The Glass Cannon Podcast - Glass Cannon Radio #17 – The Blacktongue Thief, Going Rogue in RPGs, Nerd Rant

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

The Book Club is back to get everyone's take on Christopher Buehlman's The Blacktogue Thief before digging into the pros and cons of the Rogue class in RPGs. Plus, thoughts on the future of Actual Play, what makes a great player, and a scalding new Nerd Rant from Jared. 0:00 Intro9:15 Book Club1:00:25 Going Rogue in RPGs1:32:00 Three Questions1:53:00 Nerd Rant1:59:30 Listener Award: Best CatWatch the video here: https://youtu.be/hcHeREE2xnw⁠ 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

You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network. This is Glass Cannon Radio with your hosts Jared Logan and Joe O'Brien I'm doing a Kevin McAllister You're right, it's more like it's like Welcome to Glass Cannon Radio the show where you are you have hot takes forced down your throat By myself and mr. Joe O'Brien, I'm Jared Logan This is the show where you can call in and tell us what you think of everything going on in the geekosphere That is our trademark name for nerd culture

Joe, how are you doing this morning? I'm doing not that great, dude. Not that great. I'm sick. I'm ill. Oh no. It's all right. It's just a cold. It's a cold. It happens. Oh, I hate a summer cold. Hate a summer cold. So I am, I got my box of two shoes here. I got my big cup of water and I'm powering through. I'm going to do a lot of mic muting as I blow my nose on air. Uh, it's going to be great. We're going to really sick. I've been really sick too for like, I'm not able to, um, get an erection and it's been going on for like seven years now. There's medicine for that. I mean, most of the podcasts you listen to should have.

I'm not using them, but I'm not using them. Uh, there is medicine for that. Um, uh, by the way, guys, just so you know, that was a bit, uh, everything's all the Plumman's working downstairs. Jared's going strong. Don't worry. I just wanted to start the show off on a, on a, on a fun note. All the plumbins working downstairs. Jared's going strong. Don't worry. Don't worry. Start the show off on a fun note.

Hello? OK, so this is Glass Cane Radio. You just said that you wanted to hear some hot takes. Or that we give out some hot takes. What about caller hot takes? I want to hear more caller hot takes. We need more caller hot takes for real What are you?

Afraid of us are you fucking afraid of us? We hear you you are the one to kind of go after the callers right away you go in hard do you think this is kind of like a just a natural reaction of a Comedian that you know a stage comedy performer, your first reaction is roast, roast. Like is that? Oh God, well, I mean, you know, I hope not. I hope not.

I'm not really a roast comedian when I perform on stage, honestly. I think, I'd like to think that me going in on the callers is really their fault. It's sort of a function. They brought it on themselves. They brought it on themselves. Right, the hot ticks come out when I hear wrong ticks.

So that's- You're just being honest. At that point, you're just being honest. It's not a bit, it's not roasting. You're just letting people know they're honestly stupid. I'm just being real. Nah, no one used the word stupid. No one used the word stupid. No one used the word stupid.

It's all out of love. It's all out of love. I got a whole lot of love to give. Got a whole lot of love for the nature. Well, if you want to see the movie Magnolia with William H. Macy, I did. I did. It's been a long time. I have so much love to give. I just don't know how to show it. That's his quote from that. That's me. Okay. Yeah. All right.

I'd love to see you in tears on Glass Cannon Radio one day, talking about how much you love the Naish. Hey, listen, if we want to see some tears, let's get Paula on the show. Yeah, there we go. We'll get Paula on and confess her love for the Na.A.S.E. I'm sure she'll be brought to tears. What is up, N.A.S.E.? If you guys want to join us, you can be on the show. You can be on the show today, right now, live. We shoot this live every Wednesday at noon Eastern time, 9 a.m. Pacific. You can call in through Discord, through our Discord platform. If you're

a member of the N.A.S.E., you just got to go to jointhenash.com and then click over, link it to your Discord, and you can join our show right here. We bring up callers throughout the show, get their hot takes, their opinions on matters in the geekosphere, and you can join that. And you can do it for free as well with the GCN 30 code, which gets you 30 days for free to try it out. So come in, join up and, uh, and join the show and give us your hot takes today. Big show. We're going to be doing our book club where we're finally discussing the black

tongue thief, which we announced over a month ago. So hope you guys have that all read. Then we're going to do a rogues and RPGs and in popular fiction. We're just going to look at like thieves, rogues, scoundrels. Then I have three questions for Joseph O'Brien to answer. We have a nerd rant about a very topical new release coming from Paizo. And then we'll give a listener award, which reminds me, should we start with our listener question? Yeah. Why don't we start with that listener question? Our list. So we're going with our listener question? So we're gonna do a listener question today, okay? So anytime, we did this early on in the show,

we haven't done it in a bit, but just so you know, anytime you call into the show to give your opinion on anything we're talking about today, we're gonna make sure, or I'm gonna try to remember to round out that call with this question. And the question's just gonna be, and don't type it in chat. You lunatics don't type all your answers in chat cause it kind of gives it all away.

And it's, uh, uh, it'll ruin the game. Uh, also you want to keep your answers to yourself. If I see an answer in chat, a bunch, it'll just be eliminated. I'll just say it on air and then no one can win the prize. So what we're going to do, uh, guidelines for what's a good answer to. Sorry, Joe, do you want to give the question first and then say your- I'll give the question first and then I'll give the guidelines.

Yeah. So the question, it's a very simple question. The question is, and it's inspired by The Black Tongue Thief, which features, uh, in my opinion, a very lovable, uh, cat character. Uh, there is a feline character in the book that is very interesting and that says a lot coming from me because I usually start out from a hostile position against cats in literature because I think that they're just being used to manipulate the reader. So I'm just like, get out of here with your loser cat. This one though was great.

So in the spirit of that, the question for today for every caller is going to be give us a famous cat, a famous fictional cat of any kind. Can be from any genre of fiction. Give us a famous cat and the best answer. The best fictional cat. The best answer by the end of the show will win the prize. How do you get the best answer? Well, the best way I can put it is I make a comparison to my old buddy Jason Bullman over at Paizo told me one time when we went to Dragon Con together because he was a big Dragon Con guy. He said the way you win Dragon Con in the cosplay game is you need to dress up as someone

everyone recognizes, but no one thought to dress as. That is the winning costume at DragonCon. Similarly here, the winning answer today is going to be a clever, interesting, thought-provoking answer of a fictional cat that pretty much all of us would know, but nobody thought to say. That is going to be the kind of target that you want to hit. Is it difficult? Yeah.

Is it completely subjective? Absolutely. You also have to realize that you're only the only people voting on this are me and Jared and if there's a tie, McD will break the tie. So you got to work within that realm of like, what do these guys probably know about? What have we heard of? And I've heard of a lot, but I haven't heard of every anime ever made. And I don't watch any anime, so be careful on that front.

You can say these deep cut answers at a great risk. So anyway, if you really want to win the prize, which by the way, today is going to be a brand new, shiny, glass cannon network dice tray. We're going to send you out a dice tray today to the winner of the prize that you can use in your home game. So there you go. And this tray makes you roll higher numbers, right? It makes it, it causes the day to be a natch 20. Factually correct.

It crits whenever you need it most. That's, that's the, the selling point of this particular dice tray. So keep your answers contained, call into the show, raise your hand, even if you don't wanna talk about the topic and you just wanna get an answer in on the cat question, feel free. But we're gonna give that at the end of the show. We'll go through the answers, we'll pick the best one,

and there you go. And I just wanna throw out there, there will be no cat harm during this episode of Glass Can of Radio. No cats were harmed in the making of this episode. No cats were harmed. Okay, let's get into the Black Tongue Thief by Christopher Bullman. Wow, Jason Bullman, Christopher Bullman. Christopher Bullman related? I don't know they spelled them different. So just a little background on Christopher Bullmanlmann. I looked this guy up. Did you know that he is a comedian?

I did not know, but I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised either. And I mean that in a positive way. Right, the book is funny. I thought it was genuinely funny. Yes. He is a comedian who started his act and almost exclusively performs his act

at Renaissance festivals. So he was a comedian that was like a kind of an old timey insult herald or whatever. Yes. Which is one of the nerdiest things I can think of. But also, I think this guy is nerdy in a great way. So there was a guy, this is slightlydy in a great way. So, yeah. There was a guy, this is slightly off topic, but McD will remember this.

There was a guy who came to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Fair where McD and I used to go like yearly when we were in our twenties. We would go every year, once a year to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Fair, which is a phenomenal Ren fair. And there was a performer there named Giacomo the Jester. And this dude was middle-aged, long gray and white hair. He'd wear a big, you know, kind of furry cap.

And he was very talented musician, hilarious comedian, and like a juggler and like, um, like a sleight of hand magic guy. And he was awesome. He would, we'd go there and entertain the crowds he we roast parents and bring up little kids and they have funny comedic stuff going on and You know eventually, you know, I you know I looked this dude up and you see like this is he just travels the country to Renfair all the time and And does his act, you know what I mean? Does his thing. And when I read that about Bullman in the cover

that he goes around to Renaissance fairs, he's a fair performer, I was like, it was my first thought was old Giacomo the Jester. I hope he's doing well. Hope you're doing well, Giacomo. Also, what a talented guy, Giacomo. And what a talented guy, Christopher Bullman, that he can also perform.

My friends recommend more of his books. People love the daughters war, which is a prequel set in the world here of the black tongue thief, but also apparently the one you have to check out is called between two fires, which is historical horror set during the black plague. People say that one is incredible. So I, uh, I'll go ahead and put my cards on the table. I liked this enough. I would definitely check out something else by Christopher Bullman. Uh, I'll, I'll leave it there for now. Joe, what did you think? Uh, I agree. I liked this book and that is, that's saying a lot.

I tend to get distracted I have a hard time getting through books. You'll see as we do more book clubs. I didn't finish Dungeon Crawler Carl I don't finish most of the books that I start Yeah to get distracted or it doesn't really hold me if a book holds me through to the end That is enough for me to say I like it. There's no books I finish and say that wasn't for me. Like I just don't finish. I don't care to a lot of people feel like they must finish a book they start. I get that personality trait. I don't have that personality trait. I just sort of move on to another book and this one I finished all the way. I did it in time for

glass can of radio. So that was a big deal for me. And I'm, I'm excited to talk about it. I liked it right from the jump. I actually I didn't like it from the first sentence because And it set it really down a bar for me. I struggle with first-person particularly First-person fantasy. I just I'm not interested in the story from one perspective. I just don't first-person fantasy is rare It's rare. It's why I don't like the I always think of the second book wise You know who else does first-person fantasy is Patrick Rothfuss. That's what I was just saying so Patrick Rothfuss Whose books I hate. Wow, I don't like them either. That's amazing I think they're so bad. Me too!

They're incredible. All I could say is I couldn't get through that first book tried twice and couldn't get through it He's never gonna finish, and I'm glad. So it sets it back for me. And then Christopher Bowman battled back very early on and got me, because I loved being in this guy's head. It was a great character to view the world through. You felt cool. You felt sort of like you knew things

the other characters didn't, right? Like he's playing, moving all these pieces, playing all these things against each other. Very cool way to set up a book. And overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it. And Kinch is a great character. His vernacular is very specific. So it's not just his thoughts and the stuff that are going on plot wise with his character, but the way he tells the story and the way you can tell that he's got all these idioms and all of these, you know, this phraseology that comes from Galt where he's from. And he's kind of, he's a trickster and he also, he kind of tells jokes, you know, as he's going like, and that's all very well done. You know, that, that could be a mess. That could be cringe, but instead it feels real.

And it, it, I liked the guy. I thought he was, I liked him, you know, once it got rolling and I, I got into that vernacular, I really, really liked reading his, his, the thought processes of that character. Um, what did we think of the plot though, since I mentioned it just now, this is like an episodic journey. It's like an Odyssey through the book. You know, I often think something like that works or fails based on like is each separate

little episode in the story like interesting? And do you feel like you get enough of them where by the end you've had this like great journey, you know, like you have to feel like you went on this great quest. Of course, Lord of the Rings does that amazingly. It's like the gold standard. But how did you feel about like the sort of episodic nature of this novel? I liked it. I think that there were times that it was better than others. I didn't think that it was like, you know, just home runs every episode necessarily.

