The Glass Cannon Podcast - Glass Cannon Radio #2 – Generative AI in RPGs, Tabletop Technology, Lynch's Blue Velvet

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

The guys discuss the ENNIE Awards' decision to no longer accept any products that use Generative AI for award consideration with special guest and founder of Foundry VTT, Andrew Clayton. Plus, how we use technology in our tabletop RPGs, Joe's viewing of Lynch's Blue Velvet, and an epic Nerd Rant from Jared. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/_GPqBm9F-xE Access exclusive podcasts, ad-free episodes, and livestreams with a 30-day free trial with code "GCN30" at jointhenaish.com. For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey Spotify, this is Javi. My biggest passion is music and it's not just sounds and instrument. It's more than that to me. It's a world full of harmonies with chillers. From streaming to shopping, it's on Prime. You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network. What's going on everybody? It's your old buddy Troy LaValley. We have events on sale that I need to talk about. The new tour, Glass Cannon Live 2025 Ascension. Those tickets are on sale.

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Best year ever? We'll see. This is Glass Cannon Radio with your hosts Jared Logan and Joe O'Brien. Oh, here we are back on our bullshit again. You've come to the right place and you're looking for bullshit. We're about to shovel it up and put it in your mouth. Hi, I'm Jerry Logan and With me is Joe O'Brien Yo good buddy, it's hetero straight white men. Just trying to make it in this world. That's against us

So when he's trying to make our voices heard out there. Yeah, finally we have a voice listen voices heard out there. Yeah. Finally we have a voice. Listen, this is glass canyon radio and we're excited to bring it to you for a second time. Hopefully the show lasts 22 years and then ends. We, uh, we have a show here where you can call in and have your opinion heard. And we love the niche. We love the glass canyon fans. They are so smart and had so many funny interesting comments last week. So we're happy to bring you back again. How do you do that? How

do you call in and talk to us? You go to the discord stage, the glass cannon radio discord stage, and you hop on there and you just raise your hand and we will find you and we will talk to you. Um, one thing that'll help is if you are in, uh, are the Twitch chat, just, uh, just write in the chat what you'd like to specifically talk about, like what you're specific, maybe a little bit about what your opinion is or what issue you'd like to bring up just so we kind of know what you're about to say when you're hopping on, you know, we don't want you to just let loose with a string of expletives and talk about your alien abduction. So be sure, in lieu of a producer taking calls, screening calls, please just throw that up on the Twitch. The other thing I want to say is if you'd like to be involved in this discussion, and really tell me off to my face, be nice to Joe, but you can tell me off, then go ahead and you're not a subscriber,

you need to go to jointhenage.com, become a subscriber. You can do it in a couple easy steps right now, and then you could be on that Discord stage raising your hand, and you could be heard in this episode. And you can do it for free too. GCN 30 is a code that lets you in for free to try it out. So come and check it out if you don't know how to talk on the show yet. Yeah, we'd love to hear from you. But I see, I mean, Discord is filling up, lots of people hanging out, ready to talk.

I can't wait for this episode. I can't wait to hear the Naish sound off on what we have to talk about today. And we've got a guest and stuff. Jared, please take it away. I'm very excited. We're getting into a spicy topic today. Finally this show is going to tackle the real issues. This show, by the way, this show is journalism. Okay. It's not for fun. It's not to just chuckle with your friends. Okay. We are weighing in on the debates of the day and our word is it has gravitas.

Um, so, uh, today's topics, we are first going to talk about the fact that the any's has decided to ban and disallow AI created content from consideration for any awards, any awards being of course, the gold standard of tabletop role playing game awards that are held every year at Gen Con this year, you can still have some AI content, some in your game or your publication, but starting in the next awards cycle, they will be disallowed. No AI. So we're going to talk a little bit about what you guys think of AI, what you guys but starting in the next awards cycle, they will be disallowed. No AI. So we're going to talk a little bit about what you guys think of AI, what you guys think

of AI being used in creative pursuits and works of creativity, and what do you think about the NAs decision. And then we are going to get into this topic with our very, very special guest, someone who may have some opinions on technology and how it interacts with the hobby of tabletop role playing. Foundry's founder, Andrew Clayton will be on the show with us. The guy that created the Foundry, well, with a team of very helpful people, created the Foundry virtual tabletop.

He's going to come on. He's going to talk a little bit about the AI thing, and then probably we'll get into some other issues related to technology and RPGs. And we're going to continue that discussion even after Andrew has to leave because he has to pick up his children, uh, from school, uh, because they are sick and we told him, please wait to pick them up until the interview was over. I love the idea of the school calling him be like, you have a sick child. You have to come pick them up.

He's like, I have a glass cannon radio interview. I'll get there when I get there. Uh, Andrew may not, may or may not have children. I have no idea. So, uh, then, uh, so we'll talk about tech and tabletop a little bit more. We'll kind of like weigh in on all kinds of things. Anyway, you can call in and tell us how you use technology

in your tabletop games, in your role playing games. Then after that, we have two really fun little things. First of all, we made Joe watch Blue Velvet as part of our month long tribute. This was from call her visionary director. This was from caller spice last week. Caller spice last week said that blue velvet was required reading for David Lynch. And so I said, uh, okay, spice game on.

Uh, so we'll talk about that later. Remember that last time Joe watched a David Lynch film, he walked away going, this man is the devil. So I don't know that blue velvet is going to change his mind. And then finally, at the very end, we're going to do something that probably we're going to bring back on the show. Occasionally, I am going to give a nerd rant something that's really sticking in my craw right now. My craw is my asshole.

I'm going to talk about a nerd issue that's really bothering me right now. And that's how we'll end out the show on a really angry negative note, which is how we like to leave you guys. So let's get right into it right now. Let's talk about the Ennis award. I'm not going to call it a controversy. I think this has been coming for a while. So I believe it was in 2023, the Ennis decided

that AI generated content was allowed in this capacity. If you were up for an art award, you couldn't have AI generated art, but you might have AI language model generated text in your book and vice versa. You know, um, you're for a writing award, the art could be AI generated. And they said at the time that this was to allow for companies that maybe didn't have like, you know, the buying power, there are the, the monetary resources of a wizards of the coast or a Paizo so that people like that could still have their publication, their game considered even though they had to pinch pennies a little bit and use some AI. Now they're saying starting in the next awards cycle absolutely no AI will be allowed at all so if AI was used

in any single step in the creation of your product, you are disallowed from the awards consideration. Joe O'Brien, thoughts on artificial intelligence. I mean, just a massive, massive topic and a topic that I think really bears discussion. Try to zip it up in about a minute. Go ahead. I know. It's like, how do you tackle something of this complicated nature, which not only is so far reaching in so many areas of life right now globally,

but is also so, I don't want to say controversial. I mean, it's obviously controversial, but it's so polarizing and heated that even bringing it up seems to be a real problem. And I've always been really disappointed in situations like that where you can't discuss things, right? And I really love the idea of hearing today from callers their thoughts on this and really how it impacted tabletop

creators, tabletop designers, writers, artists, and even these small individuals that are trying to start their companies. I would say in general, my initial reaction to the decision is a good one. I think it's a good decision. The primary reason I feel like it's a good decision is because I think it is, while it might be tough, a hard decision to make for various reasons, I think that it is clear, very clear, and you have a line in the sand that is not ambiguous, and I like that. One downside that I fear may come up, and I'm curious if callers have any thoughts

on this, is one of the reasons that the NEs put this into place in 2023 was to foster an environment where the use of AI could be disclosed, where it wouldn't harm you necessarily to disclose that certain aspects of your work were generated by generative AI now I worry a little bit that we may be Incentivizing hiding secrecy lying about AI in order to gain Through because if you win in any you have an opportunity to be exposed to audiences You wouldn't otherwise be exposed to you have an opportunity to grow your game in a way that you wouldn't otherwise.

And I think the temptation is there. Yeah. So I think in regards to the Ennis, I think it's a good decision for the reasons that I laid out in terms of the clarity of it and the lack of ambiguity. I don't know. What did you think when you read the news? Well, I think it's such a good point to say that now people will just try to hide it, which is-

That's what I worry about. I do worry about that. I'm curious if other people worry about that. I don't know if there's a way, and maybe the collars know this or someone can tell us, if there's an easy way to detect it. I will say that I agree with it on an artistic level because if you know, if you, if AI made it, you didn't really make it. Like if you're the, like, if you were the guy in the, in the 1700s that told the painter,

Hey, I want a painter, a painting of a field of sunflowers. And the painter went and did that. The painter really did that. You just sort of like gave them an instruction. So, uh, you know, using AI means you didn't really create it and these are awards for stellar works of art that you created. So I agree with it on an artistic level. And I also feel that a lot of AI art or even AI text is very flat and very samey samey.

And, um, the thing that makes, you know, a great game or a great novel or great movie or great, whatever is the places where it breaks the rules or is sort of idiosyncratic or, uh, you know, a little fuzzy and weird or, or different from other things. And if we're looking at a future where we create things with AI, we're not going to get that because it's going to keep sourcing. It's its lowest common denominator. It draws from all these different sources to create a very flat, you know, median thing.

So I don't, I don't, I'm not for that. I, I agree. I, my gut is also, and also also I should I should say upfront that I'm Contrary to what Jared said earlier in the show. I am NOT a journalist It's so like and I am my opinion on this is I mean to be fully informed about every angle of this I believe to be near and possible and so I'm not speaking as someone that knows a great deal about the industry Knows a great deal about even using AI I've never used AI tools. Honestly, I don't I don't really know how to use them

so I'm curious as to how that how that develops it because you read about The the light touch ways that AI are used right not creatively to Whether it's spell checking or generating layouts or PDFs or whatever, you know, how this decision kind of impacts that as well. Is it only generative AI? Is it any AI tools? You know, again, can't wait to kick it to the collars and hear everybody kind of weigh

in about how this impacts everything. But one thing I will say is that I don't feel, I feel like in a lot of these situations, you end up getting in a position to decide between something that is better and cheaper versus something that is more expensive and not as good. And in this case, it's just so, to me at this stage, so obvious that to what you said, it's not as good. It just can't be as good as human creativity, human illustration, story generation, interaction. I'd rather see bad chicken scratch human art

than see that like, you know, shiny, fully painted sort of textured AI art. I would really rather see someone draw stick figures in their game because that's unique. You know, that has that has character and you can always tell it came from someone's hand. I will say I worry. I do worry that AI is sort of a Pandora's box that has opened. And traditionally it's very hard to prevent people from using a technology historically. Once a technology is out there, uh, governments rule creating bodies have a

very hard time of going, stop using that technology. So, yeah, that's, that's one of the reasons I reasons I think that we really wanted to have it on the show here. Want to bring up people to talk about... Let's talk to people. ...how the decision, what they feel about the decision, but also maybe how they use AI in their life in one way or another, or if they don't or they refuse to. I'm curious to have an open conversation about this. I really do not wish this to turn into a yelling match for one side or another.

