The Glass Cannon Podcast - Glass Cannon Radio #10 – D&D's Sigil, Ranking the Greatest Action Heroes, Maps in TTRPGs

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

The guys discuss WOTC's layoffs of 90% of the developers on the Sigil VTT before opening the discussion to how we all use maps in general. Are they even necessary? Also, the guys rank their top 5 action heroes of all time. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/ezco9j7Sqis Access exclusive podcasts, ad-free episodes, and livestreams with a 30-day free trial with code "GCN30" at jointhenaish.com. Join Troy Lavallee, Joe O'Brien, Skid Maher, Matthew Capodicasa, Sydney Amanuel, and Kate Stamas as they tour the country. Get your tickets today at https://hubs.li/Q03cn8wr0. For more podcasts and livestreams, visit https://hubs.li/Q03cmY380. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra now at Samsung.com. You are listening to the Glass Cannon Radio with your hosts Jared Logan and Joe O'Brien. Oh hello! It was a drive by fruiting! Little Mrs. Doubtfire reference to kick us off. Today we are talking Mrs. Doubtfire and all Mrs. Doubtfire on Glass Cannon Radio. Full two hours on Mrs. Doubtfire. What is it?

You have a need a Doubtfire, dear. That's right. So get your Mrs. Doubtfire comments ready. I'm just kidding. Hello, my name is Jared Logan. This is Joe O'Brien. Welcome to Glass Cannon Radio. The show Joe O'Brien. Welcome to glass cannon radio The show where you the nays get to sound off on all of the geek topics of the day and sometimes geek

topics of other days like far in the past or Somewhere in the amorphous future Welcome. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening or watching Joe, how's it going? What's up, buddy? Going great dudes going great Uh, welcome. Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening or watching Joe. How's it going? What's up, buddy? Going great, dude. It's going great.

I just got back from a little glass cannon live tour. Uh, and so funny, cause you just were in the twin cities and that's where we were. We were in the twin cities and also Milwaukee. It was phenomenal. And I got to go to Gary con for the first time. Well, Gary con action. So I returned to the birthplace of D and D. I saw Lake, I walked the streets of Lake Geneva. Yeah.

I walked the streets of Lake Geneva for the first time. I walked by Gary Gygax's house when he created D and D. I saw the original location of the first gen con is at the Lake Geneva horticultural center and the still there. He created D&D. I saw the original location of the first Gen Con. Is it the Lake Geneva Horticultural Center? And it's still there. It's a horticultural center now? Yeah. It's a horticultural center.

Wait, was it at the time? Was it a horticultural center at the time? I think it was. I don't know my history. I think it was. I think it was an event space. I don't know if it was renamed, but it was definitely that building. And I think it was, even then it was just an event space, but it was one block from his house. And that's like why

they had it there. And you could just picture it. You could just picture them like rolling boxes and boxes of war miniatures down the street to go to this first gen con. You know, it was really right. Yeah, that's amazing. And here you go. Uh, viewers, listeners, you get a little extra nerd travel log right in the banter. Right in the bant, right in the bant, it was awesome. Right up in the bant. Well, what have I been up to since you asked? Um, let's see.

Your nose is looking better, your body is healing. It's working. Yes, yes. Yes. Finally I have my beautiful face back. Cause it's just been days of me going, my face and like cracking mirrors, you know? Yes.

And then like, like sitting in a plastic surgeon's chair in a warehouse going, fix it. But now it's back to normal. Thanks to some surgeons. And I'm happy to be back to my 100% full self. Should we talk about what we're going to do today? Let's talk about what's on the show today. So today we are going to talk about the, well, let's call it what it is, the failure of Wizard of the Coast and D&D's new virtual tabletop system sigil.

They just laid off 90 workers. I believe it was who were 90% of 90% sorry, 30 workers. 30 workers, 90% of their workforce because, because it's, it's sort of dead on arrival. So we'll kind of talk about that and what that means. Then we're going to get into, you know, we talked about tech and tabletop a couple episodes ago. This time we're gonna talk about the VTTs

versus maps and markers, mats and markers versus theater of the mind debate. What do you use? Do you ever play theater of the mind games? What are the challenges of VTTs? And what are the challenges of using markers on a mat? We're going to get into that. So if you have opinions on that, raise your hand and get in there. Then, boy, this is exciting.

Joe and I have watched Jack Reacher. Yes, we did our homework. It's just ending its third season on Amazon prime. I wasn't able to get, I wasn't able to finish Jack Reacher. No, no, no. I just started Jack Reacher, but I've watched some Jack Reacher. And Jack Reacher has, you know, Jack Reacher is also novels. It's also a Tom Cruise franchise with two movies in it. So let's talk about Jack Reacher.

And that's really just to launch us into our ranking of the greatest action heroes of all time. We have action heroes in it and they're ranked. Okay, so it's who's the number one, who's the number two. And of course it is according to our personal preferences But we want to hear maybe your rankings as well and then finally To cap it all off. We have a very special happy birthday to a particular person in the nerdosphere Guys if you want to sound off on the show if you want to tell us your opinion if you want to correct us

to sound off on the show. If you want to tell us your opinion, if you want to correct us, let me get something wrong, then please, if you are a subscriber, go to our Discord and you can join the Glass Cannon radio stage and say hello, get on the show. If you are not a subscriber, you could do it right now in about, it takes about 15 seconds. Just go to jointhenation.com and join and you can be answering questions and calling in in just a couple of minutes. You can call in on this show. So all of that said, that's the whole spiel. Oh, what, uh, McD is saying what time is the show? What time is the show? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because people listen to this after the fact. Remember, if you wanna be on it live,

it's Wednesdays at noon Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific. So, just FYI. If you're watching this on YouTube later, I guess Google it, okay? Just Google when we're on, all right? I'm not responsible. People aren't gonna take the extra step to try to find you, Jared. You gotta tell them where you're gonna be. I'm not responsible for people who do YouTube later. You know what? What's really funny is I see people in the socials all the time

going, I watched on YouTube, but just so you know, you here's my comment. And I'm like, too late. You have to watch live. No, no, no. I love it. I love the YouTube comments after the fact. In fact, I've been thinking about this. I haven't even pitched this to you behind the scenes, but let's pitch it right up front.

I want to do a YouTube comment segment where we look back at previous episodes and bring out not just funny ones, but also some really good points that we never mentioned because we we can do a two hour show delving into these topics, talk about all these different angles, have multiple callers on it, and then still miss something. I can't believe nobody ever said that. And so I think a segment of looking back at some stuff based on the comments that people make would be a good segment. So I got to do that. I think that's a fantastic idea.

We're going to do that next That's a fantastic idea. We're going to do that. Uh, we're going to do that next episode. I just decided. Yeah, it's happening. Writing it down. Okay. It might not happen next episode, but it is important that you mentioned that sometimes we get things wrong or we miss some points, some major points because we're about to go into a news story.

And I just want to remind people that we are not journalists, but we are commentators. So we're going to give our opinion on what's going on with Sigil. And you can see I already got something wrong with the intro. They, yeah, 30 people, 90% of the workforce that was developing Sigil, the Dungeons and Dragons, Wizards of the Coast, virtual tabletop, they've been laid off. Sigil is now available to play and use, but a lot of the reviews are pretty bad. People are saying it's very buggy, that it has a lot of problems.

I read a bunch of articles about what its problems are, why it may have kind of have this sort of failure to launch kind of problem. Uh, Joe, what do you think? I mean, what, what do you think was the main misstep here that caused it all to go wrong? I don't really know what the misstep was. cost it all to go wrong. Or I don't really know what the misstep was. I know my gut feeling based on articles that I've read is that there was a certain or my gut feeling is that it was over ambitious.

I think that was the main problem is what they ultimately wanted to make was too hard to make with the budget that they had with how much money it would bring in. Right? So the investment into that, because here's the way I think about it now after reading. I think I mentioned this on Glass Cannon Radio several weeks back, right? When we first started, we were talking about what we were reading and stuff before we got into book club. And I was saying that I had read Blood, Sweat and Pixels, that nonfiction book about video game development. And as I was reading up on Sigil and learning that they were using the Unreal Blood, Sweat and Pixels that right nonfiction book about video game development and as I was reading up on sigil and learning that they were using the unreal engine and

Developing three-dimensional three-dimensional terrain. Yeah, which are all intents and purposes would have in my opinion the The look feel and vibe of a fully made video game. Absolutely. And now it wouldn't have all of the capabilities of a video game. It didn't need to. It could be kind of a little bit static here and there. You didn't have to have amazing animations, but the building of the structure for the user, for the user to build maps and utilize maps

and in a 3D terrain that looked amazing with lighting and interaction in the way that they wanted it. And for also it to be an also completely standalone product that was separate from D&D Beyond. I think that was the original intention. It would have interaction, but it would be a separate product. And for it to be its own VTT product in and of itself, it seemed like, of course it's going to be buggy. They didn't do anything, of course it's going to be buggy. They didn't do anything wrong. Like it's going to be buggy.

We've talked about this before with Civ that the first iteration of a new software product, a new game, it often has a lot of bugs or things that need to be fixed in the updates. Right? Exactly. So the first thing that you see the the alpha will say, is nowhere near expected to be ready and it's going to have tons and tons of bugs. My question is, how did they not know that they were going to have to see through a

long development period post alpha and beta of constant patches, constant fixes, constant updates. It's like, so to me, it can't be that they were like, oh man, this thing did not work. This thing is not as good as we thought it would be. We're laying off 90% of the work, the force. I think that it has something to do with the larger picture of this product is no longer important to the company for some reason. And I think that that reason is financial is my guess,

is that the motivation there is- It's gotta be a Hasbro problem because Hasbro laid off 1900 people in 2023. So that's almost a third of everybody that works at Hasbro, not wizards, but Hasbro. So let me just say, I mean, you know, above everything else we're going to talk about, it's a tragedy that people have lost jobs. That's, that's so my God. And, and especially in that most. And again, we're just speculating here, but I would speculate that almost everybody

on that team put unbelievable hours into the project and loved it and thought that they were making something groundbreaking for gamers and that they were going to be, you know, transported and that it was going to be so much more immersive and great for tabletop gaming. And, and I think that their goals were, were, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Not on a little unattainable. No, no, that they were like, they were in good spirits, right? I don't think the people working on this game were like, can't wait to see all the money I get. Like, I think they were really exciting.

Yeah, they were into it. They were in, I'm assuming they had to be into it. And to just get cut out like that, which what seems like a financial decision that who, I don't know, it may be very smart decision, unfortunately, because of the market for VTTs or maybe in development they realized the ambition of the project was going to far exceed what they could actually accomplish with 30 people. I don't really know, 30 some people. Yeah,

so it's such a shame first and foremost that those people have to get laid off after putting all that, you know, love into a project. And then to see the project is just like, it's never going to be what we set out for it to be. That's gotta be really disappointing. I mean, it may be even more of a Hasbro problem because at least one article that I read said that their reporting found that there was a lot of friction between Hasbro and the development team for this platform.

And that part of the problem was that Hasbro wasn't looking at it as just a tool for playing tabletop role playing games. Hasbro was looking at it as like this sort of video game platform that they could plug other IP into. So, whereas I think the team wanted to make a Dungeons and Dragons product, the company thought that they were making something that was more of sort of a big interactive video

game for a lot of properties. Let me ask you a question. This comes from Jen from Two Ends in Discord chat. She says, I don't understand what they could be making that is that much better than anything that's already out there. Uh, what's your initial response to that? My initial response is they're trying to make a three dimensional VTT that, as you said, looks like a video game. So graphics wise, it would be far above a roll 20 or a foundry where you're moving little two

dimensional tokens around the map. Yeah, now found where you think it can have depth, but it's still, it's not really a three dimensional, right? It doesn't look like you're moving around a PS five character, right? That's what what sigil would have looked like. It would have looked like you're moving around a PS five character. I question whether you need that for a tabletop role playing game. I think people are forgetting that tabletop role playing games are supposed

to take place somewhat in your imagination and in your mind. To me, maybe someone else disagrees. That is an integral part of them. And I think that that's really lost. And that this is a, that is a flaw in this design that they were trying to implement. Yeah, I feel. Also very hard to support. You know, if you play Roll20 or Foundry,

there's this whole game of trying to find the right map, the right terrain, the right monster tokens to fit the exact adventure you're running. With Sigil, you were going to be very limited because there wasn't going to be a lot of third party support. And if anybody wanted to provide third party support, their own monsters, their own terrain, their own maps to put in the game, it would require way more lift on their part to create this three dimensional, these three dimensional objects. So you are going to be stuck. I,

I, I shit you not probably with like 25 D and D monsters. Actually, you know what? I'm speaking out of the school. I don't know how many they had, but my guess is it was gonna be a very limited selection. And I'm, it's funny, I don't even think of that. I'm less concerned about monster design and how many monsters you have access to. And even though limiting that would obviously suck,

but more so like terrain, walls, doors, like all of that is very hard to craft to look beautiful from every angle and have it all shaded and have light work and hit everything in the correct way. When especially in RPGs- Apparently it's very hard to fit it together too. It's hard to, you're just the DM, the end user.

