The Glass Cannon Podcast - Glass Cannon Radio #13 – Adolescence, Online Toxicity, Character Sheets Then and Now

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

The hosts and callers react to the intense questions raised by Netflix's 'Adolescence' series before lightening things up with a look at some of the best (and worst) in TTRPG character sheets. 0:00 Start of Show 5:33 Adolescence 29:30 A Toxic Problem 1:07:10 Character Sheets 1:40:07 Dear GCR 1:51:00 Player Fiat Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/djVbPaMt3PA 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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All. The. Time. Get the RBC ION Plus Visa. Conditions apply. Visit rbc.com slash ion cards. You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network. This is Glass Cannon Radio with your hosts Jared Logan and Joe O'Brien. Oh, coming at you from Los Angeles and New Jersey at the same time. Can you believe it?

Two Sigma males. Here to red pill you into the program. This is Glass Caner Radio. My name's Jerry Logan, that's Joe O'Brien. Hey everybody, what's going on? How are you? Happy Wednesday. Happy April, middle of April. Not a lot that's going on ever in the middle of April.

The Ides of April, as everyone says. Yeah, it's just, oh, I guess it's tax day, isn't it? Well, yesterday was. I hope you got your taxes done, Jared. It was yesterday. Oh, yeah. My wife does our taxes months ago. And I give her emotional support.

That's my role. Nice. Nice. So are your times all squared? I was recently chatting with my wife about a potential, we've got a 10 year anniversary coming up. It's about to be our 10 year wedding anniversary and she's, you know, wanted to do something special and, you know, we were kind of like talking it over and this one thing that we might want to do is like, it's kind of pricey.

It's just like there's a beautiful mountain resort in upstate New York that we've all that we've driven by a hundred times and never gone to. Cause it's like super expensive. We're like, you know, what if we went there and she started pitching it again last night and kind of going through like some of the rough numbers, like hesitantly, like it would be, maybe we could just do a night or there. And then what, you know, and I was just like, you don't have to sell me. Like she takes care of all the finances, basically.

So I'm like, if you clear it, I'm it. Like, you don't have to worry about me. I'm not going to nickel and dime you. So if you want to do it, let's, let's do it because she, she knows all the numbers. I trust her to do it. Let's go. Yeah. Honey, whatever you think's fine.

I'll be in here playing Pathfinder. Exactly. I mean, working, working. Working. Same in my house. Same in my house. Kara runs all the numbers, you know, and I'm the emotional support. I'm the heart is what I like to say. I'm the heart of the family. Heart of the house. I always say that my wife remembers the names of everyone we know and what they look like and their backgrounds, their backstories and how they know each other.

And I remember which characters are Marvel and which are DC. Perfect. Perfect. And I will correct her if she gets that wrong. I correct her if she gets that wrong. I correct her if she gets that wrong. Welcome to Glass Cannon Radio, the show where you, the viewer slash listener can call in and let us know what you think about the topics that we're bringing to the table today.

And man, do we have a different kind of show today. A slightly different kind of show. Yeah, it's going to be a little different. It's going to be a little different. Yeah. It's gonna be a little different. We're gonna talk about some serious things. I hope we can be slightly amusing while we do that. I'm gonna try to be. We're gonna be talking about the Netflix program,

Adolescence, that's a British television series, a limited series, only four episodes long, that deals with toxic online interactions, toxic masculinity, and the very very scary places that that can go. That recently got released on Netflix so we've watched that. Then we're going to talk about just online toxicity in general. We want your stories about the horrible things you have seen or experienced online, how you deal with it. What's the answer? Do any of you have the answers? You tell us. Uh, then we'll, we'll

move to a completely different kind of topic. Let's lighten it up. Let's lighten it up a little after that. Okay. One of the main components of playing a tabletop role-playing game is the character sheet. What are the best character sheets? What are the worst character sheets? We're going to give you our opinions. We want you to give us yours. And then it's another Ask GCR. We have taken your questions from direct messages on Discord and we will give our answers to

a question, maybe two, maybe two if there's time. And finally to round out the show, our good friend Joe O'Brien has a verbal essay to deliver. It's a player fiat essay. I did a GM fiat not too long ago where I talked about my GM pet peeves. Joe's gonna talk about some player pet peeves

So are we ready to do all that? Well, listen if you want to call in get on the discord first You have to subscribe to the glass cannon then get on the discord go to the glass can radio stage and raise your hand And we will call on you and we will get your I'm not two cents. Let's make it a buck 50 We'll get your buck 50 on the topic at hand. Shall we get right into it? Let's go. Let's go. I'm psyched. I'm very psyched for the start of this show. Let us talk about Adolescence. Okay. Adolescence is a TV show from the UK, a British psychological crime drama. And this show was created by Stephen Graham, who's the actor who plays the

father in the show. He's an actor I've seen in a lot of different things, including, I think it's some Guy Ritchie films. And I did not realize that until you just said that. Uh, I mean, I know who Stephen Graham is. I didn't know that he created the show. He co-created the show. I got a Jack Thorne who I'm not familiar with, but that's awesome.

Good for him because I have, I've been a big fan of that guy since the Guy Richie days, early two thousands. Yeah. Fantastic. He's so got an incredible look. Yeah. Um, and he's fantastic in this show, but the show in case you're not up to date on it, you know, if you haven't watched it, don't worry. Because I think that everyone has an opinion on these kinds of things, because these kinds of things are happening out in the world right now.

So well, if I could jump in, I just want to say this, like, we're using this as an entry way to talk about something that is very serious. And obviously the show is very serious too. But kicking it off, we'll focus on the show to start, right? How, like, what is this program? Why was it put together? Why did, why was this piece of art made? Right. And what do we think of it?

But then we were going to very quickly in short order, roll that into a much larger conversation of the themes it brings up and how it affects all of us in general in our real lives. And that's why we want to hear from you guys. We want to hear from callers how this has impacted your life in one way or another. If you've witnessed something or something happened to a friend or a family member, we would love to hear, you know, look, we have a lot of fun on this show. We goof off a lot, but it's also really important to acknowledge some of the more serious themes

that are going on. And I feel like this sort of thing impacts all of us as nerds because we are by our very nature frequently in online communities, frequently sort of going down rabbit holes of super fandom and parasocial relationships. And you know, that whole thing is very real in our scope in our realm. And so we just want to talk about it today. Not to mention, I'd say, you know, the nerd world, although it's thankfully changing is predominantly male

or has been historically, and there has been a lot of talk about how nerd entertainment, nerd content, you know, tries to empower males, you know, nerd content, you know, tries to empower males, you know, they call, you know, a male power fantasy, superheroes, for example. So that has a lot to do with the show as well, which is about a 13 year old boy who stabs a 13 year old girl to death. We can't get around that. That's what it's about. A very, very dark show. But as the show progresses, you learn kind of, not every question is answered, but you learn kind of why this happened,

what environment created this, what the influences were on this kid to make him do this, what his family life is like. And it's all done in this very immersive, very visceral film style where every episode is filmed in one long take. So when he is arrested, you literally, you, you see the cops break in and then you see them take him out of the house. You ride with him to the police station. You ride with him through all of his like, you know, processing and all of that.

Yeah. Yeah. Let me just jump in here. I was loosely aware of this, but was not when I started watching the show. How best to explain that McDermott mentioned it in passing. I didn't retain that when I started watching the show, which was just yesterday. We were going to talk about this today. So I, I was like, I'll put on the first episode. So I put it on and there's a raid on a house to grab a 13 year old boy who is suspected of murder. They pull the kid out of

the house. They put him in a car the whole time. Parents are screaming, what's going on, blah, blah. It's very dramatic. Then they get in the car and just like you said, Jared, they start driving and the detective is talking to the kid. Suddenly the detective has a very different demeanor. You know, in the house it was all, get out of the car, blah, blah, blah, blah. As soon as he's in the car and in handcuffs, it's like, all right, you're going to have to, you're going to need a lawyer, just ask for one. Uh, you're going to do this, you're going to do that.

We're going to get your parents there as soon as possible. They're going to be able to speak for you, blah, blah, whatever. But then that little bit ends and then they just sort of sit there in silence and the car is just driving and this beautiful music comes up and I'm like waiting for the scene to fade out. And I'm like, this is not, why is this not fading out? This is like very dramatic. And it keeps passing over all their faces, everybody that's in the car over and over again. And I'm just like, what is going? Oh, wait a minute. Now

I remember McD said they did this all in one shot. I'm like, Holy crap. I didn't even notice until that moment that the shot hadn't broken from the beginning, which was like when they were outside the house. And so yeah, just, just brilliantly done. Uh, yeah, I mean, a little bit of technical filmmaking for sure. The timing and the, yeah, just brilliantly done. Yeah, I mean, an incredible bit of technical filmmaking, for sure. The timing and the dedication and precision of the actors and all of that. I mean, because it all had to be done in one take. The second episode, you travel through a school. I mean, you travel all through a school.

So you see what the young boy's school is like. And that had to have been logistically a giant puzzle. So, and I do think it really adds to the show and makes the show feel like you are there and that you're not watching a movie of the week, lifetime movie kind of thing, but that you are experiencing the world through these characters eyes. So yeah, it gives you a sense of it's like theater, right? I mean, in a way, it's like you're, you, there's, yeah,

it just, it did feel so real. And so I really, truly, I haven't finished the show, but man, I just, I am completely in, in, in, what's the word I'm looking for? I'm just so completely sucked in and drawn in by the show. And a lot of it has to do with that style, which so 1917 is in that kind of style, right? That, that film. It has cuts, I believe. It does have cuts and it's very long scenes, but very long shots, but cuts.

And I just felt like, you know, I can be very cynical about this stuff, you know, a long time in New York, a long time around filmmakers and film and stuff. I can't, I tend to get a little like, Oh, what's the next gimmick, right? Like it's this kind of gimmicky or whatever. And just didn't feel that way at all in the show because it felt so intentional to tell this story in a very raw and theatrical way. You know, the performers or at least you get the sense, the performers are just, they got one shot to get this right.

And they're kind of, there's sometimes when they're stumbling over lines and stuff like that and you feel like they're, it's all intentional. It's part of the process. They're, it's a, feels like a real scene. You know, they cut each other off, they talk over each other. They, but it doesn't feel like improv'd and like, like not tight. It feels very tight. But yeah, it just feels very real.

Yeah, I really loved the single shot idea. So, so, so it's a good piece of art. I mean, at least it's a good piece of craft, let's say for sure. But we let's talk about it as art or the themes of it rather is what I'm getting to. I mean, how do you feel about this story? Let's talk about it as art or the themes of it rather is what I'm getting to. How do you feel about this story? I did finish it and you are never really given a complete picture. You're never really given like, this is why this happened. But how did you feel, I mean, watching the show or how do you think it dealt with its subject matter, this online toxicity that radicalizes and creates violence in a 13-year-old boy? I personally really liked it. I think that it's, and I haven't finished it either, but I was so drawn in, I couldn't stop watching.

