Triforce! - Triforce! #176: Lewis Brindley: Author, Voice Actor, Pokemon Voyeur

Episode Date: May 12, 2021

Triforce! Episode 176! Lewis shares his choose-your-own-adventure for the very first time, is a voice in the new 4X Humankind and likes to watch Pokémon getting nasty in the wild. Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We're here. I'm here. Yeah. I'm doing good. Lewis, hello, welcome. Nobody asked, but good, thanks. Hello. Good to know, good to know. Nice opener.

Well, you know, people are interested. I'm fine. Sips is fine. This is what everyone wants to know period's also here but in the news this week oh jersey yeah is at the center of chaos world war three yeah we're about to start it we're about to kick it off here over some fish some some some ancient fishing grounds that uh have been disturbed recently by a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing as usual, local government here. And everybody is pretty pissed off about the

bureaucracy that they're trying to introduce. And because they've disturbed ancient fishing grounds, a fish poltergeist is now on the loose in Jersey. Rearranging the fish fingers in the frozen section. That's right. I woke up in the middle of the night and there were fish fingers floating around in my kitchen and stuff. And it was pretty scary. And all of the Navy ships are over here now.

There's been a blockade. Man, there's a guy, there's a Civil War reenacting guy that was firing blanks from the castle. He's thinking, finally. At the French boats. I mean, man, it was just.

He's been waiting years. I've been training all my life for this. You thought I was reenacting. The French are coming. I have been training. The French are coming. This is not reenactment. I'm ready for the real deal.

So, yeah, it's a weird one. Jersey is not technically part of the UK, yeah, it's a weird one. Jersey's not technically part of the UK, but because it's a crown dependency, meaning that it's still owned by the Queen and her representatives are over here at like a higher level of control in government, it means that there's an agreement with the UK whereby if Jersey ever gets into any trouble,

the UK are sort of bound to protect it. Yeah, we send thoughts and prayers. Yeah. So, in this case, France got angry about this introduced bureaucracy for the fishing and said, well, we're just going to cut off your supply of power because we import 95% of our power from France because it's so close. I get it. Like, I hate having to fill in forms.

Oh, man. And like, you know. The French are just mad because normally they love it. They love the bureaucracy. And I think in this case, they're just mad that somebody else thought up some bureaucracy before they did. I see. So that's why they're, it was like a,

it was like a blow to their ego and stuff, you know. Do you think, is there a lot of flag waving currently going on in Jersey and sort of, you know, a lot of, is the attitude in general up yours, Frenchies? I'm sure. Like, yeah, there's elements of that for sure. I don't know, man. I'm just in my garage. Like, I don't really know what's going on.

Okay. That's good to know. You're at the heart of a political turmoil and you're just in your garage with no idea. I've seen some bits and pieces on the news, you know i've like done a couple of tweets but that's about it talking to barry about it yesterday he had like a satellite view because all these french boats all sailed over and sort of blockaded jersey harbor and there were two royal navy patrol ships that were sent out to kind of just i guess i guess they got there and they were just like what are we supposed to do are we just watching out for like what we watched they didn't

even really know what they were there for oh it's just an escalation it's just the way it was sort of you said it's like the it's like the chicago fight you threatened to change their fishing vessels they threatened to shut your power down yeah they send some fishing ships you send the navy you know yeah it's what's next well i i just thought it's funny because they were sort of stood off at a distance like you know to police who weren't quite sure why they'd been sent there or like whether they needed to intercede so they just you could see them on saturday just hovering like like a safe distance and i and barry was like oh you know where does sips live and i was like here oh, where does Sips live? And I was like, here. And he's like, oh.

Like a cannonball is going to fly through my window at any moment. A cannonball. Yeah. It was quite fun. So, yeah, I thought you could. Obviously, Jersey's like croissant-shaped, right? Yeah. And so it was like there's that big central sort of bay

at the bottom of Jersey. That's where all the Frenchies were blockading. Which is where people like to walk along. And it's quite nice there, actually. But yeah, it's not far from you, is it? You could probably walk down and have a look at the boats. They might have gone now, actually.

I thought they all left as soon as we sent in the nav. Yeah, I think it's pretty much over now from what i can tell i i think it's still being talked about but i i don't think i don't think there's any gonna be any more escalation i mean realistically there there can't be because it's so stupid but it is interesting though isn't it it is pretty interesting how quickly it went from well we're gonna cut your power off to warships turning up yeah so this is our closest posturing is something else it's just from well we're gonna cut your power off to warships turning up yeah so this is our closest posturing is something else it's just like well we're gonna send us some ships end it's

like we were friends like a year ago and now we're man how exciting for those guys that work on the warships though yeah they're like whoa oh my god they need us for something i'm taking up 300 targets pick up the pace on those potatoes, guys. We're shipping out soon. Yeah, it's crazy. So this week I found a... Actually, sorry, before I interrupt. Can I just go for a pee? Because I just really need to pee. It's such an exciting conversation.

I'll be right back. We'll wait. He just has to leak piss out of his... Louis Brindley of the Yogscast. What a guy, eh? Shows up to a podcast. Doesn't even do a pre-piss. Pre-pee.