But I felt like I genuinely, I think it comes from my love of Lord of the Rings, perhaps from my love of the Hobbit. Before that, I love Odyssey storytelling. I love the, I used to love, like early on when we were doing Giant Slayer, I would always talk about the, how the games I like to play in in D&D and Pathfinder back at that time were like, I always wanted to gather a group and go on a quest, right?

Like I wasn't interested in like a gritty urban political like thriller in a city where you kind of stayed in there the whole time. I have since grown to really love that kind of storytelling too and understand why that's interesting. But my go-to used to always be a long distance traveling with a group over land and you know interacting with all these different things along the way. And when early, you don't know that that's what's going to happen right away, but kind of early on they set some things up and you're like, oh, this is going to be neat. Like this woman needs to go on this long journey and we don't know why.

And now we need to follow her and we don't know why. I liked that the way that he set up an Odyssey for an unknown reason, because everybody in the quote unquote party is keeping secrets from each other. But we have a, we have this feeling that we have our interests align in a way that we can at least travel together. And I thought that was a neat setup rather than the classic sort of fellowship thing where it's like, here's the mission and we all set out on that journey together. Yeah, that would, that is a cool way to kind of change it up a little bit.

Like there's a quest, but we're not quite sure what it is. Yeah. Even our main first person character doesn't really know what the quest is. I think that's kind of amazing. How do you have a first person character that doesn't know what the quest is? Well, they set it up Well they set it up. They set it up perfectly so it makes perfect sense. It's you work for a shadow organization and you work on a need to know basis.

Bam. Simple enough and this gives me all the reason I need to keep even the main character in the dark and have the reader learn along with the main character. Also, I mean, just to go off on a tangent for a second, the Takers Guild is chilling. And the way that by the end of the book, you realize that they are the main villain of the entire setting, you know? That they are, that they're not just a criminal organization

that's like basically running the government in a lot of ways. They are also like, at the end, you're reading stuff that they're writing. That's about how they serve the forbidden one or something like that. So they're fully the devil. They are the devil. And, uh, I thought that they were really, I mean, really early on you get like chills reading about these guys when there's the beautiful woman who's really

just wearing an illusion. Yes. You remember that? That was so cool. Yeah. So yeah, I really, I really enjoyed that part of the world. Let's talk about, uh, let's talk about the writing. Uh, I mean, you know, because there's the plot of a book, there's the characters,

there's the stuff that happens in it, but then there's just like the pros of it. You know, I think that's a gigantic component of any book. For me, I already talked about kinch's kind of vernacular and cause it's first person, that's a really big part of it. But I felt that the pros was like really strong, but didn't really draw attention to itself, which is the kind of thing you want in like a very plot motivated book like this one. I mean, what did you think?

Yes, I completely agree. I think that I also, I also, I need a certain level of prose. I feel like in order to like a book, I actually that's, that's a stupid thing to say, because it's not, it's not a stupid thing to say. That's true. That's true The fact is that there are some there are some beach read type Thrillery books that I love to read on a beach right because great character interesting plot They're not necessarily pros a however I will say that like even those they need to have strong dialogue.

If I can get strong dialogue, that is great for me to carry things along. I felt like in this book in particular, I agree with you completely. I think that's a great analysis that he didn't try so hard to write a great prosaic book. It felt very natural. You don't mean prosaic, that means something else. I'm sorry, a very, you know, a prose sort of. Beautiful prose, he's not pushing beautiful, he's not pushing purple prose on you.

Right, he's not trying to make it poetic, right, in the way that he writes. And it doesn't, like you said, you said it best, it doesn't draw attention to itself. It, to me, there's a, the only bar I set, and I can't remember this if we talked about it in a dungeon crawler, Carl, the only bar I set usually when I'm reading a book is could I write this? And if I feel like I could write it, I tend to not like it.

I tend to be like, this is, this isn't very interesting. Like, you think you could write Dungeon Crawler Carl? I think I could write Dungeon Crawler Carl. No, bro. I don't think I have the idea, but I could write, if you said the idea is write a video game as a book, I could be like, yeah, I could do that. And I could do that.

Like I truly believe I could do that. And that's do that. I truly believe I could do that. And that's one of the reasons I was like, this is not very interesting. You're a brilliant man with a great imagination and incredibly skillful, but you could not write Dungeon Crawler Carl. The hard thing to admit sometimes in life, especially as you get older, is that things that you don't really love, things that you dislike were probably still created by an incredibly talented person. We have to actually begrudgingly and painfully admit that Harlan

Coban has talent. Yes. I agree. It's not talent that I value. It's not craft that I value, but it is there. Yeah. Yeah. I agree that there are several layers

to what makes a final product that a person has to invest themselves in in a way that is, you can't really quantify. But what I liked about the writing in this, when you talk about the writing, is there were so many times I just stopped and re-read sentences, because I was just laughing.

I was just laughing. And to me, so much of the humor I felt in Dungeon Crawler Carl was so cheap and so low-hanging fruit, and I wasn't interested in it. This was so biting and comedic in nature in a way that was like, I don't know, it. This was so biting and comedic in nature in a way that was like, I don't know, it was my style. It was my style of humor.

And I felt like this guy nailed it. And so you end up, to me, any character that's funny, you're genuinely funny, that you find genuinely funny, you're going to like. It's a great way to get a character, to get the audience on the side of a character. It's the, whatch get a character, to get the audience on the side of a character. It's the, the, um, what's him to call it? Uh, method, the Tyrion Lannister method, right?

Like this is a guy who has despicable habits, who is a sort of a gross person. Uh, and you know, develops over the course of the story, but you kind of like him immediately because he's funny. And that's what happened with the main character. If you can be funny, that's an incredible talent as an author, you know? And there are some people who think they're funny and are not. Brandon Sanderson. So it is an incredibly important thing an author can do. Stephen King, for example, whether you love his books or hate them, I think we must agree Stephen King is funny.

He is a, he's funny. Like, so there's that. Let's talk about the characters a little bit. So I would love if there's a lady listener who got through the book to let us know what they think of Noragal and Galva. Because I thought the book went out of its way to make sure that there were strong female characters. For me, they were strongly written.

We've already gone into how Kinch is a really interesting character, I think, because he is conflicted throughout the book, I think, in a lot of ways. He's not fully a good guy. Although I will be honest with you, Joe, I mean, if I'm picking nits, if I'm picking nits, I thought that he was very chaotic good. And I think at the outset of the book, I was expecting him to be a little more chaotic neutral and have a little more

trouble deciding to do the, the honorable thing. I agree. I, I, I agree with that. I didn't think of that while I was reading it, but that makes sense. It's a trap that I have fallen into in the past. I remember the early days of giant slayer. I played a chaotic neutral half-orc in this town who was kind of like a criminal,

like a slightly reformed criminal. And I wanted to play that kind of edgy, sort of like not always good, self-interested sort of character. And as always, I fell into like Joe O'Brien Paladin land and just started like making all Paladin choices. And we'd get complaints on like Reddit and stuff way back in

the day that were just like, this character is not chaotic neutral. At best they're chaotic good, leaning toward lawful good. And I would have to self-examine and be like, yeah, you know, I really am falling into this trap where you're like, you want to do the right thing. I kept wanting to do the right thing. You know, when I play role-playing games, uh, video games, but you know, back when I was playing fallout, uh, video games, but you know, back when I was playing fallout, Skyrim and stuff like that, a while back, I had the hardest time making the evil choice. Like it was very tough for me.

I couldn't do it. Like I always had to make like the honorable choice, at least on my first playthrough, because, um, I don't know. There's just something, there's something that skeaves me out about, um, I don't know, there's just something, there's something that skeaves me out about, um, you know, I mean, I, I think an evil main character can be done extremely well. Uh, but I, I don't mind that kinch is, is, uh, ultimately pretty honorable. I don't mind it. I just, I think my expectations were a little different from the, from the outset.

So I agree. I agree. I also, uh, well that's a little more complicated. I don't want to get into that right now. Um, let's, let me ask you a question. Um, just among those non-kinch characters, did anyone stand out to you as like, I really like this character. I'm, I'm rooting for this character.

Well, I really loved Malc who's the guy from gaults that he meets on the boat. Um, he was a great character. I thought that that was a great character. I thought that that was a complicated character. That character could have been just an antagonist for him. And, um, he ended up being much more than that. And, uh, it feels like he started out as just like a challenge on the boat. And then he kind of got, he kind of graduated into a full character.

And then his, it made his ultimate fate so horrible and, and affecting. And for me, that was one of the most affecting parts of the book was the fate of Malke in Grevica, I think is the town that they're in. Yeah, yeah, I would, I would put those two up there with side by side with like the most memorable visual scenes in my mind, right? While I'm reading it, it was him being torn apart by these goblins in this. Yeah, yeah. And the way that our narrator explains what it's like in this town, the demarcation line between goblins and if you cross over to that side, you're under their laws.

If you cross over this side of the street, you're under these laws. And they just wait at the border for somebody to screw up. It was really interesting. Yeah, yeah. And that scene was vicious and brutal. And then the other one for me was the Kraken scene, which I thought was great. Yeah, the Kraken was great.

I mean, the way I imagined it, the way it's described, it's just like, oh my god. It's not our first Kraken scene among fantasy, you know, TV shows, movies, books. But I felt like this approach was very interesting and did it in a way that felt truly terrifying. And like, there's no possible victory against this thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Which was, which was cool. The first time they encounter the Kraken, Galva like is fighting it and Kinsh is kind of hanging back. And then afterwards she's like, did you just hide? And then she, then she just can't talk to him for like a couple of weeks. Remember? She's just like, I can't look at you. You're awful. Like, and I thought that that was a really kind of strong

character moment for her and him. Yeah. So yeah, you got into the world a little bit while we're talking about the goblins and, you know, everybody goes on and on about world building all the time and fantasy, which I think is kind of a wank. We, we, we put too much emphasis on world building. Uh, what I like about this book is that it doesn't put all of its, all of its eggs in world building. It also works hard on character and plot. But that said, I really did enjoy the world.

And one thing that I noticed about it that I thought was kind of refreshing was that, of late, I feel like we've gotten a lot of fantasy in the vein of Game of Thrones, which is kind of low magic. I would say like, for example, Locke Lamora, which is a great series that I enjoy, I would say like, for example, Locke Lamora, which is a great series, um, that I enjoy is pretty low magic, but this world is high magic. There's a lot of it. And the stuff that happens is, is wild. It's like reality

altering. Honestly, I feel like you're opening a little Pandora's box here, not to be, uh, too on the nose with the magic. It's a fascinating part of this book that I want to dive into more, but I want to hear from some callers. You asked for one of our listeners to call in who might have a different perspective on the female characters in Gen with Two N's Reddit, which I'm very excited to hear. So, Jen, if you're there, your mic is muted. If you can unmute that. I know you're out and about, but we always love to hear from Jen with two N's if you can get that mic working.

We'll stand by. Oh, wait. Hello, I'm a lady. There we go. There's a lady. She's a lady. She's a lady. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, she's a lady.

What's up, Jen? How are you? Hey, sorry, walking the dog. So my mic might not be up to snuff. But I did not finish this book. I got 2 thirds of the way through. I think after they were captured by the goblins and you find out that apparently Galva is a noble,

I was like, I'm just not enjoying this enough to spend my time reading it. And it's probably the first book in a very long time I didn't finish. But I will say, after hearing your thoughts, like I am willing to pick it back up again. Maybe there's just like other ways I can see it that helped me. I thought it was a little boring, which is weird because so much was happening when you're like, okay, they're going to the witches tower, they're fighting goblins, they're fighting a kraken, but it was just like, here's two pages of this thing, I'm done.

