Funkatronic Rex Podcast: Season 2 Episode 12 Baseball, Food, and Games

🎙 Funkatronic Rex Podcast: Season 2 Episode 12 — Baseball, Food, and Games

This week we cover a little bit of everything — summer travel, baseball heartbreak, cabin cooking, board games, and the excitement of launching a brand-new RPG campaign.

Chris kicks things off with a blow-by-blow of his son’s baseball trip to Cooperstown — equal parts magical and miserable. From rain delays that pushed games into the early hours of the morning, to “Hunger Games” jokes about single elimination, to facing powerhouse Georgia teams that put up scores like 37–0, it was an unforgettable (and humbling) experience. Still, the kids walked away with a win, a pile of team pins, and memories that will last a lifetime.

Paul counters with his annual cabin gaming trip, where he and his longtime friend Q packed the days with board games and nights with home cooking. The highlight was lots of Marvel Champions (finishing the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. campaign with Magneto and Black Widow), a test run of the massive Dark Souls board game, and racing through Heat, complete with the new Tunnel Vision expansion. The talk turns to food as Paul explains his role as cabin cook — burgers, wings, tacos, and breakfast spreads — while Q washed dishes. Naturally, this spirals into a whole discussion of cooking styles, breakfast-for-dinner rituals, chicken vs. turkey burgers, and family wing recipes passed down from Buffalo.

As if that weren’t enough, the back half of the episode dives into role-playing. With a new Daggerheart campaign on the horizon, the hosts discuss what they’re excited about: hope and fear dice mechanics, player agency, and how the system compares to D&D 5E. There’s talk of improvisation, GM styles, and what makes narrative-heavy systems rewarding for both newcomers and veterans.

It’s a long, winding conversation, but that’s the beauty of it — baseball road trips, cooking adventures, and tabletop games all share the same theme: community, creativity, and finding joy in the chaos.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

There's no electricity in New York. I have to have my meeting glass, and I have to all of the dishes, and I use all of the dishes, and I mean I use all the dishes.

SPEAKER_04: 0:07

Cool, you're you're stuck in customs for an for an entire day.

SPEAKER_00: 0:21

Coming to another dimension. A dimension not only a plastic paint, but it came into a journey into a wondrous land where people have become real and cut when it cuts like a light. That's a side cover step for the head of the next step.

SPEAKER_01: 0:49

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Funkatronic Rex podcast. Uh with me, as always, is my good friend Paul. Hello, Paul! Paul Paul, and I'm Chris, in case you guys forgot. Uh it has been a few uh uh hot minutes since we've recorded-ish. But whatever, it's been a couple weeks. It's been a couple weeks. You've had a break.

SPEAKER_04: 1:10

It's not our longest between recordings we've had.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13

That's true. That's true. That's right, but we keep pumping them out. We're gonna keep going. Like you've had a break. I'm gonna, I was just on a break, and then I'm going back on a vacation. Yes, we're on a break. We said we were on a break, uh, which is great because this vacation, I am I'm really looking forward to this. Good.

SPEAKER_04: 1:31

That's been uh You're gonna be gone for what two weeks?

SPEAKER_01: 1:34

Yes. That's wild. Yes. So that's so long. Our so our plan, like the plan that we think of, like as adults, like we're gonna do a small vacation one year and a big vacation the next year. That sounds like a great idea. Uh yeah, it just totally hasn't happened. Um I think it's been like two or three years since we've done really anything. Small trips every now and then. Right. Uh but uh so the wife's parents have a condo in Hawaii. And then since they have a condo there, they can get us a discount. So they go, we'll help Chip in toward the place to stay if you guys can fly out. Like, and we're like, oh, uh, oh, we'll we'll figure that out, man. We will, we're gonna get out there. So we leave for the lovely island of Maui Satur this Saturday, whatever date coming up, I know we're welcome. So uh, and we just got back from a week long oh my gosh. It's a week long, I wouldn't even call it vacation, a week-long trip to Cooperstown for the kids' baseball team. Which was insane, dude.

SPEAKER_04: 2:46

Uh was it good?

unknown: 2:48

Well, define good.

SPEAKER_04: 2:50

Insane is a pretty broad.

SPEAKER_01: 2:53

I was saying define good, right? Um, so his baseball team's okay.

SPEAKER_04: 2:59

It's not great. They're they're exceptional.

SPEAKER_01: 3:02

They're exceptional in their mediocrity. No, no, no, no, no. They're they were, I mean, these kids. They're kids. They're 12U, right? Uh, and they play much like um actual baseball teams. So there's majors, then triple A, double A, single A in real world of baseball. So the eggs we talked about this last episode. Uh so he's double A. Uh and at Cooperstown, you play against double A, triple A, and majors teams. So it's it's a range of stuff. Whoever wants to go can go. It's a week-long tournament. You play five games in the like pool play, and then it becomes single elimination depending on where you land and you get in a bracket, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_04: 3:43

Right. Um and single elimination is where they just start picking kids off one by one, right?

SPEAKER_01: 3:48

Yes, it's it's very much hunger games. Yes. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04: 3:51

Uh do they use crossbows, bows and arrows?

SPEAKER_01: 3:53

Actually, it's really, really like uh it's uh the uh the bats with like razor blades or nine or nails in it. Okay. I mean they really commit. They really commit to it. Okay. Uh hand grenades as opposed to baseballs, it's it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_04: 4:05

So that'd be hard to hand grenades would make it hard. We shouldn't be making jokes.

SPEAKER_01: 4:11

No, it's fine. It's fine. We can always edit that out. But um we'll fix it in post. We'll fix it in post. Um so we go up there and my God, Paul. I can't tell you how much I miss the color green. Now the Cooperstown is in like middle upstate New York. Right. Right? It is it rains a lot, as we've we found out. Well, it's a rain. Exactly. It monsoons a lot. Right? It is so green. So Cal is in the back of the car and he's like, Dad, oh my is this everything's so green.

SPEAKER_04: 4:47

And I'm like, Is this what the rest of the world looks like?

SPEAKER_01: 4:49

Yes. He's like, Where's the where's the brown and the dead stuff? And I was like, Cal, sorry, bud, it rains like this, water is life. And when we're driving through New York, he's like, This is and I felt uh so like I could feel like, oh my god, I just feel like the world around me is actually alive. And I'm like, oh, this feels so good. Now, the flip side of that is of course Kyle got card sick and he barfed all over the place. But shockingly enough, like I didn't realize just how bad his car sickness was. But it was we're like, dude, that's half hour into the flight to Chicago. So we fly from Phoenix to Chicago, Chicago to Syracuse, and drone down, half hour in the flight, yaks. I'm like, uh okay, that sucks. Luckily, he uh he uh did it in the aisle, not overall over himself or anybody else. He tried to get up and go to the bathroom, and someone literally, he like, as he was walking, someone walks into the bathroom, and you can see his face like it it's coming out. Like uh never thought I'd ever hold a uh uh barf bags. Those barf bags you have on the plane, which don't work, by the way. Like those guys are leaky as hell. It was like, oh, just barf into the I mean it contains most of it. No, it did. And it thankfully. Uh and then we got a garbage bag from the the stewardesses, uh the flight attendants. Uh and of course they were like, no, no, this is your barf. You have to hold on to it. We can't, you know, bodily fluids. And we're like, so we have to sit with a bag of barf two and a half hours. Now they That feels weird. It was a little weird. They don't have a receptacle to contain it. I think they I don't know. But they did. I I didn't complain because they took they had to clean up the uh aisle. The the body bodily fluids that they can't touch. Right. But they they all had gloves on and all this stuff, right? Yeah. So yeah, they couldn't take your barf bag with their blankets. Yeah, I'm like, okay, that's weird. Um so it's fine. Um but uh we get so we finally get there. Right now, Cooperstown, for those that are uninitiated in the world of sports and the baseball, Cooperstown is very much like Disneyland or like a Comic-Con, right? It is baseball unlimited, man. There is no there's no break from it.

SPEAKER_04: 7:17

No limit.

SPEAKER_01: 7:18

No limit. You are surrounded by live, eat, and drink baseball, right? Got it. So the kids were in this cabin or barracks, bunk beds. Barracks. Barracks. No, no, no. So every week it's a hundred different teams. Okay. So you show up and there's a hundred barracks.

SPEAKER_04: 7:35

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01: 7:36

All the kids get checked in, the coach, the both coaches, the team sleeps in the barracks, the coaches, everybody. You gotta bring a little sleeping bag or or whatever. It's like summer camp, sleepaway camp, but it's all baseball.

SPEAKER_04: 7:46

So it's like filled with uh cots and stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 7:49

Exactly, exactly. Or is it bunks? Yeah, bunk beds.

SPEAKER_04: 7:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 7:53

So nice bunk beds, but still bunk beds.

SPEAKER_04: 7:55

They have probably, I would imagine it's probably like an old World War II training camp or something.

SPEAKER_01: 8:00

I I don't know what it was. I I think they built it new, new, but uh with the amount of kids and people they push through, I mean, they're not it's not like they're poor. That's right. Like it's it's nice. Sure. But they did finally, uh, they did finally apparently put in air conditioning this year in those things. And now, uh, as I mentioned, upstate New York is very green. Right. Or very green, uh, which means there is a lot of electric cars. A lot of electric cars, a lot of moisture. Yes, there's plenty of charge points. When are we renting the car? They're like, Do you want an electric car? And I'm like, Is there gonna be electricity there? Like, where are we? Like, we're in the middle of nowhere, like cat skills or something. Um, which is true because like the drive there, we're just riding down a two-lane road. And uh so we stayed at a little town called Fly Creek just outside of Cooperstown, and we're following our GPS, driving down, d and then GPS makes me turn left, which looks like I drive go into someone's driveway. Okay, but it's a road, uh, and it's getting dark out, and there's there ain't no lights, man. Okay, again, no electricity out there in New York.

SPEAKER_04: 9:09

Uh and actually drive past it, and Kyle's like Yeah, the entire city of New York City doesn't have any electricity.

SPEAKER_01: 9:16

There's no electricity in New York. Well, at least in this part. So I drive past this person's driveway, which apparently is a road, and it is even smaller, like a one and a half lane road. And I'm like, we're is this a horror movie? Dude, this this is it is luscious and green and dark. Uh, how do we gonna how are we gonna find our Airbnb? Like, there's no the classic, you come up to the intersection and there's this one lonely light swinging in the breeze that's like yellow on the one side and red on the other side. And hopefully you don't pull up to the red side because you're gonna die because someone's gonna come out and get you. So we're just driving, and we're all like this this mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Hopefully, we get there. We did finally get there. Uh the Airbnb was fantastic. Uh, and then we get up and check in. Now, as we check into this bunkhouse, we're looking at the list of teams, and there's five teams from Arizona. So we kind of knew people, which was kind of cool. Uh, somehow we're like, hey, like some of Kyle's old teammates are on a team. Like, this hey hey guys, what's what's up? Arizona in. Um so fast forward to them having fun and and uh checking in that first day. The games were rough. Not gonna lie. They were our team, like I said, our team is I would say okay, right? For a double-A team, the the kids play their heart out, they do really well, but we ran across three teams that are majors. Okay. So they're like they're out of Georgia, but they would travel to you know different states to compete in uh tournaments. So if you as I said, if you travel, you don't suck. Like you're gonna probably win that. Um this one team we played, the score was 37 to nothing in baseball. They hit 23 home runs. Not quite a record, but I mean, the 37 to nothing was a record. Frank, sorry. I was like, all you guys gotta do is make it out of this inning when it was 35 nothing, and we'll be fine because the pre- the other record is 36-0. As we as we found out, because the other game we played, we're all like, so uh, so what's how bad or how bad could this get? Okay, as long as we don't, as long as we don't go as bad as 36 nothing, we're oh no, okay, 36 nothing, and then another harm, 37 nothing, and then we finally got out of the game and got run run ruled out.

SPEAKER_04: 11:43

Hey, but now you guys are famous.

SPEAKER_01: 11:45

We are uh yes, yes, yes. His baseball team is now famous. It's in the books. Infamous. Infamous. Um, so it was uh just if anybody's listening that has kids uh or family that goes to Cooperstown, uh if you're a good team, you know, have fun. It is the Disneyland of baseball. Um, and by Disneyland I mean once you come in, you will never leave, and everything's really expensive inside the park. Like stupid expensive. The only thing that was at all well, obviously you have hot dogs. So the hot dog is$4.50. Okay. Slice of pizza is$4. Okay. I had way too much pizza.

SPEAKER_04: 12:24

Like I never thought like those those rates are high, but not not unacceptable.

SPEAKER_01: 12:29

Right, right. It wasn't too bad, but just enough to be like after a week. Sure. I would love to have something that's not as expensive as uh, I guess I'm gonna have pepperoni pizza.

SPEAKER_04: 12:38

Now were they like Costco hot dogs? Were they the quarter pound all beef?

SPEAKER_01: 12:43

You know, yeah, quarter pound. You know, honestly, I don't know. I never did get a hot dog.

SPEAKER_04: 12:46

Or were they were they the little dinky?

SPEAKER_01: 12:49

I had a feeling they were the little ones that probably sat there for a bit.

SPEAKER_04: 12:52

Probably probably Nathan's. Which which to be fair, Nathan's are good. Nathan's good hot dogs.

SPEAKER_01: 12:57

Yeah, like Nathan's. Probably Baras. Oh my gosh. No, I was thinking, I thought it's I think it's probably uh close to those value dogs you get at the TVAC stadium, which are fine. I mean, you're watching a game, you're having popcorn hot dog, but this hot dog just looks like it's been in like in this packaging for a couple of years. It's a little wrinkly, like it's it's the leftover meat at the processing plant floor. I don't want to spend four bucks on two meat, not if I can help it. Uh but yes, so that was last our last week uh before we run off to uh Hawaii was out there in Cooperstown. And I gotta say, it rained every day. We had a game that was supposed to start at 7 p.m. I think it was our first or second game. It rained so hard. Our game starts at 10:30. Wow. And we played in a late game. Oh, yeah. And then our next game the next morning was at 9. It too got rained out. Like let's not be like nothing actually ever started on time except for the last two games. Uh, but everything was pushed back. Like the previous week, the championship game, which was supposed to be at I think it starts at nine. Late games, didn't start till 2 a.m. Goodness gracious. So it's the last game. Every you gotta play the last championship game. These are the top two teams of the tournament. They're gonna play. Um, so it rained every day, and it was uh I think the wife was like, Oh, this rain is awesome. But after four or five days, she's like, Okay, all right, okay, okay. I've had enough rain. I've had enough. This is I like it because being a desert person, like, oh my gosh, there's water falling from the sky. This is a miracle. Yeah. The sky's falling. The sky's falling, and we're all gonna die. No, no, no, we're gonna be fine. Um, but even then she was like, Okay, it can it can take a break. Uh, and it did for our last two games. So we were in second to last place. Uh we played the last place team. That's how it works. So 99 and 100. We won a game.

unknown: 14:49

Woo!

