold. The problem that that gets into is if you move through things quickly, which we rarely do, you might not be prepared for the next thing. That happens from time to time. It happened more in Giant Slayer than it happens in our shows now just because I was prepping that Soap Peacemeal and really didn't know what was happening in the following book. Yeah, I'm not a great organizer. I have one word doc.

I don't have spreadsheets and docs. Maybe I should. Foundry has made the prep so much easier as well, just having all the monsters there. I always think I'm going to be more like take better notes both as a player and as a GM. Then once I start doing it, I'm just kind of in the flow. I I don't take a lot of notes and think about the the big picture But at a certain point I'll have to write like when we get to you know Benchmark episodes like episode 100 people gonna be expecting certain things the finale

I had some cool ideas But you know I just focus on what is important right now because if you go broad and think about too much, you're not going to get into enough detail of what's actually important which is the next session. Right. To answer your question from my perspective, Bevo, I just finished a long campaign in Delta Green. It's not as long as these pathfinder ones but you get the idea. My focus and you say staying on task, to me there's a danger in saying staying on task needs to keep the larger scope of the campaign in view at all times. That I think it can be a little bit of an unreasonable goal and can be tiring for

a GM and you can just get distracted from it. So the ON only on task that I would do in Delta Green as I prepped before an episode is I would just go through the four characters. That's all I would do. I would go through the four PCs and I would just look at what is the next sort of challenge that needs to get put in front of them and how do I resolve that with where they're currently at in the book. You just give them one challenge per session, one to two challenges per session that you have pre-prepared just to kick them off and let them sort of develop their own challenges, which they will do inevitably in Delta

Green. And then you just kind of roll with it. And instead of always trying to focus on the main campaign, just focus moment to moment with the characters and you're going to end up getting a lot more character depth. You're going to end up getting a lot more humor and fun situations that you weren't planning. And eventually, you know, you'll work your way to the end. I guess the whole point is like, don't have an end in mind too soon. You really even as we got to the end of Impossible Landscapes, everything that I was doing was just what's the next challenge in front of the character that they have to pick a choice between this or between this? You know, give them two clear, hard choices that isn't just like a very easy like, oh,

do I want to live or do I want to die? Right? Like give them tough choices and force them to make it. And if you just do that once a session, I think everybody's going to have a lot of fun. So that's that's all you got to do. And that's going to wrap it up. We're gonna we're gonna finish it up there one more week of FOD, which is crazy, crazy news to drop on folks. But you know, it's gonna be there in all different ways. Don't worry. In fact, it's going to be even

more so interactive than it has been in the past. And it's going to be great to mix it up a little bit more with the niche and hear your voices like we've been doing a talk nerdy town hall in our discord and stuff like that there's been so much fun and so that has just inspired me and Troy to kind of change the way that we're developing these kind of talk back shows where we give you some more insider information there's a lot of different ways to disseminate that. I don't know what the word is. I'm looking at words that start with dis right now and I can't think of it. I can't think of it. Well, that's going to do it for us, Nate.

Thank you so much for hanging out as always. You guys are the best. It's been an absolute pleasure and we got one FOD left. So tune in next week for a look back at episode 62 of the GCP, along with of course some listener mail and I'm sure we'll hear from Professor Eric. So until then, take it easy everybody, have a great weekend weekend, and we'll see you next time. Bye!

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