But yet here's five pages of what nickels taste like, you know? You know, I saw this on the Discord where people are like, he talks about coins too much. Jen, he just doesn't. That's not true. There's like, I'm gonna go back one very entertaining passage where he talks about how he loves coins. And then every once in a while, when he picks one up, he says what kind of coin it is. That's it. That there, what, that wasn't an annoying refrain at all.

I don't know. Teach their own, but the women characters, I don't know teach their own but the women characters I you know I wanted to like Galva so much because when we first saw her she like decimated Kinsh's whole group right she's just like yeah it's a very cool intro it's a very cool intro yeah but I thought she was very flat one one note. Like all she did was just like, here, let me fight and then drink wine and like mumble, basically. I feel like we didn't get much out of her. I don't disagree.

I do think that she- I disagree. I think that she might've been a little flat. She had very interesting concepts to her, but it felt like her people was really the interesting concept. Her maybe warrior her people was really the interesting concept. Her maybe warrior clan or whatever was the interesting concept.

I don't know that it transferred to her being interesting. We don't like the whole, her whole sort of order where she's dedicated to death and yeah, that's what I'm saying, that's what I'm saying, but the order's interesting. I don't know that that transferred over to what makes her as a character interesting

We just brought out an incredible character moment where she basically won't talk to kinch for like weeks because She's so into honor and bravery that you know his actions really, you know That was a great place where the characters butted heads. I don't know. I mean I Thought the character was well crafted. Yeah, maybe just because of where exactly I stopped. What about Noragal? I liked her more. We know that she's powerful.

She's doing some cool stuff. I liked that she was quippy and fun. But a lot of times she's like, just like, hey, wanna make out? Which is cool, I guess, but I don't know. She didn't really stick out to me. Maybe I was just upset at how much I was disappointed in not liking this. But I don't know.

I'll give it another shot. Maybe the last third will change my mind and I'll report back. But I'm disappointed. I hated it enough to not finish. And so I don't know. All right. All right Well, thank you for calling in Jen. I do appreciate wait. Give us a famous cat before you go a famous Yeah, yeah Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch. There you go. There you go. All right. No it is

Thank you, Jen. Appreciate the call Okay, good answer. So we got someone who didn't like the book. I'm happy we have someone who didn't like the book. Absolutely. Brave enough to dislike the book. You are wrong. But thank you for calling in to let us know. Another thing I'll say after hearing Jen rattle off like, oh, and we went up to the witch's brew and then we go onto the ship and do a fight at Kraken and then we, here's the goblin thing.

I will say if Jen talked to me before I picked up and read this book, I would never pick up and read this book because that sort of stuff to me, I just feel like I'm like I'm over it. I struggle with it enough in like my D&D, in my Pathfinder games, right? Like the classic tropey fantasy setups and settings. It's to me, I'm kind of like, I do not want to read a book about this.

I think Game of Thrones kind of ruined it for me. I'm like, I'm done with that. I need something else. But this reinvigorates, this reinvigorates those old tropes. This pulled it off somehow and I'm very impressed. Let's get another caller. Let's get Bent Paddle up here.

Bent Paddle, did you like the book? Yeah, I did. Okay, all right. All right, correct. All right, well, what jumps out at you, Bent Paddle? What did you want to talk about? Well, the writing style Christopher Bollman has is I thought it was very fun. It was very enjoyable.

It wasn't constant hits like it was in Dungeon Call or Carole, but it was you had some world building between the hits. And I think probably what I like most in fantasy is when it just jumps into the action and then you get a lot of world building through character development. Like we learn a lot about the Taker's Guild through development. Like we learn a lot about the takers guild through kinch and we learn a lot about the magic system through noragal and so on and so forth. Yeah, that's a good point. It's a good strategy. You also learn a lot about the takers guild through, uh, Oh my gosh, I forget her name. Who's the,

uh, Sesta Sesta. Yeah. You learn learn a lot. That took it to another level. You're like, oh man, they are highly trained and super intense, especially the most intense followers among them. I want to play a character, use one in an RPG who's covered in one-time use magical tattoos. Can you imagine if you had to play that in an RPG and you were like, I have a really powerful spell,

but I can use it like one time. Yeah. That was pretty cool. It was very cool. Bent, to expand on that, I remember talking to our good buddy Seth Skorkowski. Did you ever play with him, Jared? Did you ever end up crossing paths with Seth?

I've played with Seth. Yes, I have. Yeah, I love Seth. So Seth is great. Also a writer and a science fiction writer, fantasy writer. And Seth, I remember speaking on a cannon fodder, I believe it was, about world building. And he said something that always stuck out to me, which is no one will ever be as interested in your world

as you are. And if you try to just explain to them how interesting it is, it's never going to work, you have to, you have to drip it slowly through character. And I think that, Ben, you're saying this exactly about what Christopher Bullman did here. I hadn't actually thought of that or put that together that like, you learn about magic through Noragal. So like when we, you just brought up the magic system, Jared, I thought it was fascinating. And I was like, and there was a lot of really interesting stuff about it, but every

time I think about it, I just think about Noragal pretty much. You know what I mean? The magic system. Yeah. You think about Noragal because I'm sorry, go ahead, Ben. The whole scene with her making the tattoo, uh, making Bully into a tattoo was just fascinating. Yeah. It was very cool. Another thing I just say about the magic system is we don't know what every, how it all works.

We know some of the things they can do, but there isn't this sort of exhaustive encyclopedic description of exactly how it works. And I think that's that's cool. There's some mystery left in it. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, agreed. Ben, give us a famous a famous cat in fiction. I was thinking about Goose, the cat from Captain Marvel.

OK, Nick, here is I out. Yes, nice. One of the high points of the entire MCU, I think we's eye out. Yes, nice. One of the high points of the entire MCU, I think we can all agree. Thanks for calling, Ben. That didn't feel silly at all. Goose the cat from Captain Marvel. So the Magic System, Jared, you went on a rant

on this very program about the Magic System in Wicked. So this one you uh, you liked, you thought that there were enough rules that it felt grounded? I don't think I, no, I don't need, no, I think there's too much talk of what are the rules. I, I, I, it's actually the opposite. I think that, you know, we need to get back to Gandalf and stuff like that and just like let people do magic. What he does, what Buhlmann does in this book is give you enough details that it feels real

without like over explaining it to you. And I think that that's excellent. I think that that's the way to go. One of my favorite parts about it is what seems to be pulled right out of classic D&D. And when you read about sort of, I've read some takes on this book after the fact, after I finished reading it,

and somebody did mention how it has flavorful elements of like Dungeons and Dragons in it that are fun and make it enjoyable. And one of those things that I felt that I really liked about the magic was how draining it is on the, the cast. She's got a couple shell slots, right? Yeah. She does a few things and then she's like passing out. I love that concept.

It feels like it's draining your very life essence to use it. Uh, which, yeah, it's an interesting way to, to me, it's like 10 minutes to refocus. Exactly. He needs an eight hour rest. Like you said, you don't have to say explicit rules, but it's interesting to let people just do magic, but then see it have an effect on them. That means they can't do this all the time or if they did, it would kill them. I love those kinds of things where like, if she does another thing, it could kill

her, like I love those kind of power a little bit. So she's not this sort of, you know, solve everything kind of like Swiss army knife of greed of magical powers. Yeah. Rima, why don't you join us and then tell us what you thought of the book. Rima is called in a few times. Hey, how you doing buddy? All right. I'm not driving across Massachusetts today, so it's a totally different setup. Okay, great. Where are you driving across today?

I am sitting at my website. Okay, great. Perfect. Where are you driving across today? I'm sitting at my desk. It's great. Oh, okay. And where is that? Where are you, Rima? I can't remember. I'm in Worcester, Mass. Worcester, Mass. Worcester, Mass.

All right. Are you gonna tell- That's a rough town, Rima. Are you gonna tell Boston Jen with two Ns why she's wrong or why she's right? I liked it. Okay. Uh, I liked it. Okay. Okay.

You liked it. All in once battle corvids showed up. What's battle corvid showed up? Yes. Once the battle corvid showed up, I was in, I was, that was cool. Wait, so was that like, that was the first thing, wasn't it? Wasn't it like the first prologue? Yeah. Wait. So was that like, that was the first thing, wasn't it? Was that like the first prologue? Yeah. Yeah. The first fight that it's just such a great way to, uh, I just love that term battle Corvid. It was awesome. It's so pleasing.

When it talks about how it rips the opponents apart during that fight with the horned guy, it was, that was pretty cool. But then, then the battle Corvid could get fucked up too. It wasn't like invincible, you know? Yeah. I really loved the crow to find out it was a summon. It was part of the magic system too. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The war Corvids, uh, a scribble skull on discord says, if you like war Corvids, you'd like the daughter's war. Uh, also let's talk about that for a second in terms of world building. When he brings up goblins initially, I'm just like, oh my God, here we go. Like I'm not a big, I'm with Mary, I'm the Mary Lou camp. Like I'm not a huge goblin fan. And the way that they, that he portrays goblins so great. I mean, half the book, you're just really scared of them. Like they're very mysterious and dangerous and awful.

And so in terms of the world building, these former wars, you know, the war against the goblins, which I can't remember if that has an exact name, but then how it rolls into the Daughters War because so many of the male soldiers had died that now all of the women went to fight as well. Such an interesting concept. And so when I saw there was a prequel book on that, I was like, here, mark that. I'm going to have to check that out. That sounds really cool. Anything else jump out at you, Rima, about the book before we get to your famous cat? I think that you all covered pretty good. Awesome. Awesome. Give us a famous calling in. What's your famous cat? It was sheer con from sheer con. Great one. Yeah. Awesome.

Thank you, Rima for calling in. Let's get Travis green up here. Travis, what did you think about the black tongue thief? Hey guys. Yeah, I really liked it. I thought that it was Travis, what did you think about the Black Tongue Thief? Hey guys, yeah, I really liked it. I thought that it was tropey but well executed. One of the things I really liked was the way that it, like the end quest you don't really get the deal until it's basically happening. But he's peppering it in throughout. There's like the early scene with like they see a,

like a circus or a mummers play or something telling you backstory stuff that's going to be relevant later. Yeah. A good way to do it and relevant to like RPG planning. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Yes. They do a thing like that. Martin did a thing like that in Game of Thrones. There's a Game of Thrones play in like book three. Is that in the books or is it just in the show? I think it's in the books. I believe it is. What's funny about how Martin does it is you're watching things that are going on. You're across the narrow sea.

You're in those other countries, but you're watching stuff about Searcy and like a little puppet play or whatever. Searcy and Joffrey and Jamie and everything. Yeah, it is. It's, but yeah, they're like- It's kind of like a big, like here's a huge block of text with all of these different historical figures you don't care about, which goes back to the world building stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. The way that he kind of dripped out the world building. What did you, are you interested to return to this world, Travis? Do you want to learn more? Yeah, I'll check out the sequel or the, I guess it's prequel, but, um, I thought it ended in a place where I did want to know, okay, what next? Because it, you know, you do find out that Takers Guild are so horrible. And then he's sort of his mission is against them.

Now he's betrayed them. So it did leave me wanting to find out more. I know it's sort of, it's a little frustrating because I enjoyed it to have an end on like a little bit open-ended and then the next one's a prequel. Come on, I need the sequel. That was weird. Like what was the strategy behind that? I'm just curious, you know, like from a publisher standpoint. It's our sequel, Bowman. I'm gonna start, let's start the letter writing campaign now.

Sorry, go ahead. He was trying to write the sequel and he realized he needed to get more into Galva's backstory, so he had to go back and write this. So I think there is an actual sequel that will come at some point. Oh, maybe that'll fill out Galva's character enough

for Jen with two ends to be able to enjoy her. Travis, give us a famous cat from fiction. Yeah, I'm gonna say Gigi from Kiki's Delivery Service. Okay, Gigi. All right. I don't know that one. Travis, going anime, going anime, but going with perhaps the most well-known anime creator, Miyazaki.