Yeah, pre-pee. And now is just wasting everybody's time. You guys just have to sit here listening to us fill in time. Because he's probably got something really important to say when he gets back from this pee. I don't want to hear about it. I don't want an update on the pee. No. I wonder if he has good flow when if he has like good flow you know when

he's peeing he's getting older you know maybe he's maybe there's some interruptions there or like it slowed down a bit you know i've always been very slow to pee all right okay i've never been one of those people that just goes and let's just like and it's done yeah it's always my body's taking its time about everything always i've always very slow slow to learn slow to move slow to start slow to change but once you get me going sips i'm like a power boat well can't stop me nice we could use you over here but one of those little crappy ones break the blockade with your with your power boating one that a distant relative would assure you is is seaworthy but is not that would be me as a power but i'm back yeah sorry all right so i was gonna say before

louis louis went pp i've got uh i i was looking around this week for some reason i was thinking about uh choose your own adventure books right right and because i had a chat on my stream about role-playing games and dnd and stuff like that which i want to talk about a bit so when when i don't know if you guys ever played dungeons and dragons when you were kids did you guys play it when you were kids i never did no the the the closest i ever got to anything even remotely like that was we bought um me and my friend bought heroes quest like the board game right and uh but we spent most of our time just painting the figures because his dad had a bunch of model paints and we just spent a whole summer just painstakingly painting these little figures and i don't even think we played the game once but that's the closest i ever got to doing anything like that as a kid so i used to play i played dungeons and dragons from when i was

about nine nine or ten onwards um right and was this was this in america no this i never played it in the states i played it in the uk so when i came to the uk one of the other kids that i was friends with his older brother played dnd first edition the one that came in the red box the classic dungeons and dragons with the lad on the front it's like a little red cardboard box and everything you need is in there and we wanted to play and he was like he was two or three years older so he wanted nothing to do with us he was playing in his mind because he was 11 or 12 ultra advanced dungeons and dragons you know the way that you look down on younger siblings we were like we want to play he's like

oh no you're not playing and we're like please he's like fine you can make a character and we'll play some dungeons and dragons if it'll shut you up so like yeah yeah so me and my friend made characters which is our favorite part we would just make characters endlessly just making characters rolling dice making characters designing picking what equipment they have and everything and he had this adventure i don't know if it was from a book or whatever and he tried to kill us off as quickly as possible to get this over with so you could just say well you played and you lost so that's it i'm not doing it again yeah we we had to explore this old house and i think i was an elf and i think my friend was i think he was a some kind of warrior

we're exploring this room and the thing is if you show players a room if you describe a room they think there has to be something to the room because everything in every game you've ever played has taught you that they don't bother to put stuff in there unless there's something to it yeah the problem is quite often there is nothing in that room there's something in the house that you need to find maybe but not in every room it's not like a dungeon where you go like if there was a dungeon adventure and you go down a corridor and there's a large room here with an ornate statue and everything you're searching it and there's nothing there you go in another corridor there's another room this time with a large well and three bells but none of it does anything it'd be the worst adventure ever right So you expect it all to do something.

So we're in this room and we're poking around for ages and he says there's a large fireplace here and we're like, ooh, maybe there's something up the chimney. So I jab my sword up the chimney and all the rubble up the chimney falls down and kills my character. And my friend in trying to dig me out, there's a further landfall

and he is also killed by the stuff falling out of the chimney i remember thinking how awesome this was to be playing dnd but i thought this sucked and i very quickly got the idea that about bad dungeon masters and we were talking about this on stream that the it should never be seen as a contest between the players and the dm it should always be seen as like a story that you're telling together. And the DM has to adapt the story based on what the players do. And the players have, there is peril and there are things that can go wrong and they can make bad choices,

but it should never just be, you failed and you're dead. So that's what brought me to Choose Your Own Adventure Books. And there is a Tumblr called You Chose Wrong. And it's literally literally the ends sort of the ends from all these different books and i realized that cheese you're an adventure books are essentially like playing dungeons and dragons with a terrible dungeon master who is essentially just like a computer it's like a proceduralized flowchart there's no there's no real choices to be made for instance a door to your right flies open throwing a brilliant shaft of light into the corridor suddenly you are surrounded by a circle of snarling chimpanzees

they begin to close in the end yeah and that's from choose your own adventure 15 house of danger choose your own adventure books for me honestly are some of my worst childhood memories like like i i think back on some of the ones that i got out from the library and i feel a bit sick and the reason is because when i got those books out at first i thought these are gonna be great and this is something i can really get into i'm gonna love this whatever i got them and they were so disappointingly bad like i couldn't even get far in them and i would just cheat in the end you know i would like i would flick like forward just to see what the outcome was and then go back and make,

you know what I mean? It was just like the whole thing was just so unsatisfying. Like, I don't know, like I remember the cover art of the book being just not great and stuff. And like just the whole thing kind of gives me a headache.

Choose your own adventure books. We've rediscovered these books through Jingle Jam. So me and Simon obviously do a Choose Your Own Adventure every year on Jingle Jam. And we have an artist draw along. books we've rediscovered these books through jingle jam so me and simon obviously do a choose your own adventure every year on jingle jam and we have an artist draw alongside and it's great i hugely remember you know and we i guess we we we're unpicking something now and so identifying where the problems are i think mostly the problem comes with you can't really develop a character very

well when there's alternate routes through the story for people to take right but the other the other problem is that you do have to kind of railroad them down a certain route while telling them it's their choice to do it um and the other thing is you have to sort of keep track of your life you have to roll dice there's other awkward things that when i was a kid i was reading this book on the fucking bus i didn't have a notepad and a pen and a dice to roll i didn't have these things so i would just read it like it was a normal book right the classic thing people do is they keep multiple fingers in the book in case they hit one of these endings where yeah you know it's just arbitrary often you know suddenly you'll get eaten by an anaconda or fall into a pit of spikes or you know some some you'll go some and sometimes those traps will be two or three deep right so

by which i mean you know you'll make a choice and then all of that choice that choice inevitably leads to death any way you go from there but you don't know that that's a dead end right until like like the way these books are often designed is that you know you can see how they made them on a big uh whiteboard of post-it notes you know kind of thing yeah um with with these bits where it's like well this branch here leads to death this branch here leads to him getting the mcguffin that he needs this branch here you know leads leads to him carrying on but not getting the mcguffin um so he can't complete the book anyway so i mean it's often choice a choice b or choice c

