Triple Click - What's the Deal With: Dungeons & Dragons?

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Grab your D20 and roll initiative — it's time to talk Dungeons & Dragons. Inspired by their recent Triple Quest journey, the gang talks about their experiences playing with Matthew Mercer this year. They also get into their personal D&D histories, the game's recent surge of popularity, and how Baldur's Gate 3 has impacted it all.One More Thing:Kirk: Mouthwashing (PC/Steam)Maddy: Infinity NikkiJason: Secrets of GrindeaLINKS:Luke Winkie’s 2023 interview with Matt Mercer: https://slate.com/life/2023/08/dungeons-dragons-critical-role-matthew-mercer-twitch.htmlMages and Murderdads: https://rangedtouch.com/mages-murderdads/Jason on Secrets of Grindea: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-05-31/-secrets-of-grindea-the-hit-indie-video-game-that-took-13-years-to-makeSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinBuy Triple Click Merch: https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

This week, the PlayStation turned 30, but there have only been five of them. Come on, PlayStation, get a move on. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking about Dungeons and Dragons, the game we've all been playing recently thanks to Triple Quest. Let's get into the ups and downs of D&D. I'm Jason Shryor. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello. Hello. Hello, my friends. Hello. How is your thinking? Thanksgivings. It was great. Kirk, how is your Spatchcock turkey? My Thanksgiving was great. As I mentioned on that episode, on last week's episode, we had a brisket at my friend's house. But you had a turkey the weekend after.

But Emily got a free turkey at the store. They were like giving out free turkeys. I think there was a turkey surplus. So we had this big turkey. It was like an 18 pound turkey or something in our fridge. And we just made it and had some friends over for post Thanksgiving, not Thanksgiving. And we did Spatchcock the turkey. did the honors of all the gnarly stuff that you have to do. So you'd have to ask her how that part went. But the turkey came out great. And it felt very good to do it after you so enthusiastically endorsed spatchcocking. So yeah, I co-sign. I co-sign your endorsement of that method. My shop ride also gives up free turkeys.

It's like a promo every single fall for like if you have their loyalty card or whatever, you have their membership thing. You get a free turkey. So, hey, I guess it's a thing. There's turkeys. turkeys everywhere, frozen turkeys everywhere. Is it before Thanksgiving, they give you a free turkey, or is it like a Halloween candy situation where it's right after?

Oh, wow. It's before. Wow. They're giving out frozen turkeys. Yeah, they offered me when I was, I already had it. So I had them give it to charity. All right. Well, if you want to hear more spash cocking tips, you of course should become a member.

You're in the right place. Maximum fun. Maximum fun is our podcast, Eric. We are a listener-supported podcast, which means that we are only able to do this show because of all you find supporters out there. And hey, guess what? Everybody can be a supporter. Every single listener, every single person listening to this right now can become a supporter if they want. We do not discriminate.

You just go to maximum phone.org slash join, and you can become a supporter. We welcome everybody. We have a big tent here at Triple Click. And not only do you get to be inside of the tent, you also get bonus episodes from us every single month, once a month. We put out a new one, including the ongoing triple-quist saga, which is our triple D&D campaign, triple-part D&D campaign, our three-part extramagance, DM'd by the one and only Matthew Mercer. We just put out, Kirk just finished up the epic finale and put it out on the bonus feed. So if you remember, you can listen to that right now. if you are not a member, episodes one and two, as well as our kind of pre-planning episode,

are all on the main feed, and you can sign up to get the finale a little bit early. It's pretty cool. I recommend it. But also, we do bonus episodes on all sorts of stuff, and we will be recording many more in the near future, including some games talk for those of you who are members and are like, oh, man, like this D&D stuff, I don't want to, I want to hear them talk about things instead of play a game. Not to fear. We have more of that coming. There's a certain JRP we've all been playing and all finished up and might want to talk about some more. And of course, our annual tradition of talking about

things we like this year that are not video games. So lots to talk about. But you know what? If you're not into the D&D stuff, you should just shut off this episode right now. Kirk, what are we talking about this week? Yeah, we are talking about D&D this week. We're talking about Dungeons and Dragons and its vast legacy. The shadow of D&D looms over a lot of video games. And we just spent a lot of time playing it this year together. And also I just spent a lot of time really, you know, editing and working on this three-part saga of Triple Quest, which is now, yeah, as you said, Jason Complete, at least in the members feed. And everyone will get to hear the finale in December.

So, you know, I've been thinking about D&D a lot. I've also been playing D&D for the last few years with a group of friends. And it just seemed like this would be a good opportunity for us to talk about it some, to talk about tabletop role-playing, role-playing in general. A little bit of an addendum to an episode we did, I think, last year about role-playing games and what a role-playing game even is. And of course, 2024 was such a banner year for role-playing games, which we have also talked about recently.

So this is kind of the ur-ro-roleying game, or at least one of them. The rule set and the approach to role-playing that sort of looms over all. lot of video games. So I guess let's start this conversation about Dungeons and Dragons with just each of our histories with D&D and our kind of, I don't know, our relationship with Dungeons and Dragons. Jason, why don't you go first? Yeah, I mean, I haven't played much. I played a little bit with some college friends before I had kids and then haven't played a while. But I fell victim to the kind of the common joke that you hear all the time about, the common meme about how impossible it is to schedule an ongoing D&D campaign and get a bunch of busy people together

for like five hours on a Saturday or something like that. I did manage to get a couple of games together and I DM'd which is super fun. I enjoyed that experience of writing a campaign and kind of improvising on the fly as things happened and creating puzzles and stuff like that. That was super fun and then of course our three-parter but the majority of my D&D experience is really through video games. Balders Gate 3 is the most recent one, but before that, all of the old forgotten realms games like Balders Gates 1 and 2 and Icewind Dale and a few others from back in the day. And so that was always, that was my first real exposure to D&D. It was like picking up Baldersgate one for the first time. It came in one of those big like five disc sleeves. It was ridiculous.

It had five CDs and going through that and just like trying to understand Dungeons and Dragons for the first time by playing that game, which is really interesting experience. It had stuff like Thaco and other kind of mechanics that have been really done away with over the years as the game has become more approachable and accessible to people. So, yeah, it's been interesting having kind of that early experience to, or early, early kind of exposure to D&D.

It's been really interesting to see the modern revitalization with Fifth Edition and all of the kind of the popularity that it's experiencing now. Yeah, nice. We'll definitely get into all of that. Maddie, how about you? What's your experience, your history like, with Dungeons and Dragons? Yeah, it's similar and different. It's similar in the sense that I played D&D at the exact same age group as Jason, which is like late teens, early 20s. But I played with a very different type of person, which is to say exclusively theater kids. So I talked about this a little bit when I was talking about Les Mizz on the last episode, but I was very ensconced in various musical theater and acting scenes in that era of my life. And I did, uh, theater and college and community theater even, and was very into it, and actually had not great experiences with D&D as a result of that, because theater kids, and again, I don't want to make a generalization here, but the specific people, let me tell me about theater kids. The very specific people that I was playing D&D with really wanted to be the star of the show.

