The Glass Cannon Podcast - Glass Cannon Radio #9 – Pendragon, Mad Max: Fury Road, Best Co-Op Games

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

Brian Holland, Chaosium's Director of Marketing, joins the guys to discuss a new release for the Pendragon RPG and the upcoming 10th Anniversary of one of his favorite films—Mad Max: Fury Road. Also, Joe's Three Querstions for Jared, best of the best co-op games, and Jared goes off on a Nerd Rant! Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/TNAq4j_9Ebk Access exclusive podcasts, ad-free episodes, and livestreams with a 30-day free trial with code "GCN30" at jointhenaish.com. Join Troy Lavallee, Joe O'Brien, Skid Maher, Matthew Capodicasa, Sydney Amanuel, and Kate Stamas as they tour the country. Get your tickets today at https://hubs.li/Q03cn8wr0. For more podcasts and livestreams, visit https://hubs.li/Q03cmY380. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With tons of free reality shows, you are totally free to watch what you love on Pluto TV. And for me, that's Dance Moms, Bar Rescue, The Challenge, and Jersey Shore. All totally free on Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never. You are listening to the Glass Cannon Radio with your hosts Jared Logan and Joe O'Brien. Welcome, Welcome! I have a structured settlement, but I need cash now! Today's show brought to you by J.G. Wentworth and Associates. This is Glass Cane Radio, the show where you can call in and argue with me and Joe about nerd stuff. As long as you keep in mind, we will be right.

You will be wrong. I'm Jared. This is Joe. Joe, go ahead. Get your shots in about what's going on with my nose. I have no idea what you're talking about. Look, this is also an audio podcast. This is something we don't have to highlight.

I mean, people that show up when we tape this show live, every Wednesday at noon, could see our faces if they showed up live on Twitch. They can watch the show. You can call into the show. You can get that opportunity when you come live to see the thing on Jared's face. Yeah.

Oh, it's a Band-Aid. Ha ha ha ha! The thing on my face is a Band-Aidaid. Yeah, but dude, you can't just say it's a bandaid. It's also in a very suspicious location, which is the location where people that got punched in the face at a bar have a bandaid. It is funny to say that on this show, where it's like, I say lots of things that would get me punched in the face

You have to do a part it was just the wrong glass cannon radio fan was in there so right I Went to the I'll explain I went to the glass cannon VIP experience at the last live show and I started running my mouth and Next thing you know I was on the floor, stars in front of my eyes. No, I have a bandaid over my nose because, uh, okay. So has this ever, you, you have a Irish swamp skin Joe. Does this ever happen to you where you go into the dermatologist and, um, she's like, she points to like a little

tiny spot on my nose. That's just like, it's felt a little dry and she's like, that could turn into cancer. And I'm like, Jesus, really? And she's like, yes, I need to freeze it off. And I go, ah, very well. Let us make an appointment. And I, and she's like, no, now. And then she takes like this canister of CO2 off the wall. And then without telling me, this is going to be extremely painful. She sprays, I don't know, whatever the shit is that freezes the liquid metal Terminator and Terminator 2,

she sprays that onto my face and I'm going and I'm going, oh, because I can't just scream. Right. And she's like, sorry, sorry. And then she sprays it. Anyway, sorry, is that going to affect? Is that going to is my face going to be? And she's like, oh, yeah, it's going to scab over and it's going to

it'll look kind of rough for a day. You can put a bandaid on it. And I'm like, great, it's gonna scab over and it's gonna it'll look kind of rough for a day you could put a bandaid on it and I'm like Great cool. Thanks for the pain warning and the warning that my face would be marred When I try to perform On glass can and radio. Don't you know I have a live show that I do Don't don't you do you have any idea who I am? That's what I said to her. Um, well, do you know who my father is? I absolutely hear you, dude.

I have not experienced this. I've been very lucky. First of all, I had good parents that had me put sunscreen on when I was a kid. I guess you didn't have that same benefit. No, no. As you know, I was a ward of the state. Yes, I know. So I went to a dermatologist for the first time, like, I don't know, I guess it was four years ago.

And my skin on my face especially has always been awful. And I just assumed like that's part of being a guy and an Irish guy at that. Like you just have bad skin. It is what it is. And people kept telling me to go to a dermatologist. I kept putting it off. So I finally go and I learned a whole lot about how to take care of myself a lot better. And then I got ointments and stuff and medicinal things that help strengthen your skin.

But yeah, she was like, she took one look at my head of hair and she was like, you need to wear a hat anytime you walk out the door. And now I'm seeing my dad is now getting these things burned off of his head all the time and his nose and his cheeks right here all the time. He has to get little things burned off because when he was growing up, they didn't wear sunscreen. That was for nerds. It gets you. It gets you eventually.

Yeah. It's just weird that the sun, which gives life to earth is also just this orb of death that is constantly ripping at the cellular makeup of my skin. That's cool. That's a fun thought. Well said. Anyway, I put on Usurin with a little bit of SPF in it now and skincare is so important guys. So today's glass canning topic number one

is skincare. Skincare awareness. If you would like to talk to us, that's not really the topic, but if you would like to talk to us a little bit when we get fully into the show, well maybe I should say what we're going to be talking about today. Yeah, see if anybody's interested. Yeah, and then you can decide, ah, maybe I won't call in or like, maybe I should say what we're going to be talking about today. See if anybody's interested. Yeah. And then you, then you can decide, ah, maybe I won't call in or like, ah, maybe I'll just go and watch old episodes of My Hero Academia instead. Listen, here are the topics today. We are going to get into Pen Dragon. Yes.

Yes. Pen Dragon, the incredible Arthurian romance RPG from Chaosium, a new series of which is currently airing on the Glass Cannon Network. We're going to do that. We might have a special guest for that, right, Joe? We do, yes. We will be joined for that by Chaosium's director of marketing, Brian Holland, who will be here momentarily to talk to us all about Pen Dragon.

So yeah, I'm psyched for that. That's going to be great. Then it is the 10 year anniversary of one of the coolest, smartest, most exciting sci-fi action movies of all time. That is Mad Max Fury Road. 10 years? It is. It came out 10 years ago.

It came out in 2015. We're gonna talk about a film, especially because that's one of Brian's favorite films. So we're gonna get into Mad Max Fury Road and the entire Mad Max saga. You can give your thoughts on that. After that, we have a new, very special segment called Three Questions,

where Joe is going to give me three questions that I have not had an opportunity to prepare for about TTRPG is gaming or game mastering. And I will answer them with all my erudition and incredibly firing from the word talking man. Good talk person. And then after that, oh, you know, Rob Krutkovich and Joe O'Brien have been streaming their game of a new co-op video game called Split Fiction.

And so we thought we'd get into co-op video games a little bit. What are your favorite co-op video games a little bit. What are your favorite co-op video games? A lot of mine are like the old arcade ones, that you'd have to actually put a coin into. So get in line, get on the Discord, call us, let us know what your favorite video games are that are co-op. I'd love some suggestions.

And then finally, I have a bone to pick. I have a nerd rant to close us out today. Beautiful. So if you would like to get in on this conversation, please get on the Discord. You have to be a member. Get on the Glass Can of Radio stage and raise your hand and we will call on you and you can talk on the show today. Disagree with us.

Agree with us. Shout us down, whatever you got to do. Get on there. If you're not already a subscriber, that's very easy. All you have to do is go to join the niche.com and join right now. And you could be talking in this episode with Joe and I and our guests. Guest Brian. So, uh, Joe, let's get, let's get just kind of rolling in here and Brian will show up in a minute.

Yeah, you know what? Actually Brian is here. So why don't we bring him in? We can chat it up with Brian for a minute and then we're gonna dive into, pardon me, into Pendragon, which I'm excited about. So yeah, Brian Holland, gonna make sure you get this work.

There he is. Hey dude. Hello, I hope everything's working properly. Can everybody hear me? You sound really good. I can hear you, buddy. Oh, that's great, that's great. You sound great to me.

Look, I have to, oh, I'm like a skew here. Hold on, there we go. There you go, center it. I have to apologize up front because I have screwed something up and I should have been aware of it before I came in to this call when I agreed to do it given the time zone differences and things like that. But I'm not sure what the fallout for this will be, but I just need to front load it. It is unfortunately here on this side of the world at this time of

day, it is the witching hour. It is 3 a.m. version of 3 p.m. Of course, as everybody knows, the time that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was put to the cross. So I don't know what's going to happen. Like as I'm sure like there's demon shit like I'm sure you guys, has this happened to you guys? You ever just like Jared, you ever just like wake up like just on your back like fucking Dracula Your eyes just open and you're like, hmm. Why am I just awake all of a sudden? You look at your clock You're like, oh, it's three in the morning. I'm about to be killed by a demon. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so, you know what? That's like so I don't know what one time a black Yeah, yeah, well that's not good. Yeah, that's not great. Um, so yeah, just just wanted to clear the air with that

You know, it's good to know and it is and we do That's not great. So yeah, just wanted to clear the air with that. You know, it's all happening. All right. It's good to know. And it is, and we do thank you so, so much for getting up at three in the morning to be on Glass Cannon Radio Live. Please, Joe, I got up at 2.45. 2.45 to be punctual and on time.

We really appreciate it. But let's get into Pen Dragon. So Pen Dragon is, as Jared introduced, an Arthurian romance RPG, which we have had the opportunity to play in a game run by Brian, and we started this last year at Gen Con. Well, it went over so well. We had such a great time

that we had been talking for a while, but how do we bring it back? How do we get it going over so well, we had such a great time that we had been talking for a while, but how do we bring it back? How do we get it going again? And eventually we've put together an extension to that original story. There were three episodes that aired last year, first one was session zero, and then a two part story that that pretty much wrapped up, you know, by the end. And, and now we are adding on an additional six episodes, which I'm very, very excited about.

And we wanted to have you on today because that fourth episode, which is really, you know, kind of a, a, an epilogue and a downtime session really, airs tonight here or on YouTube, uh, on the Glass Cannon YouTube, 8 PM Eastern. It is premiering the first step in new content, but it's going to be those same characters from last year. Brian, you GM'd this because obviously you are not only a director of marketing at KSIM, but a big fan of Pendragon. One of the things that you've said to me in passing is that the designer of Pendragon is known really worldwide in the RPG community as one of the best game designers that ever lived.

So why don't you first talk to me about a little bit about Greg Stafford, the designer of this game and the development of Pendragon. What makes it truly such a brilliantly designed RPG? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I think the first thing to talk about when we mentioned Greg Stafford is that he is also the founder of Chaosium, which this year is celebrating its 50th anniversary, which is very cool. So, you know, it's cool that Greg Stafford, he also created Glorantha, which is the setting for Runequest. And a lot of people like old school gamers in particular like, you know, like, oh, like Glorantha is

such this big influential setting. Sure, like that is like, you know, like, oh, like, Larranth is such this big influential setting. Sure, like that is what, you know, Greg must be most proud of, et cetera. But no, he actually is on record as saying because he did pass away in 2018. He's that he considered Pendragon to be his magnum opus, his great work when it came to role playing game and design. He had a long passion and love for the Arthurian legends and the way they were told and retold and trying to bring that experience and the way he interpreted those legends to the table is something that he held in very high regard for himself. And I think, uh,

pen dragon is kind of one of those games where, um, you, you might've heard of it. And if you're like me even, or like, like maybe most people you're like, oh yeah, like I know vaguely what, you know, King Arthur and that is about, don't know if I want to sit down at a table and pretend to be a knight. Like, you know, don't know if it's so ingrained in, in, you know, nerddom that it's something that really inspires me now that there's plenty of people that for whom it is really inspiring. But I think there's a lot of people that are just like, Oh yeah, I know about that. But yeah, probably not for me at the tabletop.

But if you actually try it out and the way Stafford put it all together in terms of mechanically and the way the world is presented. It really gets its claws in you. And I think that's probably the biggest thing. So spoiler alert, Joe, when I ran Pendragon for you folks at Gen Con last year, that was the first time I'd properly run the game. And I was like, oh. Had you played it before?