i actually spent quite a long time writing a choose your own adventure book last christmas i would love to see man i would love to see this choose your own adventure and i would love to i would love the book to start out sort of fantasy with like you know you're choosing these things but then slowly uh the book becomes more about your struggle to write this book and the choose your own adventure becomes really sort of like uh introspective about you and your whole life and stuff and it's just this downward spiral of of misery that i could get into i would love to read that one i would like it to be an erotic fiction because that seems to be all the rage i mean everybody i i think that's i think at any given moment uh anything erotic is all the rage right

people are just like they can't help themselves they love it yeah you decide you've got to get help from the boat there's no telling what you'll find at the village and something is obviously very wrong here you don't make it very far though along the way you run into a large hungry anaconda the indians of the jungle say the anaconda is the spirit of the amazon and anyone swallowed by the snake lives unharmed inside forever if that's true send a postcard i mean geez come on like oh that's ridiculous imagine you live it for eternity inside an anaconda like how cramped it would be in there so i did i did like quite a lot of the steve jackson and ian livingston ones that they did

and there was one the sorcery sort of quadrology i think it is like the shamutanti hills care so to put a traps i can't remember what the other two were that was really good the illustrations in it were gorgeous but there was there were certain moments of the book where you thought well I don't really want to have to start again. I mean, you assume there must have been people out there who diligently obeyed the rules at the start of the book. And if they died, started again from the very beginning of the quadrology in an attempt to play through it. Well, exactly. But there'd really be no point because one of them is you sleep in an inn, you wake up and the innkeeper has put this elaborate trap

with a guillotine over it and you have a rope in one hand and a rope in the other and you pull one, you live, you pull one, you die. You're not going to start again because the moment you get to that point, you're just going to do the other thing. So it's like, well, I know the journey up to this point. Why would I repeat it?

So that was a clear and obvious, keep your finger on the page and choose the correct option because otherwise it feels a bit daft. There's a lot of bits in these books that people – well, there's been some – what's his name? Charlie something wrote one recently, a fight and fantasy book. There's been some guest writers. Rhianna Pratchett wrote one. Right.

There's been a couple of famous authors writing them because they remember them in the same way we do from their childhood. And also there's loads of other writers other than Ian Livingston, Steve Jackson, classic ones that we remember. And they cover all sorts of genres. But a lot of the readers are very protective of the style

and of that dead ends and the literal dead ends um where you die you know you as you reach for the riches the golem's hand slams shut around your neck this pathway has no need of those only out for themselves as you struggle to free yourself the roof collapses burying you alive yeah you have died exactly um that's it's a it's a standard element of these books and and i yeah i i don't like it but i think i think most people treat that as a continue in a video game yeah they just go back a page and they're like oops well guess guess i'm just auto loading my last auto save it's funny how that culture influences how people perceive games right like like dnd did so much for modern day rpgs and modern day gaming right

it really established the idea of of what we now see in video games and having played so many video games going back to these things with that knowledge changes how we see them. And they look very basic and they look very simplistic to us. In some ways, that's necessary. Certainly with board games, you see it because, you know, when you're trying to adapt a board game into a video game, you have to make it much more complex. Yeah.

Whereas the reverse is true when you try and do it the other way. You have to really greatly simplify. Like Stardew Valley, the board game, is like an incredibly simplified version of the game because you have to teach it to someone new in 20, 30 minutes. You can't do an hour or two hour long tutorial for a... Stardew Valley, the board game? I can't believe there's a board game of that, in all honesty.

Well, it's basically like playing the entire video game of Stardew Valley the board game? I can't believe there's a board game of that, in all honesty. Well, it's basically like playing the entire video game of Stardew Valley in two hours. There's a Cities Skylines board game as well. I actually haven't. I don't understand it. I don't really understand why you'd have a board game of a computer game. Because to me, whilst we've spoken about board games a lot, I know you're a big fan, Lewis, and they're more of a social thing do you need a city skylines board game like is it really is that a thing you need i don't understand like to me the board games of a tv show or something or a movie

at least you know something you make something interactive out of something that's essentially just a passive viewing experience but when you've already got something interactive to then make a board game of it as well seems a bit like overkill okay i've i've found i've found the thing i wrote do you want to hear page one yes my fancy oh my god okay sure all right let's start let's do this we're gonna do this so this could be real bad but um but here we go okay as tunnels and shafts give way to open caverns you begin to feel familiar cobblestones under your boots. Wait, this is how it begins? Yes. This is the first page?

First page, yeah. Who am I? Well, you're going to find out. Okay. It's a big, big lead up. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At last, you turn a corner to see the great dwarven stronghold stretching out before you.

Am I a dwarf? Well, you'll find out. Nestled deep in the heart of the flame-spewing mountain called Calakaz Makatath. Very dwarven. You are looking upon Stoneheim, one of the most remote and ancient mountain fastnesses of the dwarves.

Man, I love how pleased he is with himself here. I'm laughing at my own stuff that I wrote. Squat rune-car carved stone buildings huddled together on a plateau around a great central illumination, Maca Ea, and your jaw almost drops open as you gaze upon this great wonder.