And this isn't a problem. Every single one of them. Yes, you are picking up what I'm putting down. single one of them wanted to be the star of the show, wanted to be the funny one, wanted to be the hero. And it just created a lot of bottlenecks. And I think we can kind of talk about that group dynamic as we kind of get into the different pitfalls that can happen with D&D. But even at the time, I was like, wow, I'm really noticing the difficulties of having like a group roleplaying game with a bunch of people who are really into acting, like capital A acting. And so at the time,

I was like, maybe I just don't like D&D. I don't know what it is. It just doesn't seem like it's for me. I think maybe I just like scripted theater. But then, you know, the years went by. And I have a really different take on it now. And I'm really glad to have gotten to play it with you too. I also don't think I've ever been a particularly good actor myself, even back then.

I was always a good singer, but not a great actor. So it's really fun to play it in a super different social context with the two of you. and just have like almost a healing experience with D&D. I'm getting kind of deep right now. But I do kind of feel like I had that experience playing with you too and remembering something very pure. We healed you. I love to hear it.

I'm very glad to hear you. I mean, we did heal Key, right? That's true. Yeah. But we didn't really. It was an NPC that did it. He gets into scenarios where she needs healing a lot. Key is a real whack job sometimes.

But I do feel like I. I went on a journey mentally with D&D, and I've reached a new place with it now where I think it can be a creative outlet for a lot of different kinds of people, even people who aren't into acting, either for a living or as a hobby, and just want to do storytelling with their friends. And I think that's really cool and really powerful and fascinating that it exists as a hobby like this. It's really interesting that there's kind of the dual nature of it, the storytelling and theater and improv of it all. and then the game, the game of it all, the design and the mechanics. And I think one of the, I'm imagining, I don't know, you'll have to tell me this,

was it like playing with the theater kids, did they just kind of ignore the gameplay side of it all? Often, yes. That can kind of help pull those kinds of people down to earth. For sure. Because I played with college friends who were also actors, but like once I gave them a tough puzzle, it kind of, it helps the kind of me, me, me,ness of it all.

For sure. And I think also the, the fact that you were the DM, Jason. I mean, that's a credit to you. And I know your organizational prowess and also your ability to like command a room when you want to. I think some of the DMs in my situations didn't quite have that capability to wrangle the crew, which is another really important skill as a DM to like get everyone back on track, stop the improvisation if it needs to stop and move this story to where you want it to go. That's really hard to do. And it's even harder if it's your friends and you don't want to, like, throw cold water on the fun they're having.

These are all really difficult parts of the game, I would say, that don't have to do with the mechanics, but are part of the social dynamics of a very social game experience. Yeah, Jason, I'd love to hear a little more about your dungeon mastering. Since you came up playing the games and kind of had that experience where you were a player in a world where the DM was, like, custom designed to, you know, acquiesce to whatever you wanted within an actually very constrained set of parameters. And then you actually decided to be the game master. And I just, I'm curious what that was like, that transition.

Well, so for me, so I've talked about this a little bit on the show, but I've told you guys about how when I was in high school, when I was much, much younger, I made, I like wrote these text-based muds, these online games. Being a DM is kind of like that. It's game design, essentially. You're creating a game for people, and so you have to think about things. like pacing and you have to think about I would write each episode pretty like last minute

right before they came over and so I would know like okay they're going to be here for four hours I want to make sure I hit this beat this beat this beat I'm going to keep an eye on the clock the whole time and stuff like that yeah and so that was that that part was was kind of like the I mean it's essentially game designer you're just imagining a world and a game and puzzles and characters and creations and then a lot of it just kind of plays out on the fly um improvising MPCs and just joking around. And if you have a good kind of, if you have a good group of people who you've known for a long time and you have chemistry with them, a lot of it just kind of flies from there. But yes, you definitely need to do some wrangling. The biggest challenge I found was

actually seeing people just kind of like on their laptops, like getting distracted. That's the, that was the biggest obstacle was like trying to make sure that everyone was actually like paying attention to other people and like just kind of like focusing on the game. Yeah, I would imagine that it that it would have. help to really establish the vibe of the room and get everybody to kind of share the space. I actually just remember, sorry to interrupt you, but real quick, I actually just remember that my buddy Drew, who was part of our D&D group, was like an avid split screen listener at the time. I wonder if he's kept up with Triplica. I haven't talked to him in a while. Drew, if you're

listening, text me. Yeah, tell us what she thought of Triple Quest. And also, yeah, what did you think of Jason's DMing? That's what we really are hearing about. Yes, write a letter to Kirk and Patty telling them that. How did he do? When I was a kid, I had this magical experience. I went over to my friend's house. He was a guy named Jordan who I guess I was like friend of a friend with. Like I knew him.

We went to school together, but we weren't super tight. But a group of us went over to his house and his dad DM'd a game for us. And I don't think we finished. It wasn't exactly a one shot. And I had been getting into D&D but had never really played in this way. And his dad was amazing. And it was very much the thing that I was just talking about. The vibe of the room was so cool.

The lights were set a certain way. And he was really, really good at it. Like, it was just, it was like nothing I had ever experienced before. And as a kid, I was probably like 13 or something. I remember thinking, this is the coolest, most fun thing I've ever done on the weekend. All I want to do is do this. And then I never played again with those guys or with that guy's dad. And I actually found out later, I was hanging out with an old friend who was there.

And he said, and I don't know who this guy exactly was. I can't remember his last name. But apparently the dad was like a writer for Wizards of the Coast at one point. Like he had worked on D&D and was like very deep in the D&D world. And so he was almost a professional game master, which then explained why we had this amazing experience. Wait, why did you stop playing with it? Why didn't you play more with him? It was just kind of one of those things, I think.

You know, like when you're 13, you don't really have as much control over your schedule and you just, you want to do it again. And then we just didn't really make the time. It's not dissimilar, if I think from what happens to a lot of adults, where they start. a regular game, but then they kind of can't keep it going. It's just that we were in middle school and busy with other things as well. But I kind of wish that I had, and I think about it a lot now, especially because the three of us got to have this experience of playing with, like, maybe the greatest game master in the world. I'm absurd.

I mean, no wonder I healed. No wonder I healed from my experiences. I got to, like, have a really positive experience. Having him guide us. So I edited the third episode, the finale, my friend Sam, who is the game master for my D&D game, came over and hung out in the studio with me while we edited it, and we just kind of talked about it. He gave some good feedback and ideas, and like, it was very cool to talk to him since he's put a lot of thought into being a GM just over the last couple of years, because he had never done it

before starting for our group. And he had a lot of really cool insights or just reactions to things that Matt would do. One that I can think of that's from episode, I think it's from episode two, is when we are trying to get into the tower, the three of us. So for anyone who hasn't listened to Triple Quest. We play as Bing. I'm a barbarian named Bing. Jason is Leon the rogue and Maddie is Key the Sorcerer. So we're like a trio, a pretty standard adventuring trio. And we're trying to get across this gap from a wall, like the kind of ramparts of a castle to a tower. And I'm throwing a grappling hook. Like Bing is throwing the grappling hook because he's really strong. And I have I think advantage. I think I get three shots at it. Like Matt gave me a million tries not to fail.

And I keep rolling badly. And it becomes this funny thing. I'm like singing a song to like get into rhythm and then Key helps out and the two of us sing the song together and it's my final try and I throw it and I fail again. And what Matt does that's so funny is he's like, you do it. You see the grappling hook is flying and it's going to land and oh, then you see the rope is flying behind it and you let go with the rope. And it's like a great way of having us fail in a very funny way that isn't the same as the previous failures. And then Jason really quickly is like, I use mage hand to grab it and kind of improvises this use of mage hand and Matt is totally on board and is like, great, okay, like you do it. and manages to get us, you know, up into the tower in a way that, like, works and gets us there that still acknowledges me failing all those roles and leads to, like, a very funny and creative outcome.