I had played it once with just in a one-off session run by my friend and prolific Call of Cthulhu writer Mark Morrison, who was a wonderful, wonderful GM and one of the people I know who's actually run through the great Pendragon campaign because we'll get into it as we're talking about it, I'm sure. But that campaign lasts for 80 in-game years. So it's a very long, very rewarding experience. And I think that's probably the thing. Like I'm sure you guys know, like Jared, when you run as a GM,

whenever you run any long form campaign, one of the best things is when characters at the table and NPCs sort of get a clearly established foothold in the story. And there are things that you can call back to and everything feels a bit more real and three dimensional than it does say and just just your one-off story or your first session of a campaign. And I think Pendragon is like that on crack. So it is very, very rewarding, I think, at least. So yeah, I'm really, really enjoying what we're doing at the moment.

And I'm excited for everyone at the Glass Can Network to check it out. The new episode's airing tonight or at a much more reasonable time for me, like 11 a.m. So. A much more reasonable time. Yeah, an 11 a.m AM premiere to continue that story. So I'm going to dive in for a second into the mechanics.

I love talking about mechanics, but then I do want to come back out and explore a little bit more the themes and tone of the Arthurian role-playing landscape, which is something I was not familiar with. But I think as a gamer, I also like digging into mechanics and game design and stuff like that. And what folks are going to see tonight without giving any spoilers or anything is a, what they call the winter phase in the mechanics of the game.

And it is a downtime session. So Jared, you and I, I mean, you were really the first GM to sort of, uh, to, to show me that sort of mechanic when we played blades in the dark, first game I ever played with you was blades in the Dark and you showed me downtime mechanics. And I remember thinking that this was not going to be good for radio, right? That it was like, well, this seems like housekeeping. This is stuff that should be done off air. And you were like, no, no, no, no, no. This is stuff that we can develop into really interesting sessions.

And as I look back, those were some of my favorite sessions. So, uh, Brian, talk a little bit about what are the downtime, what are some of the highlights of downtime mechanics of Pendragon called the Winter Phase? You know, how long does it last and what do characters kind of do during that time? Well, so generally you do the Winter, because the Winter Phase is called the Winter Phase

because in, not just in the Arthurian legends, but in medieval times in the 500s, people didn't do a whole lot during the winter. They're mostly concerned with not dying. So it's kind of like that is the period of time between adventures where you find out what's happening. And every Pendragon adventure or like story or session, whatever you want to call it, happens over the course of one full in game calendar year. So when you finish your session, a full year will pass before the next story begins,

before the next adventure begins. And the winter phase is the game's way of filling in that gap in time. And if you were just to sort of read through the various steps, you know, it looks fairly straightforward and it might not look particularly groundbreaking, but what the Winter phase does is really sort of provide you with a whole bunch of little tiny, like tiny story seeds and things that allow you to expand not just on your character but also on NPCs and characters that might be around you. And also, and as you'll definitely find out when you watch our series on the Glass Cannon, new NPCs come to light from Hull Cloth that even I,

like as the GM, had not planned to have exist until you know We sort of rolled this random event table and I say to Joe Joe So your character had their lusts tested for example this past year, you know And then it the book might just say you sleep with somebody you really sleep with somebody you shouldn't have Yeah, exactly You have to make a roll to see if you did that and then we sort of decide okay What happens and that develops into its own little role playing scene. And then maybe that means there is a character of, you know, Princess Peach, who, you know, is suddenly, you know, on this on the scene. And you know, I had introduced her before, but you had like a will they won't they thing

at court, everyone knows about it. So that's a new thing that now comes up in the story. So you had sex with Princess Peach? Let's not spoil too much. Mario's gonna kick your ass, dude. Yeah, for real. So then there's the bulk of that. Then you have all like sort of standard downtime stuff. So that's when you see if any of your skills increase. You see you can train certain skills or abilities that you otherwise didn't have. You also do other interesting things like roll to see if your horse survives

by rolling on the aptly named horse survival table, which everyone might be thinking like, well, it's just, it's just a horse. You know, it's not the end of the world on that same page on the left. There's the whole survival table on the right. On the left is the horse personality table. And you roll a D20 on that to find out what your horse... And it's very interesting to see that as soon as you ascribe even just one personality trait to a made up horse, suddenly you get very invested into whether or not that horse will die or not. Yeah, of course.

No, and I can see how, like you said, it starts becoming really three-dimensional and really sort of immersive because you're handling all these things you don't handle in a lot of fantasy role-playing games. You're handling whether your horse dies, which is, that makes the world so real, you know? Yeah. And it may seem tedious

and like an excessive mechanic, whatever. And I can tell you from playing it that like it cooks, like it moves, you know, that the horse survival role may seem like a weird bookkeeping element, but you get into it and it's so fast. You just, you do a role and you see what happens. And it's not like your horse lives or your horse dies. Like there's a really interesting spectrum of like's not like your horse lives or your horse dies. Like there's a really interesting spectrum of like, oh your horse got sick or your horse whatever. And now you have a penalty to next year's role.

It's not just live or die, okay? There's different, there's the horse could get, it's leg could get broken, the horse could get a bubonic plague. This is just to say that it develops into the story. So when you start playing the next story, especially if you have a battle or something, like you have issues. You know what I mean? Like, oh, my horse sucks right now. But I didn't want to just get rid of him and get a new one because I'm attached to this

horse because of his, you know, resilient personality or whatever. It's really, really interesting. Well, you mentioned it Jared about how these sort of elements bring in things that you don't typically do in your standard D&D or Pathfinder session. So Brian, speaking to folks that play a lot of Pathfinder, that play a lot of D&D, have never even thought of playing Pendragon, you know, what are some of the touch points that you would say are essential differences that make the game feel different than playing a game of D&D? Because I think in a lot of ways, if we take out the... Well, I don't want to say that. I just mean to say that if we focus on nights only, it seems like, oh, it's D&D, but you

can only play a fighter. Right? Sure. Sure. Yeah sure so what makes that? Why is it not that? Yeah, well I think it's important just to address the proverbial elephant in the room first something that people may not know about me Is that despite the fact I've been playing role-playing games for over half my life And I've been working in the industry for like six seven years now

I've never actually played a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Wow. Now, I have played a shit ton of Pathfinder 1A and 2A. Apparently they are somewhat similar. But technically, I've never sat down to play Hasbro's D&D. I've heard wonderful things. That's just a funny thing. Obviously, I understand how the game works.

Yeah, no, so you make a good point. And that is usually one of the things that can sort of get people offside. It's like, oh, yeah, cool. Oh, yeah. Oh, so cool. Can I be like a different kind of thing? No, you have to be a knight. The game is about knights.

But the core question of the game, and this is again, going back to Greg Stafford, what he was putting forward, the core conceit of the game is what kind of night will you become? And he means that in a number of ways. He means that sort of both with your personality traits, because the game does have extensive mechanics. And also the core mechanics are surround your personality traits and how those traits ebb and flow and change kind of just like they do in real life as you react to experiences and things that happen to you. And also when we get into generational stuff, how you are raised, like if your, your parent really hates the Picts, maybe your children will also hate the Picts to some degree, right? And that's how

their passions are inferred. But while everyone is playing a knight, you're not all necessarily playing a fighter with the same skills. Like if you want to play a knight who is also mainly proficient in archery, you can do that. If you want to play a knight who uses an axe instead of a sword, like there's still a depth and breadth there. And I think that once you start, particularly when you make your own character, you'll start to see how while the game doesn't really have classes, it can generate very, very different types of characters, which I think you personally experienced firsthand, Joe, because we opted for the random role method.

For people who haven't gone and watched our session zero of this campaign yet, I implore you to do so for a number of reasons. Minor spoiler, but Joe, you weren't super stoked with the traits that you were rolling up when you were making your character, if I remember correctly. Yeah. They weren't really ideal for team play, right? Like the highest statistic I rolled, trait statistic I rolled was selfishness. And I was like, God. And like, I think it was Nora Ibrahim who plays in the game. You know, the highest thing she rolled was like, like valor or devotion or something.

Devotion to God, yeah. Yeah, devotion to God. I was like, come on, man. Like, no, I'm gonna be the asshole the whole time. Well, then it starts to develop more and more, and you see that there are a lot of layers to this. So I roll a character who is very selfish, but who is also, say, extremely prudent, right? Isn't necessarily reckless.

Who is very selfish, but is honest, right? As opposed to deceitful. And those through those traits. You're cruel too, aren't you Joe? Isn't your character as cruel? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mentioned this to Jared. I also happen to roll a high cruel instead of merciful. Also- I love that the game makes you step, I mean, if you use this random rolling method, which I love a random rolling method. Yeah, me too. I love that it makes you maybe step out of your comfort zone in terms of the type of character you're role playing. Yeah. And so I was really inspired by, so after that, after creating that character, I thought, how do I,

how do I lean into this a little bit more? How do I try to make this so that I'm not like a miserable character to play with for the other characters? And I thought a lot about George R. R. Martin, honestly, because he's one of my inspirations for those kinds of settings. And I feel a lot about George R. R. Martin, honestly, because he's one of my inspirations for those kind of settings. And I feel like it fit really well because especially if you've read the collection A Night of the Seven Kingdoms, which is so highly focused on knights, you get a, there's a really great sense of how wildly different knights can be in terms of their honorability, their trustfulness. They're not all good guys, but they're not all bad guys.

And also, even the guys that are bad guys aren't always bad guys, right? Like, there's a real spectrum to the whole thing. And so I thought, how do I play the guy who is obviously self-interested, who's obviously focusing on maybe his title or his name or his wealth or his family or growing his whatever. But you also don't have to be evil. So it really helped me kind of center on, well, this makes an interesting character.

The game also is an interesting if everybody is devoted to the same God, because there's also a brilliant underscore throughout this entire setting, which is Christianity versus paganism. And so that really helps give depth to the characters. Some are Christian, some aren't. That's interesting. If everybody was Christian and everybody was devoted and everybody was valorous and everybody was selfless and everybody was merciful, it would get boring very fast. And so the game really does allow you to explore those different areas. And you say like, oh, well, rolling those random tricks might take your player agency away. One of the things I love the most is there might be a situation where I feel so strongly

that as a player, I'm not comfortable with my character being cruel in this situation. It's like, well, you got to roll on it. So you get a chance to roll. And if you fail your role of being cruel, you can be merciful and then your trait starts to move, right. And, and you start to like, it becomes easier down the line to be more merciful or you don't, you succeed at the cruel role and you, and you

just got to be cruel. It is what it is, but you could try again another day. It's fun. It, it, it, you know, brings those rolling mechanics into personality and character development more than just, you know, trying to hit a monster with a sword, uh, which I like, I really enjoy that, that element. I think it's also not about removing the ability to, um, role play either based on your choices. So like the example you gave before Joe about how you don't want to be cruel, you have to

roll and see if you fail your cruel. That comes into play when any of your traits have us reach a certain level, like a certain height where, and that's sort of like the downside of getting very high in a particular trait. And it doesn't just have to be a negative trait like cruel. We've seen in our game, no spoilers, but one of our players has a famously high honesty and that can kind of be a pain in the ass

if you think if the players and the characters have come up with maybe a little white lie that'll make everything okay again. And if someone's like, oh, actually, I kind of need to tell everybody the truth because that's just who I am. That becomes a thing, right? And you know, if, but if you don't have a famously high trait, you as a player can still

choose to act in accordance with the lower number if you want. Like you still have the choice there, but those, those traits are there to sort of guide you to help you figure out what your character would do in any given situation which is I think worth highlighting as well because Well, you said Joe, you know, if everyone was Christian and valorous and sort of the same it would be kind of boring and That could come up you might either just through point by or random role have a bunch of people who you know Have all of the knightly virtues, nightly traits

very high. But what happens with the game is you'll be introduced to moral quandaries that presumably the four players at the table who are different people with different experiences might choose to read and react to differently and when that happens their characters traits will also change in accordance over the course of the game and that's that's where this core conceit of the game comes is what kind of night will You become is if you look at like nights from the Arthurian legends like Lancelot like again We'd like to say that you know, maybe you don't know I don't know anything about the Arthurian legends But you probably know more than you realize like you've've probably heard of Sir Lancelot. You might know that,

oh yeah, he was supposedly the most valorous and famous and best of all the knights. You might've also heard that didn't he sleep with King Arthur's wife? What was that about? And then the other thing you might hear is like, well, actually in the version of the tales I've heard is he was actually very handsome, which at the time people would, you know, they really put handsomeness very high in the, in the, uh, uh, the scale of, you know, what you'd like about people in general in society. It was very different to what it is now. But because he was so handsome and charismatic, he would just be like, oh, yes, you heard about that great battle, but he definitely wasn't that.