As wide as a storehouse and bright with bubbling lava, it is an enormous pipe adorned with arcane brasswork and runes pulling molten rock. Hit pipe very hard. I'm going to hit that shit. Bong. Pulling molten rock from deep below and disappearing high into the ceiling above. I was going to get a little

Cheech and Chong about it there. Two dwarves appear. Cheech Ra and Chong Po. And they offer you a hit of the massive Dwarven Pike they cough and laugh yeah so you have traveled long and hard to return here but your heart is gripped with dread Stoneheim feels wrong it is cold and Dwarven towns are always fierce with heat what about the lava yeah what about the flame spewing Mountain where? Where's that now? Who knows? No smoke rises from the

thousand chimneys and forges, but worse than the chill air is the deathly silence. On your journey here, you encountered no dwarves. The three great gates that you passed through were sealed but unguarded. Maybe they all died of boredom after reading

page one of this book. but unguarded. Maybe they all died of boredom after reading page one of this book. Your heart beat quickened with each step, fearing and knowing that something was terribly amiss. As you turn onto the main thoroughfare,

Stoneheim appears deserted, but your keen senses catch glimpses of dark, sunken eyes from behind twitching curtains. As you reach the centre of Stoneheim, you see a lone dwarf kneeling in front of the High Forge, looking up at the roiling lava churning up through the Great Pipe. You have heard that many of the dwarves of Stoneheim revere the magnificent construction as some holy relic, and indeed the dwarf appears to be praying.

as some holy relic, and indeed the dwarf appears to be praying. The lava pipe ascends through a ring of enormous furnaces in front of the anvil of ashes, an enormous anvil on which sits an equally oversized hammer, easily three times the size of the dwarf in front of you. Take hammer. As you approach... I type take hammer. Okay.

As you approach, she stands and turns to face you, letting two glowing rune-etched axes fall into her hands. Pale, brother, she says, suspicion dripping from her voice. From the crimson red three-braided beard and blue-wowed tattoos on her cheeks, you recognise her as a berserker. She's got a beard? One of the most feared dwarven warriors. Yeah, female dwarves have beards.

You know this. I don't know if they're necessarily fully bearded female dwarves. Are they? Well, she is. It's a choice, isn't it? You could have shaved. Wait, Gimli said that, didn't he? That dwarven women have beards?

Yeah. Sometimes more bushy and luscious than the men, you know? I'm not into that. I heard this thing just slightly on the topic of dwarves. Apparently Tolkien, nobody wanted to ever go for walks with him because he would stop and look at a plant for 20 minutes and study it, like the details of the plant and stuff like every plant he came across that really comes across in the first few chapters of lord of

the rings yeah when they're walking when they do the walk from the shire to get to anywhere interesting it's right there on the page his his obsession with every every roll of the land and every every color of every leaf it's right there on the on the page if you can make it through that section you're doing well then you will see you know if you look at the nature if you keep looking you're enough you'll see all sorts of stuff all sorts of there's little tiny details everywhere that's one of the meditative things you should do is is look but really look you know yeah no no i i choose whatever the option is that leads to you do not look closely at the vegetation. I'll do that one.

Yeah. We're doing a big jersey blockade on that idea. Anything to say before I cut you down? She says. If you would like to reply, you can turn to 280. If you would rather draw your weapon, turn to 21. No, that sounds like the end. 21 is too close.

280? How many pages is this? Well, I thought this was just one page. You said I'm going to... Well, I've written some of it. All right, let's just chat to her. How long did it take you to write all this? Oh, like I was writing it for a couple of weeks,

but I finished... I didn't finish it. I've got about a third of the way through, I'd say. I'm about a third of the way through. I broke it into three bits. No, wait, wait, wait. Let's fight her. Let's try and get this over with.

Let's fight her. Okay. Sensing your aggressive movement, there is a blur in the air, and suddenly a bear is lunging at you. Savage. Come on. Savage teeth. And razor-sharp claws moments away from slicing your throat open.

If you were an ordinary dwarf, your head would be rolling loose across blood soaked cobblestones. Oh, wait, what's that underfoot? It looks like yarrow root. Let's examine it for 30 minutes. As you duck to examine the root, the bear's attack sails overhead and he falls into the lava. But this is when you're going to pick your class, right?

Oh. But you are no ordinary dwarf. What is your history? And so this is when you are... I basically wanted to have it, you choose between three, like, types, three backstories, if you like, that then define what your abilities are going forward, right?

Give you some different paths through the book. So here's the three choices. I want to be the one that's an expert of fighting bears right so that would be most useful right now if you traveled with the burned ones to the deepest of the deep mines and stared into the core light where the intense heat burned your body to ash and your very soul was scorched and charred until it was nothing more than a windblown ember. And then he was pulled back from the abyss and blessed by the mountain. Reforged as an ash dwarf with the ability to read fire runes, then turned to 87. I can't remember if I was or not.

Oh my God. Okay, how many pages is this book? Will 87 get me close to the end? This is like a normal fighting fantasy book. It's going to take like three to six hours. I'm not going to get it done in the next five minutes. Give us some examples

of ends. I want to know how we die. Is there an option for all of that stuff to happen, but the abyss forgets to pull you back and you're just dead? Well, I'm sure that happens to a lot of dwarves in this universe. Yeah, I'm sure it doesn't work at all. That's our backstory.

That's the one we're going for. There's two more, but that's fine. No, no, Sips is one. Go on, let's hear the other two. Let's hear the other two. If you delved into the darkest forbidden chambers and spent countless years fighting the horrors of the abandoned catacombs...

That sounds hard. ...only to be mortally wounded by... Yeah. ...and causing a mortal wound to the Worm King, the legendary Basilisk... Right. ...and were revived by drinking the still-warm venom from its fangs,

turning your flesh to stone... Oh, my God. ...and your blood to acid, imbuing you with the strength of 100 dwarves if you were a stone turned then turn to page 6 and if only my blood was filled with acid right now I wish I was dead

I wish this book would end that's a good that's a good selling point for the book on the cover. Get through it quick. I wished I was dead. I want to speed run this one. Sift is safe. Option three. If you survived the traps and curses of the tombs of the old ones,

blew dust from lost scrolls and forgotten plans, tapped mysterious kegs to sample brews from the ancient Tinker Kings, or if you brought forgotten engines back to life with black, spluttering coughs, forged brass-ringed windows to peer into the cosmic beyond, or felt the sting of the lightning sprites on your fingertips,

then you have mastered the arcane art of engineering and turned to 22. Nah, you don't want to be a fucking engineer. Fuck that. Yeah. He's going to lose to the bear. I mean, quite clearly. The stone lad. Uh, stone lad. You don't want to be the ash guy either, though. Fuck the ash guy. Fuck the brainiac. Give us the stone lad.