SPEAKER_01: 14:50

Good job. So that was it. Like the goal was gonna be a game. Way to go, Cal's team. Way to go. Uh the goal was to win one game. And they got it. That was it. Because we knew, like, that's good. Coach kind our coach kind of set expectations in the game.

SPEAKER_04: 15:04

So does the the organizers not really pay attention to the the like tiers of the teams? You know, I think Or is there just so not enough teams that they can I think it's a random draw.

SPEAKER_01: 15:17

Like, okay, here's a hundred teams, and you're gonna get listing. Like, we played a game that was that was close, we still lost it, but it was like 12-10 or something like that. So we were in it and or 12-9. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04: 15:28

Um, still because like I feel like you're you're spending all this money, you're going all the way out there. You're the organizers, I would imagine. Now, I don't know, maybe maybe they can't. Maybe there's not a way to know how good a team is until they get there.

SPEAKER_01: 15:47

I mean, that's kind of. I mean, I'm sure they could look it up, but they're if you're dealing with a hundred teams and each team has like 14 kids, like that's a lot of people. That's that's a lot of bodies to push through. They're like, so just so now here's the crazy thing to play a game at Cooperstown, you have to bring a birth certificate for your child. You have to prove that they are 12 years old. Interesting. Now, as a side note, I don't know what these kids are eating in Georgia. Apparently, Georgia has Mecca for baseball. I don't know. Or Texas? Uh-huh. Uh, you would you would fit in, Paul. Great. There was a kid walking around with a dazzle beard and like, hey guys, you want to play some baseball? And I'm like, dude, how old are you? That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_04: 16:32

He was there like so he was the printer's son.

SPEAKER_01: 16:36

Yes, apparently the printer's son. Or uh that was probably a reference that I don't get.

SPEAKER_04: 16:40

Uh it wasn't really a reference. It was more just saying, like, they probably forged his birth certificate.

SPEAKER_01: 16:45

Well, I mean, I have no doubt that some people now there are you know, I mean, there's tall kids. We've run across them here in Phoenix during our uh Yeah, no, kid kids are wildly big these days. Like, wild. It was so on the team that smashed us, the shortest kid was my height.

SPEAKER_04: 17:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 17:01

And I'm 5'7, 5'8 on a good day. It was wild. Wild. Now we have two tall, we have two above average kids on our team. Right. And Cal is a bigger kid, but he's not that. But it's like, oh my God, we're running into a brick wall here. You guys are chewing tobacco and smoking, and like, hey guys, you want to play some games? Like, how old? Seriously, did you kid you drop your kid off at daycare before you came to camp?

SPEAKER_04: 17:25

Spoilers, it was just an MLB team.

SPEAKER_01: 17:27

Just like I have no doubt it was an actual double-A team that rolled in. Yes. You know, the the the as I the must the Modesto Nuts or the uh Hillsborough Hops, to name some of the ones that we ran into. Um Phoenix Firebirds. Phoenix Firebirds, exactly. Now Cooperstown is beautiful, it's all baseball. The Hall of Fame is awesome. Uh every shop is like baseball, baseball, baseball. So if you love baseball, obviously, you probably already know. But this place is fantastic. It's a quaint small little town. There's a diner there that was so small. Do you remember uh Matt's Big Breakfast here in Phoenix? The little guy. Like they had a little bar and like literally three tables. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So they had a diner, like a breakfast joint, just that size. No wait, no, no, like no uh no waiting list, no nothing. You just hang out and look through the window and stared at people as they ate to be like, are you gonna finish? When are you done?

unknown: 18:22

Hey, come on, hurry up.

SPEAKER_01: 18:22

I want to eat it. You can have this conversation outside. Yeah, right, right. You are finished. Put the coffee down. Um so we went in the breakfast. It was so awesome. It was so delicious. Uh, one of the few places that wasn't overrun with baseball. But again, being the what do they call it? The uh not mythical, but like the pseudo birthplace of baseball, allegedly, right? That's the idea of Cooperstown, and they have a feel where it was started and all that stuff. Uh so if you love baseball and you love that stuff, I do think that Cooperstown is absolutely like a trip to go. And now that Kyle's gone, like later on, if he has kids, he can go and his team's little ta uh so their pin. Everybody makes pins for their baseball team. And it is like crack cocaine, dude. These pins are traded like you kids are walking by, hey man, you got any pin? Hey, hey, hey man, you got any pins, dude? I got a pin for you. Oh yeah, yeah. And it's it is scary how intense these pin this pin training is happening. Um, but so you put a pin on the wall. So when you go back, you can be like, I was here in 2025. Yeah. And that's my pin right there. So Cal got to do at a couple of places. His pin got put on the wall. Uh so hopefully if he has kids and those kids want to play baseball, and then those kids go to Cooperstown, he can be like, there I am, that's me, right there, which is super cool. Um yeah, that's why. Did you see your pin? Uh no, I did not. Uh, because they didn't have a gaming con They didn't have a Hall of Geekdom next to the Hall of Baseball fame, right? Like, oh yes, there's a there's the original character sheet from when Chris played when he was 10, right there, framed in the on the plaque there. Oh my gosh. No, no, no. And that was sadly why I could not uh come up to the cabin with you guys. That's all right. So which uh I totally was like, but Corey was like, why are you sad? And I'm like, well, well, I had a chance to go gaming in the cabin.

SPEAKER_04: 20:24

Yeah. Well you're like, well next time you should uh you know just not support sports.

SPEAKER_01: 20:30

That's right. Sorry, sorry guys, I gotta go. Uh but we're all going as a family. Shh. I have priorities, okay? I'm gonna go to the gaming cabin and hang out. It's awesome. How was gaming at the cabin, by the way?

SPEAKER_04: 20:42

Yeah, welcome to uh to our board gaming baseball collection.

SPEAKER_01: 20:45

We talk about life. If there's anything you've learned from the past couple episodes, we do love talking about it.

SPEAKER_04: 20:50

Less less exciting than than uh a week of uh watching my kid get crushed in baseball. Um we so uh every year I try to go up to the cabin. We talked about this. Yeah. Uh and this this year we got we got our opportunity to go. I had a lot of I've also said this on the podcast a few times recently. I've I've had a lot of chaos in my life since the beginning of the year. Yep. Um the chaos has finally subsided. So but at the in the midst of all that chaos in February, my uh stepmom had said, Hey, we're gonna be out of town in on these days, so it's your turn to have the cabin. Yes. Uh if if you want it. I was like, oh yeah, absolutely. And I and I texted Josh and I was like, hey, can we do this? He's like, Yeah. Um fast forward four months, my life gets turned upside down. Um I'm hanging out at it was my dad's birthday at the end of May. And so we're at the birthday party. I'm like, hey, when when was the date I was getting the cabin again? She goes, Oh yeah, that's next week. Oops! Um, or it was two weeks, but uh at any rate, it was like, oh wow, we I'm totally unprepared for this. Q had started to make plans, he was able to cancel them. Yeah. Um, so we we ended up going. It was just just Q, me, and and my kiddo. And uh, but we had a good time. It was um a lot of games. It was as it should be. I mean, it's the gaming cabin, right? Basically. Well, I mean it becomes the gaming cabin for a few days. Uh we went up for uh we went up Wednesday night. We were gonna go up Thursday. We we switched it to Wednesday night, which is a great call because we ended up getting like an extra half a day of gaming. Yeah. Um went up Wednesday went up Wednesday night and we just played a lot of Marvel Champions.

SPEAKER_01: 22:55

We the game that we've talked about, we haven't talked about that much, actually. No, I'm kidding. Uh uh so like did you just start playing the because we played a little bit before we had uh I left and we did your uh what's the phrase? It's not tournament, but the campaign. Thank you. The campaign version of uh the box that you got. Yeah. Uh and did you keep playing that?

SPEAKER_04: 23:18

Yeah, so in the last episode, we I I said we started the Agent of Shield campaign with uh Magneto and Black Widow.

SPEAKER_01: 23:26

And Magneto is smoking, dude.

SPEAKER_04: 23:29

Wild.

SPEAKER_01: 23:30

You did. I I just watched, and admittedly, I'll just watch. I'm like, so so that's how you play this game. You're like, okay, I'm gonna do this, and then I'm gonna activate this, then I'm gonna activate this, and I'm gonna do this, and then I'm gonna activate this, and I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna play this and I'm gonna do this. I'm like, wow, wow, go play. I do this, and this makes me stronger. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_04: 23:47

Um, so I uh we put we finished that campaign. I played Magneto the whole way through. I didn't really change my deck much. Uh Q reiterated his Black Widow deck a few times, but we played that all the way through. So we finished that, the last like three missions we had or whatever. Um and we go in to do. I brought up other games. Like I had my trunk was full of just games. In hindsight, I didn't bring in a variety of games. I brought too many similar games, and then too many. Uh there was like we brought up Q had never played the Dark Souls board game. My kid was really enjoying it, um, and I knew he was coming, so I was like, hey, let's bring up Dark Souls. The Dark Souls board game is way too many boxes because you have all the Kickstarter bullshit. Um that's gonna be an episode.

SPEAKER_01: 24:45

We will definitely circle back to that. Yeah, you keep pushing for it. I want to see Paul get angry. Um maybe we'll have Mike here on that one. Yeah, right. Now, Dark Souls, that sounds familiar. Is it is it a it's based on a video game. Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 24:59

Is it a just a board game or does it have miniatures, or is it uh yeah, so the the board game version of Dark Souls, there's there's like two very two or three variations of it of the game or different games based on that IP. Um, but the the game that I have is the the first board game, which is a miniatures game. It's best described as a dungeon crawler uh in terms of what we apply to to board games.

SPEAKER_03: 25:25

Right, great.

SPEAKER_04: 25:26

Um you set up a tile, you move your your minis around the tile, the enemies come at you.

SPEAKER_01: 25:33

It's uh fully cooperative, so right, right. So it's like you're paying an adventure party going through this dungeon thing, right? And as you go into each room, you put the room map down, you fill it in, and you sort of like, oh, now there's this monster over here and here.

SPEAKER_04: 25:49

It's real abstract. The the room tiles are excuse me, um, real basic, but for the most part, yes. Um the problem with the game is it takes too long to do things, and then the really fun, cool part of the game that you're building up toward is you know, all oftentimes pretty short. Um so so the payoff isn't quite there. It's not a great game, but it it's a good solid, like co-op minis, dungeon crawler. Great. Um there's been a lot of like fan edits and house rules that hopefully help correct a lot of the issues with it. Um but we played we played a game of that. What's really cool, what I really like about the game, uh the one thing that that I really love about it is in the the Dark Souls video game, one of the things that is real it's infamous for is it's incredibly brutal, incredibly difficult. This board game is not that. Um but the way you get good at it, it's a skill-based game. So you're not okay, you're not playing, you don't you can't accidental into being good at Dark Souls. You have to practice, you have to be focused on it, you have to learn the game. And the way it works is you learn what the your the bosses or the enemies' movements are and kind of what their tells are that they're gonna do a certain thing. And so then you learn the timings and you learn when you need to block, when you need to roll, that kind of thing, when you have openings to actually strike.

SPEAKER_03: 27:26

Right.

SPEAKER_04: 27:26

And so so the game is entirely built around, you know, if if you're a fan of Dark Souls, it's it's about learning the game, and then once you learn the game, if if you practice at it and you're and you get good at it, then you can be incorrect, you it feels very rewarding. You can go through completely naked with nothing but nothing on your character except for a wooden stick. Right. And you can defeat the enemy.

SPEAKER_01: 27:53

You can survive and make the battle the boss at the end.

SPEAKER_04: 27:55

Yeah. All right. Um, it takes a long time because you're doing no damage, but you can do it.

SPEAKER_01: 28:01

It's fine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 28:03

Um, so so it's really it's really cool in that, and so what they did in the board game to simulate that aspect of it is the boss enemies that you fight, the basic enemies don't, they just do the same thing every time. It's very board gamey. Um the boss enemies have a small deck of cards, it's usually like four or five cards, and then you flip over the top card and it does that attack, and then you flip over the next card, it does that attack. Right. And then once you've gone through all four or five four or five cards, you just flip the deck back over and you don't shuffle it. So you can learn the pattern of the attacks that they're going to do. Yep. Uh, and it's it's really cool in that way. So you it's very similar to the board game, or I'm sorry, the video game. Um so yeah, so the the game is is neat. We played it once. It took up way too much volume of the car for the amount of uh the amount of time we spent on that game.

SPEAKER_02: 29:02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 29:03

Um we played Heat with the kiddo once. Um that Heat's always a great time. Yes, yes. Uh, it was you know very there's not much not much to say other than what we've already talked about. We we had a great time. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01: 29:21

Heat's a like we'll we'll circle back to it because I think there's a new one.

SPEAKER_04: 29:24

Yeah, we can talk about it. So uh while we were playing it, I was like, when does that next expansion come out? I looked it out and and uh sure enough, it's out. So we picked it up uh after the cabin trip. Looks really cool. It adds the purple card.

SPEAKER_01: 29:39

Heat tunnel vision is the newest one.

SPEAKER_04: 29:42

I got tunnel vision.

SPEAKER_01: 29:46

Um yes, and speeding through tunnels is risky, but no one is slowing down. So put your pedal to the metal. This is awesome.

SPEAKER_04: 29:57

Uh seems like a very basic uh Expansion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 30:01

There's adds a new car, you said? So it has another new color car?

SPEAKER_04: 30:05

Um, yeah, it adds a new color car and all the cards you need to play with that one car. Um, it adds a new map, two new tracks, which is one board double-sided, as they do. Uh Espana. And what was the other one? Should say it on there.

SPEAKER_01: 30:24

Two tracks, double-sided. Let's see. Um 1965 championship season. Oh my goodness, you're killing me. Give me the damn box. Oh, no, hold on. The Netherlands and the Spanish Grand Prix. I mean pre. So Espanyol and the Netherlands.

SPEAKER_04: 30:42

Yep. So uh, and in both tracks, it features tunnels. Uh, my brief understanding of how the tunnels work is you can't slipstream in tunnels. There's like you can't pass cars basically while you're in the tunnels, is kind of my understanding of how it works.