Oh, yeah, I led the Vanguard and went, oh, shit, did he really? Was he just out there lying about stuff? And he'd never actually participated in any of these fights. He never actually was involved in any of these great quests, but he just told people he was because he had a very high deceitful. And you know, that's, that's, that's one example of a different kind of night. And I really like your point about a game of Thrones and the song of ice and fire. Cause even just there, you know, you look at someone like, so Barristan Salmi versus

so Jamie Lannister or, you know, the mountain was a, was a night too. It's been a while since I read that. Yeah, yeah, he was. Yeah. They're all, they're all, they're all not in the hand. They're all different people,, yeah, he was. Yeah, yeah. And the hound. They're all not in the hand. They're all different people. And the hound.

Distinct personalities, distinct objectives, and yeah, but they all fall under the term knight. Yeah. All right, let me ask you about, and by the way, I want to get to callers here as soon as possible. So if anybody wants to talk to Brian about Pendragon, if anybody has questions for Brian about Pendragon or maybe the story so far that has re-aired the three episodes. Feel free.

Please raise your hand. We'd love to get you in here to talk. Talk to me about magic in this setting because I was a little bit, I had no idea what to expect and it still is surprising and unexpected to me in the way that it manifests itself. Talk to me a little bit about the setting and how magic works within it. So this is another thing. So magic in the setting is not something, generally speaking, and there may be future supplements that address this, is not something that player characters will have access to. Magic was used by people like Merlin or Morgan Le Fay or witches

or was practiced by performing miracles from like a member of the church and whatnot. And I think it's at this point is good to bring up another tenet of Greg Stafford's design philosophy, which was your Pendragon will vary or your pen dragon may vary. And what he meant when he said that was, you know, he's putting forward rules and a setting as he sees it. And the game that you play will be different. And you don't need to, you know, have a slavish devotion to whatever he is putting forward because just like the Arthurian legends themselves that have been told and retold all these various versions, the story you tell and the setting you put forward at your table will be very different. And the books sort of give you a bit of guidance with this. So Magic as it exists, in our game, for instance,

we are doing a probably more grounded, more Song of Ice and Fire like setting where there's not necessarily a whole lot of whimsy like you would see if you wanted to base your Pendragon game more on TH White or Sword and the Stone or something like that. So magic can manifest generally in a way that only NPCs have. And what I like to do as a GM is present situations where while the player characters, or the player knights I should say, might not necessarily pick up on it, the players themselves might understand that, oh, there is a... I have the clues here to establish an actual explanation for this

magical thing that my character has just seen, even if I don't. Right? So yeah, that's the thing you can do. And when the book, the Game Master handbook in particular talks about how you handle magic, there is a system for it. But there's also, it makes a point of saying the way you present magic to the players is a statement you are making about how magic exists in your version of the world. So for instance, in our game, again, going back to us, there's a scene in the first story, which any of you, if you haven't seen yet, it's in the Vengeful Giant. I think this occurs in part two.

It's a mild spoiler, but nothing major. The characters do meet a NPC who is rumored to be a user of magic. And the players may have their own... Sorry, the player knights all have their own varying varying opinions on whether or not this person will actually use magic and Then there's a scene and then when they go into a cave and you know, there's there's something strange burning There's some sort of weird thing burning on the in the in the in the campfire It's got a strange smell and they go in and they meet this person, you know

And I described I forget who it is But say it was you Joe so you look at your hand and your hand suddenly becomes like meet this person, you know, and I described, I forget who it is, but say it was you, Joe. So you look at your hand and your hand suddenly becomes like an old person's hand and then stops being like an old person's hand and it's like, oh shit, like is this person using magic? Is NPC or is whatever she's burning in the fire, actually a hallucinogen of some kind.

And you know, your players might not know that. Whereas if we were going, yeah, yeah. So just it lets you to sort of move stuff around. It's different. Yeah. Yeah. I also feel that that fits in with the theme that you talk about, about it being inspired by Song of Ice and Fire. To me, that stood out about that setting. There was a lot of stuff that was like, was that magic? Is it not magic? Is there a divine connection here? Is this God real? Is this not magic? Is there a divine connection here? Is this God real?

Is this not real? Or if you ever read any Bernard Cornwell, he does historical novels, but people believe in magic very strongly in those settings. And he always does like a little bit of a trick like that where you can see how they think it's magic. Like, but it's not like as a modern reader, you're like, yeah, but it could have been a hallucinogen or they could have hit their head really hard and

imagined that or something like that. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would actually put that as another touch point. I've only read the first one, Bernard Cornwell, obviously- The Winter King? The Winter King, I was going to say. He also wrote the- Yeah, The Winter King? The Winter King, I was going to say. Yeah, the Winter King is so good.

Yeah, so the Winter King is his, he did a trilogy of them, but it's his telling of the Arthurian legends and that is much more on par with what we're doing in the glass cannon version of the story. Cool. Yeah, so he also wrote, what's the other one? It's like the Last Kingdom, is that what it's called? The last kingdom, yeah. Which is obviously set later.

That's when the Vikings were invading Britain. Right. But the 1500s or something like that, I think, or slightly earlier. But like a thousand years after this, but the setting hasn't changed too much, turns out. But there's a lot in that you can also draw to your Pendragon game as well.

Let's take a call. Let's take some calls, yeah. Let's take a call. Let's take some calls. Let's bring in somebody to chat with Brian. Sweet Threat had said they were interested right away. Sweet Threat, if you're still here, can you hear us? Can you hear me? Yeah, we got you. What's going on, Sweet?

How are you? Hey there. Yeah, I'm calling from Copenhagen, Denmark. So I think that might be a first. It might be, Peter. Uh, yeah, I'm calling from Copenhagen, Denmark. Uh, so I think that might be a first. It might be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of time zones on the board today.

I just want to say it's not lost to me that the producers or the publishers of Call of Cthulhu are also producing two other systems that feel like metastomes. They like to read. They feel like they induce psych damage in the best way possible. They feel like they break something in you and you realize something true about the hobby. After reading Runecrest, Glorantha and Pendragon. It feels insane after you read them that everyone on the planet is playing one of these games. It's bizarre. And I keep seeing it and it's the moment that people get into like CD systems in motion

that something cracks and you realize something like real. And it's both with the greater Gen Con it's both with with the greater gencom performances of both systems with the glass camera that I like I ran out and bought both systems at my local game store. That's very cool. So you're saying you're a fan. A little bit, kinda, kinda, I guess I could be convinced. Sweet, are you referring to the fact that the Pendragon books are kind of laid out to

look like a medieval manuscript with the marginalia? Well, I mean, it's also crazy to look at what seems like an illuminated text in the year 2020 something. And that's just how a book looks. But it's just, it's when you read the books, it's hard to place how to use them in the same way that you would a D&D or Pathfinder book, because it's really obvious about the way that it wants you to use them. You can go to the encounter building rules in Pathfinder or something, and that's clear. You can go to the bestiary, but in Pendragon or in Glorantha, it's much more like in Glorantha, you're supposed to build a person who's a part of society who just goes adventuring sometimes.

supposed to build a night that's supposed to strive for the roundtable. It's much more than like in my mind, a nebulous task, but the moment you see it in movement, it becomes such an unbelievable experience to see. It's crazy. I agree with you. And you're going to see as the story continues, uh, sweet. I, and then thank you for calling and really appreciate your thoughts on those systems The I'd really love you to check out the new episodes that that come in

starting tonight because Brian is introducing mechanics into the game from the newly released Game-masters handbook for pen dragon which it came out or it's coming out. The upcoming. You'll be able to preorder it next week. Yeah. Next week, you can preorder it. It's going to feature some mechanics. You'll get to see some things that they laid out in there and really fascinating mechanics. Just really cool things that, like you said, they deepen your involvement in the world so clearly. I don't want to talk about them right now because I want you to be as surprised as I was playing it when they come up how much it adds to the original rulebook. It's really awesome stuff.

Brian, how long has the Game Master handbook been in development and how do you decide sort of what is missing from the core game that needs to be added in this guy? Sure. Yeah. So as I mentioned, Greg Stafford, founder of the company, actually did pass away in 2018, which was about a year before I started with the company. So while I definitely was in his orbit when I was going to GenCon and stuff, never actually met him and it's a it's a real bummer for me personally But he wrote pen dragons sixth edition as his magnum opus before he before he passed away And just to give you I might have told this story before it's not really a story. So the anecdote but Just to give you an idea of the kind of dude that

Greg Stafford was creatively He came up with Runequest Glorantha when he was living in San Francisco in the 1970s Not sure if that gives you an idea of the kind of vibe. Oh, yeah He sorry he actually said he doesn't say he created Glorantha. He says he discovered Glorantha And he died in 2018 from a heart attack that he had while he was in a sweat lodge. So this guy lived an alternative lifestyle and very psychedelic, very cool, very interesting life. I'm waiting for somebody to write a biography about him because he started his... Before he founded Chaosium, he was a door-to-door

belt buckle salesman. He also purchased... The other fun thing about Greg Stafford, he actually purchased the very first ever copy of Dungeons and Dragons because the story is somewhat been retold but basically his board game White Bear and Red Moon which was the first ever Lurantha game he was getting printed and he had a friend who was going to the printer to pick some stuff up and there was another person there printing a whole bunch of stuff he's like's like, Oh, what's that? He's like, Oh, it's this, this, this game, this sort of tabletop game working on. He said, Oh, my friend, Greg loves those. Can I, can I buy one of those off you? He's like, yeah, right off the printing press. And that guy he

bought it from was Gary Gygax, who was there printing the white box. And so yeah, and Greg, sorry, many years later, obviously, in the 2000s, he was telling this story. I mean, I wish I still had that. I gave it to a buddy so he could run it for me and I don't have it because that would be worth a lot of money now. So the very first ever copy. Anyway, so what was I talking about? Greg Stafford.

So he wrote these books before he passed away. So they were sort of all put together. So when you say how long has it been development, like a while because, you know, it was then, and then David Larkins, the current creative director of Pendragon and who the man who Greg named as his literary heir has been putting it together. And he's a, he's David Larkins is a great guy. And he's been working on it and just sort of fine tuning what's going on for a few years now. So the Pendragon Game Master's Handbook is essentially the other half of the core

rules. We have the core rule book, which is obviously player focused. And like most GM handbooks, this one has a bunch of sort of optional plug and play additional things that deepen the game. So one of them is, you know, a system for when there is a feast. You know, like that's that was a big deal. And you know, there's a whole little subsystem for how feasts work, which you of course, don't have to use those mechanics. If you don't want you can just read the importance of feasts and you know, then, you know, interpret that at your table. And then there are things like, you like, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but I think it's Finne Amor, which is the Arthurian act of romance and love. Because

back then during those times, romance was kind of like everything but the final act. Right? You know, and it's kind of like, you know, once this we might say, you know, once the thrill of the hunt was gone, like it was kind of like it was over. Right? So if you have actually consummated your flirtatious relationship was kind of like, well, that's over. It's kind of dead.