I know it, Travis. I know that one. Okay. Okay. Good. That's good. Let's get Player Guy up here to weigh in on the Black Tongue Thief. We're going to be moving on soon to talking about rogues in general in RPGs, but let's

stick on the book as long as people want to talk about it. Player. Player Guy is your name. Does it mean like you play video games or is it like you're a player? on RPGs, but let's stick on the book as long as people want to talk about it. Player. Player. Player guy is your name. Does it mean like you play video games or is it like you're a player? Like player. You are putting up numbers in the sex game. I've had that question so many times.

I made the name because my brother invited me to play a game I was not interested in and I wanted to make it player one, which was taken. So I thought of the next most generic thing, which was player guy. So no, it has nothing to do with sexual proclivities. Well, it feels like it does. All right. Player guy. What did you think of the book? You gotta just change your answer. I mean, in the future, just say it's because I absolutely slay with the lady slay.

Yeah, you should say it's because I've had sex with over 250 separate individuals. Say it deadpan flat. And say separate individuals so it's not sexist, you know? It's men, it's women, it's non-binary. Absolutely, absolutely. I'm for equality. Player, what did you think of the book? I mean, I'm going to echo a lot of the similar, similar prose people are giving.

The world building was, I think, phenomenal. I want to highlight a particular section and then I want to talk about something, I guess, that hasn't been brought up. So in Chapter 39, I have the e-book. So I don't know the exact page, but they're describing the city of eth. Yeah. And I think the third paragraph in he starts talking about how the taverns have amazing names and like lists a bunch of great tavern names and then starts to tell the story of like a queen there and how it's enshrined in the names of taverns. And I was just like, this

is such a great way to do world building. And there was so many moments like that where I was like, I need to bring this to the table. Like that, what a way to describe a city instead of like, you know, narrowing in on a bunch of details everybody knows about cities, like focus on these taverns and tell a story through the tavern names. I highlighted that section. It's really good. But it also, something that hasn't been brought up that I think was really well done is it's extremely dark world. But there is constantly signs of how people are coping and finding humor in the darkness. And I've played in a ton of tabletop role playing games where you bring

forward a dark world and you're just getting beaten on and it sucks And it's not really representative of what humans do and so I thought this was like amazing Representation for like humans are gonna deal with these terrible goblins and they're gonna find ways to mock them and Laugh and have a good time even in the darkness. So I think he did that super, super well. You're laughing the whole time despite how horrific everything is. Right on. Yeah. Agreed.

Good point. Like, yeah, you're going to build a bleak world. You don't have to have everyone be bleak in it all the time. Right. That's a good point. Good call, player. Give us a famous cat. That grim darkness.

Oh, sorry. I was just going to say real quick that grim darkness becomes sort of tropey and sort of like a stereotypical and predictable at this point. You know, we've had so much grim dark fantasy. So yeah, I do appreciate what you were saying. So sorry. What's your, what's your cat? Uh, I'm going to go with Hobbs from Calvin and Hobbs. Oh, there it is. That's a good one. There you go. That's that There you go. There were ones that I was just like I'm not gonna say I'm just in case somebody said Hobbs How do you beat Hobbs? That's a tough one. Hard to beat. I love Hobbs. Everyone knows no one thinks of him. Exactly

Did I tell it I did I tell you about? Getting my daughter on to Calvin andbes? Like they were in the library? No. Yeah. So by the way, got this from the library. I just love when I can get a book out of the library. You pitched this book and I was like, let me see if it's in the library first. So I went, I'm like, oh, it's there. Which to me is a good sign that like it's a well published, well known book at least. And so I went and grabbed it and there were these Calvin and Hobbes old torn up Calvin and Hobbes

collections in the library. I grabbed a couple, gave them to my eight-year-old daughter. It was like, she's super into reading right now. I was like, try out some of these, not even knowing if it's a good idea because sometimes Calvin's a little too smart for his own good. And he really lets you know how to get one over on your parents. But I was like, I loved Calvin and Hobbes growing up. So I gave it to her and she was, she just devoured them. She's so into it. That's awesome. Yeah. I love those growing up too. I've been getting my daughter who's six into Doonesbury. So she's getting really immersed in Reagan era hypocrisy. Oh God.

She's read like four collections. I really am like not feeling well. And you just made me laugh until I got lightheaded. Oh God. Oh no. What you would call it, singing zombies in Twitch chat says, not many other cat candidates will know the rules to Calvin ball for sure. Yes. Yes.

Great response. Great response. Let's take one more on the book before we actually. Yeah, absolutely. There's a couple more, there's a couple more. And also if you wanna chime in on the book later in the show when we're on something else, feel free, okay? This name is phenomenal. Is your name Mountain Mama?

It is, can you hear me? Nice. Oh, we can hear you Mountain Mama. Now as a West Virginia boy, I particularly love that name. Well, thank you. Well, I'm calling from Montana. So that's kind of, yes, yes. Yes. Mount mama.

That's me. Well, thanks for calling into the show. I appreciate it. You're welcome guys. No, a long time listener. First time caller. Yeah, thanks. Um, so I, I have to say, I'm so sorry, but I'm with Jen.

I did not like the book. I'm a Carl fan through and through. I love Carl. We're on like book, I think fives now of Carl. And I was really sad to have to stop to listen to this book. But I love to write- Well, you know, I've seen a few comments and I was really sad to have to stop to listen to this book. But I love the writing.

Well, you know, I've seen a few comments that the audiobook stinks. And I didn't try the audiobook. The Black Tongue Thief, the audiobook's gonna be. Yeah, no, I think the audiobook is great because the Irish broke, you know? I like that. But yeah, there were parts where I noticed my husband falling asleep. The Irish broke, you know that I like that but yeah

there were parts where I noticed my husband falling asleep and Like wait, you know, but he I think he liked it more than I did but um, yeah I did like the pro. I did like the pros in it. It reminded me of John Boyne I don't know if either of you have read John Boyne He wrote the the boy in the Striped Pajamas. So you've probably seen that movie if you haven't read the book. But he wrote it really-

I've heard of it, I haven't seen it. Yeah, oh, it's really touching. It's really sad. But he also wrote this book called Hearts Invisible Furies, and it's amazing. But he has that same kind of wit that this guy had. And it was, it's funny. I liked the writing because it tickled me. It was funny.

But yeah, just not as good as Carl, I don't think. What was wrong with it, do you think? What were you really bumping on? Yeah, if you liked the writing, was it you couldn't get invested in the characters? I liked it because it was witty, because yeah, I didn't get invested in them. I just kind of wasn't, I wasn't rooting for them as much as I've been rooting for Carl and Donut.

I think, and I know they're so different, they're vastly different, but I just felt like I wasn't into it as much. I did love the Kraken, man. That rock. That was awesome. But I just kind of was like, eh, it was meh for me. I'm just shocked that you sit and listen to audio books with your husband. Do you guys just kind of put them on like radio? We do. We, I mean, we've listened to all of Robin Hobbs books. I mean, oh my God, she was amazing. Assassin's Apprentice. So good. So good.

That's like, oh my God, she was amazing. Assassin's Apprentice. So good. So good. So good. Wait, so now, mama, give us a picture of the scene for a second. Like, are you both doing other things while you're listening to the audiobook, or do you just stare at each other in a silent room, listening to an audio book? No, that's okay, yeah.

Do you ever, let me ask this. We hold hands. Do you ever make love while listening to Dempsey and Carl? Oh my God, how did you know, Jerry? How did you know? Oh, Princess Donut, huh. Oh my God, how did you know, Jeremy? How did you know? Oh, Princess Donut, huh?

Oh, Carl, tell me again. No, actually, so sometimes we'll listen to them. Like, we came to the shows in Seattle and Portland. We met you, Joe, and we listened. We drove, so we listened. But a lot of times, after we were done watching you guys on YouTube, we'll turn off the TV, and we'll sit, and he'll do his stuff on his computer Pathfinder or whatever.

And I'll just sit and play a game or whatever, and know, whatever. And we'll listen. And, um, it's just kind of our quality time, you know, you're telling me you were playing video games while listening to the black tongue. He does that a lot. Yeah. He'll play like it. Hmm. She said he played, he does that a lot. No, I, I'm not, I can't, I'm terrible at video games. Terrible. So I, I don't, I don't play, but he does. Yeah, he plays the Baldur's Gate, I think it's called. He plays that and he'll listen.

So we're, yeah, we've listened to the whole Expanse series. We've listened to like, yeah. Love the Expanse. Yeah, oh my God. The books are amazing. I've been getting back into that. I've been getting back into that. Good, totally worth it. All right, Mountain mama wall. Sorry. You didn't like it. We'll try to get something as good as dungeon crawler Carl next time

Yeah, well, I know you're so sarcastic with your comment, but okay, you know, it's a funny It's so funny when you said that the first thing I mean you were like, I don't care about them as much as I care about Carl and doughnut I know if Donut got smashed under the first rock that fell off the thing. I know, I know, you're like, who cares a damn about them? I know how you really feel, Joe.

I know, totally. But it is true though, if you don't, and I will say, like, this isn't the best character book I've ever read. You know, it's not like I was like, emotionally invested in these guys so much. I did think it was fun though. Give me a great cat from fiction.

Okay, well you gotta go with Gargamel's cat, Ezrael. Ezrael. From the Smurfs, right? Yeah, another classic cat. That cat was, yeah, he was creating a lot of havoc with the Smurfs. So yeah. Yeah. And I remember that. Thank you, Mount Mama. Great call. Please call in again. Thanks guys. Thanks so much. You guys are awesome. Thank you. All right. Talk to you later. Bye bye. It was like a terrifying, I remember being terrified of Azrael as a kid. I watched this verse a lot as a kid,

and I remember being like, that cat was so scary. Azrael. I'm not sure how to spell that. Yeah, Azrael. That's the name of an angel, I think. Maybe a fallen angel. I'll have to look it up. Tantz. Wow. I'm sorry. It's hard to say your name. Tantztaflomota? Tantztaflomota. It's a really stupid thing that I've just held onto the username since forever now. Have you thought about changing it to player guy? You know, I like Robert A. Heinlein reference. What can I say? Maybe player Flamota.

I'll give it a try. Tansda Flamota. What's going on? Did you like the, the old black tongue thief there? Yeah. You will. You'll have to forgive me. Cause I actually, I read this years ago. Um, so it was super excited when you guys said you were going to review it because I originally saw Christoph the Insulter as he was known at the Renaissance festival Facebook and saw his authorship grow. Oh, cool. That's exciting. That's so awesome.

How was he? How was his performance? He was hilarious. I mean, like, roll on the floor, crying with laughter. Like you said, he was an insulter and you paid him to insult you and there would be a collection. They'd be like, people would throw in five bucks and you get like a hundred, $200 insults and he would go off on people for almost 10 minutes.

And just, I mean, the most terrible vitriol you ever heard in your life. Um, yeah. Was it in medieval speech? Eh, no, it was, I mean, yeah. It's been more than a decade now since I saw him last. Right. I can't quite remember.

Um, I don't think so. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool. But, uh, anyway, sorry. So, so when you read his book, you already knew who he was. Yeah, exactly.

Um, it's just, I listen, nothing I can say hasn't already been said the world building, I find fantastic. The whole idea of you have a tattoo that can only be seen in the torch light to get hit in the face and then get a Jug of beer if I remember correctly That was great. It's lovely. Um, so yeah for me Fantastic just just everything about it. Awesome. Give us a famous cat Tonsta. Yeah, no worries I'm gonna cop out here. I'm calling in from Edinburgh and so I'm going to do a British show. Let's do Red Dwarf Cat from.

Cat from Red Dwarf. Cat from Red Dwarf. Okay. Good. Good. I got to clarify on that one. Can't just say cat. Yeah.

Thank you, Tonsta Flamota. Thank you so much for calling in. That's so cool that he knew him when he was the Red Fair performer. That is cool. And you had started off the show with that. Shall we? Thank you, Tonsda Flamota. Thank you so much for calling in. That's so cool that he knew him when he was the Red Fair performer. And you had started off the show with that. Shall we talk about Rogues in general?