SPEAKER_01: 31:01

Seems a little dangerous to do that in a tunnel. So, yeah, you wanna just get through the tunnel, get a little bit of a little bit.

SPEAKER_04: 31:06

It's a little bit more restrictive. Great. Uh, other than that, the expansion's very basic. It adds a couple new upgrades, which are always fun. Uh, it adds one new upgrade mechanic. It's uh the new front wing upgrade. Is that uh-huh. Yep.

SPEAKER_03: 31:21

Mmm.

SPEAKER_04: 31:22

Mmm.

unknown: 31:23

So yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 31:26

This is good.

SPEAKER_04: 31:26

So it looks, I'm I'm I'm excited to play it. So hopefully in the near future we can uh run a game. And uh there were a couple people that came up to me afterwards that that were saying they were liking the podcast, and that heat sounded super cool, so maybe we can get a couple people involved in that race car. I think I can play up to eight eight race cars now.

unknown: 31:47

Eight people.

SPEAKER_01: 31:48

Yeah. I mean, that sounds crazy, but also fantastic. Um, yeah, I mean, I know we played this, uh, I think we played it twice now. I think I do I enjoyed the heck out of Heat. And we talked about the idea of like bringing the kids in and play, and I think both of our kids would enjoy it. Nothing crazy. But the the look, the feel, the vibe, and the playstyle of it, I think it would be really good.

SPEAKER_04: 32:09

It's funny, we were playing it, and my my kiddo, we'd played a bunch, uh, me and my kiddo, and uh we were having a good time, and then we played it at the cabin, and he I guess we hadn't played it in a while, and so he decided to play incredibly conservatively.

SPEAKER_03: 32:26

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04: 32:27

Uh, it didn't go well for him. Uh, I took upgrades because we play with the upgrades now, um, which which I think are a lot of fun. I took a couple of upgrades that made my car really good at like taking turns and and that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Managing my heat. My car was very consistent. It also meant to it had a very consistent speed. Right. Q took uh a couple upgrades that let him just shoot super fast.

SPEAKER_01: 32:53

Rocket engine, that sounds great.

SPEAKER_04: 32:55

And of course, the the map that we ended up choosing was the one with the huge straightaway.

SPEAKER_01: 33:01

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 33:02

So if he like like So I did great in those little turns. Yeah. And I would get out of those turns first and I'd be set up. Right. And then we I'd get on that big straightaway, and then Q would just go, suckers. And then he'd uh get up to the to the turns, and it was like, okay, he starts slowing down. I pass him in the turns.

SPEAKER_03: 33:21

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 33:22

And then I get out of the turns and uh and of course the the finish line is you know toward the end of that straightaway, which it should be in uh you know in in regular racing. So so yeah, so he he had the better built car and uh took the race. So cute.

SPEAKER_01: 33:41

How dare you! No, that sounds awesome. Yes, I definitely think we should I definitely think we should circle back to heat. Absolutely. Um especially since Mike has got the new expansion as well to check uh to check out and play.

SPEAKER_04: 33:55

Uh the other game we brought, I brought the Star Wars deck building game, which we we played and we talked about on the on an episode. Yeah. Q did not like it. He's not a big fan of competitive games. If anyone's been listening and like picking up, I play a lot of cooperative games and I play a lot of um when I talk about, you know, for those that don't know, Q is is my best friend from high school. Yep. Um we've we've known each other for at this point over 20 years.

SPEAKER_01: 34:22

Far too long.

SPEAKER_04: 34:23

Um almost almost 30 years at this point. And uh he's the one that got me into role-playing games. Uh good job. He was there for a lot of the board gaming. Yeah, so he's he's been a huge part of my life, a great friend. Um, we share a lot of a uh a lot of passions. And so uh he he's probably gonna come on a on an episode here in the very near future. One of the things we did at the cabin, I I did a lot of cooking because that's usually what happens at the at the cabin.

SPEAKER_01: 34:56

It's it's at a cabin, right? So you're not like, can I get uh can I get some Grubhub delivered and hopefully you're like cooking and gaming. That's it.

SPEAKER_04: 35:04

Yeah, there's no DoorDash out there. Um there's we did a lot of like uh basically every time we go up to the cabin, what what ends up happening and it works really well is uh we go out, we go to the grocery store, we buy all the food we want for the week, and then we play board games, and during the board games I'm cooking the entire time. Uh and I cook all the food, Q does all the dishes, it's great, great system.

SPEAKER_01: 35:33

See, it works out, right? One person cooks, one person cleans. Yep. You know?

SPEAKER_04: 35:38

Uh uh I felt a little bit bad this this trip because I I kind of kind of left the dishes to him a little bit more than usual. I don't I don't know what was going on inside.

SPEAKER_01: 35:50

Uh because that's kind of how a little bit how it works in our house, a little bit. Like I'm it's like 55, 45-ish, whatever. Like I do a little bit more of the cooking, and Corey does a little bit less. Uh it does, you know, it even flows out, whatever. But I have a huge, huge bad habit of I have to have my museplas, and I have to do all the dishes, and I use all the dishes, and I mean I use all the dishes. And Corey walks in and she's like, What? You not everything has to be in its own bowl. You read the recipe, you put stuff that goes together in one thing, and he's like, But that messes with my muse. Like, I need my ingredients. I must see my delicious food. Uh uh, and as I can't, I wish I remember what comedian it was, but it's like, in every relationship, there's somebody who cooks and somebody who's cleans. You know what sucks about that is when you cook, you can do crazy stuff. You can try a new ingredient, you can try a new thing. You know what's crazy to try with dishes? Nothing. It's the same thing every time. Uh so every now and then, Corey's like, so uh I'm cooking, and you're gonna feel my pain. And I'm like, but okay, too shape. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Uh so do you are you a are you a misenplacer, as it were?

SPEAKER_04: 37:07

Or like I I I feel like I find a pretty pretty good balance. Right. Yeah. Like I I definitely use a lot of a lot more dishes than like my wife does when she cooks. Yeah, yeah. Um, she does everything in one pan, and then that's it. Right. I I I do a little bit of prep here and there. I have my my bowls that I mix things, but like I'll I'll put like we made um Pico de Gallo at the beginning of the the trip for the for the weekend.

SPEAKER_03: 37:36

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 37:37

And uh I just put everything in the bowl and then we just left it in that bowl the entire entire weekend, which was which was perfect.

SPEAKER_01: 37:44

So I am so I am slowly learning to not to mees and ploss the crap out of cooking. Just try to try to focus down, you know what that comes from being uh unemployed back in the day and watching as opposed to watching soap operas.

SPEAKER_04: 37:57

I used the same cutting board for for every for all of the vegetables. Yeah, yeah. Not the meats.

SPEAKER_01: 38:03

Right, right. No, no, not the meats. The raw meats separate. Right, you gotta be, yeah, I have a little bit of food safety here.

SPEAKER_04: 38:08

So I made uh we did hamburgers one night, which I can't eat beef, so we did uh it was chicken burgers.

SPEAKER_01: 38:16

Um okay, so I yeah, come I'm gonna come back to that in a second, but yeah, chicken burgers. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04: 38:21

Did chicken burgers one night with the pico de gallo, a little bit of barbecue sauce. Yeah. Um Q can't eat breads, so I think he just ate it plain. Whatever. Yeah. Um it was good.

SPEAKER_01: 38:34

Like protein style. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 38:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, we bought lettuce. He could have done like lettuce wrap, but I think we were both too hungry. Just get my belly. That that's usually how it ends up working. We play games until it's like, okay, we really need to start cooking, and then we get really hungry. Um we've gone too far.

SPEAKER_01: 38:52

Oh my gosh. All right, so uh the white, we found this recipe for chicken avocado burgers. Interesting. If you like avocado.

SPEAKER_04: 39:04

Uh I like pina colada and getting caught in the rain.

SPEAKER_01: 39:07

So there you go. Oh, that's a good version. That's the that's the sequel to the song. If you like avocado. Um and pica de gallo. So uh if I can find it, I'll like send it to you, whatever. Sure. But I love avocado. I hate cooked avocado, so this is interesting. So this could be challenging. Um, you take the ground chicken, but you put the avocado in the chicken. So when you grill it, it does it maybe a little bit, but it's in there. Um I'd be willing to try it. I'll try anything. We tried it ages ago, and it like the uh the kiddo was like, These burgers are amazing. Like, this is amazing. And then and then the Corey was like, where the heck has ground chicken been all my life? Because it's a burger, but it's not so heavy or dense, right? Like sometimes you want a burger, just give me some burgers. But this is like, I just want a little burger, just something light and delicious. Now, the great thing is you make a little garlic aioli, uh-huh and it's and we make extra of it because we literally just dip our burgers to it and stuff like that. Um, but I'll send it to you because frankly, it is we make it like at least once a month.

SPEAKER_04: 40:10

Interesting. Oh, I'll be so it's I'll definitely try it.

SPEAKER_01: 40:13

It's a nice delicious burger.

SPEAKER_04: 40:16

I I I like chicken burgers a lot. Yeah. Turkey burgers are a lot easier to find because obviously there's more meat on a turkey. Right, right. And you can find turkey. Uh you can make a lot more ground turkey a lot faster than you can make uh a lot of chicken, right? Ground chicken. Uh, ground chicken tastes infinitely better.

SPEAKER_01: 40:32

Right.

SPEAKER_04: 40:33

Just so much better.

SPEAKER_01: 40:35

We tried it with turkey one time and we're like it's better to wait for the because for whatever reason the store was out of ground chicken. Happens a lot. Yeah. And I'm like, well, let's try turkey. You know, it's their it's chicken adjacent. They're birds. They're birds. Uh so we tried it. We're like, yeah, I think it's not the same. I think we're gonna wait for the for the ground chicken. Uh sorry, but yes, uh again, we're it's a tangential gaming show.

SPEAKER_04: 41:00

Yeah, right. Um uh we cooked, um, again, I can't eat beef, so this is gonna be a lot of chicken. Uh night two, we did uh chicken wings. I made my my my grandmother's from and my mother are from uh upstate New York, Buffalo specifically. Uh-huh. So we have a recipe in the family that is uh Buffalo chicken wings. And I've kind of made it my own over the years, but it's very, very simple. It's like three ingredients. Uh I it's my what I do differently is like I use margarine instead of butter. Um I use it's so much better. I use uh, and instead of doing like a regular wing sauce, like Frank's or whatever, I specifically always have to do red double. Red Devil uh wing sauce is my favorite. It's a little bit more vinegary, uh-huh, which wing sauce is already like real vinegary.

SPEAKER_01: 41:57

Right, rig is definitely vinegar-based.

SPEAKER_04: 41:59

Yeah. Um, and then it's got just the the way that they do the peppers and everything. Okay. Turns out really good. So that's what I do. Uh, and then the rest of the ingredients are just spices. Um, and spoiler alert. I just use an Italian seasoned packet. Call it a day. Q if you're listening. No, he knows. He I've made it for him a few times. So uh I grilled the wings uh on on the grill. They turned out fantastic. We got uh drumsticks in addition to wings. Right. Uh, because it's easier for the kid to eat. Right, right. Well, you know, they were a little bit too big. Uh, drumettes are are a lot better because they're they're smaller.

SPEAKER_01: 42:38

Oh, oh, so you got like drumstick drumsticks. Yeah, it was chicken drumsticks, the full size. The varieties, the spice.

SPEAKER_04: 42:43

The kid liked them a lot, and and they're they were easy to eat and real meaty. Um but they didn't hold the sauce as well.

SPEAKER_01: 42:51

Right, right.

SPEAKER_04: 42:52

Uh so we made that, and then night three, I made uh a slow-cooked chicken breast all day in chicken broth and spices, and we did chicken tacos that night. That was what we made the pico for. Right. We were almost out of pico by that time.

SPEAKER_01: 43:10

Well, okay, when you're gaming, you gotta got you gotta have the chips and salsas, right? I mean, if you just dip it in and wrong, mm-mm.

SPEAKER_04: 43:18

The original plan was uh when we when we planned the menu in the grocery store. Um As you do, it was it was gonna be the burgers because it was that that was easy, and then it was gonna be the slow cook the chicken all day for the second day. Yeah. Um but we got through the second day and I was like, I forgot to start the chicken. It's all right, we'll just do the wings tonight.

SPEAKER_02: 43:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 43:40

So we'd made the the pico the night before so that way it would soak in all the lime juice and everything. Um and then we get to the second day, and we ended up not having what we made the pico for. So yeah, so it ended up getting mostly we had enough, um, but it got close. Uh so it was and there's no leftover pico, hopefully, because you know I've I've done chicken tacos almost every time we go up because it's it's super simple, it's super super easy, it's always super good. Everyone can kind of put whatever toppings they want. Um I didn't get as fancy this time as as I sometimes do, but that's fine. Um so yeah, so we we did all that, and then uh I made breakfast every day, which my kid doesn't like, but that was fine for us. It was just a bunch of scrambled eggs.

SPEAKER_01: 44:27

I know suddenly we're now we're on a podcast about cooking, uh, which I freaking love. Breakfast is my jam. Right. Uh like I don't know if you'd like to be able to do that. That's my meal. That is my meal. Like if like people are like, what's your favorite food? It's breakfast.

SPEAKER_04: 44:40

Like if my kid doesn't like breakfast foods, and my wife doesn't like breakfast, eating breakfast in the mornings.

SPEAKER_01: 44:46

So I am struggling. Dude, that that is rough. I mean, Core's the same way, honestly. She's like, you know, I have my coffee. I'm like, I've I've I've made eggs benedict, or I've made a breakfast sandwich. She's like, uh, give me give me a couple hours. And I'm like, what? Now I I can eat breakfast any time.

SPEAKER_04: 45:06

I've just gone to we do breakfast for dinner now.

SPEAKER_01: 45:09

Yeah. Oh dude.

SPEAKER_04: 45:10

When I when I'm wanting breakfast, we do breakfast for dinner. Yeah, yeah. Um and my wife, my wife loves breakfast foods too, so she's okay with that. She just doesn't like eating it during breakfast.

SPEAKER_01: 45:20

Right, right, right. Oh my gosh. The first time I didn't.

SPEAKER_04: 45:22

The kid doesn't like eggs, the kid doesn't like sausage. What? The only thing he likes is bacon.

SPEAKER_01: 45:28

Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_04: 45:29

And I can't eat pork bacon anymore, so it's all we can get is turkey bacon, which is not as good. It's not as good.

SPEAKER_01: 45:35

I mean, it's close.

SPEAKER_04: 45:36

It's not even close.