It's not really exciting anymore. And there's a whole subsystem for, you know, what does that look like? You know, at court, you know, what is flirting like, you know, you know, are you flirting with somebody that you shouldn't be flirting with and what and how does that manifest? So there's a whole bunch of flirting is on the character sheet. We're just as low like long sword. Yeah, it is a skill just like all the battle skills. Yeah, flirting. It's so amazing. Obviously this book also has a bestiary in it, the whole section on magic and how you wanna do magic,

your game table and a whole bunch of other rules, including an expansion on family stuff. And yeah, cause as we've talked about, the game becomes generational because every session, a year passes, your character gets older. If you have children, they get older. and eventually you can resume play as one of your children. If your character dies or you just need to retire them because there's also a section on getting old and you know, uh,

geriatric stuff starts coming in at 35 years of age, which I thought was tough. Yeah. Tough year for me in particular. Middle ages were rough. Yeah. Yeah, tough year for me in particular. Middle ages were rough. Yeah, exactly. Middle ages were rough. Let's take another call. Ghost Thorn, if you want to join us here, hop on and talk to Brian while we have him here if you're still there.

Can you hear us? Can you hear me? We can. Yeah, we can. What's up, Ghost? Hello. Not much, gentlemen. I actually would just like to thank Brian and you, Joe, because you're on right now, for the bachelor party live play that you did a couple of years ago.

It's by far probably one of my most favorite shows you guys have done. And it is my go-to when I'm feeling anxious or sad to watch that and just have you guys go off and be absolutely silly and thrilling all at the same time. Amazing. Oh, thank you so much. Perfect casting for Joe who just, he reads as guy at a bachelor party. That's his overall vibe. Oh, and Joe, your bachelor party guy was the best douche in the world.

Douche-acular, that guy. You just honed in on what that type of stock guy was really like back then. And oh, man. Thank you so much. That's so kind. And we're and that is a precursor, right? Sort of a precursor to Alone Against the Static, which is the book that Brian wrote that won him an ennys.

I think you'll find it won me two ennys, but that's okay. That's right. Two ennys. That's just one. No, it's fun. If you liked Bachelor Party and you haven't read Alone Against the Static is a Call of Cthulhu book and it is a solo play book, so you can play it without friends, which is why I wrote it, because I don't have anyone to play with because I've got no friends. But no, Bachelor Party, I agree with you. Thank you so much for saying that because I think about it all the time. A little behind the curtain thing that people may not understand is that I was driving with

Chaosium from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Indianapolis for Gen Con. And it was the day before and I got an email from Troy saying I think it was Matt was sick and they had a gap and could I come on and run something in an hour and a half, you know, with like a day and a half's notice, I think. And I was like, yeah, I think I've got something because I was riding alone against the static at the time at the time and I said oh you guys just need to Just all make characters and you just need to think of why four dudes would be at a cabin in the woods together And then I'm in the 90s and they came back and said yeah, we're having a bachelor party I'm like the rest of this writes itself

Do anything and look my one regret is the Jared you weren't part of that table and I'm not brown-nosing I just think that would have even been I just want you I just want to play in a game that you run. That's all. That's all right. We'll figure it out one day. The moment during that game though, that I was just like, oh, I need to, I can't interrupt. I just want to watch these four maniacs

just play their characters was, I was talking about this with Rob Kirkovich the other day. There's early on, there's a bit where someone says like, oh yeah, I brought like porn, like let's put porn on to watch. And then whoever said it clearly had not thought about like some of the pre-established relationships between the characters.

And Rob just says in character, yeah, I can't wait to watch porn with my brother. Like, you know, what are we doing? And I'm just like, this is so, this is great. So yeah, if you haven't watched Bachelor Party from Paul, it only goes for like an hour. I think it's an hour and a half. I think it's an hour. I think it's like, it's a tight hour, man. Maybe 90 minutes on YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. And it was really scary too. Anyway, Gus, thank you. Thank you for bringing it up. Thank you so much for saying that. Appreciate that.

Really appreciate it. Great to talk to you. Let's get one more call in and then we got to, we got to keep it moving here. I'd love to hear Brian's thoughts on Fury Road here in a second. Soloqvist. Yo, can you hear me? We got you. What's going on, man? Oh, sweet.

Well, first of all, thank you for existing. It's awesome to listen to you and I'm pretty new in the niche and everything. Well, welcome. Thank you. Nice to meet you. Thank you. And I'm calling from Stockholm, Sweden, just to- Oh my gosh. ... have to do a northern thing. I was thinking about, well, it ties a little bit into what you talked about last week, when we talked about how a system can either promote roleplay or kind of... Yeah, exactly. And that's, I think, what I really love about the Pendragon personality

system, that it's rules and gamifying kind of that really, really promotes role play in a really, really cool way. And I think a moment that I really liked and that really showed that was when Sir Quiggen Sir Quegan had an Irishman at his mercy. And that was a really crystallizing moment, I thought, for his personality, but also for the system. It was very tense and very interesting. And I just wanted to applaud both Joe and all the other guys who played that and also Brian for the game mastering and- For putting us in that horrible situation. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Putting Irishmen in your way. Well, thank you, Solakvist. I really appreciate calling in from Sweden. That's so awesome. Thanks for calling in. Just to tack onto that real fast, I hadn't voiced this before, but I guess here's what I love about playing. Solakvist talked about how the system promotes role play. It doesn't get in the way of it. In fact, it helps color it so much

and bring it to life. When you play Pendragon, correct me if I'm wrong, Brian, but like, there's no such thing as a Pendragon optimization guide, right? Like, there's no best way to build a character to survive longer or to win the game. There's no winning really. It's really all just the life you live and how your character develops in that life and when they're presented with challenges. One thing that you do so well, Brian, is present moral quandaries, as you mentioned them earlier, moments of decision where you have to go one way or another,

there's really no gray area here, how do you do, what do you do here? And when you make those choices, they have consequences, right, like, and your character develops over time. There's no concept of like, oh, how to build the best night. Is that safe to say Brian? Like it's, it's really brilliant design because there is no clear way to make a better story by the way you put your stats in.

Well, I would say that, I mean, you can use the best way to play if you want to do that. I mean, you can definitely put more points into your sword skill or your horsemanship skill, which is something that for some reason the players in our game are choosing not to do that much. I think in our last winter phase, no spoilers, I think it was like, Oh, my all right is seven now. That's great. I'm like, cool. I guess no one cares about combat. That's fine. But I'm just saying the optimization guide could be like, make sure you have a sort of at least 15. Otherwise, you know, it's not going to be great. Yeah. But yeah, no, it's, it's, it's, uh, like I said, I like to play the game, but beginning presenting these personality traits by introducing, yeah. Um, yeah, more moral quandaries and you know, w that there is no, there is no

necessarily, uh, you might have two clear options, but neither one of them is 100% good or bad and I I as a GM like this, I mean, and this is me showing my, you know, I mentioned earlier that I've never played D&D. So what a lot of people might've been thinking is like, okay, well, what the fuck was your first role playing game? And that's when, you know, I told her, well, my first role playing game was actually vampire. And a lot of that comes from this because that game is about morality and it's about trying not to become the thing that you are through a negative light. So try and present these moral quandaries which reinforce what the game is about and what kind of knight will you become, which

is essentially asking what kind of person are you? That's how these things come about. And some of you might be acting like I know you Joe, because we've established that clearly Sir Queegan with his high cruelty and high selfishness is nothing at all like Joe O'Brien is in real life. Nothing at all. Oh, Brian. You are making choices that you wouldn't realize. This is really strange for me to try to get

into these character shoes. I remember once as an aside that like during a scene where we were all talking about, oh, you know, I wasn't involved, that where all the players are talking about what they should or shouldn't do. I think you actually said something like, well, yeah, me, Joe, I just knows, you know, this thing's a fucking lunatic. Like we should, like, it's so easy for me. If it was just me, I'd be like, oh, this is cut and dry, but it's not you. You're looking at your traits and being like, well, I could do this, but I'm looking now and I'm saying, you know,

this particular trait is higher than the other one. So maybe I wouldn't be thinking. It helps you. I think sometimes players jump into fantasy role playing games and they just play themselves, which is fine. Other times they want to play against the, who they would naturally gravitate toward and they run into a challenge. They don't click with the character. It's not sinking in and they find themselves lost in role playing scenes. They find themselves hard to find motivations.

They find how would have a hard time reacting to one thing or another. And then maybe something happens and it clicks and you're like, Oh, I get this person now. I get it. I think what pen dragon does is it really gives you all of the tools you need to get there faster, to get to where you understand your character and how they would react to different stimuli faster and with kind of a guide that makes it easy and fun to do. Uh yeah, I think that's one really strong element

of that trait system is it helps you role play. It makes you better at it faster, which is a cool concept that I don't think is inherent in the stat systems of Pathfinder or D&D. Yeah, yeah. And I have also found that when I've run this game as demos at conventions here in Australia, people who are newer to role playing, sometimes you're like, oh, you know, and the king walks in and says, what are you doing

here? What do you do? And some people like the like deer in the headlights, like, okay, well, what do I do? I don't know. And you're like, well, you can say, well, hey, look, look at your character sheet, you'll notice that you have a high dishonesty. So maybe your character will lie if you want to like that's and then people will be like, oh, okay, I can use that as a roadmap for what I think I'm going to do. And like I said, I've already highlighted as well that you're also not locked into that. You as a player can still make choices and then that will change your various traits and whatnot. So I do think it's very fun, interesting, and obviously, Jared, would love to have you involved. Guest star, guest star, Tom, baby.

What is this Ken star in? Yeah, yeah, here he comes. I love that, love that idea. For now though, let's keep it moving because Brian- Let's keep going. We always talk to Brian about Chaosium stuff, and Brian has a lot more interests than just Chaosium products. When I asked him, I said, we want to have you on the show.

What's something else nerdy that you're into? And he rattled off a bunch of stuff, but one of the things on that list caught my eye, and that was the film Mad Max Fury wrote. Jared, why don't you introduce this, talk to us about, you know, your experience with this film and how this first comes into your life. Sure, well, let me just set up the film.

If people haven't seen it or maybe it's been a while, this is the fourth Mad Max film. It came out in 2015, directed by the Mad Max man, George Miller. It might be the greatest action movie of its decade, at least, if not more years than that. The entire film is one giant chase across the desert. It stars Tom Hardy, it stars Charlize Theron, and I think Nicholas Holt is in there as well, if I'm not mistaken. there as well, if I'm not mistaken. And the story is Furiosa, what was her? She's Imperiax Furiosa? Imperator Furiosa.

Imperator, thank you. Thank you. Imperator Furiosa, she gets in the war rig with all of Immortan Joe's concubines and takes off with them across the desert, saving them from stealing them away from stealing them, saving them from being sexual chattel for a Morton Joe, a big pale, scary looking warlord motherfucker. Uh, she takes off, uh, and, uh, Joe's minions set off after her, including one of them with Max actually chained to the front of the car.

And that's how Max eventually escapes and Morton Joe joins with Furiosa and tries to save these women in what is, like I said, one of the longest, most incredible action-packed chases in cinema history. So that's what the movie is. I love the movie. I watched some of it last night to prepare for the conversation this morning. Um, I think it's for sure the best Mad Max movie.

Uh, but I'd love to hear Brian's thoughts on why this movie is important to him and why he loves it so much. Yeah. And I'm going to kick it to you one second, Brian, because I, when I Brian's thoughts on why this movie is important to him and why he loves it so much. Yeah. And I'm going to kick it to you one second, Brian, because when I asked you, you laid out things such as Tolkien and the entire Lord of the Rings franchise, among other things. Which we'll have you back to talk about. Right.

Of that degree, because you had just reread the books and you read the Silmarillion and everything. It was that, there was some other huge, huge property and you were like, and Mad Max Fury Road. To me, that just says a lot that it's lumped in with those things. So please talk to us about this. I just want to disperse any assumptions people are making. Of course, the Australian guy is a big mad max head.

