Funkatronic Rex Podcast: Season 2 Episode 13 The Start of Daggerheart

🎙 Funkatronic Rex Podcast: Season 2 Episode 13 — The Start of Daggerheart

We open this week with classic Funkatronic detours — Mel Brooks nostalgia, Spaceballs sequel rumors, Naked Gun casting debates, and why Blazing Saddles still makes us laugh (and wince) decades later. From Jackie Chan’s The Tuxedo to desert island movie picks, it’s a comedy deep-dive before we even hit the main event.

From there, the conversation shifts to card games and campaigns. We talk about the punishing difficulty of Arkham Horror LCG, what it’s like to run decks across digital platforms, and why some campaigns feel like slow grinds of trauma while others tell brilliant, unforgettable stories. There’s a breakdown of how Arkham compares to Marvel Champions and Lord of the Rings LCG, plus stories about deck-building experiments, support characters, and the thrill of eking out survival against impossible odds.

Finally, we hit the reason for the title: our session zero for Daggerheart. Paul hosted in the garage as we sat down to create characters, build connections, and dip into the narrative-first style that sets this new RPG apart. We dig into background questions, how character bonds form at the table, and why Daggerheart’s emphasis on hope, fear, and storytelling feels so fresh compared to number-crunchy systems. Even Mike (who normally wants to skip straight to the action) came away impressed and excited to see more of it in the store.

It’s part Mel Brooks tribute, part card game clinic, part RPG first date jitters — and all classic Funkatronic Rex chaos.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04: 0:00

Oh wait, okay, I hit record. Good. Remember to- Oh god. But we do have we do have time. Unlike last time where we totally just dimension.

SPEAKER_00: 0:19

A dimension that only a plastic case for the beginning is a journey into a wondrous man where people become real and cut when it cuts like a light. That's a sign for the step for the head to the next step. The function.

SPEAKER_03: 0:51

To Hardware Wars? Wait, to what? What are you doing? You ever heard about this? Heard about what? They're making a sequel? The space balls. We're getting space balls to search for more money.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05

I I have, and frankly, God bless him. Like if 90 frickin years old and he's still. Dude, if I'm if I'm 90 and I'm still able to do that stuff, now uh to me it's kind of kind of like the uh Mel Brooks. Oh no, no, no. Well, I think it's more like if this is gonna be the movie that kills him. I don't think it'll kill him. I just think he will pass away in his sleep. Lovely, laughing all the way to the bank. You know, uh I think it's like Ozzie Osborne and Mel Brooks. Like, how much of the or how much of it are they actually doing versus the apparatus that is around them, right? Because Apparatai. Apparatai, the the uh incorporate the incorporation that lives in Delaware and the Cayman Islands that helps, you know, maybe, hey Ozzy, go do a show every now and then. Just go uh, you know, or Mel Brooks, hey Mel.

SPEAKER_03: 1:59

I mean I'm gonna eat a bat. Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_04: 2:03

Uh hey, uh we need to you need to, you know, help pay for your kids' college or your grandson's divorce or whatever. Oh, just make another movie. Sounds good. Good plan. Yeah, let's do that. Now, I'm still gonna go see it. Because if they can get who who it's Bill Pullman, right? Was Bill Pullman? Yeah, Pullman. Uh unfortunately John. Can't get John Candy.

SPEAKER_01: 2:24

Um Do you think they're going to do like Mog 2 or Mog Jr.? And it's gonna be played by like somebody like Jack Black or something? Uh I'm trying to think of a heavier set comedian. If Jack Black Days world. If Jack Black plays the son of Mog. I think Jack Black. Now he Oh, his name's gonna be Mitch. Wait, no, they get they get that one girl from um Saturday Night Live, Melissa McCarthy. They get her, and her name is Mitch.

SPEAKER_03: 3:06

Oh my god, no, no, no, they're both in it. I'm half they're both in it.

SPEAKER_01: 3:09

Half no, it's witch, right? Well, you're which it's half woman. Womitch. Half half woman, half bitch. That's totally a Mel. That's totally a uh a Melbrooks on television. That's totally a Melbrooks good joke. Come on. It is true. No, no, no. What do you mean you can't say that on television? Did you watch Blazing Saddam's? That entire movie should have displayed this.

SPEAKER_04: 3:34

That movie. I alright, no, so I Melbrooks holds a special place in my heart. I'll admit. Uh A The Humor is right up my freaking alley. Like, love that. Uh back way back in the day, uh, I got really, you know, you ever know you get really sick. You're home for like a week from school. I can't remember what it was. It was probably like, you know, cancer or something. No, I'm kidding. Uh it was like, I was out. Now, one of my mom's friends brought over two movies. Um, one of them, and they were one was Blazing Saddles, and one was History of the World Part One. Now, I think my mom and dad had a pretty good sense of humor. My dad still, I mean, he's past, whatever. But um my dad, like, we'd be watching Monty Python, and he'd be like, Chris, uh, I just don't get it.

SPEAKER_01: 4:27

Um, no, uh exactly.

SPEAKER_04: 4:31

So there's some things he just didn't get. Now, Mel Brooks, however, he's like, I okay, I can get this. And so we we would watch it and have a good laugh.

SPEAKER_01: 4:39

I mean, Brooks, Mel Brooks is just dad joke after dad joke after dad joke.

SPEAKER_04: 4:44

Right. Uh, and and just and maybe some regular jokes, but it's definitely some packs.

SPEAKER_01: 4:48

And definitely some racism.

SPEAKER_04: 4:49

Yeah. Racism. Racums.

SPEAKER_03: 4:51

Racums. Racems. There's a racism and raisins and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 4:55

Um he was good at doing racism in a way that like you could tell the man himself wasn't racist, like you know, you read it, read H. P. Lovecraft novels, and that's just racism. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like he he definitely used race to his comedic advantage.

SPEAKER_04: 5:16

Well, as you should, because it it it you're making fun of the idea of racism, so you take the people who perform it at racists, as it were, right? And you you put them in, you make them hilarious, or and you're in essence, through that you take away their own.

SPEAKER_01: 5:30

I mean, oftentimes the the race, the people when he was making a uh a joke for at the sake of racism, it was the racist that was the villain or the right the negative part of the movie. So he did it tastefully. He did it good. Um not not necessarily saying that all of his jokes would fly today.

SPEAKER_04: 5:53

No, there's well as we all I mean, culture it does grow and change, right? Hopefully we progress as opposed to regress, but you know, two steps forward, one step back, whatever. Um, blazing saddles wouldn't be made today, as we all know. Not at least not in the form it is now. It would be it would be different because there's some there's some good stuff out there. Uh I mean we watched Dumb and Dumber recently, and we're all like, oh my god, this movie!

SPEAKER_01: 6:17

Like, would we still have the joke? Where are the white women?

SPEAKER_03: 6:21

Yeah, we're on the white women. Red leather. Red leather. Where are the white women at? His hands are so dirty after a cross burning.

SPEAKER_04: 6:30

But I watch so I watched Blazing Saddles and History of the World Part One, and I was watching it. And now, like, I had like that cough bronchitis, like pre whatever you want to call it. So I was like having trouble breathing. I was laughing so hard and coughing so much that my mom like came into the room and was like, Are you gonna freaking die? Like, are you okay? And I'm like red in the face, like tear, like tears, and I'm just like, she's like, pause the movie and just I got you gotta stop. And what scene are you in? Mom, it's the campfire scene. And she just starts laughing too because it's the campfire scene, and bodily functions are freaking hilarious.

SPEAKER_03: 7:11

That's absolutely a preteen scene. Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_04: 7:15

Totally, totally. Well, hey, okay. Uh, I still laugh my butt off at that. That is one of my favorites. Um, and the other scene, I don't know if I've mentioned like the other one that I love is Young Frankenstein. I mean, it is that would be good. That would be made too. Oh, God. The There's always a movie and it that makes you laugh, and you like you watch it because it makes you feel good. And then there's a part of that movie that just kills you. Like, much like when I was watching the Bean sequence in that. Uh, so the sequence when they get to him singing on stage, putting on the writs, like I probably holding in my laughter right now. Like, I kid you not, again, I have a heart attack watching that because I'm laughing.

SPEAKER_01: 7:59

It when we're when we're driving in the car, I'll put on like random 80s songs. Yeah, yeah. Every so often. And that song will come on. And they'll they'll be singing, and they'll get to the the course, and as I'm singing along with the the song, I'll just say, Put it on the red!

SPEAKER_03: 8:17

Oh my god, it it it it might like. And my wife looks at me like, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_04: 8:23

What was that? It's like, you know, shh, it's okay. We'll watch this movie, you have to understand. But oh my god. Like, right, like I said, it makes me cry and laugh so hard. Uh, I think the only other movie that I ever experienced that level of like couldn't breathe laughing, um, uh, were I thinking Dirty Rotten Scoundrels gets to it because that movie uh I haven't watched that one. Oh, okay. Uh when you have a chance and you're in a comedic movie, Steve Martin and Oh my god, why can't uh he played the butler and Batman Begins, Michael Cain. Okay, Steve Martin, Michael Cain play like grifters, right? And then they get into a competition with each other who can grift the most. And like uh it's like really well done, genius, great stuff. Uh the other one, and this one caught me by totally by surprise because I was out in the movie theater with a friend of mine, was I think it was called The Tuxedo with Jackie Chan.