Yeah, yeah, let's move on. It's, oh, God, it's just so tough because people want to talk about the book. I don't know. Let's move on. And if people want to bring up to call, want to talk about Black Lung Teeth, that's 100% fine. Either way, you're going to get up here to discuss. So let's talk about Rogues for a little bit in RPGs. I want to intro this briefly by saying we haven't talked that much about the Taker's

Guild. We talked about sort of like the large scale sort of toward the end aspects of it. Early on in this book, I think there is great inspiration for anybody that wants to play a new rogue character or a thief character. I think it would, I never, I know Skid has thought of this before in the past. I know that he has played some characters that have ties to a criminal organization,

right? Or criminal guild that are, and that's scary, right? Like, as you, you never know if you get on the outs with them, what can happen. That's really well done in this book. And I think it introduces thieves and in a way that is very interesting because you add a little bit of magic into the fray. You add a little bit of benegesserate level manipulation and fingers in every pot of every nation moving and shaking the leaders of all. I thought that it was a really cool guild, at least the way that it's introduced early on. And I think that it could be a really interesting inspiration for anybody that wants to play a rogue build in a game like D and D and Pathfinder as a thief.

Cause you don't always play a rogue as a thief. Those are kind of, they can be the same one in the same, but they're not all right. Right. No, not there's different builds, right. And Pathfinder and in five E, you know, your subclass or, or whatever can, can make you a different type of rogue. You can be more of a brawler brute type of a rogue.

You can be more of like a social manipulator or mastermind kind of rogue. Yeah. Let's, let's define terms for a second. I would say when we talk about rogues and RPGs, when we talk about the class for me, all of those things come under rogue, right? So like every thief is a rogue, but not every rogue is a thief, right? Like I think, if you think back to old school D&D, it was just thief. Like that was kind of the class, but the thief was described, if I'm not mistaken, even in old school D&D as somebody that could also be like a social manipulator,

a charming and a swindler, a con artist, right? Well, that would fall into the purview of role playing a lot of time in old school D&D because, you know, it didn't have quite as many skills and things like that. I mean, rogues were really good at traps, you know, and they were a skill monkey. So they had a lot more skill abilities than, skill abilities than other people, um, in old school D and D. I mean, I think the thing that unites rogues, at least in fantasy D 20 games now, whether they are a social manipulator or a thief is the sneak attack.

Yes. Sneak attack is in terms of a fantasy D 20 game, the sneak attack is the, is the element that unites all of them. And I find it to be the most fun part of playing a rogue. I think that puzzle of getting that sneak attack damage. It's like, it's like if you play a barbarian or a fighter, you kind of just want to go in and do big damage. But if you're playing a rogue, you kind of want it to be a puzzle every time as to how to get the big damage. To me, that's cool. And like the fiction of it is cool.

I'm coming up behind the guy and shanking him. Sneaking through in the dark or I'm going to be the first one in to sneak into the camp or I'm going to, you know, by the behind the firelight and then stab somebody in the back. Or once the combat's underway, I'm going to wait till the enemy is distracted by the barbarian, then go in and hit him. You know what I should just say at the jump? It's my favorite class in all of these games. Like I can't deny that my gut instinct is to always play a roguish character specifically

around sneak attacks and stuff like that. It's not that I always want to play like a con artist. I don't think I'm, I don't get a lot of enjoyment out of that because I don't think I'm very good at it. Um, I don't, uh, necessarily love stealing things. That's not my favorite, but I just love a Dex-based fighter, a Dex-based martial character that has the ability to sneak, hide, get into places early, scout,

and get, you know, in a great position to make a sneak attack. To me, that's one of the most fun ways to play these, these D20 style games. Yeah. I want to play more rogue. I mean, for, for sure, because it is a extremely fun class to play. They're a little squishy, but like you said, you know, one of the things that's funny is when you're playing a fantasy D20 game, it's like, you might be this like incredible fighter, like a barbarian or something, but then you realize that, you know, uh, other than when you're jumping or climbing, like you, your character doesn't know much, your character doesn't have a lot of skills, but like when you play a rogue, you're almost always succeeding when you roll all those different skills, which come up a lot of skills, but like when you play a rogue, you're almost always succeeding when you roll all those different skills, which come up a lot.

So it's fun to succeed at things. Um, and we've already said how fun it is to sneak up on people and stab them in the back. Yeah, it's pardon me. It is. Um, it can be frustrating though. Let's talk about the downside for a second. You are reliant on a lot of times on tactical

gameplay from other players that might not necessarily be there for you. They might not think about your positioning first, right? They might think about themselves and also they might just not even really, they might just be playing their character. I'm a barbarian. I don't think about tactics. Like that's fine, but it can put

you in difficult positions or even if you're not playing, talking about playing tactically, if you, and this happened to me once in the Giant Slayer realm, you end up through a series of characters dying, story reasons, your party gets kind of reshaped until there is no other melee martial character but you. That is, that can be problematic as a rogue. Yeah, a rogue probably shouldn't be your frontline. Yeah.

It's not your brick. I've been in a party before where the power all comes from casters and you're the rogue. It's like, you can like almost never get sneak attack. Uh, the, the big solution to that is make sure that your casters are casting darkness and that everybody has dark vision. Then it'll work for you. That'd be so funny if someone came to you to play your AP and they were like, here's what we're doing. Um, all of the casters have darkness and we all are orcs.

Exactly. There's your triumph of the deserts and roadie right there. Yeah. Now I will say as a GM, uh, and this is mostly experienced with five E, but as, as a dungeon master, I found playing with a rogue very frustrating, um, because Clinton trucks played a rogue through most of my five E campaign that I ran for like two years and Clinton trucks. I forget the name of the exact ability, forgive me, but I was constantly saying I roll a 23 that's a hit and he'd be like, actually it's not like every time you'd hit him, he'd be like nimble dodge,

whatever the ability was called. And he'd be like, actually time you'd hit him. He'd be like nimble dodge You know whatever the ability was called and he'd be like actually you don't hit me and I'd be like fuck you Like this is so frustrating And then have someone say actually no What do people think? What do you guys think? Do you think? Rogues are just awesome across the board? Do you think Rogues are too squishy in 5E or Pathfinder 2E? Or, you know, I'm curious to see what people think of the class in general.

Let's talk to Corvus Duskwalker. Corvus. Yeah, a frequent caller on the program. Corvus, are you there? Hey guys, how's it going? Hey, how's it going, Corvus? Hey. Not too bad. I am a big fan of rogues. Cool. I think 5e does a really good job on rogues. I think Pathfinder 2e has mastered. Has what? I think he has mastered how to do a rogue. Mastered, okay, cool. Right, okay.

If you can conceive of a rogue, you can do it in Pathfinder. That's kind of, regardless of if you wanna be the swashbuckler, whether you wanna be the thief, the manipulator, you can do all that in Pathfinder based on your skills. So have you played rogues? I played a little bit. I have my favorites have been my girlfriend played one that was a medic and she was an

incredible medic, like one of the best healers I may have ever seen. Wow, a medic rogue. Yeah. So she was like a, like a battlefield, like a doctor, like saw bones kind of a kind of type like that. I mean, it kind of works cause rogues are just, you know, they get all the skills and, and you know, they, they also usually have a lot of mobility. So she's able to get to people are hurt. And if you take that medic dedication,

you can get a free expert in medic. And yeah, that's cool. And for me, I was the exact opposite. I was a drink space rogue. I was and my whole thing was, you know, speaking, I was pretty good self to begin attack and then terrify everyone with that that your next Yeah Where you just you kill someone so viciously that you look at somebody else and now they're scared they get a no condition Basically a serial killer Well, yeah, well Tariq Tariqariq was actually an evil character,

kind of slightly based on Riddick in a way. Ooh, Riddick, interesting, I love that. That's really cool. Yeah, he's got the full thing. And stuff like that, but yeah, I love, Brogan is great, and as far as squishiness, don't be there. Right, yeah, get out of the way before.

The Miyagi School of Defense, don't get hit. Corvus, give us a famous cat. I wanna get to a lot of callers in this segment. Give us a famous cat. Famous fictional cat, we're gonna go with Schrodinger's cat because everyone knows him and they don't know him. That's a great one. Because it either is or it isn't and it is both at the same time.

Great answer Corpus, great answer. That's awesome. Yeah, lots of people want to talk and I really want to get to as many as we can. Let's get DeSiccio up here. DeSiccio, back on the show. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I got the good mic plugged in. Hopefully it's coming in clearer than last time. Yeah, you sound great. You sound great. Awesome.

So, talking about- Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to jump right in with Rogues. Probably my favorite thing about Rogues in TTRPGs in general is just like, I feel like sometimes these other classes are like monoliths of like they have a very central idea and Pathfinder does a great job with archetypes of adding variety. But I feel like rogues naturally have some of the best variety in the game when it comes to options and the ways you can do it, like the medical rogue that we're just talking about. And I gotta say like one of my favorite rogue builds that I ever came up with, I haven't had a chance to play it

because I'm a Forever GM, but I did come up with this. I am gonna do slight self-promotion here, but for the past four years on the Pathfinder subreddit, I've been doing a weekly thread called Max the Min Monday, which, because I was annoyed with people, like, going, like, hey, I want to use this option in my character, and all the time you'd see it on the subreddit, don't take that, it's a trap.

So my goal with this weekly series was to take those trap options and show how you can actually make them a central part of your character if you build around them properly. And it's been really fun, it's been a blast. But that birthed a fire dancer rogue build that uses the underground chemist archetype.

So he's like all into pyrotechnics for his shows. And yet it still comes around into a very cohesive build that does 100% fire damage sneak attacks and using volatile cocktails, volatile accelerants actually increases the sneak attack damage significantly. And it's like, I wouldn't have thought about that without the constraint of I want to try something I would have never thought of before. And the rogue just slid into that perfectly. Very cool.

Yeah, cause like you said, you just have so many options. What a cool and terrifying concept. Give us a famous cat. I'm going to say Gwinnivar from the Legend of Drift series. I know it's a series that people love to hate or love to love either way. But I love famous cat. Um, I'm going to say one of our from the legend of Drift series. I know it's a series that people love to hate or love to love either way. The ghost Panther. Yep. Gwinnivar the ghost Panther.

Nice. Thank you. Uh, as always for calling in buddy. I just wanted to say, you know, I really do hate, you know, all the online like don't take that feat. Don't take that ability. It's a trap. I think that's such a wank.

It makes me roll my eyes so hard. Anything can be good in the right campaign. And if you, and if you take something that you find fun, then your GM should help you make it cool. And anybody who thinks it's all a zero sum game where some things are just objectively better than others is I think a little bit missing the point of RPGs. He said something else that jumped out to me

that I feel like we should talk about this one day on the show, but let me get an early take from you. Have you ever built a character when you didn't have a game coming up to play that character in? Like you've ever built a character when you didn't have a game coming up to play that character in like you've ever built a character just to build one? Absolutely. In fact, I probably did it this week.

Oh my God. Fascinating. Listen, we should talk about this on the show sometime. It's fun. It's just fun. And there are games that I desperately want to play that I don't think I'm going to get a chance to anytime soon. Yeah.

And the way to get that little hit is to build the character although sometimes I start getting into it and I realize it's 1230 a.m. And I'm like Deep into the mechanics of this character. I'm like, what am I doing? What is singing zombies doing with their life? Singing zombies, join us. Hi, can you guys hear me? Yeah, we got you. How's it going singing?

Good. It's great. Excited to see you guys next week in Ann Arbor. Oh, awesome. Oh, so glad you're going to be there. That's right. Next week, we'll talk about it on next week's show. We're heading to Ann Arbor for the first time ever.

That show is going to be awesome. Anyway, sorry. What would you want to weigh in on here? Rogues or the book? The Rogues. Please. I've always loved the fact that there's like so much history, at least for, from the D and D side of things for Rogues.