That's really cool stuff, like, improvising in the moment and coming up with a much funnier failure than I might have come up with if I was just, like, put on the spot. Yeah, he's like a genius or something. I don't know. Yeah, I forgot about that moment. He is good at it. Coming up with, like, improvisational ways to fail is so important, too. But yeah. Yes.

And like how to fail and yet still get where you want the group to go, which is also a really interesting thing about D&D. Because sometimes I talk to Sam about this, he'll come up with whole like groups of characters and subplots that just never happen. Yeah. We just never do because we'll just go right instead of going left at some intersection. That May Chan thing is a good example of like a really good DM because I think there are DEMs out there who see it as their goal to kind of stymie the players,

whereas Matt as the best. as the best DMs, including Matt Mercer, like, see it as their goal to allow the players to do as much as possible because that's what's fun. It's like you want to find ways that the players, like, can. Like, you want to say yes as much as possible the way a good video game does. Or the way a good improv comic goes, right? It's very yes and. And yes, and it's all, it's so close to improv comedy. Maddie, when you were talking about playing with the theater kids, it made me think about that experience, because I've done some improv comedy as well.

I believe you have to. and like the experience of doing it with people who are really good, a really big part of being good at improv comedy is that you don't always want to be the one making the joke. You're actually like, sometimes you're just like acting out a realistic scenario. And it's just funny because it's unexpected. It isn't always like outsized and hilarious or you're not always trying to be the biggest ham because it's like a kind of collaborative thing.

And D&D works that way as well. I think that's something in a critical role, the group that Matt is the GM for. of course, the very famous D&D players, that's what they're really good at, is they're sort of collaborative and supportive, because they're all actors and they kind of have a good dynamic together. I think the adventure zone is similar. Like the McElroy's really know how to do comedy together. Like they're very funny and they're a very well-tuned comedy machine. So when it's time for them to like get into the rhythm of a story, they understand like intuitively almost at this point how to make that work, which is a lot harder for people who don't spend that much time acting and

working together. That's exactly right. And I also think some of my old friends probably grew out of those tendencies. Like there's a big difference between being like that when you're 19 years old and doing it when you're older and just kind of learn how to respect other people's time and also give them the chance to shine. Because some of it is like yes and in your other players, even if you're not the DM, you're just kind of setting up other people for success too. I would think that that would be a really great exercise for theater school, like for people who are learning how to act. is to do a D&D campaign, not for the least because you're like, could then become a professional D&D player.

Because that's like actually a job that an actor can have. Some more stable than a normal acting. Yeah. It's one of the coolest things about critical role is that all these voice actors who we've seen, you know, over the years, especially recently, how hard it is being a video game voice actor, even when you're in huge games, their union is like always fighting for better pay and better conditions. And then to watch these voice actors kind of form their own thing and create this company that's wildly successful is really cool. And yeah, they did it because they're all really good at role playing together. So I think that like we've seen and we've talked about, but just to say it here, like there was this big surge of D&D popularity attached to kind of like fifth edition and the rise of critical role and other adventure zone, other kind of play. What are they called?

Live Play podcast. Actual Play. 2014-2015 is about when this happened. Yeah, that sounds about right. And I think you can really point to Fifth Edition itself as a big reason for that, because Fifth Edition really streamlined a lot of more hardcore aspects of D&D. And there's still some hardcore stuff. I mean, there's still a thick player's manual. You could read that thing forever and still not understand all the rules. But like, it's much, much easier to get into it. And it's much, it feels a lot more accessible and approachable than it ever has been. And so I think that like just hearing you say like it's a very easy to imagine an acting group, a group of actors or a college club or something like that just kind of regularly get into it. Even people who aren't really into tabletop games or any sorts of games just because there isn't a ton you have to memorize. It's a lot of it is just kind of playing on the fly and a good DM will kind of smooth over the rules when he or she needs to or like just not to worry not worry too much about exact specifications of a specific. spell description. And then also on top of that, there's Baldersgate 3, which is such a good way to learn all the rules in another really approachable, really accessible way.

That I feel like it's just, D&D is in such a good place right now that anyone can just pick it up and play it in a way that I don't think was possible 20 years ago in the days of FACO and A D, D, 2.0 rules and stuff like that. Yeah, can we chew on that a little? Because I think you're right broadly, though having played like other types of role-playing games, like Fiasco, which I talked about on the show, which, you know, or our last best hope, some of these indie games that are kind of post-D-D role-playing games that are designed to really streamline the rules and really make it possible for you to just act and play characters and tell stories. Fiasco is so good at that.

It's just these very simple cards. And most of what you're doing is just telling stories, like just coming up with what happens next. and it gives you a really great framework for creating a very funny fiasco, but there are almost no rules, there's no dice in the most recent version that I've played. And it does really simplify things,

and it would be an even easier exercise for a group of actors or even just people who want to get together an act to do than something like D&D. And there were complaints about Baldersgate 3 that because Baldersgate 3 adapted the rules of Fifth Edition, that it actually was too complicated.

I think there were people out there who wanted to play BG3. Complaints from me, you mean? Yeah, well, and Maddie, right, you had this experience, right? Like, where you wanted to play it because the story and the branching narrative and all that is really cool, the role-playing. But there is a lot of, like, pretty crunchy stuff in that game. For sure. Yeah, there is. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, so when I say D&D Fifth Edition, I suppose my comparison point is other D&D iterations. The previous ones. So, okay, so a couple of thoughts. One is that like fiasco, another top

Tabletop games, they might all be well and good, but D&D is almost, it's become the band-aids of tabletop RPGs. It's become that kind of, that is so highly associated with it that the, that the, the trademark is almost gone. Like, it's like, you don't just say, more people would say, I'm going to play D&D than I'm going to play a tabletop game. I'm going to play a role playing game or something like that. It's just become the way that we talk about this sort of thing. And so I guess I'm kind of, I'm looking at D&D. It's almost. its own category from the others. And then, yes, when I say fifth edition is more approachable, more accessible, I'm comparing it with past iterations. I guess I see what you're

saying. And yeah, I've definitely seen some people like Maddie under complaints about Baldescape 3's kind of impenetrable nature in some ways. But yeah, I don't know. I feel like some of that crunchiness you can ignore and still have a good time with it, especially in the tabletop stuff. it's not like when we played triple quest it's not like we were like thumbing through every single spell to make sure our characters were as optimized as possible it's not like we were going through every possible mechanic of the game or just kind of like picking what we wanted to play around with and having a good time of it and I think you can do that I think the rules are to allow for that in a way that maybe they didn't in the past yeah especially in a tabletop setting yeah I think and I'd be curious to really go through the new DMs guy in particular, the dungeon master's guy. Yeah, the one that just came out. I think like literally just came out and I haven't had a chance to read it. But I think it'd be interesting to look at that because it's really kind of up to a DM

to make those choices that you're talking about, Jason. Like in my game with my friends, we don't deal with encumbrance. And money actually also is like very abstract. Like at one point, we got hired for a job by a guy at the very beginning of our quest. And he just gave us a bag of gems. And the bag of gems is just worth an absurd amount. and we can basically afford whatever we want. Like we can't just, I don't know, we can't buy like a massive war machine to go stomp the enemy.