I really want to try to have... You love yelling. You're such a huge yelling fan. I would love a yelling match. Who's pro AI? Get on here right now. Do you think we really have a lot of pro AI people? No, I don't.

But I also just want to make sure, I mean, I think that one side of this, particularly as it relates to tabletop role playing games, is so abundantly obvious. But that's just my mind. I don't think the way other people think. And I think it's important to try to listen to the way other people think. The way that I approach these problems is, it's very hard for me to go onto a Reddit post about AI and gaming, for example,

and just read vitriol from people that are enraged that people even consider AI as acceptable in any way, shape, or form without listening, listening to what people are saying. And that's just, that has nothing to do with anything, but I feel like the way my brain works. I always am curious to know what possible argument do you actually have on the other side?

And I want to give them time to flesh it out. I want to hear it and make a decision, you know? It's horrible that you went to the internet and you weren't able to hear a balanced discussion of an issue. That is my, well that's what my- What the internet is for. If I'm honest, that's what my dream is for this show. That's what I want this to be that kind of platform

where people can come freely and speak their mind. Bad news, Joe. I don't think like everyone either, some people are wrong. Let's bring up the first sacrificial victim. All right, let's bring up somebody to the stage here. Let's go with Marco. Marco, hello. Marco, can you hear us? Oh, hey, Marco. Coming through loud and clear, Marco. Marco. Hello. Marco. Can you hear us? Oh, hey Marco. Coming through loud and clear

Marco. What did you want to say about AI tabletop role playing games and maybe the any's? Well, I mean, largely I agree with what you were saying about the output of this thing. It isn't, it isn't particularly creative and TTRPGs are, you know, it's all about being creative. It's all about having fun and telling stories. And these things, although they appear at first to be able to do that, when you actually use them a bit, they're not creative. They're just bland, as you say, I think that was a good word. But the other thing is ethically, they're all built on stolen material.

And until that is a problem that is solved and it's a difficult one to solve, I find it hard to see how it can be used, how you can award things. So I think it's the correct decision not to. Yeah, yeah, thank you, Mark. That is a great point, a good call to start us off. We didn't even mention the ethics. Ethics is a great point. A good call to start us off. We didn't even mention the ethics.

Ethics is a massive issue here. And it really does. Marco brings up a good point. It's like, you said, how do you close the Pandora's box? Marco says, how do you make it not based on stolen material? Right? Like, how? I don't understand how it would work

without sourcing all of this stuff that was, you know, I don't know, stolen. No, it really is. It steals a little piece of a thousand different things, right? And that's how it creates its image or its text. Yeah, is that stealing? Is it stealing if I take a penny from each person? I mean, I don't know. Yeah

Yeah, it's just trying to take the Trying to take the devil's advocate here. Yeah, my devil's advocate to that argument is Just and then I'd love for somebody to come up and and argue this with me. I just love to hear the other side Is like how do you where do you draw the line, right, between inspiration and plagiarism? And I think sometimes it's very clear, but other times it's like, look, I mean, there's no way, some of the characters that I have made on the Glass Cat Network have been inspired by a great character from a novel or a great minor character from a TV show that I

and the the source is there and somebody else created that but I had a different thought about it or a spin on it You know is that theft I you know, I'm curious. I don't know Joe You know, I'm a professional stand-up comedian with multiple TV appearances under my belt Just like to throw that out there. And sometimes someone will go, hey, that guy has a similar bit. He's doing your bit. And then I'll watch him do the bit, this other comedian,

and it's really just the same topic. It's not even the same joke, you know? Or like, you know, sometimes I'll do a bit, and some other comedian will run up to me, some fucking hack, and they'll say, hey, I do that bit. And you know what I always say? It's yours.

Cause if we're both doing it, I don't wanna do it. And I have more ideas, you know, like, I don't need every little thing to be so precious. How does that apply to AI, Joe? It's not important. Let's bring up our next caller. Let's take another caller. Let's see, let's get, let's get ClorpDunk.

ClorpDunk, who is a great Twitch supporter of ours, always in chat, raised their hand. Clorp, can you hear us? And yep. Oh, hey, yeah, we got you. What's going on? All right. So I'm no longer anonymous.

You've now heard my voice. Yes. I was thinking about you've come out of the shadows. Yeah. Keeping the clorp pedonk character in the shadows. Well, I'm an art teacher. Oh, wow. Awesome. Awesome.

Okay. And you allow your students to use AI? We debate it. We talk about it. The I guess my the people over me have given license for us to do as we want with with our own classes. So it's not like banned from the top down. Well, I'm not sure about writing papers

and that sort of thing. I'd have to go dig into emails they've sent about that. But it's pretty fascinating. Every semester, I talk about it with each person. And things that have already been said about the concept of taking from other artists is something to consider. So I don't know how it could ever be considered ethical. But...

I agree with you, Clore. I didn't know it was, I never knew it was Clore P. Dunk until today. No, no, no. That's just like, that's what Jared called me last time. And so it's okay. Okay, great. Right. Clor P dunk. I forgot. Yeah. So, so Clor, yeah, I agree with you about the Oh, sorry, Joe, I was just gonna say to Clor, if a child in my art class, got online and managed to make an AI generated

work of art, I might be a little impressed and go ahead and give them at least a C. Well let me ask you, Clore, what if you're discussing it? I mean it's Clore Dunk. It's not Clore. Yeah. So Clore. I know, but I'm saying Clore as a bit. It's a bit.

If you're in front of this class and you're having this discussion, having this debate, what form does the debate take where the art student says, I want to use AI to supplement my art and that's acceptable? How is that argument put forth, if my question makes sense? Right. Well, I think, I don't know that I've really had anybody ever say that they feel great about the concept to be honest. Good.

Just because it's a little bit of a chicken and the egg thing in that this artificial intelligence would not exist without that human intelligence to first create it and then create that library of images wherein the AI could come in and start taking like your pennies, right? Yeah, I mean, it is a good point and thank you for coming up, Clarke. Coming out of the shadows to talk to us, great to hear from an art teacher. I think that that's really cool. I'm glad it's being discussed, but it's hard to us. Great to hear from a an art teacher. I think that that's really cool. I'm glad it's being discussed, but it's hard to imagine.

So I came out of the voiceover industry at the end of my career. At that time in the voiceover industry, representing talent really is when the rise started to happen of AI voices. You not tell the difference of. That was terrifying. It's awful. And it really does put a deep fear into, uh, into performers and I, as it should, and, and us as agents who represent them. And I just can't even imagine what that must be like for, for artists, for illustrators, writers, it's gotta be just so terrifying and awful.

This is what I'm saying. I've worked as a TV writer and a lot of people are out of work right now. And some of that's because of mini rooms where they hire less writers. But also, the Writers Guild went to war over AI and they said that they got concessions from the studios. But again, I worry that it's like Pandora's box.

Like yeah, you know, this year the studios promised XYZ, but I just, I don't know. And the other thing that's crazy to me is it feels like, you know, so far the two people we've talked to, but I bet everyone we talked to today is going to be like on some level anti AI and it feels like the powers that be are still going to, pardon the phrase, ram it down our throats. Sorry, that's kind of gross. Ram it up our asshole. Yeah, it doesn't feel like you have a choice.

I was very weirded out when Gemini came into my Gmail and Google suite experience just recently. It felt like recently, right? It's just been the last few weeks where it's like now it's in everything. It's in every search bar. It summarizes my emails without me wanting it to. And I'm like, what the fuck? And it really is weird that they decide to give you no choice on that.

Let's get another caller here. We only have a couple minutes before we talk to Andrew Clayton from Foundry VTT about this. Very much looking forward to hear Andrew weigh in on this. But let's get McKennan to the stage. McKenna, I dig your profile picture, man. McKenna's got a little Lebowski John going on. I tried to invite, but if it didn't work, I apologize. The dude abides. The dude abides. All right, that didn't seem to work. So it's, oh no, there it is. McKenna.

Hey, sorry. I'm at my bar right now working and I just took a beer delivery. Anyways, here's what I have to say. Here's what I have to say about AI is that there are a few things that get overlooked with this. I think in terms of like the art and the people who are doing the creative stuff that they put out into the world, it's a little bit shady. But AI is a great tool for people like me who are not very smart that need to make filler content. who are not very smart that need to make filler content. For what is your, for your games? What is filler content? For your home game or for your bar or what? Ah, for my home game, for my bar.

I can't use AI. I'm pouring people pints, but for home games. I don't know, maybe you own it. Maybe it would be marketing material, McKenna. That's true. Oh, are we? I'm not your mother. I am yelling at you. Why don't you own the bar, McKenna?

You're not working hard enough. So you like to create material for your home games using AI generator things? I don't like to, but sometimes, I mean, I work a lot at my job and I run a game and we play a game together and we're like, oh sometimes I mean I I work a lot at my job and I run a game and we play for like eight hours every other week and sometimes it's just easy to like okay I know that this there's a possibility that there's gonna be an interaction with an NPC or not and sometimes it's nice to just have like pop in a prompt, make a thing happen.

That way I can use it as reference material instead of preparing for every situation because we all know how often that can happen. Well let me say two things, McKenna. One is a statement, the other is a question. The statement is, everybody knows that having a job and other things to do is no excuse for not prepping your role playing game for 27 hours a week. A role playing game, GMing is a part time job, and if it's not taking over your life, you're not playing Pathfinder Remastered Adventure Paths. That said, what kind of prompts are you putting in?

How are you using AI to create a NPC so I can do that? Teach Jared out of shortcut his prep. No, no. I mean, a good for instance is I'm running Strength of Thousands. I am using it in a Pathfinderfinder to e adventure path by the way. Oh yeah. Yeah. So it is.

So it is a part time job. Okay. Yeah, it is. Yes. Uh, but so an NPC and because of the shenanigans of the players that I have, I can write in, okay. can write in, okay, Joe Schmo is angry because you betrayed his trust and now he's finding a way to do that. And like, it can just create something that I don't have to think about.

I do a lot of like improv, but sometimes it's nice to have a few things out there that I can improv off of when in, in the grand scheme of the world of like, where we're playing in, there's like a billion different options. And my, my party is want to just go in every single direction. So sometimes I'll just make those.

And honestly, like 98% of those I never use. Yeah. But it's nice for a dummy like me. Yeah. yeah, I, hey, I hear you. And in fact, thank you, McKenna, for calling in. We're going to get to Andrew Clayton here in one second. I just want to say to bring it up for discussion, we're going to talk to Andrew here for a bit. And once Andrew is done, we're going to get back to callers. And I'd love for people to talk about how they use this tool in their home games, if they do or not.

