The Glass Cannon Podcast - The Announcement

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

Glass Cannon Network CEO Troy Lavallee kicks off Gen Con 2025 with a huge announcement. The heroes level up for the final time and continue their journey to the Nameless Spires. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/CDVKpRYFJXA Access exclusive podcasts, ad-free episodes, and livestreams with a 30-day free trial with code "GCN30" at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠jointhenaish.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. For more podcasts and livestreams, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://hubs.li/Q03cmY380⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Searchlight Pictures presents The Roses, only in theaters August 29th. From the director of Meet the Parents and the writer of Poor Things comes The Roses, starring Academy Award winner Olivia Coleman, Academy Award nominee Benedict Cumberbatch, Andy Samburg, Kate McKinnon, and Allison Janney, a hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses, only in theaters August 29th. Get tickets now. What's going on, everybody? It's your old buddy, Troy LaValley.

Happy GenCon 2025. If you're joining us here in Indianapolis this weekend, I hope you're as excited as we are for the four best days in gaming. We got live shows all weekend long. We got a booth on the exhibition floor, yet again, booth 174. Stop by and say hi. You never know who's going to be there.

We're going to be running gauntlets. all day there. There might be even some spots left there. There might even be some tickets left to the live shows. Go to Glasscanonnetwork.com slash GenCon. See if there's anything left. Come by and say hi. If you're not joining us here, first of all, what are you doing? You got to make it out here. I don't care if you live in Australia. Find a way to treat yourself once in a while and get out to GenCon. It really is the best. Not only do we do things, but everyone in the industry has stuff going on. And if you like gaming, you really should come check it out. But if you can't can't come and you're sitting at home, we're going to be streaming content like we do every

single year all weekend long, new games, old games, a bunch of new cast, game masters, and that's going to start today at 10.30 a.m. Eastern, right here on our YouTube channel, so please check it out. And if you subscribe to our subscription service, you can get at the free 30-day trial to join the nation.com with code GCN30. You can listen to all the audio podcasts if you miss the streams live. So, bunch of stuff happening. The thing about GenCon is, you know, this is usually we're like publishers and people in the gaming community, this is where they like make their big drops for the year. And if we were a publisher, we would have our big game that would come out or something like that. But we're, we're a content company. So we're, you know, for the past

few years, we're thinking like, how do we really make a splash at GenCon besides all the other stuff that we do? And we said, well, this would be a perfect place to make a huge announcement about what's going to happen with the Glass Cannon Podcast. As most of you know, last December, I announced that our campaign two playing the Pathfinder second edition Adventure Path, Gatewalkers, was going to come to an early end. Rather than play out the entire adventure, we have just kind of changed it and, you know, kind of swush stuff together, played it very differently, experimented with a bunch of things, and that is going to be ending next month.

So it took nine months to cancel it, but at least we're giving that story an ending. And honestly, I think it's been better than ever. recorded the finale. If you've enjoyed it thus far, I think you're going to really get a kick out of what we've done with that. But the big question on everyone's mind is, what are we going to do next? I wish I wasn't just recording this because I can't do multiple takes. If I like edit takes in between each other, you're going to see that I did some cuts. So I've just got to kind of speak off the cuff here. I'd try and not take 45 minutes because there's a Starfinder show happening at 1030 and I want you to see it. But I do want to walk you a little bit through the process

before we make the big announcement of what's happening next. When I announced that we would be canceling gatewalkers, I immediately was like, okay, well, what are we going to do next? And so I went straight to every single adventure path that was available for Pathfinder second edition and just started reading through all of them. A couple of them jumped out at me. I brought them to the group and was like, what do you guys think about this? And there was a little pushback here and there.

You know, I wanted to make sure it was going to be something that, got everybody excited, you know, not just like one person excited or like four out of five being excited and the other person being like, ah, I'll find a way. I really wanted everyone to be fired up for this. And so, you know, I was struggling to find something that got me excited and got everyone else excited. And so then I just, I was really focusing on like the remastered stuff because that would just be easy to do that.

And then I looked at the pre-remaster stuff because at this point, it's not that hard to convert that stuff. And again, nothing was really jumping out. me. I knew I wanted to do something. I didn't want to do a six book. That's what I knew. You know, three book. I know there's a four book one out there, season of ghosts. I looked at that. And then I just nothing was really popping. So then I like looked at first edition stuff. And I'm like, well, these are pretty much all six books. I think they are, they're all six books. But maybe there's a way in. Maybe there's a way in. We play a book four, five, six and convert it from first edition to second

edition or play book one, two, three. I don't know. I didn't really, I really was just looking like, is there a story out here that I want to tell with my friends. And just, again, I was coming up dry. It's not to say that there weren't amazing stories. Everybody knows these adventure paths are top-notch. There was just nothing out there that sort of lit my fire of the story that I wanted to tell. So then I reached out to Paiso and I said, all right, what do you got coming down the pipe? Do you have any, you know, stuff that, you know, is either on the way to the printers or or hasn't hit the printers yet, might still be in draft form that I could take a look at. Paiso, as always, amazing partner.