And so I've seen three full episodes of the four. I thought that I wouldn't be able to see any before this started and I just stayed up super late last night watching. I couldn't stop. It's so good. I can't recommend it highly enough. Matthew had sort of implied to me like, eh, you know, it's a little intense. Like he sort of implied like that emotional intensity might not be for everybody. And that might be true. And I was hesitant to watch it because of that. But then in watching it, like I didn't feel that way at all. I felt like, like it's intense. It's a terrible story and a murder and everything, but it's just, uh, it is from the perspective in of generation, I feel like, of the older generation,

trying to understand what's happening here. So they do a really good job of not laying that all on really thick at first and sort of slowly rolling out to you through the kids kind of being interviewed, like, how do you not get this? You know, and then they just start explaining and walking you through what this, you know, the codes, the coding that is sort of used in the social media communication sphere to transmit messages of bullying and hurt. And, and, you know, the same stuff that always

happened, you know, same stuff that we were kids, but just in a very different way and a dangerous way considering how much and how widespread appearance and all that stuff is across so many different people can know. And so yeah, it was just, I think I really liked the way that they handled that part. And then yeah, the masculinity part was like, it was really scary. It's really, it was, it was kind of frightening. Yeah. You know, we're of an age where we weren't really exposed to that kind of thing.

I mean, I had the dial up internet, you know, and I was definitely alone in my room waiting for pornography to slowly populate the screen line by line. to slowly populate the screen line by line. But I, you know, thankfully wasn't exposed to these ideas of red pill and, you know, the 80-20 myth that he talks about. I'd never heard of that before. It was so funny too. Yeah, 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men. I definitely was, I don't know if you were, Joe, but as a young man of 13, 14, 15, I was definitely frustrated about how unattractive I seemed to be to girls, how much trouble I had

sort of maturing into that phase of life. So I can see, you know, why these myths and these horrible movements are attractive to young boys. You have a boy, right? You have a boy. I have a son, yeah. In fact, it's so wild. It makes me think of when I was having a kid, having my first kid, I was obviously really nervous and my good buddy Nick Lowe

turned me on to a podcast. I don't know if you've ever heard of this one, but it's called The Longest Shortest Time. You ever heard of that podcast? No. It's a really good podcast that sort of prepares you to have a kid in a way. It's almost like NPR-ish or like this American life-ish where it's just sort of like short stories that are typically from the people that went through them. And they're everything from like fun and sort of fun story, fun light stories to dark stories. But most of the time, they show you a resolution that is positive.

And so they say there's gonna be a lot of things you're on ready for. It's gonna be a lot of things that are scary and you're unprepared for. But you'll get through it. And here's how and here's how this person did it. And here's how it worked out, whatever. And in one of those things, one of the women, I'll never forget, we were pregnant, I didn't know what we were having and she was so terrified because she found out she was having a boy and she was really upset about it.

And I was like, this is weird, I want a boy real bad, I would be great to have a boy. And one of her main reasons or psychological traumas that she had with this is that, uh, she was like, when you have a boy, you have a responsibility that is beyond, you know, what you have with a, with a girl because a boy, it feels like can so easily become a serial killer. You know, it was like dark, but this is like where her head went. She was like, I feel responsible to make sure that he never hurts anyone. And that doesn't seem to be as much of a worry with a girl, at least physical harm, right? And it just really struck me and I was like, oh man, that is a good point.

You know, like you want to make sure that you are emotionally educating a boy to, you know, not have that sort of toxic masculinity. When, when we were pregnant, uh, we didn't know whether we were having a boy or a girl, but a friend of ours was over and said something about how, well, you want to have a girl cause you know, so many men are predators, you know, and, um, I got so mad, I got so mad that this is how we think of men and this is how we think of babies before they're even born. Like little kids, like if they happen to be male, we're like, we kind of have already labeled them as a problem, you know? But my anger is probably,

You know, but my anger is probably, it's complicated because the reason that we do that is because the evidence bears out over and over and over again. There aren't a lot of lady serial killers. There's a lot of violence against women by men constantly every day. It is an endemic problem. Look at the statistics. It's, it's out there. So I can understand why that woman would have anxiety, trauma about having a boy. And this is getting very personal, but even my wife was, you know, she was like when the boy, when our son was born, she was,

you know, she's an incredible mother and loves him obviously, but she was a little troubled by it for a minute or two. Like, Oh, I had a boy. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I, it makes me think of a great line from another great British series that I loved years ago. The fall. Did you ever watch the fall? I saw the fall. Yeah. I really liked the fall. That was another one that was so intense, so dark. And Gillian Anderson's character at one point, she's, she's a, she's a detective, she's a cop, and she's talking about the danger of men and, you know, women, etc. And she was like, you know, they pull, you know, there's a poll or whatever, research poll, or whatever that asks a majority of men men what they fear most about women.

And she's like, they fear most like rejection or being laughed at. It's like what it boils down to. She's like, when you ask women, what do they fear most about men? It's being killed by them. You know, like it is a wildly different range. And, uh, that, that line I thought was really powerful in that show to, to kind of bring You know, like it is a wildly different range. And that line I thought was really powerful in that show to kind of bring that up. And we will never, you and I will never fully understand that fear.

And that's why, you know, we have to listen to that fear when it is voiced. Yeah. And the, which we'll call it. So anyway, just back to the show real quick before we move on to the kind of general online thing is like, you said this and I wanted to chime into, um, when the boy, when the psychologist is able to get through a little bit talking about how he feels about himself. Um, I could, I could maybe say word for word, that is exactly how I felt at 13. Like the way that he described himself. Like, do girls like you? He's like, no.

And he doesn't seem that bothered by it. He's just like, no. And he's like, why do you think that? And he's like, because I'm ugly. You know, and she's like, why do you think that? He's like, aren't you supposed to say I'm not ugly? You know, and she's like, I'm just interested in how you think about yourself. And he's like, well, everybody's supposed to say you're not ugly, blah, blah, blah. Um, I remember feeling that way exactly. You know, you feel rejected all

the time. You feel like no girls are going to like you. Um, and, and that, you know, it was, it was well done. I thought, you know, to me, for these bars, the bars for me, for these shows, I just want to be immersed and I want to feel like they're trying to capture real human experience and not trying to make something slick or sexy or cool, or just like a wow factor, right? That there, or that they're trying to like hammer home some message, force feed you some message. Like this just feels very real.

It felt very, very grounded. I, one thing I would say is, you know, I think some people, they look at a message like this just feels very real. It felt very, very grounded. I, one thing I would say is, you know, I think some people they look at a program like this and they go, wow, too dark, not for me. Can't do it. I can't do it. Nope.

It's just that I only like things that, you know, entertain me and make me happy. And I would really encourage people to watch this program even though it is so dark and so uncomfortable, because I feel like, you know, programs like this are important, you know, and you may agree with where they land on the issues here. You may disagree with it, but I think that it's cool that this program goes there and tries to inform you about it and goes and asks these very, very uncomfortable questions.

The program is not at all graphic. You're not going to see a graphic scene of murder or anything like that. Right. Everything that happened happened before the show started. Right. So you're sort of seeing fallout. You don't really see the... But sometimes we need to make ourselves uncomfortable.

That is a very important thing that entertainment can do for us that is good for us. To make us uncomfortable and to make us confront things that don't make us happy. It's not Netflix's job to make you happy all the time. It's not Stephen Graham's job. Netflix, I think, do want to make you happy all the time. It's not Stephen Graham's job. Netflix, I think, do want to make you happy, but Stephen Graham, it's not his job to do that.

He's trying to present something that will create a discussion. That is what they're trying to do. You can't have that discussion if you won't watch things like this. I think everybody deserves and should be in on these kind of discussions. All right, that's my little soapbox on that. Should we talk to some people? Yeah, let's see if anybody has any thoughts

on what we've been talking about so far, at least with adolescents. Blueberry is here. Blueberry, how are you? Come on up and join us here on Discord. Hello, you guys can hear me okay? Yeah, we got you! You sound great.

So, yes, I have watched the episodes and I kind of went on a YouTube deep dive. There was a few social workers who made a comment about episode three and they said that the way that they shot that episode and all the questions and stuff, oh, sorry, I'm a little shaky, is spot on. Like this is how you would kind of try to gain, you know, someone who's in the system, you know, kind of their trust or kind of to open them up. And it does take a toll. And yeah, it. And again, after I went on this deep dive, then I learned everything was shot and, you know, one continuous take. I was like, what?

Oh, so you didn't even like notice it while you were watching it? I mean, that's why I think it's good. It's not like, it's not obvious at first. No, it's not obvious at first. And I was going from a filmmaking and yeah, I was all in off. Now comes to why I'm a little bit shaky. Take your time. Well it kind of just hits a nerve because I'm a mother to a young boy and yeah it's really scary you know kind of raising him because yeah my goal with raising my son who's

going to start getting into that age where he wants to play games online. Or he's starting to do his own friend groups and stuff. It's kind of scary that I can't really control that to a certain extent. What they're talking about, what they're doing, what they're telling him. Yeah. And so the best thing that I can do is first, always teach him consent. He loves giving people hugs. So I constantly have to remind him to ask, establishing that. And then also keeping a line of communication. That was something that the show kind of pointed out between, you know, the teenagers and the adults. There was a scene with the detective, I think it was the detective, you know, trying to approach with his son.

Right, yeah, there was, yeah. Hey, have this kind of dialogue and open communication. So if I have to sit through, gosh, know how many hours of really crappy shows on YouTube in order to like connect with my son, then I'll happily do it. Yeah. You know, and again, it's kind of trying to keep in mind in their world.

And then as parents, my main goal is as long as I raise any kids that I have to not be complete douche canoes, I'm gonna call that as a parenting win. Extra points if they actually give back to their communities. Yeah. And I keep that in mind. And I also try to omit my failings and struggles as a parent.

What was it? Was it the last episode we focused on the father? Yeah, it is. Yeah. The final episode is just with the family. So again, kind of mild, you know, this entire series is a little bit triggering. But one of the things he says is, I never hit my child because I was beaten as a child. But you can see with the father that he doesn't address his anger and

his frustration in a healthy way either. And so as parents, he also has to keep that in mind. He has anger problems. He has anger issues. Like a ton of men have. Yes. And so again, that is something that we need to try to admit in ourselves, in our frustrations, and address those feelings. So that way our kids will hopefully be able to have

an idea of, oh, I can at least go to adult and explain, hey, I'm feeling very frustrated about this, and not be able to express themselves a lot better. Yeah. Great call, Blueberry. Really great way to better. Yeah. Great call, Blueberry. Really great way to start us off. Thank you, Blueberry. And you sound like a great mom too.

So. I think you have your priorities in order there. That sounds. You got it. You got it going on with the mom thing. Good job. Let's talk to somebody else. Let's see.

Corvus, Corvus, come on up and join us here. Had your hand raised to discuss. Hello? Adolescents, hey, how you doing? How's it going guys? It's going great. Actually maybe more of a topic for the toxicity in the next section.