SPEAKER_06: 9:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 9:26

Okay, so we're watching this movie, it's Jackie Chan. It is funny. But I'm like, it gets to a point where I can't stop. Like, it is, and it's probably not that great of a movie. If I went back, it might not be hilarious. But my friend was like, dude, he's like, hit me, dude. Are you okay? And I was like, oh my god. Like, almost like angry crying, like oh my god. I was laughing so freaking loud and hard. And I uh I'm not a subtle laughter guy. I don't know if you've noticed this about me, Lar Paul. Like, like, if I if it's funny, like it's a g like I am done. And everybody's gonna know. Oh my god, and my friend I walked out of the business, like, uh, I don't know if the movie was that funny, and I was like, you obviously missed it because it was hilarious! Like, uh, oh my gosh. And I think one of the the guys who cleaned the the people who worked there kind of was like, that funny, huh? Like, we heard you out here, dude. Like, yeah, yeah, that that funny. So uh I haven't gone back to watch it, um, but for whatever reason. So if y'all are out there, check it out. Let me know if I'm right or wrong. Like, I would love to be like, okay, Tuxedo, worst movie ever, but it's still Jackie Chan. Oh, it's still Jackie Chan, and Jackie Chan is hilarious. Um and Dirty Run Scoundrels, even my wife loves that movie. Like, that's a movie that she loves too. Right. And it's great. And of course, as we said, uh Melbrooks, man. Oh my gosh. If if there's a sequel, I'm I want to hear more about like what you know.

SPEAKER_01: 10:59

How how are we feeling about naked gun 44 and a quarter? Well 444 and a quarter. Yeah, this is 300. Uh with with I I just want if we don't talk about this potential movie at uh at all, the one thing that I I just want to just really appreciate for a moment is that they got Liam Neeson for the main role to play Leslie Nielsen's character. Yeah. Like, because the number the amount of times that in my brain I cross those names. And I and I'm sure I'm not the only one, right? Like, like that's part of the gag.

SPEAKER_04: 11:41

Oh, yeah. It's gotta be. Yeah. Well, my wife last night was like, well, Leslie Ne New. Oh my god, that's genius. She just sounded brilliant. Genius. I I can't even say it's Liam Nelson Nissan. Who what's happening? Uh I am, I I enjoyed the heck out of the naked guns because it should is right up my alley. Um so I'm I am well, I'm probably gonna go see it in the theater. I think that will be a fun theater one. Um hopefully get the kid to go see it. Because again, he's 12.

SPEAKER_06: 12:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 12:16

I think it could be right up his alley. Right? That kind of humor. Um I don't know. I'm I'm here for it. But I think you and I, you guys have you and I have mentioned this and and talked about this a couple of times. Is I'm I don't mind the rehashing and maybe like road killing of some of these properties. Like, do we need another Space Balls too? Maybe, maybe. Right now we could all use a really, really funny movie.

SPEAKER_01: 12:45

I think we could use I think comedy needs like just yeah, uh something.

SPEAKER_04: 12:50

Do we need an extraordinary?

SPEAKER_01: 12:50

Comedy is not what it used to be.

SPEAKER_04: 12:52

Right. Uh but I I uh so I'm not against it, but I'm also like like myself, like as a writer myself and all that stuff, even though I'm well past the age of ever doing anything over there in the the Hollywood stuff, but uh the the dream is still alive. Um there are writers out there that are making cool and new and original ideas, they're just not not making through because it's not a property, it's not uh right.

SPEAKER_01: 13:18

It's not gonna make it's not that it's a less sure bet to make money. Right, right. Exactly. Yeah, we don't see nearly as many steel magnolias as we used to, right?

SPEAKER_04: 13:28

Um yeah, like the 80s back in the day, I felt like and say maybe some of the 90s, right? Um one of my writer friends, and I kind of agree with him, is like the 80s was the best. Whether that's 80 to 90 or like 85 to 95, because the cultural shifts don't go with the decades necessarily. But he's like the 80s had the best frickin' movies. Yeah. Hands down, Pepsi Challenge, anytime. Like all the 80s were amazing. Because and and this is uh how we th how I think about it is since it was kind of uh maybe not Wild West, but kind of like listen, let's just make this movie because maybe we can make money, but I want to make a movie so that guy, you know, beat that guy's movie to the theater, beat that guy's movie to the theater. Uh, I've got this idea, let's just do it. For whatever reason, there was enough production companies. Obviously, they're not they're not really around anymore, so maybe lesson learned. But it was Or they all just got bought up by Disney. Right, right. Oh, oh, oh. But there was enough creative force and enough money around to be like, uh, we're gonna make this, we're gonna make Leprechauns 2. Right. Why not? It goes direct to video, still making a heck of money. Uh leprechaun seven, right? Uh, or or like diehards and all that stuff. Um, but it all has to be like so many properties. Um what's the franchise? Like how are we gonna franchise this out? I'm like, maybe, maybe it could just be a movie. It's okay.

SPEAKER_01: 14:58

I think I don't think they made very many movies in the 80s with the intent to franchise. I think there were definitely a couple, right? Like Star Wars set the bar for that, right? Um right, and so a lot of I think I think that might be a lot of a lot to it is Star Wars the success from Star Wars and its franchising and all of that. Right. Merchandising, merchandising uh all of that from Star Wars. I think a lot of movie companies were trying to emulate that, and so they were willing to take more risks because Star Wars was the biggest risk, right? Right. Uh, and it paid off. And so I think that's why the 80s was so successful. Right.

SPEAKER_04: 15:40

You just throw darts, yeah, darts at a wall, see which sticks, and if it sticks good enough, you look can we like like Die Hard's a great movie, uh, a great example too.

SPEAKER_01: 15:48

Uh nobody thought I don't think they they I don't think anybody had any intentions of making a sequel to die.

SPEAKER_04: 15:54

I don't think so either. And suddenly it's like this thing, this thing is pop making money.

SPEAKER_01: 15:58

Yeah, and then unfortunately they started making sequels for Die Hard. Right.

SPEAKER_04: 16:02

All right, the first couple were okay. Like Die Hard's still the best.

SPEAKER_01: 16:07

Die Hard 2 has some people that like it. I whatever. Um and then we got into Die Hard 3 and Die Hard.

SPEAKER_04: 16:20

What to me once July 4th. Once you get past three, for me, it definitely uh loses a bit of its luster, and you're like, oof. Well, like Indiana Jones, same idea, right? Right. I I think for Indiana Jones, I think that's a good one.

SPEAKER_01: 16:35

I think Indiana Jones the intention was a franchise.

SPEAKER_04: 16:37

Yeah, or like we we can make a trillion uh make an assessment of the show.

SPEAKER_01: 16:41

But to be fair, that was also a a uh George Lucas production. So right.

SPEAKER_04: 16:48

Jujuka's Steven Spielberg.

SPEAKER_01: 16:50

Yeah, I think if if I was in a situation where I was only allowed to watch three movies for the rest of my life, I wouldn't even pick Star Wars. It would be Are you ready for that?

SPEAKER_04: 17:00

Oh yeah, no, no, lay it on me. That's a great island question. Like, what are what are the three movies you have on a desert island? Right? Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 17:07

Uh Blazing Saddles. Yes. Um Airplane. Clue.

SPEAKER_06: 17:14

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01: 17:15

Those three movies. Those three movies, I would be entertained for life.

SPEAKER_04: 17:19

Dude, I uh I do not uh disagree or disparage your your uh choices. I think those are yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 17:26

Those are those are three movies I know. All of the jokes. Oh my gosh. There's no surprises. No, and I laugh every time.

SPEAKER_03: 17:32

Every time.

SPEAKER_01: 17:32

And I and I honestly, it does it takes a lot to get me to laugh these days. So we'll we'll go to movies and we'll watch a comedy, I'll hear the entire theater laughing, and I'll just be still there.

SPEAKER_03: 17:43

That's funny. That's I recognize your sense of humor.

SPEAKER_01: 17:47

Um, but but that being said, like I I recognize that I have a good sense of humor and I enjoy humor uh a lot, but like those are three movies that actually make me laugh. There was what was the movie that I saw recently that actually made me laugh?

SPEAKER_03: 18:04

Every time I see it.

SPEAKER_04: 18:05

I don't know. I still think for me, like on the Desert Island three movies, I love your choices, but it would be like Indiana Jones, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, the first like OG, I think, just cuz. Um, what would be my third one? God, like I do think a comedy would be good, like Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein, like something like that, where you you can MST3K it and it still hits, still is funny. Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 18:34

Yeah, I mean Clue and Airplane are like for sure. The third slot could be any Mel Brooks movie. Like literally just pick any of them, and I'm probably happy. I didn't love the producers. Um that one didn't land with me. I thought the producers was good, but I felt it was a but I love men and tights.

SPEAKER_04: 18:55

Oh my god. Uh I felt the producers was was and oh my god, not that this is a flaw, but it's almost like it had an actual story and character. Like it was a it had a little plot and push as opposed to this stuff is kind of loose and fun. Like men and tights, it's it's loosey goosey. Right. It's got more. I don't mean to put this down and I don't mean to make it sound like it, but it's kind of like these are bits and skits that have been woven together to create a story as opposed to producers, which has a story with bits and skits in it, if that makes sense. Yeah. Uh because I agree. I mean, the producers is hilarious, but it's not as I don't think it's as funny as Men and Tights or Young Frankenstein or whatever, you know, Spaceballs.

SPEAKER_03: 19:39

Yeah, space balls classic.

SPEAKER_02: 19:41

Classic! Classics!

SPEAKER_03: 19:43

Hey, should we get started?

SPEAKER_04: 19:44

Hey, Paul, maybe we should get started. You wanna do a recording here? Welcome, everybody to yet another podcast from the Funk Zone, Paul.

SPEAKER_02: 19:55

Welcome to the podcast. Known as Funkatronic Rex. Excellent. I was once a man. Gulfing? Help you, I will gelfing.

SPEAKER_01: 20:13

You, me, and Mike are the only ones old enough to get that joke.

SPEAKER_03: 20:16

Sadly, there I'm sure there's somebody out there that'll chime in on the Discord.

SPEAKER_01: 20:21

I I somebody was talking about that movie, the the G.I. Joe uh cartoon movie, um on like a podcast or something recently, and and somebody made the I Was Once a Man joke like as the reference to that movie. And that's like the one part of that movie that I actually remember. I remember nothing else of that movie except I was once a man. And so every now and then I'll just throw out that that's quote because it's just so stupid.