Like they're kind of the origin of like, this is what my character would do. They're kind of the origin of like, this is what my character would do. I think one thing I think about when you guys bring up rogues is discussion that especially when you're doing homebrew, the moment anyone picks a rogue as a GM, you kind of feel like, oh, I need to put traps into the adventure and opens up that discussion as a GM. Like, do you like traps? Because there is a rogue, do you do you feel like you need to necessarily put in traps if you don't like traps? I know Paizo had a funny lesson where they had to put in a rogue rule.

They called it the rogue rule because I believe there was an adventure path that had zero things for the rogue to do by the end of the adventure. They didn't realize. Yeah. And then they put in a rogue check where they make sure by the, they just check all the books that there's something for the rogue to do if there's a rogue, assuming there is a rogue in the party, which I just find interesting from a design standpoint, because it really is true that if I don't have a rogue in the party, I kind of generally don't put traps

in my adventures. Right. Well, that's why there's those players guide to every AP and then in that player's guide, it'll be like a paladin. I mean, I'm sorry, a champion, a champion would be great for this. A fighter would be good. A wizard would be great. And then at the end, it'd be like a rogue would, I don't think it'll fit here.

You know, yeah. Yeah. And it's like, when we played quest for the frozen flame, that was the investigator. They were like, I don't think you need an investigator in the realm of the mammoth. That's right. It's best to get it very important for pre-ridden so that people feel like they didn't kind of pick the wrong thing. Cause it just didn't doesn't come up.

Um, it's, it's an interesting, uh, concept and thanks for bringing it up. I, uh, to me, I mean, as a GM, I don't run a lot of d 20 games, but I love traps. I love traps as a GM. It's like, what's not to love? Not only are they, uh, really fun to mess with people with and, and hurt them in interesting ways and get them all like a puzzle solving, but even if it gets found, it's such a cool moment for a player and it's quick and easy and then moves the story along.

I don't know. I think the problem with traps, and we should do a segment on this, is the perceiving them, how you encounter them, how they go off. There's always been a lot of controversy about that. And even in Pathfinder, it sort of in some ways demands the exploration rules, which sometimes people don't fully use. It's a, that's a complicated, I think people love when traps go off and crazy stuff happens. It's just adjudicating them that gets a little tricky. They're going to get tricky singing.

Give us a famous cat before we move on. Aslan from Narnia. Yeah, as land from Narnia. Big one. Big answer. Thank you. Singing that he's God. So yeah. I mean, how are you going to vote against God? Singing Zombies just suggested God.

Slow Eye Joe, join us on the show here. Love this. So many people jumping in. Slow Eye. Where did you come from? Where did you go Slow Eye Joe? Can you hear me? We got you. Yes. All right. So I actually have a hot take on rogues. I am bearish on rogues in general and TTRPGs. Okay. So I, my big beef is kind of boils down to two things. One being sneaking and the other being combat mechanics.

Rogues are really good at sneaking however in the context of their entire party. I feel like if you ever have your entire party trying to sneak somewhere it's almost inevitable that someone's gonna fail and covers blown. Which doesn't feel very cool. Um, the other thing, uh, when it comes to combat. I agree. I agree. I am not a fan of that mechanic. I've talked to you before about this, Jared. We talked about the concept of, of doing blades in the dark style, uh, clocks for awareness

of an enemy. Cause whenever you get into group stealth roles, it's all but guaranteed failure. And um, that's, that's just mathematical. It has very little to do with the players themselves. And so it can be kind of boring to have like the result already basically known mathematically before people are even rolling. Um, but to have a clock where it's like just, it's not pass or fail. It's like, you start to become seen and maybe you can still do a few things in the dungeon before you're actually, uh, you trigger the alarms or whatever is one way to deal with it.

The other way is also, I'm sorry, Joe, there's the mechanic of, if half the party or more succeeds, you all succeed. That's an interesting one too. So if half the party or more, that's good. Um, I also like the, uh, follow the expert. Uh, sometimes I think that you have to loosen it maybe a little bit because the mechanic is in there into we sometimes I feel like it's not robust enough to make it feel truly like you're following an expert and that expert is making all the difference.

It sort of just feels like you get a small bonus to the role and you're still going to fail it anyway. If you're not a trained, stealthy person. I don't know, we could talk about that another time, but it is a good point. It is a reason to be bearish on the, on road. Sneaking can be frustrating. It means like you got to go play alone. Right? Yeah, that's what I was going to say is the road can go off and be cool by themselves, but everyone else is just kind of in a holding pattern waiting before they can engage with

the encounter to Let's let's let's sum it up. It's a very interesting concept Rogues are ruined by every other party member basically with the exception of sneak attack from flanking All right one second so I Jared go ahead real quick the thing with the Rogues going off and sort of having a little mini adventure on their own That can be fun and cool if your GM is making it interesting and Not making it take too long It can't take 15 minutes and the other thing the rest of the party has to pay in pay attention And be generous with their time and go. Okay, let's let the rogue do something now most recently in

and be generous with their time and go, okay, let's let the rogue do something now. Most recently in Quest for the Frozen Flame, Mary Lou's druid, not even a rogue, went off and had like an entire, what, like 20 minute adventure on her own, but everybody was cool with that, and we tried to make it quick and interesting. So, so much of RPGs are not just how the mechanics work,

they're how they're run, and so the rogue going off on their own can be cool if it's run correctly. Those are the places where I will say like to a player, to the other players when they're like, ask them if they know about blah, blah, blah, or look around the court, blah, blah, blah. That's where I tend to not be like, you're not there.

You're not there. Because if it is gonna be 20 minutes long, it's like, let them be invested in what the rogue is finding out. Let them as players, or as players, yes, as players help drive the narrative too, while this one character's playing. I don't know, I think it's interesting.

Good advice, Joe, but I tend to be like, you're not there because- I know, no, there are definitely you're not there moments. I just don't think it's 100% of the time you're not there, you don't get to be involved. That's all I'll say. Now, there are definitely you're not there moments. I just don't think it's 100% of the time you're not there. You don't get to be involved. No, you're right.

They, the way you're saying it is how it should be run. And the way I run it is to go, you're not there because I'm an asshole. Sorry, slow. I please continue. Yeah. So sneak attack is cool at the very beginning of the fight for the first strike you make. But I feel like after that, the narrative and the mechanics are somewhat disjointed. They're not really in harmony. Narratively speaking, I don't really see the difference

between a sneak attack from a road mid combat versus just two melee fighters flanking somebody. And so I don't tend to enjoy that mechanic as much. And I feel like they're not getting enough narrative juice for the squeeze on the sneak attack because it's really just that first strike before the enemy's aware that, you know, the party's there or whatever. So yeah, slow. I give us a famous cat. Um, I'm going to have to go with, uh, to Vildo from Baron and Lucien by Tolkien. Oh, wow.

Very cool to Vildo. Yeah. That is a deep Silmarillion reference. Vildo. Well, it's not from Silmarillion. That's from Baron and Luthien, but yeah. Uh, okay. Awesome.

Thank you. So I showed deep cut. That's a deep cut because I don't think it's even in the, it's like when Sauron was a cat, it's very, it's very confusing, but there was a draft or a version of a legend. Tolkien wrote where Sauron was in a cat's form. Okay. And his name was Tavildo. Okay, good to know. Yeah.

Sweet Threat come up to the stage here. Join us. Sweet Threat. Sorry, hey guys. Hey. Hey. Are you sick too? No, I just, it's something that happened to me, sorry. It sounds like a ball hit him in the head as we put him on the air.

It was pretty close. I just swallowed wrong. I swallowed wrong. It happens. Uh, sweet. Oh, you want to weigh in on Rogues here? Hell yeah. Um, so last time I ran something, uh, one EAP that I updated to 2E, the only Marshal in my party was a rogue, and he lasted two combats. Yeah, yeah, he was the only Marshal.

That's the thing. Yeah, he could shot with a lot of arrows real quick. Just becomes a pin. So that's what I mean. Yeah, yeah, it. Yeah. It was horrific. Did you talk to your, did you talk to your players about the party composition before you started? Sure.

Did Jared. I also, they, they first rolled up with three charisma casters and I said, maybe just let's take a couple of, of sats to like spread out a little, maybe just let's take a couple of sets to like spread out a little, maybe a couple of traditions. Uh, yeah, I talked with them about it and they wanted to try to run it. Okay. There, there's this thing that happens with party composition in almost every game, not just fantasy D 20 games where people keep stepping on other people's

shtick. Like you'll have three people come and they all want to be the car charismatic social person, you know? And I'm not saying this happened with this particular example you're giving, but it happens to me all the time. And then you have to tell people that they have to play something different. But your reasoning for telling them that it's like so hard to communicate, like you're stealing someone else's shtick. You're, different. Uh, but your reasoning for telling them that it's like so hard to communicate. Like you're stealing someone else's shtick. You're, you're all going to be doing the same thing. Um, and it's tricky. It's tricky to tell them that. Absolutely. But for me it

was all well, it's layered, but I think one thing that really also comes to the front with Rogue specifically, is that Rogue, as Slow Eye Joe also pointed out, they invite a sort of, like, I don't want to call it solipsism, but a sort of solo specific play style and intent. And they also kind of invite a specific social role with that character that doesn't really happen with any other character in a T. Chappity. I think at least in PF2E, aside from the investigator, the investigator has a very specific like social role as does the rogue. They have thieves camped. They're like a social group and fighters on the social group.

Yeah, it is interesting to think I would separate it from investigator even. It is funny, like, it is the name of a class that is really a personality trait, basically. Yeah. Like as opposed to every other class, right? Like a rogue is. Yeah. Like I'm thinking this out loud, like rogue as a class just means you operate outside of the lines, right?

Like you cross the line all the time in whatever way. Like that's interesting. And it's specifically with Thieves' Cant, which is like, it's like based a lot on like some of these like low brow languages, specifically with Thieves' Cant, which is like, it's like based a lot on like, some of these like low, lowbrow languages, especially from England. And it comes from tradition, of course, with also with like AD&D and the alignment languages and all that. But we have backgrounds that are also like criminals. We have like, we have specific, if you want to be a criminal,

you can like pick a background, like a pick pocket or something. But for some reason, rogue does the same thing for a character. It like makes you a criminal twice over. Well, I don't totally agree, Sweet Threat. I think that what we were talking about at the beginning is that a rogue can be all kinds of things. Like a social manipulator isn't necessarily a criminal. And I would

also say like, if the role playing is what's bothering you, if the person that takes the rogue role is going against the party a lot or going solo without considering the party a lot, that's not the fault of the class. That's the fault of the player. Right. Yes. Not the class. Yes.

But I think for a lot of people, like a knee jerk reaction is to accept that sort of, of like mind space where they are going to prioritize looting first. They are going to insist on sneaking ahead so they might get a better peak or have that like... I don't want to... Because I don't attribute that to any sort of like bad character trait on the player's behalf or to the rogue's framework, but I think there's some like in mission where that just keeps happening and I keep seeing it, especially when people want to play that archetype. I gotta be honest, it's totally on the player.

It's totally on the player. Yeah, but let me defend. A barbarian can be annoying too, constantly running in and attacking before everybody gets to kind of plan out how they wanna handle the combat. A wizard can be annoying. Anybody can be annoying if they're played by someone in and attacking before everybody gets to kind of plan out how they want to handle the combat. A wizard can be annoying. Anybody can be annoying if they're played by someone who's not playing as a team and

being generous with the fellow players. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't disagree. I do think that there's something to be said about the baseline starting point for the rogue as a class is by definition, you're not a team player. Whereas a wizard, that's like a choice to not be a team player. As a barbarian, barbarian is a good example. That one is a little trickier because you're like,

it's a, I'm a barbarian. I don't think I just run in and I just scream and kill the first thing without talking to anybody. That is, that can be kind of annoying. And I get your point there, Jared. But yes, you are right. the end of the day. It's about the player has to make these choices. There's I operate outside of the rules in the fiction in my role playing persona. And then there's I operate outside of the rules in the way I play as a player. And those are two separate things. You can play a rogue and be roguish without pissing off your GM and fellow players. That's true.