And if so, I guess I'm also interested in the overall topic of are there ethical issues in private use or is the ethical issues only coming up in commercial use when you're selling things? Is that when it crosses over a line? Or should you never be using any of these tools due to carbon footprints and energy usage and stuff like that. Um, I'm curious to see kind of where people stand on that. Jared, something else before we get into that. I can just say, I can think of one ethical issue for private use and it's not so much ethical as I would just say, and again, this is no criticism of McKenna or anybody who uses these things. I have used them honestly in role playing games,

but private home role playing games. But I feel like, you know, part of what's cool about GMing is you're working a skill, you're working certain muscles, you're getting better. It is an art form and you are learning to perfect that art form every time you do it. And when we just sort of like, go, okay, computer, give me 15 ideas. We are sort of selling ourselves short.

Like we aren't like, we aren't improving ourselves as GMs. That is a, again, that's a little bit of a devil's advocate to, to people who are like, well, it's okay to use it at home. Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. Um, Oh man, I could, I could get into that too for a little bit, but we're going to cut off right now and talk to our friend, uh, Andrew Clayton from Foundry VTT, uh, friend of the show and GM of our Ember series, uh, creator of Ember, creator of this amazing tabletop, who obviously does a lot of work in this field. Andrew, welcome to the show, buddy. How you doing? Hey, hey folks.

Hey, what's up? Hey, Jared, how are you? The founder of Foundry. Andrew, do you have any children? I do, yes. I'm so blessed. They need you to pick them up as soon as you're done here. This is a joke that came up earlier.

And yeah, we said that you were coming on the show regardless of your children's needs because you're so committed to glass-can radio. Yes, they're secondary to GCN radio for sure. Yes. Well, thanks for coming on, Andrew. I really appreciate you taking the time. We saw the article come out about the Ennis decision,

reversing a decision from 2023. And my first thought was this is something about the Eni's decision, reversing a decision from 2023. And my first thought was this is something that, you know, I'd be interested to talk to Andrew about and get your thoughts on it. So let's just start there. What were your thoughts when maybe back in 2023, when the Eni's first made the decision to allow awards

for only human creativity, but possibly in products that contained generative AI versus removing consideration at all for any product that uses generative AI in any aspect of it? Well, I think that it was unlikely at the time that any sort of policy would be indefinite. I think this is such a rapidly evolving space that every company is kind of constantly assessing and reassessing what their stance is, whether

they're as a creator debating, is this technology that we want to use? Whether it's as a platform, is this technology that we want to give surface space to? I think that the landscape is changing and the community's understanding and kind of the perception of the issues. Yeah, it's an evolving thing. I think that to be honest, I think the ennies probably made this statement because they were feeling some pressure from people to take a stronger stance. I mean, they said as much in their in their statement. I think it's a little bit hard for me to imagine how that is going to work for them in terms of enforcement. Either way, they're relying on self-declaration of what is your product and how is it made.

I'm not saying that people will lie. Some people will lie. But I'm also saying like some people might not necessarily have the same view of. Oh is is my project. Generative in some way where someone will say yes someone will say no i mean anyone who's. Doing layout for a print book and has encountered the need to like i've got account for this area. So this image asset has to stretch just like 20 more pixels. Photoshop, generative fill, place this asset on my book page. Oh, you just use generative AI.

Your book is now ineligible for any consideration. Where do you draw the line? Like what is, yeah. And who's going to call that out, right? So that publisher that used generative AI to account for bleed margins when laying out their product, are they going to decline to self nominate for the enemies? Because let's be honest, that's how it works usually. Um, or are they going to say that's so minor? Like who, who cares? Or there's publishers that don't know,

there's publishers that don't know that their artists use generative AI, or there's publishers that don't know that their writers used chat GPT prompts to help brainstorm ideas. And ultimately, someone's got to enforce it too. So like when a submission comes into the ennies, are they going to, you know, be the inquisition? Are they going to go through and hand check every product and try and see if they can spot an extra finger somewhere? I don't know, it's tough. And that gets the wrong answer sometimes. Like we, during the Ember Kickstarter,

we had several people come in hot against us accusing us of having AI-generated artwork, which we absolutely don't on that project. We have a very firm, no AI policy on that project, but someone sees a piece of artwork and you know, there is kind of a hair trigger response. Everyone's like on the lookout and trying to, you know, push back against that sort of thing. And so who who's going to be the judge of that? I don't know. And so who's going to be the judge of that? I don't know. That's a great point. It's not just people hiding maybe their use, but people accusing others of using it without actually knowing or having proof.

And one other thing I wanted to say is I think it would be amazing because you mentioned an extra finger. If a tabletop RPG product won an award and then someone noticed an extra finger. What then? Yeah. What a controversy that would be.

Yeah. But no, that's a good point that people are gonna start accusing each other of this. Well, not just they're going to start. I mean, this already happens. This already happens actively, not just for our project, but I think there are people who are actively looking at new things coming out and seeing if there is a scandal in the

making, any sort of problematic content, whether it's AI or otherwise. And I'm not saying that shouldn't happen. I think it is the tabletop RPG community's responsibility to self-enforce the, you know, the mores, the norms, the social norms that we want and that we find acceptable and the behaviors that we want to encourage and the behaviors that we want to crush. You know, that's what a community does. And so I'm not saying that shouldn't happen, but you know, who at the Ennies is gonna be doing that? I don't know.

Yeah, and I'd say, you know, although we do wanna sort of, to some extent, police each other maybe, or creatives that work in this field should do that, I don't know, it just, it adds to this, the general clamor of nobody knowing what's real, when, you know, people aren't revealing that they're using this, other people are accusing them of using this, or accuse is maybe a strong word,

but saying, I think anyway, what is real? We're all living in a simulation and I don't even know if I'm really here right now. That's sort of how life feels right now and I hate it. Was that a good comment for this discussion? I think you're getting into your own shit a little bit. Just getting into my own shit. Andrew, the, you are in the midst of developing a

mind blowingly enormous product. And product to me is a, it's a word that is, it feels inappropriate. It makes it feel like it's just a thing. It's an experience. It is, it is a massive, for those that don't know, Andrew is developing along with a large team Ember, the first real virtual tabletop campaign built for virtual tabletops with an amazing amount of content to explore. Jared, you and I have a great time in Quest for the Frozen Flame doing our exploration. That's sort of one of the bases of this Ember adventure.

And it is, Andrew correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know if it's grown since we've talked, but at least 25,000 hexes that are populated with stuff. 25,000 that your players can explore, that you as the GM have all of this information that comes right to your face to work with. To me, I feel like you are not cutting the GM out of this. Was there ever a point at which you ever thought about, even if it's not really AI tools, where

you thought that the system could automate itself to run this game, or in your mind, was it always a human GM oriented project? For this project, the goal was always to have a human GM in the driver's seat, because that's the kind of collaborative storytelling experience that we wanna create. We wanna kind of have aspects of Ember that stay really true to the kind of traditional TTRPG roots, even though it is a

very digital first experience, we want to stay authentic to that interpersonal experience of the storytelling. But there are definitely facets of Ember that are at the boundary of moving away from a traditional experience. And there are places in Ember where automated decision-making occurs around what narrative event happens when you move from one hex to another based on a huge number of factors that affect the probabilities of different events occurring. The time of day, the calendar, the weather, other events that have happened, things that you've done in the past, where you are in the world,, where you are in the world, where other people are in the world,

all these things weigh into what event happens. Now, in our game, that's a probabilistic model, so it's not a generative AI tool, but it could be, it could have been a neural network or an AI model that would be doing that. It's maybe a different than content generation, but there are tools that rely on that sort of AI to create content.

There's great tools, game assist tools in the TTRPG space for content generation, like random dungeon generation or dungeon creation. There's tools that use AI models to place assets in rooms and design dungeon layouts, and you can randomize your dungeons and get all these different things. Like, are those tools evil?

Because they use certain types of models? No, certainly not. But those types of model usages are not directly disenfranchising other creators in the industry who are working hard to create artwork or write prose upon which certain LLMs or other image, generative models are trained. So it's a very complicated space

in terms of not all AI models are equal, not all uses of AI models are equal, but that's not a kind of nuance you can ever distill down to a policy statement, you know, for your platform or for your awards show. So is it better? Do you think, I'm sorry, Joe, maybe you have a pay that they just made a blanket decision, just like, Hey, AI, nothing. Like if you get an AI, that they just made a blanket decision, just like, hey, AI, nothing. Like if you get an AI, you can't get an award.

I mean, is that what they had to do, given how complex it is, or is that decision really missing the complexity of the issue? Yes. Do you know what I mean? No, I think I can see the argument that it's something they had to do because, you know, explaining the criterion or the nuance of like, this is okay. And this is not okay. It's inviting. It's inviting a kind of disagreement or discourse that they I'm sure can't, can't work with. I mean, that's not gonna be feasible for them. Yeah, they don't have the time, yeah. Having clarity around what the rules are is probably the most important thing.

And while that maybe leaves some people shut out that I think might, based on the work they've done, be deserving of an any, there is an abundance of work in the TTRPG sphere that is deserving of an any that has not gotten an any or not gotten an any or not gotten an any nomination in the first place. So like deserving is, is probably not even really part of it with that.

Yeah. I haven't even asked a bigger question. Do we care about the any? Okay. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah. I think honestly, I am glad you said that Andrew, because to me, the any's place here in this conversation

is just a Kickstarter. It's a firestarter. It's just like to get a really larger discussion going here, which is how should AI tools be used at all in the TTRPG space, separating generative AI from different AI tools that are not generative. And what I cross over into listening to you and your approach to it is, and I kind of start to feel old in these arguments, right? In these discussions, because I'm very uninformed about it. And I think that it is insane to think that an AI could DM a game.

I think that it's preposterous at the level that a human can, especially one that's been doing it for a while. Just a general question to you. Do you feel that way at all? You're much more involved in the tech space that I am. Do you see in a few years from now, 10 years from now, that there will be AI GMs everywhere? that AI GMs will be way more prevalent than they are now and perhaps really beating out human GMs to run games, that players will choose to play with an AI so that somebody doesn't have to do the prep. Do you see that as a future in gaming,

leaving the business and commercial end out of it? I do see it as a future, although I don't see it as maybe as ubiquitous as as what, you know, you proposed it might be. I think that there's a lot of people that like. The idea of TTRPGs, they like the experience, the adventure, the storytelling, the character development, but there's a lot of people in our industry that. And in our community that actually aren't really all that comfortable with the interpersonal side of it. And and i think that's not maybe the people that are on podcasts and on shows and you know in the public.

You know, in the public, in the public zeitgeist, but there's a lot of people that love the idea of solo games, or there's a lot of people that love the idea of scheduling just sucks for me, I can never work it out, I never get to play D a really fun adventure solo guided by a piece of software, I think a lot of people would enjoy that. And I think a lot of people will enjoy that. But it's not going to be the same experience. It's not it's not one for one. It's not saying this is the same game or the same type of game as what you have when when you're five people gathered around a physical table or five people gathered around a virtual screen on webcams. All of those are different experiences in different ways. And I don't think that, I think that as the technology improves, I think AI GMs would be able to tell great stories.