SPEAKER_03: 20:54

So bad. It's so good. So good. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04: 20:57

Wellcome back everybody to the Funkator Rex podcast. Uh I know Paul and I have had some fun and a little break. Uh he had a vacation. I had a vacation. Uh I think he went back on vacation. I don't know. Um, but yet another episode to put in the bank. And uh hope you guys are enjoying listening and hanging out. The bank is dry. No, that's true. The bank is the well is a little dry, Timmy. Uh, so we might need to record a few more. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. Um, but hopefully we're still on track to get some stuff out there. Uh well, as we usually like, how the heck have you been, dude? Like, I know we've we've uh I'll tell you, Chris.

SPEAKER_01: 21:36

Oh, hi. If I was any better, I'd be twins.

SPEAKER_04: 21:39

But um shh I was gonna say, is there anything uh I know we've got some cool main topic stuff because we played a little. Well, not played well pre we pre-gamed pretty well the other day with some dagger heart. Um spoilers, I'll bleep that out with some brrrrrrr. Um, but anything else been happening? Like fun-wise, life-wise, game-wise?

SPEAKER_01: 22:05

So uh I talk about it a lot on the podcast side, uh, my Arkham game. We moved it to monthly. Uh so now it's gonna be less frequent. It's not gonna be on the podcast as much. Um, just scheduling. Yeah. Just adults trying to work schedules.

SPEAKER_04: 22:22

I mean, that's oh my god, we've we run into that a lot. Uh uh, well, just by literally this podcast, like adulting and getting life and getting together and hanging out and maybe spending some time gaming sometime in there. Uh, but yeah, so monthly.

SPEAKER_01: 22:37

Now everybody's scheduled is like, could we please do it monthly? Yeah, we had our first uh first game after the extended break last night and uh playing Leo, Leo and Leo Sledge Hammers. Um, so the campaign is over. Uh and not successful. So we got to the second to last scenario of the campaign. There's there's so not final boss, but like scenarios. The next the sub-boss. Step before the final boss. Okay. Um, we get all the way to the to the end. We the finish line is in sight. My decks come together. Like it feels great. I can get the hammer out on the first.

SPEAKER_04: 23:22

I know you mentioned last time you can you can hammer on off.

SPEAKER_01: 23:24

Smash the heck out of things. Yeah. Uh there was there was a time where I sw I heavy swung the hammer twice in a single turn. Wow. I could also like basic swing it, like if there's a bunch of little little itch little shitties, uh, I could basic swing it like six, seven times. Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_04: 23:44

Um that's a lot for that's a lot.

SPEAKER_01: 23:46

Okay. So if if everything, if I once I once the deck is built up and I've got all my permanents down and I'm ready to go, um, yeah, it it does it does the thing. Right. And I'm excited, but I also start the scenario with three health and four sanity because I've got so much trauma throughout this campaign. Somehow I've survived.

SPEAKER_04: 24:10

So if uh if I remember, like obviously your health goes down as you get, but does your as your sanity do you lose sanity as well? Right? So once you lose H points, you're out, but as if you lose sanity, you become HP Lovecraft, basically.

SPEAKER_01: 24:24

So so it you have those two two pools, both of them are essentially your life, but the the damage is dealt individually to either one. So if a monster deals physical damage to you, you take physical damage to your health. If a monster does horror to you, it takes your sanity away. Right. And then if you're ever defeated by health or stanity in the scenario, then uh you you gain a trauma of that type.

SPEAKER_04: 24:54

Oh, okay. I love the fact you just said stanity. Thank you. That's that's in the game right now. That's insanity, yes. Um health and sanity.

SPEAKER_01: 25:05

And then there's other like story elements where like if you if you make the wrong choice or if you don't do as well in the scenario, you might take more trauma on top of that throughout it. So that that happened quite a bit. And that was that's what like this story kind of does. This some this campaign. It it's dealing out a bunch of trauma. Right. As much as possible.

SPEAKER_04: 25:32

And are you able to uh to are you able to take a long rest and heal any of this stuff? Or is it like as you build your cards and and build your deck, you're able to like use that to heal up like so, just like in real life, trauma is permanent. Trauma is permanent. There's there ain't no therapist in this world.

SPEAKER_01: 25:49

There there are actually there is there is ways sometimes baked into a campaign, you can heal a trauma somehow. I think we did, I think we did heal through our story. We we had a really good success on one thing, and so we were able to heal one of our trauma. Nice. Um but it's very, very, very, very, very rare, and it's not by player choice. Um until you know like the mechanics of that campaign that when it heals, so you could like target that, but you still have to play through to that point. Right. Um you still have to make it. Uh and so what trauma does is for every point of trauma you have in either of the two, physic uh health or st or sanity, you start the each scenario with that many, that much damage in that pool. So if I have five mental trauma, I start with five five horror damage at the start of every campaign.

SPEAKER_04: 26:54

For those listening at home, I'm making a really bad face. That's bad. That does not sound good.

SPEAKER_01: 26:58

No, it's it's painful. Uh so yeah, so I was like, I think my base pool is eight health, six sanity. And I think I started with four health and I want to say four sanity. So not at full strength. No, no, well, the rest of my deck was was basically full. It's just I'm I'm a lot more fragile.

SPEAKER_04: 27:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, your yeah, your deck's fine, but your character like not the little weak.

SPEAKER_01: 27:26

Now it is it is damage dealt to you, and there is a lot of like cards that can heal. So you can put cards in your deck that say heal health or heal heal sanity uh from an investigator or from yourself, and then you can heal that damage up. So one of the guys, uh, his character had died in the last game. He built a new character who was a farmer, and the farmer had a thermos with him, and the thermos says heal two damage from or heal a damage from an investigator at your location. If that investigator has two or more trauma, heal two instead.

SPEAKER_04: 28:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 28:06

So he he had the thermos, so for one action, he could heal two damage off of basically anybody.

SPEAKER_04: 28:11

Himself or anybody, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 28:13

Well, his character was new, he didn't have any trauma yet.

SPEAKER_03: 28:16

Um he's like, hey guys, you guys, anybody thirsty? Hi guys. I'm just a farmer. I was abducted by aliens.

SPEAKER_01: 28:24

My crows started turning into zombies. So we played this through the scenario, and I'm all and I will avoid spoilers if anyone wants to play The Forgotten Age, but suffice it to say, uh, it was hell in a handbasket. We didn't find a single clue. Clues are how you how you went. Progress, right, right. Uh we we found literally zero clues. We never picked up a single clue. We found one location, and that was because an enemy put it into play. So we had basically what what I'm saying is we were trapped in the first room, surrounded by enemies, just drowning the entire scenario, and so we get to the end of the uh the scenario. We're all defeated because we just increasing odds of snowball. And uh and we we read through the resolution of the scenario, and at the end of the resolution it says each investigator is killed, the campaign is lost. From the ground erupts Cthulhu. And as you're reading through it, it like so the game is a lot of if-then statements. Right. And it's very it feels a lot like a choose your own adventure in that it's like um, like one of the questions it asked was what was the current depth level? Um, so we're we're trying to to Descend into these caverns and uh depending on how deep we were, we might have survived. But because we made no progress, we did not survive. Um so like yeah, so it's fine. Like, I don't they hated it. The the group I was playing with, or at least two of the three the three other players, um, hated it.

SPEAKER_04: 30:26

And no, hated the this campaign.

SPEAKER_01: 30:29

Yeah, they hated how difficult it was, how unforgiving it was, just constant, constant, constant just trauma, hate and hate trauma, and pain. Um, so they they they l they legitimately said, I did not enjoy this campaign. I yeah, I'm ready for the next one. Yeah. Um and I I could I can respect that. Like it again, this was like my fourth time trying this campaign, it's definitely the furthest I've ever gotten in it. It is a hard campaign. I now that we've gotten through it um as far as we have, I appreciate it a lot more. Um it's I I like the difficulty of it in that that's the point of the campaign. The point is just your body is wearing down, you're getting weaker. It's like this is hard.

SPEAKER_04: 31:20

This is it one of the harder campaigns for the game, or is there like extreme difficulty?

SPEAKER_01: 31:27

We were playing on normal difficulty. You can play any campaign. There's four difficulty levels. Right, right. Uh normal is is difficulty two. Um easy, normal, hard, and insanity, I think it is what it is what it's called. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04: 31:42

So you were playing this on easy or normal? Normal. Normal, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 31:46

Normal, yeah. Um and so it was Oh man. It was not easy. Um it was It's in the name!

SPEAKER_03: 31:58

It's not easy.

SPEAKER_01: 31:59

The story it tells is super duper duper cool. Like I really loved what the camp the story the the campaign was telling. Um, it's you know, you've got some Indiana Jones vibes, being in a tom uh being in temples and in jungles and Aztec and such things, and and then there's some weird stuff, some timey, whimey stuff.

SPEAKER_04: 32:25

I mean, it is H it is you know based on Lovecraft. So it's definitely like you gotta everybody lick page three as we continue on the adventure here.

SPEAKER_01: 32:33

Yeah, it's it's HP Lovecraft without the horrible racism. Um it's oh well yeah, you're right. Uh so it was it was a lot of fun, and I I really liked it. I would love to sit down, play through that campaign again. Now that I know it a little bit better, I can make some better decisions. Um and I'd love to to see through. It's never gonna happen. I'll never find three more schmucks or even one more schmuck that that are gonna go through this campaign. Now, this is a now I can play it full solo, right?

SPEAKER_04: 33:08

But that's half the fun is the gaming with the peoples, right?

SPEAKER_01: 33:13

I think um I've tried playing Arkham full solo a handful of times, and while it's not unfun, it's it definitely loses a lot of its charm. Right.

SPEAKER_04: 33:23

It is more fun, as we say. You know, I mean, half the reason why we're here in the store and and hanging out is like it's more fun to be hanging out with the peoples, right? Uh so all right. So this is a campaign. Uh, and you've played it how many times? Four? Is this the fourth time you've gone through this this particular campaign?

SPEAKER_01: 33:42

Yeah. Well, this is the like the fourth time I've attempted the campaign.

SPEAKER_04: 33:45

I mean, that's what I'm saying. So you haven't beat it yet.