Right. Sure. First of all, I'm a first generation Australian. Both my parents migrated here. So I'm Swedish Irish. Right? Okay. And I feel- So when are you getting shit burn off of your skin? Well, I tell you, I've got so many anecdotes about skin cancer to share after that opening bit. We'll get into that later. I don't want to distract them with your rogue conversation. So yeah, I feel not one shred of nationalism or national pride. I think there are a number of flaws with this country that makes it very difficult to be a proud Australian in my mind. And it's not

in my blood, so to speak. However, I am an Australian when it comes to Mad Max. I'm like, that was us. That was George Millers. My boy. He's my guy. Like, this is sick. I don't care that Tom Hardy can't do an Australian accent until Shelley's the wrong didn't even try. I don't care about that. Because you got Hugh Keys Laurie being, you know, in there being like, where are they? You know, and it sounds sick, you know, and it's just, I'm like, that's it. That's what's going on. But this movie is so good, you do not need to have seen any of the other Mad Max films. It was my first Mad Max film. It was my first Mad Max film as well. So that's what I'm saying. I'm not just out here being like, yeah, Australian films are sick. You should all go see them.

Like I'm not saying that. I'm saying Fury Road is a masterpiece. And I went to go see it in 2015. I was 25 years old and I went to the cinema by myself and midday on like a Tuesday, I didn't have a lot going on back then. And I was like, I've heard this is good. But I know that I, I don't care about cars. I only got my license when I was 30. So it wasn't even driving at this time. And I also zone out during action

sequences in most films. I'm usually just like, you know, I get it. It's just not for me. And then I sat there and I was like, Oh, shit, maybe I've just never really seen a good action Yeah, I was like, because I was clued in and what I love so much about Fury Road is that it it, it doesn't hold your hand. We live in like this era of the marvelfication of cinema where everything is so clearly explained expository to you because they wanna capture as wide an audience as possible.

And this film doesn't explain anything, but it gives you clues and context clues to pick it up yourself. And that is so I find that particularly also, that's a big thing about when I'm reading books, I really like books that allow me and George Martin is a genius with this too, because he never, he never doesn't, that doesn't just have a chapter that explains the history of westeros before you start reading a game of Thrones, you

pick it up through osmosis. And that's what happens in it. Like there's a scene in Fury Road where Tom Hardy's character, Max says to Nux, the war boy that Nicholas Holt plays, he just, he just, he's standing next to the truck, the war rig, and just says, are you a black thumb? And, and Nux just goes, oh yeah. And you're cool. That's all that was said. And then they start talking about how they need to fix the truck. And on this, like, well, I've heard the expression green thumb is supposed to mean you're good with plants. So I guess black thumb is like, oh, you're good with engines and oils.

And that's never actually established, but I'm assuming that's what's going. That's just one example of what's going on. Everything else is very much, it's in the text, but it's not, it's non-expository exposition is what I going on. Like everything else is very much, it's in the text, but it's not, it's non-expository exposition, is what I would say. And that's one of the reasons. It shows you the world, it doesn't tell you what is going on in the world.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's almost, for a large portion of the film, almost no dialogue. Tom Hardy says almost nothing. Like, so it's awesome because it does what film does well, which is it's purely visual, so much of it, you know? And then the 90% of the effects I read are practical. So there really are people jumping over trucks

on dirt bikes, you know? There really are, you know, there's real fire coming out of that rig that the big, the motor. Here's some stuff that you might not know. I think the word you're looking for was the doof wagon. The doof wagon. That's what the car is called.

This is the car, if you're familiar with the film, where it has the doof warrior, who is the guy shredding on a guitar. Yeah. Who's who's who's an Australian man named Iota, who I saw played Frank and Furtar in an Australian production of Nice. Rocky Horror a few years ago.

This was before he blew up as the Doof Warrior from Fury Road. Yeah. So that wagon, which is it's just nothing but speakers and everything. And then this guy's just shredding on a guitar and spewing flame, flame out of the end of the guitar. And it's kind of like, you know, this is this version of like a war drum and, you know, a trumpet blast talking about Pendragon marching into war. This guy's just shredding on a guitar the whole time. Now fun thing about the Doof wagon,, we're talking about everything that's practical,

George Miller, who was the director, who's now like a million years old. So he's doing very well when he was making this movie. His dedication to the practicality of the film was that the set designers and whatever, like they built the Doof Wagon, like this car with like all this ridiculous amount of speakers on, they're like,

hey George, hey, come check it out, George, Hey, come, come check it out, man. We're done. Come check it out. And George at the time was like 70. He's like, Oh, this is sick. Don't yeah. Yeah. Look, it'll be great up there.

And he's like, well, hell yeah, bro. Let's fire it up. Let's, let's listen to it. And they're like, what do you mean? He's like, I want to hear it. Let's go. And they're like, Oh, they're not real speakers. Like you'll add that in post, right?

He goes, no, this needs to work. Music needs to come out of those speakers. Start again. And they did. Yeah. So it's just that kind of dedication to practicality. That design philosophy comes through in the final film. Yeah, exactly.

That's also why the development of the film was an absolute hell and everybody who worked on it was like, we thought we were going to die and that this movie was going to be ridiculous and terrible. Then it got nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture. Yeah. I felt I'd never seen Mad Max. I had never had any interest. I'm not a zombie guy.

I know it's not zombies, but I'm not a post-apocalyptic guy. And I'm not a car guy, just like you, Brian, like it holds no interest for me. And I heard it was good. So I went and saw it and simply put what really jumps out to me very, very early on. And then throughout is this, it can have all this crazy, weird shit that I normally wouldn't be into. And it doesn't matter because the characters are so good. Like right out of the gate, you have such a clear understanding of what that emote and Joe is an absolute evil piece of shit. Like just from the way he looks, you're just like, got it. Right.

Yeah. They don't have to tell you anything. It's just the way he looks you just like got it, right? Yeah They don't have to tell you anything. It's just the way it's presented You're like got it then like max like what does it deal with this dude and he doesn't say much But it doesn't matter because the focus is on Furiosa and it's on Nux and even Nux like you think this kid's crazy But then you're like I kind of kind of rooting for this kid It was like all painted and all in a psycho and whatever but you're like, I'm kind of rooting for this kid. It was like all painted and a psycho and whatever,

but you're like, I don't know, I can't explain it. I'm kind of rooting for this kid. I tell you what, Nux is also dripping with skin cancer. So that's the other thing. So Nux is definitely it. Yeah, yeah, Nux has skin cancer. He's a skin cancer guy. Yeah.

Yeah, yay! We're on theme. But yeah, and then it keeps kind of rolling through, right? You also have the women, who I don't know if there's a specific name for what they were. They have names. You're referring to Toast the Knowing, Capable, the Splendid Ang Herod, and the Dag? Is that who you're talking about? Sorry?

The Dag, Cap capable, yes. Okay, so sorry, I meant as a group if they had a name. But they're- Oh, they're the wives, yeah, his wives. The wives. Each one of them is different. And they take little moments, whether it's a look or what they say

or their reaction to something that makes them each individual personalities, which makes you care about each one of them in different ways, you know? And then getting to the green place and meeting those people and caring about those people. I mean, it's like you care about everybody, which is so hard to do in a movie, in a two-hour movie.

Every minor character, they each have a little bit of a moment that makes you care for them. And I think that that's why you see it slinging into like best picture nomination territory because you you have to have Good character to get those kind of nominations. I feel like and and that's where it really we really earned it Do you want to hear a few calls on on fury road? Yeah Singing zombies. I wonder if you want to talk about fury road. Do you want to? weigh in on the convo?

Yes, long time listener first time caller. Awesome. Yeah, I see you on Twitch all the time. Thanks for hanging out and I'm so glad you joined Yeah, big fan of Wildermyth So yeah, I was amazed because I didn't watch the previous three I was amazed because I didn't watch the previous three Mad Max movies when this movie came out but everyone said it was super good and it really was like the best action film I've seen in the past 10 years. Yeah, I mean how often do you see action films that big that have that much character, right? Have good character.

Usually they're spending all the money on technical effects and not on writing good characters. This had it all. Yeah, and everything's CG now too. Everything in this action movie is real. Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. Well, and then there's so many movies, once you hit a certain production budget, you get

executives getting really afraid that viewers won't get the film and it becomes overly preachy to you. It's almost immersion breaking at times, how movies these days overly preachy to you. And it's almost like immersion breaking at times how how like movies these days will like talk down to you like you're an idiot. And it was just nice to get a very clean experience that wasn't overly preachy, but it was also very easy to follow. The movie itself is structurally very simple. You're following a moving caravan. I was amazed to only learn later how troubled the production was because usually it's always a disaster for how these movies turn out. It seemed like it was just a lot of dedication. The movie

looks so amazing today because a lot of the shots are like very real shots from like an angle that you would have to put a physical cameraman there to see it compared to like Furiosa where like sometimes they would like set up shots that don't seem possible from like our quote unquote real perspective. They also use like a lot of artificial lighting. And so it just sometimes it looks off to you like it came out of a video game cut scene rather than something that was actually filmed. And then this film was filmed, you know, long cuts with natural lighting. It seems like it was honestly an extremely difficult shoot to be in the weather for that long and that many takes

and stuff like that, but it looks so amazing to you because the movie feels so tangible and you feel like you're physically there in so many of the shots. And the car stunts are all real, so when it's flying in your face, it really does look like it's flying at your face. So how cool, how cool is that part where after the amazing scene in the storm, right? When the chase enters the dust storm and then the dust settles, how amazing is that shot?

Where like, it looks like it's just a mountain desert landscape. And then Tom Hardy shifts and it's just him coming up out of his head. Such a cool shot. It legitimately looks like the desert landscape. And then you see it's just a guy's head covered in sand. He's like shakes it off. So cool. Yeah. good point, singing. And I think another thing to add on there is, I don't know, I'm more suspecting this after our David Lynch conversations, Jared. We talked a lot about David Lynch on Glass County Radio, Brian, after his passing, which is, I think it would be so easy, as singing was saying, to get studios involved and just ruin with executives.

You know, you need to explain more this, they need to fall in love or they need to kiss or whatever. And I feel like since it was a George Miller project, he kind of had that clout to be like, we're doing what I want to do. Now I don't know. But he hadn't made a movie in a while though at that point. I know. I mean, Fury Road was like in development since the 80s.

Really? Yeah. It was the early 90s when they first put it together. It was just in terms of the storyboards. And what's interesting is that the actual story had not changed in that interim of 30 years or something. Like the movie that we saw was the same one that they'd put together. The thing is he actually did have a huge amount of issues with various executives and whatever. He just had enough clout and whatever to be able to push back and deal with a lot of it. They were

over budget by quite a lot. They were filming for like, like a much longer in the middle of the Tunisia deserts than they were supposed to be. Um, he also had a big deal because there was no script for the film. They just had storyboards. Right. Like where, where's the script? He's like, Oh, we'll figure that out. But the storyboards are where the film is because the film is, you know, this big visual exercise. It's a comic book. Yeah. Literally. Yeah. Yeah. It's huge. But there's all kinds of other stuff. Like, so I learned as well that, Jared, I'm not sure if you knew this, but did you know that Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy fucking hated each other? I'd heard that.

Fury, like, like, because apparently it's, look, I'm not picking sides here, but reading about what happened sounded like Tom Hardy was being a bit of a prick. Like, I mean not picking sides here, but reading about what happened sounded like Tom Hardy was being a bit of a prick. No, I mean, Charlize is a class act. Yeah, yeah. From what I've heard. Yeah, same. But apparently, like they would, he would just rock up routinely, like three hours late

to set. And she, because she's a professional, should be like, she'd be there on time in her makeup, you know, and everyone's in the middle of the desert and she's sitting in a truck and I, you know, the war rig looks very cool. It doesn't look like it has AC, right? You know, apparently there was a, there was a, like a, a, um, straw that broke camel's back moment where he showed up several hours late and it was like multiple times he'd done this. As soon as she saw him, she just got out of the car and started screaming, calling him the C word and saying that he should be fined $100,000 for every person that he's wasted

his time here. Then he's like, what the hell? He just went ballistic at her. Then they had to film the scene where they fight each other. When you go back and watch that scene where they're beating the shit out of each other and you're like, wow, this is really visceral and real. Like, you know, like, no, they really hated each other. That's amazing. Let's get one more call in. It's so interesting how like fucked up productions can sometimes make incredible stuff.