They just sent me stuff that wouldn't be out for months. And so I started reading through, you know, future adventure paths this year. All awesome stuff. But again, it wasn't scratching that itch for me. I mentioned a couple things to the group, and it's just, I could tell there was a discord there. We weren't quite clicking with the material. So then I said, all right, here's a long shot, Paiso. do you have anything that's coming out like way further down the line that you maybe don't even have

uh sort of drafts of but that i could at least you kind of know what's happening because i have time here gatewalkers is going to is going to take some time to finish off i have plenty of time it's about waiting for the right story and so uh eric mona especially was super helpful in getting me a draft copy of an adventure path that's coming out in 2026 and now this was in February January, maybe March, it was an ongoing process. They sent me the outline of this next adventure path called Hellbreakers. And it was so cool to see a professional outline done by one of the top publishers in the world. It was very eye-opening. I was like, oh my God, I need to know how to do this. This is really, really cool to see the way that they structure ideas, the way that they talk

about. In this chapter, we want to show off these kind of mechanics, or maybe these kind of monster and just making suggestions to whoever the author is. Really, really cool to see sort of the early development phase of an adventure path. What really struck me was the story. I was like, this story sounds awesome. This is kind of, this is very much in line with what I'm interested in. And the themes that they talk about, the sort of other media that they compare it to, I don't want to talk about that, you know, and spoil what's coming out.

I was like, oh boy, I think the cast would really like this. So I brought it to the group, and they were just like, oh, my God, this is, this sounds amazing. Yeah, all right, let's go through it. So obviously, I want to read this or as much of it as possible before I pull the trigger. So I had to wait a little bit while they got, you know, drafts done. And then they started sending me drafts of the early books, you know, just early stuff. But, you know, it's always going to be pretty close to what it is at the end. Maybe they'll change an encounter.

But the story beats are all there. And so I started reading. the actual material, and it's awesome. It's really, really good. I was like, okay, I'm going to be disappointed by it. The outline was too good. There's no way the story could live up to the outline, and I'm reading it. I'm like, oh, man, this is, this is awesome. I think this is, I think this is the one. Now, meanwhile, in conjunction with trying to make this decision, we started a new live tour this year, Glass Cannon Live, Ascension, playing Pathfinder second edition, but instead, It's a homebrew story that I'm coming up with sort of based on, you know, what the decisions the players make.

It's a very experimental experience, something I'd love to talk about sort of after it's all done, both with the cast and with the audience, like, how we're doing this. I'm trying to do something a little bit different from sort of traditional actual play and experimenting with a lot of things. Some of it's working, some of it's not, but we're learning a ton throughout the process. And so in playing that, I think it was, I was flying to do some shows on the West Coast. This must have been April and I'm all fired up about Hellbreakers. And I was on the plane prepping, prepping like the show for the weekend. I think we're doing Seattle and Portland, I can't remember.

I'm prepping the shows and I kept budding heads with sort of what I thought we'd be able to do that weekend. You know, I wanted to create sort of a bunch of different. opportunities and the mechanics of the game. I kept rubbing up against the mechanics of the game because we try, try as we might, we don't always succeed, but we really try to make the mechanics of Pathfinder work, even though we don't always remember them. We are old. Some of us are old and our brains don't work as well. But, you know, I just kept budding up against what I'd like to do and being true to the mechanics of Pathfinder second edition. And then the whole time I'm thinking about, okay, life after

gatewalkers. And I was like, what if we just, what if we just didn't do Pathfinder Second Edition? What if we didn't do this adventure path at all? What if we tried something completely, completely new and exciting and different?