I don't think they'll be able to necessarily read the room and the emotions, the interplay between party members to pick up on those subtle plot lines that you can pull on. But good point. Yes, but also like not just this plot, not just the story. Also like you said, reading the room, knowing when a player needs a win, right? Like a person. Yeah.

Just they can't take it right now. You need to ease off. That's an interesting concept. Let me bring a question here from chat, which is very basic, very straight up. A few people have asked this, but A-dubs just says, aren't AI GMs just video games? Yeah. I don't necessarily agree. What do you think? Or I don't necessarily think the't necessarily agree. What do you think?

Or I don't necessarily think the answer is yes. What do you think, Andrew? Do you think that that is the distinction? A human GM makes it a TTRPG, a AI GM makes it a video game RPG. Is that a fair statement? It's fair adjacent, but I think that

video game experiences often are ones where the creator of the game has decided what the story is. I'm in the creator of the game has made assets and visuals and artwork and. Scripted events and animation all to tell their story and to tell their story in a way that you can experience. I think a traditional tabletop role playing game is one where it's really it's the player's story and the GM is just there to help tell it. And I think that is a little bit different because the narrative choices that you're making as a GM aren't, I mean, yeah, they may be partially self-serving

because you're prepared for certain things or not, or you have a certain direction that you foresee or want the story to go in. But ultimately, like the prompt, response, reaction, kind of framework of these collaborative storytelling experiences is one that it's not like. I'm gonna ignore what you did like that door is locked you can't go through that door i wanna break the door that you can't break the door down that's a locked door it's not that kind of thing. The the GM has a lot more flexibility to change the world or change the story in response to what the players do, then I think what most people would think of as a video game would do.

That said, if we're looking at the five or 10-year horizon, I'm sure there's going to be video games that are very heavily invested of procedurally or otherwise generated content where, you know, the game reacts to the player's choices more than is typical even for like a, you know, BioWare or CDPR or whatever game that's using, you know, Larian game that's using very sophisticated dialogue trees. But ultimately those dialogue trees have a limit. They have some point where you reach the end of the tree or the end of a node and you can't

turn right. You can only turn left or you can only say, okay, I'm done with this conversation now. Right. Farewell. Yeah. So you, you imagine there'll be a video game where like you can talk to people and then this conversation now. Right. Farewell. Yeah. Yeah. So you imagine there'll be a video game where like you can talk to people and then at a certain point they won't just say the same thing that they said last time, like a weird

robot. That always drives me crazy. I make no claims that it will be a good game. That game will abs- that game is absolutely coming where you would be having fully AI generated conversations with an NPC that will be saying something that no human lines of dialogue that no human has written. You will be having a conversation with the machine. I'm not saying that will be a good game. I'm not saying that that is what I'm most excited for in the future of gaming.

I think in many ways it's a little bit of a bleak future to think about. But yes, absolutely that game will exist. I think such games are already being made. Yeah. I feel like people will accept this. This is a very bleak point of view, but I worry that people are just gonna accept

these products that are flatter, that are less, you know, idiosyncratic, that have a less originality because people already accept all kinds of terrible entertainment and are like, well, I guess I have to watch the new Michael Bay transformers movie. What choice do I have? You know? Yeah, it is interesting. And I hate to leave you on that note, Andrew, but we're gonna let you go.

A bleak future is how Andrew left us. Let's do at least one more round. Thank you, I didn't wanna leave it on my stupid, I didn't wanna leave on my stupid comment, Joe. Just try and redeem, you know, some now. No, I think it is an excellent point and an excellent distinction. And I agree with you that video games are a story that are largely, the way we define

video game is a story that is being told by a developer, a publisher, a team of writers that is crafting this story that gives you the ability to color in the lines, but you got to stay within the lines. AI-GM tools, what the future of that looks like is you literally saying whatever you want to an NPC and then responding to what you say, not a choice of four lines of dialogue. To me, that is massively different than a video game. However, I can't see it, at least now, at least for the foreseeable future ever being like a human in any way you know in terms of how it can You know develop and craft a story and respond in a way that I don't think it'll trick me basically, right?

I don't think I'll be like man. I can't believe this isn't a human being on the other side of this thing That that's just sort of my gut reaction to it. You don't believe it, Will, but you could be wrong, Joe. I mean, I have a hard time believing that too, but maybe in 10 years, it will be able to trick us. One comment, as far as TTRPG content specifically goes, I think it is a very specific type of content, a very specific form factor that current generative models

aren't specifically trained to deal with or to be good at. And I think the sort of like rules of Pathfinder or the rules of D&D, like an AI GM making up skill checks or stat blocks. It's a very crude and clumsy emulation of some sources that somewhere in its ephemera of training data, it's someday seen in the past. But these models don't know what DND is.

They don't know the rules of Pathfinder. So anything that they make up is horse shit, you know, in that regard. Similarly, for like digital assets in like a VTT, like a top down token or like a circle stamped token with the creature artwork in it or a battle map that is designed to fit to a square grid, where the grid positions are actually tactically or logically meaningful with regards to like buildings or walls or you know doors or anything like this isn't something that any of these image generation models know how to do. The only way that they ever learn how to do that is by taking a ton of maps and ton of tokens the human artists have made and learning how to fake it.

And that ultimately is why among other reasons so many people are rightfully pissed off because, you know, your model has no right to that. Your model has no right to take the years and years and years of hard work that I, as a cartographer, hypothetically, or I as an illustrator have put into mastering my craft, and then you don't just get a free ride on my hard work and the hard work of other people. But there's no other way for these models to get good at that. The only way for them to get good is to steal. There is no other way. But you know, artists also all steal, you know? I mean, like, if I were to look at like

five different dungeons, I like to go, Oh, I'll use this kind of elevation thing here. And I'll use this bridge encounter here. Am I stealing? You know, it's, it's, it's like, you said, I mean, it sounds like, yes, yes, you are. But the difference is like, you know, we're talking about then selling that as original work or submitting that for an award and lying about how you made it. No, no, that's not Joe, an artist, a person who's creating a new dungeon can absolutely. And I think that this is legitimately being an artist go, I like how this worked over here and this thing and how this worked over

here and this thing. Oh, and I liked this NPC from this adventure path. I'm going to make them a, give them a different name and kind of change them slightly. That's how art works. Yeah, no, I agree. I was literally talking about like Photoshopping. That's what I imagined, like taking this part of this dungeon and this part of this dungeon. But yeah, no, I agree. I was literally talking about like photoshopping. That's what I imagined, like taking this part of this dungeon and this part of this dungeon. But yeah, no, I hear

what you're saying. That would be stealing. Yeah. Right. But just the idea of being inspired by these different artists and the work they've done before to come up with the ideas that you come up with. But I think that the danger and I know you got to move on to questions and I got to get out of here and whatnot. But the danger of of these these generative approaches becoming normalized and accepted in their current form is that it will gradually displace original creative work to the point where the industry becomes a closed loop system. there is not any external innovation It's just these models that are kind of internally recreating the same thing that seems statistically

Plausible like I the machine think that this looks like a map and it's plausible So I'm gonna spit it out, but there's no real creativity there But there's no real creativity there and i think that the danger of like is it is it just that it's bad for commercial. Products are is it is it problematic in my own home games well ultimately like the popularity of these tools is gonna be based on how many people are using them. And whether it's commercial or not, if the kind of groundswell of sentiment about AI reaches a point where it is prevalent, it is like everyone who's running TTRPGs just kind of uses these tools, there won't really be much space left for artists to competitively have a place in the industry. And if that happens, then the system kind of becomes closed. And it could be kind of a death of creativity, at least a death of this type of creativity, maybe other doors will open or other windows will open. But you know, it is it is the

nature of things. And it's not just this is not the only technical technological innovation that has caused society to grapple with this type of conversation. It has happened in the past and it will happen again, but it's where we are right now in this moment. Yes, I agree. However, I think we can all agree that its applications in tabletop gaming are the most important.

The most important of all. Possible application. Also, McD, make a note that the YouTube title for this episode should be The Death of Creativity. Featuring Andrew Clayton. No, Andrew, thank you so much for coming on. It's how I feel at 9 a.m. Monday morning.

I really appreciate it. I talked to Andrew about this briefly yesterday, but it is fully our intention to have you back again on Glass Kind of Radio as a regular guest. I think you have great insights into this community and into this whole area of how tech interferes with this long-standing tradition of gaming that we've all experienced. We all have to be ready for this changing world. I think that you have a great perspective on all that.

We'll definitely have you back on Glass Cannon Radio and I look forward to the next time. Thanks for coming on, buddy. Awesome, thank you so much, Joe, Jared. Great chatting with you all and I'll see you next time. Yeah, take it easy, man. See you next time. I wanna thank Andrew for being smarter than us

and also better able to articulate himself. Maybe he should host the show. I know. There were multiple times I was just like, that's what I was thinking, but couldn't figure out how to say. There were multiple times where I was like, he said a smart thing. Yeah, exactly. It has been too long since we've heard the callers.

Let me just say a huge apology to our Discord listeners who were not able to hear Andrew, but that was something that we knew was going to happen this week, but we're going to work on getting him into Discord next time. He just was not able to on short notice, and I was like, ah, they could just watch it on Twitch, but I understand the confusion there. So apologies on that front, but if you want to come back into Discord and get on the line, let's do it. Let's get some people up here.

Dude36. Dude36, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Can you hear me? Yes. I can. You sound great, dude. Well, I appreciate it. What do you wanna talk about?

Did you, were you able to hear Andrew's interview? I was, I mean a little bit, just kind of back and forth in the background. Yeah, what are your thoughts? I mean, so her background, I am a software developer. So I've been in the space with AI. I haven't worked with it specifically, but learned a lot about it in university, did

a bit with computer vision. So the main struggle that I have with it, as far as general use, is the environmental impact of it. But as far as in a creative space, you talked earlier about, or Jared talked earlier about having his, like the, the GM practice or your experience is like a muscle, right? The more you train with it, the better, better you use it, you know, and so you're really honing your craft and kind of offloading that creative thinking onto a computer. I mean, that's very like the reason that Dune universe is the way

that it is, you know, it's. Thank you for bringing up Dune. You of course are referencing the but Larry and jihad. Uh, and the fact that a war had to be, uh, you know, waged against the, the thinking machines so that later in the doing universe all thinking machines and computers are outlawed. Yeah. Good point. Any time someone brings up Dune, I know that they're making a good point. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. The other thing that not a lot of people know about but is something that we're starting to see more and more of a problem with because of its prevalence is the fact that AI in general is, I mean, in computer science terms, right now it's not a true AI AI it's not a from the ground up.

I'm built thinking machine it's just taking millions upon billions upon trillions of examples that other people have used to train itself into a way of thinking so it's. So it's, you know, if you feed it garbage, you're going to get garbage out. If you feed it good stuff, you're going to get good stuff out. Right. Um, however, because of the content down in the world is good stuff, right? Absolutely. There's just a, a pleasure. There's not a lot of garbage out there. So, um, and for example, in, I don't know if you guys have, have played around with or seen, um, like the AI generated photos all over like Facebook and Instagram and stuff like that, but you can kind of start to see that it's developed a style, right?