Yeah, there's a couple of stories like that. Yeah, let's get one more call on Fury Road. One more call on Fury Road. Kenny Cat, can you hear us? Yeah, can you hear me? Yeah, we got you. What's up? Hello. Hey, first time caller, long time now listener. I actually have vacation so I can listen in today.

Awesome. Awesome. We're so glad to have you. Are you a Fury Road fan? Oh my God. It's one of my favorite action movies of all time. Yeah. Uh, I hadn't really experienced too much of, uh, Mad Max except for like, um, the third movie a bit and the second movie. I hadn't seen the first one in only a pieces, but what I love the first

one it's super low budge. It's a very different experience, but I really love it. Oh, I hate it compared to the other one. Oh really, okay. Yeah. But I just really wanted to bring out that every single one of these characters in there

just feels like a total person with their own like storyline that kind of gets completed and Matt and Mad Max is kind of just like the vehicle who just like there to show these characters storylines off It's their big moment and it's like his Tuesday It is it's so How how do they do that then the movie's named after him. I guess you call him the main character, call him, but he's just quietly moving between all of the people whose story you're watching.

You're not really watching his story so much, right? Very interesting, very clever. Well, you know, it has themes of feminism, you know, Fury Road, and it wouldn't have those, it wouldn't be as strong in that way if Max was all at the forefront the whole time, you know? Yeah. Then he's like, he's not quite, he's not really saving them, is he? Like Furiosa is kind of saving them, but he's like their, I don't know.

It is really interesting. Yeah. I think on that, Jared, I think it's actually the best kind of feminism or any kind of activism that's being shown in the film. And this is on record as unintentional on George Miller's part. He just said, oh, we just wrote that and that's how it turned out. But Max is being a feminist in the best kind of way because he's not making it about himself. It's like, he's like, cool, I in the best kind of way because he's not making it about himself It's like he's he's like right cool. I don't need to ask you questions about being sex slaves I'll just believe you and then later on when he's like, oh, we've only got three shots left with the sniper rifle

I've just missed two You know what? Furious. You're just the better shot Hey, so use my shoulder as the as your rest and you can you can take the shot like so there's things like that Which I think yeah are very cool. Yeah. Just like the whole hero at the end is just amazing. Yes. Yeah.

And also, let's not forget, that development is so important because early on, as you just said, he beats the shit out of her. And she beats the shit out of him. There's a whole fight because he's not a he's not a paladin. Right? Like he's not here to save everybody. He takes the war rig and leaves them all to die. And then he's like, ah, fine. He's probably got a very high selfish Joe, like Saquigan. Exactly. You can have those thoughts and then try to fight against them. Anyway, tying it all back together. Thanks for calling in OkiniKat. I hope you get more vacation and can call in more often.

Yeah, that'd be great. Great call. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Just real quick, I wanted to mention about, because Jared, you talked about the first Mad Max film, which I told you I've still not seen. But again, just going back to George Miller's practicality. So I live in the state of Victoria, which is just south of the state of New South Wales. That's where George Miller lives in Sydney. At the time, I guess it was the late

70s when they were filming the first Mad Max, the speed limit in the states was different. I think in New South Wales, on the freeway, the fastest you could go was like 90 kilometers an hour, which pretend it's miles that makes the story the same. But he's like, but I need to be able to drive faster than that to film this film. So he drove like all 30 cars across state lines to Victoria, where you could drive up to 110 kilometers on the roads out here. And a lot of that was filmed like in the back roads near where I grew up in rural Victoria So it's just I've still not seen it, but it's just pretty cool It's like oh cool. You know we couldn't possibly just go at 90k and just speed it up

Well, I need to film it at 110 so it looks really That has ever lived love car crashes more than George Miller. I don't more than George Miller. I don't know. That guy has an obsession. He was a doctor. He was a doctor, and he worked in the ER. And apparently, he saw a bunch of car crash victims,

and he was just like, this is horrible, but also, bet you that was fucking Miley, right? But also, it's giving me an idea, yeah. Wow. Brian, amazing, amazing amount of fun facts here on Fury Road, stuff I never knew about, even though I love the film. I've seen it at least, I don't know at least ten times. I've watched it I mean like I don't watch movies that much anymore and I make time to rewatch Furious

You wrote I will say I'm not I'm not omniscient So I would recommend to you all there's a book called blood sweat and chrome Which is the oral history of the film, which between that and I've read a book about the art and the making of it as well. But Blood, Sweat and Chrome is a very easy read and it's really well put together,

would highly recommend it. And before we wrap up, I feel like I also have to let everyone know that I've got a Fury Road tattoo. Oh wow. Can't quite see. It says, oh shit, shit. You can't see it. It's a little blown out.

Whatever it is. But it says, witness me, which has got a bunch of, a bunch of, a bunch of different meanings in my opinion, when you watch the film. I feel like Brian's about to spray silver spray paint all over his mouth. Witness me! The best kind of SPF.

High pigment chrome spray paint. Yeah. Well, Brian, thank you so much for joining us today on Glass Cannon Radio. Yeah, thanks, man. Very enlightening. Thank you. So excited, everybody. Check out Brian as the GM of our Pendragon series, Under an Iron Sky.

You can watch it tonight. It premieres tonight on YouTube at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. It is a continuation of the story we started one year ago at Gen Con in 2024 at Gen Con. That story continues. Same characters, but all new stories. So come check it out. Join us and then also get your own copy of Pen Dragon and the Game Master's handbook. You can pre-order it in a week, you said? Yeah, in a week. And you can get all the other

stuff on Chaosium.com right now. And if you use the code PENCANON2, that's Pen Cannon with a 2 at the end, you'll get yourself 15% off. And it'll also send Chaosium and my boss is a little message just saying that you love the glass cannon, you love what they do. So that's a good way if you want to support the show and also play Pendragon, go do that on Chaosium.com. And also, yeah, hopefully see more of this in the future. So take it easy, man. Thanks for getting up with us in the middle of the night.

Go get some sleep. Thank you so much, Josh. Thanks, Brian. Good to have you. Back to bed, buddy. I will. Straight back to bed. Wasn't that awesome? That was great. It was awesome.

I had no idea that he would know that he read a book in oral history on the film. So much detail there. Well, that's how cool the movie is. It's deep enough that there could be a whole book about it. I mean, incredible. For real. Incredible. All right.

Let's get into a segment that we're calling Three Questions. This is something that I... A lot of'm, questions are kicking around in my head to ask Jared from time to time because I, from the first time I met you in 2020, and we started playing Blades in the Dark together, I saw a different way of GMing, a different approach to how you do things. And over the years, I've asked you a lot about your process and how you do this stuff.

You've pointed me to a few books over that time. And just in general, I think that these are conversation topics that I would have with you if we were on the road together or had a chance to chat. And I was like, you know what? I've got a few things that have been kicking around in my mind. And I wonder, you know what? I'm just going to throw this out to Jared, get his thoughts on it and let's just do it as part of Glass Cannon Radio. So we're going to call it three questions. Let's do it. And maybe the Niche has some answers for you too. Absolutely. If people want to call in or have thoughts on it, absolutely. We're going to try to keep it tight here,

but it's basically just questions. You do not know what they are. You're not prepared for them. This is assumed. You haven't done research. It's really just what's your initial, what's your gut reaction, and then sort of explain that to me. So, this is our first, so my first question is, in our lifetime, will a tabletop RPG ever surpass the brand recognition or market share of D&D? Wow, great question. You know, D&D seems to be having problems right now, although people say that all the time. So, you know, when fourth edition wasn't really hitting people said, oh, it's the end of D and D. I do think a lot about why do people flock to D and D more than anything else? And I've had, um had people who are very big

in the actual play community say to me, I will never play anything other than D&D. Anything that I wanna do with a role playing game, I can do with D&D. Which seems kind of insane to me because D&D does some things well, but it doesn't do everything well. And in fact, it does some things very poorly.

Pathfinder solves that problem by, it just keeps grafting on extra subsystems so that eventually you can do everything with it. Yep. Will we ever have an RPG that surpasses? In our lifetime, will a tabletop RPG product ever surpass the brand recognition or market share of D&D? No. No, because it's Kleenex. You know what I mean? Hand me a Kleenex. When I explain

to people what I do, I can't say to people that are completely civilians, I can't say, oh, I run tabletop RPGs. They're like, what is that? I have to go, Oh, I am a dungeon master. And then people get it. I don't think that anything will ever surpass the popularity of D and D even if D and D sales are flagging, they just come up with a new version and reinvent themselves. And that brand recognition stays strong. Do you guys agree? Do you think there's a chance in the next 25, 30 years, by the way, that's how long we have to live. Isn you guys agree? Do you think there's a chance in the next 25, 30 years? By the way, that's how long we have to live. Isn't that sad? In the next 25, 30 years, will a product ever surpass D&D? Do you disagree with Jared? Call in. I don't need to go into it. My opinion doesn't

matter here. This is Jared's three questions. Okay. Question number two. Your opinion matters. I don't want to do that right now because this could be a whole segment. So number two, we're going to go a little bit more granular, a little more specific now. Should retraining feats, spells or other abilities in Pathfinder and D&D be a mechanically easy option for players or a mechanically challenging option for players? You know, I'm in a sometimes unpopular camp where I feel like everything doesn't need to be optimized all the time. I can tell you that no matter what game master you're playing with,

they're not optimized all the time. And at the end of the day, I feel the point of playing a tabletop role-playing game is experiencing the story. Stories involve characters that have flaws. If characters don that have flaws. If characters don't have flaws, it's not a good story. Now what does any of this have to do with retraining feats? Why don't you just stick with the goddamn thing you chose

and try to make it valuable to you? Find opportunities to use it. I know that for some people, it's more fun to do the math problem of what the ultimate most perfect build would be, but from my point of view there is no perfect build. And I think it's, you know, someone on the discord was saying that they love general feats and they take like quirky ones that seem like they would have very specific instances of use. And then they try to find opportunities to use them, you know? And I think that that's a really, really great play style as opposed to, well, I need to

retrain all this because I didn't realize the campaign would have so many ranged combats. So what I need to do is I need to retrain this so that I have a feat that makes me better at ranged combat. Like that to me, it feels like you're trying to win the game and you can't win a tabletop role playing game. So I guess my answer is make retraining very hard or make it not a thing at all. Okay. Final question. Then we'll take it'll take a couple calls on what we've just said right here. People are already chomping at the bit. This is one that I go back and forth on a lot myself. It's very simple and I'm not going to give you any specifics as to the question.

I just want your gut reaction and then maybe some banter on it. Wizard or sorcerer? Wizard or sorcerer? Um, so the, one of the designers of 5e is even, uh, on record saying that he doesn't know why they made a separate wizard and sorcerer class. Um, I am aware of, you know, the mechanical differences. The sorcerer is an improvised caster with less spell options and the Wizard has to carefully pick his list every day. But I mean, if you want me to choose, I kind of like the Wizard more.

And I'm not sure why. I just think it has something to do with that, that sort of strategy involved and picking those things carefully, you know, and knowing you only have, you can only use this certain thing one time, you know, and then it's gone. the sorcerer can spam his stuff a little bit more. And I also like the lore or the world stuff of the arcane college and the mysterious learning that is involved. Whereas our TTRPG version of a sorcerer, excuse me, is someone who's just born with magic in their blood and usually they have like a draconic ancestry or an angelic ancestry or something like that.