It's hard to get it fit together just right to look well. Exactly. And so, yes, I think it's great to get it fit together just right to look well. Exactly. And so, yes, I think it's great that you make that point that like, first and foremost, role playing games, tabletop role playing games, part of what makes them unlimited is that they live mostly in your imagination. That is what allows them to have much more of a spread than, uh, than, than, you know, your average RPG video game, even if it's a great video game, war historian on

play a video game. There are great RPG video games. Go and do that. If that's what you want, if you want a, like a game board that you cannot on the fly change to something else. If you want character designs to, to stay static and not throw in new enemies, like, cause the GM has decided to do it on the fly, go and play a video game. And I think that the designers and the Hasbro don't, don't get that.

I think they don't get it at all. I don't think Hasbro understands D and D even a little bit. I don't think Hasbro understands D&D even a little bit. I don't think they get it. War historian on Twitch says they wanted Baldur's Gate 3, the virtual tabletop. Yeah. And that is very possible. And I think that that's a great point. I think that here's my guess.

Okay. If I'm going to completely guess how this came to be. I think somebody in some room somewhere says, how is Dungeons and Dragons and Wizards of the Coast not in the VTT game? This doesn't make any sense. And somebody says that's absolutely right. And then they say, let's put together a plan. They put together a plan to make a product that or they you know, purchase part of an existing product, whatever, to have their own branded virtual tabletops.

So people, the entire experience from rule books down to the map you play on all is in one place has to go through us, right? Through no third parties, you know, through wizards. And then in those development conversations, people say, what if we did this? And what if we did, how do we differentiate ourselves from what's already in the market? But we gotta do this, and we gotta do this. And it's gonna be big, and it's gonna be groundbreaking,

and it's going to change tabletop role playing games for everyone in the world. And people are all like, hell yeah, this is awesome. How many people do we need to do this? I don't know, this amount. And how can we make money off this? Microtransactions, we'll get people to pay for every little upgrade, every little thing that they need to get. You know what I mean? Oh, this model worked for this game or that game.

This is going to be huge. And I don't know. That's why I said your first question was where did they misstep? I honestly don't know. Perhaps it was the moment they said, we need to do something that's never been done before in virtual tabletop. That kind of thing is, uh, it's great to say it sounds great in a meeting, but actually making it, you know, it can be really much more challenging than it seems at first. I mean, you know, easy for me to say sitting back in my chair, but to me, there is no virtual tabletop that is absolutely perfect though. Foundry comes close.

But it might have served them better to go and look at what other people are doing already and made the interface more intuitive. Make things easier and provide things in a, instead of trying to make a video game, make a great virtual tabletop. And I think that someone didn't understand what a virtual tabletop should be. Yeah.

And in my opinion, I think we agree on this associating a great virtual tabletop with great three-dimensional animated graphics, I don't think that those two things connect. I think a great virtual tabletop is something that is easy to use, something that is easy to build in and be original in and create something that you're excited to share, not only with your players, but maybe with a larger community. And there are other options out there that are doing this. I mean, yeah, when I use a virtual tabletop like Foundry or Roll20,

you know, I have a bunch of maps that I have stored, you know, if, if the players want to go somewhere, I didn't expect them to go. I can go, give me five minutes guys. And in five minutes, I can get that map up. I can get some monsters in there and I can do something improvised on the fly. And it just doesn't sound like you would have ever been able to do that with the 3D terrain and everything. Agreed. Let's talk to some folks.

Let's see what people have. If people have any thoughts on Sigil here, if they might know any, you know, more than we do. Singing Zombies here wants to talk. If you're there and able to come up and join us singing, can you hear us? Singing. Keeping up the, um, glass can and radio tradition of the first person we call on not being able to use their mic.

Thank you for keeping the streak alive singing. We need to have a catchphrase. We'll come back to you. When that happens. We'll come back to you have a catchphrase we use when that happens. We'll come back to you. How about door lock? I like that name. Door lock.

Door lock. Come on up, buddy. Come on up. There he is. Hello, can you hear me? Hello, door lock. We got you, door. How's it going?

Very well. Calling from Norway. Oh, awesome. In the barn with the cows, but, uh, I'll try to keep them silent. Wait, I'm sorry. Did you say with the cows? Yeah, I'm feeding the cows right now. It's amazing.

You work on a farm. Do you own a farm? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I own a farm. So, uh, small in American standards, but quite northerly Norway. Wow.

Incredible. Please go. Well, what does a farmer think of? Sitial. Well, actually I'm playing your role playing your later tonight. Uh, but I tried it the last week. Uh, it looks amazing but you need a really powerful computer to run it. I saw this mention in the articles.

Yeah my 4070 Ti got really hot and so if you want to play it on a laptop or something, I think you will have a great problem. Oh, that's very good. Yeah. No, please go. Yeah. And also, I think it's a project for a very niche part of the role playing game community because you need to invest enormous amount of time to build the maps and set up the adventure. So I don't know who it is for. Yeah, I mean, that's a great point.

Thanks for kicking us off with some good questions. Good luck with the cows. It is like, I didn't even think about that. So I don't know, Jared, do you know, if I say to you 4070 TI, does that mean anything to you? Of course. I know what that means. Explain.

Well, uh, pixels are a generative, uh, it's a, it's really a yard stick of your PC's RAM power. So just nailed it. I did read, I did read that, you know, you need a really, really powerful rig, souped up computer, a great rig to be able to run sigil. Yeah. And I didn't realize, and it's great to hear somebody thank you door lock for calling in and saying you actually tested it and has a

4070 Ti. So I currently have a previous generation, I think I have a 3070, I might even have a 2070, but like it's a pretty decent GPU. You know what I mean? Like it might be a year or two old, but it's pretty decent. A 4070 would be like amazing to have. And even that is running hot playing this. It's like, to me. And even that is running hot playing this. It's like, to me, it's just not worth it. It's not worth the stress, the effort to, to, now what I read is that they might with patches and updates, they might be able to get those requirements down, but the requirements are so high that even getting

them down wouldn't make it really accessible to most gamers. And then I really liked Dorlock's second point that it's going to be a small amount of people that can even do this because you need to spend an inordinate amount of time making the maps. And like you just were talking about earlier, it's like, what's better? An absolutely breathtaking map that took you forever to build or the ability to make an, okay, just fine serviceable map in five minutes for your players. When they

irritated in any hobby, that's like, guess what? You now have a part-time job. Like I think that that's absolutely egregious. Someone should be able to do this with a couple hours of, of recreation time. You know, like you should be able to prep this with a couple hours of recreation time. You know, like you should be able to prep a game. You should be able to prep a Dungeons and Dragons game in an hour. You should be able to do that.

And there are a lot of books that tell you how to do that. And you should be able to do that. Let's go back to singing. They've requested to speak again. You got it working yet? Singing? I don't know what to speak again. You got it working yet? Singing? I don't know what to tell you. They're-

Sorry singing zombies. You're not muted, but whatever you're talking into is not connecting to- You ain't singing today, boy! You ain't singing today, boy! Let's see what Squid has to say. Squid is in the audience today and might have something to add.

How do you feel? Hey, squid, very active in the socials. What's up, squid? I guess I am. Yeah, I changed my hand. It's just squid because every time Joe calls me great gray, I feel like he's addressing me as, I don't know, skinny white guy or something. So I have two thoughts. One, the eerie parallels to

the failed fourth edition VTT, which we can talk about if you want to. I think it's fascinating. But the other thing is, I mean, it really does seem like Hasbro just completely mismanaged this whole thing. I mean, the D&D Beyond team that is, you know, that's fully owned by them. They have a VTT that they have already developed called the Maps VTT, which is much simpler, right? It's a very simple VTT, but it integrates fully with the D&D Beyond. But nobody uses it. Am I, am I wrong about that?

No, you're exactly right. But, but the thing is, is that because they have their own in-house VTT there, they didn't want to work with the Sigil guys. So there's like this rift between the Sigil team and the D&D Beyond team who have all of the digital assets that I'm sure the Sigil team wanted to use. And this whole Sigil project came around the same time that they were saying that the monetization of D and D is what has to

be upped. And so everybody looking at this is like, well, this is just going to be a cash grab to try and get players that spend money in addition to GM spending money. And, and I mean, it really does seem to be completely mismanaged from the beginning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Capitalism run amok. I'm not familiar with this squid.

So for any of our listeners or viewers who are also unfamiliar with it, can you talk to us briefly about the fourth edition VTT collapse? Like what was the background on that? So this is a weird part of the D andD history because one of the things, okay, so classic objection of 4e is it's too video gamey, right? Well, part of the reason why it was developed in that fashion was that they intended from the beginning of 4e to have a VTT running along with it where everybody could access this online and play online just like they could

play in person and all the assets would be digital native and all this stuff. And the reason why they thought they could pull this off is they had this crazy, crazy good developer who had done these proof concepts for them that they thought they could make it work. And then a year before 4e is ready to launch, somewhere between six months and a year, I can't remember the exact time range, a year before 4e is ready to launch, this guy has a psychotic break, kills himself and his girlfriend.

Jesus Christ. I mean, it literally is like a slashing movie horror story. And the whole project falls apart without him. Squid! I mean it literally is like a slasher movie horror story and The whole project falls apart without him. Squid! I'm not making this up. This is real. You can go look this up. It really the whole project fell apart and so the 4e digital integration that they were sort of depending on making this system work for a wide variety of people just completely fell apart and and it a wide variety of people just completely fell apart and it really, they were like, we can't keep developing this.

It drives anyone who works on it insane. It's the King and yellow yellow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so what's the, and VTT is kind of cursed. I don't know. Wow.

Interesting. Uh, I would say thank you squid, but that was very sad and depressing. No, but very good to have that knowledge I didn't realize that. Thanks for bringing it down squid. Yeah, thanks a lot squid Today's topic is family annihilators Sound off in discord if you have something to say about people who kill their entire family Well, I do think that there's a whole lot that we could speculate to hear about what's going on. I think more will be revealed as, as time passes on,

you know, what was happening in internally and why this, this came to pass. We'll see if we ever get, you know, more information on this, but it definitely opened up for us a larger question about you know, more information on this, but it definitely opened up for us a larger question about how we use these tools in general and and how we play our games and we kind of we Decided to call it a little segment called the map dilemma now if you're on hold and you want to call and talk about sigil Absolutely, that's still part of this great so but we also want to open it up here to the idea of Anybody can call in and talk about how you utilize this, what seems to be a central part.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, McD, when we were kids, I feel like we never played with maps. I don't feel like that's something we ever did. I don't remember playing strictly by a grid map or anything like that. We, we, we played fast and loose. Yeah, we played fast and loose. Theater of the mind is what we called it now.

When we were in middle school. And to this day, I argue for theater of the mind all the time. It seems whenever we run into major logistical bottlenecks with problems with certain games or shows or whatever where the map becomes a problem, a lot. And I'll be like, why don't we just do this the other way around? And people generally seem to not really wanna do that.

I don't know. But I understand, a lot of Pathfinder feats and a lot of Pathfinder skills are wasted if you're not playing on a map. I don't think that that's true. I think that you can explain to your GM how a certain feat works and say, positionally, I want to get here. I think it's so much more fun to be like, you're there. Then to like, worry about it so much on a map.