Yeah, that's ideal. But we're not counting coins. Yeah. And also, like, when I played, I, instead of leveling up being based on experience, I just had a tie to, like, story milestones. Which, again, like, these are ways that you can kind of reduce the crunchiness. Right. And I wonder how much guidance the DM's guide gives, like, a new dungeon master for that sort of thing,

since it could be overwhelming for coming in and being like, oh my god i have to deal with incumbrance are kidding i don't even like when video games do that yeah and then not realize maybe oh yeah you can just get rid of all of that you could you could streamline almost everything and just use the character creator and then just wing it the entire rest of the time if you're having fun that's totally valid yeah i mean you can wing everything also even when you get so i i played almost entirely um custom campaigns either are the one that mac created or the ones that i created myself because i just find that way more fun um but even if you're using, like I have a couple of the books of the pre-made ones, even if you're using those, a lot of times

they'll give you a lot of different kinds of options as you read through them and it'll be like, well, if you want this kind of adventure, you could go this. Or if the players choose to go this way, you can, you can present them with this. And so I think, I think it allows, I, I think D&D's kind of rule set allows for as much of that as possible. And also it kind of, it allows you to just, like, get rid of the rules you don't want or, like, not pay attention to what you don't want to to pay attention to you. Yeah. I mean, exactly, because it's tabletop, because it's just literally people having a conversation. I mean, like we were saying, that the DM or GM can just yes and whatever they want to or need to in that moment and they can choose even what they need to ignore,

whereas Baldersgate 3 cannot do that because it is a video game. And it's doing its best to say yes to everything that I want to do, but just by its very nature, it's always going to have some resistance to me. I mean, that wasn't the only issue I had with it. I think there's other things about it that are really crunchy that I just got used to over time. And it's, it's amazing how much the narrative says yes to choices that you make and remembers things the way that a DM would. But there's, I mean, you can't be just a human being sitting at a table being like, okay, like, Kirk just failed this role five times. What's a funny way that I can make this work? Like that is, that's unbeatable by its very nature. It's like, it's someone just telling you a story. It's like the greatest. And like reacting

to your choices. I mean, one of the most fun moments, or there are several of these, are when Matt would get excited about something we would do. And it really did feel like he was jazzed that we had an idea. So that he'd be like, oh, hell yeah, like, let's do this? And then he would be kind of yes, standing us in a very, like sort of supportive way. You know, I'm going to shout out, have the other do you know Majes and Murder Dads, the Range Touch podcast? Cameron Konsleman does this with Danny, I think, is his co-host's name. I've been listening to it. They've been playing through the whole Baldersgate series. I just listened to their episodes on Baldersgate 3. They're really fun because both of them, I think, have a really strong sense of D&D and have played a lot. And it's super interesting

to hear them analyze the different sequences in Balders Gate 3. They talk about the Grim Forge. They love that part of the game, which I think is technically optional. Do you remember the Grim Forge? It's like in the Underdart where there's this Forge and you can make a couple pieces of armor. I did really like that part. Yeah, that was cool. It's cool because it like, Like, they describe it as really feeling like one of those modules you referenced, Jason, like a really good one of those where it's a self-contained thing. You can get into it a variety of ways. Yeah. There are, you know, a number of different ways to solve it.

There's a whole hidden story behind the forest that you learn or you can sort of miss if you don't care. And then it kind of ends with this really huge kind of trick boss fight. It's a little bit of a puzzle boss with that huge, like, colossus that you have to trick into walking underneath the stomper or whatever. And I don't know. I think it's really cool to look at Baldr's Gate 3 as really replicating a variety of different types of D&D game, where it's almost like there is one DM, there's one narrator, and of course one group of people made it, but there's a lot of variability. And especially listening to them kind of played back through it and process it,

it kind of broke it up into a bunch of cool and kind of digestible bits of varying quality. And it was a really neat way to see the game. People should check that out for sure if they're interested in D&D. So, okay, so when I talked earlier about the kind of the two facets of it all, the kind of improv collaborative storytelling nature of it and then the game design part of it all, I think that like no matter how hard it tries, a computer game is not going to be able to recreate the former, the collaborative improv and storytelling. And even when we have like AI dungeon masters who can who can supposedly react to any choice you make and like improv along with you. Sure. Take Matt's job. Yeah, take Matt Mercer's job.

Unlikely. Good luck. Even when we have that, something's going to be missing because you know you're not going to have that human connection and it's just not going to, you're not going to be able to impress Matt Mercer with your own reactions to something and unexpected ways and surprise the DM and to have it to think outside of the box. It's just not going to be the same experience. On the flip side of that, the game side of it all can be much, much better because it's being tracked by a computer and you can kind of see it on your screen. You don't have to worry about like keeping track of charts and stuff. So that is always something I find really interesting. And even when I'm playing, all the times I've played D&D, I've always found combat to be the worst and least interesting part. Whereas when I'm playing a computer version of D&D, I think combat can be great and can be really interesting and strategic and you have to think about it and build a party and think about composition. And the reason for that is because the stuff that would be,

that makes combat interesting is stuff that you don't want to have to spend a bunch of time talking about with your friends. It's stuff that a computer should handle and that you want to kind of prepare by yourself or maybe like do a little bit of co-op if you're playing with someone else. But still, for the most part, that sort of strategy I think is much less interesting when you're doing it in person. So to me, it almost feels like despite Baldur's Gate 3 and D&D experiences having the same rule set, they almost feel like playing different games to me because one feels like it's so much about the mechanics and the kind of the pre-written story, whereas the other

feels like it's so much about the collaboration and the improvisation that you're doing along the way. Yeah, I've definitely noticed that that sort of rhythmic quality to combat, which, so when I edited Triple Quest, especially that finale, because there was a lot of combat in the finale, and also we were in separate places, so it was easier to edit. But also when we were in the hotel room together, I cut out a lot of nonsense. Like, there is a lot of times where we're like, wait a minute, okay, sorry, this is a dexterity check. What's my score? Oh, is it plus two?

No, actually, it's going to be plus three. Oh, okay, it's plus three. Oh, I dropped my, oh, the dice is cocked. Hang on. Why didn't you leave that in? This is already, this is so fascinating. I'll just keep acting this out for another 10 minutes and people can get a sense of what they missed.

So it's, yeah, this stuff is like, I would say probably my biggest criticism of D&D is that the combat, when you're playing around the table, no matter how hard you try, it's just slow. And it just takes along. time. Like, I find with my group, we'll start a fight at the end of, you know, we only get together like once a month. We'll start a fight. It'll like end with us, you know, running into some guards and then the guards draw their weapons and we can't talk them down. The fight's about to

start. Okay, and then I'll see you next month. We'll spend the entire next session just in this fight. And like, almost something happens because, you know, each turn is whatever, 10 seconds or something. So like, it really just takes forever to get through it. And listening back to the podcast where it, like, moves right along. And you're like, oh, this is. exciting and fun. Like, it kind of works as a listening experience because I've edited out so much of that stuff and only left in a little bit. But it does really, I don't know, like, I think it highlights something important and something that could probably work better in D&D. And kind of a difference between playing D&D just for fun with your friends versus playing D&D for like a performance,

like for content, which is a really different experience in general editing notwithstanding. Yeah, I think the rolling of it all has a bit. big impact on that because so much of your decision making is just not up to you. It's just kind of chance. It's like, I don't know, playing the percentages in XCOM, which is not quite as fun. It is with the exception that you can do what you did a couple times, Jason, and you can just say to the DM, actually, hang on, like, I don't think this should work this way. And the DM can just be like, yeah, you're right. Like, I totally agree. I'm going to change it right here. Well, that's a super fun part. And yeah, I think that kind of maybe the ideal version of D&D

combat would be a little bit more of that and a little bit less of the dice roll. and the kind of the number crunching. And yes, the times that I DMed, and I think if I were to DM in the future, I would think a lot more about this how to streamline combat. I did a couple things. One is that I made combat as limited as possible.