That's fine, please. We can move on kind of theoretically into that next section for sure. Yeah, let's do it. Let's see if they can see the connected topics. So I'm 36. So I'm around the age of y'all I imagine. So, you know, when I was younger,

I look back and I think like, if I had the wrong group of friends, if I didn't talk to this person, if I had a different interaction with the internet, who knows what type of person I could have turned into because it's so ever present out there. And like what you were talking about, Joe, like that feeling of like, oh, no one gets me. No one understands me. Like there are people who are in the wings waiting

to tell you like they get you and they understand you and they do not have your best interests at heart. understand you and they do not have your best interests at heart. Yeah. I think the same thing Corvus, when I think about, uh, I mean, McD who's on this call, you know, McD who's on the show and, uh, produces this is like, we go back at that, that friend McD and I go back to grade school. We were in, we were in kindergarten together. Like that friend group that we had is so essential to,

you know, our experiences through high school and stuff like that. So we never got involved in stuff that we might have otherwise, at the time we thought we wanted to be involved in. But we were, you know, we just had a crew where nobody was into that stuff. Everybody was pretty healthily afraid of their parents, I think. And just sort of stayed out of trouble. And I feel like I got very lucky with the friend group that I had. And that's what I fear with my kids. I don't know who they're talking to. I don't know what those kids are saying. And it freaks me out for sure. Oh yeah. You're envious of those other people. But when you get older, you're like, oh man, it's a really good idea that I didn't go and hang out with them.

Or like, and I've always got my head in the sand a little bit, as far as the internet is concerned. So when I had some people who I know who were getting on 4chan and things like that, and I was like, I checked it out, and I was like, wow, everybody and I was like now everybody on here This seems like they're a giant dick. I just stopped going Those message boards and things like that and I didn't realize it like that's the point. That's why people do like

So I didn't I didn't understand the whole point of that So I dodged a bullet there point of that. So I dodged a bullet there. Well, Corvus, I'm going to move on because it seems like a lot of people want to talk, but thanks for the call. And I think it's important to bring up here, we're not only talking to parents, we're not only talking to teenagers. So like, it's us too, you know, like, we are involved in social media, we are day to day using these things now, even if we're not teenagers. And I wonder if anybody has any sort of experiences or thoughts they want to share about how this

stuff works or methods they used to avoid some of the pain and psychological damage that can be associated with some of these things. I personally stay off of them most of the time. I kind of can't handle it. If I get into reading a lot of intensely negative stuff, even if it's not just about me, even if it's other people fighting with other people, I get very like turned off. And so you'll see that I have, I barely post anything on social media. It's just, I'm not on it. I stay away from it in general because it,

it frightens me. Jared, how, I think, how often do you use social media? Social media, I'm on it too much. Look, I really feel like the internet and social media is the worst thing that ever happened to civilization. That it completely has destroyed our dialogue on everything. It's shattered our culture. It, you know, people now believe the thing that is most, you know, that confirms their biases

and their prejudices. And I mean that on every side of the political spectrum, not just on the side that I don't agree with. I think that my side of the political spectrum also believes a lot of goddamn baloney and it has become extremely intolerant of people who believe differently, even slightly differently. And I think it's a fucking shame. And I'll say all that before I say, and also it's causing boys to murder people. So the social media

is a plague and a curse. It's a plague and a curse. There is no bright side. There is no bright side. I agree. I don't, there's never a time when I think I wish I had it or I'm trying to stop an urge to watch it. Like I, every time I post, I wish I hadn't. That's sort of how I felt.

So I just stopped posting. Um, Malcares, why don't you join the call here. Malcares, what do you have to say on the topic? Hey gentlemen, can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, we can hear you. Nice mic. Loud and clear.

Thank you. I think what I'm going to say is going to echo a lot of the things that have already been said here. I'll preface my experience with this just by maybe giving a slightly different take on it. I grew up in a pretty rough and tumble home. And I think that that it changed the way that I interacted with a lot of these things. So I grew up speaking French and Italian and moved to Toronto at a very young age and had basically very little English to my name and was brutally bullied by the fact that I had a very, very thick Italian accent.

very, very thick Italian accent. And it inspired me to really, really dive in on learning English and becoming the best that I could at English. And God bless teachers. I have not seen the show that we are referencing, but I've learned now that it takes place in a school. And I wanna shed some light on the importance of teachers because in my own experience of

bullying and being in this situation, and much to what Blueberry said of being terrified of having this child go out into the world and not necessarily knowing where those influences are going to come from. When I was in grade five, grade six, a teacher of mine noticed that I was spending my recesses inside, burning through books to try to get a better handle on the language. And he noticed that I was reading fantasy. And he approached me one day and said, Michael, do you know what roleplay is? And I told him that I had no idea.

And he explained to me the concept of a TTRPG and when out of his way... Oh thank god it went in that direction because it's always scary when an adult walks up to a child and... You know what role play is? The second it was out of my mouth I was like, phrasing. Sorry, go ahead. No, absolutely.

He explained to me the concept of a TTRPG and went out of his way to collect a couple of us kids that were more on the outs. And every Friday would host a game night for us where he started walking us through Palladium's rifts at the time. And that was my first experience with TTRPG. And it changed the trajectory of my entire life. Growing up, it opened me up to the idea of silly, to the idea of fun, to the idea that different is maybe not so bad. That teacher, he revolutionized the way that I would continue to travel through my world, you know? But later on in life getting into video games and now in the industry that I currently work and I work in the tattoo

industry here in Montreal, Canada. Jared, just like, or no, Joe, I think, no, Jared said it. Anytime you post something, you immediately regret it because goddamn does everyone have an opinion. And especially when it comes down to something as simple as I have a different technique for the way that I do a thing is simply because my hands might be bigger than said persons and I need to manipulate my tool in this particular fashion to achieve the purpose that I need to do it.

And immediately you'll get flash, like all kinds of hate on and personal messages. You don't know what you're doing. Yeah, how could you do that that way? No, no, no, that makes no sense. Yeah, yeah, this, this and that. And it's like, well, look at the final product. The final product is glorious.

There's no one telling me that the thing is shit. People are telling me that the way that you approach the thing was different. But if the final product is gorgeous, well, you know, come on. So anywhere you turn, it's there's really and you know, God forbid you get into games like League of Legends or whatnot, where I literally had to stop playing because it was just like, yeah, this game is fun. And yes, I enjoy pushing my skill. But like if this is a forum in which 99% of the time, you are interacting with it, you are playing, you're not even necessarily interacting with other people.

And if the toxicity of that community can be as wildly harrowing as it is, when the purpose of it isn't even the chat bubble, then could you imagine, you know, when the purpose of it isn't even the chat bubble, then could you imagine the situations that people must find themselves in? Yeah. People aren't themselves.

People aren't themselves online. Would you guys agree with that? They're not who they really are. I bet I've never. And thanks for the call, Malchor. That's some really good points. Thank you. What a great story about how that teacher

introduced you to that. Man, that's something that's a thread in that episode of the show with the teachers. It's so painful to watch them just struggling with these teenagers, how hard this job is. It's just insane. I was going to bring this up. I hope you get a teacher call in today because I'd love to hear a teacher perspective. I was going to bring this up. You see, this teacher's a lot struggling with phones. Yeah.

And some people are calling for a phone ban in schools that schools should just ban phones. You're in trouble if you have one, it gets confiscated. And to me, that sounds great. That sounds like an answer. But I just read like a little opinion piece in the Guardian about the show that said that's not going to work. They're going to get to the phone somehow. I just read like a little opinion piece in the Guardian about the show that said that's not gonna work They're gonna get to the phone somehow. You need to you need to teach online Literacy online engagement in a healthy way you need to teach that in schools and I'm like, okay

Yeah, I see that you know, um Yeah, I see that But I don't know. what do you think, Joe? I think that that's really interesting. I am from a culture that, you know, I'm raised Irish Catholic, so I am from a culture that is like, you just don't do any of it. You just take it away, right? And then you'll never have anything bad happen.

And so I think that my first reaction is obviously like, you know, your phone gets found, it's immediately confiscated, you lose your phone, whatever, huge penalties for having a phone, etc. But I do agree that like, they're always going to find their way in, the kids are going to sneak them in. And so and they're so tiny and everything. And when as a Catholic, you know, when you make something forbidden, you make it more attractive, right?

Exactly. And then it's just you got to get more inventive, more creative, whatever. So I like this idea. I never thought about this before. I think it would be interesting in fourth grade, you know, in fifth grade, not to start just talking about predators necessarily, but to start talking about what having a phone and social media means and make that as important as history, right? Like as important as mathematics. Like you're training these people socially. In fact, like I mean, you have social studies at those ages, right? Like you're learning about like, is it more important, more important that they learn who founded their state and what year their state

was ratified? Or is it more important that they learn what is actually on their parents' phone? Because that's what they want more than anything. They just want a phone, even at third grade, second grade, they just want a phone, because they see you on it constantly. So it's like teaching in social studies, what is a phone, what does it do, what is it capable of?

I think that my daughter in third grade is pretty convinced that a phone is for talking to your friends, texting your friends and playing video games. Like I think that she doesn't know or understand social media yet. Introducing that in a way that's like, here are the dangers, here are the pitfalls, here's we have to look out for. I don't know. I'm not a teacher. It sounds like a good idea.

It does. To me, it's, there's something intriguing about it. In fact, it sounds incredibly important. It sounds incredibly important. Yeah sounds incredibly important to do that. Yeah. And then we also need to give that class to all of the adults as well. Let's get, yeah, for real, let's get Jobster up here.

We didn't benefit from those classes when we were kids. Also, we're learning more and more every year. Jobster, how you doing, buddy? I'm doing all right. I just picked up my six year old's big boy bike from the bike shop today. Oh, there you go. There you go, nice.

I have a six year old. We're gonna, yeah, I'm excited because it's a lot easier to get them away from screens and stuff. And it's like, hey, let's go ride bikes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that helps. Yeah, I'm coming at this from the perspective of a teacher and. Ah, there we go.

It's also a high school teacher. I teach high school French and currently do not have a school to teach in, which is why I'm able to call in. But it's. It's tricky because I think you're the suggestion of of teaching kids about what a phone is, I think there's something in there, but I think it's more important to teach it. There's some people going against SEL, like social emotional learning. Learning how to treat people and making it clear that people online are still people,

I think, would be more valuable, addressing maybe the root cause. But what I would always tell my students is, I'm going to make them speak French to me. At some point in this class, you are going to be assessed by doing a thing. There's a skill and you won't be able to pull up your phone and use chat DPT or what have you. And the other thing I would tell them is that there are engineers working for these companies that make more money than I will ever make just to figure out ways to keep your attention on that machine so that they can make more money

for their company. I can't compete with a multi-trillion dollar industry, put your phone away. Cause it was, and also schools are limited in what they can do with kids because legalities, private property, there's a host of issues that start cropping up when you get into those controls.

It's a thorny issue and teaching kids how to regulate and deal with it. Someone in the chat mentioned, can we also do the same with boomers in social media? I'm like, yeah. No, I mean, that's a good point. I mean, yeah. I mean, it really has destroyed the boomer community as well. I remember I was at my age. I mean, everybody is incredibly misinformed and incredibly radicalized now.