SPEAKER_01: 33:47

Well, I've got I haven't gotten past, I think it was scenario three before this.

SPEAKER_04: 33:51

Oh god.

unknown: 33:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 33:53

So in the campaign, there's obviously levels and scenarios. So what scenario were you on? Like, were you on this was out of how many?

SPEAKER_01: 34:01

This was scenario seven out of either eight or nine. Okay. I don't know how many were at the end for sure. Uh I know that so basically the way that Arkham used to release is you would get the the expansion box that introduces the campaign, and that comes with the first two scenarios. Okay. And then they would release six more booster packs afterwards. And those six booster packs would each have one s one or more scenarios in them that would complete the campaign. Right.

SPEAKER_04: 34:30

So it's a big box. If I remember right, not a big box, like a box, and then like little blister packs of cards too. Yeah, exactly. Uh accessorize that.

SPEAKER_01: 34:38

And so that last blister pack that we didn't play, we were on the second to last blister pack. That last blister pack, I don't know if it had one or two scenarios in it. Because sometimes they'll they'll have two, especially if it's the last one. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, dude. So so yeah, we were we were almost all the way through it. And then um now they just release the full campaign in one box. So you just you go just get the box, you go to Funk, nowhere else, and you buy the campaign box. There's two box two boxes. One box is labeled the campaign expansion, and then the other box is labeled the investigator expansion. And so the campaign expansion features the entire campaign, all of the story, everything, and then the investigator expansion just has all the the investigator cards that they're adding for that campaign that you would collect and build your character from. So the reason that they do that they did that, and it's really smart and totally antithetical to the history of board gaming, is they release the the campaign expansion so that you're you know one person can buy the the campaign, but then they release the player expansion so that all of the players that are playing can each buy their own copies of those cards. So you're not having to build from one person's pool if you don't want to. Right, right. Um, so if you're a huge fan of the game and you play it a lot and you want your own set of cards, you can pick it up. You can pick it up and do that. So we play that game digitally. I own all of it physical, so I don't have a problem with with playing it digitally. Um, but we play it digitally and because we're all over the US. Yeah. Um and so we we get to share cards uh quite frequently. So then we we uh two of us hung out afterwards. Two two uh two people, their spirits were broken and they they they're done, they were done for the night.

SPEAKER_04: 36:39

They're like, I gotta go, guys. I'm gonna take a shot of tequila and just uh wash this away. Calgon take me away, right?

SPEAKER_01: 36:47

Um so you and the other player hung out for a bit. Yeah, we hung out a bit and we built our new decks. So we're we're ready for the next campaign. Right. Um you said this is digitally, so you can do it on the web-based or arcamdb.com is the website. And I use that even when I'm playing physical, which we'll get into in a minute, um, to build my deck. And then I it's easier for me to to do it digitally and see what cards are available. I can filter and search the cards as opposed to flipping through binders.

SPEAKER_04: 37:17

Well, I do the same thing for uh Star Wars Unlimited, right? Star Wars Unlimited database or something like that. Switum. Switem. Uh SWIDUB. Um but yeah, going being able to once you put your collection in and being able to like build a deck digitally and then play it dig like have some playtesting and play around. Uh I've it's absolutely been a game changer for me. Now it's been a hot minute since I've really gotten into a card game like Star Wars Destiny ages ago. And there was something about that, uh, there was a database for that too. Right. But before that was ages ago for the original Star Wars one, and that was literally, I had to get all my binders out, sit on the like take over the table and like flip through stuff and like, oh god, like okay, I've lost track of what the hell I'm building. Right. Like, what am I doing here? Who am I? Um, having a database, a digital database, is fantastic because you can then print out your list, bring it to competitions in the store so you can turn it in or whatever. Right. Um, but then have and you can make a really quick change. Like I build my sideboard and I can just switch it out and try it.

SPEAKER_01: 38:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 38:21

Yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_01: 38:22

It's fantastic. So um I guess I guess I can talk about it now. So I'm also starting a second Arkham campaign in person. Oh. Uh just Q and I. Okay. Um, we're in real life, people. In real life, we wanted to Q Q is finally ready to try the game again. Um, he loves it. He he always says, I love I love playing Arkham. It's just like it's a lot, right? When you have Marvel Champions, which is just like Marvel Champions is a lot, too. I mean it's a lot mechanically, but for the most part, compared to Arkham, it's it's very much a beer and pretzels kind of experience. It's an action movie, right? You're you're you're going in, you're watching an action movie, you're you're just here for the vibes and the good time. Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, there's a lot going on, but like you're you're just blasting.

SPEAKER_04: 39:10

Well, no, but yeah, I can see what you mean by it's not like there's intense gameplay or mystery solving. It's you know, how do I work with you to attack this villain or this henchman to get to our goal, as opposed to what's this riddle? What's this puzzle? How do we get out of this room so we can actually move on to the next next next room and puzzle, basically?

SPEAKER_01: 39:33

Arkham is much more like watching a murder mystery and you're trying to like an in tech intellectual movie, it's like watching a uh Nolan film, right? Like there's some action.

SPEAKER_04: 39:43

Um but it's making your brain work a little too much.

SPEAKER_01: 39:46

You're having to think, right? And you're you're you it's positing questions to you as a player group. Um, and it's telling and you're having to follow along. It's it's a full story for eight scenarios. A campaign in Marvel Champions is five loosely tied together stories that have basically don't tell a story, it's just five boss fights, right? Yeah, this is you're doing the full story and it's telling a narrative, and it's it is very involved. Um, so a gameplay in Arkham takes longer, and it's a lot more thinking and a lot more and it's harder. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04: 40:26

Like your actions probably have a lot more consequences and like ripple effects while in Marvel Champions. Yeah, maybe I don't help you this turn, but the chances of me being coming around and being able to help or do something next turn is very high. You have a turn or two to do while it feels like an Arkham, you're like, if if we do the left fork in this path versus a right fork in this path, that right fork is done, gone. You you can't go back.

SPEAKER_01: 40:53

It's there's four of us with three actions each. We have 12 actions as a player group. How are we gonna use those 12 actions to maximize our chances of surviving this turn?

SPEAKER_03: 41:04

Just surviving.

SPEAKER_01: 41:05

Um that's a lot of what Arkham is. And so um, so yeah, so we're finally sitting down, and so we we decided to do that. We pulled out the binders, we built decks, man, you know, like clubs. Yep, yep. Um, and I went through the binders and I pulled the cards and I cut the cards like I normally would, like I would do for for Marvel. Um, so we both did that. We built our decks. I'm playing Mandy Thompson, the researcher, and she is her entire gimmick is whenever a player would search their deck, they can either search an additional three cards or because all the search effects aren't like search your whole deck, it's not like a full tutor. Yeah, instead, it's like look at the top nine cards and find a card with the weapon trait on it, right? And put that into your hand. And so I can look at instead of looking at nine cards, I could look at 12 cards, or instead I could look at the nine cards and I can find two league, two valid targets. So I can find two weapons for one card. So she that's what she's doing. That's pretty cool. That's cool. Um and but as a result, she has a much larger deck size. She instead of a 30 card deck, she has a 50 card deck. Oh. And that's all right. That it used to be that you could choose between odds and ratios, so yeah. It used to be that you could choose between 30, 40, or 50 with her. Like you had that choice. Everybody just picked 30 and you know, made it easy. Let's make it well. Let's just be more efficient, right? Let's just be more consistent with what we're trying to do. So they they uh in the FAQs, they will mutate cards to change the how they function.

SPEAKER_04: 42:53

Yeah, love it.

SPEAKER_01: 42:54

Um, to balance the game. And it's totally optional optional whether or not you play with the the taboo list, is what they call it. Or if you play, you know, with the cards as printed. You could do either. In fact, in in our online game, one player she only plays cards as written, and she only builds decks from the cards through the campaigns that we've played, and we're playing in order. So her deck only existed of Forgotten Age and Earlier. Um, and in our new next campaign, it'll be Circle Undone through Forgotten Age and Earlier.

SPEAKER_04: 43:29

Oh no, all right. So quick side question is with these campaigns, there's not uh it sounds like you can play them in an order, or is it kind of random ish? Like you can play campaign A, depths of the sea, and then campaign B.

SPEAKER_01: 43:45

The campaigns are not connected in any way other than they all tie back to Arkham somehow. Right, right, right. Um, but the intent of the designer's intent is for you to start a new character with each campaign, build a new deck, start a brand new character. Okay, there is rules, and people do it where you can take your character from the last campaign and play it in into a new one. Um if they survive, if they so that's just it is usually by the end of that campaign, your character has suffered a lot of trauma. Yeah, and yes, you are very experienced and your deck is very powerful, but your your pools are a lot weaker. Right. And so there's a bit of a balance there. And so people do that, and I honestly I don't really I'd probably try it once at some point, although the the allure after playing eight games or more with a single investigator, the allure of building a new deck and trying a new mechanic is is always more enticing to me than just keeping it.

SPEAKER_04: 44:49

I've played this character, I've played this investigator, I've seen what their tricks or tricksies can do.

SPEAKER_01: 44:54

The deck is solved. Right. Usually by that point, I have enough experience that I like my deck does what it wants to do. I don't need more experience. I don't need to go earn anything.

SPEAKER_03: 45:04

I don't need more hammers.

SPEAKER_01: 45:05

Yeah, I'm not chasing anything else. Um so yeah, so the so we built the decks. Um, and I built my Mandy deck with a card that adds 15 cards to her deck. So her deck size is 65 instead of 30.

SPEAKER_04: 45:23

Jesus. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 45:24

So most investigators, the the deck size is 30. Yeah. Her her deck size in that I built is 65 cards.

SPEAKER_03: 45:31

Excuse me while I whip this out.

SPEAKER_01: 45:33

That being said, it's uh the card that added the 15 cards. The reason I chose it um is it lets you instead of drawing a card at the end of each round, you draw two cards and discard one. Okay. So you're going through you can go through your deck pretty quickly. Effectively, what I did is I cut my deck in half, right? Um, and I'm only picking the best card of two each turn. So not only am I getting a better draw each turn, but on top of that, I'm drawing twice as much. So now instead of having a 65 card deck, I effectively have a 32-card deck. Right. So my deck size is functionally about the same size as a normal Arkham Red.