I tried to have, like, each session be, like, a mix of everything. So, like, some dialogue challenges, some puzzle challenges and also maybe one or two combat rounds, but, like, only sparingly and only, like, important encounters, kind of, like, the way that Larian designs their games. And then the other thing I did was, like, I tried to just make the combat encounters quick, if I could, and try to give people kind of heroic things that they could do that were a little bit beyond, like, a little bit more puzzly encounters rather than just kind of the standard,

I'm going to smack you with my great sword. Because the other, the cool thing about T&D combat as a player is getting to feel badass and heroic and do something awesome. And a lot of the times in these long combat rounds, that is not the case. So you want to try to present those experiences. But you also can't have too many or else they don't feel special. So it is a tough challenge. But yeah, could definitely be streamlined. Although I found when I was playing TripleQuest,

I found that like having played Baldur's Gate 3 and understanding bonus actions because of that and like all the other kind of fiddly mechanics, that helped me get better at playing combat in D&D, which is interesting. Yeah, like specifically for 5E, which I wasn't what I was playing way back in the day. I'm like, well, at least now I know how this version of it works with the bonus actions.

And like, especially playing as a sorcerer, which I chose a hard class to figure out. I was so glad you did. And then I had to like keep track of more math, which I mean, even as we're talking about this, like this is part of what I'm realizing all those other shows must do, but that I've never really thought about before is that they must also be editing out all of these moments where you're like, okay, so wait, my deck score is this? And da-da-da-da-da. Like, I, God, I've listened to The Adventure Zone. I don't know. I'd seen critical role. And I just never really thought about all the editing that must go into that, where it makes it

seem like you're watching a TV show or, you know, listening to an audio drama because D&D just seems so much more fun. It's like we're creating a false advertising situation almost. It's true. It's not that bad, but like, yeah, I don't know. And I actually, I don't know how much editing those shows do. I don't either. I wonder. They do live shows. Like, they do live streams. So they're, I think they're so good at it probably that they don't need to do nearly as much as we did. Because sometimes we just would forget the rules or not remember, not know how to do a role. And it would just be kind of just lame like, oh, you got you have to do it. You know, like, this is what this role means. Like, where like, there is certainly beyond that. And so they're probably a lot

faster. But yeah, I actually just, I have no idea. I should ask Justin and Griffin how much they edit the adventures in. I bet. I bet it was the same. We're like in their first season. They probably edited it a lot. And then over time, they just get really good at it and they know everything and how it works and how to take advantage of the systems that are available, because that's also part of quote unquote, getting good at D&D is not just getting good at the role playing part and being comfortable with yourself enough to engage in that and having good chemistry with whoever you're playing with. It's also just being really quick about what the skills are and just knowing what all of them are and remembering them all and being like, oh, I could actually use this

obscure thing or oh, I packed the thieves tools or whatever. And so I can take advantage of that here or whatever it may be. Yeah, it's something that Baldur's Gate 3 actually really sort of embodies or like replicates in the game where by the second act, you're really like, you've narrowed down your party. You know what skills everyone's going to use. Even though there was a huge possibility space at the beginning, you've kind of gotten down to a few core skills that you use. And then the best scenarios then instead of forcing you to like learn new skills, they just put you in a situation, you know, a timed escape from a high pressure situation or something where you have to think kind of differently about the fight and rather than like learn new skills and kind of do more fiddly stuff.

I really like, there's an article I think people should read that we'll link in show notes by Luke Winkie from last year where he interviewed Matt Mercer and just talked to him about D&D and the article is just sort of a cool wide look at the rise of D&D. And he talks about something that is known as the Mercer effect, which I didn't know was a thing, that we have definitely like furthered with Triple Quest, which is the fact that like now a lot of game masters see the standard that he and other sort of great actual play celebrities have set as like how good you're always supposed to be.

And then their players are probably out there listening to critical role and being like, man, why can't we be as good as them? Yeah. I mean, that's also false advertising. And are like voice actors and are so good at this kind of thing. And especially with Matt because he is he is such a good DM, which I just think is funny that like, you know, my D&D game, we are not at all trying to turn it into content. We're just screwing around. And as a result, we really like play a game that is tailored to us. I mean,

we have a couple of engineers and like, you know, like kind of problem solving thinkers in our group. And we'll just spend forever talking about like reinforcing a boat's hull and like how that works. And it's fine because like everyone sort of having fun getting nerdy about like what kind of timber you would use or whatever. And like it would be terrible content, but that's not the point. We're just having fun as friends. One other advantage of home games, speaking as someone who is DMed home games, is that you can just steal stuff from places, which is also fun. When I was doing, I would like steal bosses from Final Fantasy games and stuff like that.

Which like, who cares? Because it's not like you're putting this on the internet and installing it as content. You can just do that, which is super fun. It feels like you're playing out in these like kind of fan fictiony worlds you've created. It's a funny thing because D&D is so derivative of like, the Tolkien verse to begin with. It's already stolen anyway, so it's fine. I mean, the whole premise of Triple Quest is not actually that dissimilar from the D&D

movie that came out where it's like there was a failed heist and we lost someone. And like, you start to realize like, oh, like these tropes like just come up again and again and again to the point that can anyone really claim to own them. Well, there's a reason why they do. I mean, they're fun. It's, it's, it's, it's doing a one-shot. You just need to, like, there's a ton of tropes in our one-shot. But that's what makes it fun is the particulars, like the things that we just sort of came up

within the spaces between the bigger sort of familiar plot pieces. The best stories are familiar but different, I think. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. And certainly for something like D&D, where you have enough to worry about just remembering all your stats and figuring out what your character is going to say,

let alone trying to come up with like a really original groundbreaking story. There's a thing that Matt does several times, especially in the finale that I really like, that I think Dungeon Masters, I think the Dungeon Masters guide encourages this. when you get a critical hit in particular, where the DM will say to the player, I want you to describe to me how you destroy this slime monster. And like he does that whenever we land a killing blow or get a critical hit.