I don't know. Um, Pathfinder with no map, Joe? Are you out of your goddamn mind? I think I could do it. Now, I enjoy playing on a map, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I think Theater of the Mind is fantastic. And I'm just curious what the rate, I'm curious where you think all these things fall. I don't know if the mods can get up a Twitch poll quickly

during this thing, but I'd like to see a poll. Like, how do you play most often VTTs, maps, you know, like maps and minis or theater of the mind. And I'd love to see where those votes fall in on a poll of that nature. I, you know, I love theater of the mind. I've played a ton of theater of the mind, like you, my old D andD games or my old Games when I was younger were always theater of the mind and what I will say is I have never once Played theater of the mind where one of the players didn't go. Oh, wait, where am I? I thought I was over here or like Where are they? I don't understand like and sometimes it can be quite frustrating because you've done like five rounds of a

combat and one of your players the whole time thought they were behind someone or, or they didn't understand that the layout at all. Or that, you know, people get uncomfortable with it. You know, I think in theater of the mind, you can go, look guys, it's kind of amorphous. It's, it think in theater of the mind, you can go, look guys, it's kind of amorphous. It's it exists in our imagination. So it's more like, it's more like the GM making rulings. And some people are very uncomfortable with that. They're very uncomfortable with the GM having too much power and just sort of, like you said, ruling. Okay. You're there because sometimes the GM is going to

have to rule. No, you can't get there. And that's gonna be a problem for some people if there's not a map to help adjudicate that. And I think that it just irritates me to... It just irritates me. Like, I think that the map causes more arguments in those territories than less arguments. Really?

Yeah, because when you play theater of the mind, I think it's tough. Some players have to realize this. When you play theater of the mind, you're actually only playing in one person's mind, the GM's mind, right? And that can make it a little bit challenging. The GM has to explain themselves very clearly and the players can say, well, what about this? What about that?

Bring up interesting questions. It might make the GM rethink things and they can revise of course, but to say, I want to get there and to say, you can't get there. It Brooks no argument because it's just, it's in the champs mind. Like how are you going to argue that? The ultimate arbiter, but I can see why some people would have a problem with that. Can I tell you what I did recently? Here's what I did recently.

I hadn't played drawing on a mat in a long time. I bought myself a new type of mat that I really like. It's like a game board that you fold out. It's like hard. It's not. And I was playing call of Cthulhu. I was playing the scenario Deadlight, and I drew out maps.

I took a little advice from our good friend Seth Skorkowsky, who says when he plays on a mat with minis, he doesn't count squares. He just goes, yeah, you can get there or no, you can't get there. When they're looking at the map, they can kind of go, okay, I can see why I can't get there, you know, like they can go, yeah, that is pretty far. I get it. Okay. Then the other thing I did was Joe, I am so tired of minis.

They're expensive. None of them look like the thing you want them to look like. You're always like, Oh, this is a goblin, but it's actually an ogre. Like it's always so annoying. And then your players who, you know, you know what players do. They're like, wait, is this a goblin? And you're like, I said, it's an ogre 10 minutes ago. So my good friend, our good friend, Clinton trucks told me when he was younger, they played using dice as minis and each player was just a D four. And then the enemies were like, you know, if you had a bunch of guards who were essentially identical, you'd put out D sixes for all the guards.

And then if the vampire behind the guards, that would be like a D 12 or something. And if it was a big monster, you get out your big D 20, like your big one. And I tried it that way and it worked beautifully. No one got confused. Everybody, you know, the D fours had to look at all different colors so people could remember who they were. It worked beautifully. So I want to do a little bit more in-person gaming with, with that system because so far it has worked for me. Awesome. Okay. Let's, let's go to the callers. Let's see what people how do you play or do you want to speak on Sigil?

Let's talk to Stem. Stem is. As I say, hey, how you doing? Hey, not bad. How are you? Very well, thank you. So what do you want to talk about? Yeah, so I'll be like yourself. I used to play like The Theory of the Man when I was a kid and I was at university. And then when I kind of got older, started doing like pathfinder society, I really kind of went to the maps and I think it was cause you were playing with like

people you didn't know it was like random people. So it kind of avoided any disputes when you're at maybe a table of people you weren't comfortable with. And then I think that kind of carried over into like the pandemic when you were using a lot of VTTs and you avoid like that crosstalk as well, where you've got people talking on microphones and when you start putting theater of the mind, you've got people saying, you know, where's he, where's that, where's that? It avoids that kind of side of things.

But I think for me personally, I find like narrative games, like maybe like Call of Cthulhu, I like theater of the mind a lot better. But if it's more tactical, a bit more crunchy like Pathfinder, then I think the maps do help a lot. They avoid a lot of that confusion. Yeah, that's a good point. I did not think of it. I was assuming you're playing with like a group of trusted friends, right? Like you can't play theater of the mind at a Pathfinder society meetup at a game store. Like that's not going to, that's not going to fly, especially if it's like an official game. So yeah, that, that is a really good point when you're playing with the GM. Yeah. If the GM is making those kinds of rules, you kind of have to

trust the GM. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You would have to already trust the GM stem. Do you do VTTs more often now than playing in person with maps and minis? Yeah, definitely. I think more often than not, and I still, I will say even then if I do like, I did a call through the game the other day on a VTD and we did it all, you know, narrative based, no maps, no minis, but then if I play D&D or Pathfinder or whatever, then it's straight back

to maps and minis on the VTT. And there is a lot of work involved in that, but I don't think it's that much more than like drawing maps. I remember like having the rub off maps and you'd be leaning across it and half of it ended up on your t-shirt and stuff. So yeah, yeah, that's one thing that I've grown to love about VTTs and you know, with the, the most of the time I play now is for the Glass Cannon Network.

And so when I'm playing, I'm typically, if we're together in person, we're still playing on a VTT in person around, you know, on laptops. And then if we're playing remotely, obviously we're using a VTT. So I've gotten very used to VTTs and I'll say one of the biggest pluses I feel is when you're the GM and you put in the work to prepare and develop the map for the VTT, it's set and then you can be done. Right.

And like, once the players get there, if they ever get there, it's all there, set and ready and saved like a saved video game. Whereas when you're prepping at home, like you can't prep all that much in advance with drawn maps, right? You kind of have to like, you know, and if you do draw a big map and then they don't end up going there or the session gets canceled, you have to like erase the whole thing

or else it's going to stay in on your map and then you got to do it again, you know, two weeks later when you reschedule the session. So that's one thing I really like about VTTs is like setting them up, doing all that work ahead of time. And then things are a little bit smoother in the session I feel. Yeah, 100%.

And you can always revisit as well you know if you're running that game if it is like on a Society game or something you can run it for multiple groups You're not having to like redraw that map pick all those minis out again I remember I used like before I was doing society games I'll be picking out you know hundreds of minis you're going through boxes and boxes of pawns or minis and trying to get them together And it's just so much quicker digitally, but I do miss that, that tactile element. I think when you are playing in person, you don't get that on a VTT quite the same.

Yeah. Yeah. I tend to agree with you, stem though. Like I said, we play in a VTT in person. I'm curious if anybody does that. If you call in, let us know if you ever play in person with a VTT. Or say if there's someone who's like, I have to have minis, like minis are like a huge part of it for me.

I would love to hear that too. Player guy might have an opinion here. Player guy, would you like to come to the stage? Hello. Thanks for having me. Oh, pleasure. Nice, nice late night voice you got there. Oh, thank you so much.

I've been told I have a podcast voice, but this is the first time I'm getting to practice it. Very nice. Yeah, I wanted to bring up in particular, like there's, there's kind of a sweet spot, I think, in between the VTT map and the theater of mind, which is the dry erase kind of blank square, like just drawing in loose lines. And in particular, what why I want to bring this up is with VTTs, I ran a VTT map recently with my group, and I was making the map myself. And I noticed if you if you just draw a blank, like an empty room

and a VTT players are just staring at that floor tile. And it's very hard to tell them there's stuff in that room and have them eat it. Whereas with a dry erase map, you draw like a blank square, you say it's the king's bedroom and they are immediately filling in those details. They can believe you and they're looking at you describe it. So I feel like there's just like a big workload involved with VTTs. Additionally, games don't, I think most role playing games don't provide the best map making guidelines. So you're kind of relying on professional map makers, I think with VTTs a lot more. And there's just too much of a design load, I think, if you're making your own, especially for VTTs where with dry erase, you can kind of make adjustments as needed. I've made a lot of maps for friends where

you make a room a little too long and a whole bunch of stuff breaks, or you make a doorway five foot wide and it's the only way into a room and it becomes like an awkward choke point of tumble through checks and like blockages and line of sight issues. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Sorry.

Go ahead, Darren. I was just going to say maps in general are always limited. You know, when I played fourth edition D and D, I had a friend who his character would always keep backing up away from the fight, shooting arrows and we want to back into the room before. And I'm like sitting there like, God damn it, like trying to draw more map as he keeps backing up. And eventually you just run out of map.

And that happens in roll 22 sometimes. Or foundry. Oh it happens on VTTs all the time. Yeah, where you're kind of like, no guy. So everybody has to kind of go, we all agree we're not leaving this area. Even though, even though if you could really do anything, you're off the map, should be able to go off the map player guy. Uh, thanks for the call. And you do have a good back. Uh, I think I'll say two things. Player guys said that really triggers something for me. One is this goes back to what we said about theater of the mind. The plain dry erase

map expands what you can do and the imagination of the players. Paleshade in discord chat says yes, my dry erase map has engaged my players more than anything. Because without all of the accoutrements to look or to, when you see other things, you assume nothing is in the places where there isn't a thing, right? Whereas with a dry emergency, when there's nothing there, you have to rely on imagination to populate the room. And you really are looking in the narrative

and you're looking at the GM, not at the table, right? You're looking at the GM, which I think is a really good point. And then the other thing that Player Guy said that made me think of something was, oh, is some of these pre-written adventures, they don't do a great job with maps. Not every encounter map is well designed. Sometimes you get a sense that they might be a little hasty. Sometimes they're repurposing an already existing map and just throwing it in there.

And I don't mind any of this, by the way. I think that they have enough cut out for them. It's the GM's job to make adjustments when that happens and either use different maps or your own maps. So I had experience with this. I did this in Wrath of the Righteous. There was a certain point while I was running that AP, this was not a recorded show, where I just, there was an epic encounter with a really tough enemy and I'm looking at the map and it occurs in like a 20 foot by 20 foot chamber. Right. Which makes sense because this was their like room or whatever, their bedroom or something

is like where you jump them, right? And I was like, knowing PF1e mechanics, everybody's going to stand in the same place or people are going to get stuck in this little awkward fight, and it's not dynamic and it's not thrilling, and this was not meant to be some middle filler encounter. This was a major, either book ending or chapter ending encounter. And so I rerolled the whole thing,

and I entered in all of this, like, dimensional magic for myself, And so I rerolled the whole thing and I entered in all of this, like dimensional magic for myself so that they could like transport into these larger areas during the fight. Yeah. And it was so much fun. I was pulling out like different maps and just like being like this whole thing is open area.

What do you do? And like that to me is, is that's on the GM sometimes take a, just like, um, um, which we'll call it our last caller, a player guy just said, it's like, look at what they put there. You would not be holding to it. If you think that that's going to cause a weird bottleneck or it's going to slow things down or make things boring, change the map. I think that that's, that's a great idea and a great point.

In particular, Paizo gets criticized for having maps that are too small all the time. So, I mean, it's just, it's hard. It's hard to like write an incredible story and get all these visual assets together. I know in Quest for the Frozen Flame, Joe, there are tons of encounters that there's just no map for. So I have to kind of dig into our VTT and figure out where to get apps from.

TJ, TJ Hansel is here again. Good to have you back. TJ, do you want to, you want to weigh in here? You got anything? No? Yeah. I mean, how are you guys? TJ.

Good to see you, TJ. First time caller. Oh, really? I thought that you'd been on before TJ goes way back with the niche TJ's og so it's good to hear Lots lots of our urban said I totally agree with with the VTTs and the theater the mind. I just I find that There's a lower threshold for entrance with theater of the mind. Then, you know, like we've talked about getting the mini is getting the maps, doing all that stuff.

And so it's a lot more fun for, I feel like new players to kind of get in, stretch the imagination, get the cobwebs out and then, and then dive into the. The VTTs. Yeah. I mean, I- Sorry, sorry, not to cut you off, but real quick, I think this is another really good point, which is when you're working with new players,

and sometimes, let's be honest, you're working with new players that aren't in person sometimes, right? So you gotta kind of deal with that reality. Yeah. But like the technical hurdle of the VTT, which, I mean, this is the area that Jared's in, right? You run into a lot of technical issues.