SPEAKER_04: 46:17

Right, as the other players. That's that's a cool strategy. So your deck is basically almost equal to the other players, but you have a better chance of filtering through and finding what you need.

SPEAKER_01: 46:26

Right. And the entire deck's built about around that search function. So I'm gonna draw a bunch of cards anyways. That allows you to search more and get more. All right, yeah. So I built that, and uh she can choose between three different uh secondary classes, which some some can, some can, some are locked into a secondary class, some don't have a secondary class, they only have traits. Um, so she can choose either Mystic, uh Survivor, or Rogue. I didn't want to do rogue because uh my Leo deck with the sledgehammer is essentially a rogue deck, a green deck. Um so I and I hadn't played Mystic in a while, so I chose Mystic, built the deck, we played through the scenario, we got rocked. First scenario of the game. Just just I think we I think we legitimately lost, and it said the campaign was lost on the first scenario.

SPEAKER_04: 47:21

Oh, you're gonna let you start over.

SPEAKER_01: 47:22

No, so we were like, let's start over. I'm gonna retool my deck. So I switched to Survivor, I built it on Arkham DB so I could kind of like see the cards and and make better decisions, and so I feel a lot more confident now going into the this the next attempt. Um so yeah, so I'm I'm I'm a lot happier about it.

SPEAKER_04: 47:51

You're dead. Oh my gosh. Now here's uh you might have talked about this previously in this, but with Arkham, so you and Q are both an investigator, right? And then uh so the game has its own AI mechanic, basically. So you have decks and stuff that you build and draw from to tell the story, and you guys work together. It's within that.

SPEAKER_01: 48:13

Yeah, it's all the same um, it's all based on the same bones that were originally developed for the Lord of the Rings card game. Okay. Um, so it's all you build a player deck, you have a identity of some kind that that determines the deck, and then uh every round there's a clock that ticks up that that keeps the pressure on. And there's a you draw a card, a bad card from the deck that does something bad to you to set you back. So Marvel Champions is exactly the same way.

SPEAKER_04: 48:53

Familiar feel.

SPEAKER_01: 48:54

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04: 48:54

And I've I've heard uh I know here in the store there's uh a group that plays, I'm pretty sure it's Lord of the Rings cards. Uh and I I really enjoy hearing them. I think maybe I think they come in on Sunday. So we're not playing Star Wars, they're playing Lord of the Rings. And if I've got my butt kicked, I just kind of lean over and listen to them play, and they're like, oh my gosh, this. Okay, how do we uh I've got, I think to your point, like, oh my gosh, we've only got three actions or two, how are we gonna get out of this? And I'm like, how are you guys are you guys where's the DM? So it's like they're just drawing cards, you hear them go, yeah. Okay, uh that we're puckering, you know, how are we gonna survive this? I'm like, that it does sound a little fun, but also like could be frustrating. You're like, well, we just bad shuffle, bad draw. Yeah, we are hosed.

SPEAKER_01: 49:44

So Lord of the Rings, I I got I uh sold off my my collection of Lord of the Rings. I I had almost all of it. I'm shocked. I liked the game. I I love the frame I love the IP. Yes. Uh I just didn't the way that the deck building worked in it, it didn't speak to me. Um the scenarios were both too hard, and the the way they were designed is you were it wasn't there wasn't as much of a campaign. There's a narrative, but your decks aren't like growing and changing through the campaign as much. There's a little bit of it, but not not as much. Um then the intent was you change your deck, you sideboard between each scenario to solve the puzzle that is the next scenario, right? And so you replay that scenario over and over until you beat it, and then you move on to the next scenario. And that just didn't jive with me. Okay. I I totally respect that it's it's something that a lot of people love. And the game, like I said, it there's people that play Lord of the Rings here in the store. Nobody plays Arkham here in the store on a regular basis now. I used to. Um, you're letting us down. I know, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_04: 51:03

Um well, no, because that's I mean, I think that's a really valid and a good point to bring up because as we see, like there's so many games that we have here in the store. Every every one of them is gonna have a little different vibe, a little different play style. Like if it's a deck builder, how do you build that deck and how do you solve the fix uh solve the the game? How do you solve this adventure, this encounter? And so if Lord of the Rings doesn't scratch that itch, it's still good. You still like it. But if it's not scratching that itch, and you're like, but Arkham does.

SPEAKER_01: 51:35

So And that was part of it was like I had all three uh of the games in that that design uh series. And Lord of the Rings was was by far my my least favorite of the three. I'd rather, if I if I don't have a lot of time or I don't want to think too much, I'd rather play Marvel Champions. If I do want to think that much and I do want to to like tell a compelling story and play something that's very difficult, I'll play Arkham. Yeah. Uh Lord of the Rings was kind of right in between where it was like not as not as narrative focused as Arkham is, um, but much more difficult than than Marvel Champions. And so it didn't it it didn't I didn't really need it in that sphere. Right. I already had Well, you have two games that you said. Effectively do the same thing. Yeah. Um they do play differently, and you know the the deck you can build some really cool decks in Lord of the Rings, but you can build a lot of really bad decks. Um Marvel champions and Arkham, especially Marvel Champions, are a lot more forgiving. You can put a bunch of bad cards in a deck and it'll still muddle through them. Specifically bad decks for like Doctor Strange to try and like bring the power balance down, and it's still fun, and it's still doing it.

SPEAKER_04: 52:55

Doctor Strange is still pretty powerful. But like I said, if I can build a deck or like just briefly glance at a deck through the database, like oh, that sounds fun, and do it. And while not muddling through having fun and playing the game, right? That's that's a really good sign of a I think of a really cool design of a game. Uh, you can just use a deck right out of the box, and then you can slowly start changing it and building it to craft your own version of Wolverine or whatever. That's great. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 53:23

Um so yeah, so then we built our characters last night, and um, and it might change before depending on what people want to play, but I wanted to play a mystic. Um when I play Mystic, I usually like to play weird mystics that aren't doing all the just they're not just spell slinging. Right, right. Um the spell slinging ones just haven't ever like clicked with me as being super interesting. So I built Father Mateo. Father Mateo, he's a priest. Um, who and then I'm playing the uh parallel version of him where it was an online promotional print print your own version of him kind of thing. Perfect for the digital stuff.

SPEAKER_06: 54:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 54:08

Um and it it changes both his his front card, his main ability, and it changes his deck building rules on the back of the um and you can choose either or or both um of of a particular side. So I can play with I can choose to play with the new front side and the old back side or or via. Yeah. What I ended up doing is I'm playing both both of the new sides. Um his old card was what was it? It was whenever an investigator would draw a token, once per game you can say, no, you draw the superstar instead. Alright. So once per game, once per scenario, I he could say, We need this test to succeed. I'm gonna pray to my God, and we're gonna succeed. That was essentially what he did. I that was fine, it wasn't that interesting. I don't like once per game abilities, yeah. Too much thinking. Oftentimes I end up just sitting on it too long until it doesn't matter. Yeah, too late. Or I use it too early, and I'm like, God, I wish I had it. Um, whatever, I'm not smart enough for that stuff. So his new version looked really cool. So his new turn new version plays with the new blessed tokens, which weren't out when he was first released. Blessed tokens are tokens that are added to the chaos bag. So the way that that checks work, I should explain that. I don't know if I've done that on the podcast yet. Is you draw whenever you're you're doing a test, instead of rolling a die, you draw a token from a bag. Okay, and then that token will have the superstar, uh, which is usually a special ability based on your investigator. It'll be a plus one, a zero, a minus one, minus two, minus two. Now, do you have your own four minus five?

SPEAKER_04: 56:01

Or it's like, so it gets worse. There's not a lot of success. There's not a lot of success. There's a lot of failures. Uh, does each player have their own bag? Or is it a community as you bring your characters, you all add those tokens to the bag?

SPEAKER_01: 56:12

Or is it all of the the the superstar is there's always one superstar and one tentacle token. Yeah. Those tokens are always in the bag. Uh-huh. Um, and then once you draw a token, you see what the effect is, and then it goes back in the back.

SPEAKER_04: 56:27

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 56:28

The tentacle tokens and auto fail. The superstar, like um, I think on uh on Leo, the last character I played, it was I get if I draw the superstar, I get plus two for the attack. I get plus two, and I get to look at the top three cards of my deck and if and put an ally into my hand.

SPEAKER_04: 56:49

Okay, that's cool. So so no dice, so all the tokens go into a bag, and that's the that's like that random action thing in the middle of that.

SPEAKER_01: 56:56

So yeah, so there's the superstar and the the tentacle. The superstar for Father Mateo was plus two. Look at the top three cards, find an ally, put it in your hand. Um they added a new mechanic in one of the campaigns uh a couple campaigns ago, and now they're they rebrought it back for the newest campaign called Blessing and Curse Tokens. So those are tokens that you can uh through player card effects, you can add tokens to the chaos bag that essentially say if I add a bless to the token or to the bag, if somebody draws it, it gives them plus two for that test, and they have to draw a second token. Oh, all right. And then if that's a blessed token, they get another plus two. They're now at plus four and they draw another token, and then and then it's usually the minus four, and or no, it's usually the tentacle and the autofill. Um plus four, yeah! Yeah, that's that's usually what happens.

SPEAKER_04: 57:52

Yeah, that's that's that's uh Arkham for you.

SPEAKER_01: 57:54

So um so the new the new Father Mateo is you can once per round, you can choose an investigator that does not have a bless token sealed on their card. So sealing just means you place it on their card. Right, right. And it's now no longer in the bag, it's on that card. Um so I can put the blessed token on that investigator, uh-huh. And and then whenever somebody does a test, if they're at my location and they have a bless token sealed on them, I can say, okay, instead of drawing a from the bag normally, you're gonna draw that bless token instead. So I give I can give basically one person per round, I can give a plus two to any check. Right.