Oh, sweet. Give us a, uh, give us a famous cat. Come on. There's a lot of hugely famous cats out there. Thomas O'Malley from Disney's The Aristocats. Oh, I'm very familiar because my children love that mediocre Disney movie. It is. It is mediocre. Yeah. From the Aristocats, yes. Thank you, sweet.

All right, we gotta move on because we're running out of time here. Obviously there's lots to talk about with Rogues. Right. Those of you that are standing by to call in, hang on, because we're gonna get you up here to, at the very least, get your cat in. So hang in there with us. We're gonna get to you shortly, but let's move on topic wise and

and we'll get to these calls in a second. All right. So our next topic is three questions. Last time we did this, Joe O'Brien asked me three questions. Today I'm going to ask Joe, and these are questions that we don't know are coming We haven't discussed them with each other beforehand and they can be kind of about anything. They just need to be open nervous This is unprepared questions about anything. Yes Now I could not remember what you asked me last time So I hope there's not too much overlap here, but we still haven't heard your perspective either way. So, okay question number one. Yes. Superhero movies appear to be on the downswing in popular culture.

Marvel lost a lot of money on on several of their superhero movies in the last couple of years. What is going to replace superhero movies or what do you hope would replace them as the dominating genre? Interesting. Um, wow, that's a really good question. I don't know what would replace them. I do feel like, man, I think that it could, you know, maybe it's just cause I'm in the zone right now.

I've been, you know, I thought we would talk about it more in the rogue's segment. Um, I was reading, uh, I've been diving back into blades in the dark and just re-reading the book because it's such a great role playing system. It helps you so much to learn how to play any other game, you know, really, right. It's true. And, and so I'll say the thing that's at the tip of my tongue here is I think that there are a lot of those kind of less popular fantasy, uh, and steampunk

popular fantasy and steampunk and crossing over-ish into a little bit of sci-fi properties that have not been explored in mass media like that, in TV and stuff. I feel like it's, I mean, look, there was a time when superheroes would have been a huge leap to have the mass market buy into. There was a time when something like Game of Thrones never would have been on the radar of the audience.

So it's really not about the audience isn't ready for this. It's all about the vision of the creators and selling it in a way with character and story that engages people and gets them to care. I feel like we could see a replacement with some of these less, you know, something like Duskfall could make a phenomenal TV series, prestige TV series with factions and gangs and manipulate all with a sort of a level of technology that goes in between what is hit mass media so far, right?

Yeah. A level of technology between Game of Thrones and the Expanse, right? Like somewhere in between where it has this sci-fi-ish, air-shippy elements, but also, you know, you're talking about plenty of fighting and melee with swords and sabers and stuff like that, but then someone has a gun and that makes a huge difference, you know, those

kinds of things. Um, so just to review guys, when I asked Joe, what will replace superhero movies, he said, steampunk. So just, so everybody remembers this day. Joe thinks steampunk is the next big trend. I just think, I think that they're going to start blowing up some of these other fantasy properties that are just not quite as explored. I'm going to get you a top hat with goggles on it and you're going to wear it

at Vegas steampunk Joe steampunk, Joe steampunk Joe. All right. Uh, this is my next question. What is the future of actual play? Is it going to become more popular, more mainstream, or will it always remain a niche form of entertainment? I certainly am only doing this because I think it's going to become mainstream. And I think that the going to become mainstream.

And I think that the way it becomes mainstream is going to take a great deal of evolution. I don't think the way that everything is done right now is going to directly result in mainstream entertainment. But I think that there have been a couple different attempts at a couple different ways to try this that haven't worked so far. And I think that there's ways out there, similar to your previous question. It's going to be about creators that come up with a concept

that translates this inscrutable esoteric hobby to people that have never seen, heard of it, or know anybody that plays it, which is most people, right? So like, you gotta kind of... translate that through character and story and engagement. And I think it's definitely possible. I think that's where it's headed. I don't think it's just gonna fizzle out to nothing.

Okay, yeah, yeah, well, uh... So you're saying it's gonna go more mainstream, but isn't that going to make it sell out Joe, isn't that selling out? I will say that it would probably be redefined in a way. It would look, it's going to look very different if it goes mad. I don't think you can even call it actual play, whatever it would end up being. I think actually playing while it needs to be a component of it. I don't think that that would ever land mainstream, uh, in, in the traditional

style of how your games at home feel. And it's hard for me to conceive people who have never played Dungeons and Dragons watching actual play, the only way I can really conceive of a mass interest in that is like, if we have the holodeck, you know what I mean? Or if we had some kind of virtual device that makes us feel like we're there, then I can see people role playing on that level.

So I don't know. Yeah. All right. That's a big one. That's a big question. That's a big um, I don't know. All right. That that's a big one. That's a big question. That's a big question. Curious. You know, people that are, that are waiting to get on here, we're

going to get you on in a second. And if you have any thoughts of like what you think the future of actual play is, I'd be curious to hear. Yeah. Um, okay. Third question. If you had to pick one thing that makes a great player in a TTRPG, what would that one thing be?

A great player. You've been a GM, you've been a player, you've done a lot of both. Honestly, I think, oh man, this is, this is tricky. Only pick one thing. Don't be like one of our callers and be like, actually I have to, I would say a great player. A great player. Man. I'm going to just go with complete awareness of the rules.

Wow. Okay. Complete awareness of the system. There are so many important things to being a player, but if your base is you know the rules inside and out, whether you need to like constantly bring that up or not is a completely different topic. And if you do it too much, you're a bad player. But knowing what you're doing in that respect is huge

for everybody at the table and for the GM. I love the concept of a player captain, somebody, because the GM, when you GM games, it is not your job to know all of the rules all of the time. There are so many times when you are simply, you don't even hear what's being said while you're GMing, because you're so in the zone of reading or looking at the next thing

or thinking of the next plot point or thinking of the next challenge. And it's great to have a player there that has an encyclopedic knowledge of what the rules are. It keeps the game moving, especially in these tactical type games. I did not expect that answer, but you're, I, it's a good, you're making a good argument. It's a very nuanced answer because it is, you can weaponize those in a negative

way and be a bad player, but a, a great player, a great improvisational artist, someone that really knows how to give and take time from any one of those can be stymied and, and slowed down by not knowing the rules of the game they're playing. And I feel like having that base is like, if a player comes to the table and says, I was relistening recently, actually, to Haunted City, episode one, to when you created the characters in Haunted City, episode one.

And it was so evident that Josephine came to the table knowing so much about the rules of the game. Joe always knew the rules. And I love that in a player. I think that is such a great trait. She came to the first session asking questions, wanting deeper information and teaching you on aspects that you didn't even realize yet,

even though you had been playing longer. And obviously, Joe has a way to do it that is charming and engaging and makes you learn and doesn't feel overbearing or know-it-all-ish. And yeah. So that's my best explanation. Yeah, it's knowing the rules. So you're saying knowing the rules, not telling the rules.

Exactly. That base of knowledge, you know, how you disseminate that is a different player characteristic. But I would say first and foremost, really knowing it is going to make the game better for everybody. It makes it faster. How much does it suck when you sit around and everybody's going, Oh geez. Um, let me just, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm looking in the index under, uh, you know, when flanking, I don't see flanking specifically in the index. I don't know what page, you know, well, there's always that push pull no matter what, but you're right. It goes so much smoother when everybody knows the rules. And I've found that I don't really know how to play a game until

I've played it 10 times. That's one thing. And then, uh, I don't know, there's just always that push pull. One thing that I later came to as a game master was like, huh? I tend to like really push to pace a lot. Like I want to go, go, go, go, go, you know? And that made stopping down to look at rules very difficult for me. I felt like I was failing. Uh, if I or other players were doing that and now I'm like, take a breath. Like the rules are part of it. They're actually,

they can be a fun part of it, you know? Uh, but you know, even in, in blood of the wild, sometimes you're like, actually that's not the rule. And I'm like, but it's really not me annoyed at you. It's me. I'm annoyed at myself for not having absorbed it already. It is tough. I have struggled over the years so much in, you know, how to communicate that. And, and I've also struggled with getting it wrong, you know, thinking you have it right and it's wrong.

It's, it's just tricky. So what I would love as a player is to know all the rules and be right about all of them and then decide how that comes out in game play. So first and foremost, let's be knowledgeable about it. Then we can worry about being a good player with that information. Well, you know, you really want the whole team to be somewhere around each other. Like having one guy that knows all the rules and everybody else not knowing them at all, that guy's going to be very frustrated and he's going to have to

tell the rules sometimes in order to keep the game moving. And that person becomes villainized by the other players, even if it's just for fun, even if it's like, Oh God, shut up. I've known the opposite to happen where you've got like four people who know the rules and one who refuses to know them at all. Like that can also be frustrating. So you kind of hope to get everybody kind of in this nice median space. Um, it's interesting. It is very interesting. Um, shall we take a call or should we just move on?

Let's take some callers. Let's get some callers. You guys could talk about any of these three questions that Jared brought up, which were great, by the way. Great question. Really hard. Oh, thank you. But fun to think about questions. Anything we talked about today, the book,

Rogues, the three questions. And of course, we're going to get your answer in for the contest before the end of the show. Philonus, if you're still here, hop in and join us if you're still around. Or Pelocary, if you're here, Pelocary, do you want to join? There we go, Pelocary's here. Hi, Pelocary.

Hey, Pelocary, how are you? Hi, guys, how are you? Good, Philonis, give us a second, we'll be right with you. Go ahead, Pelocary. Yeah. I actually wanted to talk about the rogues for a sec. Great. I felt like they got a little bit of

a it was like a negative ending. I don't know. I guess I want to go to. Yeah, no, it was two in a row. There were two kind of rogue detractors at the end there, not rogue, but just let's think about these things that are not that

great about the rogues. I appreciate that. But yeah, we did end with two of them. So what's the people's experiences with that, which is valid. Like I understand that. It can, like, I don't know, call a certain type of person to it sometimes. But I also, the point I wanted to make was that it can be a really versatile, multiclass option because it's not extremely stat dependent. So like if you have generally it's deck-class option. Because it's not extremely stat dependent. So like if you have generally it's deck spaced.

So like if you have decks of a certain value, you can just think about getting some rogue feats, some rogue class options that could be useful for you. And also it could be, which happened in my game a few times, to just be motivated by the story. To go that direction a little bit. And I like that aspect of rogue a lot. That's cool. Sorry, Palakri, we don't have a lot of time.

So give me your famous cat. Cheshire cat. Cheshire cat. Great one, that's great. We've heard of it, we've all heard of it. We've all heard of it, I didn't think of it. Thanks, Collector. Just because I play devil's advocate,

I am not a fan of multiclassing. I think people constantly are like, I would like a second archetype and a second class, and I'm like, dude, learn how to play one correctly. Like, it's very complicated to just play a fighter. And I feel like players are always like, I need more knobs and dials. And it's like, you actually don't like figure out how to play the class. Yes, agreed. Agreed. Phil Onus, are you there? You can unmute your mic if you want to if

you want to join and hop into the combo here. Hey, real quick, I'm on the floor at work, so I just say my thing real quick. You guys mentioned that the feast and all that don't get really used to much in the rogues, I believe. I'm making some listening, but I haven't played a rogue myself personally. Yeah.

But the group I'm playing, Dungeon of the Mages, we did Dragon for the team. we got a guy playing fairy rogue, arcane trickster, but she's basically just, she sees anything glittery, any, you know, she goes after it and it's just, it's pretty awesome, like the dynamics that we get into and all the shenanigans that we have to deal with, with her going to steel and then dipping out like in the final battle

of Dragon house and we're down the under city and all that. Yeah. She kind of just goes invisible, leaves us, gets the gen and then I tried to get up. Sorry. Sorry, Philonis. We're having trouble with your phone, but I think I hear what you're saying there, and it's just that, man, the options that you have as a rogue

for interesting story that is not necessarily you have to beat the boss to get the item, you can just get it and get out of there, right? I mean, we didn't even talk about the most famous, like one of the most famous rogues of all time, Bilbo. Bilbo Bagg is the original. Bilbo's a rogue, He's a burglar. The burglar, right?