I have a hard time listening to the news because if I hear things I don't like, I cringe and want to turn it off. That's because I have been pushed in a direction by my, I think, online exposure. I do. You should be able to- Weren't you just talking to us about the need for challenging media to be a part of our diet? Well, yes, yes, I was. Well, that's what he's saying. He's saying he needs to consume media that-

I need to challenge myself. ... doesn't just say what he- Yeah. ... reinforce the only thing he believes. Yeah. Yeah. It is really important to get that diverse media diet And I have sat in on classes where kids are encouraged to look at sources and gather stuff from multiple materials So at least in Massachusetts, some of those classes are out there and and still exist and it's

Yeah, it's it's I could talk about this for way too long so I feel like I should get off the stage I couldn't talk about this for way too long, so I feel like I should get off the stage. I'm just going to ask you about anything I said. That's okay. Thanks for calling in. Well, no, I appreciate it. And that's a good, it's just a good perspective to understand. I think the jokes are coming from a teacher perspective is understanding A, how legalities are really complicated for just taking away people's civil liberties, quote unquote, right?

Like your phone, your property, like you just can't have it. Well, it's not a weapon, right? Well, is it right? And then, uh, to discuss you, you have to fundamentally teach these kids why staying off their phone for this amount of time is important. And you know, you know, it is, it's interesting. Uh, like Joe should say, getting at the root cause, uh, and not just trying to solve, you know, the symptom, which is like, oh, looking at social media, that's the problem.

No, I mean, I can look at social media and I've never trolled somebody online. You know what I mean? It's because I know I was raised to know how to treat people. I have a very serious, intense feeling of wanting to make sure that I don't hurt anybody emotionally. And so it's so, so that is a behavioral thing that, you know, some, in some ways it's innate, some ways it's learned. But if you get at that root cause, you would never

have a problem with at least hurting other people on social media, though, hurting your own mind, reading it, that's something that's really, you know, how can you be trained out of that? That's, it, that's something that's really, you know, how can you be trained out of that? That's, it takes a psychological strength that I can't imagine a teenager has and most adults don't have it either. Mathis, why don't you join us?

Sorry, we're going to bring up one more caller, Jordan. Hold that thought. Please, let's do it. Mathis, any chance this is- Judge Mathis, where you at? Mathis. Perhaps Mathis stepped away for a moment. We'll come back.

Sorry, Mathis. XC57. XC57, you want to join the conversation? XC? Well, you know what, Jared? I guess why don't you just go on with your thought. Well, my thought is... Oh, wait, wait. Okay. No, no, you go ahead. XC is going why don't you just go on with your thought. Well, my thought is, okay.

No, no, you go ahead. XC's gonna work on their mic. Here's my, here's my, oh, hello, welcome. There we go, we got Mathis, we got Mathis. Mathis, here we go. Sorry about that. No problem. Yeah. Did you go to the bathroom?

No, no, I just, I had stepped away from my phone for a minute. Yeah, you guys are talking about, especially when it comes to the teacher brought up how the teachers are competing with these multi billion dollar companies. And it's like, they don't they don't care what you watch as long as you as long as they have your eyeballs. It's so insidious these algorithms that like you can it's so easy to to fall down a rabbit hole on YouTube or Instagram like you you watch one video for a little too long and the algorithm

latches onto that and it does not care what you watch. It's just as long as you watch and you have eyeballs on those ads, it's so easy. I can't imagine being a teenager right now. Like everything's designed. The deck is so stacked against these kids. Yeah, I agree. I'm terrified at the prospect. That's a few years down the line for me and I'm just, I'm really frightened just with, you know, just with how to, how to prepare them adequately for it. It's, I can't imagine. We've got it.

We've got to control it and regulate it and teach literacy in it. And, uh, you know, hopefully allow people to realize that a lot of what they're getting is misinformation and that using it too much is bad for them like smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol. You know, these are things that we've done with cigarettes and alcohol, but we haven't done with your online usage. We haven't like, really made that part of like a civic program to tell people these things. Yeah. And thanks for the... Sorry, go ahead, Mathis. Absolutely. No, go ahead. Good.

I was going to kick you off. So if you got something to say, let's let's let's get it in before we move on. No, we're good. I'll get off the stage. Peace. All right. Thank you, man. I take it easy, Mathis. No, and that he brings up the the insidiousness of the algorithms, the way that they are completely engineered to cycle. I mean,

these are psychological geniuses that have been employed specifically to manipulate you manipulate your mind. And so it's very hard to fight against even even with a strong mind, you know, it's the Jedi mind trick. It's true. It's hard. It's hard to fight technology. You know, I always think about when the printing press was invented, Joe, did you ever hear about what happened after the printing press was invented? was invented, Joe? Did you ever hear about what happened after the printing press was invented? I don't think so. Suddenly, everybody could spread a lot of information really quickly, and they could print it in the language that the people spoke, and they could spread it everywhere. For about a hundred years, everybody just went fucking ape shit. Suddenly, schisms within the church multiplied exponentially. You know, it really

kind of indirectly led to the reformation, which was this giant, you know, which led to the 30 years war and so many people died because there was this new information technology. Misinformation was being spread wildly and it made everyone go fucking bug nuts for a while. And we're just going through another printing press right now. It's really scary. Dink Dink on Twitch chat says, when I was in my teacher prep program, they spent on a not insignificant amount of time teaching us neo-Nazi and hate group recruiting symbols

and tactics so we could keep an eye out for it in our schools and several of us found those symbols on campus. It was scary. Wow. That's really scary and that's the thing that really enlightened me about adolescence is like, I knew there was a bunch of lingo out there I didn't know. Sometimes we talk about it playfully with Sydney or Kate because sometimes they're a little bit more plugged in. Matthew too, because he teaches and so they have a little bit more access to this information than I do. And they'll joke and make fun of me about not knowing this term or that term that the kids know. And it's all in light. When you see it in adolescence and you can see it comes

down to the symbols in a lot of cases and all the symbols mean and they mean like I'd like you but I don't want anything physical with you or they mean like you're like a symbol can mean you're never gonna have sex with anybody. Like that is just such hard. I mean you kind of it's hard enough being 13. You know stacking that on top of it is brutal. I'm going to take another call here in a second, but just coming back to the show because we were talking about teachers, Blueberry brought up the scene with the psychologist. And I'm not sure if I'm saying that right. I think it's that she's a psychologist.

But that scene, I was... It's interesting because I feel like in some ways you could be like, are they planning to make you feel bad for this kid based on how he was bullied or how he was raised, what his parents did, what his friends did, whatever. And I'm kind of like looking out for that as I'm watching. And throughout it, like I find myself not feeling bad for the kid and feeling really bad for the therapist slash psychologist. Like I never felt that way that I can remember

in a therapy or psychologist scene. I'm always focused on the subject, on the victim, right? Not focused on the person who's just trying to help them, the social worker or whatever. She was like, I was like, you are in an absolutely impossible position. And, and it's really scary to see something that, you know, feels out of control and like there's nothing you can do about it.

And anyway, she did a fantastic job. The actress. Yeah. Uh, great actress. I'm going to look up her name. Uh, while I bring up W story, uh, W story mentioned in discord chat. I believe that this is a very big topic and yes it is But hey, that's what we're here for. We don't want to shy away from that from the important stuff out there either. What's up story?

No, it's it's hard. My mom or my wife works at a school Have second graders with smartphones are not emotionally capable of understanding What you say on to a screen is the same thing as saying it to their face, if not worse. And it starts, I mean, like you've said, we have parenting, we have teachers. Our district is going to ban phones in the classroom

and it's, this is, it's systemic and we have had to learn to adapt where these kids have full access all the time. A lot of times parents use phones and tablets as babysitters. And so you're just, like, you just continue this trend and it just, it's worse and worse and like said companies want to make money so they're going to do things that that support making money and so this is I would say this is a systemic problem and there's no easy answer yeah and thank you for the for the input there story I agree and that's I'm glad we're talking about it. We're not here to solve the problem.

It's not solvable, at least right now. This may surprise you guys, we are not experts on this. No, we are not experts on this, but we just, the show sparked something in us that we wanted to talk about it. And I think that's what, to me, it's the mark of a great show. Just to bring up Jobster again for a second, who we just had on the teacher, he posted in Twitch chat, I asked a group of 11th graders if they thought social media was bad for them and if they would give it up if they could. 100% said yes. I asked them if they were going to and 100% said no. Here's, here's my plan.

I'm not going to let my children have a phone or be on social media until they're 21. Okay. Exactly. So they will be horribly, they'll really be horribly ridiculed for this, but only at school, you see, so they won't be online to be ridiculed there. Yeah. They'll just be ridiculed directly to their face in person. Yes I really think this is the plan. I think this is the way to go So don't already play the psychologist. Yes way Aaron Doherty Aaron Doherty

Hey, so look fist. How are you? I'm good. It's It's really nice to hear you talk about this. This is something that I think about a lot and I read about a lot. I'm a theater teacher here in Sweden and I meet kids of the age that are prone to these kind of problems. I have a several kids in my classes that are uh that I can see the signs in like they're chronic online they're they don't have many friends in school they uh they do they get most of their like sense of humor or vocabulary online from things they don't really understand.

And it's, it's problematic. But do you, what do you do about, what do you do about phones in class or in rehearsal? Like what do you do? You do you ban phones to phone our phones a problem like while you're trying to teach or rehearse? Yeah, we have Strict no phones policy In class like in rehearsals and in class, like in rehearsals. And I mean, it's for one thing, it's to give them a space where they're not bothered by the online sphere. A space where they can be present in the here and now, which is something that theater can give kids.

And it's so like it, I'm trying to make sense here. Sorry. Yeah. I'm trying to make sense here, sorry. No, it's a tough topic. It's really hard to wrap your head around what even your own actual thoughts are. Yeah, absolutely. But what I wanted to say, I wanted to bring up another thing too, but it's that I can see

in these kids that their activation in the arts or with other people and becoming a part of a healthy group and realizing that people like them for who they are in reality and interacting in reality with other people is a very good thing for them. And I think, well, I mentioned before I'm from Sweden and we have a, I guess, a slightly different approach to arts in schools and arts funding for after class. But I don't know. But I can really see that it's a very good thing for them to have that space. 06 Yeah. 06 Right.

06 Yeah. That's great. Thanks for the call from Sweden, Solokavist, who's been on the show before. And I wish adults had that space. I wish adults had that space. I wish that people would go out and do things with other people more often. I really think a ton of people don't anymore. Yeah. And I was talking to my wife about this recently,

you know, we compound all of this technology. I don't think we've even brought this up yet with COVID. Yeah. Like, let's not underestimate what a psychological impact that may have had, not only on us, if we're, even if we're not really actually acknowledging it, like what impact that had on us, how savvy we got entertaining ourselves at home, how savvy we got and how much we started to like isolating ourselves in a way, at least speaking for myself, I did. And I love hanging out with

people, but I was just like, I love being at home. It was fun. It makes it harder. I got anxious to go out to parties or to go out and socialize really, or like there's like almost a laziness that happens where I'm like, oh, I gotta go make that effort. It's so easy to curl up here in front of the TV, you know, in front of my computer. You're absolutely right. That compounded it for sure. But then there's also, you know, the kids that were, you know, 10 in 2020, the kids that were eight in 2020, right? Like how is that now these kids are in high school

and it's like, how is this impacting their, their social life when, you know, at that time they were isolated, they were with their parents and they were just interacting probably on phones. Social media is the only way they were interacting. Uh, yeah, definitely as autograd says, or all grad says on Twitch, it definitely sped up the process it lit a fire under social media that, you know,

otherwise may have taken a little bit longer to to develop. Let's see if we can get XC back up here. We kicked them off as we were trying to XC your mute your mic was muted. So if you can fix that, that up here. We kicked them off as we were trying. XC, your mic was muted. So if you can fix that, that would help. It's still muted. Thanks guys. There we are. How are you?