It ruins the game for somebody. And that's so unfair. That is such a shame that they have this bad impression of the game because of technical issues they have connecting with and using a VTT. Hey, let alone a VTT, sometimes just getting the call to connect. I had a game that started an hour late because it wasn't even my fault, which is shocking. It started an hour late because people couldn't get on Zoom. So. And you don't want that to be your first impression of these kinds of games. I'm

sorry, TJ, continue. No. And I will say as an advocate for the VTTs, I have played sessions in person with VTTs and really it helps with management. That's my biggest like love of those things. As a GM, like you've said, Joe, you throw everything in there, you have initiative trackers, you have monster trackers, you have all the stuff, and it really helps streamline the whole process. But you know, there's some of my favorite games, like Seventh Sea is all theater of the mind,

and it's wonderful and brilliant. I played Seventh Sea at Gen Con run by Brian Holland, who was on the show last week. I believe it was Brian Holland, because isn't that a, wait, no, is that Chaosium? Seventh Sea, it is, right? I thought it was. It is now, yeah.

You mind mixing this up? Yeah. It is, yeah. Yeah, and he ran us through this half hour, I I thought it was. It is now yeah. It is yeah. Yeah and uh and he ran us through this like half hour I mean it was so short it was like this half hour experience a 40 minute experience and we told this like amazing story in 40 minutes because it was all theater of the mind it's all action it's all swashbuckling heroics it was so so much fun I totally agree. Seven C is definitely an underrated game in my opinion. Yeah, love it. Anyway, those are my thoughts.

You guys are awesome. Thank you, TJ. Appreciate having me. Good to see you, TJ. You know, now that you say all this, Joe, I really want you to run a Pathfinder, which is all Theater of the Mind, and we could just see how it goes. I'd love to do it, man. I love Theater of the Mind.

Okay, so let me take you on a brief journey of my Delta Green games that I ran with, with the, with my players here at the glass cannon was like out of the gate. It was theater of the mind, like our first one, because we just like kind of doing it. And it's last things last, which is like a classic intro scenario for Delta Green. Then we were like, all right, I'm going to build a season and do an operation, a full operation. While I got into prepping that thinking it's going to be theater to mind it, as I'm looking at this and there's no maps in the book, obviously, I was like, oh man, I have these ideas of how I can use a VTT to create a crime scene. And then literally give you pawns to like walk around a crime scene. And I put hours and hours and hours of work into it. And I think that it was like, so worth it. Because when I first brought that map up, the players were like, Holy shit, this is awesome. Like, there was just like police lights lighting up certain areas, because it was like a nighttime crime scene. Right. And I got to play with lighting mechanics and stuff. And as

they uncovered things, they would see it. Wait a say, wait a minute, what's this over here? Is this a weapon sitting on the ground? Like, oh yeah, oh, you have found a weapon. Now what do you do with it? Whatever. That was really, really fun. But in recent times, I've bagged off of that a little bit more because I've done a lot more,

just let the players take it wherever they want to go. And when that happens, it's hard to have maps prepared for all that kind of stuff. And I think that theater of the mind has been so fun for the action in Delta Green. I think that when we have action scenes, I think it would be really a disservice to those scenes to put like cars on a map for a car chase. I don't think we need to do that. We just do it theater of the mind. Right. Well, what's nice about a game like Delta Green, as opposed to say Pathfinder, is that you can just choose, like for you example, just the crime scene.

This entire session is going to be a map, you know? Yeah. But then the other stuff they do is Theater of the Mind, because you don't need a map for it. I mean, I guess that's sort of true in Pathfinder too, but I feel like Pathfinder is kind of going from map to map to map in a way. You know, combat is way more assumed,, it's assumed to happen on a more

regular basis. So let me tell you another thing that I hate about maps, especially on no, not just on a V this is all maps. And when you talk about this going from map to map to map, I hate that when a map comes out, you know, a combat's coming. Right. Like, I hate that. that when a map comes out, you know a combat's coming. Right? Like, I hate that.

And some GMs, myself included, have done this over time, GMs that have run games for me, have set up maps for social encounters or a bait and switch where there is no combat. That's great. But 90% of the time, that's not the case, right? Like as soon as Troy says, let's go to the map,

you're like, okay, so I didn't even realize this was gonna be a dungeon case, right? Like as soon as that Troy says, let's go to the map. You're like, okay. So I didn't, I didn't even realize this was going to be a dungeon crawl, right? When we were talking about walking up to this building and talking to this, uh, you know, the town marshal or whatever. And then all of a sudden you get outside the, this building and it's all blacked out and you just have a doorway in it's like, what do you do? And you know, you're like, oh, so now we're in this dangerous situation that I didn't know about. So I think there's a minor spoilery thing

with using maps too, which can be frustrating. Maybe that's a little bit correctable by the GM. Like maybe you say roll initiative before you debut the map. Yes, yes. That's obviously a lot easier on VTT. I do that a lot, yeah. Yeah, that's easier on VTT.

If you're at home, you can't be like, roll initiative and then spend 10 minutes drawing a lot. Yeah. That's easier on VTT. If you're at home, you can't be like roll initiative and then spend 10 minutes drawing a map. Uh, so that's a problem with drawing, you know? Um, that's interesting. That's a very interesting problem. That totally makes sense because it's so much more fun to be surprised by these things. You know, one more time I'm going to give singing zombies one last chance. And if you blow it this time singing, you're done in this town. I tell you, you're done. Oh no.

Am I done? Oh, you zombies. You made it. I was pushed to talk the first two times and I didn't know. There you go. Push, push away. Talk to us. What do you want to talk the first two times that I didn't know. Oh, there you go. Push away, talk to us. What do you want to talk about? Yeah, so actually I have a lot of varied experiences.

So I'm very sympathetic to Theater of the Mind, completely online campaign, which ties back to Sigil. I was most excited about it during the pandemic, because I was playing completely online. So as a GM and a perfectionist, I just want to present the best map, the best tokens that my players can see. And currently, I also GM in person, but we have the virtual tabletop to project. So that's our map reference. I don't bring a map. I don't bring minis. They

look at a screen for reference when they need to. They have their sheets. They have real dice. They really like rolling real dice. And I like that as well because it also gives you the option of in case someone is sick and they still want to play, you can actually run that campaign online and it's really easy to. Yeah, that's interesting. Let me, I think Skid's here in chat. What's up Skid? Good buddy. I hope you're still here, but Skid was really one of the first people to open my

mind up to all, to how the tech can be used in an in-person game. Cause he would just do maps and minis for his rise of the Ruin Lords game, but I would come in and visit from time to time or guest play. And he always utilized a big TV in the living room. So we'd have his computer hooked up to the big TV and he would have sirenscape running, right? This is my first experience with like music backed gameplay and stuff and sound effects, everything.

He'd have sirenscape running. He'd have big art of the monsters or the NPC up on the TV, but then also, you know, physical maps and minis. And sometimes just like you said, singing, somebody couldn't make the session and they'd be like calling in on a Skype call and they're just giant head would be on the TV while the rest of us were in the room playing. So it was really funny. And there's skid.

He's here. He's here. It's good at tech. Skid is good at time. I mean, he really introduced me to all of these options. Skid's a computer builder from way back and he built, you know, a six system to run even his in-person Rise of the Runelords games. I mean, he would do, he would record himself ahead of time.

This is pre podcast days, doing like a, like the voice of the villain and then run it through filters and stuff and make it sound real horrifying. And then you hear this and he would just hit play on his computer. It was awesome. It was really amazing. Anyway, sorry to cut you off singing, please. No, I actually, I'm exactly that type of GM and type of player.

When I first started, I wanted music. I had an iPad just so I can show them pictures of the scene and characters. I want them to help with immersion any way I can. I want to set the mood. And virtual tabletops are also great because I get lost in details. Like, I just want to know what spells my enemies have.

So I'll have that prepped. You could print out cards, but a lot of times, if you're homebrewing, you kind of want to do the whole thing. But I'm also playing a game that's completely theater to the mind, which I will add, that campaign is only four players. I play with six players, theater to the mind is insane. Everyone's constantly asking, hey, where's so and so?

Where are the enemies? Where's so and so? It's- Better with less players, you're saying. Better with less players. It's, because everyone has to kind of track in their own brains, so they're constantly not asking for reference of what the scene is.

It's easier with less opponents and less players. It was just a simple, we were fighting on a ship. Two of us were above deck, two of us were below deck. But the amount of time you lose just asking where everyone is in reference to each other. It was a Pathfinder game, unfortunately, so it was tough. And on the other hand, and even with a real map, sometimes you get the player who spends five minutes going, can I get there in one move? And they're staring at it and you're all waiting.

You're like going insane. You're like, you just want to say, yes, you can get there. Just say you can get there. Yeah, yeah. All right. Then thanks for the call, singing. We're going to keep it moving and get some more people on.

I just want to say, even playing music for my games melts my brain. It's like, oh yeah, the music. I forget it every time. So last time I played that Call of Cthulhu game I mentioned, I just turned on this great Call of Cthulhu playlist with ambient music. And a couple of my players were like, it's distracting me.

And I was like, oh, sorry. And I turned it way down. So that's where I'm at. Music is essential to me in my games. We should do a whole segment on this at some point. One fun idea was our friends at the Order of the Amber Die here in Jersey, I went and guessed it in some of their sessions.

And music is a big part of their things too. And they'll kind of keep it in the background. It just kind of plays a playlist, you know, and, but they all pick a song like in their campaign that's kind of their like their walkout song. If you're a closer in baseball, right? Like your song for when there's a big moment that comes to you. And so every once in a while, it really is like not that often. It's every once in a while when it's a real big moment, you could be like, put on my song,

you know, they play your song, whatever it is. And, uh, and it comes up and they turn up the music and then you do your turn and roll your die on a big moment. Uh, it's a really fun way to play. Let me tell you what I think happens every time, at least in my games, you turn on village sounds while they're in the village, you know? And then it's like, just like people far off. I know exactly what you're going to say.

And then while they're like buying a potion, suddenly the music goes, like we're buying a potion right now. I hate that. That's why I like, that's why I do all the music on the GCN for the, not every show, but like every show I'm on, when I do the music, I'm so meticulous about like making sure that we're, we only have this kind of music in this kind of scene. And like when it gets elevated or too big, I immediately have to fade it out and move on.

I am, I am not a multitasker. That's I, I envy you being able to do that while playing. I mean, while GMing that's insane. Uh, 10zilla come to the stage. You want to join us? Hey, how you doing? Hey, what's up? I'm doing great.

I'm, I'm in Pittsburgh where it's snowing right now. Oh my gosh. Wow. A little late in the year. It's awesome. And, and I did want to mention Joe, we all miss the days when you would hit every button on the soundboard at once. Yes. Jared, do you know about this? Do you know what? All right. So back in the day when I was running Sirenscape for the games, for the show, for the main show, it had all these hot keys attached to

it so that it would make sounds whenever you hit the K button, it would make an explosion. Whatever you hit the Y button, it would make a bird sound, whatever it was. And a couple times back in those days, I would think that I was not on the sirenscape window on my computer and I would want to Google, like Google search something that somebody just said or something I'm looking for or whatever, or a document in my drive, my Google drive, and I would just start typing and it would go, yeah, boom, yeah, all this shit would happen. And I'm serious, if it happened, if it happened half a dozen times,

like four of the six were in incredibly quiet, dramatic moments. And I just blew them up with these sound effects with a random fireball explosion. This TJ, truly among the nation's fondest memories. Thank you. I did. I did want to mention real quick, going to Theatre of the Mind versus physical maps or VTTs. I'm in my early 50s now.

I am no longer smart enough as a GM to keep everything in my head doing Theatre of the Mind. I just, I got to have something down in front of me. And the other piece of it is, one of my players has a 3D printer and a subscription to Hero Forge, and it becomes a delightful expression of the player's creativity to make these intricate,

really wonderful, expressive minis of their characters that they can then bring to the table. And it really adds a certain flair to the gameplay. Just seeing those, you know, the characters in kind of what are their signature poses with their coolest weapons and so on. It makes things look really neat on a physical dining room table.