SPEAKER_01: 45:37

No, it's like don't do that.

SPEAKER_04: 45:40

Don't don't give me home.

SPEAKER_01: 45:42

Don't tease me, man.

SPEAKER_04: 45:43

I have had good turkey sauce or good turkey bacon before. Yeah. I don't know how or where. Right. I'm pretty sure it was just pork bacon and they gave me the wrong one.

SPEAKER_01: 45:55

Was there turkey on turkey written on Sharpie on the packaging? It's turkey bacon. Um I remember the first time I made breakfast for dinner uh for the kiddo. Because, you know, as we all know, like if you're the printing it, sometimes your meal planning doesn't go as planned. And uh Corey and I are like, let's just do breakfast for dinner. You know, we got some, let's use up the bacon. We got eggs with this, and like the kid stood there and watched us. He's like, What are you guys doing? This is why you can't do that now. You can't cross the streams. You have dinner for dinner, and you have breakfast, and he's like, Shh shh, cow. Food is food, right? Eat it. You know, eat it when you want to eat it. You can have sandwiches for dinner, you can have sandwich lunch. And he just watched us and he's like, This is this is so awesome.

SPEAKER_04: 46:44

Oh, I thought he was gonna say this is a sacrilege.

SPEAKER_01: 46:47

No, no, he just was like bacon and eggs with some tote, whatever. He's like, Yes. Uh and then we made another uh like a couple the next week. We made what I call breakfast for dinner as well. Uh what's it's like so do you do you cook your do you how do you do your eggs?

SPEAKER_03: 47:05

Uh well, do you do scrambled spots?

SPEAKER_01: 47:07

I'm a fan of scrambled because it's it is the easier way to do it.

SPEAKER_04: 47:11

I I like scrambled because I like the taste more.

SPEAKER_01: 47:13

Yeah. I mean I do and I do a bunch. There's uh butter makes everything better, so there's definitely some butter and lard uh and scramble the eggs. Um and then the other way to- So when you scramble eggs, do you do it?

SPEAKER_04: 47:22

American style, French style, how do you do your scrambling?

SPEAKER_01: 47:25

Squatamol style. I have no idea.

SPEAKER_04: 47:27

All right, no, uh So do you just put do you just like scramble the eggs in a bowl, pour it in the bowl, and then just scrape the pan while it cooks?

SPEAKER_01: 47:34

A little bit. So uh I uh so you whisk or whip the eggs in the bowl, add a little milk or whatever, a little pirin. Uh sometimes, like if you're uh feeling spicy, uh I put like a little sour cream or something like that. Just a little tang. So all the ingredients from the bowl, the salt, peppers, whatever spices, and whip that together. Not too much. Uh-huh. Just you know, you season it in the bowl. Right? And then put it in the pan and let it sit for a little bit, and then just slowly start mixing it. And then and then sometimes I sometimes make that, I guess it's the French style. I call it the egg burrito where you let it get and then they fold it over and you have like more like an omelette. Yeah, more like an omelet style.

SPEAKER_04: 48:15

I did a folded egg at the cabin. We did uh the first night. I did uh I wanted to do breakfast sandwiches, and again, Josh can't eat the or Q can't eat the uh English muffins, so he just had it, you know, in a bowl. But uh I did folded egg, um turkey sausage pressed, and then I uh grilled in the griddle some English muffins for the kid and I. And hit the kid's sandwich left uneat like half eaten.

SPEAKER_02: 48:48

What?

SPEAKER_04: 48:49

Um yeah, it was a travesty. And then he like smothered it in ketchup because he's a kid, and I when we when when he goes to the cabin, I kind of let him do whatever he wants to an extent.

SPEAKER_01: 49:03

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, dude, there's like little free range at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_04: 49:06

Especially especially on this trip where it's like, hey, Uncle Q and I are gonna be like compl completely ignoring you for most of the time. Um so don't die, but if you want extra ketchup, have extra ketchup.

SPEAKER_03: 49:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 49:21

Um, but then it was like this there's this half-eaten delicious sandwich sitting there, and it's like I wanted to eat it later as a snack, and it was just covered in ketchup, so I couldn't. Um But I did do a folded egg, and it and the folded eggs turned out great. I was really happy with with how that turned out.

SPEAKER_01: 49:36

It sounds delicious. Um I did not eat much breakfast this morning.

SPEAKER_04: 49:39

No, the French style is how I usually do it. So yeah. I don't do creme, creme or milk, but cra that's the the appropriate thing to do. Um, but you get a pot, not a pan. And you melt way too much butter. Yes. In the in the pan.

SPEAKER_01: 49:55

Way too much butter.

SPEAKER_04: 49:56

Uh in the pot. And then mix the eggs in, and then just stir and don't stop stirring on a low heat. Like medium low. Yeah. Like four. Um don't stop stirring, let it, let it keep going. And then periodically take it off the heat, let it rest, and it'll cook on its own. Yep. And then put it back on the heat to reheat a little bit, and you do that over and over. I don't do the taking it off the heat much anymore. Okay. I'll usually do it a little bit more lazy, but as long as you're constantly stirring it, what ends up what you end up getting is that more cottage cheese consistency. Yeah. Um yeah, really small curds, basically. Correct. And uh that turns out and I don't season it until toward the end.

SPEAKER_01: 50:41

Okay. Uh, I'm gonna still put a little dash at the end. Uh you know, maybe not obviously. So you're not using a skillet or like that. You're using more of a uh like a tall-sided saucepan or something.

SPEAKER_04: 50:52

Oh yeah. All right, try it sometime.

SPEAKER_01: 50:54

I will.

SPEAKER_04: 50:55

Absolutely. Yeah, so I mix it, pour it, stir it with like a silicon spatula constantly until it's uh about done.

SPEAKER_01: 51:04

I mean, and I and we've been like uh trying to get a cow, because again, I'm a breakfast fan. Like, and if there's one one or two things that I want to pass on to the child, is you might not be able to like change the oil in your car or whatever, but by darn it, you're gonna know how to make at least one or two things so that when you go to college or whatever, you can make a couple things and you will not have to buy college kid nachos. Right. Like, go make some food because that was my theme. Theme burritos. I had like I can make breakfasts, obviously. It was like two dishes. Like that's that's and when you're a poor college student and frankly a starving artist back in the day, uh, there's a lot of ramen with an egg in it, you know, not gonna lie, and whatever leftover veggies that are about to go bad, you just put them in the ramen and eat that up. Um I'm like, so you're gonna learn how to make eggs, like scramble some eggs and fry some eggs. And that's it.

SPEAKER_04: 51:57

He's like, Dad, this is this is it's it's easy, it's fun, it and it's always so rewarding. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 52:03

Um and you almost always have some eggs on hand to do stuff with. So that's the other version we make. We made fried eggs.

SPEAKER_04: 52:09

Uh yeah, I do I do fried eggs for the wife and the and the kid every now and then. Yeah. Sometimes I'll do a fried egg for myself when I'm doing a breakfast sandwich and I want the fried egg. But for the most part, I'll do scrambles. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 52:21

Scramble's easier to control. Uh it doesn't make much of a mess. But I do love if you can like we try to get like what I call uh not hard boiled, uh a soft boiled, like so the the yolk is just barely cooked, because like obviously you want the whites to be that's the grossest thing ever, where you're like eating an egg and you're like, what is this? Oh, it's an uncooked egg white, great, yuck. Um but if the whites are done and the yolk is just barely touched, so it's not full on magma hot running out of your sandwich, yeah, but it's just a little uncuousness, a little sauce that you can, as my kid like drit dip it in his plate full of ketchup, because he does the same thing, you know, kids.

SPEAKER_04: 53:02

Uh so that's our favorite thing to do with a breakfast sandwich is like you get the fried egg, the eggs, the yolk's super runny. Yes. You bite into it, it squirts out the back. Right. Uh, and then you when you get toward halfway done with the sandwich, you're just scraping the plate with your sandwich. So good. Yeah, it's 10 out of 10. Um 10 out of 10.

SPEAKER_01: 53:24

Well, what do you think?

SPEAKER_04: 53:25

Yeah, so so that's that's our our board gaming slash cooking trip. Uh all right, guys.

SPEAKER_01: 53:30

Welcome to the cooking podcast.

SPEAKER_04: 53:33

The other thing we did uh at the at the cabin is talked a lot about role-playing games. Okay. Uh, specifically after last episode, I got a gang together. So I've got I've we've got about five people that are you, me, Q, and a couple other people are looking at starting a role-playing game. Yes. So um, to that end, Q's very excited because he loves role-playing games, and uh, it was all he could talk about all weekend uh for four days.

SPEAKER_01: 54:08

Just bouncing off ideas like what's the world we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_04: 54:11

Now, because you reached out with some ideas for a little bit of the world ideas and uh a lot of his ideas for different characters. Right. Um so yeah, so uh one of what I wanted we can get into the main topic. I think we've waxed long enough about non-waxed political enough, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 54:26

As you're the main topic.

SPEAKER_04: 54:29

So the main topic is we're I wanted to talk a little bit just generally about role-playing games. We started talking about Daggerheart last episode before the uh the timing ran out. Technical difficulties. Do you do you have enough storage space on the USB drive before we get started?

SPEAKER_01: 54:46

I wiped this clean, so we have approximately 12 hours.

SPEAKER_04: 54:51

So we can record all well it's a good thing we're not opening the shop today. No, no, um so so I wanted to talk a little bit about so we're gonna play Daggerheart. Daggerheart, right. I'm I'm super excited about Daggerheart, Q's super excited about Daggerheart. I hope everybody else is, um, or I hope they they have a good time at the very least. You win. Um I wanted to talk a little bit, just kind of talk with you about what you wanted from the game, talk a little bit about like my approach to starting a new campaign. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I know a big thing a lot of people come up with is hey, I want to play, I want to try Dungeons and Dragons. I want to play a role-playing game. What do I need to get started? How do I find a group? Right. Kind of address some. We've talked a little bit about some of the stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 55:39

We did talk a little bit about that in our role-playing thing, but I think revisiting that since we're actually going through it right now. I think it's it's gonna be really good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 55:47

Uh, and then what we'll end up doing is after we have, you know, every few episodes or a few sessions or so, maybe have uh Q or or one of the other players uh come in and we we talk about that game. Yeah, yeah. So um so Dagger Heart. So we started to talk about it.

SPEAKER_01: 56:06

I forget where we got cut off, but um I think if I remember right, we got cut off right right around when we were talking about it. Is uh it's not a it's a 12-sided one. It's a 12-sided dice. So I have um with me some dice here.

SPEAKER_04: 56:22

That came with the collector's edition of the game that I got.

SPEAKER_01: 56:26

Uh for those listening at home, Paul, of course, being the awesome sauce dude that he is, oh, listen to that, has the um has the collector's edition of the dagger heart. And I just want to say, as I don't know about you guys, uh, but when the new player's handbook came out, like I haven't role-played in a long, long time. Like, this has been uh I want to say '96, '96, like around. So it's been it's you've DM'd since then, though. No, no, no. I haven't done anything. Any of it, okay. Anything. So like when the new players handbook came out, like I picked it up and I was like.

SPEAKER_04: 57:01

And when you're saying new players handbook, you're talking about 3.5.

SPEAKER_01: 57:05

Yes, I'm talking about 3.5 when it came out. No! What is this? 5.5 or whatever? Oh, fifth edition? Yeah, the fifth edition. The new new one that Mike's got up for. Okay, five 524. Yeah. Yeah, because they're using years now, which is probably more appropriate.

SPEAKER_04: 57:18

Yeah, 20 2024 edition of fifth edition.

SPEAKER_01: 57:21

It's like hello darkness, my old friend, kind of thing. Like you stare at it, you and I I I opened it up and I did exactly the same thing when Paul pulled out the book. Like, I picked it up and you did the whole like like eating. You gotta smell that ink. You smell the ink and the paper. While it's still fresh. Oh gosh. Uh, and it definitely always takes you back to those the Halcyon days of youth, and you're like, you know, I remember back in the day when you like everybody had one player's handbook and we all had to share it around the table, and you slowly like saved up your money to buy an extra player's handbook.

SPEAKER_04: 57:51

Uh you played with people that bought their own books.

SPEAKER_01: 57:54

Well, it was uh I I was lucky enough that I had I had I was always the guy that bought the books and everyone took mine. Well, no, no, no. So there was my stuff. Yeah. Um, and then eventually, because I played with uh the the Halcyon days when I was playing was back in high school when I moved to California. Right. My uh Christmas of junior year, so it was about a year and a half, two years. I want to say, really shockingly quick, found a group of friends and hung out, and we all like, hey, we like gaming. And so I had the books already, and they're like, this is fun. Yeah. So slowly as we played, everybody got their own players' handbook. Everybody ends up getting their own players' books. But because you're like, I want to look at my own stuff and read stuff, so as opposed to sharing the communal library. But yes, I was the one who had I had all the Forgotten Realms books, I had all the maps, I had them on the wall in there, and it was so like one guy has all the books, everybody should have their own players edge. And eventually eventually eventually gets it out. So I love the fact that he rolled in with this sweet, like gilded, no, not gilded edge, but the sweet, sweet uh cover of Dagger Heart. Yeah. Um I'm like, I just love the it just again, holding the book takes me back.

SPEAKER_04: 59:05

And I'm like, uh, while the the shop won't have the collector's edition, I don't want to spend too much time on the fancy version. It's the book that that we we won't be able to get a hold of. Um I do want to talk about the game. Yes. Uh so one of the cool things that I love about Daggerheart, Daggerheart is is a cart has a lot of cards associated with it, um, which I think we talked about a little bit in the uh the Forgotten Lost episode.

SPEAKER_01: 59:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_04: 59:30

Um But it had it cards are a core component of the game. 60 bucks, I think, is the price. Maybe yeah, I think I'm I'm 90% certain. Don't hold me to this.

SPEAKER_01: 59:43

Oh, I'll hold you that.

SPEAKER_04: 59:44

Um But for for the price of what you would normally spend for like a player's handbook, you get the player's handbook, which also has a bunch of uh DM stuff in it. Right. There's not a DMG, there's not a monster manual.