That could be very cool too. If you play that strongly in your character and you get into those, those, you know, complicated lineages. But for me, lately I've been really wanting to play and I didn't do it for your disorganized play game, Joe, but I really wanna play a wizard who has a hawk. I don't know why. I feel like there's been a little bit,

around me lately, there's been, we've had developments. Ascension, our live tour, which we're heading to Milwaukee and St. Paul this weekend,'ve, we all created new characters. Uh, people are talking a lot about campaign three. Don't know exactly when that's going to come, but everybody, the players are excited. We keep talking about what would you play? What would you do if you, ba ba ba ba.

And something that keeps in my opinion, now I'm not doing wizard for any of this stuff, cause I played a wizard in strange. I played a wizard for a really long time. because I played a wizard in Strange Eye Onslaught for a really long time. And it seems like the familiar option in terms of two-wee class feats, I believe it's a class feat, is just a shoot. Like it's not mentioned.

Everybody's like, nah, nah, nah. And I keep being like, I was just having that thought recently that like, I think I'm ready to like crush a familiar. like, like have a familiar, a hawk or a bird or something that like carries, you know, communicates your spells to you and stuff. I think that that's really cool. Well, I'm thinking of the bonds mage in the lies of Loch Lomora. Are you aware of the lies of Locke Lamora. The lies of Locke Lamora. Yeah, and the wizards are so scary and they all have like, or at least the main one that you meet has like a hawk. And I don't know, I just think that that's a very, very cool. Familiar is a very cool option.

Let's get a couple of calls. People sort of raised their hands right away. I'm curious to see their thoughts. XC57, we have an Android calling in. XC57, can you hear us? I can, can you guys hear me? Yes. You sound remarkably human.

Well done. Thanks, that's right. Thank you guys for having me. Love listening to the show. And I also gotta say, Jared, I'd love to do your campaign setting discussion sometimes. So you guys got to talk about that.

Oh, yeah. My wife? The D&D campaign setting discussion. Oh, we'll do it. We'll do it. I've been reading nonstop Eberron lately, so we should talk Eberron. You know who said that they want to be on that show when

we do that? Skid. Skid was like, I want to be on that show when we do that? It was Skid. Skid was like, I want to be on the D&D setting conversation. Great. Sorry, XC, please continue. Yeah. So I tend to go with, when I GM, I tend to also side with Jared on the no retraining

option just because I feel like as a game master it's kind of my if somebody wants to retrain something it's kind of my job to figure out how to implement something that they saw for their character because they had an initial impulse to try and choose something different or unusual and if it's not working out like it you know like if it's really not working out because it's poorly designed, I suppose I'd reconsider, but I kind of also see it as a challenge to try and integrate something a little different so that I can help them see out their original vision of the character. Yeah, I think that that's a good point. Jared did not mention during his explanation of that exact

situation that like, also, the GM can spend a little bit of time thinking, how do I make this ability relevant in the story? You know, how can I present challenges that this ability can help solve? Which is why to me, it's, I know it's always be the GM's problem. No, no, no. There's constantly players that are like, Hey, I have this thing, can you make that happen? And that's cool. GM should love to do that.

But also we're all creating the world of the game. The GM isn't just entertaining you, you are entertaining the GM. So if you've got something on your sheet where you're like, this hasn't really come up, make it come up somehow. Figure it out. Totally.

But I also have characters who are like, man, this just doesn't seem to work. And so sometimes it takes a little bit of finessing and might need a little bit more kind of fine tuning of the game to actually implement or implement successfully a character choice. Awesome, good point. Thanks for calling XC. Please call again. Thank you, XC. Yeah. Awesome, good point. Thanks for calling, XC.

Please call again. Thank you, XC. That was a really good point. DeChiccio. DeChiccio. DeChiccio? DeChiccio? I think I say it wrong every time.

DeChiccio wants to weigh in here. Which of the, you're muted, buddy. Which of the, is this on one of the three questions? Is that what you wanted to talk about? Or something else from earlier in the show? First off, you got it right this time, De Sikyo. De Sikyo, yeah, sorry. As I told you, I have a very good friend that's De Chico, almost spelled the exact same way.

So I will always struggle with how your first C is pronounced, but continue. Well between me and you, I think it got like modified through the years. I don't think my name is actually the proper pronunciation of it between you and me, but that's what my family's been going for. So I was gonna talk also, I guess I didn't expect to be Devils' advocate here about the retraining thing,

but I wanted to bring up a different system, which I don't know if you guys are aware of, but have you ever heard of Lancer? I've heard of it? I've heard of it. I don't know anything about it. It's a it's a mecha RPG something that like honestly when I was going in my first three sessions I was not a big fan of the setting or the gameplay and then I really sunk my teeth into it and I really got into it and I could talk about that for a while but like one of the things about this being a mech RPG where it's like you build not only your character,

which is the pilot, but you also build the mech. And in their rules, they have it where every time you level up, you get the opportunity to retrain either a talent tree, which is like the equivalent of three feats, or your license levels, or a core bonus, which is like an uber feat, I guess. Which, to a degree, makes sense in a system like this

because it's like you're rebuilding your mech to meet the specs for the new mission, which is narratively justified. But what I like about it from a player's perspective is it allows you to just have fun trying something new even for something as short as a single mission because you usually level up with at the end of every mission which is about three to six combats. And just the ability to have variety, it does increase

like your ability to engage with your character in new ways and change things up. That is a very cool, I love that whole thing you just laid out for me. Thank you, DeSiccio. That's a very cool way to simulate fixing or building your mech, but what I will say is DeSiccio made me think of something else, which is a lot of times I think retraining is about of something else, which is a lot of times I think retraining is about analysis paralysis or like the grass is always greener over here. People want to tweak and fiddle and tweak and fiddle and tweak and fiddle for tweak and fiddling sake instead of just like going with what they have and making that working and learning what the character they have is about.

Well, we have generic discord name, who I think disagrees with you, Jared. Good. You're welcome to come in here and let's go. See you go toe to toe with Logan here. Hey, do you hear me? Yeah, we got you. Oh, man. I be all talking about Eberron in the way that you are I

Have been running a path I've been in a Pathfinder campaign set in the world of Eberron for the past four years and so When it comes to retraining a character in Eberron and in Pathfinder, I felt like it's a experience that I've had But I I gotta admit I couldn't disagree with you more when it comes to retraining because retraining isn't just about winning at the game right and this is coming from someone oh by the way I shouldn't mention my name I'm Joe. Hey. Hi Joe. Hey Joe. Retraining just ain't about isn't just about winning the game.

As much as like having a feat that allows you to do cool shit is great. But it does allow you to in longer campaigns have a character that as they develop and mature actually gains new mechanics to reflect that. Like for example, right now I'm playing this fighter who was at one point level four, is level 18 right now. I love him to death. He started off as essentially a lawful neutral Siren War veteran who had a pretty dour worldview and didn't trust himself even as a fighter

with a melee weapon. He went in with a shield and nothing in his one hand. And eventually, you know, over the course of a lot of events in the party and years of actual play, he realized that, okay, he could do more good than harm with a weapon in his hand. and he slowly retrained to be sword and board. And that came with time and experience and as a artifact of the party's actions. Well, let me follow up on that because the question wasn't should you be allowed to retrain or not. Jared sort of said, you know, I could go on an extreme here, you know, but the real question was should it be mechanically challenging or should it be mechanically easy?

Do you think, Joe, that it should be mechanically easy for a player to make these kind of choices, regardless of their motivation for why they want to change it? I think that... Thank you for the clarification there. I do think that there is value in making it a bit more mechanically challenging. You don't want to just all of a sudden say, all right, I go to bed one night and in the next day, I come up all of a sudden ready to go with half of my battle knowledge completely changed.

It's striking the balance between simulation and what's cool in the fantasy. But I think a week is a perfectly acceptable amount of time, you know, depending on your campaign. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And thanks, Joe, for calling in. And yeah, so week is like the standard rules for 2A. And the rules are very like, it's up to GMs.

You would need a trainer. Maybe you don't need a trainer. Maybe you do whatever. You would need a lot of in- time in, in order to do it. Uh, but yeah, weak is weak is pretty standard. You know, I, I'll just, I'll just say one more thought on this, which is, you know, as a GM, like I also realize you want the players to have fun. So if, if they're telling you, I'm not going to have fun unless I change this

thing, then you need to figure out a way to change it so that they're having fun. then you need to figure out a way to change it so that they're having fun. But I would hope that my players would embrace lumpy, imperfect characters, characters that have quirks and little things sticking out of them that are not all smoothed over and perfect. That's what I would hope. Great. And I agree with that completely.

The last thing that I'll say as a parting thing before we move on to co-op gaming is the, is just the idea of that. It's not always perfection that you're seeking. What if you wanted to retrain into something that you think fit the character a little bit more that is a non optimized decision, you know, like that, that is possible. I agree with you that generally speaking, all things being equal, people are trying to make themselves mechanically more relevant. Something happened that they didn't realize it's not working right. But I think that there are times where story can help to retrain things. But as the GM, you always have the ability, if what it's going to be is not optimal,

if what it's going to be is very based on narrative and a really good choice by the player, you always have the ability to just poof, ignore the mechanics if you want. It also depends on your campaign. If your campaign is going to have downtime where you can get into the story of retraining things, well then make it hard. But if your campaign is not about downtime and going off and training and stuff like that, then you maybe need to make it easy so you can move on with whatever your campaign is about. If it's all about dungeon crawls, you don't have a lot of time to talk about retraining.

Yeah, Minshew in Twitch chat said, that might be a good point to this discussion. Pathfinder APs are high-paced and often don't bake in real downtime. Yeah. So it's hard to retrain, but not necessarily as a result of the mechanics. It's more a result of the pre-written campaign you're running. But anyway, more to talk about another day. I just wanted to bring it up, get your thoughts on it. That was fun. Great.

That was fun. Thank you. That was fun. Next time I'm going to ask you three questions. Please. I'm open. Okay. Let's talk about video games for a little bit here.

We've been talking a lot of the TTRPGs today, but not video games. As Jared mentioned earlier, inspired by my recent play of Split Fiction with Rob Kirkevich, what we're going to get back to as soon as we can. This is just a travel week for me. I'm literally leaving for the airport in 10 minutes. We had a great time playing Split Fiction. Wow, what a phenomenal experience. And it made us think, you know, hey, what games are out there? What co-op video games that we have played or haven't played yet that people love that, you know, I can play couch co-op with my friend or maybe online. Give me cross-platform options, which are always more attractive to me so that somebody doesn't have to have

the same exact system as me or whatever. But first, kick it off Jared, give me a couple that just stand out to you as games you've played in the past that are some of your favorite co-op experiences. Absolutely. Well, you know, I'm not as up on video games as you are. That's one of the things that I unfortunately had to sacrifice in my life. But growing up co-ops were probably my favorite type of video game, honestly. And the ones that really stand out to me are Streets of Rage. I played lots of Streets of Rage with my brother and my friend Nathaniel. And then I think about Diablo,

right? Oh yeah. Because that combines the beautiful fantasy dungeon crawl with the co-op. Quick. Diablo's incredible. Quick interruption I want to tell a fast story. So Diablo 3 comes out, right? And it has problems. And then they come out with Reaper of Souls, whatever it's called, the sort of fixed up version. And it is phenomenal, right?

So I get this game, and I'm playing it on, jeez, I want to say maybe it wasn't Switch. I can't remember what I'm playing it on, jeez, I want to say maybe it wasn't Switch. I can't remember what I was playing it on, but it might have been PlayStation. So I'm playing it and I decided to get a buddy of mine that I work with into it, right? This is a buddy of mine who is a very light video gamer, zero TTRPG player, not interested, and just generally not a nerd. He's a guy who is a big music guy, way into the music world, right? And so we're working together at my talent agency that I was working at and he had an apartment that was like two blocks from the office. And I was like, look,

I'm looking for someone to play this game with. You have a PlayStation, let me bring the disc over, we'll go get lunch and on our lunch break, we'll just play Diablo for an hour and then come back to the office. And he's like, all right, I'll blow the dust off my PlayStation. I guess it was a PS3 at the time, maybe PS4, I can't remember. I think it was PS3 and we'll play. So we got out, we play it. Long story short, he gets obsessed with this game.