Do you paint minis, Tenzilla? My group does. I'm the forever GM, so I never have to. I use the, what do you call those little cardboard counters that Paizo sells? Yep. Yep. That's what I always used. Yeah. Before the VTT days, I would always use the cardboard standees for Pathfinder. That was their I always used. Yeah. Before the VTT days, I would always use the cardboard standees for, uh, for a Pathfinder. That was their like standard bestiary box and stuff. Because back when we first started pre, uh, GCP and, um, and pre Troy running like Jade Regent, I, we utilized like a, like Jared just said, a finite number of cheap plastic minis that we would use for everything and

you'd always have to be like, all right, so this, this one is a thief now, you know, and it's some orc, it's a barbarian with like furs and a great ax. You're like, and then I swear to God, the players are always like, there's an orc in here and you're like, motherfucker. I told you it was a thief. Uh, thanks for the call. Tenzilla. Appreciate it. Let's get somebody else up here. I love this name elf barf

Yeah, what's up elf barf? Hello? Hello? Can you guys hear me? We got you doing it? Yeah, good good to hear from you guys big fans. My wife is very excited. I got called on But of the wild fan as well I'm a big fan of virtual tabletops. I've I'm a big fan of virtual tabletops. I've been GMing and playing Pathfinder for a few years using them almost exclusively. And I honestly don't know how I'd do it otherwise. I've had in my games at various points, I think, people from four different time zones. So we've had people as far away in the Philippines, Netherlands, UK, the US, across multiple time

zones. And I think that's one part some people kind of forget is some people don't have friends that are into tabletop RPGs, especially ones that are kind of crunchy and tactical, you know? Yeah. I might be able to convince a friend to try something like 5e or something more casual, more theater than mine, but some people just aren't interested in stacking plus one bonuses, you know?

Sure. Sure. And you bring up the biggest advantage of the VTT, which is playing remotely. You know, you can't play remotely with a, with a mat and minis. I guess you can play theater to the mind remotely, but you can't do theater to the mind remotely, but, um, yeah yeah, I think Theater of the Mind is no different remotely than it is in person, right? I can't think of why it would be any different. But the VTT, when you're remote and when you're new, I think that it's helpful, like you, I think you kind of

said this, Halfbarf, which is like, when you're new, role-playing games are so hard to wrap your head around. Yeah. It's not just that the mechanics are challenging or there's too many rules. That's not it at all. It's like what we do, how the game flows, the entire thing is completely foreign to any other form of entertainment. And VTTs can help, I think, be a bridge for people that love video games, uh, and maybe play digital board games, but have never played an RPG. It can be a good way to bridge that gap and say, Hey, look, this is too much

different. It's a good visual aid having something as simple as like a chat history of all the roles. So you can look at bonuses and things. I think it helps you to learn to give it a bit better. I would respectfully argue that a VTT is not good for beginners. I think earlier people were saying it theater of the mind is good for beginners. And I agree with that.

A VTT comes with it a giant list of new things you have to learn in addition to learning the game. You have to learn how to move your guy, how to use the ruler with a lot of games. You have to learn how to roll dice. All of these things are, you have to learn on a VTT. They're like hurdles to just getting the story out. Logging in for a lot of people, logging in is a thing. No, seriously, I played VTT and you're like log into roll 20. How do I do that?

Oh my God, go to the link. What link? It's like this whole thing. So I think a lot of us who are used? Oh my God, go to the link. What link? It's like this whole thing. So I think a lot of us who are used to it are like, what's the big deal? All of my players do it automatically. And I'm like, no, there's a lot of people, especially new people who don't know all of those things. I say, thinking back to when I first started playing games online, learning the difference between the forge and foundry was something that took me a number of weeks.

Yeah. Me too. Knowing which one to log on. Me too. And now I totally get it. It's something I take for granted now. I've been doing it for a few years. It's simple. Just follow my link and log in. But at the time, my God, how many times I logged into Foundry's website instead of the Forge and vice versa. Thanks for the call, Elfbarf.

We'd love to have you back on at some point. Please call again. Yeah. It was like, I went through this when we did disorganized play. So we're going to do disorganized play very last minute. We're going to bring in Jared and Mary Lou and Rob Kirkevich and Sydney very last minute to run a PF2E dungeon. This is a couple of weeks ago.

We did this live. If you don't know about this, the audio is out and available on our subscription service. JointheNation.com. You, like, I was dreading sending Jared the email with the link to just say, please sign up to my game on the Forge and join in, because the Forge isn't Foundry.

And now there's two things that both begin with F that Jared's gonna be like, what is happening? Hey, I got in no problem, come on. You did, you had no problem at all. And I played SideQuest SideSash on Foundry, so I was okay. Oh, that's right, you had an intro through SideQuest SideSash, that's right. And I love how when,

well, I'm not going to get into it. Um, should we move on? I think we should. We got a lot to discuss. The greatest television show that has ever been created as of course, a lead into a, our action hero discussion, which I am so excited for. Uh, yes, Please. Now I want to say earlier, I called it Jack Reacher. The show on Amazon prime is called Reacher and it's stars. I want to get this right. Alan Richardson as Jack Reacher, of course, the famous character from the Lee child Jack Reacher novels of which there are many. I have read The Killing Floor, which is the first Jack Reacher novel, and it is the basis, although I would say the very loose basis, of the Reacher TV show.

I've also seen both Jack Reacher films with Tom Cruise. Possibly the worst casting of Reacher they could possibly have come up with. Alan Richson fits the character perfectly as described in the novels. I watched some of the show. Joe, what did you think? You, you watched a bit of the show as well. I did.

So I, uh, here was my journey. First, Tom Cruise movie. Okay. And I love Mission Impossible. I love the whole series. Me too. I love the whole thing. You'll see how much in a little bit, how much I love it. And so I was like, all right, let's see.

Let's see. And I didn't like it at all. I don't know. I just wasn't a fan. The TV show. The TV show. And then- Didn't your friend have a pitch to you about the show? Or no, you didn't like the movies? No, no, I'm sorry. The movie. I didn't like the movie.

Great. Go ahead. So this is way back when I see that. Then I'm like, you know what? Maybe I'll try out this book because I had- I go through phases of genres like, oh, I'm into nonfiction now. Oh, now I'm into fantasy or now I like, I want to read a spy novel. And sometimes I get into a thriller mode. I'm like, I want an airport thriller, right? Like a David Baldacci situation, a Lee child or whatever.

And so I was like, you know what, just because I didn't like the adaptation doesn't mean that that first book probably isn't awesome. And I started reading the first book and I was not that into it. I felt like it was a little cheesy. I felt like I felt the dialogue was a little too like cute to Hollywood. And I just wasn't that into it. And I know, people can be, especially judgy people, I think, can be like, well, you were reading a thriller. Like, it's not supposed to be Shakespeare. Sure. There are thrillers out there that

have realistic dialogue that make you feel like real characters that you're super into. And you just like, you get into it. Anyway, then I'm like, I see the TV show ad with this Hulk of a human being. And I'm just like, this is going to be terrible. And then I don't watch it. And I just hear over and over again, how good it is.

Like, all right, interesting. So because of Glass Cannon Radio and bringing up Jack Reacher, whenever we did three weeks ago or something, four weeks ago, when it was first starting the new season, I was like, I'll check this thing out on Amazon. And I started watching it and I really liked it. I thought it was really good. I mean, I thought he was very likable, even though a little weird. And yes, some stuff is cheesy, 100%. But I think that they did such a fantastic job

with the mystery and then with the action, with the fighting. Like this guy, what is his name again? Alan, uh, Rickson, Alan Richardson. Alan Richardson is like, he pulls off fight scenes very well. Uh, and I, so anyway, I was like, I'm into this. I dig it. Now, is it my favorite TV show I've ever seen? No, but like it's, uh, it's hard to come by good action

shows and good action movies. And, uh, this one I think is, is pretty damn good. What did you think? Well, um, uh, first I just want to say the reason, you know, we're talking about this is cause we did mention it on an earlier show and also it's such a huge property. It's gigantic. It's two movies. It's books. It's a TV show. People love this. People are nerds for Jack Reacher. So whatever you think of it, it is a force. Okay? That said, I did not like this show. I think that Alan Richardson is good in the role. I think he's, he, I don't think he's an incredible actor, but I think that, you know, he, he inhabits the part. He, he looks like a hero. He, you know, he, he can pull off like a cool line reading the fights were great. The fights look amazing. And if you're someone who likes a good fight choreography, and I do,

And if you're someone who likes a good fight choreography and I do the fights are incredible. But other than that, I found it to be like another procedural, which so many people just want to watch procedurals all the time. I thought maybe it won't be a procedural, but then right away they get into, you know, the crime and then how the police are going to solve it. And I didn't feel like it brought any real new spin to the procedural. And then ultimately I found that some of the, some of the, the show was just like, kind of a little bit janky. So for example, when the first episode starts, it says, Margrave, Georgia. So you know where you're at.

Then like three minutes later, Jack Reacher walks by a sign that says, Margrave, Georgia. I'm like, you could have picked one of those instances. I didn't need to have it reiterated three minutes later. Like, and you know, the reason, like the way they get him to join in the investigation is so far fetched to me. It's a ridiculous way to kind of rope him into the investigation.

And I guess you're supposed to go, well, eh, you know, it wouldn't be a show if he didn't help investigate, but it didn't seem very plausible to me at all. And then the twist in the first episode at the very end made me groan audibly. It seemed like again, the most implausible, ridiculous twist. And if I'm going to watch a procedural, I've seen way better procedurals. And also I'm tired of procedurals. You know what? I'm going to be an asshole. Procedurals are for basics. They're for basic people, okay?

They're for my mom, all right? Like there's too many of them. There's, I don't know why boring people, that's all they fucking want to watch. Like there are other fucking things out there. Like why are there so many procedurals? So yeah, that's my, that's my opinion of it. Now I remember actually liking the movies quite a bit

with Tom Cruise. I watched both of them. I don't remember a lot about them but I do remember enjoying them. And I read the first novel and I did not like that either. I agreed with you. I thought that the novel was kind of hokey. Yeah, I was like hokey. Yeah, that's a good word for it. Let's get one call on this before we move

into action hero conversations. Clancy wants to speak and I want to see if Clancy wants to talk about Jack Reacher. Hello. Hey, Clancy. How are you? I dare you to talk about Jack Reacher. Hello. Hey, Katelyn, how are you? I dare not talk about Jack Reacher. Justice for Jack. How dare you? Bring it. Bring the heat. I can't believe what I'm hearing. No, they are hokey, but that's what's fun about it for me is that they are a little

silly. They are a little hokey. first book, the romantic scene, the sex scene was so bad. I just laughed. I think it's really fun. It's not something where you're going to have to think about it a whole lot. It's a beach book. And have you watched the TV show? Mm-hmm. And are you all caught up on the TV show? Mm-hmm. And are you caught up on the TV show? I am totally caught up on the TV show.

And each successive season, still impressing you? You still enjoy it? Yeah, I still enjoy it. I mean, is it the best show I've ever seen? No, there's a lot of shows I like better, but I really enjoy Reacher. It's sort of just a wish fulfillment fantasy thing. They show his abs a lot, which I like. Hey.

There's a lot of booty. That's a selling point. Eat booty. I just think it's not a good sign when it's just. A lot of cake going on. Not a good sign when everybody that talks about your show goes, is it the best show I've ever seen? No, that's not a good sign for your show goes, is it the best show I've ever seen? No. That's not a good sign

for your show. Well, I disagree. Everything can't be the best show. It would just be stupid, right? You got to have things that you enjoy watching that are not necessarily your favorites of all time. When we really love a thing, we don't give that qualification. We don't go, is it the best? No. Now, what you love is what you love. And you might love something that's bad. But yeah, what I love, I love like True Detective, right? But there's things about that I don't love too. So, you know, nothing's perfect. Is True Detective a procedural?

Yes it is. But I would argue that at least in the first season, which is the one I'm most familiar with, it does have a bit of a twist on the procedural in a lot of ways. I'm going to put this down as another like peg for a segment. I think we have to have a procedural discussion here in debate. Oh, God. I think with Reacher, you have to define this for me. Let's get my Aunt Linda on the line because...