We want to be the acid blood one. No, that's the ash one. We want to be the stone one. Yeah, no, the stone one was the one. Yeah, the basilisk. Yeah, yeah, the stone one does have acid blood. He's got acid for blood yeah what is he yeah yeah yeah he's a xenomorph just one of these dwarves managed to kill my entire crew in less than 24 hours i don't think this i don't think i've actually completed this this thread yeah this is one of the ones i haven't done yet anyway let's hear some let's hear some of the some of the the ends i want to hear

oh you want to hear one of the death ones? Just a couple of ends. How do these things even end? Because like I said, I just got a headache. I never got through any of them. So I don't even really know how they end. Are the endings like pretty good normally? Or do you always win? I don't know.

I never finished. No. I always just got about halfway and went and did something else. The other thing I wanted to do was I wanted to add keywords, right? So rather than keep track of your life through like the score or life or numbers, I wanted to add keywords, right? So rather than keep track of your life through like the score or life or numbers, I wanted to add keywords. So for example, if you got burned, you'd get like, say you gain charred

or you gain like burned, right? And then if you got burned again, you'd get like killed, right? So if you ended up, you'd lose the game if you took on multiple damage keywords. You see what I mean? And that would also affect how people reacted to you and stuff like this.

Anyway, so you heroically leap off the edge of the platform, again, inspiring, but immediately regret your decision as you bounce off an outcropping of rock, cracking your head against the surface and spinning away. You blink your eyes open to see yourself falling fast into a sea of lava that heralds your certain doom.

You are dead. Great. Wow. That are dead. Great. Wow. That's out of nowhere. You plummet into the lava sea, and despite your considerable powers, you cannot survive being submerged in lava, and you return to being one with the mountain. Your adventure ends here.

But if you were the ash dwarf, you would have survived that. Oh. Well, how am I meant to know that? Well, because you can't dive into lava if you're the wrong type the wrong type of dwarf well i wouldn't have dived i wouldn't have dived into the lava that's crazy whoever chose that was written that's here you go how about this consumed by berserker rage you tear into the dwarves as they try to run away when you have feasted on their organs you turn back into the gin but you have missed your chance he looms above you and brings his scythe down in one easy swing and cuts you clean in half your adventure ends here

so there's another there's another death but yeah there you go that's a little that was a project that i had some ideas to work on like ended up giving up because i was planning on writing it for jingle jam but i didn't do it in time right um and so it got shelved and i haven't really come back to it and i guess i should do really because i'd like to do it with simon um i'd like to i'd like to take simon on on a sort of themed dwarven adventure that he that's familiar to him in a sense like this is almost like writing a dnd campaign for someone that you know well because i can add in references to stuff that he you know feels like he knows and the dwarven universe that he's familiar with from from things like wow and other things that were you know yeah

if it needs to feel in in in universe right anyway i i enjoyed doing it but i don't think it's very good it's supposed to be a bit kind of silly You did great. No, I mean I was thanks. That was really commendable. You were you were great. I was Okay. Well this I just felt like I had this I just found it like talking about it is worth I never I never share this with anyone There I guarantee you you'll get a bunch of messages saying there i guarantee you you'll get a bunch of messages saying i want more of levi's you'll have to publish the whole thing i'll have to i'll have to finish it yeah yeah i'm not sure i i do need a crazy wall to go through and do all the threads i started making it but it was

oh man i just thought maybe it's easy for me to just write like one thread i don't know to start with yeah and then fill in the second thread one really good one and then you know and then flesh it out from there i think you're also when you're writing and creating stuff you do have to um trick you i have to trick myself when i do do anything i and i sometimes that involves doing the fun bits first you know if you if you think oh god i have to fill out this boring bit then you probably shouldn't be doing it in the first place you know you should just you just find a way to avoid having that boring bit in your story. It should be full of bits that you're interested in and want to tell.

Otherwise, it can be pretty skippable. If you're not interested in writing it, then you shouldn't be writing it, and they don't want to be reading it. So, yeah, one thing I did this week which was interesting, completely pivoting the topic, is I did some voice recording. So I went to a studio the day before yesterday, locally, and I did some voice lines. It's the first time I've ever done anything like that, really, like a professional studio. And it's for Humankind, which is the new Civ game.

So basically they said to me, do you want to be in the game? We're not going to pay you. I was like, sure, what do I have to do? They were like, oh, you could just take some pictures of yourself. And I was like, okay, send them in. So I sent some pictures and they were like, oh, these aren't good enough, we can get some more done. So I was like, okay, so I got Joe to take loads

of pictures of me and they were like, we need back of you and head and everything, like 3D pictures. So I was like, oh, crikey. So I sent all these pictures in and then they were like, oh, we need you to do some voice lines for your character now. And I were like, we need back of you and head and everything, like 3D pictures. So I was like, oh, crikey. So I sent all these pictures in. And then they were like, oh, we need you to do some voice lines for your character now. And I was like, oh, OK, sure. Let me know what I need to say. And I'll just do it in Audacity and send it back.

And they were like, oh, no, no, we need it in good quality. And I was like, oh, OK, well, we've got a studio here. I can just go in the booth and do it in there. And they're like, oh, no, no, we need to have the voice coach. There's like 470 lines. You're going to have to be there for two days. We're going to have to rent a studio. And I was like, okay.