SPEAKER_01: 59:56

So this is like the book, as it were. The book. So there's one.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:00

One source book for the game and get all the cards with it for the for the one price, which is super rad. That is cool. Um so in Daggerheart, the core of the system is you're going to roll two D12. Paul leans over and grabs some. And you choose one to be your hope die and one to be your fear die before you roll. And you want them to be different colors so you can you can tell which one's which. I don't want to I don't want to spend too much time on this.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:29

But I think it's 12-sided dice.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:31

He's passing me some dice. They're the weirdest printed 12-sided or weirdest cut 12-sides I've ever seen. Because here's a normal 12-sided.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:41

Yeah, hand me the regular one. But these are specific ones because they're like four-sided instead of five-sided. Yeah. Admittedly, when you picked them up, I was like, why is he going for the 20-sided? Because they they're closer to that kind of cut as opposed to the 12-sided. Yeah, it's super weird. That is weird. But the dice are super cool. They have uh purple with some gold flecks in them, and the other one is like a white with some cool iridescent inside. Like, uh I love me some accoutrements on these dice. Yeah, they're very nice dice. These dice are pretty sexy.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:13

So um I'm gonna drop it. That's fine. They're they're dice, they're supposed to be thrown. Um just tuck it across the room. So so you you choose the two dice you roll, and then whichever die is higher determines whether or not your roll has hope or fear associated with it. So if you roll higher on the the hope die, you rolled with hope. If you roll higher on the fear die, you rolled with fear. I'll get into that in a second. Um then you add the two numbers together, and let's say you rolled a 11, right? Um, you rolled a five and a six, and the six was the higher, the higher of say hope.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:49

Right.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:50

You rolled an 11 with hope, and then you compare that to the DC to use uh Dungeons and Dragons terms, and that's diff difficulty check.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:00

Yeah, all right, good. Um I haven't forgotten everything.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:03

Yep. And if you rolled higher at or higher, then you succeeded. So if you succeed with hope, that means you did the thing and you did the thing spectacularly well. You get to as a player, you're called to describe how how that was spectacular for you. Okay, you get to gain hope, which is a currency that powers your abilities, um, and that kind of thing. If you roll, if let's say you succeeded, but your fear die was higher, then you succeeded with fear. You still succeeded at whatever task you were doing. If that task was hitting the monster, you succeeded. If it was climbing over the wall, you succeeded. You got over the wall, you hit the monster. But because there's fear, right, then the the DM gains a fear point, which is their currency to do some of their bad stuff and power some of their abilities, and they get to do a move.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:58

Like a like a mock nations, the world moves and shit as the character. Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:04

So to give to use those examples, um, you s if you succeed with fear on hitting the monster, you hit the monster, but it uh you look down and its dagger has kind of found its way into your side uh in the attack. And so you take a little bit of damage.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:22

Your weapon's stuck in it or something like that, maybe. Right. Yeah, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:27

You hit it and then it um knocks your your dagger away or whatever. Right. Um something to that effect. The if you're climbing over the wall, you get over the wall and uh you drop, and as you drop down, you realize you just dropped into a band of five guards. Um so stuff like that, right? Um and it's it's totally up to you know the the DM to kind of or GM in this game to kind of determine what that all means and how that all works.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:02

So it it sounds like uh, and I think we talked about, we did briefly mention this, there's the other system, Genesis or Star Wars, where it's you have success and failures, but you have a mix of a heavy, maybe heavy is not the great way to say it, but a a good dose of storytelling behind the die roll.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:21

The dice will help propel the story forward in dramatic ways. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:26

That allows you, the D GM or the player, to be like, you you have succeeded with hope or with a bonus or whatever, so how do you succeed? How are you gonna what's your little je ne sais quoi that you want your character to do?

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:40

And then if you succeed with fear, you're the DM can have a little fun.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:43

I will say, like, and and this was definitely something I talked about during the last episode, but um the I'm gonna say that a lot. The I I think Daggerheart is is a uh so far, based on what I've seen from again. I've only played the beta the the beta test.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:02

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:03

Um I haven't played the the final product yet. Um Daggerheart is a system that is gonna be really good for new players. Okay, people that haven't played uh a uh a system before, or their only system that they have experience with is Dungeons and Dragons, and they want to explore a more narrative system. Yeah, players are gonna be great in this. It's very welcoming. The the character sheets are really well written. Um, it it does a really good job. I didn't give you any character sheets. I can grab one if you want. Um it's it's really well designed from a player standpoint. From a GM standpoint, though, um I as a GM, I'm super excited. I want I want to preface like this game is made for me. Um it's gonna be a lot harder for a new GM to run than say Dungeons and Dragons. Okay, it puts a lot more weight on improvisation and thinking on your feet and being creative in the moment, which is something that that's how I run my games. Yeah, yeah. That's how I run DD. Um, that's how I run any RPG, and that's the way my RPG brain is built. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:22

So that's I love that stuff. Yeah, yeah. I mean, uh when we were playing, since I was usually uh, well, not usually, I was the GM. Right. Like just for like I had I had experience, nobody else had. So I was like, well, GM. That's also kind of uh kind of how I ran the games too, is like I had a rough outline and an idea. Well, and frankly, sometimes not even that. Like, hey, we're just gonna get together and have fun. Yeah. Where'd and like, all right, guys, where did we leave off last time? And they the hopefully the players remember what happened, and I'd be like, were you guys paying attention? Maybe, because I honestly maybe forgot too. Um if we got wrong, and I totally did, and if I got it wrong, it was fine. We didn't really care, but it's the that improvisational. I want these guys to have fun in this adventure in this world. Uh, I have an idea where like what the next bad guy is, like what's the next thing that you're gonna unlock to propel the game.

SPEAKER_04: 1:07:16

But you might not necessarily know how you get there. Right, right. Yeah. That's exactly how I run games too.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:20

No, it's been a hot, like I said, it's been a hot minute. So my improv skills are real bad. That's fine. Um, but but I do remember back in the day, like, they're like, how do you do this? And I'm like, well, you know, you guys, it's it's that yes and thing of improv. It's like, I'm gonna give you guys a question. Like, how do you get through the door? How do you do this? What are you gonna do? And your actions give me ideas. How am I gonna bounce off? Because I always had one player uh that would always sneak away. Right. Always, like without a freaking doubt. You know, we're like, hey, you know, we're we're in this room and it's well lit. And he's like, I'm gonna sneak into the shadows. I'm like, did you not hear me say it's well lit? I'm still gonna sneak in. Dude, yeah, all right, roll for it, bro. Like, let's go. And then something stupid would happen, and he get he would he'll get separated from the group, and I'd be like, all right, hang out, we'll get back to you, and all like depends on how many people usually like the three or four like would just be rolling their eyes and be like, dude, can you not just stick with the group? Yeah, or or he would actually take one of them with him, like he activated a trap because you're doing something you you didn't yeah, you're you failed your role and this and that, and you did-da-da, and like the floor drops down, and two of you get sucked down, and they're like everybody would turn to turn and be like, What's what's wrong with you, bro? Yeah, but he played his character very well. He was a thief, a sneaky, well, a dwarf thief, if I remember right now. He was living his fantasy and having fun. Um but that idea of the improvisational nature of stuff of this game, uh, I haven't played fourth or fifth or five twenty-five, obviously. Does uh if you know, like how in the realm of in the realm of like improvisational versus rote uh things, where does D D stand now? Do you know versus say versus Daggerheart or something like that? Is has it changed much or is it still like a rules heavy it's it's changed a lot in in the two systems you haven't played. Yes, yes, I'm sure it has.

SPEAKER_04: 1:09:27

So in the 40 years, so yeah, so to my point, um I I play a lot of improvisation and I and I tend to like games that encourage improvisation for or give a lot the or or give the GM a lot of tools for improvisation. Right. Uh narrative systems are great for that. Um if you're the type of GM that's playing DD and you like to have a lot of prep work done and you like to have a set plan going into a session and you know what encounter is going to be what um and when it's gonna happen and how. And and your games are very railroady. Yeah. That I I hesitate to use the term railroad because that's has a lot of negative connotation. I don't think railroading is bad.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:11

Like you're running a module, like there are steps and things that someone might want to do.

SPEAKER_04: 1:10:16

I think I think railroading in a game is sometimes appropriate, and I think that um if your game, if if your group is if that's the type of game your group likes, then run that type of game. Like I don't think that that's a problem for that for the right table. I think most tables want a little bit more freedom. Right. So that's why it gets a bad rap. And I and I'm not saying, hey, just go write your novels and then make people sit through them. I'm not telling everyone to go do that, but I am saying like a a little bit of structure here and there isn't necessarily a bad thing. Right, right. Um, when it's done right, that you learn with time and you learn with practice and so forth. Um, fourth edition DD very much thrived in a very rigid design structure. That's why I didn't like GMing in fourth edition. Fourth edition was great as a player.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:11:09

If if somebody said I want to run a fourth edition game, and it was a it was it was a GM that that uh I knew had a lot of experience with the system, I'd be like, Yeah, let's go. I want to play in that system again because that system was so much fun. Um, everyone that hates on fourth edition, I s I know why, and I don't disagree with you, but I think uh peel back the the hatred a little bit and look at fourth edition from a uh a wider standpoint, and you'll realize, hopefully, realize that fourth edition was a really well-designed system, and it was really good for what it did and what it was trying to do. It succeeded at very well. Um, that being said, I I fully acknowledge that it's not for everybody. Right. Okay. Fifth edition definitely took a step back, it's a lot closer to 3.5, uh, 3.5 and third edition uh in terms of its organizational structure, but it also gave a lot more improvisational tools, it encouraged a lot more modern gaming uh strategies, and to that end, that's why fifth edition, in my opinion, is the best and most well-designed version of Dungeons and Dragons. And I think that's why DD is doing so well. It's it's going through a resin renaissance, partially because of the popularity from groups like Critical Role, bringing it to the forefront, making it a uh an entertainment tool, bringing people in. Then COVID happened, and that encouraged people to play online with each other and try out DD. I think DD 5th edition is an incredibly good system, incredibly well-designed system that's very approachable for a lot of different types of players. Great. Um, it's just not for me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:58

Your mileage may vary, as it were, right?

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:00

I I've played a lot of of DD 5th edition. I don't hate it, um, but I struggle with it. It's okay. It's a little bit too rigid. There's a little bit too much, there's not enough players aren't given enough agency from the rules of the system, uh, which puts a lot of onus on the GM to recognize when the players should have agency. Okay. Um, and so as a player, part partially because of that, but also partially because uh as a player, I I've been GMing for so long at this point, 15 years. Yeah. Um Wow, that's awesome. That I struggle from a player standpoint because I I want to be, I want to have that improvisation. I want to be thinking 18 steps ahead and like doing all the the wild. Um and as a player I struggle with that. And then as a as a GM playing DD, when I ran the campaign we talked about the dragon apocalypse.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:08

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_04: 1:14:09

Um running the game, I did as much as I could to facilitate the style of game I wanted, and there were some things that turned out super good. One of the things that I did, uh I borrowed heavily from fourth edition specifically, was the concept of skill challenges, which in fourth edition skill challenge was a rule set that said uh players can use skills to overcome a challenge, they have to get X number of successes before X number of failures. Um here's what happens if they get the failures first. Here's what if they succeed, then you know, here's what what they move on to the next part, or here's what happens, here's the reward.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:49

Right, right.

SPEAKER_04: 1:14:50

Um, so it created an encounter, but instead of combat, you're doing skills.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 1:14:56

And so I did a lot of that and it created some really cool narrative things. One of the things that happened in the game was uh the the last standing city that in in the world, uh Bastion, we called it, um uh is run by a church, heavily inspired by the by the Catholic Roman Catholic Church. Um the church is running the city, they're pulling, they're calling the shots. Uh it's it's kind of militant in how the city is run, but it's the last city. Like it a lot of people are okay with it because hey, it's the only one you got. If if if this place falls, we're we're gone, right? Um it created a lot of fun, fun experiences where people are like, cool, you're you're stuck in customs for an for an entire day. Um those types of things. Uh it created for for some good laughs. Um, at any rate, uh the the adventuring party is out. They've left the city for like a month, they've been out traveling and running their quests and trying to find relics that are gonna help them to defeat the the big bad dragon that's leading the leading the dragon army. And uh they they're like, okay, we need to go back to the city. I was like, okay, this is perfect. This is a perfect time for you guys to go back to the city. You guys should go back to the city. Yes, yes, you should. So they come back to the city, and um, I'm like, cool. So you guys are approaching the city, and there is more action, more fighting. You hear noise off in the distance. There's smoke rising. It it's the it's clear that you've seen the city under attack many times, but nothing like this. There is so much more happening, it's so much louder. You crest the hill and you see hundreds, thousands of people. You didn't know the army was this large of people fighting. Where did all these people come from? They're fighting the dragon forces, the cobalds, thousands of cobalt, giant dragons. An entire battle is is waging of a size you've never seen before. We start doing the skill challenge, and through the skill challenge, uh what I do is I say, Hey, describe what what your character's gonna do and what skill you want to use. And then the DC is always the same DC 15, DC 17, whatever it is for that challenge that's appropriate for their level.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_04: 1:17:25

Um here's the DC. You guys need to get five five successes before you get five failures. If you get five successes, you get through the battle unharmed, uh, and you get to the gates of the city where you can get in. If you get five failures, what's gonna happen is you're gonna have to fight one of these ancient dragons that are probably gonna kill you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:43

Yeah, yeah. I mean, probably.

SPEAKER_04: 1:17:45

Yeah. You're level 11, these things are CR18. Right. Like this is not a not gonna be a good you might win. It's not gonna be not gonna be an easy fight. Um, so I set the stakes ahead of time. They know what's at at risk. Um, I they know exactly how many successes they know they need. I tell them what the DC is. I'm not trying to hide anything, I'm not trying to pull anything over on them. But I I give them that and I say, the only rule is you can't use the same skill that you used last time or that the person just before you went. So if you use athletics, you can't use athletics for your next skill check. If the last person used stealth, you can't use athletics or stealth, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:30

So once you've once somebody uses a skill, it kind of removes it from the skill pool they can draw from as they go around, right?

SPEAKER_04: 1:18:37

I don't it's I don't lock it down too much because I want it's also DD. And people just put all their skill points into like three skills.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:46

But I do want Robo.

SPEAKER_04: 1:18:48

Uh I'm trying to encourage them to think outside of the box a little bit, be a little bit more creative, and then I give them a lot of agency. So I I'll say, you guys are approaching the battle. This is what you see in front of you. Who wants to go first? And go in whatever order, there's no initiative. You just can't go until everybody else has gone. You can't go again. So that way it's not one person going back to back to back. Um, but go in any order. Whenever inspiration strikes you from a narrative perspective, tell me what you do. And so they might say, Okay, I'm gonna use my athletics. Um, I see a uh a crumbling wall. Sorry, I need I need to step, take a step back. They get they get to they get to the battle, you approach the battle, dragons are fighting, huge army. Where did this army come from? Turns out the entire army is undead. The the church has been hoarding corpses from all of the the lost battles, all the lost fights, uh for for the last couple years. Right. And they've now emptied the warrants, they've reanimated all of these these fallen soldiers over the last couple years. Skeletons, zombies, some people are missing arms, legs. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:06

The army for the city is an undead army.