Hey, how are you? Thanks guys. I'm doing well. I may or may not be working as well as the Stinctive Program. Thanks for doing it, man. We love it. So I work as a counselor for kids with autistic or other developmental delays.

And a lot of what I do in certain sessions is just online safety. And then that also kind of translates to talking to the parents about YouTube is a great way to distract a kid to get your work done. And we're all trying to get stuff done but you also have to be aware of what your kids watching and be aware of what you're doing and while I you know use like like

I let my 13 year old have an Apple watch to text with friends like I also like drop into text with them and see what's going on. I don't think it's inherently the technology that is crippling, but it requires just an incredible amount of parental work to keep the kids safe. Vigilance. Yeah, vigilance and just involvement. And it really does kind of like, it is so helpful to be able to distract like a young kid with a screen to be able to get like five things done. Whereas like you distract a kid with a painting project

and you're then cleaning up that painting project for a half an hour. Oh yeah. It is super handy. But like you also have to have like even on the like the kids saved versions of it, you have to have like a vigilance eye because Fred sneaks in there that you don't that they didn't intend to or that like didn't like that just can't be caught by the filters.

So you have to be constantly vigilant. Awesome. Yeah, that's cool. Cause parents don't have enough on their plate already. So let's go ahead and add exactly. I agree. I agree with you. I'm just saying it's like asking your GM, like, couldn't you just make my character

sheet? Yeah. Why couldn't you just draw your own map and then illustrations of all the NPCs and then also have a mastery of the system for bartering. You're already doing so much work, you know? So a friend of the show, Sharkey, writes in on Twitch and says, I wasn't able to talk about it in person earlier, but the ADL has a great resource for educating yourself about hate symbols and groups and online hatred. And there you put a link in Twitch. So if anybody wants to pop over to Twitch and check that out,

and it's, it just gives you what symbols mean and what to look out for. You know, if that's something that you want to keep an eye out for, you know, as a parent or, you know, as a teacher or anything like that. So yeah, it's interesting and scary. Hopefully they figure all this out before my kids want phones. Yeah, that's what I'm like. Fingers crossed. We've got a little time.

Figure it out. Get that sorted. As they say on the show, I love the British, the British speech. Well, that's sorted. Yep. That's what they say. I love it.

It was, so I was in London. I talked about it on the show, I think for the first time ever, uh, in December I was in London and I just, I walked past a poster and it was, uh, I think it was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in, in the West End, right? Like it was the poster for Harry Potter and it just said at the bottom, it said, your Christmas gift sorted. Like that's all it said. And I was like, then they just mean it like done and done. Right next to it is a big poster. Like it's essentially, if you see something, say something. It was like a poster from the transit authority, basically the police saying, if

you see suspicious activity or something that seems off, let us know. And it just said, we'll get it sorted. They were like side by side. So it was like a Harry Potter Christmas gift or like stopping terrorism. And it was like, we'll get it sorted. Sorted. I just love that term. I'm going to start trying to use it.

Well, that's that sorted. I think that might be, have we sorted online toxicity for now? What a great, a bunch of comments. Yes. I mean, some of the best calls- Thanks for having this conversation with us. Some of the best calls that we've had. I had a feeling- Not a typical conversation for the show, but maybe we'll have more like this.

It was great. And everybody that weighed in, it was so sincere and obviously in some areas, hard to talk about and hard to wrap your head around. And so thank you for Colin and sharing that stuff with us. It was so good. Really, really good. We're all in it together. That's the thing at the end of the day. We'll keep working. We'll keep working and keep trying. And yeah, I'm sure we'll talk about this again another time. Yeah, I think we could. I mean, you could talk about it for for days and weeks and years. Yeah. Yeah. So let's let's change the tone a little bit. Let's move on.

Let's change the tone. Let's get back to the classic GCR brand that people have come to love. Distraction from important things. Yeah. Distraction from important things. Yeah, distraction away from important things. Let us talk about tabletop role-playing games, specifically character sheets. Character sheets. My character sheet. My character sheet.

Every single TTRPG has one. I think at least, I think all of them have one Actually, I'm wrong fiasco doesn't but most CTRPGs have one and they are an integral part of playing the game and Sometimes it feels like they can get in the way of playing the game if they are not good if they're not well-designed Sometimes they make the game more fun So we sometimes they hope to streamline the game and make it more efficient. They help to streamline it, yeah. If they're built well, yeah.

So we kind of listed, I gave you, Joe, some of my favorites. Mm-hmm, yeah. And then I also talked with you a little bit about some of my least favorite character traits. Let's talk about some of, let's talk about some of your least favorites to start. I think that's a good place to start. I'm just gonna throw it right up here on Twitch.

So we kind of have it as a visual aid. Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, one of Jared's least favorite character sheets. That's right. The Pathfinder second edition character sheet. Yeah, fuck that sheet, man. Now to be fair, to be fair, the way that you presented this to me in the email was here's some of my favorite sheets and then you listed off a bunch of sheets that were not your favorite and they're all the most, the largest companies in gaming basically.

And so it was really funny. So Pathfinder and D&D are right up at the top there for you for sheets you don't like. Why don't you like this beautiful, elegant sheet right here? Well, let me first say that I will acknowledge Pathfinder and Paizo have a more difficult job because their game is more complex, maybe in some ways than other games. So they have more information to impart. But look at this. If you have never played the game before and recall Joe that I am fairly new to Pathfinder 2e. You know, within the last like five or six years, right? If you do not know where things are, you are going to stare at this sheet and feel overwhelmed. Look at how many lines of skills there are. Look at how many lines of skills there are. Look at how many lines of strikes

there are. I mean, like, and also, can we please do away with the ability score and the bonus? Isn't the ability score really just the fucking bonus? Well, you know, I think that they did because this is, I'm realizing this is like a pre remaster sheet. There's no way that they have both in the remaster. So that would have changed slightly. But yeah, in general, we're talking about, you have so much information on this thing. I mean, the other thing is like, do some classes need it? Yes.

How often Jared, do you have filled in three separate ranged weapons and all their stats in a game? You know, like, do you really need that? Like, how about a second page that has extra weapons, right? Like one weapon. Oh, well, there are like second, third and fourth pages, right? I mean, and they are for spells and for equipment. Like that doesn't even fit on the first page. Like I think the ideal character sheet,

everything fits on one page. everything fits on one page. And it isn't as busy as this page is. Look at hit points. How many boxes are part of your hit points there? Look at that. One, two, three, four, five, six different boxes to sort. That's that sorted to sort that. And then perception also so many little boxes like and I know some of us are so proud that we've mastered this thing and it's easy to us here's the remastered player yeah okay here's the remastered sheet the

remaster sheet does look a little bit better I I'd say. It's also interesting that it is wide, like that it's in landscape. You don't see that too often. It's a landscape sheet. This looks like what would sometimes be transferred into two sheets if you were printing it out. So I'll tell you what I like about this sheet. I'll tell you what I like about this sheet. I like when Pathfinder sheets lay out your skill feats, general feats, and ancestry feats by level on their lines, rather than like a list or alphabetically. I think it's important.

And this is coming from a gamer who has used so many digital character sheets in the last 10 years that I got away from like doing them by hand. And one of the problems you run into is not remembering where your feats came from or why you even have them or when you got them. So I do like a sheet that lists your feats by level so that you can break down. Oh that's why I got that and that built built into that. Now I remember, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, think about being a relatively new player to this. Sitting down and having the GM say, all right, roll for initiative.

You know, give me your perceptions. It's like, and everybody's staring at you, waiting for your number. You feel the pressure. And I've been the GM in that situation. Yeah. And that is why, you know, online character creation has so many advantages. The biggest one of which being it.

Half the time, maybe more than it takes to create a character. But next time I make characters for a pathfinder or Dungeons and Dragons five E game, I'm going to insist everybody sit down with pencils because when they do that, they remember what feats and abilities they took and what they mean. And it's a lot more work, but people actually absorb their character. Yep, yeah. So if we look back at this remaster sheet again,

I mean, just look at Building your skills. It looks like a lot of junk on on screen but if you Let me see if I can get a little even a little closer here. Yeah, so look at this if you look at the skills You'll see the ability like if you look at acrobatics You'll see the ability associated with it plus your proficiency bonus, plus your item bonus minus any penalties for armor. And they lay it all out. Yeah. And that way you could see as you're learning the game, you know, a lot of

times new players will be like, all right, what's your proficiency bonus? And he'll be like, I have no idea. But if you're doing this, it's going to be like you're in school again. And you're, you got penalized and you have to write your proficiency bonus a hundred times in a row on a chalkboard. Once you write your proficiency bonus nine times down the side of this list, you're not going to forget it anymore when it comes up. So yeah, that is interesting and pretty elegant.

Oh, and then really tiny here trained expert master legendary very tiny little symbols there but uh that's pretty cool the way they do it. I don't know if it's elegant but it's definitely very useful you know um it's useful and again there's so much information that has to go into a pathfinder sheet so they have a they have a very steep hill to climb there. They start, they started at disadvantage. Let's, on that trend, let's go back, let's go back to the old days. Let's go back to the first character sheet that I remember. Let's take a look at the AD&D second edition character sheet, or at least one, one version of it. Let's, let's look at this. You showed me this earlier and we were laughing about it. We were cracking up. McDermott sent me this and I just, first of all, it immediately brought back memories. Seeing my, writing my AC into the shield in the bottom left. I remember that. All, I mean, the thing that McDermott really jumped on that cracked me up was, look at movement. Movement itself is a box with

with nine lines. Yeah. And it looks like a lot of it has to do with, um, encumbrance, right? If you're light, uh, maybe light, moderate, heavy, severe, and then you have a jog movement rate, a run movement rate times three, times four, times five. Interesting. Can you imagine?

You didn't tell me you were jogging. You can't get that far. I'm jogging. You didn't tell me you were jogging. So good. Um, yeah, my, my wonder, like, I mean, look at all of the substats to each ability strength This modifies hit probability damage adjustments weight allowance max press Opponent do what's opters?

opponent dear optional Drivers, I have no idea. I don't know. I'm over here on the saving throws where the saving throws are. I mean, really? Okay. So the reason this character sheet is so ridiculous is because the rules for AD&D seem so ridiculous to us now. There's a saving throw just for paralyzer poison. There's a saving throw against rods, staffs, and wands. There's a saving throw just for being petrified or polymorphed. You really need to write that number down that you're going to need once in your campaign. Yeah.

I mean, maybe it happened more often in the eighties. I don't know. There's a different time, Jay. And then there's a perhaps a saving throw. Yeah. It's so wild that that was the design philosophy there. That's how you should divide up saving throws. But also, let me just say flat out,

this being my first game I remember playing, I remember this sheet filled with pencil being in a three ring binder that I hole punched and I kept in a three ring binder. And I loved filling out every number in this sheet. You know, I loved it. I did love it. I look back on it obviously. And I laugh about some of this stuff like, Oh, I wouldn't want to do all this today. But man, it was fun filling out every little, little detail in that sheet. Uh, raise your hand if you want to talk character sheets as well.

