Bonus Episode: The Workshop #1

We take a break from trials and tension for a behind-the-scenes discussion of why we chose Dungeons & Dragons as our first system, what it's like to build characters in a system-agnostic way, and our (specifically Sarah's) love of "Blue Prince." 

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The Mechanics Guild is written and played by Sarah Davis Reynolds, Carlina Parker, Attilio Rigotti, and Clay Westman. 

Music is by Clay Westman. 

Additional writing is by Taylor Fagins. 

Theme song is by Arcane Anthems. 

Editing is by Taylor Fagins, Attilio Rigotti, and Clay Westman. 

Album art and logo is by Dan Pindell. 

Character Illustrations are by LaserLazuli.

Produced by Ian Prince. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to what after characters.

SPEAKER_01 0:03

After characters. Is that what excited they were calling it? It's one idea. One of the first is probably figuring out the name of this thing.

SPEAKER_03 0:12

I have named so many things today, including completely off the dome, so I'm not naming this one. Okay. I came up with after characters.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

I'm wondering if there's anything about uh like fixing a car, like um thinking of mechanical, you know, thinking of mechanics.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

The tuna, the tuna? Welcome to the tuna is not the garage. Damn it, did I name something else?

SPEAKER_04 0:32

You did, baby!

SPEAKER_01 0:33

The garage. It's a welcome to the garage, the tuna.

SPEAKER_04 0:37

The checkup, the check-in.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

What do they call it when you like bring it the check oil light that we ignore from the month? Check engine room. You have to stop saying rooms.

SPEAKER_04 0:46

Um Well, we'll put all this into uh a poll. We'll let people vote on the room.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

Ooh, if they can vote on the name of this, yeah, our options are the after characters, the check-in, the I give up. Um tune-up.

SPEAKER_04 0:58

I like the tune-in. The tune-up is also tune up.

SPEAKER_03 1:00

I wonder if there's something to do with like character sheets also.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Um But that's the thing. We need a system agnostic uh should we talk at all about DD or should we save that for uh an uncle?

SPEAKER_03 1:14

I think we can talk a little bit about it. We want to we want to do a deeper dive later. Um, but we did just finish recording several sessions of DD. Uh, how do we all feel, friends? And cooking taste, dude.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

It's so good to be in the space, and I think you do a great job of what you do.

SPEAKER_03 1:29

We had to start my compliment.

SPEAKER_04 1:32

Why not? You're so fucking fantastic. I think you're for everything. That is my tone. That is my tone. It was a little intense.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

This is my nightmare. Never mind the bleeding lightning. This is my nightmare.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

No, but uh what I wanted, I would not be nice. I would not be nice. You will not be nice. Uh but uh what I did want to bring up is that DD wasn't the original system for the first arc, but it wasn't what it was gonna be for this series of things, right? And we ended up really coming back to it for a reason, right?

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

What's the instinct around that for you, for us, or everybody, to be like, or go back into it?

SPEAKER_03 2:06

Yeah, I mean, I think that with DD, and uh everyone here knows this because I say this all the time of like, this is not a DD podcast. Um this is an actual play podcast where we play a lot of things. And I was a little hesitant to even start with DD because I didn't want us to be known as a DD podcast. But I think that is what brought definitely me, I think Carlena and Clay, and a little bit of telio too, of like that is what brought me into tabletop role-playing games is DD. And um it felt right to say in this game that we're going to explore new systems that we don't know, that we're gonna break rules and like fuck around a lot, start at home, you know, start at what feels comfy and right. Um and as, you know, full disclosure, as a DM, I've been DMing for 10 years now. I've mostly only DM'd DD. And I've noticed in writing this adventure, there is a lot of I write with DD in mind that I'm trying to break of actually just write a story and then figure out how the game fits. But there is a lot of like, and how do I do this mechanically through DD? Um, so I think to like figure out the way we all work together and the way these gears turn, doing something that we all felt good and comfortable with felt right.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Sure, sure. We we also want to start with something I think is immediately accessible to most people for getting to know these characters because they will stay consistent, everything else will change.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Uh, real quick, what was the first system you ever played? I will go first with DD 3.5. Wow. Nerd True, true. It's back in high school.