SPEAKER_04: 58:45

And that token then goes back on the back.

SPEAKER_01: 58:48

Well, that that's just it. Is normally if you draw a blessed token, once you resolve it, you it gives you plus two, and then you draw another token. And then once that test is done, the blessed token is removed from the game.

SPEAKER_04: 58:58

Oh, so it's not an infinite resource. Once you hit them, you use them up.

SPEAKER_01: 59:02

Okay. Normally, yeah. So with but with his effect, uh, I give you I give you the blessed token, the plus two. You're guaranteed to draw a blessed token for this test. Yeah. And then it goes back in the bag at the end of the test.

unknown: 59:14

Oh.

SPEAKER_01: 59:15

Oh. So you the you can essentially like double dip on the plus twos a little bit. So I built a blessed deck. Um, all it does is just tries to fill the bag with as many blessed tokens as it can. You can have 10 in the bag at any time. My goal is to always be at 10.

SPEAKER_04: 59:32

I think that's an admirable goal from the sounds of it.

SPEAKER_01: 59:34

And then the the other cards that I've flushed him out with are if it's not adding a bless token, the only thing it it does is just makes the game easier. It's uh canceling bad cards, it's canceling attacks. Oh, an enemy's attacking you? No, no, it's not. Not anymore.

SPEAKER_03: 59:55

Power of Christ compels you!

SPEAKER_01: 59:56

Yeah, oh my gosh. Uh, so that's the entire character. It's not, it's not there. To win, it's there to just like support.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:02

Just make we're gonna make it a little and by a little easier, you mean we have a better chance of surviving. Yeah, that's not we're not gonna be we're definitely not guaranteed to win. It's just literally going from 20% odds of winning to 25%. Maybe 30%. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:17

So I'm really excited for it. And as I was positing this idea, um, my friend that was building the deck, building a deck with me, he's like, wasn't there I kind of want to play Guardian again? Isn't there a Guardian that cares about blessed tokens? I was like, there is. Synergy. So he's playing, I'm playing the priest from Teo. Yeah, he's playing Sister Mary, the nun. Okay. And the nun also cares about the blessed tokens. And so we have now, like, between the two of us, we're definitely gonna be filling the bag, but we've also loaded both of our decks with a bunch of cards that say, like, look, draw five tokens, and then for if the if there's a blessed token in there, a good thing happens. And so there's just like all of these synergies on across the two of us. It should be really neat. He's gonna be really good at handling monsters. I'm gonna be really good at saying no. We'll see what the other two players do. Somebody had better be finding clues.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:09

I was about to say, someone better be in a uh what is it, the in a uh an investigator, a clue? Like, we need someone who can protect us, and then there's someone who can find the stuff. Because we're just gonna be hanging out with yeah, you're blessed, you're blessed, you're blessed, you're blessed.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:24

We're gonna be really good at at not losing. We're not gonna be good at winning.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:28

That's a great way.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:31

Because you don't win for beating monsters. No, like beating monsters doesn't win you the game, in except there's like a handful of scenarios where it does, but it's like very specific scenarios, right? And it's usually one scenario per campaign, if that. So yeah, there's a very good chance that like well, if you beat the monsters, that means you have time to solve the riddle and investigate and shoot.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:56

Right? Sure.

unknown: 1:01:58

Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:59

It should be fun. I I think it'll be fine. I think I know one of one of the two players is gonna be clue focused. The other one'll usually in a four-player game, you want one cluver is the community term where you're hoovering clues. Yep, okay. Um one cluver, and you want one monster slayer, and then you want two flex characters, two characters that can do either as needed. And so my Mateo is a bad version of a flex where I get kind of flex. So but he's the the intent there is he's giving everyone a plus two. So the right the Cluver gets better, the monster slayer gets better, right? So he's while he himself is not the one that's finding clues or killing monsters as much, he does have some ability to do that because that's that's responsible deck building. Um you don't want to do that. He does have some ability, but for the most part, he's just there to to make everybody else better at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:00

Right, the true thing, true classic kind of support piece. You guys are I'm making you better, and then hopefully you guys make sure I don't die.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:06

You know, or honestly, I don't even care about that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:11

He should be durable enough too. Like he's he should last with the cards that I have and everything, like I think I think we'll be okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. So yeah, so what we should have one more one more flex character and one and a Cluver between the last two characters. Oh my gosh. Last two players. So yeah, so that's uh well that so in in short, that's what I did recently.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:37

Uh long story short, or uh short story long, you know, uh shocking enough, I think the only gaming stuff that I've really been doing was uh when we did our pre-gaming stuff. Uh I haven't been able to get out and about Star Wars in on Wednesday. Well, I do uh I mean I do do the Star Wars stuff. Yes, I was able to come in on Wednesday. My writers group uh didn't fire, so I was like, hey, you know, let's hang out, whatever, do the dinner with the family. I'm like, hey, come back, I'm gonna go play some Star Wars for a little bit.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:05

I have I have a quick question about your writers' group. Um purple. Does it have a name? And if it does, is the name the Rough Riders?

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:17

It is not. Uh sadly, it's just the Wednesday night writing group. That's that's it's pretty lame. Time to put that in the agenda. Add it in the addendum and the the stuff like I'm gonna pull forth.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:29

I'll let you use that free of charge.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:31

Rough writers! Oh, that's so bad. Uh uh, it's it's more focused on like screenplay style writing and stuff like that, as opposed to long form short stories and stuff, plays or whatever novels and that kind of thing. Because I do all of that, but I've been doing these guys for uh with this group for a while, and it's pretty awesome. But it didn't fire on Wednesday. And Wednesday here we got uh we usually do Star Wars Unlimited, the Twin Sons version, so the multiplayer, four-player pods uh to coin a lot of.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:59

Did you ever build a twin sons deck?

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:01

I have I have built it digitally, so I've well, okay. I've almost built it digitally. I don't know if I actually have fully fleshed it out. I think I built it with uh I the number of cards. I have literally have a pile of cards. I think I made it with like 85 to 90 cards right now. Uh-huh. Um I can't remember what the limit, what the deck size wants to be right now because then I think they're up to 100. Yeah, I think the new set just came out. Legends of the force, which is sweet. Oh my gosh. Uh I was on vacation when I came out, so I wasn't able to actually like totally like mainline and rub that cardboard on my gums when it first came out. But uh got some stuff. I got a you know, a carbonite box, too. I was lucky about that, and a regular box. It's got all the Jedi and Sith. It's got all the lightsabers, so it's very much unlike the last one was um let's see if I can see it over here. Uh uh jump to light speed, so a lot of cool ships, space, so it kind of shifted. There's always a good balance between the ground uh versus space units in the game, I think, depending on how you want to play.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:08

The forces balance, right?

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:10

Well, they try to. Um light speed definitely shifted to like you kind of want to do a little more space just because these are awesome, right? Which is where my uh Luke, uh trench run Luke deck is from, pretty much. Uh and I love that deck. Gosh, if like having one thing that fires off, like for your guy, like I just want to hit my hammer and swing my hammer a bunch. Uh, Luke, is if I I have uh if I can do my trench run once, I have only have two cards in there. Uh, but if I can do it once, it it is so awesome. Like get Luke on red five, do the trench run. It it feels great. I might not always win, but it does a lot of damage.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:46

So the chances of me winning are much better as long as we're playing appropriate. Provided you pull it off.

SPEAKER_04: 1:06:53

Yeah, yeah. Um, and then so this one's got all the Jedi. So again, we're shifting. Maybe you want to. There's a little more ground unit action, maybe some more lightsabers.

SPEAKER_06: 1:07:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:07:01

Um the extra art, uh, the premiere. No, no. Uh gosh, I always get these messed up. Not premiere. Um hyperspace. Well, there's hyperspace, but so in the carbonite box, they have uh prestige, the other P word. So they have prestige cards that can be I was thinking of a different P word. Oh, yeah. Well, sh sh sh um that's in there too, probably. Uh so prestige cards have like unique art, foil treatment, and limited edition numbered versions of them. Uh on the whole, because they introduced it with jump to light speed. I have been really, really like the art on these cards, very cool. Like, absolutely, I would love to have a like this character's art is awesome. For example, the new, I think the Vader version of the Prestige, the art is a great alt art. Um, I think Magic does the same thing, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:53

They're collectors.

SPEAKER_04: 1:07:54

They're definitely pushing that version of it. Uh the Carbonite comes with more, like, more foil, hyperspace foil, and hyperspace cards. I love the hyperspace full card art. Yeah. Love it. Like foil I go back and forth on, but for whatever reason, like the hyperspace without that border, I've just, it is to quote me in when I'm opening boxes. I'm like, mm-hmm, it's so oh hyperspace, so good. Um uh but the new sets come out, and I have really been enjoying trying to build and play with the deck. I came in on, as you said, on Wednesday, tried out for the first time. Ah I lost, but uh I got I won one out of three you you know, which is fine. Uh had a great game. Um my opponent's deck, like he was playing Darth Revan, and he's got some tricksies up his sleeves as man. And he pulled it off. I think he pulled it off both games he won, uh, which is the I can't remember the name of the card. But when you play it, if you have Sith, two Sith, you kill everybody else and give your Sith guys two shields and two experience cards each. So they go, they I mean, it's when that happens, it is. It's that's the that's end game right there. I mean, it's very hard. Uh, I have like uh the power failure card, which removes all upgrades on everybody, which is the only way to get rid of that stuff. Um, but yeah, when you put a lightsaber on those guys, they're just they're they're cutting through, man. Like I was uh uh it was I was the soft butter and the hot knife. First game we had, I did all right, but he still got me by like three or four points. Second game was that was the one he got it off earlier, and I was like, that's that's game. That's buy me dinner next time. Um uh but the third game I got him because I was able to just squeak in and hit his ground units, so he wasn't able to get that ability off. I'm like, well, if you only got you don't have one tank, or you only have two tanks, you only got one, so I can survive that one. Yeah uh but it was great. Um I'm loving it. It's got Qui-Gon, it's got Maul, uh two, like two versions of Obi-Wan, um Yoda, obviously, and Yattel, who I can't remember where Yaddle's from, but the that's from episode one. A female version is it?