What specific like way that it looks, right? Everything's a bit oversaturated. The lines are way too you know defined. I'm and the reason it's doing that is because. When you know open a I and all of you know that company just kind of said here world here's chat GPT and here's its image generation. Here's chat GPT and here's its image generation engine. Have at it. A bunch of people started generating images and then it became a feedback loop of those images

then get put into the training database under the guise that someone actually made them. And so it's training on its own generated image which is kind of the snake eating itself. And in the in AI, like white pages and stuff like that, that always goes poorly and poisons the database. And so in my perspective, as someone who's somewhat knowledgeable about this. I think in, you know, 10 years or so, a lot of the like small or I guess to say earlier trained open or all of the earlier trained language learning models are going to be a lot more successful than some of the later ones because their database is more human generated rather than computer generated.

So it's only gonna get worse. I mean, I think so. In some respects, if the database is cleared and you spend some time doing a lot of that data cleanup, then absolutely, it could be significantly better. But as a developer, you got to be incredibly wary of where you're getting what you're training on. And just given like, O4 has, I think something like several trillion lines of text that it's trained on, you know, and they're only going to want to get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

So it just, it's, I mean, picking through 13 trillions of lines, it's going to, it's going to be possible. Yeah, we hear you. And thanks for the call. And it is like, you know, the, the sneak eating itself concept slowly degrades over time until it's only yet the feedback loop and everything very good points and dude also brought up. I had mentioned it just briefly earlier, but the environmental impact is not a huge whole, you know, aspect of this thing that takes it out of just generative AI and into all elements of how these tools are used. Very concerning aspect as well to make sure that we're listening to and focused on. One thing I want to say before we go to the next caller is I talked to a few people about

this. When I knew we were going to talk about it on the show, I reached out to some contacts that I have in different spaces. There was one in the tech space and one in gaming. I asked how AI comes up in their day-to-day. The person that I spoke to in gaming is kind of in the video game development area, but in that crossover to RPGs. Their comment was very simply that the AI... I just want people to know that from the inside, a lot of people are working on this.

Ton of people, like Andrew was saying, want to develop these tools that you can talk to an NPC and get spit out original responses that are based on your questions, not lines of dialogue that are preset. And this person's experience thus far has been that it works very briefly and then collapses over and over and over again. The AI is just not able to run games yet in an effective way as an NPC and actually respond in a way that doesn't feel flat and like a robot. It can have lines that will surprise you with how poetic or

good they are or shockingly well done. They go, oh my gosh, this is like, what a great GM. And then within a minute, we'll say something that is nonsensical and completely breaks you out of it. And then on the tech end of things, which I found very interesting. Someone said, everybody is talking about this all the time in our space and you get the sense that it is a lot of talk and a lot of air and not a lot of actual sort of... People can't actually say what is happening or what they're doing. You'll be in a presentation, people will be like, AI this and AI that. They'll be like, but what is the AI actually doing or how is it actually working? And you get like just no responses. It's like everybody's talking about it, but there's no real, nobody

can really point to exactly how this is being used in their own companies. It's really kind of, kind of wild, but just want to get that out there before we bring up Jen with two N's to the stage. Yeah. Oh, hello. Hello, Jen. Welcome back. How are you?

I'm great. Well, you know, the world. I'm good right now. Yeah, good. Good. We're glad you're here. We're glad you're here. I feel like that's if anytime someone says, how are you doing now? You have to say the world.

Yeah. Then you can move on. Yes. Yeah. Thoughts. But anyway, so my kind of stances is like, I do think there is a place for AI. Like I, I want it to help humans. I don't want it to replace humans. You know, like I want it to help humans i don't want to replace humans you know like i want it to help take my meeting minutes i wanted to help finesse an email that i'm struggling to craft really well.

You know a lot of times i'll put things in there and say help me fix this you know and learn from that i want it to be a tool for my job and such. I actually used it last night for the first time to help with a new character I was going to play to help with inspiration for backstory, because I was stuck. Like heck, a 2e game I was playing, I had a summoner and then all of a sudden I was like, oh crap, I played Foley and a Verxius. You know, like, is that ripping off you, Joe? Like, it's just, you know. That's theft, Jen with two ends. It's theft. You're allowed to do that. You're allowed to just steal a character in the glass cannon and play it. That's fine. Great. Big baby. Next character coming to you. But anyway, it's a lot of it, too, is like,

would we have these same thoughts and feelings if it was magically, ethically? OK, you know, I think a lot of people are kind of opposed to it. And I think rightly so because where is it pulling the info from, you know, the physical resources and climate change, like all of that is an issue, you know, and even like how it deals with like deep fakes in videos of people, you know, all of a sudden it's like, what if someone put this video of you out, Joe,

doing some whatever, and it, you know, like taints your reputation. And of course people are gonna not know that's AI and be like, oh, Joe would never dance with the Harlem Globetrotters, but you know, you did, whatever it is, like. Yes. I love that that's the thing that takes down Joe.

Well, that's a story for another Discord. No, it is. Truly, it is. I just think that it's, I think it's insane. I think that as a celebrity, as a real celebrity, you must live in constant fear, constant terror of this happening to you. You know, any kind of A-list celebrity, how could, I can't believe it's not happening more, honestly.

Like I think that it would be happening all the time. I know it is happening, Joe. I mean, like, let's just like talk about a movie, Rogue One that everybody says is so great, but they took Peter Cushing's face. They put his face on another actor and they make this person play Grand Moff Tarkin, but they're using Peter Cushing's face. Now, obviously the Cushing estate signed off on that, but I think it is anathema and it's awful.

And when you talk about it, it wasn't even good. And it wasn't even good. And it wasn't even good. Right. Well, how about Ian Holm? Ian Holm in the most recent Alien Romulus movie. I mean, I would say arguably the worst part of that movie, something that really damaged the movie for me. So like, I think that we- And so incredibly unnecessary.

And unnecessary, you could have had another actor play the role. You could have used practical effects and have some kind of like weird puppet thing. Though both of those options would have been better. And I think that when we're talking about creativity, we need to apply that to actors too. When Peter Cushing plays Grand Moff Tarkin,

he is creating that role himself. That character doesn't really exist outside of Peter Cushing. Now, another actor can come and recreate their own version, but taking his skin mask and digitally putting it on someone's face is macabre. Yeah. And it needs that. that kind of shit needs to stop. Sorry, Jen, real quick. Rebel then King from Twitch chat says how terrible this part is

of Rogue One and says it's just immersion breaking. Just get another actor who looks somewhat like him, and it would be so much better. We agree. We agree. Jen, sorry. Jared went off on a rant there before his actual nerd rant. I have more to come. Did you have, did you have anything else Jen on, on AI or tabletop, you know, how you use it in your, in your tabletop games?

Not much else. Like I said, it was the first time I really used it last night. Were you happy with the results? You know, I was, it was a good base that I felt like was the first time I really used it last night. Were you happy with the results? You know, I was. It was a good base that I felt like was a little more unique, and it was something that helped me to say, okay, I can take these pieces and really flesh out a new character for me. You know?

So I'm happy with it, because I was agonizing over like, okay, I gotta make this new thing. I want it to be great. I wanna feel good about this character. So I think there's a place for it. I wish we could make it fully ethical. Who knows how and when we're going to do that.

But yeah, it is a good tool for certain situations. I think it's up to each person to realize where you apply that tool and how you're okay doing so. And where's that line for every person. Well said, Jen. Well said. Let's keep the colors coming. Do you have a comment on Jen's comment? Can I jump every person? Well said Jen well said let's let's keep it Well, no, I just want to say can we broaden the topic now and kind of like just talk about Technology in general because we've been talking about AI for a while

Yeah But I would really like to just get into if people would like to tell us Jen just told us how she used Technology to help her create a character. If people want to just say, Hey, this is how I'm using technology in my games or how they feel about VTTs or how they feel about, say, the D and D beyond character sheet that rolls for you. Like, you know, it's tabletop tech. That's interesting. That's a good pivot. Yeah. I like that. I mean, look, we've said a lot on AI. I think that we could talk about it on ad nauseam, but we're going to start, uh, like the AI itself, I think we're going to get into a bit of a loop here. We're going to start saying the same thing. And I, I just want to start off, you know,

with this pivot by saying that I hate technology. Oh, I know you do. I hate having to learn a VTT, which to me, it's like, Hey, want to play world playing games? All right. Learn a new software program. It's only going to take you 80 hours of hard work. And I get where I get really sort of discouraged is when I go on a site, like start playing games where they are GM's for hire, right? And people talk about another use of technology with tabletop role playing

games, a website where you can hire GM's. And, and I noticed that the GM's that are getting hired are people who have painstakingly created these extremely complex layered maps and like VTT experiences. And I wonder if their GMing is any good. To me, it looks like a director who spent all the time talking to the people that build the sets and never talked to the actors. But I don't know, I haven't played in those games. So anyway, my point is, weigh in on any way that you find technology affects your game, because I'd like to hear it, Joe would like to hear it. All right, that's it.

Do you prefer, now you play in a home game, is that home game, do you lay out maps and use minis in home game? Do you lay out maps and use minis in that game? So when I played a two and a half, three year Dungeons and Dragons 5e campaign at home, we used minis and we used the, you know, the dry erase map. Yeah. Right now in my, the one ring game,

we do mostly theater of the mind. And I think that sometimes a game calls for theater of the mind. Sometimes it calls for maps and minis. I actually thought, okay, so I ran a pathfinder adventure, the fall of plague stone for my players. Yes. And, uh, it, that was totally available for a VTT. So I said, guys, instead of me like dry erasing the whole time and having these little minis that fall over,

what if we all bring our laptops and we use the VTT while we're playing in person? And you know what? Ultimately, my players were like, you know, thank you for running that, Jared. That was fun, but we didn't really like doing it that way because we felt like we were staring at our computer screens instead of each other the whole time. Hmm. And it's just, it's just like, I know everybody has fun in different ways. Okay. And what's fun for you may not be fun for me, but to me, when I think of what my version of, of tabletop role playing games are, it's us looking in each other's

eyes and it's us like, it's us like feeling each other's energy. And I even think, and you know, you and I play once a week, a game over the internet. You're in the East coast. I'm on the West coast, but I think you even lose a little bit doing that. You, you not, not so much. Oh my God. Are you kidding me? I'd love to play in person with you. I love for our game game to be... Well, I'm coming to the East Coast this summer. We'll play a game in person. I love it. I love it.

Let's see. Let's have other people weigh in on this. Your thoughts on how you use technology in your games at home. Make your life easier. Do you use maps and minis? LokiThunderson. I like that name. LokiThunderson, I've invited you up to speak if you'd like to.

And if we don't see you, we'll just keep moving. Let's go to Tom. Tom O'Brien. I love that name. Tom O'Brien. Tom, your mic is muted if you want to... Hello. Hey, Tom.