Procedural scope is so wide. Like, how could you throw that under one genre? They're wildly different tones. No, they're really not. Wildly different shows. It's people solving a crime. So you might call that a mystery, but usually a procedural involves police or FBI or someone who...

So Twin Peaks is a procedural. Twin Peaks is not a procedural. Very loosely. No, you know, does it. Yeah. Yeah. Twin Peaks is not a procedural. Very loosely. No, it's not a procedural because you're not spending a bunch of time at the police. You know, SVU, law and order SVU was a procedural. And even things like Chicago fire or a procedural.

Right. But Twin Peaks is not a procedural. I think, I think for me, the difference the difference is when I'm thinking of a procedural, I'm thinking of law and order, something where it's a mystery of the week. And then Reacher's not really a mystery of the week. It's a story arc over the season. That's true. That's what makes it different from a procedural for me. But I love me some SVOs. I've got to listen to your wife's true. That's true. That is true. That's what makes it different from a procedural for me, but I love me some

SVU, I've got to listen to your wife's podcast. Hey, listen, I love, I love SVU too. I really do. Yeah. And yet. He shits on the procedural. And yet. Well, SVU is the one that does it best.

So who does the basic procedural best? And it makes me roll my eyes seven times per episode. Of course. That's how I feel about procedural. All right, Clancy, thanks for calling. We got to get to our next thing here. Good to hear from you.

I did want to say something. Somebody nailed it. Rya Q in Discord chat says, the most unrealistic part of the Jack Reacher TV show is that he can find clothes that fit him in thrift shops. Excuse me. You're eight feet tall. There's no chance you found a perfect pair of jeans in the back of a gas station. That is so good.

That is so funny. Nailed it. Nailed it. Yeah. Amazing. Let's talk action heroes. Now this sort of like segue us into like Jack Reacher is, uh, is an action hero and, uh, this show, uh, presents a very fun and, uh, I don't know, I feel interesting character, especially early on with the mystery of his background, everything like that. He's so interesting. That gets into epic fights. Good at everything you could possibly imagine.

He's Sherlock Holmes, but he's also John Wick. That's a great, what a great character. All right. All right. Let's focus. I'll just check all the boxes on the sheet. Yeah. That's what irritates me about like, when people don't understand that their character in RPGs needs to have weaknesses.

I'm not talking about like mechanically added debuffs that aren't in the part of the build. I'm talking about like realizing that spending ability points is a point spread of where you can either be okay at everything or great at some things and you gotta pick other things and not be okay at everything or great at some things and you gotta pick other things and not be great at. I just love that about hero building in a Pathfinder D&D game. So I'm curious how this is going to factor into this. Some people a 10 on the sheet gives them anxiety. A 10!

They're like, oh God, oh. So that brings us to what somebody wanted to talk about. We kicked around this idea. What if we ranked our top five action heroes of all time? Absolutely. Let me lay down some ground rules. I think there's only one real ground rule, which is it needed to be a fictional character that is the, uh, the stipulation, a single fictional character.

Yeah. If you can't just say Schwarzenegger. Exactly. Right. For each slot. And then we had no other rules. That was it. And so we went off and, uh, I don't know. I just like our last, my, my offense is rank.

My offense is rank. I was, you know, you sort of define how you break ties and how you make the list on what criteria, but we don't know what those criteria are. Jared, I'd like to hear you see how you want to start this off. And then on what criteria, but we don't know what those criteria are. Jared, I'd like to hear you see how you want to start this off. And then of course, we're going to take callers and see what we missed in our list and get your suggestions. First of all, this was a hard list to make because I realized- I'm sorry, there was one more rule. There was one more rule.

What was it? No superheroes. No superheroes, right. No cyborgs, no Batman. No Marvel characters. No, this was a action heroes, action movie heroes kind of character. This was a really hard list for me to make because I realized how many action heroes

are really just a place for the star to live. you know, like, you know, um, this is mostly in movies, but you could have done books. Like you could have done Jack Reacher from the Jack Reacher novels. If you wanted to, um, you could do TV. Obviously I think all of mine ended up being from movies. Um, let's do it like we did last time. If you have someone already on your list, we'll wait to talk about them when we get, if they're, if they're higher on your list, like closer to number one, we'll wait until we get

to yours. Um, okay. So I'll start off mine. All right. Um, you're not going to know who this is, but I'm going to say it. And then I'm going to tell you who it is. James Dalton. Do you know who James Dalton is? No, it's Swayze and Roadhouse baby. Okay. Swayze and James Dalton. Do you know who James Dalton is? No, it's Swayze and Roadhouse, baby. Swayze and James Dalton and Roadhouse is the ultimate badass. Excuse me, because he has that Swayze sensitivity and that Swayze serenity, you know? And he doesn't want to fight. He doesn't want to fight anybody anybody but he works as a bouncer and his entire job is just fighting But he really tries to give people an out. He's really a man of peace. He practices Tai Chi And you get an ass shot

You get to see name another movie where you get to see the action heroes ass only roadhouse. So James Dalton in roadhouse, I think, uh, in, oh, yeah. McD just said you get to see his ass in the Terminator and you're absolutely right. McD that's a cyborg and therefore not allowed. Oh, that's funny. That's my number five. What was your number five, Joe? My number five, I'm sure you know,

but I am sure is not on your list. So I did, my number five here is, okay. So let me talk about some of my stipulations. One, having more movies did not increase your ranking, right? Like the ranking for me was all based on just that character and my interest and enjoyment watching that character and, um, more movies helps because you get to know more character, you get more depth, you get more nuance.

Of course it's hard to deny that it's going to help, but it wasn't a requirement. You didn't have to be certain box office level to make this list. Right? So that said, uh, number five for me is cage, which is Tom Cruise's character in edge of tomorrow. That character I thought was so fun for me as an action hero because he's a marketing and PR guy at the start of the movie, who is just like, I can spin this for you.

Like I know how to spin war and I know how to sell your war and I know how to whatever. And then gets thrown in to having to be a soldier, like kind of a super soldier kind of thing, mech soldier kind of thing. And we see that training and breaking process, where you like, and a person who would never be an action hero gets a chance after over and over and over and over

and over to become like a true action hero. So anyway, I thought that was a neat take. Seeing that journey is interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I thought that Tom Cruise did such a great job early in the movie of being like honestly terrified, like terrified. And Tom Cruise, that's a casting where you can believe him as a wimp and you can believe him as a badass, right? He kind of combines both. Yeah.

Super interesting. I love that. So that was his name. His name, I looked it up on IMDb. His name is just Cage. And then by the time he gets sent, when he gets sent in to fight and he's with, oh for Christ's sake, Paxton, Bill Paxton is like his commanding officer. He just calls him Private Cage. Like this over and over you just hear Private Cage, Private Cage this, Private Cage that. Yeah, his name is just cage according to IMDb. So edge of tomorrow is a great film. And it's the only film I can think of where an alien

explodes on you and then you get stuck in a time loop. Um, so good. So that's an interesting, that's an interesting one. Gimme for a movie. Look, there are aliens and if they spit on you, you get stuck in a time loop. Okay. All right. Number four. See if you know who this is. John Matrix. John Matrix?

No. John Matrix from Commando. Have you seen Commando lately? No, Commando is Schwarzenegger, right? It's Schwarzenegger, but it's peak Schwarzenegger and commando. His daughter, Alyssa Milano gets kidnapped. He was out of the game, Joe. He was retired. This is a trope we have to have present in a list of the greatest action heroes is the guy who's retired. He doesn't want to go back, but they kidnapped Alyssa Milano and then he has to go on a revenge rampage and he does it with all kinds of trademark quippy Schwarzenegger.

You know, early in Schwarzenegger's career, they always wrote him characters that had quippy lines. And my favorite in Commando is early in the movie, he tells this one bad guy, I'm going to kill you last. And then later he has the guy by one hand hanging over a cliff and he goes, Hey, Sally, remember when I said I'd kill you last? And the guy goes, yeah. He goes, I lied. And he lets him go. Just the cold blooded, just,

just the fact that there was a certain part of the American film where we're like, we are behind sociopaths. Like that was a great moment in American film. Uh, you know, my list, I'm going to go ahead and say about my list. The first rule was it has to be a fictional character. It cannot be an actor. And I realized what I was making it. I'm basically breaking this rule if not in, in spirit, because is John Matrix a character or is it mainly Schwarzenegger playing a character? Yeah, it's kind of like the culmination

of Schwarzenegger's peak work, right? Yeah. Is this line from the movie, KaiGuy in Discord chat says, quote, did you leave anything for us, Matrix unquote? And then the response is only bodies. Yes. Yes. Basically we were just for a while in the 80s, we were just celebrating serial killers. And that's, that's an interesting thing.

So good. So good. My number four, also John, and I thought you were gonna say the same thing here as me, John McClane is my number four. John McClane, oh, only number four, I'm surprised. Only number four, yeah, I was like. Now John McClane is a character played by one actor, but John McClane, you know, maybe this is a testament to Bruce Willis's range. John McClane is a character.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I just, I don't know. I love the character and I've loved those movies, you know, throughout my life and, you know, all the different variations. And yeah, I don't think much more needs to be said. I will say John McClane is fourth on my list

because the top three on my list are all massive action heroes. So it's a tough list. It's a tough list, right? It is a tough list to make. And I just want to apologize for breaking that first rule in spirit. Um, I guess the next, the next, the next person on my list is a character. I guess we got to take a moment for John McClane cause he's so fucking cool. Yes. Yes. And one of the things that's great about him is that he, he's, uh, he's got more

feet of clay than say a John matrix, you know, or one of these, you know, he, he gets hurt more, he has, he's, he's afraid more. Yeah. I mean, you just see him like limping and everything hurting and like skin burned and cut and blood stains on his stuff. But he just, yeah, cold blooded eyes on the prize. And you also get the sense right out of the gate in the first Die Hard movie that he's

not a great guy. When it comes to being a good husband or a good father like he's kind of an absentee cop kind of father, you know, and you get that sense. And so it's a multi-layered character, flaws, good things, you know. Yeah, flaws are a good thing. Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho. All right.

My next, my next pick is a character, but I think played by only one actor over the course of this character's existence, and this is John Rambeau. Yep, John Rambeau just out of my top five. Could have easily put John Rambeau in instead of Cage, but I did not because I'm just not a big Rambeau guy. I've only ever seen that I can remember anything about First Blood. Like I didn't really watch a lot of the other movies. First blood is the one that I've watched multiple times, but I've definitely seen the rest of the Rambos,

including the one that's like from, I don't know, 2010 or something like that. And I just enjoy all of them. Rambos set of skills are really cool that he's like an outdoor guy who can make traps and stuff. Yes. Yeah. He also has the great trope of I told you I'm out of it. I'm not doing this anymore. We need you to come out of retirement, John. I can't, I put all that behind me. Um, Stallone is an underrated actor. Stallone, you know, he started as, as I think, uh, a little bit more of a serious actor, I mean, writing his own scripts and things like that. And then, you know, he kind of got, I think a little bit sometimes.

Pinned into characters like John Rambo, but Stallone is just great. He's just, um, the way he plays the character, particularly in First Blood, you have a real sympathy for him and you need to, because like John Matrix, he's a bit of a serial killer. Yeah, I totally agree. It was really tough for me. I just wanted to make a list.

Yeah, I had to break some really hard ties and John Rambo just fell outside of the list for me. I just wanted to make a list. Yeah, I had to break some really hard ties and John Rambeau just fell outside of the list for me. But I think a really interesting character, somebody you feel for, somebody who gets totally screwed. Like completely screwed. And so I think, yeah, just a really well written character. Yeah. Uh, and, um, yeah, I mean, I, I, I can't believe he's not on your list. I'm shocked. Yeah. The only number three on mine. I have two. I like more than that. But what is your number three on mine? Instead of Jan, John Rambo, I went with Neo from the main Neo. I went with Neo. You broke a rule. Neo's a superhero. No he's not he's just a man. Neo is a superhero

by by movie two Neo can fly He flies in the matrix. He can't fly out of the matrix. It's all in your mind Anyway, the movie is called the matrix. It all takes place in the matrix I don't think it's a real brain. What do you guys think? Is that a, is he a superhero? I think that he represents a, I think he's such an interesting character because he, you know, he represents the ability.