And there are just a few times where each of us gets the chance to kind of we get to describe what happens. And that's like, I think maybe a kind of newer thing with D&D. Sam, my game master and my group's GM, there have been times where he, there was a moment. moment where he really tried something experimental. I'm not totally sure. I don't know where he got this idea, but basically, the party had been split up, and one party member was like back at the base, and the rest of us were off taking care of something, but we hadn't played in a little while. So he was talking to the one party member who's in the base. And then he's like, there's a knock at the door. And so the one guy who's in the base goes and opens the door. And he's like, standing in the door

are, you know, the three of us, like the three guys who are missing. And he's like, they each look crazy. They're wearing a crazy outfit. What are you wearing? And then he had us each like described, just make up a weird outfit. And then because the guy who had stayed behind was going on, like, going away and he wouldn't be able to play for the next few games, he had us do like a side story where we basically then had to tell the story of what happened between when we left and when we came to the door wearing those crazy outfits. And so we had to like collaboratively come up with an explanation for like why one guy was wearing like a leopard print bikini and like had his hair died pink and why the rest of us looked this way that wound up we were like wound up being

performers and going undercover and a whole thing. But it basically, he gave us the opportunity to define the, like, the outcome of the story that we were then about to tell. It was really cool. And I think that kind of thing, it's difficult and it's not for every group, but it's really cool. And I don't know, I thought about it every time Matt told one of us to take the reins and sort of tell the story in our own words. Yeah, that's a fun way to do it. And yeah, that's how you get people engaged as a DM too because you don't want to feel like you're just you're just lecturing at them about what happened right you can kind of offload some of your work for a second too you just like I don't know you tell me what what happens yeah yeah yeah it's great yeah it feels like such an honor

too like at least that's how I always felt in those moments where Matt would throw to us definitely with him yeah you're like oh boy no pressure to come up with something as cool as what Matthew Mercer regularly says let me see if I can try my hand on it but it also just like felt really really good every time too to be like all right let me try to be really creative for a second and that's like the whole point of the game and it's really neat yeah it is really neat yeah i i enjoyed um every minute of it i also i think it worked well as a three-parter and us just kind of defining that in advance because it made for a really good um just kind of three-act story with some clear beats along the way and then a very very epic ending um i think it was uh and obviously matt did an incredible job

crafting it. Yeah, it was super fun. Should we do it again sometime? I'm going to need a break. I spent so much time on those edits. Yeah, at some point it'd be fun. I learned a lot about the music and sound effect. All of that stuff, I got so much better at it by the end.

That part is so impressive. I really can't emphasize it enough because Kirk, he will only slightly tut his own horn, even though proverbially he's tuning it all the time in these sweet, sweet musical edits that he's putting together for a triple quest. It's so, so good. That part of it was really fun.

We should just do a live, a live episode. Right, right. That'd be a live being here. Yeah, sure. We'll just stream it on our Twitch channel. And then the audience gets to watch us, like, be like, what's our decks? They would realize that when you have a conversation and then when you have a conversation with, like, a cool, groovy, like, piece of music playing underneath it, the second

conversation sounds a lot cooler. Like, I guess we could have a little music board or something that triggers a lot. Yeah, you'll have, yeah, you'll score it. on the fly. And it like edits out, all this like looking for the right dice and like looking at our pieces of paper and all that stuff. All that would be back in there where we'd be like trying to remember our

stupid stats and everything. People don't need to know. Right. We'd have to up our game a little bit as it were. Kirk, I'm just imagining you with like one of those soundboards with like a fart noise. Every single time one of us talks. Yeah, easy. Easy. The sword swinging sound effect. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It was at the very least

it was a very fun project. I think it gave us all a good, a good perspective on D&D. And yeah, man, it's just a D&D world that we live in. So it feels appropriate that we spend so much time with it. It spent so much time with it this year. So anyways, yeah, I'm sure we'll have more to say about it in the future. I'm looking forward to everybody getting to hear Act 3 as well because that was a lot of fun. It's really good. But for now, let's take a break. And then we will come back with one more thing. Hey, is this Meredith?

It is. This is Alex Schmidt from Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. I'm calling because you You have been named the Maximum Fun member of the month for the month of December. Hooray! Yeah. As the member of the month, you are going to get a $25 gift card to the Maximum Fun store. You get a special member of the month bumper sticker. And you get to use a special parking spot at the Maximum Fun headquarters in Los Angeles, California. Definitely getting plenty of return on my investment.

I have not worked through all the bonus content yet. If you're a Max Fun member, you can become the Duxin member. next Max Fund member of the month. Support us at maximumfund.org slash join. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, the JVee Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year.

Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And we're back for one more thing. Maddie, why don't you go first? What's your one more thing? Sure. So I got a pre-release version of a free-to-play game called Infinity Nicky. and this game is really fun and really strange.

I don't know if you two remember the trailer for this game, but I'll kind of try to describe just the vibe of it. So it's an Unreal Engine 5 game, so it's beautiful, and it really is beautiful. It's not lies, the trailer is not lying to you. It really, my computer is feeling its age. I ran it on PC, and it was feeling its age as it was playing Infinity Nikki with me and it looks it looks incredible it's a it's a very like anime style uh look to it you play as

niki uh this is like a long running series of free to play games chinese developer i'd never played any of these other games but they're gotcha games they're they have like randomized mechanics and because they're free to play you're like paying to unlock things and also you like get free draws of like random items in the game um but this is the only one i played so it's the only one I can speak to. And it's a significantly bigger scope than any previous game in the series. And it's definitely something where they're trying to get more people to get on board. And it's really, really weird because, well, for a few reasons. One is because it is such an unabashedly and wonderfully feminine game. And that's weird because I don't see it very often. And

it's incredible at the same time. Like this game is entirely about you collecting outfits. the entire, you are in like a fantasy world where you're like shooting balls of fire at like evil enemies and like climbing hill and veil and like exploring Breath of the Wild style. But you are this, this cute woman named Nikki and she is a fashion designer and every single one of your abilities is tied to a different outfit. And by the end of the game, you have like hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of outfits that you're collecting. But at the very beginning, you just collect like an outfit that makes you jump higher, for example.

And as soon as you press the jump button, Nikki will magically transform into this different beautiful outfit that makes her jump higher. And then as soon as she lands, she's back in her original outfit. And so you're like instantly switching between these different outfits. So it's kind of like Barbie or like a doll dress up. And the outfits are all beautiful. They're incredible. Like just splendor Disney princess style gowns that you just like, you get each new one. You're like, whoa, this is an amazingly beautiful dress.

And so then you get another outfit that's just for shooting fireballs. And like that's your fireballs outfit. And as soon as you just instantaneously change. And so you just keep unlocking these outfits. And like, that's it. Like the whole game is just unlocking outfits. And like, I don't know. I didn't love the gotcha parts, obviously.

No surprise there. And the plot is like hilariously and self-awarely stupid in a way that I found extremely charming. Like all the characters are like, okay, like you've been transported to this mystical land. Like you, all we do is collect. you're in outfits are magical. Like, you're a normal person, I guess, but you've been transported into this mystical land. Can you elaborate on the gotcha parts? So the gotcha is the outfits? Like, you have to, how hard is it to get new outfits without paying? So obviously, the pre-release code gave me,

like, a ton of free currency. So it's hard for me to say whether, like, the current version of the game, which I believe is out this Friday. So it'll be like tomorrow as you're listening to this, listeners, so I don't know, and I think in the coming weeks, people will make it clear, like, how bad the gotcha stuff is. But the part that did confuse me as somebody who had free currency, or like a lot of different currency, is the opaque part is that there's multiple kinds of currency to a degree that I found absurd. It's like my main beef with the game is that there are so many systems and it's intentionally opaque. So like there's a, there's like, you know, six or seven different ways that you can unlock different outfits. So like some of them,

are you need multiple kinds of the same one. They all do this. All these freaking catch games. You need to combine certain of the same outfit and then that'll create a new one. Or you need to collect a whole bunch of different things around the world, like a certain number of flowers, certain number of whatever seeds. And then you combine those to craft an outfit. Some of them are, oh, you have to like do this randomized puzzle or solve something or whatever, or you spend various kinds of currency to get different outfits. That part of it, I was just like, this is way too many systems. And I can tell it's intentionally way too many systems to confuse me and also make me want to like spend money to speed up the process and I don't I don't know how that's going to work.