Uh, we'll, we'll get you on here as we go, but we want to get a few more in before we take calls just to get some more opinions here. Let's move on to something that you like. Name one of the sheets that you're a fan of. Blades in the Dark. Blades in the Dark. Blades in the Dark. Let's take a look at a Blades in the Dark character sheet.

Now to be fair, it's not a character sheet. It's a playbook. It's a playbook, that's right. That's what they call them in Blades in the Dark. So look at Blades in the Dark. It tells you everything you need to know and then has just room for a bunch of lines of notes. Look at that.

Yep. It has just extra room down there to just like, here, write whatever you like here, right? Whatever you need here. Okay. So that's how efficient it is with space. Um, one second. I just want to clarify one thing. Playbook is not a, uh, a character sheet by another name.

The reason that they say playbook is because there is no such thing, sorry, there may be like a blank character sheet. If you're going to make up a class, but Blades produces a character sheet for each class, essentially. And so your specific abilities, the way your items work are all already pre-made on a sheet. What your inventory is or what items you have available to you on the sheet, what you're, uh, what, what things you do to gain experience on the sheet, because that's different for each class. Um, what a great game, a fascinating game with a great character.

It's a fascinating game. But I mean like, look character. It's a fascinating game, but I mean, like, look how brilliant this is. Every special ability, I mean, what you might call a feat in Pathfinder is every single one that you could possibly get throughout your whole life, your career is right there in front of you. Yep. So you can, you can always have access to all that. Look over at the, I'm sorry, I can't remember the exact term they use, but let's call them attributes.

I know that they're actions, hunt, study, survey, tinker. Those are like skills, finesse, prow, skirmish. Those are actions. But look at the attributes like insight and prowess and resolve, how when you fill in dots for your actions, it automatically calculates them for you. You just use the column. Yep, you use the column.

That is so brilliant. It is, it is so, now that is elegant. Yeah, the fact that every item that you could possibly use is right there on the goddamn sheet. It's all of your items. You don't have to spend, you don't have to spend an hour and a half going through spending gold, filling in an inventory sheet. It's all right there.

Now again, some of this is due to how elegant the game itself is, but I think it's very telling that John Harper is not just a brilliant game designer and writer, he's also a graphic artist. And he created these himself. And I think you can see that he realized how important a character sheet is

and made it a really core part of his game, not just a way to do bookkeeping for his game. Yeah, yeah, agreed. And also I would say, I'm not sure if you already kind of said this, but also with John, I feel there's a common theme that I think comes through in Blades in the Dark and why it's probably my favorite rule book ever written. And it's because it comes from a perspective. And so thus the sheet, it seems to be designed from a perspective of someone who has played thousands and thousands of hours of RPGs.

And they say here, they boil, you know, John really boils down. Like here's what we really need to do nothing but have fun. To just have fun as quickly and as efficiently as possible. This is not only the game setup, but then here's a sheet that is set up like I, speaking for John, a player who has played an absolute ton of RPGs and seen a ton of different character sheets. This is how I would lay it out, and I think it's really, really well done. It's amazing. I agree. I agree with that.

The best sheet. All right, I will put in a an argument for best sheet that I share with with McD. And that would be this one is actually filled out with some examples. One of my favorite sheets I've seen is the Alien RPG, the Alien RPG from Free League absolutely love this sheet. Similar to the way Blades does their, their under, you have three separate categories under which skills get matched. Here, and this is more of a mutant your zero sort of system, but you have four attributes that branch off each into three separate skills. So your strength attribute modifies close combat, heavy machinery

and stamina. Your wits attribute modifies observation, survival and Comtech, you get the idea. But the way they lay it out on the sheet, it makes it look like a computer in a way and kind of like a, like a DNA sequence or something, right? Like all the kind of lines attach the circles together. And that way, whenever you're rolling close combat, you know you're adding your attribute to that skill roll. And you can see the two numbers right there.

They're all kind of connected to each other. A quick five plus three would give you an eight. You know you're rolling eight die. Love that. Then I love the conditions and the consumables. So in the bottom left, one of my favorite mechanics in Alien that we never got, didn't quite get into enough because we didn't have a long enough game, but like a single number to represent

how much air you have left if you're in a space suit, right? And then you have to roll to see if it goes down. If it, if you roll, like, uh, I think if it's the roll anything, but a one, it doesn't go down, but if you, if you roll a one, that number starts to decrease, you never know when it's going to go down, but when it does, it can be scary. Sometimes it can go down really quickly and then you can be out and that's air, food, power, or water. I love that. Uh, that mechanic power or water. I love that.

That mechanic is super fun. Very cool. And I love that that's on the sheet, you know, that's, yeah, that's very cool. Put it right there on the sheet and then yeah, everything else you could see it's all focused on the skills and attributes. That's really the core of the game and that's how they design the sheet so that it's, you know, not too new, not too chunky to have to deal with. All right, let's turn to a call.

Let's see if anybody else has anything to weigh in here on character sheets or has a suggestion that we look at. I would try to bring it up for you here on screen real quick. Anybody have a favorite sheet? Bloom. Bloom, you there? Yes, I am. Hey, how's it going?

Hey, it's going great. Welcome to the show. Hey. I have two. I'll talk about them very quickly. They're both in the old school Renaissance sphere, so they're a lot simpler. But I really love Mouse Ritter because one, the sheet is very simple. And then two, you get little tokens and you have six item slots. And so you have to use these tokens like a Resident Evil game inventory management style. You have to like Tetris your inventory together.

So it makes your character sheet part of the game. That's cool. Yeah, that's cool. And then if you've ever seen the mothership 2e character sheet, it has a flow chart and the rules for building your character are right on it. What was the other character sheet I said I liked, Joe? The other one that Jared said he liked was, oh, mothership. And there it is.

I'm not sure if this is even the 2E. But yeah, this is similar. Yeah, good suggestion, Bloom, because this was on Jared's list as well. So yeah, oh, I'm sorry. So I want to examine it a little bit. Talk to us about what you like about the mothership character sheet. So the big one, like I said, is there's a flow chart and it tells you exactly like your stats.

It says roll 3D 10 times two for each stat. Like this is your max. Then you go to your vitals and it's your starting health equals your strength. And like, it tells you everything that you need. And it goes through like a flow chart, telling you where to go next, what to add. Like if you pick a certain class, you just fill in a bubble and it tells you what you get.

It's very, it's easy. You don't really have to explain it to people because the sheet's doing it for them. So yeah, you just sit down with this sheet and walk through the flow chart and you will create a character. Like step by step. I feel like someone who has a little bit of experience with RPGs could sit down without the book and know GM and make a character. I do. They had a little bit of experience and kind of knew a little bit of what they were looking at. This is incredibly cool. This character sheet's awesome. Do you know I've never played a single minute of Mothership and it makes me angry. I've wanted to play it for so long. You know, the new campaign coming to GCN next month. Next month. If you like Alien, you'd love Mothership.

Yeah, I think I would love it. Thanks for the call, Bloom. Two great sheets. I'm glad that one of yours was on Jared's list. Let's talk for a second about Mothership. I just, and this could be a little, we're going to insert a little mini travel log here. We just got back from Seattle and Portland. We did shows in Seattle and Portland, and every time I'm in Portland, I go to Powell's World of Books, whatever it's called, the great used bookstore in Portland, just a phenomenal store. They have freaking everything. I went to their RPG section just to see two huge like

What am I trying to say here an aisle Completely filled left and right top to bottom with just role-playing games I mean just incredible truly a ton of games and Man, did I not stumble across a mothership box set and then a mothership deluxe box set that was like the size of a big board game, that one, and they were not cheap. I didn't buy one because I also had to fly home, but I was like, oh man, this looks interesting. And then I just tried to Google, I mean, I never heard of these. I just tried to Google like, where can I buy these?

And very hard to find in my quick Googling. I was like, oh man, this is a really neat little collector's item I feel like they have here. Mothership boxed sets. Pretty sweet. Let's get another caller. Let's bring Kill Torres Kill up up here kill. Are you there? Do you have anything you want to say on character sheets?

Hi, long time. First time caller. Welcome. Thanks for calling in. I'm currently operating heavy machinery right now. Oh, dear. Oh, it's a character in Alien or Mothership. Something like that. I wanted to talk about that point that you had with Pathfinder second edition character sheet. Yeah.

Oh, I mean, I've never. I've never played with just pen and paper. I've always just played online because of the pandemic and friends living far away and all that. Yeah. So, you know, we've always used foundry and it's character sheet, but the one resource that I love is it's called path builder. It's got all the feeds on there.

It's free. And then some of the extra rules. It's like five bucks for life. Yeah. And you get all the stuff. Yep. A lot of performers on the Glasskinda network use Path Builder. Yeah.

Sure. To whip up a character real quick. But when, but yeah, Path Builder, we were talking about these online resources a little earlier, but once the sheet is printed, is the path builder sheet easy to navigate, especially for a new player? It prints like a kind of a traditional pathfinder sheet, right? I honestly have no clue. I honestly have no clue. You don't know because you just play online. Yeah, I'm a simpleton.

Well, this is interesting. So a lot of people don't even look at the real sheet anymore, Joe. They just have like, a lot of people just play on D&D Beyond and they never print a sheet, or they use Path Builder and they never print a sheet. Interesting, interesting. I think people should print their sheets

and look at their sheets. Thanks for the call, Kyl. That was, it was great to, you know, people listening and then calling in for the first time. I greatly appreciate it. I met a lot of great people during the live shows this weekend. People that were like, I love Glass Cannon Radio,

but I can't call in because I need to do my work hours and stuff, you know? And I'm like, well, if you're ever off of work, like please call in. We want to hear from you. Yeah, and guys, listen, if you meet us, let us know why you're not calling into Glass Cannon Radio. We need to know what your excuse is, okay?

Because there's really, you know, if you have a job, let me know and then I'll be able to note, okay, that's why he didn't call in. It's important for us to be informed on that. Joe, are you okay? You seem like you have... There was a character sheet that I could not find and I've been desperately trying to find it. And, you know, not that I think it's something amazing, but it's an RPG we talked about a

little bit, maybe a couple of weeks ago. I believe it was on Glass Cannon Radio. Inspectors. You remember we talked about inspect little bit, maybe a couple weeks ago, I believe it was on Glass Cannon Radio, Inspectors. You remember we talked about Inspectors? Yeah, we talked about Inspectors on Glass Cannon Radio. I seem to remember it having a really good character sheet, but I can't find it. I know that it's sort of a very low-key system, but I'm having trouble pulling one up here. But I wanted to show it as an example because I specifically remember sitting down the first

time I played that game, having very little experience at all with anything outside of D&D and Pathfinder, and thinking the character sheet was so simple, so straightforward. We got the information in there and we started playing like that. And it was really fun. So anyway, I'm gonna keep shopping around here and see if I find it,

but I haven't been able to find it just yet. See if you can find inspectors. So when we talk about the character shade, I really do think that Kill Torres, that was an interesting comment. I mean, I guess a lot of people just aren't even using them anymore. They're using these online tools and that's significant. But for my money, as I was saying, I really, really think people should print it out and write on it if they possibly can,

because that is, you know, it's like when I'm, when I'm making notes for an adventure I'm running, if I take out a notebook and write stuff in by hand with my pencil, I feel like I retain it a lot better than if I just, you know, copy and paste some things into a Word doc or something for notes. I feel like I really retain it much better. Yeah. Yep.