How are you? Now, Joe, this is your brother, right? This is my brother, Tom. How are you? Now, Joe, this is your brother, right? Yeah, this is my brother, Tom. We're going to admit it, Joe. What's going on, Tom? How are you? I'm doing great. I wanted to say, you know, I run a lot of 2E.

I like to incorporate a lot of tech because mostly I play over Discord or other video services. And I had a very interesting experience this past month. There was a lot of people who were in town for the holidays and I got together for the first time in many years for a fully in-person game, which was wonderful. And a lot of people who were curious about TUI who hadn't gotten a chance to play it before, so we were like, okay, we're going to do, I modified the beginner's box to make it about Christmas, which was fun.

But I found that we used a dry erase map and everything, but using a character builder was really helpful for a lot of people. We used a path builder, but I know there's a ton of other systems that do a great job. But in my experience, it's great for people who are already immersed in the game, who know the rules, but by making your life easier, it's pretty common for people to miss things. They don't know where this bonus is coming from. They don't see an ability because they haven't actually like gone to a book or archives of Nethus or whichever

to actually read the summoner. So I had a player in a long running campaign that it wasn't until we were level 15 that realized that the summoner had to act together. She like because how was it a choice part of the summoner class? Right. It wasn't a choice that she got made in the character creator. Right. She had seen where all this is a base aspect of the mechanics of the character. It wouldn't be mentioned in a character creator. Right. seen where all those offers she had to do so. It's a base aspect of the mechanics of the character. It wouldn't be mentioned in a character creator, right? Yeah.

Exactly. So, you know, in terms of rules, you know, we had each other to play off of, but nobody else was reading the Summoner. So it wasn't until well in. So I think that some of these tools are really supportive if you already know what you're doing, but they can hide important aspects if you overly rely on them as you're learning a new system. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a, what a great point that technology makes us. Yeah.

Thank you, Tom. The technology makes us not, it's running the character sheet for us. We don't actually know what's on our character sheet because it's populating it with all these things and we're not taking the time to read the core book and figure out how our characters work. But I will say, having met a lot of players that that was a huge problem even before we had automated characters. Yeah, I agree. And I we I use automated character sheets. Yeah, I agree. And I use automated character sheets for everything. There have been times when I've been tempted to just go back to a character sheet and a pencil

and I was like, build this from scratch and really like see how it all shakes out. And it's just, to me, it's just not worth it. I feel like the character builder gets me into what I wanna do so much faster, which is like play, right? Just like create story together, get into those moments. I don't want the character creation to be an impingement to getting to that point, especially with newer players. But I do completely recognize that those shortcuts do have consequences that you have to be aware

of and conscious of, you know, before you, you know, jump right in. Let's take another caller, Baylor the Bard. We got to get caller heavy here because we were so long on with Andrew with no callers. Baylor, I've invited you up if you're still around, if you'd like to speak. It can be tricky to learn how to do this. All right, let's move on to Verdika. Verdika, can you? Hello.

Hey, what's up? Hi. Hi, how you doing? Doing great, how are you? Same as Jen, you know, it's minute by minute. The world. The world. The world.

I'm gonna start doing it like this. I'm gonna start going, hello, the world. Can I get a grande macchiato? Berica, your thoughts on your tabletop tech. What do you use? So I play in a game with my brothers-in-law. They run for us. And so it was my first experience using a virtual tabletop or not a virtual

tabletop but Foundry virtual tabletop. Oh, okay. And have had several other games run with Roll20. And but they were all more like Blades in the Darky, Storytelling, you know, Evidence Boardy. So it worked really well. But man, Foundry is just really gorgeous. Yeah, it is gorgeous. It definitely, to me, it heightens the game experience for me, for sure. It's funny though, I keep trying to tell my brothers-in-law, like, I guess they installed it a while ago and there's something wrong with it, to where it gives us errors when we load and we keep saying, let us know, we can send you money to fix whatever. So I don't

know what's wrong with it, but sometimes it's a little glitchy for us. Well, I'm going to tell you all the all VTTs, so I'm not picking on Foundry or Roll20 or anything. They just constantly as a GM, I'm like, let me just move this character. Oh, I stretched him out. Okay. Wait, maybe I can move this token here. Oh, I've moved the map. Like, I know everybody in the chat right now is going to be like, well, you actually, you were on the map level and you should have been. Yeah.

But I know that, but I'm just telling you like, it gives you way too many options. Yes. When would I ever need to stretch a token? And if I need to stretch a token, shouldn't that be an extra special menu I go into the stretch a token menu that shouldn't just be something I can do on the fly accidentally. You need to have like a menu for babies like me who are like, I don't use this a whole lot. And then a menu for like-

Are you calling me a baby? Yes, but a cute one. Oh. What are you going to do? So back on, I a cute one. Oh, yeah. What are you going to do back? I love you again. So, Verducai, are you sticking with, so this remote game is ongoing?

Yes. Yeah. It's like we get together about once a month or so. They're over in like San Diego and we're in Vermont. So it's like our way of keeping our family talking to each other on a regular basis. Oh that's great, that's great. But otherwise if you were at home you wouldn't start using a VTT in a room with people. I don't think so unless I was like setting it up that way from the beginning like I can't remember who it was, which discord it was, if somebody in

the NACE sharing a picture of their game room. And I could see that, I think, that they had a projector in the ceiling to shine down on the table. And I was like, that would be a really cool way to integrate a virtual scene into your game in person. But I also could have totally been misreading it and that's not what it was for. I think you're on to something there and thanks for calling in again. It was two weeks in a row with Vertica. It's very nice. We've looked into that as well at times, you know, the projecting

down or literally playing on a screen that's like in the table. That's really fun stuff too that some people are doing. It's interesting. I had brought up Baylor before and I think that, what would you wanna say Jared real quick? I just think it's bullshit. All of that like projecting or like the screens turning on. Like I know I'm being very polarized here, but it's like-

You're being very old. You're being so old. We're spending all of this time on this stuff. But to me, the game isn't the stuff. To me, the game is the story. It's you know, it could be the combats. It can be that it's the encounters and it's the interaction between the people and it's most importantly people laughing together.

And it is not what I know will happen which is my GM starting the session and then spending 41 minutes getting the projector to work. That is 1000% what is going to happen. Fair enough. Baylor, the bard, we tried to bring you up earlier and it wasn't working but it looks like you're on now. Can you hear us? Your mic looks muted. Sorry, Baylor. Oh, wait.

Oh, oh, oh. Hey, now that's a way to come into a room. Hi, guys. Hi, Baylor. How you doing? Welcome. I've been over here trying to figure out how to get this to work with my accessibility technology stuff.

So that's the end result right there. So we can hear you. We can hear you now. What's going on? What are your thoughts on the tabletop tech? So I am totally blind to have it my whole life and it kind of impacts my view on this a little bit in that I essentially am stuck in a situation where I have to use it for basically all of my ttrpg needs. So even if I'm in person, like I've got to use like I got to bring my phone or something

for my character builder character sheet because a Braille character sheet would just be a book because of how much space Braille takes up and you couldn't do your hit points on the fly or anything. So let me ask you, Baylor, how does this first come into your life and develop, right? Like what was your first experience in, uh, tabletop RPGs and how did you utilize tools to get that, uh, off, uh, up and running? So, uh, my first experience was a roll 20 wrath of the righteous campaign. Oh, I love wrath. Okay. Yeah. And pathfinder first edition, uh, never got to finish it, which is real sad. We only got like halfway through book two. But it essentially was like, Roll20 back in 2015 or whatever year it was when I started was very bad for accessibility and

they're kind of a little, they're somewhat better now. Like I don't want to crap on Roll20. Like they've made progress. But it was essentially like it took me the whole first year of like like essentially it started off with my the DM running my character sheet and you know finally I figured out how to how to get to the character sheet with my assistive technology because things weren't really labeled so my little robot voice that I have to listen to wasn't, you know, wasn't telling me everything I needed to know to find my way around. And, you know, finally I figured that and the character sheet we used was like created by a custom creator, and it was actually very accessible. So from then on, I was able to kind of roll my own dice and

everything. But the one thing that isn't accessible anywhere is like the tactical map element of it. So I always have to kind of talk to my friends if I'm playing with you. You're always playing theater of the mind. Yes. And when I DM, I try, I pretty much run exclusively theater of the mind. And that works. That works for you, right? Running a theater of the mind, right? Yeah. and I actually like it better like I Sometimes do too. Yeah, I think it makes combats less restrictive, especially in assistive like second edition Pathfinder Which I love but like sometimes the map like especially piezo maps which are just so small sometimes from what I've been told can make combats very very restrictive and like I I

sometimes from what I've been told, can make combats very, very restrictive. And like I enjoy theater of the mind because I can just be like, it's much bigger and there's much more environment to interact with. And like, I enjoyed the shit out of that. I love theater of the mind. I love theater of the mind for tactical combat as well. I feel like there's a lot of,

I just wish there weren't so many abilities out there that are designed around movement. Like you don't want to kind of hamstring characters that spent their general feet on fleet, for example, right? You have to tell your players, hey, don't take fleets because, so you are adding work in that way. You're having to like go like, hey guys, these are the parameters for how to create your character because we're doing theater of the mind also

I has a big proponent of theater of the mind I'll be the first one to admit if I want to do a combat with ten ghouls running at you. It's extremely Tricky and challenging in theater of the mind to figure out who's hitting which ghoul and which ghoul is hitting who. Like, you know, it's a lot easier if I'm running a boss battle with one big dragon, but it gets tough when I want to do those, those like, you know, skirmishes between two large groups. Yeah. Yeah. Like I think I've done one of those like a bunch of skeletons or whatever. And I ran like skeleton six for like two whole rounds after he was dead just because you know back in back in the early days of doing it. It's one of the reasons I really want to play blades because like you just don't you don't

need a map for blades in the dark. Yeah. Yeah. That's why that's why Jared loves himself some blades. Baylor, thank you so much for calling and another like another awesome perspective or angle on this whole conversation is like, what if you can't even play the game without technology? Really awesome to get that point of view as well.

It's like, there's these tools out there. Let's take one more caller and then I want to move on to our new, to our blue velvet. I can't. Oh boy. I can't wait. Anu, Anu, come up and talk to us. Anu? Hey, how's it going? Hey, am I pronouncing your name correctly? Yep, perfectly. Awesome, awesome. Welcome to Glass Cannon Radio.

So first and foremost, before I forget, for book club, I'd like to make a suggestion. The Shadow of the Gods. Great. What is it called? It is the Shadow of the Gods. It is a great book. I just read it this week. So the Shadow of the Gods. Shadow of the Gods. What is John Gwynne?

Give me give me John Glenn. Give me give me the elevator pitch. So ultimately, it's a bunch of Vikings in a fantasy setting. OK, it's imagine D and D with Vikings. Vikings. I mean, it sounds like something I would like. Can I ask you this? Are there any graphic erotic scenes?