SPEAKER_04: 1:20:08

It's now an undead army.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:09

Okay, that doesn't that doesn't cause any problems.

SPEAKER_04: 1:20:11

They're trying. They have been on this war has been going on for a thousand years. Yeah, yeah. This is they feel like the church feels like this is a great way for them to uh to overcome it. So um peel back the curtain a little bit from a uh GM perspective. This was always the plan. Um I wanted to have the option for the the party that if they wanted to go, if they wanted to explore the church side of things a little bit more, that they would find that the church is corrupted and being uh influenced by demonic forces. And that never happens, and that the the the church, which once had good intentions, is now uh falling because of because of these influences, and it's now doing things that are straight up evil. Um so so yeah, so the it has the undead army, and it in fairness, very much like modern Marvel movies, like Endgame and such, yeah. They they see an end goal, and their their goal is good. It's something that we can get behind. We want to bring an end to the war, we want to stop the dragon horde. Right, we want to bring an end to this thousand years struggle. How do we do that? We need an army. Where do we get the army? Well, we've got all these extra bodies laying around. Right. So waste not want not people. So um, so that that's what I described to the players. And so they describe all these things, and I'm like, and so then I they roll, and then based on if they get a success or a failure, I as the GM would then take what they gave me, what they were trying to do, run across uh uh barricades, try and stealth through a uh a ditch that they see and hide. Try and um and I also tell them you can use spells and things instead of skill checks. Uh it does count toward your spell slots for for the encounter, and your spell attack role has the same DC, etc. So I do give them a little bit of flexibility on that. Um to try and help encourage more creativity and give the casters a little bit more flexible and and hopefully create a more dynamic story. Yeah, yeah. So they have it allowed me to describe these things where dragons are are swooping down over the party and uh ice breath is spraying down on all of the the undead around them, and everything gets crystallized, cobalt undead, and you're running through this icy sheet and you barely dodge it. And and it creates this really exciting thing. And so you can you can do all that stuff with DD, but you need a little bit of help. You need a little bit of creativity. Sometimes you need to borrow rules from other other game systems or older editions of DD to get the more narrative focus that I like. Daggerheart puts it all up front. You're rolling it on the dice, the dice give you incur uh give you um the the success or failure with a little bit of uh dual uh an additional axis of success or failure. Okay uh and then on top of all of that, there's no skills in Dagger Heart, which is one of my favorite things. You don't have athletics, you don't have stealth.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:39

So there's not necessarily like a list of skills to skill check against stuff that the DM can use as a rule to be like to open this door, you use your pick clock, you're climbing, you're this skill.

SPEAKER_04: 1:23:48

You go, I want to try to do this, and then you would think of uh like so you base it off of the the attribute, like uh strength, constitution. Right, right. In this game, they use a few different ones, they they name them a little bit differently, but there's definitely the same man, the same analogs.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:09

I need my strength, my dexterity, my constitution. How's it? Yeah, right. Look in the back.

SPEAKER_04: 1:24:15

If you hear flipping, it's because oh my goodness, I need to reprint these.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:19

We're shuffling pages.

SPEAKER_04: 1:24:20

Uh I'm going through the I'm trying to find the generic character sheets here, which I did print a couple of. Um but if I can't find them, here it is. All right. So here's the generic character sheet. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:24:36

At the top of the sheet, there's the different uh different abilities that you have agility, strength, finesse, instinct, presence, and knowledge. And then underneath those, it gives you examples of when you might use those those different effects. So you say I wanna I want to try and sneak past the guards, right? Right. Well, what then you would say, okay, and if you don't know what what you want to use, then I I might say, okay, you're gonna roll me a finesse check. Right. Okay. And the finesse check is gonna be either plus uh anywhere from a minus one to a plus two. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:17

And that's when you would roll the two 12-sided dice.

SPEAKER_04: 1:25:20

Yep, and then you'd have to add your plus two to it and see what you got. All right. Um, so the because there's no skill checks, you're like, well, how do I get better at things? Well, right, on the uh on the lower part of the the sheet on the left side, there's a box labeled experience. Experience are the experiences your character has either before the game starts or during. And at character creation, you choose two experiences.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:50

Right. Like, why are you a why are you doing this? Like, what has driven you to become this person that wants to go on an adventure kind of thing?

SPEAKER_04: 1:25:58

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:59

Right. Or just what or whatever.

SPEAKER_04: 1:26:01

Yeah, you might say, um, professional chef is one of my experiences. Well, what does that mean? Well, it means I'm good at knives, I'm good with knives, uh-huh. Uh I'm focused under pressure. I'm, you know, it it you it has a broad use to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you say, okay, because I was I have my experience as professional chef, anytime you make a uh a check that you're making a check that you think your experience would apply, you can spend a hope. So remember, hope is one of the currencies. You can spend a hope, and then you can add the bonus from that experience to it. A plus two in is at the character creation. So if you're trying to cut up meat, right? You get a you can have a plus two on it, right? Right. Uh, if you spend a hope. And so you have these broad term things, and and it might be something like uh as you level up, you'll gain experience, you can write down new experiences, you want them to hopefully tie into you know what you've learned since your last level.

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:01

Right, right.

SPEAKER_04: 1:27:02

Um it can be incredibly broad. It could be something like uh what's it what's what's I'm trying to remember, I'm sorry. Like dedicated friend, right? Like something like that where if you're trying to protect someone or if you're trying to to stand up for someone, right? You can apply that to different things. It could be uh a phrase, right? Like um, what's uh what's somebody's catchphrase? I'll be back. Okay, that's a bad one. But you you get what I mean. It's it's very, very flexible. It doesn't have to necessarily be a specific thing, it doesn't have to be the best experiences are the ones that can be applied to a broad, broad uh range, like um natural gambler or um I'm trying to think of a phrase and I'm I'm drawing a blank. I'm sorry. Anyways, so you you pick the experiences and then that's that's how you get your extra skill bonuses. And sometimes as a GM, I might reward the entire party with an experience, you know, survived the great dragon, right? Right, right. Uh in which case now you have that experience to you, and if you think that it applies, and I agree as the GM, then you can spend a hope and and add the dice to it. Okay. Um so so yeah, so there's it's really cool in that it encourages the players to to think a bit more creatively, it encourages a bit more role play, um and it gets rid of that that that skill system that a lot of people have always complained about with across all games, right? Right. DD Fifth Edition's pretty good about it because it's the skill system's a lot more refined, it's a little bit more broad. Um whereas like 3-5, every there was what 60 skills.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:54

Oh, I definitely remember running down that list and be like, so if you didn't pick tightrope walking as opposed to just balance, you're like, sorry, you can't like but it's right. So it definitely was like, how many skills do we need to list in the book? How many things do we need to does a character or a player need to worry about? Uh and then the DM has to be. Right, right. Which skill is this specific? You know, just like just I would almost a lot of times, if I remember right, I would just do like their dexterity, yeah, strength, stuff like that. I'm like, every now and then it was a specific thing that their character had done before and built up on stuff and several times, like, all right, what's your skill in that? Because that's we would work on rewarding a point or two in that. But I was like, just roll a strength check, dude. It's like let's keep it simple.

SPEAKER_04: 1:29:46

And and I I would oftentimes like encourage players to say, Okay, what's what do you think is gonna be the best skill for this situation? And they might say, Well, I think presence, my my presence is gonna help me get past the This stone trap. Well, no, that's not gonna work.

unknown: 1:30:04

Hold on.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:05

Right. You can try to charm the pants off of it, but it's not gonna care.

SPEAKER_04: 1:30:10

Yeah, right. Um, but but no, I still, you know, if they if they can come up with a a good logical explanation, I'll say go for it, man. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'll give them a little bit. So this this gives them a lot more control, but it's gated behind a resource that you have to earn uh throughout play. And without that resource, then you won't be able to to abuse it, right? You can't just apply the the plus two to every single die roll, right? You can't say good at everything, right? As one of your experiences, and then just say, Well, I'm good at everything, so I get a plus two. Well, okay, spend a hope. I'm out of hope. Okay, well, sounds like you're not good at everything. Um hope less. Sounds like you're not not good at role-playing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:54

I think this is really neat. Uh, I do like the names agility, strength, finesse, instinct, presence, knowledge. Um, so it's like adjacent to DD. It's not totally creating something new. You can kind of get the references.

SPEAKER_04: 1:31:08

They got rid of Constitution, which I mean, it kind of bull kind of is rolled into strength. Uh, constitution in DD was the least used skill. Right. Uh, it was just there to pad your HP, and they just handle all that separately. Right, right, right. Um, I still like having Constitution be a characteristic of your character, how how durable are you? Right. But I can see why they would get rid of it here, and it's fine.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:37

Because a lot of times I use it not just for physical, but like mental. Like, how like are you able to withstand technically wisdom should be able to do that? Well, yes, yeah. I know, sometimes. But like, but but if you're being like like if you're being tortured by the bad guy, you know, if you're being James Bonded into something, no, I expect you to die.

SPEAKER_04: 1:31:58

Yeah, you're you're resisting physical torture.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:00

And sometimes the mental strength.

SPEAKER_04: 1:32:02

Braving the elements, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:04

Um, so this is kind of neat. And I do like the fact they have like, you know, under agility, they list sprint, leap, maneuver, like, and of course, these aren't obviously end all be all, but these are launching points for the player to be like, oh, okay, I want, I'm gonna try to uh sneak around this corner, and if I can pick pocket this guy and get back, okay, so I need to try to hide and then maybe, or is it navigate, you know, like or is it chart like so you have uh options, yeah, and not only as a player, but uh obviously as a hopefully as a DM to be like, okay, it's gonna be both a finesse check or whatever, and a you know, maybe agility check, like something like that.

SPEAKER_04: 1:32:45

So you can more likely what I would do to to shortcut things is I would say, okay, cool. So you're gonna you're trying to navigate through your your your way through the streets under the cover of darkness, yeah. And to get to your point. Uh you can roll either a finesse or instinct check, your choice. Right, right. Just pick whichever whichever one you want, yeah, and you tell me what you get.

SPEAKER_03: 1:33:06

Great, great.

SPEAKER_04: 1:33:07

Um they split up dexterity into across agility and finesse, uh, which I think is good. Uh, I think that the difference between fine hand control and kind of awareness is better than uh it is different than your ability to parkour.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:27

Right, right. No, I I I like that. Absolutely. I mean, and then instinct presence, like knowledge, obviously to me, I lean toward the wisdom style, but uh instinct and presence is both a combination of wisdom and intelligence, uh, you know, and maybe instinct is more is more wisdom.

SPEAKER_04: 1:33:46

Yeah, knowledge is intelligence, and presence would be the charisma analog. Yeah, that's great. I think those are cool, but I I would be again as a as a GM, if if as a player, if you're like, I really want to use my presence for this, and you're describing what you want to do. Okay, you're describing what you're describing to me is something that's more instinct related. Right. But maybe you do this, right? Maybe maybe you give them a wink as you're doing this, right? To to try and get them on your size. If you're you're using very you're really focused on your body language in this moment, then yeah, let's do presents, right? And I'll give you that suggestion and see if you want to roll with it, which you probably would at that point given what we just described. Um nudge, nudge, wink, wink. So yeah, so the that's kind of how the so it and then as opposed to doing in D very infamously has the um the uh the different scores of eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty. Character creation, you roll your six set of dice, and every even number you get your bonus is increased by one. Yeah. Uh this game gets away with all that. You just at character creation, you're just basically picking one of your attributes to be a plus two. You're picking one of them to be a minus one. Okay, and then two of two of them are gonna be zeros and the rest are gonna be plus ones.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 1:35:23

Right? Or it's two zeros, two plus ones? Two zeros, two plus ones. I think that's pretty good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:28

So you always have one that's you're really good at.

SPEAKER_04: 1:35:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:31

One that you're not so good at, and then a couple that you're just above average at. Which is good, because again, you know, the idea of you being a the well, I I I equate it to like you being the hero of the story, you know, like there's a reason. What's the what is the reason that you're good at this? That you're that you're feeling like you need to go out and experience this adventure or or whatever.

SPEAKER_04: 1:35:53

Uh that's yeah, I think that's incredibly important. I think it's it's critical, crucial for any player character to have a motivation as to why their character not only would be adventuring, um, but also working with the party, working with working with others to achieve their goals. Because yes, you're you are the main character of your story, but so is everybody else. And we're sharing this story with each other.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:22

So I mean, it's again like why was the fellowship created to make that analogy? Like all these disparate characters have have realized that they have the same goal. Now, obviously, maybe not all at once, around a table, and someone tells you you're only the fellowship has been created. Go forth and adventure. So as you go through and meet stuff, and which is one of the fun things when we had a smaller group was like we could talk about how did you guys meet? Like, uh, were you friends of friends, or did you come through this town on a on a thing and you stayed a little too long and you actually like started cooking at the tavern or whatever? You know, uh, and they're like, well, this is kind of okay. So we're what and of course, every now and then you just like, well, you're just a bunch of murder hobos, as I like like as as the infamous phrase is used. You just showed up and you just realized, hey, you like killing people? I like killing people. Let's go!

SPEAKER_02: 1:37:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:37:13

Um, so yeah, so we we talked a little bit, Q and I talked a lot, and we we started a text thread, and we were talking a little bit about world building. So with world, we talked a lot about world building, and one of the things that we talked about was when I was first getting into DMming in 3.5, I had built a homebrew world where uh it was very I wanted to do pirates. That sounded super fun to me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37:42

Um pirates are almost always fun. Yes, as we I thought so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pirates and ninjas kind of thing.

SPEAKER_04: 1:37:48

So I built this like Caribbean-inspired world. The entire world is ocean. There's uh six large islands that make up the the majority of this space, and then a bunch of smaller islands in between for adventurous diagrams. Oh, yeah, yeah. Uh, each island was inspired by an element. So you had the island of Earth, which is just a bunch of mountains. It's where the dwarves come from. Uh, it's just this this huge mount, these huge mountains jutting up into the sky, right? And you've got to climb up the cliffs to get into the mountains and then go through tunnels. That's that's the Earth Island. Great, great. Uh the the fire island is volcanic island. It's it's a bunch, a bunch of volcano. There's constantly lava pouring into the ocean. Nice. Um it's Hawaii. No kidding. It's Hawaii, that's where the orcs live. Okay. Um at the time, maybe maybe this all changes now. Uh, but the original plan was that's where all the orcs are from, and um dragons and things like that. And then there was the air island, which is a uh an island that's floating just out of the water. Ooh, okay. So it's above the water, and there's these like vines that that are like hanging down into the water that you can climb up to get to it. And uh the elves live there. And then there was the water island, which isn't an island at all. It's actually a city.