I feel like that's a good call. There's another issue with character sheets that I'd like to bring up, which is that sometimes when you are role playing with people, have you ever heard the phrase, the answer is not on your character sheet? No. Okay. So Ben Milton, who does Questing Beast, which is a really great OSR YouTube channel, has often said the answer is not on your character sheet, because what you'll find is when you're playing with people, especially new people, and you'll ask them, what do you do? Hey, you're in this dark hallway.

You hear a slithering sound up ahead. The torches are out. What do you do? They look down at their character sheet and they look at it like it's like a menu of things that they can do. And if it's not on there, they shouldn't do it. You know?

And we need to, and, and, and GMs are guilty of this too. I'm staring at my notes instead of looking at the players. We need to look up while we're playing role playing games. Um, and a character sheet that allows you to look up, I think is better than one that demands that you kind of sit there reading it Agreed Here's another one. I wanted to mention that we didn't get to yet, which this one was reminded McD reminded me about this one Game I think many of us know on love. Come on, Mork Borg. Look at that

Sheet, it's got a sick character sheet only for four main statistics, strength, agility, presence, and toughness, and obviously very cool art style with how you put them in there. Your hit points are written into like a skull, which is very cool. And then yeah, just one line for weapon or two lines, sorry, two total lines for weapons, one line for armor. And then, you know, oh, oh, this is the same sheet. So I was going to say it's two pages. No, it's just black and white and color.

That's the only difference. So this is all you need to play this game. Two weapons, armor, equipment, which you can write in one of these boxes. And then four powers. Other than that, name, description, class. That's all you're writing. And I promise you, if you're playing one of these OSR games like Mork Borg, you will find

there is plenty of complexity in the game. Oh yeah. Even though you don't have five lines for weapons and 13 different feats at level three, you will find that you have a lot of decision making to do and there is a lot of tactical complexity. Let's get one more caller in here before we move on. Feline has had their hand up, Feline Machine. Would you like to join the show here before we move on to Dear GCR?

What's up guys, good morning. Hey, good morning, how are you doing? Good morning. I'm doing fantastic. So some character sheets I wanted to throw in the mix. They're sort of the OSR style, but I just think they do things right. And one of them is a game you're familiar with,

Dragonbane. Oh yes, yes. I forgot about the Dragonbane character sheet. Good call. There's a lot of cool stuff going on there, especially like encumbrance and equipment. That's like, I love doing equipment and encumbrance and what they do is there's ten lines right the most you can have is nine items and a backpack so there's only ten lines for

it the game only allows you to have three weapons on hand like quick to draw so there's only three spaces for weapons so So it's very like the kiss law. Just keep it simple, stupid. And it's just a fantastic at a glance reference. Like the second you know the system, just the roll under like there's no questions. You just look, you roll, you go. Yeah. Yep. The roll under. Yeah. You just get these, the one number for each thing. You just have to roll under that movement is a single box Jared, not nine different lines.

That line that movements on those are all the derived characteristics. So you have the, the, the top for the primary stats and those three other entries, those are the derived and you're done. Like, yeah, they just come from these. Yeah. So damage bonus is modified by strength damage bonus. That's modified by agility and then your movement. And my spells can fit on the first page.

Yeah. And so can my abilities. What I don't need to put that on page three. No, not at all. What I love about this is that once you have your skills and, and gear and abilities plugged in, you can put this in a slip sheet. Like, because everything else is dry erase, you know, compatible. Because I love the old school character sheet. Back in third ed, you know, I was doing, I was on Excel all the time doing auto calc sheets, you know, because that seemed like the coolest thing in the world.

And that's when fourth edition sort of missed its beat because like it needed to have that sheet and it didn't. So it was rough. That's why I was your other game there. Feline your other character sheet. Mouse guard. Um, and for a similar reason, people were saying mouse guard online. I've never played mouse guard.

It's it's a burning wheel light. Um, the other cute thing about it is again, you can only have as many items as you have in, as they give you for inventory, whatever that number is, like you can't have any more than that. And like that's a, that's a hard rule. Like you have to drop something if you have more than this. Hmm. Yeah. Everything is just whatever, whatever your dots are. That's what you roll, you know, it's simple at a glance

You know, but OSR games, you know are like that and need to be like that So I believe this is the mouse guard sheet we have up here It does have a spot for parents and senior artisan and mentor which is cool But yeah, you got some rules written on here, which is good for relationships. So you don't have it right on the sheet. And then yeah, gear and possession gear is limited to what you can carry as depicted by you on the sketch above. Possessions are kept in Lockhaven or another location. That's so cool. It's a little, little artwork of a mouse and you would have to draw on there what you're holding. And if it looks preposterous, maybe you can't.

Yeah, I love that. That is really cool. And just more engaging. A really good artist. That means a really good artist gets to hold more items, Joe. Is that fair? Is that balanced? It's fun. I don't know if it's fair. Yeah, fun. I don't know if it's fair. Yeah, fun. I don't know if it's fair. Good point. All right. Thanks for the call, feline. All right. I mean, obviously we could keep going on and on about character sheets,

but we got to, we're running out of time. We got stuff to do. That was fun. I want to just look at more for like, you know. I mean, why can't we do character sheets part two? You know, we could do that at some point. We can and we will. We didn't even talk about, we didn't even talk about, we didn't even talk about Call of Cthulhu, we didn't talk about Delta Green major shows on our network.

We'll look at those sheets and give opinions. We should just do a Delta Green Call of Cthulhu episode and just get into all things Delta Green and Call of Cthulhu. Yeah, that'd be amazing. All right, we are gonna go into our next segment. It is called Dear GCR. If you ever want to participate in this segment, a couple days before the show, I'll post a call for questions. You can DM me on the Glass Cannon Discord and send your question

and we'll pick some to talk about. And I'm going to go ahead and get into one right away. This one is from Alex, A-L-I-K-S. And this is the question. It says, you guys are both lucky enough to be surrounded by talented and kind players and GMs. For those of us who aren't so lucky, aw, what are some of the worst experiences you've had in the past at TTRPG tables? How did you handle them?

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh What do I do about that? It happens all the time. And my answer is always like, that's not RPG advice. That's human being advice. Do you know how to manage relationships? You need to figure out how to manage friendships and relationships. And here's the first clue. Just cause someone also wants to play and likes the game that you like,

doesn't mean that they are your friend or someone you should hang out with. So that little warning aside, the worst experience I've ever had at a TTRPG table, I'm very lucky I haven't had a very bad one. I've heard horror stories about lines getting crossed. I, you know, I believe that that happens. I've heard stories about, you know, really bad arguments or disagreements. I have had a player shut down on me before, which means that the player, while they were playing, they got so frustrated that they felt like nothing they did was going to have any effect on the game and that they

thought that it was completely unfair and stacked against them and why bother? And essentially just kind of shut down. Like whenever I called on them for their turn, they were like, I mean, I don't know. Like they went into like a dark place. How did I deal with that? It was very difficult because you kind of want the game to keep going. Everybody else is having fun. And from my point of view, at first, it seemed like the players point of view was absurd. Everybody else is having fun.

No one else is having this problem. No one else. I, Jerry Logan, am a world class GM. What could this person be complaining about? That's right. I mean, honestly, truly, truly, that's probably my perspective. Now, luckily, I had a lot of trust with this person. So later, but I admit it took too long. Later, we sat down outside of the game and we had a conversation about it. And, you know, I don't know that we really, we really came to any kind of conclusion about the game, but we definitely came to a conclusion about our friendship and we moved forward, you know. Yeah. So, you know, it's about trust and

trust. And our TTRPGs are about trust. I don't know. It's it's hard. I think I think at the end of the day, similar to our toxic problem discussion, you know, let's, let's disclaim this by saying we're not experts and we don't solve problems. But I don't really think that that's what the question asker is asking. No. I think the question asker would feel better to know we also have experienced these things because all they ever see is everything that always works out on air. Um, and I will say that I, oh man, I've definitely had these experiences.

So when I first got in, it was with Skid. So I had, I was friends with Nick Lowe. in. It was with skid. So I had, I was friends with Nick Lowe. I met, uh, skid at a restaurant one night because, uh, it was Nick's buddy. It was coming to dinner as well. And the three of us had dinner and I was like, you, you play Dungeons and Dragons. He's like, yeah. Well, I mean, it's called pathfinder, but yeah. Uh, and I was like, I haven't played that since I was a kid. I, it was the best thing I ever did. Like it was so fun. Uh, you play in the city? Yeah. Can I play? Uh, I'll see. You know, getting into a gaming group is kind of tough when you're a complete stranger. So he asked his friend, his friend is like, well, let me meet this guy.

So I go out for a drink with this GM and skit at some point we like hang out and he's like, yeah, he's like, you, you gotta, you gotta play in our game. It's going to be great. So I come, I joined their game, play a cleric within the second or third session, he, the GM and some other guy in the game who I've never seen since, uh, got into a super uncomfortable fight about literally the height of a wall. Wow. And you knew like other stuff was going on there, but I did not know these guys very well at all. And I was just sitting there in the room and he was like, the wall is this. He's like,

you said the wall is this. I can't, you know, you can't get over it. You can't shoot over that, you know, whatever, you know, the guy was just like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, had a total meltdown flipped out. It was like, I quit, I quit the game. I quit everyone. And it was so uncomfortable and it killed the session. And it was just like, flipped out, was like, I quit, I quit the game, I quit everyone. And it was so uncomfortable and it killed the session. And it was just like, all right, everybody go home. And that group never played together again, like after that day. And then I was left wandering again and aimless. I had, now I had this bug, this itch. So that's when I started digging into Pathfinder Society, like in New York. And I went to a game or or two there and that was just like people that weren't necessarily

my style and stuff and so like I was like, ah, this isn't really my thing, but But you know, I got to find my friends to play with So I found some friends to play with and then I got into a good game and I was running it I was GMing it I was running it for a while some people long-term members of the nation will know this story because I've Told it before but I'll narrow down a little bit more on the I was running it for a while. Some people, long-term members of the nation will know this story because I've told it before, but I'll narrow it down a little bit more on the resolution for Alex, which I didn't nail down on before. So I'm running this game and we played at a bodega in New York because nobody in New

York has a table big enough to run a D&D game. So we're playing it at a bodega. We are, there's some drinking. I mean, they sell beers in the place, you know, we're having beers and stuff. And I've got one sort of problem player. Got a player who routinely, perennially is aggressive, is irritated when things aren't going his way, is very vocal about things not being fair

or things that are whatever, but he's a buddy. He's my buddy, you know? And I was just, uh, one day it just went a little bit too far, right? And he said something that implied that I was, like, fudging all my roles or, like, making up these numbers, right? And I got mad. I let my anger out. I wasn't in touch with my feelings, Jared.