It's like martial arts more so to me, right? Like the ability to, with your mind, sort of break the, uh, this, this oppression that is so, uh, weighing down your people and, uh, and through that training and, and, uh, and action, you know, basically be able to be the hero that truly saves the world. I mean, I think it's a, I think he's a fascinating. You really love zero to hero because you loved that about cage in edge of tomorrow. And that's very much Neo's journey. As I, as I look at this, this is my list.

This is the theme of my list is like what feels like regular people that become heroes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm seeing. McClain is that too. McClain is very much that too. I'm realizing that's every single person on my list. Now. Yeah. I'm seeing. Because McLean is that too. McLean is very much that too. So is McLean. I'm realizing that's every single person on my list. Now. Well, that's okay. You like feet of clay. You like flaws, as you keep saying. Yeah. And so I'd love to, we'll take calls in a second here so we can hear a few more.

And then I'll rattle off some names that just fell outside of my list that are, that are just epically badass from the jump. They're on there. They just didn't make my top five. Um, let's go to your second number. Okay. My number two, this might be the biggest cheat. Uh, again, I keep cheating on that first rule. My number two is the character Lee played by Bruce Lee from enter the dragon. I had a feeling this was gonna be on your list. It wouldn't make my list because it's not, I've never even seen that movie. What the fuck?

And I know you love- You idiot! I know you love that movie. Well, it's an incredible film. Yeah. I thought we might see this. Wicked Empire was partially based on enter the dragon. Yes. The, the character of Lee, uh, you know, I mean, he does have some things about him that are kind of unique to him. For example, he's a little bit rebellious when they tell, when the authorities tell

him he has to go on this investigation with them, He's kind of a jerk to them. So he's not quite a goody two shoes and also enter the dragon is the one where I think finally Bruce Lee is like, ah, finally really gels because he doesn't quite do it as much in the earlier movies, but an end of the dragon, the whole time it's, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do that. It might be problematic. It makes me so happy when it's happening in the film. And I just think that like the look, the style, the acting, everything about Enter the Dragon Lee is so fucking cool. Like it is the top of cool to me.

So I love that character in that film. I didn't realize this. I mean, I knew you loved it, but you're selling me on giving it a watch. I got to give it a watch. You got to give it a watch. You know, it's from 73. So it's not really quite at the pace or the special effects of a, you know, even an eighties movie, but it is, it is the best for what it is.

Of the Kung Fu films that are out there. It might be the absolute best. Great. Yeah. I haven't seen a lot of Kung Fu films. So I think that, uh, yeah, let's see. Let's do a whole segment one day. Let's go to Joe watches that enter the dragon and then we'll, we'll talk about it. Oh, lovely. I'd love to do that. Enter the dragon, enter the dragon, enter the dragon. Yeah. All right. Sounds good. My number two, you know,

or you love her. Ellen Ripley is my number two action hero. And as you mentioned, I didn't think of this before, but it's another sort of like, she's the second officer, right? She's just sort of like a there to, she's like an XO, right? Like, oh yeah, you're kind of there to- She's blue collar. She operates power loaders. Exactly.

She's just there to make sure that whatever the captain says sort of gets done and blah, blah, blah. She's not in charge. She's not the one that's going to save it. She's not, you don't know that she's, yeah, you don't know that she's the protagonist at the beginning of the first movie. Exactly. There is no hints to it.

And then you see her up against these like roughnecks, right? Like she's not going to survive the roughnecks and she's just too, too much of a bad ass. She's the smartest one because she's the one who's like telling them not to bring it on the ship. And yeah, she's the one that she keeps them outside that she won't let them back on for quarantine rules. Yeah. And Ash is like, no, but it brings him in and you know why later, but at first you don't know why. Like what the hell, um, you know, maybe, maybe she is just kind of a tight ass, right? And like, yeah, right. But then you get to see like she was right all along, you know, maybe, maybe she is just kind of a tight ass, right. And like, yeah, right. But then you get to see like she was right all along, of course,

cause she's an amazing hero. So yeah, Ellen Ripley, number two for me. Ellen Ripley is killer. She's amazing. And Sigourney Weaver is amazing in the role. And, uh, if I may be permitted to be heteronormative, breathtakingly beautiful in, uh, in that first film and, and in the subsequent films as well.

But in that first film, she just is a very beautiful woman. Yeah. Uh, all right. Uh, number one, number one, number one, look, this guy's been brought up a couple of times already in the show. This actor, number one, I gotta go. Ethan Hunt from the Mission Impossible films. This is amazing.

So Ethan Hunt is probably my five, but I swap him out for Cage just because I feel like it didn't get enough love, right? Like everybody's, but I also wonder, yeah. Ethan Hunt, John Rambo, just outside by five. I'll tell you what broke the tie. Ethan Hunt doesn't have that zero to hero journey. No, he's hero to hero.

He's just hero and then bigger hero and then bigger hero. Hero-er? Hero-er? Even more hero? I tell you, there is a theme to my list, which is like, it's really, I mean, I'm sorry I broke the rule. I'm a bad, I'm bad. I'm a bad host of glass canine radio. The theme to my list is it's really just the actors and even hunt is the role that Tom

Cruz was meant to play. When Ethan Hunt is running, when he's running, I get fully turgid. It is incredible to watch. You know, Tom Cruise doing all of his own stunts, like some of the things that Ethan Hunt does are just so beautiful to watch. Those films are, you know, the epitome of action. I'll tell you another theme in my list.

And we didn't talk about this. I think that everything you've picked is fantastic, but I didn't pick anything where there's like an alien or like, you know, any kind of sci-fi. Like to me, like one, one thing I, well, I'm just saying one thing that I love about the mission of possible films and Ethan Hunt is that they exist in this very like hyper real espionage world with like this tech you could almost think is real. Um, Ethan Hunt, what do you say?

I mean, hyper real, hyper real. Yeah. I don't know if it's hyper real. What Hunt, when he's climbing. Did you say hyper real? Hyper real, yeah. I don't know if it's hyper real. What does hyper real mean? I mean, Joe, is there actually special robot suction cups you can use to climb up the side of a building in Dubai? Because if there are, I want them. What I'm saying is Mission Impossible and Ethan Hunt

are just almost believable, but not quite just a tad bit science fiction. Yeah. Yeah. There's just, there's just like that edge, but, um, you know, I mean, like I love that Ethan hunt, uh, tries to be a human and fails cause Tom Cruise can't act like a human. So like, you know, in moments when Tom Cruz is like, I'm sorry, when Ethan Hunt is hanging out with his team, having beers, he's just like,

we're having fun. And you're like, Oh no, Ethan Hunt. That's not a person. You're bad at that. Yeah. You're not good at that. You're not good at being people. Ethan, but if you want to like, you know, ride a motorcycle off the side of a mountain and catch a train. Oh, and he rides motorcycles. Ethan hunts your man. All right, I'm going to do one more and then we're going to open it up.

I see tons of suggestions in chat, all that were on my list, but didn't make the top five. I'd love to hear what people want to weigh in and please call us. Raise your hand, get on here and talk about your favorite superhero or action hero, I should say, that we didn't mention. My number one is a classic. Also not a zero to hero so much as a regular guy thrown into situations where he has to become the hero. That's Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones is my number one. Indiana Jones, great pick. And I love that he's a professor. Very much a normal guy. An academic. Yes. An academic, a researcher, but then it have to be snakes. Right. But then, you know,

he gets to hang off the side of a Nazi tank having like a fight with one hand while, you know, getting crushed into stone walls. The, I mean, it's just, it's just fantastic. So Indiana Jones is, oh yeah. Jobster says you call him Dr. Jones. Yes, you're right. You're right, Jobster, Dr. Jones. Let's get some calls. Harrison Ford is so good at taking those larger than life characters and making them feel

like really real people. Like, absolutely, you know, in a way that like Schwarzenegger could never ever approach that level of acting. Yeah. All right, let's get Harry up here. Harry 1385. How's it going Harry? Have we got you there Harry? Harry? Yep. I just had to plug in my microphone.

Got you. How are you doing Harry? I'm doing great. Good. Do you got any way in here on action heroes we missed? Great. Good. Do you got any way in here on action heroes we missed? Yeah. I could list off a few I was thinking of. Let's just pick one because we're going to. I'll pick one.

Oh, Mad Max. That's fine. We just talked about Mad Max. So yeah, that was part of a reason I was like. But yeah, pick one more and I want to leave it open for more people to call in. Not in the first film because it's not really an action film but Caesar in the recent Planet of the Apes films. I think in the follow-up symbol of the planet. Of course the first caller is like, can I pick a chimpanzee?

But genuinely he's an incredible action hero in those. He's so emotive. You love him. You root for him. Even against him. God damn it. He's genuine. Sorry, we should have had a's genuine. No chimpanzees. Okay. I'll say Daniel Craig Bond in casino way out because he's a horrible murder. I'm glad you had a backup. Thank you, Harry. Oh, that was three quick ones off the board. But I will say, I was very impressed with the emotional CGI of that chimpanzee. It was very impressive.

Yeah. You look in his eyes and you see what you see. He's working things out. I'm going to say Caesar is a superhero because he's a chimpanzee that talks. So that to me is a superpower for a chimpanzee. So before we get somebody else on here, let's get gatekeep Harry. Let's talk about James Bond for a second. He brought up Daniel Craig. James Bond fell out of my list for various reasons. One is I'm not a

Bond guy, but what, how in the, for the purposes of this list, do you just say James Bond and it gets on the list? Do you distinguish by actor? I know that it's a, you know, a book character that goes way back and that they're all playing the same character. Of course you could just pick that character. That would be well within our rules. But do you feel, are you a Bond guy, first of all? Not huge, which is why he didn't make my list. There's stuff I like more.

All right. Well, I'm just curious if people think that like you would need to specify, are they very different interpretations of the character that you would need to specify? You know that is a really good point. Maybe Bond is harder to put on my, at least for me to put on my list because it's like it's actually a bunch of different people even though they all play the same character. Ancient Edie come on up here we're running out of time. I want to talk to as many people as possible and get some more names on the list. Ancient Edie if you're there come up and join us. If we don't hear from you in a second, we'll move on. There we go, you there?

Hi, Ancient Edie. Hello. Hello. Hey guys, what's up? Not much, having a great time. How you doing? I'm doing good. Excited to see you guys in the hardware coming up soon.

But apart from that, I wanted to make a case for a vastly terribly underrated action hero and one John Spartan from demolition, man. Oh yeah. That's a fun one. That's good. Ancient Edie. I just watched demolition man last year and I gotta tell you, buddy, it's one of the worst films I've ever seen in my life. Wait, that was the first time you watched it. You know, I had seen it when I was like, you know, 16. Right, me too, and I loved it. And I rewatched it about a year ago, I think it was.

And I was like shocked at how much it does not hold up. Like at all, but fun entry. But I wanna hear your case for John Spartan. Give me your case for John Spartan. I will give you that it is a terrible movie. You're not wrong about that. However, right at the start, you get the fact that John Spartan is a terrible person and the fact that he just blows up all kinds of buildings and collateral damage and stuff

and one bad guy, right? One bad guy. Fast forward 20 minutes later and he's being woken up into a utopian society so that he can stop one bad guy and in the process destroys the entirety of civilization. Well put, well said. Yeah. That's well, he's got to stop Simon Phoenix. Simon yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Procedurals of procedure was really fun. Thank you, ancient Edie. We're going to try to do a quick around the horn here, get as many people as we can.

K-Rob, come up to the stage here and tell us what we missed in terms of action heroes. I did hear you say Mad Max, but Furiosa was my pick. Ah, yeah. Furiosa is on my list. And I was mainly thinking of, um, uh, Fury Road. Uh, when I, when I picked Furiosa. I was so bummed I missed last week. I was thinking about how she, I wrote her down.

She's on my list, just not in the top five, how she was so badass in that movie and like in the action parts, like when she gets hurt, like real bad, it just like powers through it, you know, when she gets in that fist fight with Max. It's so good, so real. The choreography, everything was great. K. Rob, what'd you, you know, we didn't touch on this last week.

K. Rob, what did you think of the Furiosa movie? I thought it was fine. It is fine. That's a good review. It's no fury road, but no, it's not a bad movie by any means. Yeah. Once again, damning with faint praise. K Rob. Hey, look, it's not the best show in the world. Yeah, go ahead. One more thing is you picked Indiana Jones and the Indiana Jones game is fantastic. You should play it.