I'm not sure about that. I mean, there is. Then I'm afraid it's pretty low on my list. There is one sex scene, but they don't go into detail. Hell yeah! It just went way up. Alright. So can you tell us about tech and how it applies to your gaming? Yeah, so honestly I'm fairly new to Dungeons and Dragons and everything, but I'm also in the military and I've tried using Roll20 multiple, multiple, multiple times. And I don't know if I love it or hate it, but I finally agree with Jerry for once.

You know, ultimately, every time I get on Roll20, it's horrible. You know, everybody, every single time I get in there, it's just horrible. DMing horrible. Everything, you know, everybody takes 30 minutes to set up map stuff like that. Yeah. Where is it? Dead time. A lot of lost time. It maybe doesn't really save you time, you know, unless the person is extremely proficient, which means that they've had to

commit a lot of time and, and it's a lot more being a new player and all like learning not only D&D, but also learning the aspects of the online role play. What a great point. Yeah, you have to not only, you have to learn how to use the software in addition to learning how to play your character. And when you're new to the hobby, what a heavy lift.

Like it's complicated enough to even understand how to play a game. And I'm not even talking about your character mechanics. I'm talking about learning the flow of a TTRPG, learning that experience. To me, the role 20-ness of it, so to speak, can be such a roadblock to just like understanding the Interaction that's supposed to be happening the kind of joy you're supposed to experience

You know laughing and venturing with with your friends in this in this environment It's a that's a really good point is for brand new players that are introduced with a load of technology upfront as well. And it complicates the process. It almost made me wanna get out of the whole D&D scene at first, like the first time I played, roll 20, you know? Yeah. It's just miserable, you know? You don't get to look across from the guy across from you

and ask him questions or whisper to your buddy sitting next to you while the DM's talking. You know? Yeah, these are great things about playing in person. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a great point. Thank you, Anu for the call. Yeah. It's a great point that, uh, to just, to take away those little tiny things like, like learning the game, like what should I do here? You just want to ask one person, you don't want to like stop the whole game for everybody and whatever, whatever.

I mean, we don't even really have to go into, is playing in person better? That's not really the discussion. That's pretty obvious. But it is interesting to see how tech can really help, how tech can be essential. But then also, as Anu says, how tech can actually be a roadblock to learning the game when you're new to it.

And not just the character creation aspect, like we heard earlier from a caller, but the interaction of the table and the whole map experience can be really good to bug down. I do see all the benefits, but like everything else, it's good and bad. That's probably true of AI too. It's good and bad.

And you have to decide how much the good stuff weighs in comparison to the bad, and you have to decide how much the good stuff weighs in comparison to the bad stuff for you. You know? Um, I mean, maybe getting to play with your, your family who's on a different coast, that is a benefit that outweighs, you know, the trickiness of learning a, uh, a VTT or the fact that your, your brother can never manage to really figure out how to get it to work.

So I want to set up our next thing. Are we ready to go? I'm ready. So. Actually, I don't know if I'm ready. You're ready. For the rest of the month, last week on our first episode,

we talked about the passing of the incredible, surreal, dreamlike director, David Lynch and his incredible body of work. And we found out that Joe had only seen one David Lynch film, which scared him like a little baby to use Verdict's terminology. So we decided that we were going to continue all month for four weeks, kind of diving into the work of David Lynch. And we noticed that, Joe and I noticed that a lot of the films were just thrown up on Macs after David Lynch's passing. So we decided to have Joe and I rewatched Blue Velvet, his 1986 film noir thriller journey into the dark side starring Kyle McLaughlin, Laura Dern, Isabella

Rossellini, and Dennis Hopper. And I just want to very briefly give the plot of this film in the briefest terms imaginable before we get Joe's reaction. So if you've never seen the film, it's extremely dark, extremely strange, but still has sort of a plot that you can follow. It's not, it's not completely disjointed and weird. It's not as surreal, I'd say, as Mulholland Drive, the other film that you said you had seen, Joe. Um, but basically a young man who's home from college because his father is sick, finds an ear in a vacant lot.

That ear leads him to the police, which leads him on his own investigation into a woman named Dorothy Valens, who's involved in a web of violence and intrigue involving a criminal named Frank, played by Dennis Hopper. And when this boy, this this college guy Kyle McLaughlin enters this world he goes from his like sort of perfect white picket fences suburban life

into the dark underbelly of his town and Dennis Hopper's character and this will explain the chiron that is about to appear below me Dennis Hopper's character is a complete psychopath who huffs gas and then says, baby wants to fuck. And that is one of the main reasons I love this movie and one of the biggest influences on my particular creative style. So Joe, what did you think of Blue Velvet? So Joe, what did you think of Blue Velvet? I thought, well, going in, it was very helpful to know a little bit more about David Lynch's

style, right? I went into Mulholland Drive thinking it was just a regular movie. I didn't under... Right? So you're really shocked by the surrealness of it. I went into this afraid. I was honestly afraid that it was gonna like give me nightmares or something like that.

And it was not like that at all. But it was fucked up, as you said. I mean, fucked up. And at first, you know, the, right out of the gate, you get the bugs in the ground that just are a very eerie sort of shot. It's like, why? And it's strange and the ear and it's just very, very weird.

And man, does it take it to another level when Kyle McLaughlin is hiding in a closet and witness when you first witnessed Frank and how bizarrely evil he is. Yes. It is, it really, I was like, this is, I'm not crazy to say that the stuff that was coming out of David Lynch's mind, it makes me feel like he is the devil. Now, now obviously since the topic last week and reading into it and everything, I mean,

so many people have just the nicest things to say about this guy and what a warm and caring, although strange individual he is, whatever. The darkness that is portrayed in this movie, to me, it's to be able to generate this stuff out of your mind and then make a film about it is, it's just shocking. It really is shocking. Now, what I will say is that there are certain parts of the movie that I was like, is this just the movie aging? Like not aging as well,

because it was the eighties or whatever. And there were other parts that I was like, I am, what is the word I'm looking for? I am enthralled. I was completely enthralled at times with McLaughlin's relationship with Isabella Rossellini and how sexual it was. It was so intensely sexual. While he also then has this Laura Dern relationship, which is like more traditional, right?

And sweet. And there's more love. There's maybe more love there or more, uh, more of a spiritual connection, maybe. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But, but you feel like this kid, right? Cause at that way he looks so young, this kid getting pulled in these, in these different directions. And then when it really comes down to it and he's sort of like taken by Frank and that whole crew, which included Brad Dorif, which I thought was so awesome. I was like, Brad Dorif. Yeah, Brad Dorif. Like how- Dean Stockwell. Exactly. Dean Stockwell, like with his like weirdly like, his masquerade eyes. When he punches him? Yeah, it's so strange.

But how scared he must have been. Like that scene in the car is so scary because he's all boxed in. And Dennis Hopper is phenomenal. So I love Dennis Hopper so much in Hoosiers. That's my big Dennis Hopper movie, right? He's such a wonderful actor in that movie. And in this, to see him, to me, I was like, how do you read this script and say, I want to do this movie? Like looking at those lines,

they're so creepy. They're so crazy. They're so out there. Well, he takes it and he buys in so deeply that the way, the way that he, I mean, he says, fuck in every single line and he lands it every time he hits it so hard and so well. And he's just, he's just terrifying. Uh, I thought he did an amazing job at amazing. I would, I don't know for sure. I haven't written, read a, like a making of account, but I would, I would assume that some of that was improvised. And I know that Lynch likes to be very improvisational when he directs.

So I, I would imagine that some things in the film are very scripted and some are a little bit more loose. But what I wanted to ask is, do you sort of agree with the basic premise of the film? Which is that, you know, we exist in sort of this, sort of this safe kind of world of like, people who are polite and nice to each other and follow the rules and obey the laws and are respectable. We're not degenerate, we're not debased in our sexual habits. and follow the rules and obey the laws and are respectable.

We're not degenerate. We're not debased in our sexual habits, but right underneath the surface of that is the Dennis Hopper world of like huffing drugs and crashing cars and saying, baby wants to fuck while you like, you know, basically, I mean, let's be clear. It's a very dark film where you abuse this woman whose husband you've kidnapped. Do you think that our, our society, our world has that sort of, that sort of

underbelly that's always just beneath a thin, you know, coating of like a thin veneer? I do. I do believe that. I think that it's a really interesting aspect of that film is that what I kept thinking was... Very briefly, I did door to door sales. Very briefly. It was a time in my life where I was in the restaurant business.

I hated it. I really wanted to get out of it. I was just trying to find ways to make money. It was just after September 11th. The job market was terrible. I was doing interviews and stuff like that, but I couldn't really get anything. I got this door-to-door sales job that basically paid cash and I'd have to knock on people's houses. What I saw in that just like four month span that I worked that job was just how wildly, wildly different it is inside someone's house or someone's apartment that you could see outside. You could see at the market, you know, you never

know. And then the way that people live can be so different from what you expect or the circles that you move in. And that kept recurring to me in this particular scene where he goes into this woman's apartment and you're going to a stranger's place of living. You have no idea what you'll see there. And this film does a great idea of just, it does a great job of showing you such an extreme dark thing that you did not expect to see at all, that is very, very disturbing. I just, I think that it's an interesting,

an interesting look into like, you never know what's going on inside the house next door. Right? Like there's been a few movies about this recently, right? Like, you know, about small town, neighborhood houses, everything looks, you know, picket fence and whatever. And then inside these horrible things are happening.

What did you see in these people's houses while you were going door to door? I'm very curious. Well, like hoarder-ish people. Yeah. You know, there was definitely a lot of that. There were some people that were, I remember one woman in particular who was intensely religious and she was like, step inside, step inside.

I came in and she was in a nightgown and she just started going off about how I was meant to be there in this moment. You look around and there were pictures of Jesus up all over the place and little altars and things to kneel on, like in a church, little shrines, little shrines and stuff like that, right next to dirty dishes and a gallon of milk. It was just a small little condo in this condo building where we were working one day. I was just like, you never know. I didn't see any real dark fucked up shit though.

I did. I will say some of those hoarder apartments were real and houses were really dark and smelled and you know, that kind of stuff. Kara and I lived beside, um, some people at one point and you, we were in apartments. You, they were very, very clean. When you saw them out, they were affable. They looked put together, good clothes. They had great jobs, you know, like well-paying jobs. And then when they moved out, the apartment manager was like, look in here. And I looked in

their apartment and it was like a hoarders apartment where like things were covered in a layer of dirt and then also like their toilet had no seat on it so either they took that with them or they were just kind of squatting over the toilet. Oh my god. These are people that like you know had good jobs in the entertainment industry. What did you think on your rewatch? Did anything jump out to you that you didn't remember or you know, anything that's. What's amazing is I saw this movie last year at the new Beverly where they show show movies like this. So I saw it in 2024. I think at the new Beverly, it might've been 2023. I had forgotten so much.