But I, so I can't speak to that. But I did really enjoy playing a game that was just so unappassionately feminine. And like, I have mentioned the combat. The combat is so easy. It's like sillily easy. Like it doesn't need to be there. But like really, you're just going around. You're collecting magical mystical outfits and I guess you're saving the world.

There's sort of a plot. It doesn't matter, though. You know what I mean? Like, it's just like a perfect, just smooth, wonderful experience that reminded me of, like, playing dolls as a child in like a really pure, enjoyable way. And, like, that's why it's effective and might be a very successful game. Yeah. So I was looking at this for my five-year-old daughter potentially, but the gotcha stuff immediately

just, I'm just like, no, I'm not going to do this. Yeah, I feel like you need her to be older. You need, like, a middle schooler who has, like, a sense of how much things are worth to play this, but I do feel like once you're old enough. That's, I mean, middle schoolers are the ones I did, I feel like I was, but then again, I was raised in a household where for every commercial, my parents would sit me down

and be like, do you understand how, what's really you're being lied to? Like, I got a lot of commercial lectures in my household. Very different experience. No, middle schoolers are the ones who are throwing money at Roblox all the time and like asking their parents, hey, I just need to spend this, this and this.

I think it depends on the kid. I think by and large, that's who games like this are targeting. It's true. And it's also true that, like, you know, having some of those proclivities is genetic and I can brag, but I am blessed to be able to stop when I want to stop and know that I don't need any more. It's very difficult for some people to, like stop playing of any age,

middle school or not. Some of these games are very hard for some people to quit. So that is a danger. But also, I do really like the look of the game, and I had a lot of fun with that part of it. And I think it's fun. Yeah, I'm looking at it. So I can't say it's all evil. So it's just like Genshin impact for like the dress-up. Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of breath of the wildie, but like with pure dress-up mechanics.

You are exploring a world and there's like some, I mean, I can't emphasize enough. The combat is barely even combat. Like it's just, it's, it's all about collecting those dresses and being like a Barbie in a world of other Barbies who are also collecting dresses. It does look. I'm looking at screenshots. It looks really pretty. And yeah, it looks like Genshin.

These games, these like beautiful games that are built over just a sea of dark arc patterns that are designed to trick you into spending money or like break your brain. I'm like, I don't know yet because also I got to play a version of the game that was like not praying on me. You know what I mean? So like I got a best case scenario in some ways. You're like getting the influencer deal. Yeah, I know.

I know. So I don't love that. But I got I got to admit I did enjoy playing it. So that's the game I played this week. It looks very pretty. Yeah. And I'll be very curious in the coming weeks as people discover the gotcha patterns and what they think of it.

I will keep an eye on that. tuned. Jason, what's your one more thing? So my one more thing is a game that is a sprawling, like, open world action RPG, but does not have gotcha mechanics. So this is a game called Secrets of Grindia, which might sound familiar to you too, because I talked about it a few months ago when it came out in like February or March of this year. So I, at the time, I played a few hours of it and was into it. And then recently picked it back up after doing a Bloomberg post last week. that kind of rounded up some of the best indie games that I played this year, including this one. And I was like, hey, you know, I kind of abandoned this for other games. I should go and give it another

chance. And it really, it is really, really good. I think you two might enjoy it. So, Secrets of Grindea, it's a Super Nintendo looking game, very heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda, a link to the past, in that it is a 2D action, 2D top-down action RPG. You go around and you smack enemies with your sword, and you are in this kind of this fantasy world where there are lots of slimes and goblins and other creative monsters and you fight them and you do quests and you solve puzzles and go through dungeons and it's just kind of, it's your classic Zelda-ish affair.

But it's got a couple of cool, interesting ideas and twists. One of the reasons this game stood out to me is because it was in development for 13 years And you can tell that it's in development for 13 years. It's a team of three people. I spoke to them for a Bloomberg piece that will link in the show notes a few months ago. A team of three people. And they're in Scandinavia, and they have been working on this game, like, in various forms for 13 years.

It entered kind of early access at some point along the way and has just been updated every month. And it's still being updated. Even now, they're, like, working on New Game Plus and stuff like that. console ports. A real Stardue Valley situation. It is, it is. It even looks kind of like Stardue Valley. And a couple of things that I think are really unique about this game.

One is the skill system. There is this kind of in-depth skill system where you can pick from like dozens of different spells and weapon skills to use and just kind of focus on those and then assign them to hotkeys and use those to take out enemies. And there's so many and they go so deep that it makes the kind of the standard Zelda fare a little feel a little bit deeper and more interesting. There's one ability that I'm in love with that's like a blink ability that you can just kind of zap across the screen. Jason loves the blink, almost as much as you love a double jump.

That is, yeah. The combination. They're both great. Double jump and a blink. A double jump and a blink and a blink and bam, I'm so. So having a blink in a 2D action RPG is pretty fun. You can also like go full on sword user or full on spellcaster or just kind of hybrid of them. There's a lot of cool gear you can pick up and customize and stuff.

The puzzles are really, really good. And the story is really, really interesting. It's got this unique idea where, like, you play as a quote-unquote collector, where you have to go around the world collecting these artifacts, and there's a story involving kind of bringing your dead mother back to life potentially, and these artifacts that you find, they all talk and have personalities, and it's got a lot of humor and a lot of warmth to the humor. And then it goes in some unexpected directions and has some really fun

and surprisingly emotional twists and turns along the way, There's one dungeon, like maybe midway through the game, where it involves time travel and you're going back and forth between the past and the present and kind of changing things to alter reality and doing quests that way. But also you get to experience these stories that progress over time and watch these kind of these arcs of these characters unfold. And it's really interesting. So it's got a really good mix of storytelling with the kind of the Zelda gameplay that is really smooth and satisfying and fun to. play. So yeah, it's really good. It might wind up on my top 10 list for the year. I'm still still in the still not finished with it yet. I'm still making my way through. But I'm glad I picked it back up. I'm really enjoying it. Also, uh, pick back up Bellacho and we'll not talk about

that because that's being of dark cards. Be playing on your phone? Well, yeah, the like hours of my life just, no, there's no way I'm putting this on my phone. Thank God. There's no micro-transactions. Dangerous. It's great. Well, the problem of putting it on the steam deck is like you'll take it into the bathroom. I know. You don't want to be that. Your legs will fall asleep.

There are dark patterns in Bellatra, though. Balatra is like just straight up. It's not trying to trick you into clicking a button that you didn't mean to click. Well, dark in a different way. No. You just lose your life into it. Yeah, it's just addictive because it's good. It's not trying to trick you, but it is addicting.

Yeah. It's right there. It's on the surface. The problem of Blotra is that like, once you do it, when you start a run, it's really hard to like take a break and then come back to that run. Yes. Because you kind of forget some of the strategies you're doing. You have to complete the run.

You have to complete the run. And that's like a solid 20, 25 minutes. But then when you complete the run, you're like, well, I may as well do another run. That one didn't go the way I wanted to. And suddenly you've spent an hour in the bathroom and your wife is knocking on the door. A dark pattern is more like when the like auto subscribe thing pops up and there's a cancel button but it's way smaller than the subscribe button and it doesn't show you that you can skip it. It's that kind of crap.