SPEAKER_01: 1:39:26

It's an ith.

SPEAKER_04: 1:39:27

Uh it's it's it's a uh a place beneath the ocean. Okay where it's an underwater culture. Like an underwater culture. And then there's this bubble of air that protects the people living in that city down there.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:39:42

Um, or maybe a series of pockets, I don't know. I I'd have to re-re uh reapproach it. But that was the idea is like where that island would be, there's nothing because it's all under the water. Right, right. Uh, and I had water elves coming from that area. Okay uh and then it was like high elves were in the air island, and then water elves in the in the water, underwater. And then uh so earth, fire, wind, water. Yeah, and then the island of life was in the center of the five islands. Uh there's a sixth. I mean, I know I'm I'm missing it. Uh the I Island of Life is this like lush jungle uh island, and that's where most of the people live.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:33

It's where all of the different humans, halflings, so would that be the maybe the biggest island of the group where most of the people live, the most verdant uh has the most like goes from like a lush jungle to maybe some hillside to plains, whatever. So it's got a lot more varietal.

SPEAKER_04: 1:40:50

Exactly. Okay, okay, cool. Um and so that's like the majority, that's like the biggest one. And then the the last island, the sixth island, is the island of death, and that's this swampy area and undead. It's overrun with undead and ghosts and things like that. Nice, nice. All the spooky stuff happens there. Um, so so that was like the cr I call it the elemental islands world. Um and it was entirely spy. I just thought it was a cool idea to have different elements make up the these different core places, and then you're just the the adventures are uh taking place across the different islands.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:33

We have a and you have a disparate things like we can, as the story goes, like maybe we go to the volcano island. That's really really scary. I mean, nobody likes lava, everything dies in lava, whatever. But if you go around to different places to create different stories, it reminds me, uh, because I do this a lot as a writer too. Like, like there's this, it reminds me of this, and then you pull this from here. Right. Uh, because everything one thing that I learned as a when you're DMing and probing, and it's okay to beg, borrow, and steal from it. You know, there's no harm in it, and there's no shame in it because it allows somebody to identify with it, like, oh, that sounds familiar. Oh, I I like that idea and identify with it, and it hopefully pulls them in, like sucks them into the story a little bit easier. And uh, I'm trying to remember what it's called. No, it's the reminds me a little bit of Wizards of Earth Sea, where it's all it's the uh Ursula Le Guin uh series of books. Um uh and it's about uh one of my one of my it's uh younger adult stuff, but again, it's set in these series of islands and archipelagos and all that stuff where it's not necessarily we have a big continent and we're huge fantasy castle cities. It's like, well, no, I mean it's a rough life living on uh these islands, and you have to eke out an existence. And how do you work with people over there and trade over there? And that island's really rocky, and that island's a little more lush, so we gotta go over here and here. Uh I mean that sounds cool. Yeah. I mean, sounds great.

SPEAKER_04: 1:43:02

It's a it's a world, it's a uh campaign frame that uh campaign frame is a term from Daggerheart. It's a it's a campaign frame that I've wanted to kind of explore more of. Um I it it's it's such a versatile thing. Like the I've tried to run it a few times uh in a few campaigns. One we just spent the entire time on boats. Another time we literally never left the life island. It was, you know, because everything's just jungle and there's there's a lot of cool stuff that can happen there. Um so yeah, so there's there's a lot of a lot of option.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:40

I feel like it's got a lot of potential, right? Correct. Some a lot of lot of well, you know, story hooks, things that can create adventures and create stories for you to tell and for hopefully the players to enjoy, right? So that's good. All right.

SPEAKER_04: 1:43:52

So that that was one of our ideas that we talked about, and then uh I knew one of our players is very sci-fi minded. Yep. And uh so we were talking about okay, well, how can we get them engaged because they they're just not fantasy fans. Right, right. Uh, and I was like, well, what if we did like on these boats there's lasers? And instead of instead of gunpowder being the name of the game for this this world, they're using magical crystals, right, that they're farming from these islands. Yep. And then the they put the crystals refined and powered by magic into the cannons, and they fire a handful of sh of laser blasts at the other ships.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:40

But not so but you have to keep replacing like but you have to replenish the crystals. Right. It is a what do you call it? Uh used up, you're consuming. Yep. It's a resource. It's a resource. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:44:50

Uh, and and then that also one thing that I personally wanted to avoid is I didn't want to do uh gunpowder. I didn't want guns and and muskets and all that stuff in this in the world. Yeah, yeah. And I didn't want that to overshadow the power of if somebody wanted to play a wizard or a sorcerer where they're slinging spells, I want them to still feel powerful. Um, so what that allows is instead of everything just being ranged based, you now have the the magic casters are your ranged classes, and they're the ones that are you know taking care of the the other ships afar and that kind of thing. Yeah, and uh, but the ships are still your melee is still the forefront of kind of how conflicts are resolved, and so ships need to get close to each other and that kind of thing. So I I think that that could be a really cool thing. So that was one of the things one of the things that we we uh approached to the group, and it sounds like the group is leaning toward that way.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46:02

I I think so. I mean, I'm I am definitely of the uh the you know old school fantasy stuff that's high fantasy crap. Oh my gosh, it's you know, Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, all that stuff. And I think this is funny.

SPEAKER_04: 1:46:16

This presents a pretty good middle ground.

SPEAKER_01: 1:46:19

Right, right. Now, the one thing that gets me, and and and I've talked about it a few times, and it gets me about uh Age of Warhammer Age of Sigbar specifically, if uh is the, and this is my opinion again, right? Uh, but when you have a fantasy setting, and to me, fantasy very much relies upon that uh sword and sorcery, right? Like we are making weapons, armor, swords, bows, and arrows, but then we have a little mystical aspect just to give us this edge. We've discovered magic, whatever it is. Uh-huh. Uh and that's that's your uh firepower, right? That's your ranged weapons, your pew-pews, your laser beams. And and and I know there's a few people, there's people that play it, but in what in Sigmar, there's the I think it's the card on overlords or and other stuff in Cities of Sigmar, where they have they have guns and gunpowder. And I'm like, so is it fantasy? To me, that it where that's the question I have. There's still fantasy in it. A little bit. But what so that is one of the, like I said, for me, one of the defining lines between a like a fantasy world versus modern world versus sci-fi, stuff like that. So if this world that we're that you're building and creating, well, we're gonna lean toward that sci-fi.

SPEAKER_04: 1:47:35

I I'm wanting to lean toward the fantasy. Fantasy. Okay. I want age of sale with a heavier lean toward fantasy than the industrial side of the age of sale.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:47

And I think this uh That's what I want. Well, no, I think I think that's great because that's getting my my mind thinking, much like when you watch Star Wars, uh-huh. The question is do they ever run out of bullets? You could pew pew all day long, bro. Yeah. And of course, stormtroopers can't hit, but there's no like changing clips, reloading stuff. How do you recharge it?

SPEAKER_04: 1:48:06

Only an Imperial stormtrooper would be so so precise.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:10

If the yeah, right. Little did we know that they can't hit a broadside of a barn. But like, for example, these crystals. If those crystals are the charge of by which we shoot things, you have to find them, you have to make them, you have to build them. And if you have enough of them, that means you can go on this adventure. And then there have to be there's like a whole, like, I'm like, oh, that means there's people who have to find the crystals. There's people who have to then charge the crystals. Yep. Then there's people who like sell, like, uh, okay. So you still get a sci-fi vibe and feel because you're not shooting a cannonball or bullet. Right. You're shooting a magic. I attack the darkness. You're shooting your magic missile, basically, which I think is is cool. It's a laser beam. Still lasers.

SPEAKER_04: 1:48:56

Maybe at some point later in the campaign, if, or or maybe early on in the campaign, if if the the group really wants hand guns and that kind of thing, right? Maybe, maybe we all agree, okay. Well, maybe there are guns, maybe, maybe they're using the same crystals, smaller versions of the crystals.

SPEAKER_01: 1:49:13

That's what I was saying. Is like you could like it, if you go, all right, so as opposed to cross bows and arrows, right? Uh, we have a uh like a little mini crossbow thing that you have to reload with a crystal. A bow with a crystal in it, that doesn't that maybe shoots energy, I suppose. Because I did that. I love those. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Um, but so you I agree, I think that will scratch a little bit of that itch, hopefully, of like, well, it's technically not a laser pistol, but it it is not a crossbow.

SPEAKER_04: 1:49:46

Right. Right uh another campaign idea that that I had that I wanted to approach the group with, and we we kind of talked about all this in the the text thread very briefly. Um another one that that I was kind of interested in, because again, catering toward the one guy that that is very anti-fan high fantasy, yeah, um, was Weird West. Right. Where it's the Wild West, you've got horses, you've got you know towns out in the desert, and uh kind of steampunky stuff. You've got the gunpowder, you've got the the revolvers, six shots, uh, you've got all that stuff, but there's also weird magic going on. Right, right. Uh, and so you've got the spellcasters, and there may be there's maybe more of a um like a voodoo bent to the magic, as as a lot of weird West tends to lean. Right. Um, and so that way you it still has the fantasy elements, but they're all wearing cowboy hats. Right, right. You know, because that's what magic does. Um magic the gathering, thanks for that. Um so that was one of the ideas, and that seemed to get a little bit of traction, but not it wasn't as exciting as lasers. Um and then the other option that I that I had was I I was loving the world building that I had done for the Dragon World. Yep, but I never got to finish that campaign. I don't want to retell that story because I've kind of spoiled a lot of it. Right. Like at this point, I've told told people about the church. Yeah, it was really cool when like in that campaign, the group is like traveling from point A to point B, and as a random encounter, I said, you guys come across the the aftermaths of a battle a little ways off of the city. There's smoke in the ground, uh, a lot of bodies laying on the ground, and you see members of the church. There's a priest there, and a bunch of like the the temple guards, uh, all at this battle, this aftermath, and they're taking up the corpses of the cobalds and the the fallen soldiers and even some of the drag the smaller dragons, and they're putting them onto carts. And these carts are piled high with the body with these bodies. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and they approached them and they tried to like engage with them, but they were being really cagey, and they were like, This is really weird.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:15

Yeah, this I'm I'm smelling weirdness. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:52:17

So they end up they end up leaving it. They still didn't expect the army of undead at the gates. That was that uh Q had said that that caught him completely off guard, which was super rad. And um, I'm really, really happy. He was like, it made sense and it was super cool. I didn't expect it at all. I was like, I was worried that I was like being a little too open-handed with it. I was trying to plant the seeds, but I I wanted it to kind of be a surprise. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:47

Well, it's like any well, any story you're telling, whether you're reading a book, watching a movie, playing a game, right? If you can, because this is what I'm working on right now with my writing, is like, you know, you wanna, I just want to leave the breadcrumbs. And hopefully it's enough to engage the players or the readers or the viewers, but you don't show your hand right away. So when you have a revelation, everybody's like, and you look back like it was right there the whole time. Like, yes, yeah, the church is evil and it's summoning dead bodies. Like, uh, but we didn't uh right that revel that moment when all the players go, dude, you just blew my mind, is is it was is fantastic.

SPEAKER_04: 1:53:28

So I I won't be able to revisit that exact campaign again, uh, which is a little sad, but whatever.

SPEAKER_01: 1:53:34

We can always like go back in the time.

SPEAKER_04: 1:53:36

You can like so yeah, so that was that was the other idea I had was maybe we go back to that world. And we could do one of two stories. We could do the story of what happened before the war. Right, right. How did this thousand year war kick off? Yeah, tell that story. Uh, or we could do the story of af the aftermath. The thousand war thousand year war has ended, but now there's there's this church that is got an army of undead that is ruling the land.

SPEAKER_01: 1:54:10

Well, then you go, well, who won? Did the church win or the dragons win? Like that's the thing. Like, if the church wins and they are now uh I just said like influenced by the dark side, and then people are coming back, the world is getting repopulated, but there's something wrong, right? There's like an underlying current of darkness underneath it. Correct. Or if the dragons win, you're like, well, now we have a dragon uh uh a true dragon apocalypse. A true dragon apocalypse, and then do you uh like do people survive? Can we come back from that? You know, uh I don't know the first option. I I I love that idea of now that uh post-war and we build up to another uh epic uh uh conflict, but it's like the good guys won, but did they? But did they? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:55:01

So that's a great that's a great so that story hook, yep. That was another option, and I've got ideas for I obviously know how how the dragon war started, at least like nothing's been codified, but um, because I left it, I left it intentionally vague in the game. This war's been going on a thousand years, most of society has crumbled and been destroyed. Uh, what little records and books exist in the world uh are all guarded and kept in secrecy by the church that's being very cagey and very secretive. Yeah. And they're they're walling off you know access to the higher upper levels of the city. Um, so so yeah, so there we don't nobody truly knows how the war started a hundred generations ago or ten generations ago. Yeah. Um so yeah, so so that was absolutely one of the options was let's let's tell how the how that story fell. And I've got ideas on how it felt. I uh of course that would change with play.

SPEAKER_01: 1:56:06

Right, right, right, right, right. But like for story hooks and stuff like that, um as a like I said, as a writer and a like those ideas like the I get excited, like that world of the post-war world is kind of exciting because it's the uh this church and you know, society's real stuff, but it's like as like do have have the characters found a book or found a object that's like this is supposed to be illegal, like this is not supposed to exist. Like um now, and again, I uh it's a bad habit that I have kind of gotten into because I do a screenwriting group, and we always um make this comparison of it's like this movie meets this movie, or it's this story meets this story that creates a new thing. I think that's good for RPGs. Which is which is great. So uh there's a TV show out there called Silo. Uh-huh. Um I haven't seen it. The idea is this uh society lives in a silo, which I think is an old missile silo that's being repurposed because something terrible happened in the past. Right. And this is we're living now, but enough time has passed that people have forgotten and the knowledge is controlled by a group of people here. And then this group is uh the police force, uh, and then there's something hidden, something's wrong, and then something happens, and people are like, and anything that you find from the past is like you're you're basically killed if you find hold it, which is what we like that's so you find a PES dispenser, bro, it's just a pee you know, like it's crazy. Um but the the thing is is one of the things I liked about that story is is is uh the idea that how quickly things can be forgotten. Right. And how do people because human the the cool thing about humanity is we are very curious. We're always pushing, trying to push forward and search for that knowledge to answer these questions that we have. Right. And suddenly, if you just live in this confined area, you're like, well, something's gonna happen that someone's gonna knock something and find something that shifts their paradigm. Right. And how is that gonna mess with nobody, no church or no controlling body wants to have their paradigm shifted, but yet somehow it just keeps it does ha happens all the time. So when you start finding these objects and asking these questions as a character, you go, What does this mean? I found a book from a thousand years ago, or whatever, a piece of paper that talks about the dragon war. And it was like, there was a dragon war? Wait, huh? Like, no, no, no, shh shh shh shh, sir, can you hand me that, please? I will take the eat it for whatever. Uh but I think that's intriguing because it does set up the characters to ask questions in this story to go like, how did this happen? Who, you know, who are we? What are we doing here? Right. And through that, through that finding a cool story to tell.