Not like he's going off the deep end Diablo, which people can definitely do, but like, he's like, when are we going back to our place? When's our next lunch break? When can we get back to the game? Because as you get the gear and as you level up and you're working together, I just have such great memories of Diablo 3

with this guy who just like does not normally play these games, getting way into it. We had so much fun playing that one. The Diablo games are great co-op. And then what I was gonna mention, you know, actually McD reminded me about the great games, X-Men Legends, X-Men Legends 2, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance,

which I played all the way through all of those games and with my friends. And those were incredible too, cause you know, you had that giant roster of characters to choose from each with different powers and stuff. So the co-op game, yeah, it's one of my favorite types of games. The competitive game, like death matches and stuff like that. Hate that kind of game because I suck.

Not my favorite. Not my favorite. I'm just like, I'm just like headshot. The second I respawn, like I'm dead, like over and over, like no thanks. Not my favorite. Oh, I'm just like headshot the second I respawn. Like I'm dead, like over and over. Like no thanks, I'm out. I would be remiss, I'm just gonna rattle off a few here and then we'll take some calls. I would be remiss if I didn't mention, I think when I hear it, the first thing that I think of

is playing legendary Halo combat evolved with my good buddy McD. That was such an amazing co-op experience at a time when, you know, I'm not sure how many really great first person shooter co-op games there were at that time. I don't remember, it didn't feel like a lot. And this was really, we had so much fun. And I say legendary specifically,

because when you increased the difficulty to that level, you really had to work together in order to beat the levels. Like that's what it felt like. You couldn't just go rogue and carry the other person or whatever. You really had to work together. So that was awesome. And then I'll go way back old school. Contra.

So Contra on Nintendo. What a great time to play with somebody else Contra. So Contra on Nintendo. Contra! What a great time to play with somebody else. Amazing. So fun, so fun. And then more modern, also with McD, and I hadn't thought about this until recently when I was thinking about this segment

and looking stuff up. McD and I also had a great time, McD, if you recall, playing Valheim co-op. That was really fun. So do you know what Valheim is, Jared? No. Uh, it is a, uh, a, um, open world, uh, crafting and survival game that's sort of set in a kind of, uh, like a Valhalla waiting world, right?

So kind of like an in-between. And so you feel like you've died and, but you're in like what seems like a regular world, forests and mountains and lakes and rivers and oceans and stuff. But you have to, in order to please the gods, you have to like create your own home and then hunt these great beasts and then whatever, do all this stuff. So it has kind of like, yeah, like a Viking-ish sort of theme. But you can have your world exist and invite multiple friends in and everybody can build their own houses and go hunts on hunts together to make things easier. And we just had such a great time working on places together, putting, let me go get some more wood. I'll build the

roof over this side. You get this, whatever. Anyway, that was a great, I haven't gotten to do as much as that kind of co-op. Cause you know, like I said, I got out of video games a number of years ago and I feel like that's the kind of co-op that's coming in now, like more of a survival thing where you're doing things other than just like shooting bad guys. You're like, uh, helping to build a world together. That sounds incredible. Totally. Uh, helping to build a world together. That sounds incredible. Um, Sydney introduced me to Lethal Company.

That was a really fun co-op horror experience, but also really funny. Uh, great, uh, game where inexplicably you just work for the company and you have to just go to these like, is it moons or something, you go to a moon and you have to just like mine it for resources or find old stuff in broken down facilities and just bring things back to the company. That's your only job. But the wrinkle is the communication in the game is all handled through the game.

So the mic is all handled through the game and it all adjusts to where you are physically. So as you walk farther away, you'll start to not hear me. Oh, wow. And it cuts off your mic if you die. So you have great little experiences where somebody goes down a hallway and you're like, Sydney, let's go try but going back this way. Sid? Sydney. And then you're like, oh my God, she's dead. And I don't know what killed her. And I don't know where she is. You know what I mean? Really, really fun, really fun time. Cool.

Let's get a couple of callers and I'd love to hear other suggestions. Charles Froh, you got a suggestion for us for a co-op game? Do you hear me? Yep, we got you Charles. All right. Yes. Oh man, this is a topic perfect for me with my doubles. Thanks so much for having me.

Our pleasure. I'm listening first time caller. Oh, I have two different groups that I need to play with. One is a seven year old who is very sheltered, my son. And then the other is more than four grown up idiots that use multiple platform. Oh, I've had to do a lot of research cross playing between Xbox and PC PC and then we don't have

any of the Nintendo stuff. The young ones wanted to try, I did try, really interested in split fiction, but it was a bit too adult for my seven-year-old. I was really excited to play with my eight-year- And then when we got into it with Kirk, I was like, God, these these are adult themes here. I don't really want to get into this with my eight year old. Yeah. So unraveled to know you might. It's actually got some undertones that are still pretty mature, but it worked really well. And then we'll shout outs in the chat for games have been great for that. Minecraft Dungeons is Diablo, but in Minecraft.

Okay. Minecraft Dungeons. Those are mine and I'm looking for any additional suggestions from the chat for ones. Um, I mean, Minecraft could be a whole topic on the show and it should be, but I, that's the thing that I really want to play with my kids one day is, uh, is some Minecraft. Yeah. Minecraft Dungeons is a specific game that is Diablo big.

Right. And that sounds awesome. Yeah, that sounds, that sounds great. Uh, Charles, thank you for the suggestions. I'm going to let you go. I'm sorry. Your, your mic doesn't sound great. I think that you might've had a gate thing on it where it kept cutting you off anytime you got even a little bit quieter. And so, yeah, sorry to let you go a little early, but just type in chat if you had more to say.

It was just a little hard to hear you. Let's get Drogonath up here. Drogonath might have some suggestions in the co-op world, but I wrote this down. Unraveled 2 and Minecraft Dungeons. Drogonath. Hello. Hey, what's going on?

What's going on, everybody? I've heard some really good titles up here. I completely forgot about Marvel Ultimate Alliance, which was great. I logged a bunch of hours into that. In terms of a great co-op experience, I'm going to take you guys back to the mid 2000s for a little game called Star Wars Battlefront 2.

Anybody log some some good hours into Battlefront 2? Man. I mean, I haven't played any of the remakes that I know that there's the kind of more modern versions. I haven't played those, but me and a buddy, that might be the most played game Like that I've ever owned. I think I've logged several thousands of hours into into a Just conquering the gout the galaxy with a buddy. Yeah great. Wait, so you're playing against words a PDE You can kind of there are a bunch of different modes, but you and a friend can essentially

play on the same side, whether that be, you know, the rebels or the clones or whichever kind of side of the conflict you're on and just go around. Yeah, just conquering the galaxy together and fighting the empire or or the Republic. You're not playing against other real people, right, that are playing the other faction. I thought Battlefront was kind of like an MMO. That's not the right word. But like an arena, like a MOBA. No, Dota? I can't remember what you're referring to. You certainly can play. I think there was an online feature to it. You could play with other humans, but typically it was me and a buddy on a couch just destroying computer opponents together. Okay, yeah. And that's what I love.

I love the ability to get on with a buddy and do a little PvE fighting. No, I never played Star Wars Battlefront 2, but yeah, if you've got a thousand hours in it must be pretty pretty awesome. Yeah and I think they have some kind of like I think they like re-released a like updated version of it that's oriented to the kind of like modern Steam player base. It's got some other name now but yeah great game. Awesome. Thank you Drogonoth and thanks for the call.

Well, unfortunately, we got to go. We got to keep it moving. We got to go. Hey, where can people watch you and Rob play split fiction? They will play it right here on Twitch. We don't have the next date scheduled because I actually Rob was unavailable the early part of this week and now I'm I'm flying literally right now. I'm headed to the airport to head out. Right. Do you want to go while I do my riff? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm good. I just want you to be late. No, I'm flying literally right now. I'm headed to the airport to head out to Milwaukee. Do you want to go while I do my riff?

No, no, no, not at all. No, I'm good. I just want to get to the- I don't want you to be late. No, I'm good. I just want to get to the nerd rant and I wish we had more time for co-op and I wish I could give you a date on Split Fiction, but it's going to be coming soon, hopefully as soon as next week.

So I'll let you guys know when we set another date, but that game was phenomenal. Anyway, please. Yeah. All right. Well, then let's close it out with a little bit of unbridled anger. Yes! Yes! This is my nerd rant for today.

I have no idea where this is going. Amazing. When you sit down to watch your favorite prestige television, whether it be Severance on Apple Plus or Squid Game on Netflix or Tulsa King on Paramount Plus. You know, you sit down, you click the episode, you hit play, you know, you snuggle in with your partner, that the music comes up, the intro starts, and then a little button appears on the screen that says skip intro.

So I'm here to argue that if you click that button, you are a vulgar person with misplaced priorities and you're dragging society down. Okay. Oh man. Okay. You hit skip intro. You are denying yourself one of the best parts of the show. The opening credits give you a moment to get re-immersed in the mood of the show. They let you get psyched up for the show. They're an opportunity to go grab a snack or get your blankets just right. They allow you to re-center and prepare yourself to receive the show. Prestige TV is art and art is not meant to be sucked up your nose like a rail of coke off of a stripper's backside.

You don't need everything in your life to be faster, faster, faster now, now, now, now. How about this? How about take a minute to be present for the opening credits to Nurse Jackie? Just take a moment. How about let's watch all of the leftovers opening, you know, and let's use that time to think about what's happened so far. All right. Hey, maybe on this episode of Game of Thrones, they'll show different castles in the opening. Did you know that sometimes they show different castles? I know you skip it every time because you're fucking consuming

life instead of living it. I mean, the opening song of the sopranos fucking slaps. If you skip that, you're just uncool. You're just an uncool person. If you skip that, you're just uncool. You're just an uncool person if you skip that. And after you finish this episode, you probably don't even take a little time to think about it, do you? You probably don't take the evening

to just kind of like digest what you saw. No, you hit play on the next one and skip intro again and you fucking raw dog four episodes back to back to back the way I eat donuts in my car in the middle of the day when I'm trying to hide from my wife. You also probably listen to podcasts at 1.5 speed you fucking animal. My advice is to slow down to put your fucking phone away get an Adderall prescription and watch the opening credits that so many artists work so hard to bring to you. Incredible artists and designers worked for months.

They had multiple drafts, they sent stuff out. The showrunners sent some back. They worked so hard on it. And you guys are just like, eh, fuck them. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. No, watch the opening credits, okay? Or maybe you'd prefer to skip intro on your life and go straight to your death bed. Because you're headed for a heart attack at 44 if you don't stop skipping everything!

That's my rant. Wow. Wow. Good rant. Good rant. I think I made my point. You've given me some things to think about. I'm right about this one. I don't want to skip I made my point. You've given me some things to think about.

I'm right about this one. I don't want to skip intro on my life. You're right. Don't do it. I need to think a little bit more about this. Well, we're out of time for today, but holy shit, what a great way to end it. Well done, Jared, as always. Very, very impressive.

Guys, thank you so much for tuning in, hanging out with us. I hope you enjoyed Brian Holland and Pendragon. Tune in tonight for all new Pendragon content, eight o'clock Eastern premiering on YouTube on our Glass Canna Network YouTube channel. And then, you know, continue to follow us on Glass Canna Radio. We're live every Wednesday at noon Eastern time,

nine a.m. Pacific on Twitch. Hop on the Discord if you wanna get in and call into the show. That's it for now. Until next time. Thanks Joe. Thanks McD. For everybody heading to Milwaukee and St. Paul, we'll see you this weekend for Glass Cannon Live Ascension. See you then everybody. Bye.

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