So I went over and stood in this booth, met the nice people. There's a booth. In fact, it's right next to the BBC Bristol. So I was in David Attenborough's recording booth, where he normally does all of his dulcet tones for the BBC nature stuff. And they played these sort of animations of Civ leader, like a generic stock animation of Civ leader, sort of saying something along the lines of, oh, you know,

like angrily shaking his fist or like bowing, stuff like this. And I'd have to say these generic kind of voice lines, which are like, you snake, how dare you betray me or something like this you know uh and so i i slowly over the course of the day became more and more because i started off saying i'm just gonna do my normal voice i wish to be me i'm gonna be like you know you you you nasty man don't do that but then over the course of the day i became more and more matt berry i became more and more exaggerated no you know more and more sort of hail friends i will be your grand leader and it would just it just sort of became slowly more ludicrous were they

happy did you have fun though they were they were fine they didn't say anything i had fun it was nice um smash through i've got done in a whole in a in about well by about two o'clock actually so i didn't need two whole days nine to five i needed a morning and a bit right to do them right it was very interesting uh it was quite fun i had a nice day and i think i i'm interested to seeing what it looks like in the game when it eventually comes out. Is it this month it comes out or is it when is it out? I think we're delayed. So it's like six to eight weeks away. Okay.

But obviously I'm a big fan of that sort of, you know, that sort of video games. And it's nice to be in one. I think that's one of the best things about our job. I think that's awesome. I think it's awesome. Yeah, we get to do stuff like that. it's pretty cool yeah i look forward to it i must admit some of the things because i had to sort of there were quite a lot of lines that were quite like angry okay like i and i found myself like a bit uncomfortable with the idea of yelling this

at the player you know it's like my character comes up and he's like you mangy dog how dare you spit on my people in such a way do you know i mean i almost like i was because i was sort of doing them all so quick and lost in the in the moment and i had to get a character being very angry i didn't really soften any of it or give it a like more light-hearted spin or make it cheeky it was all very kind of so i'm a bit i'm not really concerned. Are you very angry? I was...

Well, I got not... I got in character angry. I didn't get angry, angry, angry in real life. But I'm worried that it'll come... I just... I don't know. It's slightly uncomfortable that, like, I didn't put a lighthearted...

I didn't think about it, really, because they hadn't sent me the lines beforehand. I couldn't really tweak it to my personality. So it was almost like I was just reading out things suddenly that I was not... They're not offensive or anything, you know, but it's almost like just a bit rude and aggressive. I'm just worried that people will clip the voice lines out.

Then again, I think people... I'm just paranoid now. Don't worry, Lewis. You're a worrier. What a journey, man. Holy jeez. It was a bit of a journey. Don't worry, Lewis. You're a worrier. What a journey, man. Holy jeez. It was a bit of a journey. It was fun.

Interesting. And man, my voice at the end of it was like absolutely killing me. My throat was like really, really parched and sore. And like just from just like just talking. It wasn't even like I was really flamboyant or like, you know. You know what? It wasn't even like I was really flamboyant or like, you know. You know what?

The professional voice actors are amazing at preserving their voice and still being able to do the voices. When I did the, for Dota, I did the Rick and Morty announcer pack with Justin Roiland, right? And we would do, I think we did like six or seven calls over Skype. And he would be recording at his end in here because he's got a studio at home because he's a voice actor that's what he does so he's in California and he's recording and I he's just got the the mic open on Skype so I can hear his takes and we would make adjustments to the script and stuff like that and the stuff that was wildly inappropriate I would

mark as wildly inappropriate so he did Rick and Morty for like three or four hours at a time. He would do it and he would do the voices seamlessly going between them. And one voice is very high. The other voice, you know, Morty's voice is kind of like, oh God, Rick, you know,

and then Morty, Morty, come on, we got to get the bottom tower, you know, like that. So he did that for like three or four hours. And I'm thinking a normal person would only be able to do that for like 30 minutes before their voice is completely gone. I couldn't keep my own voice consistent over the course of those three hours.

Two other freaky voices that are very straining. I started to forget how I sound. I was like, what is my normal voice? I had to like kind of like try and reset my own. So I started putting on this weird like. It was I was really like almost. But the other thing about it was because the way it was set up was it was just in a random fucking order. It was like evil kind of character me and then friendly character me and then evil character me and then friendly character me. So I had to like schizophrenically switch like schizophrenically switch between oh welcome friend it's good to see you again to what do you want

you disgusting maggots like and then back and forth again and so when you get back to the office were you a bit like hello harry you worm any calls so yeah that's normal normal me actually yeah that was easy to just slip right back into that um narcissistic arsehole oh yeah so it was it was it was worth doing it was worth it was fun but yeah great respect for the people who can somehow i don't know how they maintain like a consistent character voice it's crazy day after day or especially multiple ones you know these people who do like five or six different characters in a show yeah really really really cool anyway i recommend it you should do it yeah i recommend to everyone out there get into voice acting for a video yeah did you do did you did you do bodega did you do the voices for the characters or did you like just no he got um he got some uh big

hollywood uh name in i got david attenborough um oh same. I got David Attenborough in. Oh, same. Yeah. You got Brian Blessed and a bunch of other people. So that means you haven't listened to the audio book, Lewis. I haven't listened to the audio book. Interesting. No, yeah, I know I did it. It was a week.