SPEAKER_04: 1:58:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:58:59

Uh that gets me excited. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:59:02

You know, the world is is being rebuilt. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:05

Uh in whose image? Like how and why? And like, yeah, yeah, yeah. All that all those questions start popping up in my head. I'm like, that sounds fun. Oh, yeah. The island world does the same thing to me. I'm like, ooh, that sounds again, that sounds fun. I'm ooh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:59:18

So yeah, so those were those were a few of the ideas that I had. Um, and and so you know, we'll when we get together for our character creation in session zero, we'll iron out which which world we end up solidifying on as a group, right? And then explore the options, you know. I'll I can talk uh then about what my ideas for the world is and the inspirations we can align and then do shared world. I love to do shared world building. Yeah. Where it's like, you know, in the dragon campaign, I I had created a map of that corner of the continent where where the story took place. And I I left I put in a bunch of things and I marked like locations of buildings and towns. But I didn't name any of them. Yeah. I didn't put anything on the map. And it worked really well because in the nature of the game, most of that area is wild and forgotten. And so it's like, okay, well, where do you where are you from? I'm from this village. Okay, let's put that on the map.

SPEAKER_03: 2:00:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 2:00:15

Here it is. I'm from, you know, I'm I'm playing a dwarf. Okay, well, the dwarf city was the last city to fall. It fell 15 years ago. Yeah. What happened 15 years ago?

SPEAKER_01: 2:00:30

Yeah, how did you survive?

SPEAKER_04: 2:00:31

What was the name of the dwarf city?

SPEAKER_01: 2:00:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 2:00:33

Right. And so, so the uh the all of the the map in that world is is created collaboratively with my players. And so we do the same thing, right?

SPEAKER_03: 2:00:42

That's great.

SPEAKER_04: 2:00:43

Um, you know, I came up with the name of Sindala and Bastion for the the last city because that was like my idea for that city. But um I I left a lot of the other stuff open to the players to name and and describe and that kind of thing. And a lot of times it would be like, hey, I'm going from this place to this place. Okay, well, you come across this point here on the map that I have marked. What do you find there? And let them kind of draw draw that out. Okay. Most of the time it would be like I would get the idea of what I wanted it to be. Like at one point they uh were traveling to the Dwarven City, and along the path to the Dwarven City, there is a grove of trees. And uh in the middle of the grove of trees, as they were going to that, I thought, well, this would be cool if this was like this point in the Fee Wild where the Fee wild dimension was bleeding into the real world, and that's why there's this hard conglomerate of trees, and so they get into this grove and suddenly things start looking weird. People start acting weird, and do not eat the mushrooms. Yeah, I was it so the way I described it was you meet the the the elves of this forest, they take you to their village, uh, you climb way up into the trees and you start crossing these bridges. And as you're crossing the bridges, you start noticing that the flowers are looking a little bit brighter, a little bit more colorful. You see a bird flying across, and its tail feathers are a hundred feet long, rainbow-colored, shimmering, right? And the bird flies over. You see, um and then you get to the center where the the elder is, and you go inside to meet the elder. Uh, and inside the the elder is is kind of pressed into the tree, like they're part of the tree. And there's vines that are snaking down and they're almost moving on their own, and you look closer at them, and they are indeed snakes, but wooden snakes, and they're alive. And you start everything's really weird, and then they get outside, and they're like, you see you see a huge bulbous flower. Uh-huh. And as you get closer, the flower opens, and inside it's the face of a child. And they're like, Nope, we're done. We're out.

SPEAKER_03: 2:03:20

We're gone.

SPEAKER_04: 2:03:20

And then you turn around. There's places and they never went back to it again.

SPEAKER_01: 2:03:23

And then you turn around, your friend's on fire, and he's like, guys, I don't feel so weird.

SPEAKER_04: 2:03:27

It was too weird for them. Uh so yeah, so it was it was just but that was all an idea that I had at the last minute.

SPEAKER_01: 2:03:35

And that's one thing that I didn't do, and I think 3.5 and back in the day, yeah. Did lean a little more hack slash. Now we were in high school, so hack and slash was kind of the flavor of the day, as it were. Right. There was some world building and creation, all that stuff, but uh, I think that's really cool. Um, having your players as you build your character, you kind of help build the world. Now, I uh now within we talked about the character creation and stuff like that. You got these great printouts and play guide and all your character sheet sidecar. So you get like stuff to help you go through and the ways to think and how to do your player. But one thing's that uh uh and we still have time for it, I think, because we started early. This is great. In the set, you have uh cards and now I hopefully I'm not skipping ahead. No, you're fine. So uh as we look at the class options, and it also comes with cards. Now, what are the cards used? What are they for, dude?

SPEAKER_04: 2:04:30

So the cards are the cards are used for that's the the fancy edition. So they're gilded edges. Um the cards are used for a few different things. So the bards on the top here. So um so those cards go over like the different class features. Okay. And part of it, if you look at the bard there in the book, is it you there's two different paths that you can choose, subclasses of the bard.

SPEAKER_01: 2:05:00

Yeah, subclasses.

SPEAKER_04: 2:05:01

Yeah, and so you can choose one of the two subclasses. So the card just gives you a printout of the ability. You can easily write that down on a piece of paper and just say, this is my ability. And that's what you would do in DD. Right, right. But having the physical cards, it's just kind of nice to have something to quickly reference. Um, and then some of that, those cards are for the like the level up stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 2:05:24

Okay, yes, because you have your troubadour to use bards. So the subclasses are troubadour or wordsmith, and then you have six cards here, and each one is uh three foundation, specialization, and mastery. So you can go through and as your character grows, you get more and more powerful or more and more specialized in your subclass, which is cool.

SPEAKER_04: 2:05:46

Yeah. And then you'll also choose a um an ancestry and a community that your character comes from. Uh-huh. So the ancestries are it's your race to use the old 3-5 term. Uh-huh. Species. Your species. Um they're moving away from the word race for reasons.

SPEAKER_03: 2:06:11

Uh yeah, I don't know why. It's all right.

SPEAKER_04: 2:06:12

Um so you're you're you choose kind of which what what species your character was born from. Okay. And there's a few different options there. One of the things that's really a few.

SPEAKER_01: 2:06:25

This is great.

SPEAKER_04: 2:06:26

There's there's a lot, actually. Uh one of the things that's super cool that I that I like about it is they allow you to kind of mix and match. Um, so if you wanted to do a half species of of any two species, you'll choose. If you look at each of the cards, you'll notice that there's two abilities for each ancestry. Yeah. So you can choose the top ability from one ancestry and the bottom ability from a different ancestry. So if you wanted to be a half-work, you could look at the human, you could look at the orc, and you can pick the top ability for, say, the human, the bottom ability for the orc. Now you're a half-work. So you can kind of pick from there. Okay. Uh, and then last the last part that you choose is the community, which is kind of what part of society did your character grow up in?

SPEAKER_01: 2:07:21

Origin-ish. What's up? All right.

SPEAKER_04: 2:07:24

Do you hell hail from the wild?

SPEAKER_01: 2:07:26

Right.

SPEAKER_04: 2:07:26

Have you been wandering?

SPEAKER_01: 2:07:28

City, urban, under dark, whatever. Yeah, to to to to to say that like wilderness, village. Oh. All right. Now, with these cards, are they uh is the idea that you randomly pick them, or is it like you could you could so you could shuffle them out and be like, hey, of these four, does do any of these speak to you to create a character? And you go, yes, yes, no.

SPEAKER_04: 2:07:52

You can absolutely do that. I think that's that's a super cool idea. Yeah, yeah. Uh, I think the intention is more just to have to save you from having to write things down. Where it really gets involved is with these cards here. The other set of cards. Okay. The other three boxes.

SPEAKER_01: 2:08:10

All right, don't wanna don't want to mix them up. Here, I'll give you the let me give you the bard guys back.

SPEAKER_04: 2:08:15

So the last part, the last types of cards is each class is two domains. So if we look at the domains are like the the origin of the abilities. Uh-huh. Uh the bard is a mixture of, if you flip, I think it's the next page. Nope, next one. Nope, next one. Nope, next one. Nope, next one. There it is. There it is. Uh the domains. So the domains, there's different types of uh basically uh schools of abilities.

SPEAKER_01: 2:08:48

Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_04: 2:08:48

All right, is the origin of their abilities.

SPEAKER_01: 2:08:50

So you get like Arcana, Blade, Bone, Codex, Grace, Midnight, Sage, Splendor, Valor. I'm getting a little bit of like a uh like a Magic the Gathering, like those color vibes like earth, air, water, fire, like kind of that, that sort of thing. Like, what is your well, as they say, your core theme of each class. So you can combine it. So you can have a a uh so well, it's defined each class comes from a domain. Oh, here we go. Here we go.

SPEAKER_04: 2:09:21

So if you look at the wheel, right now the wheel defines the two map two domains that are next to each other is one class.

SPEAKER_01: 2:09:29

Okay. So let's say if I was playing a bard, I am attached to grace or codex, right? Right. Which links to are you a wordsmithing bard or a troubadour bard, right? Kind of where you want to land. Correct.

SPEAKER_04: 2:09:49

Well, a little bit.

SPEAKER_01: 2:09:51

I mean, I mean, there's no there's no you're not railroaded into something, but these are the influences that help create the core of your class. Correct. Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 2:10:01

Uh so what'll end up happening is when you make your character, you're going to choose, you're gonna have access to all of the cards for the Grace and Codex domains. Okay, okay. All right. Now, there's also numbers on the top, which is the levels. So we're only gonna look at the level ones for right now for the for the sake of this example. Keep it easy on me, dude. So, as a bard, you would have access to those six cards during character creation, and you would choose two of them. And those are the abilities that your character has. Okay, great. And so, and then as you level up, you get access to even more abilities that you choose one card for, and that kind of thing. So, you get to customize your character from all of these different abilities, and the cards kind of help reference the abilities as well as kind of give you a little bit of uh scope of the number of variations that you can choose from.

SPEAKER_01: 2:10:57

Yeah. Again, like the seeds from which you build your character. Like we're giving you just ideas uh that you would either back in the day write down on your character sheet or and you still can write them down.

SPEAKER_04: 2:11:10

The book has all of the card text in the back of it. So if you don't want to play with cards at all, if you're opposed to playing with cards, you just grab go to the index and write it all down.

SPEAKER_01: 2:11:21

Just write it all down. I mean, I love it. I I did like the fact that what what was it? Was it version four or five? I don't know. When they started coming out with spell cards and these cards so that you didn't have to write everything down. Fourth edition. Yeah, you just had your these are the cards I had.

SPEAKER_04: 2:11:36

I loved the the cards in fourth edition.

SPEAKER_01: 2:11:39

And that way I don't have to look through the book all the time. Yep. Like, I've got my magic missile, my fireball, my this, and I have my card for that. And once I sp once I cast it, I can like turn it upside down or whatever. So great. Okay. I'll I'll let me uh I'll hand those back to you there, dude. Uh-oh, he's gonna have me more. No, no, no, no. More again. So yeah, so many cards, Paul. I love it.

SPEAKER_04: 2:12:02

I freaking love it. We talked a little bit about uh the kind of what the conversation looks like or choosing a world, that'll then influence. So hopefully what I what I wanted to do, and we're we're at time, but what I wanted to do is hopefully that kind of you can uh looking at the different types of classes and the different type of uh ancestries that exist, hopefully that kind of gets your brain juices flowing as far as what kind of character you want to be in our laser pirate setting.

SPEAKER_01: 2:12:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, back in the day, when I played, uh I was almost always a ranger or a wizard sorcerer. Those are the two I almost always went toward. Right. Because for whatever reason. I like my bows, I like my pew-pews, and I like my uh firing magic missiles. Your poo-poos? My poo-poos. I like my poo-poo platters. Uh well, that's great. I mean, again, variations on a theme. You know, you got your basic ideas, but how how is Daggerheart gonna make their own twist on it and make it interesting? And how to make it uh to make it interesting for a player to engage with the character creation and run that character, and then make it interesting for you as a DM or you know, GM uh to help create and tell a cool story.

SPEAKER_03: 2:13:24

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 2:13:24

And that's it's I so far the stuff that you've talked about, the ideas of hope and what's what's the other side of it, sorry? Hope and fear. Um and then not having too many skills, but like if you want to make like think about what you want to do, and then the GM is gonna try to figure out what skills will help you do that. Exactly. And then between the two of you and the other players, hopefully, you can create a cool event.

SPEAKER_04: 2:13:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 2:13:50

Like a micro event that turns into another one that turns into another one, you know. You're not just again, I love that phrase, you're not just murder hobos running around. You're like, we're actually gonna try to do something, and well, you could still do that. Hopefully, benefit the world. Hopefully, yeah, for the for the benefit of everybody. Oh my gosh. Well, uh, yes, I do think we're at we're at time. The the Mike and Michael have shown up to open up the store. Uh-huh. Which is awesome. We're getting kicked out. Um well, this has been uh another awesome adventure, Paul. Always. Always. Uh it's been a great morning to talk about games and hopefully start our new adventure in a role-playing of Daggerheart.

SPEAKER_03: 2:14:29

I'm really looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:14:30

Yeah, yeah. I think it should be good. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, as we like to say, always check out the uh Discord. Paul and I are on there uh a good bit. If you guys got questions or comments about the podcast, by all means reach out to us. Please inside the Discord. Also, check us out online. I'm sure there's uh the Facebook community and uh other online stuff for you to reach out. And of course, we're a physical store here in Phoenix. So if you're here in the Phoenix area, please swing by. Pop in, have a game or two. It'd be great to say hello. And on that note, we will say audience folks, and we'll see you next time. Bye.