One of my favorite things we've ever done, you've probably heard me say this before, is New Game Ho-Discs. When COVID hit, we had to shut down our studio, we had to stop our flagship show, all of our subscription shows because I was worried about how remote audio would work. It was something we hadn't experimented with. So I was like, all right, let's just

start a bunch of new shows and, you know, we'll figure out how remote audio works. And this will be a great time to start playing some new games. And so, uh, that's where a new game Houdis came in. And we were like, all right, let's do a new show, a new game every few weeks. We'll get new cast, new game masters, new games. Everybody'd be learning new games. We'll play it. And it might help the, the nation grow as well, because when you throw those videos up on YouTube or get it on Twitch, people may not play Pathfinder, but they may play Calla Cthulhu or cyberpunk rared or something like that. And then they'll find our videos. And hopefully that will sort of funnel them into the rest of our content. And it worked. We never saw

more growth than we did during that period. Because I knew everyone else was going to shut down. Let's double, triple, quadruple down on our content and try some new things. And it was an exciting time. We burnt out, for sure. But that spirit of wanting to play lots of new games is something that we never lost. You know, when we're this, all this weekend long here at GenCon and on streaming, we're playing probably 15, 16 different games. I might be exaggerating, but it feels like that. It's not just one or two games. Some are making a couple different appearances, but for the most part, we're playing a bunch of different games by a ton of different publishers. And that's really what we enjoy doing at this sort of stage of our

lives and careers. So, I don't know, I just kind of thought about that on the plane. I was butt in my head against this encounter and, uh, I was just like, I started to latch on to this idea. Yeah, what if we, what if we did? What would we even do? So anyways, I landed, checked in the hotel after around a little bit, and then met up with the cast at lunch. And, uh, we ordered drinks. Drinks came, made a toast. And then I was like, all right, let me just get this off my chest. Let me just throw this out there, see what you think. What if for the next campaign, the next story that we tell. We didn't play Pathfinder second edition. And everyone's eyes just sort of lit up like they did, I didn't know that was an option. And they were like, that would be awesome. Unanimously

around the table, everyone was like, that sounds, that sounds amazing. Why not? Pathfinder's not going anywhere. We could always come back to it. But to be able to explore, you know, new settings, new systems, you know, just a whole new experience on our flagship show, that could be a win. win, win, win, win, win. You know, we've been playing Pathfinder now on the network for over 10 years. We've been playing Pathfinder is our main exclusive game for a lot longer than that. I think it's time for something different. So then the next question began.

All right, everybody's on board to try something different. What are we going to try? What game are we going to play next? Luckily, at the time, I had been reading voraciously a bunch of other systems for this project that I'm working on outside of the GCN. And so I was kind of in the know of what was hot. on the streets. I'm reading all these different systems, seeing what I like, see what I don't like. And the thing is, like, there might be a really great game from the 1980s that no one's

ever heard of that we could play. But, like, that doesn't really help us move things forward if we got to, like, get people excited about a game they haven't heard of. You want to find a game that, like, people are really excited about right now that also excites us. It helps us grow. It helps that game grow. And so I'm reading and reading and reading. And I finally find something that just seems right for right now. I brought it to the group, and it was the game. And that game is Shadow Dark. Now, maybe you've heard, maybe you haven't. It won the N-E for Best Game last year. Last year is Gen Con. I'm sure it's up for more any's this year. It is, the closest thing we've played to it on the network is Morkborg. This is an OSR game, but it is so much more.

I mean, it looks thick, right? But, like, I read it in one sitting. And the thing is, is the book is there to kind of teach you, oh, there's the basics. But ultimately, I don't know if I read this somewhere or if it's just sort of the spirit of the game, the character sheet, the rules, they're a last resort when you're at the table.

It is a game that speaks to us right now. It speaks to the way that we want to play. You know, it is a brutal game. It's deadly. It's dungeon crawl. It's lots of random encounters and combats are quick and deadly. It has all that. But then you take what we do, improvisational storytelling, you know, world building in the moment that becomes part of the canon.

It just seems like a perfect match for where we are right now creatively and what we want to do. And to put a game like this in our hands, I just feel like we can really lift each other up. And so when I brought it to the group, they were like, oh my God, yes. I mean, you've never seen Skid more excited. Because he's just like, oh my God, this is like an original D&D, they did the this and this. An original D&D, they did the blah, blah, blah. And so we've been playing it, not recording it, just really starting to get it in our bones because it's so different. There's so much that's very similar to Pathfinder in D&D, but the spirit of it is so, so different as well.

You have to kind of unlearn everything that you've learned. And so, you know, the plan for this is unlike new game, you know, we're not going to play like three games. and then, you know, we might play this for a year, a year and a half, six months, two years, who knows. And then the next game will play for six months or a year or two years. You know, it's kind of all going to be, the stories are going to take as long as they take. These campaigns, these adventures, they're going to take as long as they take. And we're going to just try experimenting with lots of new games. But the first one that we're going to spend a ton of time with is Shadow Dark.