Or like the timer that on. locks and it's like pay this to speed up the timer. Infinity Nicky has some timers that I was like, and like tricks you into clicking on something or not realizing you had the option to quit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, to be clear, Milatro is a perfectly, like, lovely game. It's just fiendishly addictive. It's like terrifying me. It's just destroying our lives. It's really good on phones. I got to say, I love having it on my phone. I play it all the time. God, that's scary. So Secrets of Grindia, really cool game. I've been also, I've been playing it like jumping back of between my desktop PC and my Steam Deck runs great on Steam Deck, and it's a great, like,

watch TV while playing this game, although the music is really good, so don't miss out on that, too. Kirkiel, you would enjoy the music of this game. I actually, this is not like a term-based JRP, so I actually recommend you both play it. Before the end of the year, you should try to check it out. It's really cool. I really enjoyed it, and you can, you jump right in, and you'll get a feel for it, and I think you'll be able to tell within the first 30 minutes if it's the kind of game that you'll want to keep playing or not. If you're into like 2D, Zelda-like pretty games that feel

really good and have cool stories, like, I am really enjoying it. Jason, have you played mini-shoot adventures? Speaking of Zelda life? I have, yeah, and I think I talked about this. Yeah, I think it was a one more thing when it came out. Oh, was it a one more thing? I remember. I'm just forgetting.

Yeah, I didn't like it because like the twin six shooting just did not feel good to me. Like the core gameplay of it, just I did not enjoy, whereas with this I really do. This game reminds me the most of cross-cons. which is the game that is my predictions back game. In fact, Leah, the main character of Crosscode, has a cameo in Secrets of Grandias. There you go.

Clearly some combatability there. Yeah. Nice. Well, I'll go last. My one more thing is a PC game that I played last week called mouthwashing that I loves that I can't stop thinking about. That is a pretty messed up narrative horror game that's just really, really great. And I wanted to go last, or I had myself go last, because if you're at all interested in that kind of game or you're interested in this game, I think you should just go play it totally blind.

Like, just play it. It's like three hours long or something. And if you like, you know, speculative fiction, horror, like, kind of, I don't even know how else I'd describe it. Like, games that are, like, genuinely kind of psychologically disturbing, but also, like, really engrossing and kind of just great. I really recommend it, and you should play it blind. But I'll describe it a little bit now. So I'm last. There's not going to be anything after me.

You can just stop listening now if you don't want to hear anything about it. But I'll give a little of the narrative setup. This is a game. It's made by a five-person team. They're called Wrong Organ is the name of the development team, which is pretty great. And it's another game, sort of like Crow Country earlier this year. It looks kind of like a PS2 game. It has that kind of aesthetic.

I don't even know how I described it. It's very warm colors and everything is a little like oversaturated. Low-poly, right? It's low-poly, yeah, it is low-poly, and the character models aren't super detailed. I've seen some screenshots. But it's also like, it's a really strong vibe from the start, and that's a big part of the experience of playing it. It starts kind of confusingly, and the whole story is told out of chronological order. So you're doing a lot of sort of, you know, four days after the crash, three days before the crash,

and the environment really tells you kind of where you are and what's happening. You play a number of different characters on a small crew, like, I think five-person crew, on a shipping vessel that works for a company called Pony Express that's sort of like Amazon, like Space Amazon in the future, like a giant corporation that just ships stuff all around the solar system or galaxy. It's not really clear. But they do like interstellar shipping. And you're on a crew that's on this ship where something goes wrong at the very beginning.

You have like an impact with an asteroid or something. Not totally clear why or what happened. And you're all stranded and probably screwed because you have like a couple of months of food left. the five of you, but you're not like, no one's really coming and you're sort of just stuck out in space because you were supposed to be just like on an automated, you know, trip from point A to point B. So that's kind of where it picks up. And you're playing as a guy Jimmy who like assumes command and is kind of like, I'm going to be the captain now because the actual captain is like

horribly injured in the crash and is like on a table he's wrapped in like bandages and like only one eye works and he can't talk and it's like really horrifying and you're the nurse another character is her name ania she's keeping him alive by like just like feeding him opioids basically and like you're all just there's like a sense of doom but also everyone's like okay we're going to work together and we're going to try to survive as long as we can so this is all in the very early goings and they initially decide okay we're going to crack into the warehouse because we have this giant like shipping warehouse because we're on a shipping vessel we're going to see what we were shipping because we don't even know what it was. And maybe it's food. Like, maybe it's something we can use to survive. And they crack open the

first container, and they're shipping mouthwash. Like, they're just carrying, like, a million containers of mouthwash. And that's all they have. And so that's kind of the setup. And then just horrifying things happen. It's just, like, the gradual sort of everybody falling apart and the, just, like, the, like, dissolution of this group as everyone's, like, people kind of turn on one another in various ways. but it's also like an interrogation of the darkness within people and the way that certain systems and in particular like certain workplaces can set up the incentives and the scenarios that allow that darkness to come out. And it's like it's, I think it's simple. It's over simplifying it to say that it's like a critique of capitalism and that's the real villain because there are people who do very terrible things in it. And, you know, they are the villains too.

Like, you know, they chose to do those things, but they were in the position to do them because of the systems around them. And it winds up being, I think, a really insightful and chilling and just unforgettable experience. Like, they come up with these set pieces, these sequences inside of a character's mind or, like, these hallucinations that are, like, genuinely disturbing, but kind of, you know, really compelling, like, they really pull you in. And by that, you know, there are points where I was just like, oh, my God, okay, I have to finish this game. I can't believe I'm doing what I'm doing right now. Like it has that kind of feeling. And I really found it to be a remarkable achievement. Like I think it's a great, a great creation.

Like it tells a great story. And it does require you to kind of think about it. It doesn't just lay it all out for you. I did a lot of reading about it. There's a lot of actually like great forum posts and like Reddit posts and even like Steam reviews where people have written their whole like their take on what they think it all meant. And that's really cool too. I love that kind of horror game.

The game, Soma, it's not, they're different in a lot of ways, but Soma sort of, it reminds me of Soma in some ways, particularly in that I finished Soma. And I was like, oh, my God. And then I just couldn't stop thinking about it for a long time, which I felt that way with mouthwashing too. It's been a while since I played a game like that. So I really, really liked it. It is a feel bad game. It's like not a game for like when you want to have a relaxing time or like feel great about people. Back of the box quote, a feel bad game.

Yeah, it's a real feel bad hit. But, you know, like that can be a really cool, a really cool experience or a worthwhile experience. And I think this is one. I think they should be really proud of what they've done. So it's a great game that I was glad I played. So that's mouthwashing. It's on PC and Steam right now. I don't know if there's plans for it to come to consoles or anything.

But I played it on PC. And it was great. Awesome. And there you have it. Yeah, three games. Yeah, we played games. We did it. We're gamers, man.

Look at us. Play games games. Yeah. We decided to check out some video games for you. We did. I thought we changed it to one more thing this week. We'll be back to talk about many more games in the future. For now, though, I will see the two of you next week.

See you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes.

Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun podcast network and if you like our show we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximum fun.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple clickpod, send email the triple click at maximum fund.org and find a link to our discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum fun. A worker-owned network of artists-owned shows. Supported directly by you.