And that's what I think we don't realize about rewatching movies is like, you're like, Oh, I saw that. I know what happens in it. You forget everything. Trust me. And if you saw it last year, you're going to see it differently this year. So I enjoyed it. I think even more than I did when I saw it on the big screen last year. And I thought, uh, I just, I just think it's like really brilliant because let me ask you in a funny, in addition to being sort of scary, which is a hard trick to pull off, but David Lynch is good at that. I want to ask you a couple of things real fast.

So, um, let's talk about some, some kind of, uh, some messed up scenes. Uh, okay. Okay. So one is when they feel like they're being chased by like Frank, but it turns out to be her boyfriend, Laura Dern's boyfriend. And he's just like a jock at school that wants to like rough him up like, hey, you taking out my girl or whatever. And it's out front of her house, out front of Laura Dern's house. And Isabella Rossellini comes out of the bushes, like completely nude and all beat up and scratched and scarred.

It's just like, oh my God, like it's so crazy. But then like the way she keeps like hugging him inside and like whispering, nothing's him. I feel like, like to me it's, those scenes, they're so strange because they, there's no concept of realism to me in those particular scenes. Like when Lauren Dern's mom is just looking at this nude woman and it's like, I think I'm going to call the police. Like, you know, like you're like calmly, like how's this, she's not doing well. But maybe that is how someone would react. I mean, how would you, would they go hysterical?

You know, I, it's interesting that you mentioned the Isabella Rossellini walking out of the bushes naked because that's based on a real experience. David Lynch had when, um, he was a boy or much younger. He remembers seeing a nude woman walking down the street in trouble, obviously. And it bothered him so much that according to the source I read, he said that it made him cry, you know, as, as, as a kid to see this thing. So it got in there really deep and he put it into the film, you know, and it comes at such an intense moment.

You have two people arguing over this thing. And then suddenly it's like completely dropped because this, this, you know, battered woman essentially comes walking out of the bushes. Right. Cause that fight between the jock and Kyle McLaughlin, cause Kyle took his girl that belongs to the upper world of sunshine and picket fences and watering your lawn. Isabella Rossellini is from the dark underworld and she,

she pops up and everything is recontextualized. Yeah it's really interesting. Okay and then one other part and this is one of those parts that made that was this was the most Mulholland Drive moment to me. Now I don't remember much about Mulholland Drive and I will never watch it again so like I don't really know how to exactly Joe that's next week. How to exactly- Oh, sorry, Joe, that's next week. How to exactly describe it. But the moment to me that felt the most like, it creeps me out to a point where like, I

want to turn it off is where we, I think it's when you first see Dean Stockwell, that like party in the apartment scene when Frank, when it's over and Frank is like, we're leaving, we're out of here. Everybody get your shit, blah, blah, blah, we're going. There's like some strange, to me, like distorted figure sitting on the couch that you don't see most of the time, but then he steps to the side and it's like,

it feels like a distorted face. It might just be like a pillow over something's face or something. Joe, I don't remember this at all. Are you sure that you saw that? And then he's like, let's go, blah, blah, blah. You can kind of see one person's shoulder behind him and him saying, let's go. And then they vanish from the scene. Like they do.

They do like kind of like pop out of the scene. I remember that. And they're gone, but it stays there for one second with that figure. This like on the couch with either something over it's blurred deliberately, something over its face or like a distorted like monster face is how I saw it. And it creeped the shit out of me. And I was like, fuck this David Lynch shit. I hate it. And that's,

that's what people are talking about when they're talking about that dreamlike style, you know, because it feels a little bit like a nightmare, you know, the way that he and that's just him moving from one scene to another. That was just a kind of a transition, you know? Yeah. And it was cool. It was like, it definitely made me like, oh, it weirded me out. But I thought I thought it was an interesting choice. And then bring it back full circle and he does the bugs again at the end,

which was really neat. There's a bug motif. Yeah, I love it. Bug motif is very cool. What is more out of the underworld than an insect, you know? Yes, exactly. So yeah, I mean... Check it out. If you haven't seen, uh, check it out.

If you haven't seen it before, you really should. And, uh, please let us know, you know, what Lynch film you might like us to talk about next or what aspect of his work we're going to keep coming back to it for a couple of weeks here, uh, maybe two more weeks. Um, so Joe, thanks for watching that. Cause I know having homework is a whole thing. And if you had been like, I got through 15 minutes, I would have been like, no problem.

Yeah. And, and, and Corp Donk says in, in Twitch chat, use it for your Delta green, John. And like, honestly, yeah, there was great inspiration in there for role playing games for Delta green, for evil character, evil NPCs. Like, man, what a great, uh, what a bunch of stuff to pull from that you would never think of. It's very twisted. Corp Dunk also wrote Jared bursts from Bush's nude all the time. So we'll take his opinions with a grain of salt.

Yes. So shall we close out with me giving my opinion on something that's really been bothering me? I'm not familiar with like where you're going with this. You just said I've got something I'm pissed about and I'm curious to see where this goes. It's Jared's nerd rant. Yes, here we go. It's time for me to weigh in on something that's really, really, really been bothering me.

In 2024, the musical film Wicked was received to rave reviews and excellent box office receipts. It has been nominated for an Academy Award. It is a great film in many respects. The sets and the costumes are unbelievably beautiful. The acting is fine. It's very solid. The songs and the way that they are performed, the melodies, I mean, they're earworms. Define Gravity is an all time musical number. All time earworm, yeah.

However, when I watch a film about a magical fantasy world, I pay the closest attention fantasy world, I pay the closest attention to the magic system of that world. And I cannot in good conscience recommend the film Wicked because the magic system of Wicked makes no sense. I will now break it down for you. When Elphaba played by Cynthia Rivo, first arrives at the magical academy named Shiz, which sounds like the name that someone who doesn't read fantasy books thinks fantasy things are called,

when she arrives at Shiz, she has an experience where she telekinetically, psychokinetically moves a bunch of objects when she becomes angry. So it first appears like the magic system in Oz is a psionic system, right? Our emotions and mental energy are able to affect the outer world around us. When Michelle Yeoh, who is one of the deans of the school,

sees that Elphaba is able to like throw a bunch of chairs with her mind when she gets angry, she's like, this is a very talented student and I've got to take her under my wing, all right? So I'm thinking, all right, so the magic system in Wicked is psychokinesis. And then we see Michelle Yeoh teaching Elphaba to move a coin with her mind. More psychokinesis, right?

But Elphaba is not able to move the coin with her mind. She keeps messing up. Like it keeps going clonk and not working. All right? Shortly after that, Michelle Yeoh tells her that she is the most powerful wizard that has ever lived and she is destined to help rule Oz alongside the Wizard of Oz. And I'm in the theater like, dude, she can't move a coin. How can she be the most powerful?

She doesn't have the coin thing down. She's still working on the coin, dude. She's still working on the coin. And I feel like the screenwriters never show us like how the people are learning magic. At one point they're learning like magical history, but we never see the instructors at shiz teaching like how the magic is supposed to work. In Harry Potter, which is what I would compare it to, Wicked being a weak ass pale imitation of Harry Potter.

In Harry Potter, we see them learn the spells and we kind of get how the spells are supposed to work. You have a wand, it's tailor made for you. There are verbal incantations that you shout. You must say correctly. If you say that slightly wrong, you can do other things you didn't intend to. Yes.

And in addition, there is an alchemical system, but other than that, like, I mean, that's how the magic works and wicked. It's psychokinesis can't move a coin. You're the chosen one. And then once they've decided she's the chosen one They take her to the wizard and the wizards like I need you to read this magical book that no one else can read and I'm like What where did the books come into it?

And how come you can't read it and how why is she able to read it? Just cuz she can make a coin flop over? Like it's like so she has to cast this spell using this book. And I'm like, where was the book when she was trying to move the coin? How come we've never seen these books before? So she tries to cast a levitation spell from the book, a levitation spell. Yeah, this is great. This is what I was hoping you would get here. And instead of making anything levitate, she causes an army of monkeys to grow wings. Now, that by any rubric is a failure to cast the levitation spell.

One might even say a catastrophic failure. And yet, Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum, the Wizard of Oz are like, this is great. This is exactly what we want it. Yes, this is what we're looking for. We wanted to unpredictably give a fighting force aerial capabilities. We weren't planning on that, but this goes right into our plan. What a happy accident. What a happy accident.

And I just think that in the movie, Elphaba shows herself to be an incompetent wizard over and over and over. But the movie wants us to go, wow, she's the most powerful wizard of all time. But the only way that the movie makes us think that is by telling us, listen, she's the most powerful wizard of all time. Right. They do the exact opposite of show, don't tell. They just tell and don't show. They just tell. And I just think if you're gonna- Hold on. Can I finish it off? Yes, please.

Are you done with the plot part? Well, I just want to say one last thing, which is that if you're gonna have a magic system in your, if you're gonna have magic in your movie, in your story, you've got to figure out a little bit about how it works. And as it stands, Wicked does not have the artistic integrity of a Brandon Sanderson novel. And that, that my friends, is an extremely low bar. Well done, well done. But I feel like you missed,

I feel like you could have had a better landing. Now that very end was, was wonderful, but there's one part to me that you were leading up to and didn't mention, which is after failing to attempt to cast a levitation spell. She throws off her, you know, throws off the cloak or whatever, gets onto a broom and then flies and not only flies, but levitates lies like a, like a fucking stealth bomber. Like she's been flying for 25 years of flight experience, Like she's been flying for 25 years of flight experience. Like more flight skill than Superman all of a sudden. Literally hovering right outside the tower, belting, singing to hover lungs, you're not

going to hold me back anymore. Meanwhile, all they've done is been like, you're the greatest ever. You're the greatest ever. Your potential is unmatched. And she's like, I'm tired of listening to you, hold me down. And she starts flying and she couldn't cast a levitate spell a minute ago.

Yes, very interesting, very provocative, Jared. No one gave a shit about the magic. Like, they were like, it's about her being held down. And I'm like, yeah, but the magic needs to make a little sense, needs to make a little sense. Yeah. Needs to make a little sense. We like understandable and cohesive magic systems. We like rules around here, Glass Cannon Radio. That's right.

And we like to make sure that you follow them. That's going to wrap it up for this week. Man. Was she even using a manipulate action? I don't know. I don't know. Did she provoke an A.O.O. from the monkeys? Did they have a reactive strike?

Wicked, wicked. I don't know. To everyone, every single one of you watching us here on Twitch, listening on the podcast, and especially those that are in Discord that came up and put their voice to the show today, called in. Thank you so, so much. We really appreciate it. We can't wait to be back next week. More to discuss next week. We'll do a little bit of Lynchian stuff and

you know, more and more things to come as well. So we have great ideas for this show. We can't wait to see it develop and evolve over time. I think it's going to be a really fun journey. Thanks for your calls. So many great points and great, you know, different angles on everything we were talking about. We'll see you next week. Thank you guys. We'll see you next time, everybody.

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