In terms of the story, you know, they put out some crawls and they put out some mini-adventures. But really, there's no adventure paths. like they do with Pathfinder or even 5E. They make these beautiful zines, these cursed scroll zines. There's three of them out now. There's three more coming, I think, with this other Kickstarter that they just crushed.

And these zines, they give you new classes, they give you new spells, they give you more tables to roll on, and then they give you sort of a mini-adventure in the back. And adventure is the loosest term forward because it really is just a bunch of hooks and then a crawl, like a bunch of, adventure hooks that I can build on, that the team can build on, and we're going to kind of

create this as we go. But the beauty of Shadow Dark is that you can draw in material from everywhere. I can go back to old D&D modules, pull stuff from that. I can pull stuff from Pathfinder. One thing that I'll be pulling from heavily is this adventure that came across my desk from the amazing publisher Exalted Funeral. It is a masterpiece by Luke Gearing called tephrodic nightmares. This is a morgue adventure. I spoke to the good people exalted funeral and I said, hey, would you be cool if I sort of converted this to shadow dark? And they were like, hell yeah. So I mean, between the stuff that Kelsey puts in these cursed scrolls and to frotic nightmares and whatever else we come up with on the spot, I want to create an organic living adventure that is like,

well, here's some ideas that I have. But then the players are going to be giving ideas. and it's going to take the story in wild new directions, random stuff that it's going to take turns and all of a sudden become a canon part of the story, I want to try something different. We all want to try something different. I know there's comfort in doing what we've always done. You know, people sort of come to expect those things,

and there's a comfort in wanting that. But as an artist, it's important to do new things. And all of my fellow players agree with me. We want to try something different. I think actual play itself can get very stale if we're always just kind of doing the same thing. And so this is going to be a whole new experience, and I'm so excited for it. I hope you will be excited for it, too.

The cast is going to be myself with Joe, Skid, Sidney, and Matthew to start. The schedule for this one, we used to record like two days a month, which is great. But it doesn't always work that we can make those days. Somebody gets sick or somebody has to do something. We lose that day, and then we start scrambling. Unfortunately, Kate, who is a member of Gatewalkers, she kills herself to do that. But she can do two days a month with this new show we might need to do four days in a week or like five times a month or like none in one month and then six the next month.

It's just not a schedule she's able to keep up with her full-time job. So because we had to change the schedule, Kate won't be a full-time member. However, one of the other changes for this new adventure is that we're going to have a fifth seat there. And so hopefully Kay can come and play a few sessions. If Jared's in town from New York, we'll get Jared on the show, Kerkovich, Ross, Nora, you name it. People can guest on this show. That's something that couldn't really happen with Giant Slayer or Gatewalkers. It was so strict that you had to stay in, you know, this sort of box.

I mean, at least it did for the way that we play the game. We don't want that anymore. We want there to be other people that are coming in, experiencing this world, and changing the world and the story with us. So yeah, that's it. That's all I got. I hope you are excited. We could not be more excited. And I can already tell you. Well, I'm not going to tell you. But I already have an idea of what's going after, shout out. And after that, and like I said, Pathfinder's not going anywhere. We still have several Pathfinder shows on the network. And Pathfinder could find its way right back to the Glass Cannon podcast. Now, you may think of this as Campaign 3. Hell, we might even designate our file system sort of behind the scenes as C3 or whatever. But really, this is just the start of the new Glass Cannon podcast, where we get back to what we do best, which is playing lots of different games, telling lots of different stories with hopefully lots of different people and characters. And so, yeah, get excited. October 30th, 2025, a whole new adventure begins, a whole new story, a whole new campaign,

a campaign that is unscripted, uncensored, and unsafe. Have a great Gen Con. And I'll see you right before Halloween. Look, we all know there are a lot of celebrity interview podcasts out there, but there's only one happy, sad, confused. I'm Josh Harrowitzin. Yeah, I'm the host of the show, so I'm a little biased, but truly happy, said, confused is the place for nerdy and intimate conversations with all your favorite actors and filmmakers. from Andrew Garfield and Scarlett Johansson to Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino for over 10 years and over 700 episodes. Happy Say I Confused has broken movie and TV news every single week.

That's because I ask all the questions I want to know, and more importantly, you want to know. Casting what-ifs, backstage stories, acting pet peeves, and much more. So whether you're into superheroes, prestige TV, or just the coolest actors and directors alive, you're going to learn something in every episode. Listen to Happy Sank and Fused on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Old West is an iconic period of American history and full of legendary figures whose names still resonate today.

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