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:14

Yep. Is she? She's from episode one. Okay. Gosh, bad. So in episode one, she's on the council. You see her on the council. In episode two, she's no longer on the council, which is interesting. Interesting. And I believe they addressed that in one of the newer series. So I think the clone, the was it Clone Wars?

SPEAKER_04: 1:10:37

Well, there's Clone Wars and there's Rebels, which dealt with a lot of.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:40

It was definitely Clone Wars. It was it was I can't remember if it was the last season of Clone Wars or if it was that like Tales from the Force. Oh, yeah, yeah, like the little shorts. Some some like singular stories they did the Count Dooku episode. Um, or I think it was like three episodes for Count Dooku. I can't remember if it was that series, that first series that they did, or if it was the the last season of Clone Wars. Either way, they feature her and kind of what happens to her. Oh, I never I never season.

SPEAKER_04: 1:11:14

I'm sad to say I never finished Clone Wars. Like I watched a lot of it and then was sporadically back and forth in it, so I never quite finished. I watched a lot of Rebels because Rebels was really good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:25

Um see, I think Clone Wars is better. I mean I so both both shows struggle at the beginning, right? Like the first couple of seasons are really rough for both shows. Um, Rebels felt way too kid focused, and um it didn't really didn't really grip me at first, and then it got really good. Yeah when once it started getting more into more adult themes and themes of the force, and you started Dave floninging all of the characters that he loves into the show and and all that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:59

It started he totally does that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:01

He absolutely does that. Uh it got a lot better, and then Clone Wars Clone Wars didn't really have the problem of being too kid focused. The it had two issues. One was it lacked consistency because it was telling stories, it started by telling disparate stories from throughout that time period, right? Right. Um, and going back and forth, and so it it lacked focus, and then uh it also was just kind of telling just gener generic store short stories, and then towards I think it was season four, is where they start doing more serialized storytelling. They started telling like four or five episodes about a single story back to back, and then they would do a filler episode.

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:47

It did feel at the beginning like uh like short stories, like a little snippet of here, here. So you're piecemealing some of the history and uh the happenstances that happened between the movies. And you're like, it's still cool, but you're like, where's the like most TV shows that we come to expect? Like, where's the flow? Where's the connective tissue that pulls us through the uh season and makes us want to get to the next one, right? How are we gonna what makes me turn the page? Um, and the other show, god, the other show is Bad Batch. How am I forgetting that? Um well, Bad Batch is basically just Clone Wars. Part two kind of uh I I've again uh not watched a lot of it, but uh I've enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:30

I enjoyed it, I watched most of it. It was fine.

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:34

Yeah, but I I agree.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:35

It wasn't bad, right?

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:37

Right, right. I I still think, well, uh I still think these are very good, good to very good, if not elevated a little bit more in the world of stories in Star Wars. Like you can really enjoy them, they're not amazing. Uh oh, sorry, they're not like mind-blowing. They get there, uh, but they're good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:57

Um I will say the the good parts of Clone Wars were absolutely incredible. Yeah. In the later seasons, when they tell the when they tell the really good, complex stories over the course of you know two to five episodes, those are those are some of the best Star Wars television available. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um and then but Rebels as a whole, because it told a more consistent story of the end of Rebels was very good. I don't think it the it did, I don't think it peaked as well as as Clone Wars, but I think it was more over there was less downtime and less filler episodes.

SPEAKER_04: 1:14:34

I think it was a more consistent, yeah. Maybe plateau is a bad way to describe it, but picked up and was very consistent with its heads and flows. You're right, Clone Wars really had a really, really like amazing peak, and then you're like, oh, okay, these are still good, but not as awesome. Oh I gotta Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh I don't even know where the hell I was going with that. Um, working with the stuff. Um, but there's some really cool, like I'm really enjoying building stuff with this because uh uh one of the things obviously that is great about Star Wars that I love too is, and we'll get to this when we uh talk about Daggerheart, is my I really identify with that Jedi, like your inner hero, your inner power. Which wolf are you feeding? How do you make what the choices you make, how do they affect you and the world around you? Uh so those are the characters I lean toward when I do gaming and role-playing stuff like that. Right. So this set focuses on Jedi and Sith. So I'm like, oh, just man, I want to get me some Jedi on the table. I want to, I want to lightsaber throw, I want to put some lightsabers on these guys and slice and dice. And on the whole, it it works pretty good until I run into the like there are two of them, or now there are two of them, or whatever, and I'm like, oh, that's a that's that's uh that's a rough, uh, rough one right there. Um but so still playing around with it, still playing around with the deck, figuring out of doing it, and again, loving the database. So I played last last night or Wednesday night uh and spent a little bit Thursday morning, like, okay, I like where's the weakness? Where is my weakness? What do I need to have in there to help answer some of the questions? And since I use uh Force Table to play the decks, you can pull decks from the database and put them in as your opponent. Now Force Table is AI, it's not always gonna every now and then you just make a choice, and they're you're like, was that was that the best choice, Mr. AI or Mrs. AI, you know, whoever you um and you're like that was that was weird, why wouldn't you attack? You sh it wouldn't win you the game, but that would be the better. I don't know. AI's smarter than me, apparently. Um so I had fun building it and retw uh reworking it a little bit to come in hopefully on Sunday a little bit and play in our regular premiere style or whatever if we do a draft or something like that. So yeah, if you guys are obviously uh Wednesday nights is usually twin sons, and Sunday afternoons is usually either a draft, sealed, or just premiere play. Uh so come on in if you guys are into it. It's great. We've had a lot of really good uh Sunday afternoons, new people, new faces. Uh it's been really nice watching the community grow a little bit and having fun. Uh it's it's awesome. Perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh well. Should we get into our main topic? Maybe the main topic. And speaking of like building decks and characters and stuff like that, uh, and having the one of the few times to actually get some gaming on, Paul. Right. You opened up your domicile, more specifically, your lovely gaming garage. Thank you. Uh, to let uh several of us in and start working on our daggerheart campaign. Right. Very cool. Uh, I loved it. It was great. That's our show.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:52

Uh so we had session zero for Daggerheart, which um a lot of people I you know, I don't do session zeros every time, but I I do try to to do at least usually my session zero will turn into like it'll be half of what we did, and then the other half will be a session. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:18:12

It actually is a little like the intro to to use a TV term, it's like the teaser trailer. Let's get the ball rolling a little bit, and then oh, what's gonna happen next? And we'll come back. Uh now I haven't role-played in a long freaking time. Like, I gotta say, that was probably the first time since '96, '97. Uh rolling some dice. Not that we rolled dice, but metaphorically speaking, dice adjacent. Sure. Um, but getting out character sheets and filling it out. Like, it's been a hot minute.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:43

Um and and all we did, just to be clear, yeah, all we did was session zero. We did no actual role playing. Um, I mean, that we did, but but we didn't like to the to the extent of us telling a story, it was all all the role playing that was done was done to facilitate what the the start of the story, right? Right. Once we do actually start playing. It was a lot of world building.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19:10

World building, I mean, that was kind of cool, uh, in the fact that I think Daggerheart, as you've mentioned this, is trying to be a little bit more of a oh, what's the phrase I'm looking for? Not role playing. Narrative. Thank you. Gosh. Uh obviously my caffeine hasn't totally kicked in. I'm almost out. Oh no! Uh quick, get this Red Bull stat. Um more narrative-based as opposed to 32 ounces of coffee. Just, oh guzzle, guzzle, guzzle. We'll have a pea break in a second. Um, but it was like I don't know what the percentage is yet because we haven't played it, but it definitely is like more narrative-based as opposed to dice rolling based, which I thought, which to me, I definitely was like, why am I not rolling dice? Pause. Right. Where I, you know, the old school, I roll my four six-sided, I take out the last one, I do that a couple of times, I run the numbers. Am I playing a because I usually do like either a ranger type or a wizard type? Like, which one did I roll an 18 or 17? Dear God, I hope I did. That's the that's going in the important one. And if I rolled anything terrible, well, uh, so you know, you run your gamut with your numbers, and that to me helps create your character. Like, obviously, if you're doing a wizard, a spellcaster type, you're gonna be more brainy than Brawny, and it helps create that character in your mind. Uh, but this dagger heart is as opposed to rolling dice, you just go, you have uh a plus two, two plus ones, a zero, two zeros, and a minus one. And just one minus one. Uh so as opposed to having numbers you roll against to do checks or whatever, you have they've and I don't know if other systems are doing this. I'm sure they are, but they've gotten rid of the idea of having a number. You literally just have your plus or minus, and then the DM goes, all right, make a roll against your blah, blah, blah. And you just roll the dice, and they, depending on how your dice roll, they can tell that story without being bogged down in a number thing too much. You that like you're not bogged down in the details. And well, like you succeeded, and I like this, like, you succeeded with hope. So, how, like, between the two of us, as you say, and this is gonna be hard for me, I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, this is gonna be a hard growing step. Uh oh, as I go through the role-playing in puberty again. Like, I just look at you and be like, I stabbed the darkness. And you're like, bro, come on, like, give me a little more. Yeah. Uh but you succeed with hope or fear, and so you can use that as a currency in the game to create that story, create that narrative in there. Uh, I'm excited, I am nervous, I'm not gonna lie, I am nervous as hell. You know, it's like going out on a first date. You're like, what am I?

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:00

Hey, hi, I um I I my name is my name's Chris, and I like long walks on the beach and I cast spells, and oh, what do you do?

SPEAKER_04: 1:22:09

Um, but it was a little bit of that during the game, during the pregame too, you know? Um each character has on the sheet. So I did enjoy the character sheets. Uh-huh. Um there was a lot of like explaining. You have your reference sheet, whatever. I'm like, it's pretty, it's once you read through it, not too confusing. But you flip it over.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:30

Pretty straightforward.