Like just get in, get what you need, get out. Don't even have to fight. It's kind of cool. Felonis, before we let you go, give us a famous cat. Come on, famous, there's big ones out there still. Felix. Felix the cat. Felix the cat.

Yes, good one. Felonis was also just saying that he kind of likes how the rogue goes a little solo and does its own little scouting mission. So like I said, people can enjoy that. Sometimes when I'm playing, I'm like, ah, a little break while the Rogue does something. Yeah, it's very like Philonis said there.

Basically that exact thing. Oh, she just goes and grabs whatever shiny or she'll leave the party at times. She'll blah, blah, blah. That exact same setup could be somebody being like, and that's why I hate my friend that plays the rogue. Or, you know, and the way Filona said it was like, and that's what makes it fun and interesting.

And like, it gets us in trouble a lot, but that's fun, getting into trouble is fun. You know, so it's neat. It's all different takes about how people deal with it at the table. All right, let's do a quick round the horn here. We're going to try to get as many of you as we can in just to get in the contest. So I'm going to bring you up. We're going to ask you a famous cat and then we're going to kick you out. Sorry, we can't go into more, but we don't have time. Jared's got something

he's got a rant on. I got a rant. Ultimate Fritz, ultimate Fritz, uh, B frisbee. Oh, ultimate frisbee. Got it. Ultimate. You pronounced it ultimate. Ultimate. Good job, Joe. Thank you. I got there. I got there. Uh, what's there eventually? Give me a, how are you? I'm great. Cat in the hat. Cat in the hat. Never said you believe it. Never said on show. Thank you. Ultimate great one.

We'll get back to you. We'll let you know. Uh, who else we got here? Uh, love this. Let's get surge up here. Surge. Are you still there? Surge.

Hey guys. Yeah, I'm here. Hey, hey, sorry. We couldn't get to you until now, but just give me a famous cats What do you go with? I'm gonna go with the crookshanks from Harry Potter Crookshanks from the potter from Harry Potter great awesome. Thank you. Mr. E night. Give us a a famous cat Mr. E night Mr. E night

All right, bloom. We'll move on Knight. All right, Bloom! We'll move on to Bloom. Bloom, give us the name of this cat. Kate Sith, Final Fantasy VII. Who is it? Kate Sith, from Final Fantasy VII, also known as Ketchy, either pronunciation. Oh man, sorry, I don't know how to spell that. Joe, please use the Ketchy pronunciation for this cat from a very specific volume of the

Final Fantasy franchise. Well, it is also the most famous installment, but we were all thinking about this cat. We were. It was on the tip of our tongues. Right, right. Remember guys, we're not looking for the nerdiest possible cat. We're looking for the most well-known cat that nobody thought of. Calb- like the cat in the hat was a great answer. Calbarog. Calbarog. You're running out of- oh wait, Mystery Knight is back.

Mystery Knight. Oh, I am back. You're back. Give us a cat. Um, I was going with Heathcliff, the cat. Heathcliff. Yeah. There you go. Like the ghetto garbage cat version of Garfield. He's great. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Uh, Kalbarog, what do you got?

How about, uh, Mr. Picklesworth from Austin powers? Excellent. Excellent. The impression is worth extra points. That's wow. Oh, that was good. That was good. All right.

We might get a few more in here before the end of the show, but let's get to Jared's nerd rant. We love to get a good nerd rant in here every once in a while. Sometimes it's me, sometimes it's Jared. This week it's going to be Jared. I had something that came up brand new. By the way, we're talking about new news from Paizo and hang in there callers. We might get a few more in for your cats before the end. We may, what should we call it? But I'm not

wondering about this. I know for sure that Jared is not going to like this. Okay. So hold on a second. I want to get this set up properly. So how to do this. McD just have that image queued up to go into our topic window. I'm not going to put it up on the main screen. Don't put it up yet. You can switch to the nerd rant topic. But then I want you to change that topical image to this other image and Jared, you'll be able to see it on stream there. So the image I'm going to show is some artwork that came out of a recent publication, which

is to come out. It's not out yet, but it's called the Draconic Codex from Paizo. Our good friends at Paizo come out with the draconic codex, which sounds so cool. But I saw an image that I thought you would find interesting. Go ahead and throw it up there, McD. This is an image of something called a dragonet and it is playing a loot. It is a tiny dragon the size of a pigeon and it is playing a loot without any other context. I'd like your thoughts on this image, Jared.

Well, wait, is this a, what is the, I need a little context. This is a playable ancestry? I believe this is, I believe this is, I don't think it's a familiar. I think it's a like playable character class or ancestry that you could play in the new draconic codex, which by the way, sounds very cool.

There's a lot of extremely like there's everything from like elder ancient giant dragons to this. What seems like a tiny pigeon sized dragon smiling purple dragon, pigeon sized playing a loot. Well, playing a loot. I'd like to say. I was curious to your initial impressions on something of that nature. Yeah. First I'd like to say that I love the Paizo brand. I think the bulk of material that comes out of their studio is excellent. However, they are a for-profit company and they are aware that many players want to play ancestries that are for want of a better term, stupid.

Paizo realizes that they must have character options for pudding heads. Heizo realizes that they must have character options for pudding heads Playing a tiny dragon the loot Is Contrary to the theme and mood of pathfinders go larian setting Imagine playing a cute adorable flying dragon in Quest for the frozen flame, an AP that I'm very familiar with. At one point, your cute little talking dragon is going to encounter a village square filled

with decapitated heads of innocent villagers who oppose the local totalitarian regime. Do you see how the character doesn't match the setting there? Okay. What is the dainty dragon going to do when he sees the heads of innocent people on spikes, play a jaunty song, a sad song, play a sad song, quip a clever riddle. Maybe he'll just be traumatized by the horror of that and end his own life with a firearm from the guns and gears supplement. Can you imagine a little purple dragon at strumming a loot fitting in as a player character in Curse of the Crimson Throne or Kingmaker? If you can,

Curse of the Crimson Throne or Kingmaker. If you can, you are wrong. Pathfinder is a dark game. In every possible interpretation of the game, you are expected to stab people or bash their heads in with a blunt object. The game is not meant to be whimsical. The game is not meant to be totes adorbs. The density of the rules alone tells you that this is a game meant to be played by full grown adults who don't carry around their stuffed animals. Your goofy ancestry choice doesn't make you unique or funny. It just shows that you don't get it The reason people like goofy Ancestries is either a they are bad at role playing and think that playing something goofy will make their character interesting It will not They are a little embarrassed to be role playing and think playing a weird race will show everyone

that they're not taking this too seriously. They should or see they are a pudding head. I'm not here to tell you how to have fun. Okay. If you really want to be an adorable little creature who uses magic to create friendship and giggles, may I suggest a game that would be perfect for you? It's called the My Little Pony role playing game. You get to play little magical ponies. And if you meet some other folks who want to play this game, who knows?

Maybe you guys could dress up in pony costumes and then meet in a hotel room near the airport and rub up against each other That's a game you could play too. That sounds like it could be fun or you could just play D&D 5e Oh the rub up against each other. God, that was that was next level. Oh, oh, my God, that is so funny. My little pony, my little pony. So that's what I think of your dragon at exciting news out of the halls of of Paiso, for sure. Exciting news out of the halls of Paizo for sure. The Draconic Codex seems like it is filled with a lot of dark epic stuff. Sounds like there's cool stuff in it.

I would like to read it. But I'm going to rip that page out with the Dragonette. I'm going to rip it out. Somebody in chat said Jared would not let that thing reach level two if a player brought that into his game. Just kill the dragon that. Amazing. Great rant, Jared.

Great rant, as always. Thank you. Skid is in Twitch chat and he says, glad someone said it. Skid, you're the best. All right, let's go final around the horn for the last, we got a couple minutes to get the last few people in here before we pick a winner. Best cat. Oh, you know what? I screwed up, oh no.

Is it Mr. Bigglesworth from Austin Powers? Is that the name? Yes. Who said that? I didn't break down. That was Knight, Mr. E. Knight? No, Mr. E. Knight said Heathcliff. Geez, was it Bloop?

Bloom? No. Bloom said the Final Fantasy VII one. Shoot. I did. Kalbarog, that's right. Thank you, Kalbarog. Kalbarog, great answer.

I gotcha. Sorry about that. I gotcha, Kalbarog. Okay. Pardon me. All right, here we go. Quick. Quick round the horn.

TJ Hansel, we just need a cat. TJ, give us a cat. Countdown is on. I was going to say grumpy cat from the memes. Grumpy cat from the memes. I wondered if a meme answer was going to come up today. From memes. Thank you, TJ Hansel.

Let's get, who else? Clancy up here. Clancy, sorry it took so long to get to you, Clancy. Very disappointing today. Hello. Hey, how are you? Puss in boots. Hey, Clancy.

Puss in boots. Puss in boots. Great answer. How did it go this long? How did it go this long? Thank you, Clancy. Puss in boots. Great answer. And let's get one more in here. Let's get Benjance in here. Benjance. Benjance. Benjance from our Talk Nerdy Hang here. Let's get vengeance in here. Vengeance. Vengeance. Vengeance from our, uh, talk nerdy hang. What's up, Bange? How about Hobbs from Calvin and Hobbs?

Already been said. Do you have another one on deck? No, I missed some of the other stuff, so that was mine. All right. Well, it's a good one, but it's been taken. It has been taken. Sorry, vengeance, but thank you for, uh, trying. Okay. Let's wrap it up here with a little listener award.

We're going to give away- I know what I want. I know which one I like the best. You know which one you like the best. Okay, so here's what we're going to do. I think let's chat it out for a second. And then first of all, I'll say the winner here is going to get this sweet, sweet Glass Cannon Network dice tray.

We'll mail it out to you. Those who participated, thank you so much. Man, a lot of interesting answers today. I'm going to go ahead and... Oh, wait. I don't know the name of the cat from the Final Fantasy VII cat. That's okay. It's not going to win. It is not going to... Oh, Kate Sith. That's it. That's not going to win. It is not going. Oh, Kate, Kate Sith. That's it. That's it. Kate Sith. All right. Yeah. Let's just go. You already know what you want. I'll talk through them for a second. Um, uh, sheer con good. A Hobbs. Right. That answer. Schrodinger's cat is so good. Uh, great answer. Um, Cheshire cat Felix cat in the hat. I mean, ultimate eight frisbee.

I don't know how to know ultimate frisbee. You had a good one with that. A puss in boots, round in and out strong. Grumpy cat is fun too. Um, I'm going to go with my first instinct, uh, which was Hobbs. I got to go with Hobbs from player guy. What's yours, Jared? It's Schrodinger's cat.

Schrodinger's cat. Great answer. What a great fictional cat. And it yours, Jared? It's Schrodinger's cat. Schrodinger's cat. What a great fictional cat. And it works on multiple levels. It's even fictional in the theory. It's so clever. I just, I can't, I'm too much of a Hobbs fan. I can't go against Hobbs. However, we do have a built-in tiebreaker here. He's our good buddy, McD. He produces this show. McD, is it going to be Hobbs or Schrodinger's Cat? Who wins it? Schrodinger's Cat wins this one.

Schrodinger's Cat wins it! Corvus Duskwalker, congratulations, buddy. You are the winner of a sweet Glass Cannon Network dice tray for your awesome answer. That was a great answer. Very clever on several levels. And yeah, yeah, hard to deny that that's a great one. So good job, everybody.

Great, great show. Man, absolutely flew by. So fun as always. Jared, as was said many times in chat, you're a national treasure. Thank you for keeping us all honest in our role playing. You guys are a national treasure. A national treasure, as we say.

Thanks, everybody. Have a great one. We've got tons of stuff we want to talk about next week, too. We're very excited. Lots coming. We'll see you in a week. Until then, take it easy, everybody. Have a great week and weekend. Later. It's time to make your membership official. Start your 30 day free trial today and become an official member of the Naish at jointhenash.com with the promo code GCN30.

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