It's available on Audible, though, isn't it? It is. And other platforms, probably. Probably. Yeah, I came down there for a week. I think I did a couple of streams and i would spend about two or three hours a day i think maybe slightly more recording it and we had a lot of office noise and we had to keep coming out and saying can you guys shut the fuck up please that

happened to me a couple times actually yeah because we didn't i mean we just did it in the old in one of the old offices we didn't have like a studio or anything like that because you've got the streams going on and everything i guess now actually would have been the time to do it it's probably pretty quiet in the office but um we did it when everyone was down there it was super busy but it was it was hard work you get into the flow after a while you get into the flow but sometimes i'd be i just couldn't finish a sentence without fucking it up and it'd be like my god it was just taken forever yeah and we would sort of have to start again but um it's like that sometimes right you just gotta you gotta take a little break and i mean you know what exactly but the tricky part is the mic was so

sensitive that the turning because i had it all printed out turning the page would show up on the audio so i'd have to when i'm getting near the end of the page i have to find a point to pause memorize that sentence turn the page over and then so that you can't hear the sound of the page being turned on the book otherwise it sounds like that that's good that that's a't hear the sound of the page being turned on the book otherwise it sounds like that that's good that that's a bit of asmr the page turning i i didn't i wouldn't have minded it but the problem is it's not printed out in the same format that the book is so the turning of the page might not be in time with although actually you're listening anyway you're not reading so yeah no i don't know why we did it we did uh we did it but you know we wanted to cut

down on all the all the background noise but i'm pretty sure that you can hear office laughter or chat at some point. Because the thing is, like, your guy's desk's right there. People would congregate there and they're like, oh, what a fine tale. And then we'd also have the air conditioning would kick in every now and then and go like. So that was on the recording so it was the the biggest time sig was actually killing background noise telling people to shut up and waiting for the air conditioning to require yeah well that's that's that's their office in a nutshell isn't it as well as the pigeons and seagulls seagulls hey jeez and various things had a had a big rainstorm this week huge rainstorm obviously our roof just leaked all over the place

we had hail here uh this week we it hailed on like wednesday i think it's fucking mad it was the i know just april it was the coldest april since 1922 yeah tell me about it jesus like it's fucking it was like arctic wind out there it was unbelievable it's nice today though it actually feels warm and tomorrow's meant to be like 18 degrees which is i'm excited to returning to life oh my god yeah what how's what's the deal with you getting a vaccine and stuff lewis you have to wait because you're you're under 40 right it's like a doomsday counter ticking down on the news every day it's like last week it was like 41 then it was like 40 and i think it's like 39 now. I've got to wait another two weeks or so probably, and then it'll be my age group.

It's not fun, but it's important. No, absolutely. I think people are starting to get pretty fucking slack around it. For anyone wondering if it's good for you to get the vaccine, consider this. Nothing else in life that is fun to do is also good for you right think about it eating eating disgusting sloppy food doing hard drugs getting really drunk yeah doing dangerous stuff yeah none of that's good for you we don't need to tell our audience they know no one's listening to this who's that irresponsible relax we've

shooed them all away with these these these believers of getting the vaccine sucks the next few days will suck so you know it's good it's like going on a diet anyway the other thing tell you what the other thing i did this week was i played pokemon snap you scum it's great you should get it for your kids fuck off i don't want them anywhere near a pokey man or pokey woman no thank you it's full of very adorably cute uh pokemon that you bother do you know what it reminds me of it reminds me of those kids in zoos who bang on the glass that's what pokemon snap reminds me of right because you you're you're in a little bubble thing and you get sort of along on rails and there's pokemon everywhere and you're just constantly harassing them with like camera sounds and like throwing apples at them and like flashing music and flashing lights to them to make

them like turn towards your smile do something right and then as soon as they like do something like a little dance or a little fucking wiggle or they breathe fire or burp or jump into a waterfall or whatever you take a picture of them while they're doing it and that you know that that gives you the reward so you have to provoke these animals what are in the wild so you go into the wild you you provoke them into making doing something and then you take a picture of that and then and then the guy gives you stars for it so it's like it is like it is like being that kid in the zoo who is tapping on the glass to like make the animals which is a terrible thing pictures of uh wild animals is if nature documentaries have taught us anything you

just wait until they start having sex and then you take a picture covertly like some kind of nature voyeur weird peeping that's what you're supposed to do yeah you don't go in there and poke actively but there's like four pokes different pokes for the pokemon i guess that's why they're called pokemon they've added um a bunch of like new ones since i last have even been aware of pokemon and some of them they're all so cute now they're so so cute i just love i'm in love with like what it's like a coral one there's like there's like cute little manta rays and stuff and like little fish like three or four different fish wait all this stuff sounds like uh what i would have

expected to just be in pokemon no matter what well i didn't quite realize that like i was still on the on the idea that it's all uh the same ones that i remember. And they are, sure, the Pikachus and the Bulb Swords, all of them are still in there, all the favorites. But they've cutened it a lot. At least for this game, they've picked the cutest ones. Oh, my God. And there's so many now as well, so many more. There's like 20 different kinds of bird Pokemon,

like 15 kinds of Pokemon that live on a beach. There's like 20, like any kind of animal blended live on a beach there's like like it's like 20 like any kind of animal blended with any kind of thing is a pokemon and i i just i was i just was impressed like i don't know why i liked i'll tell you what i'm just looking at the names of the pokemon and it's very clear they ran out of ideas for names. And now I think they're just mashing the leftists together. Yeah, they're the worst. I'll give you an example. Here's the first 10 in Generation 1 of the Pokemon, right?