Oh yeah. I really want to play the great circle. I think Skid was streaming that, wasn't he? Yeah, Skid is streaming it. I really want to play that one. I just finished- Oh shit, I'm sorry, K-Rob. I just accidentally cut you off. Sorry, K-Rob.

Sorry, K-Rob. I'm sure you were saying you just finished it, but yeah, thank you for the rec. I'm going to look into that. Let's get somebody else here. Punk Luke. What do you got on super? There's a lot on the list here that people haven't mentioned that we didn't mention. Come on.

What do we got here, Punk Luke? Are you there? Too much of a punk. There he is. Oh, your mic is muted, Punk Luke. See if you can unmute that while... All right. I'm going to say something while Punk Luke works on his while, um, all right. I'm going to, I'm going to say something while punk Luke works on his microphone.

Yeah, say something. John Wick. John Wick. It was on my list and it got bumped off. Me too. On the list, but I'm not a big John Wick guy. I think I got to go back and rewatch. I never saw anything besides the first movie and even that one I saw a very long time ago.

I like the first one. I think some of the action sequences in the later ones are amazing, but I think overall John Wick is a little boring. Like as a character? When you get into the, no, when you get into the later movies, the films get a little boring. They, they're very long and stretched out and they're never like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like I feel like when you watch like a diehard, like the pacing moves.

And with John Wick, there's a lot of like deep meditation that I don't really love. Harry, uh, who is a big fan of chimpanzees just left says in chat that John Wick, the character becomes progressively less interesting with each sequel. So, uh, yeah, an interesting take on the character. Punk Luke, did you fix your mic? No, couldn't get it to work. Sorry punk We'll have to come back to you another time. What about Travis? Travis come on up

Hey Travis All right, I'm gonna make my action pitch real quick cuz I'm gonna poke at Joe about Reacher I don't know if anyone said it cuz I had to go do some work real quick. But what about John Slater from last action? Is it John or Jack? Fortunately, I think it's Jack Slater from last action hero. I don't remember that movie. So you like you like parodies of action movies.

Well, that that that is that is fun. But also Corbin Dallas from Fifth Element. Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Another and another Bruce Willis and sure that's a fun one. All right. Talk to us about Jack Reacher real quick. What do you want to? OK, so Reacher is just one of those shows I watched on wine. It's not a real head scratcher, but I cannot watch it without laughing

because on a band for a recent show, it may even be old. You talked about how a buddy of yours told, said that the show asks the question, what if a guy was big? Yes. Yeah, so every great work of art asks a question. The question that the show Reacher asks is, what if a man was big?

That's what I see every time I watch it now. It's like I'm playing with GI Joes and I have these like 10 inch WWE figures and that's what Reacher is to every other person. He's not even that big. The actor is like 6'3". He's just massive. He3". He's just massive. He is. He's just massive.

And thanks for the call, Travis. As I watched it, I was like, it must be so cool to be that big. Don't you think? Don't you think that would be a great, like, in life just to be that big? Like, to not have everybody around you is so much. You could do whatever you want. The comedian Joe Mandy, who's very funny, has this bit about how height is boobs. Meaning that, you know, like women are always like, I want a tall guy. He needs to be tall.

I love a tall guy, but men are not allowed to go. I want a woman with big boobs. I hope I meet a woman who has giant boobs, but they are kind of the same thing. Okay, the final round here, we'll do two more. Curdy Bird, if you're there, hop on up. Curdy Bird, you there? Hello? Did it work this time? It worked this time. What's up, Curdy? Who do you like to add to this list? I had to drag my personal laptop into works to get this to work finally. So I'm so thankful. Awesome. Glad you're here. Well, Travis took the one I really wanted, which was Jack Reacher. But I was thinking about action

series, like TV shows, because I'm a little bit like Kate, where I'm not a huge, huge movie fan, but I do like TV shows and I found like prime dramas good and even like Firefly like Nathan Fillion's character is kind of like this club that kind of gets his way and is fighting his way through the universe. I don't think that's like my action hero now. I Really I really liked him and then Merton Riggs from the lethal weapons series Martin Riggs was on my list Got bumped out of it You know, no, no, I didn't say that's one that got bumped down because of the actor. Let's admit it No, no, I tried to steer clear of that When you get really drunk, do you start shouting that Jews started all wars? I did not know that.

That's something that Mel Gibson did one time. Thank you, Kurti, for calling in, getting another last minute there. One more and then we're going to, I'm going to list off a few more that haven't, haven't been said yet. Jobster, come on up here. If you're there, Jobster finished this off. Hello. Hey, hello.

Yeah, we got you. Who didn't we say? Um, I got, okay. So the action movie parody made me think of it. Detective Nicholas angel from hot fuzz. Oh yeah. Cool. Yeah, that's yeah. Cool. Is that Simon Pegg? Yeah, that's Simon Pegg. I remember watching that movie. I was working in a dormitory at a school and just like,

that was such a fun, that movie's such a fun watching experience and it's such a love letter to action movies. I also wanted to... Yeah, exactly. It's a parody. The difference there is, and I don't remember his name. You just said his name. Nicholas Angel, great name. But he's a very interesting character. It is a little bit classic, but his like, you got to do everything by the book. You got to... We're going to clean up the laziness in this podunk town is so well done and so funny. And then when he turns into an action hero, it's just hilarious.

Yeah, I love that movie. Yeah. So anyway, thanks, Joe. Thanks for bringing it up. And we'll just rattle a few more off here before we wrap up the show. Things that nobody said that I had on my list that I want to mention. Jason Bourne, you know, Ethan Hunt, Jason Bourne. Oh, I had that on my list too. I love Jason Bourne. Love Jason Bourne. To me, it's all the, and there's a lot of this in Ethan Hunt too, but the hand to hand,

the hand to hand combat stuff I find so fun and really well done. And there's cool car chases too in Jason Bourne that are really amazing. Yeah. The Bride from Fiddle. Yeah, hell yeah. Also on my list and got pushed off. Also on my list, Ice Cold, the pure revenge movie, you know, and just such a badass, but also like, you know, has a heart, you know what I mean?

At one point was a lot sweeter, you get the sense, but was broken by what happened to her. And then the whole, I just love the scene. She also knows how to take a hit as well. She's not perfect, you know? Like she's a badass, but she takes her hits as well. She gets pretty rocked. I did have Ethan Hunt on my list.

I had, oh, Snake Plissken I had on my list I had Oh a snake plissken I had on the list. Plissken amazing. Yeah, just just a year ago You can go Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China with Kurt Russell as well. I've never seen never saw Oh my god, which Kierkevich was like what is wrong with you? Like you have to see big I do really want to watch. Well, I didn't know John Carpenter basically at all. And then, uh, because we did the escape from New York game at Gen Con, I was like, all right, I'll go watch escape from New York. And I really liked it. Yeah, it was great.

This is, this is awesome. And so I got to watch some Big Trouble in Little China. I guess last one for me that I had written on my first list was Katniss Everdeen. I just love the standing up to the man, break down the system hero. She's another like, she's just a person, but she's just a hunter, but? But she has to survive and that's how she becomes a hero. So anyway, that rounds out my list. Jared, why don't you take us home today? I didn't have any extras, but I will say that the person who,

I don't know, someone just brought up something that made me think of point break. And that made me think of Johnny Utah. Hmm. Viacondias. I've got one. Oh, McD, there he is. Hey buddy. Oh yeah.

Uh, inspector tequila from hard boiled. Hell yeah. Like great action hero. Hard boiled is an insanely good action movie and tequila is a fucking hardcore tough guy. Yes he is. Yeah. He dual wielding pistols like a thing.

Yeah. That movie's guy. Yes. He is. Yeah, I do wielding pistols like a thing. Yeah That movie's dope. Yeah Jared last segment Why don't you finish this off here? Okay, so We're gonna do a segment every once in a while when a big birthday comes up and we call this happy birthday nerd Okay, so though he passed away in 2015 big birthday comes up and we call this happy birthday nerd. Okay. So though he passed away in 2015, today would have marked the 94th birthday of one of the greatest nerd icons of all time, Leonard Nimoy. All right.

Now, Leonard Nimoy, of course, played Spock in Star Trek, the original series, and in eight films. And I mean, I think you have to agree, this is a character that would go on the nerd Mount Rushmore. Yes. And something that I think is so significant about his portrayal, you know, Spock as a character, is that it speaks to so many nerds

and their life experience, you know, Spock as a character is that it speaks to so many nerds and their life experience, you know, so many nerds value logic and reason and facts, and also so many nerds have a great amount of trouble expressing emotions. So that is why Spock is a, you know, a landmark character for nerds in general. But, you know, even though the character like sort of has no emotions Nimoy makes him incredibly likable and he imbues him with so much sensitivity and humanity, you know that it's really an amazing portrayal and He plays him with like he plays him like he's playing shakespeare

And he plays him with like, he plays him like he's playing Shakespeare. He plays him like very seriously and with dedication. And that had to have been hard some mornings when they're gluing on your pointy ears, you know, he makes that habit. Now he had a really complicated relationship with Spock. He entitled his 1975 autobiography, I am not Spock and he maintained that he always loved the character But maybe he didn't love people he met on the street Addressing him as Spock and I could see why he might not like might not like that But he he set the record straight his 1995 biography is called I

am Spock so Look if you're gonna be known for playing one fictional character in your life, you could do a lot worse than Spock. I think, you know, that is a character that people look up to that has qualities that are worthy of admiration. So you're putting something that is a net good out in the world if that's who you're known for. But if we focus on Spock, we're ignoring all the awesome other nerd shit that Leonard Nimoy did. He was in an episode of The Twilight Zone. He had musical albums, one of which he sings a song about Bilbo Baggins on. He was the host of In Search Of, which was a docu-series about unexplained

phenomenon where they talked about Bigfoot and UFOs and Jack the Ripper, and he was in the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is as good, if not better than the original. And his character is really interesting in that. He's like a mental health guru, which kind of plays on the whole Nimoy thing of being this sort of like trustworthy intellectual in a weird way. So Nimoy had a talent for taking the strange and unusual

and making it feel real. Like there was something sort of unearthly about him, something that was like also really forthright and moral about him. That's probably why it felt unearthly because we don't experience that a lot in our day-to-day lives. In many ways, that's what made him feel like he came

from another planet is how good he seemed to be as a person. So that is our tribute to Leonard Nimoy. Happy birthday, Leonard Nimoy. And obviously we have so much to cover in the Star Trek space and future episodes of Glass Cannon Radio. It's something we haven't even touched on. It's very intimidating. How do you start approaching it? I don't know. An entire two-hour episode only on Spock, right? I mean,

you could do it. It's- We could do Star Trek for two hours. Oh, we certainly could do Star Trek for two hours. So more to come down the line, but just a good, nice happy birthday to Leonard Nimoy and thank you for everything. And that is going to wrap her up here, but let's talk about next week because we want to give people a heads up. Put out the word next week. Jared's been putting in a lot of time, putting in a lot of time getting caught up on- I finished last night. On Severance.

He had never seen an episode before a couple of weeks ago, a few weeks ago, and he went through, watched the entire first season. The, the, the finale has happened for the second season and we're going to talk about it next week and it's going to be spoiled. So if you want to come in, hang out, talk with us about it, listen to seasons to watch 19 episodes of 19 episodes to watch right now and next Wednesday if you want to do it live, but that's going to be the next step. We'd love to hear your thoughts, your theories, your suggestions. I'd love to love to talk to everybody about it.

So next week's going to be a big severance week here on glass cannon radio. Please please join us for that. I'm very excited. Guys. Thank you for all your calls and your comments. It's always nice talking to you guys. Even though I yell at you and tell you your taste is bad. I don't really mean it.

I love you. Daddy loves you. I love you guys too. It was great seeing everybody in Milwaukee and St. Paul who said they love Glass Cannon Radio. We love you guys. Please listen more. Call in when you can.

More to come next week. We'll see you guys in a week later bye peace out it's time to make your membership official start your 30-day free trial today and become an official member of the Naish at JoinTheNaish.com with the promo code GCN30. That's JoinTheNaish.com and use code GCN30 to gain access to exclusive podcasts, ad-free episodes and content you can't find anywhere else. Once again, it's JoinTheNaish.com and use code GCN30 at signup to get your first 30

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