SPEAKER_04: 1:22:31

You've got your uh this is what we recommend, and I was lucky I didn't screw my recommended settings too badly. Um and then they got your uh starting equipment, which was cool. I circled a few things, which helped. And then they got those three questions. Your wait, it's I see like six questions. Sick, three things that you as a player ask yourself and work through. And then three questions you would ask your other players. Yeah. How to like how do we how do we connect? How did we meet?

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:02

Then this is that they're they're called background questions and connection questions. Yeah, that that was really like the the meat. That is the meat and potatoes on it. Absolutely. Creating a character in Dagger Heart is pretty pretty straightforward. Like you're you're choosing your class, choosing a couple cards, you're choosing where your stats go.

SPEAKER_04: 1:23:20

I love oh, I just want I love the fact that there's cards. Like I like I know this is a recent thing, D D's got them. It's the I enjoy a little paraphernalia, like a little, like, not just dice and pencil and stuff, because I've you know so many dice now. I'm like, oh, I can get cards now. Yeah, like extra stuff. But I like the fact that they have the reference cards, so you don't have to write everything on your character. Right. You can if you want, but you got them available, which is great.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:46

So I like that that you can write it down, right? Like a lot of people when they saw there were cards, they're like, oh, they're just trying to make extra money, and I don't want to play with cards, extra stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you don't have to. But you don't have to. They give you they they give you character sheet or character sheet um sheets. Yeah. They give you extra sheets that you can write your cards down, like a traditional DD character sheet, where you would write your abilities. Instead, you're just filling out uh a sheet of paper where your cards would go. And so I I love that it gives people that both for the between session thing, right? So I have two dagger heart campaigns I'm running right now. So one I'll need the cards for the other campaign. So there's gonna be a little bit of like people's cards are gonna get mixed up. So having them written down is gonna be helpful. Yeah, um, but also um, because everyone's sharing mine and Q's cards, um because there's only so many gate the game is still in its infancy. There's only so many books.

SPEAKER_04: 1:24:48

Are they uh to totally tangential sidetrack? Are the cards available separately yet? Do you know?

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:55

You can download them and print them for free on on the internet. Okay, okay, great. I love that.

SPEAKER_04: 1:24:59

Because I do that for Marvel Crisis Protocol all the time.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:01

I love that.

SPEAKER_04: 1:25:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:02

Um, so so like if you don't want to, if you want to just use your friend's book or you can't get a hold of the book right now, is is what most people are into. Yeah. Um, then you can print out your cards and you can you can probably uh I don't know for sure if they have it on their website, but hopefully there is a a tool where you can just kind of like the old fourth. Do you remember the fourth edition? You didn't play fourth edition.

SPEAKER_04: 1:25:28

I didn't I stopped.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:29

Fourth edition had 3.5 had an application you could download from the Wizards website that let you build a character in in this little Windows 97 application. And then at the end of it, it gave you uh it put all the cards onto a printout that you can print. They do.

SPEAKER_04: 1:25:48

So uh well before we did our pregame stuff, I was I watched a few YouTube videos from them just to be like, you know, what's that with the sheet or something like that? Uh get your sheet together. Get your sheet together, yep. Uh very hilarious, very fun. Uh, I think presentation was great. You could definitely tell the guy does voice acting and acting stuff like that. You know, it's it's he's just not a gamer. Yeah, they're they're pros. Um so I watched a few of those, and then I did so that I could um, you know, help facilitate and not get too bogged down on the stuff. I did try to build a character or two in that online thing, which is great. You can buy the I think they allow you to buy, I was about to say player's handbook. You can buy the book digitally, which unlocks the stuff, which I might do. We'll see. Um, so online they do have a character creation. It is limited by some of the pre-built stuff. Right. So if you buy digitally, you unlock everything and then you can do that. Uh, and you choose the cards, and then you you can export it to PDF to print out. So we'll I'm gonna experiment with that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:52

Yeah. Uh and to be fair, full full spoilers for for all of our listeners at home. Mike, the store owner, is is in the game with us. He has he has joined us. Um, so maybe we'll get him on for an episode or two. We'll probably get Q on for an episode or two. That'd be great. That'd be great. Um, but that being said, the um Mike did say he he had a lot of fun. I was really worried because Mike's not a huge fan of like the session zero stuff. He just wants to dive right in. Yeah. He said he loved the session zero stuff. Um good, yeah. He was loving the game. He said it's not he doesn't like it as much as he likes Genesis and Star Wars, which is fair. He brought up some very good points. Maybe we'll talk about that uh with him. But he um he really enjoyed it and he said he really liked what he saw and what the game brought, and he definitely is going to order as much of it as he can to offer in the store. So if if you're out there and you're you're this all sounds great to you and you want to get your hands on it, as soon as the prints are available, we're gonna have them in the store.

SPEAKER_04: 1:27:56

Well, I think due to the fact that it is uh from Critical Role, right? They have a they have a pretty huge following. Yeah. Um, and while I was watching some of these videos, like as YouTube does, as it procs out, like what video do you want to watch next? It definitely says, like, this is what I love about Dagger Heart, doing Dagger Heart, this, dagger. So there's definitely resources out there if you're interested in this. Not necessarily anti-number crunching stuff, but more narrative, flexible rules, storytelling uh version of role-playing. Um there's resources out there to watch and dip your toes in it to see if you want to buy it. Yeah. And and check it out. And I love the fact that Mike's like this is kind of fun. Uh, because there was a couple of times, and I wasn't sure because here's one of the things as we were doing this is like as you ask questions and someone's coming up with their character.

SPEAKER_01: 1:28:49

So I want to before we don't don't lose that thought. Uh I'll try not to. Yes. But before I wanted to get back to uh the the questions. So um, so as you're building, you build out your character, you write down all of the the mechanical junk, right? That that doesn't really take that long. It took us a long time because we literally had as soon as somebody finished that portion of the character, the next person would show up. Yeah, like and it was only one person at a time showing up. Yeah. So it was literally just back to back where we were all waiting on, always waiting on one person to finish building that part of the character. It was really funny how that timed out.

SPEAKER_04: 1:29:27

Not a lot of not too rule crunchy, uh not too number crunchy. Um, I thought it was very cool because then you can, as you do some of that stuff, you spend time with your, what were they called again? The ones that you do, your words, your phrases, your background questions. So then we have the three background questions. As someone's building their character, you can work on your background stuff. Uh so well, quick editor's note here. Apparently, my ineptitude knows no bounds. And our USB drive ran out of space. So here's the rest of the show. Or at least the rest of what we recorded. And uh you'll hear more about Daggerheart coming up. Don't go nowhere. Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:13

Are you are you wearing glasses? Oh my god, I am. Son of a saying was uh as soon as somebody would would finish building their character, the next person would show up. Right. And uh and then they'd get caught up to the background questions where they would then have to fill out their background questions. And so um to that end, we'll have to rehab this conversation again. We're gonna talk about it more next time since you all didn't get to listen to that great conversation about background questions, connections, and world building in Daggerheart.

SPEAKER_04: 1:30:49

Well, I think it's good. Uh if there's one thing I picked up from this is that it is a very, very cool narrative base, not number crunchy base. Right. Um so if you guys want to explore that, please do. And I think uh after this session, uh one of the things you mentioned is Mike is excited about this game.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:08

He's very excited about this game.

SPEAKER_04: 1:31:09

So we might actually see more of it in the store uh once more gets around. We'll see more of it here in the store. Yeah, absolutely. Which would be great. Uh and speaking of store, well, since we uh had a little technical hiccup, ladies and gentlemen, a little oopsie dootsy, a little mmm. Chris, you're fired. Oh god. Um fired, fired, I quit. Uh well, it's been an aw another awesome with a few road bumps time chatting and hanging. Oh, it's a pleasure. Oh my gosh. Despite our uh infallibilities, it's still pretty awesome. Um, if you guys are out and about, obviously, we are a store in the real world, funkatronicrex.com. Please swing by, check us out. Uh there's a schedule, I think, online and posted on all the social media platforms about when we play stuff. Uh come on in, get some games in.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:02

Check us out on Discord. Check us out, we have an active Discord community with full of super awesome people. Chris and I are on there periodically. We are happy to engage with discussions with you all. Yep. Definitely ask us questions uh on the podcast, give us ideas. We'd love to hear from you.

SPEAKER_04: 1:32:19

Always could use more show ideas.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:21

Discord is the best way to reach us.

SPEAKER_04: 1:32:22

And thoughts and comments on the shows. We'd love to the community engagement is great. And also leave a like a thought, comment, review on wherever you uh are listening to this. It will help obviously grow our podcast, get more people into it. So when they do search for stuff about Daggerheart or Arkham or Mel Brooks, they can actually help find us and you guys can spread the love.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:44

And speaking of supporting us, definitely check out our Patreon. We've got a lot of cool stuff, cool rewards going on on there. Uh yeah, if it's something that you can afford, something that is uh fits within your lifestyle, definitely consider uh supporting the store and the podcast through the uh Patreon as it helps us to continue bringing us uh bringing you these random tangential crazy board game adjacent uh recordings that we love doing three times. Uh three times a year. Three times a day because somebody doesn't hit record or runs out of space. Uh but no, please please check us out. Please consider supporting us. It it means uh the entire world to us and it lets us continue to spend time with uh with you guys indirectly, but also directly. Check us out. We're here in the store uh playing games on the Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:33:39

Usually whenever we record on Fridays, we're also here in the afternoons trying to get a game in. Uh I know Paul's here a lot playing the Magique. I do a lot of Star Wars.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:48

Wednesdays and some Fridays. I'm usually here. Yep. Chris is usually here uh Wednesdays. Usually Sundays, sometimes on Wednesdays when his writers group is rough writing. That's right. Uh all right.

SPEAKER_04: 1:34:00

All right, y'all. Thanks for listening. Uh, we will check you guys next time. Bye. Love you bye.

SPEAKER_05: 1:34:05

Bye bye, budfit man, game over there. Budfit man, game over there, game over.