Right. Bulbasaur, Ivysaur, Venusaur, Charmander, Charmeleon, Charizard, Squirtle, Wartortle, Blastoise, and Caterpie. Right? Now let's look at... Those are numbers 1 through 10. Generation 8. The most recent 10 are Zacian,

Zamazenta, Eternatus, Kubfu, Urshifu, Zarud, Regiliki, Regidrago, Glastria,

Spectria and Calyrex. You sounded drunk when you were reading those. It's like a drunken list of just think of a fucking name all right here's one dreepy that's one uh dreepy snom mr rhyme i mean they've given up so in fact i'll tell you what one of them one of them is called is a is a sea cucumber pokemon called pew cube muq okay yeah that's the english name in japanese it's namakoboshi

right or namakoboshi and it's it's like a sea cucumber except a giant white gloved fist

comes out of the end of it right and like punches things or grabs things how do you i mean honestly

it freaked me the fuck out so i was playing the pokeball snap and i was like just you know as usual throwing apples at things spooking them like trying, honestly. It freaked me the fuck out. So I was playing the Pokeball Snap and I was like, just, you know, as normal, throwing apples at things, spooking them, like trying to get it to dance for me.

The usual. And I throw an apple at this thing and this giant fucking fist comes out of its mouth and just grabs the apple and took it back in. And I was totally, I was totally freaked out. And that's what Pokeball Snap, I think, is really. It's like, these things are just really fucking weird ideas. Like, only the Japanese can come up with this this stuff it feels like a lot of time i tell you what i like

i do like animal crossing um i don't play it but my my wife and both of my girls play it my youngest loves the game and she's obsessed with getting other people onto her island and going to other people's islands and all that kind of social element it's very wholesome yeah but she is the nicest islander she she makes things just for her friend's island so she ran up to her she was super excited she was like i helped my friend make a cafe and i had all the furniture made and i was just waiting to see if i could help someone make a cafe so i made loads of cafe furniture and we built a cafe and now her island is up to three stars. Nice.

I was like, made her day doing that. That's a sweet game. I like that. I don't think, like, Pokemon Snap is all that bad. Like, I think it's... It's making animals into a commodity, Lewis. You goad them into doing something worth looking at. As if the animal, the pokemon itself is not beautiful

no it must be a performing kablunky for me perform kablunky jump around and i'll only be satisfied if it punches out its foes with with its big comical mickey mouse gloved fist that comes out of his whatever the animal must do our bidding before it has value no oh that's i genuinely couldn't shake it and that did taint the whole thing for me i guess and maybe that's just the cynicism of of seeing our um seeing i don't know you i constantly read and i can't help it because it's always there people constantly throw bad fucking news at you all the time it's so depressing like someone will be like oh yeah there's a bird that that doesn't sing it so anymore because there's too few left in the wild that is for the species

and it's like oh fuck me you know like god like just get back to singing for my sake christ just fuck this bird ain't gonna sing let's fucking kill him what's the point oh man god yeah anyway fucking stupid bird think about somebody else for once jeez you real animals we got digital fucking weird ones now which are even cuter you know philip k dick do android's dream of sheep? Foretold this People replacing the natural world With robotic versions of creatures And the question is That have big eyes

Do they dream? Indeed Well there you go That's a little A little Philosophical Yes Note

To end the podcast on Right What an ending Choose your own adventure Whether to Listen to this podcast again Skip to one hour and one minute if you don't like

any of the topics. It's at the start of the podcast we should put that. If you wish to listen to the podcast, continue. However, if you think it's going to be garbage, turn to page one hour, two minutes. The end. Oh man. Choose hour, two minutes, the end. Oh, man.

You have died. You have fallen into an abyss of boring chat. Of course, ironically, whichever one you choose, that happens. So, you know, you're either going to listen to the podcast and reach ascending or not listen to it and still perish. Like I said, by episode whatever world now, I think we've shaken out

168. 175 went up this morning 175 geez yeah so 176 so since we did the the the 100 episode special at y'all come we've done 75 more podcasts that's amazing this is now 76 that's that's so nuts we're gonna have to think of what to do for the big 200. Yeah. Yeah. I've got a couple of... No, I don't really, actually. I haven't... I'll start thinking about some cool ideas, though. I'm sure we can...

Yeah, we'll think of some cool ideas. Yeah, yeah. Well, don't think too hard. No, I won't. Thanks to everyone. Thank you to everyone for listening. Thanks for all the support. Yeah.

It's always much appreciated. You can check out new episodes of Triforce on Spotify every Wednesday. And also, Pitch Please is back. I'm on it, I think, this Sunday. you can check out new episodes of Triforce on Spotify every Wednesday. And also Pitch Please is back. I'm on it, I think, this Sunday. What was your idea? It was basically like having therapy for my Path of Exile addiction. Right.

Because I wanted to, I think I just wanted a sort of a more, I want like games with more automation. Yeah. I want my games with more programming. I want, instead of an action RPG, I want an automated rpg which is a terrible idea but and the guys did a very good job in letting me get it out of my brain and questioning me and realizing i knew i didn't really have a plan um and it was okay but imagine you play you play this game and it's like at the start it's an action rpg and you have to go through like the motions you have to like you skill up build up get gear and stuff but then the other part of

the game is that you get older and become wiser and then you mentor other adventurers and you can like send them out and you can occasionally just go in and see what they're up to in the dungeon like you know if they've gotten any cool stuff and like how quickly they're clearing like the monsters and everything so it becomes like it transitions into like a management game where you have to manage heroes that go out and do this kind of stuff and they come back and they bring back the gear and you sort through it when you like you work for a cleaning company yeah and then you own the cleaning company you end up managing the cleaning company yeah right wow yeah, yeah. Right. Wow. Well, that sounds like a pretty interesting idea. That would be awesome, no?

That was not what we thought about, but maybe we need a follow-up. Yeah, just do a follow-up and pitch that one, please. Yeah. Well, they're our friends, so you can check them out if you're interested in listening to a podcast. Otherwise, thanks for listening.

See you next week. Yeah. And goodbye. See you all next week. Yeah. And goodbye. See you then. Bye. Bye.