We talked about this before, right? We talked about, um, you know, this earlier today about how learning how to do this better. And I definitely have anger problems. And so I got really mad and I yelled at him and basically said like, you're ruining the game for everybody. You're constantly bringing up this stuff and complaining. And during that, I threw a finger in his face, like, you need to blah blah blah, whatever and he whacked my hand out of the way jumped up out of his seat and

Whacked me both hands into my wow like pushed me back So it's a physical altercation. I go stumbling back I'm and he hit me so hard because he's really strong strong guy. I was totally staggered. He was totally staggered. I can't believe that just happened, blah, blah, blah. Sat back down and was just like, don't put a finger in my face. Don't put a finger in my face. I just took a breath. I was like, I'm sorry. Sorry. I just got a lot going on. I just got a little whatever. I mean, the other guys at the table and Skid was there and Nick Lowe was there are just completely silent. They're just so uncomfortable. Wrap it up. End the session rather quickly and it ends on,

is this the end? Is this the end of this group? Is this the end of this campaign? It was a bad, bad scene. Then he called me immediately the next day and he was like, I want to apologize. I'm so sorry for this and so sorry for that. I was like, I'm so sorry for this, so sorry for that. I was like, I'm so sorry for this, so sorry for that. We kind of laughed it off a little bit because we are buddies and we know each other's shortcomings and stuff. Then he was just like, he's like, I know you and I are going to be cool. We're buddies.

It just got out of hand. We had a little fight. We'll get over it. He's like, but I can't stop seeing Skids face looking at me when I did that. He was like, I don't think he'd ever seen somebody lose their shit like that. Quite that way. He was like, he was just, he looked terrified. You know what I mean? And he was like, and I felt so embarrassed and so awful that I made him feel that way. And so then we both did like an apology to the whole table the next time we got together

and everything. And we went on and played that campaign for like another year or two. So it did work out, but it was a very bad situation and they happened. You know, tensions run high. These things are always going to happen. And I've even been playing professionally before and gotten into some sort of sketchy situations in terms of, are we communicating correctly to each other? These things are going to happen, but that's why you have to play with good people who have some emotional intelligence.

Yeah. And I think talking outside of the session is also really important. You feel like something's a little off as a player or a GM, go to that player or to that GM and say, Hey, can we talk about our game for a second? I'm not feeling invested or I'm not feeling like I'm in the zone right now. I'm not blaming you. But you know, I feel like something's off and maybe I need a break or maybe we need to change my story or maybe we need to just move on from this character. I don't know. What do you think?

You know, have the conversation because it's, it can be uncomfortable for sure. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That was a great question. Thank you, Alex. Do we have time for another one? No, unfortunately, we got to, we got to move on to our last segment.

Sadly. Let's go to our last segment. Joe, I believe you have an address that you'd like to make. I do, Jared. Thank you for asking. I do have an address I would like to make about games, about tabletop RPGs, about our approach to them. It is one simple little issue that I want to address today, but I'm

going to go about it in a way that I hope brings you around to my way of thinking, because I don't think we've quite talked specifically about this kind of thing before. In 1988, a professor of mathematics at Temple University named John Alan Polos published a book called Enumeracy. It's an awesome book. It's a book that you can see for the subtitle, it's mathematical illiteracy and its consequences. Really the book is about a problem that exists, then it exists now, a general problematic lack of understanding, and in some cases willful lack of understanding, of how numbers work, what they mean, and then

also just like basic math. And these problems can lead into big things like misinformed governmental policies, poor, confused personal life decisions that are based around your understanding of numbers. In fact, the famous sci-fi author Isaac Asimov went so far as to praise this book, calling it an intelligent and good-natured analysis that would improve the quality of thinking for virtually everyone. Well, in games like D&D, Pathfinder, that we play a lot, TTRPGs, where the central mechanic of the game is taking the result of a die roll and modifying it in order to achieve a certain benchmark, thinking about numbers and how we present them is essential to the quality of the gameplay.

Therefore, in pursuit of a higher quality of experiences for players and for GMs alike, I'd like to propose that whenever you roll a check in games like this and the result of the die is not a natural 20 or a natural 1, aka 90% of the time, that you only present the modified number to the table. One number, one result, period. An explanation of playing this wrong is, a quick explanation of bad behavior is rolling a die saying 17, then starting to add your modifier, telling everybody what your modifier is, then maybe some penalty that you're adding as well. Or another way you can do this is react terribly to a natural roll of five, talking about how bad the roll is, only to then add your plus 13 modifier

and find out that an 18 is a success. And realizing you wasted everyone's time at the table whining like a little baby. Perhaps you may hear this as I start this out and think that I'm advocating in some way for fudging your results of your die. That's not what I'm talking about. But not saying what the number that is on the 20 is so important that it will affect your game in multiple different ways. There's so many reasons for this, but we're limited on time, so I'm only gonna do two. Two reasons, major reasons to only say one number

after you roll a D20. The number one is clarity and efficiency at the table, which is something all TTRPGs need. The number two reason is shielding yourself from unsolicited outside analysis. So first, clarity and efficiency at the table. Saying the number after you rolled the die and before you modified the roll immediately sounds to the GM like the modified result. The GM doesn't care what number you rolled on the die unless it's a natural 20 or a natural one. Right.

Saying the number oftentimes will result in the GM revealing information they didn't mean to reveal. They could say, oh, that's a fail or that's a success, which then requires backtracking and clarification. Oh wait, I didn't add my bonus yet. None of that would have happened if you would have just simply silently added your bonuses in your head and then given one final result, pass or fail. Forcing other people to listen to you say out loud numbers that are not the

result is an egregious and offensive affront to a game that already requires so much minutia to get weighed down by your incompetence? It's unacceptable. If you were playing a poker hand in a casino in Atlantic City and had your bet called and then put down three of your five cards to reveal a pair. And then just as the dealer revealed, you lost the hand. You then added two more cards to complete a full house. You would immediately be hauled out of the casino and blacklisted. If you did the same thing in 1883, you could be shot and killed on the spot.

And it would be legal. Yep. D20 games like D&D and Pathfinder have a mountain of inefficiencies that GMs and players all have to climb together. Saying anything other than one number after you roll a die is akin to you pulling everyone down that mountain with you a few pegs, making them all together work their way back up again. Don't weigh the game down. Just do your job. And then secondly,

shielding yourself from unsolicited outside analysis. This is a huge one. If you are, what's the word I'm looking for? If you are nervous about doing math, right? If you are, what's the word I'm looking for? When you're, when you're not sure of yourself, you're unsure of yourself, you're anxious, insecure. If you are insecure about your ability to do arithmetic, basic arithmetic and quickly, I get it, that's fine. Some people can do math really fast in your head, some people can't. This isn't a commentary on that. In fact, this is going to help you if that is your problem.

Have you ever found yourself getting frustrated with people second guessing your arithmetic? Or with people checking on your build after you reveal a die roll and its modifier? They might say, wait a minute, don't you have a plus four to dexterity? Wait a minute, you're not an expert in survival? Fuck that. That is the kind of thing that I do as a player, which is terrible. I hate myself for it. I got to stop myself from doing it.

But I won't be able to do it to you if you never give me the base number to work with. You know, there's nothing, like I said, there's nothing wrong with not knowing the math quickly. But if you just give, take your time and give one final number That 20-point range of randomness means that nobody can guess your arithmetic and nobody can Challenge your build or if you did things correctly almost never will you run into that problem? They may raise an eyebrow They may wonder if you did something wrong, but without the hard evidence Jared without revealing the revealing the number on the 20, it's all circumstantial. It won't hold up in court. And also the game's moving on.

The game's already moving on. The game is already moving on. They're not going to bring a case against you. They don't have the base number to work with. So that is really the two ways that I think you should focus on this. It makes your game more efficient. It makes your GM happier. It makes you happier

because it keeps other people from second guessing your responses or worrying about your arithmetic. If you're worried about your arithmetic, just don't say what's on the die. Roll it, sit there quietly, put the number together in your head, take all the time you need and then say the one final number. I think when John Allen Polo sat down to write a numeracy, he knew this problem existed among TTRPG players. He knew. And it's not about math.

It's about understanding what numbers mean in D and D and Pathfinder in D20 games with a modified result. There is only one number of significance. The final modified number. Nobody wants to hear anything else. That's it. That's my player. Hear ye, hear ye. Hear ye to hear anything else. That's it. That's my player. Hear ye, hear ye.

Hear ye, hear ye. And I think I probably, I think I probably violate this idea sometimes. I do all the time. Do as I say, not as I do, Nesh. This is so well argued, sir, that I am going to really try. I'm going to really try to implement only saying that final number from here on out let's see how well I do let's see it's tricky I'll tell you that you know the toughest situation toughest situation is the natural 19 or the natural 18 now if you're playing 1e

that that's a critical threat right there in some weapon cases in some keen edge cases you need to discuss what's a critical threat. That, you know, that's obviously very important. In 2E, unless I'm misunderstanding the game, that doesn't matter. The modified result tells you if you crit, if your critical range is hit or not, or your fumble area is hit or not. Just say the final number. It's faster, easier, and better in every way. Sometimes those of us who do actual play also are afraid of dead air. So we're afraid to go roll and they go, okay. Yeah. Uh, sorry. So that's, uh, don't be afraid of silence. There's nothing wrong with silence. And I don't do great at this, but I was listening

to things about like public speaking and podcasting and the general knowledge is don't go, uh, or try to fill the air. Like people pauses are automatic suspense pauses are good for you. So, um, anyway, well, I mean, Clark dog says, Clark dog says dead air ain't great though. There's well, there's two layers here. says dead air ain't great though. There's, well, there's two layers here. First of all, if it is truly dead, that air responsibility for that air falls to the GM and the other players, right? So if you're talking about doing a show and you can see somebody needs a second,

you fill that gap a little bit without talking to that person and distracting them. Talk about somebody else or say, Oh oh man, this is gonna be huge. This is gonna be a huge moment. I do this plenty. This is a strategy I've used a lot over the years as a player when it's not my turn to kind of hype up a role or give people time to put their modifier together. If you're at, but like Jared said,

there's also, silence can be suspense. Also, if you're doing an audio podcast and it's not live, that's where edits happen. Your edits are harder to make when people are like, ah, 15, because now you can't cut out the ah, because it rolled right into the next number. If you're just silent and go 15, all of a sudden it sounds like in the edit,

you did that math super fast. So anyway, all of a sudden it sounds like in the edit, you did that math math super fast. So anyway, all these little tidbits to say one number and one number only because numbers matter for the role and for the damage, please. I don't need to know. I don't need to hear every number that goes into your damage for every guy. Thank you, Joe. Thank you for giving me a forum, Jared. Thank you, Nate.

We got that out there. We'd love to hear your response. Throw it on the Discord and we'll give a forum to talk to. If you've got an interesting character sheet or an interesting response to anything on today's show, maybe it'll come up in the next comments below segment. Write us on YouTube. Go to the video and type in real fast. We'll get your opinion in there. We'll get you heard, even if you weren't able to be here live. Thank you, Naish. I'm wishing you all safe, happy, and calm internet interaction. See you later. Love you. Bye bye. Let's hope, let's pray.

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