SPEAKER_04 3:44

Gosh. I do I do think my first one was DD. I think like right during the pandemic, um, I knew I wanted to get into it, but I didn't have any friends. Luckily, the pandemic put everything on the phone. At all? You had no friends, no, um, luckily the pandemic put everything online. So I got started on Roll 20 and was able to join, I think I joined three. Wow. And I had like weekly games with three different groups for a while. Because I had nothing else to do, like everyone else on the planet. Absolutely. Um obviously that like shifted and changed. Um, but yeah, I got into DD shortly thereafter, did Vampire the Masquerade for a while.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

I still have to play Masquerade. Morgana.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

I feel I don't think it was D, but I feel like it's one of those things where you like where you you're like, oh yeah, totally, start with DD, but you actually have encountered some sort of tabletop RPG before in some other fashion. I mean, I come from the video game world, right? I do have some experience in tabletop, and so you know, a lot of those like the Fallouts, the Baldur's Gate 2, like all these are, you know, Dungeons and Dragons. They are the DD system, right? That are sort of put into the and the all the number number crunching and the rolling and everything is sort of put behind the scenes a little bit, right? So I would say sure, formerly DD, but I would I do believe there's other systems that have been hovering around. Call of Cthulhu, probably.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

That's what I would have guessed.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

Yeah, I think like, or or you know, or some of those tabletop things that sort of ghost others into it, right? Like well, I mean, not yeah, you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_03 5:22

Yeah. Technically Pathfinder.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Pathfinder So I started with 3.5, but then Pathfinder is where I really like got bit.

SPEAKER_05 5:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

I loved um one one thing that doesn't exist in any modern version of DD is this thing called prestige classes that used to have in 3.5, where if you met certain qualifications, if you had a uh this many levels in this and this many levels in this, you could take a prestige class, which was extremely like focused and not necessarily good, but always fun and different. Um Pathfinder had a lot of that shit too, just like tons and tons and tons of options.

SPEAKER_04 5:57

Okay, that's how I feel about multiclassing in general in DD. It's like not necessarily always optimized, but super fun to do.

SPEAKER_03 6:03

I listen, I'll take a little level of Bard for flavor.

SPEAKER_04 6:06

Yeah. Yeah. I did yeah, I think this is one of my first times ever actually multiclassing. And like we'll get into this later, but like Liv is technically a rogue sorcerer multi-class. Yeah. Let's get into that now. I'm not sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Literally, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

So specifically, the question of we talked a little bit about this before, like what would we talk about? Um, this was the first time ever building a character without the subclass, like the specific archetype in mind of what they would be.

SPEAKER_03 6:35

Specifically building them completely system agnostic. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Yes, yes, yes, yeah. Usually, every single time, it's what brand of wizard do I want to play? Because I exclusively play wizards, and then I fit everything in around that. I don't even think about what they look like some of the time, because I'm so mechanics driven. Yeah. But this was the first time having to go, okay, I'm just gonna make um a little guy, and then find out from there. And then in my mind I was like, okay, he's probably magically inclined, and then this and then that. The interesting thing for me, and you probably found this too, when when it came time to sit down and put this little guy into fifth edition, I went at first had my usual thought of what kind of wizard am I? And I went, oh shit, he's a tinkerer. He's not a wizard, he's more of an artificer. Okay, I guess I'm breaking my own mold a little bit. They're like cousins. They're half cousins. They're very closely related, but still.

SPEAKER_04 7:31

He's really, he really does have wizard energy.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

And he's got one level of wizard because he that was required. Yeah. But that was one of the most fun things about building for this was uh having the idea first and then shaping that into the system rather than the other way. And you wouldn't say Argo's a wizard.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Say that again? Would you say Argo is a wizard?

SPEAKER_01 7:54

I'd say he's more of an artificer. Yeah, yeah, which is which is interesting, which is not like we reskin the wizard. Right, yeah. That's what I was thinking at first. It's like, how do I reskin the and that that didn't feel authentic to the character?

SPEAKER_04 8:04

Yeah. I think, weirdly enough, the first thing that I thought of when I was creating a character is I bought a set of dice. I went to the store, I saw some dice that I really liked, and I said, these. Now, how do I make something that would use these? Wow. And so from there, because they were that like black and like blue and and purple, I was like, oh, like an oil slick. And from there, I said oil slick, that was her nickname. Why? Her last name, Oslick. She's oil slick, she's she's confident. Yeah, it's for Oslick. We haven't brought that in, we haven't brought that in yet. Oh yeah. But that's the one. I mentioned Ozlick, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's like an oil slick, yeah. But once, once, and we'll talk about this later. Once my once. I gotta keep looking at the camera, like our friends here are a little more talking about later. Once my friends are a little more comfortable, they that's that's the name that they throw around when I'm like doing really well at something, as just like a good job oil slick. And so that made me be like, oh, charisma, high charisma. What are the like things that I can do in DD that are high charisma? Um, and weirdly enough, I don't usually play a rogue as like charisma evil. Yeah, but we wanted to like have that be like, oh, she's really good at being like a diplomat and like an ambassador. So that's where like uh the mastermind rogue came in.

SPEAKER_03 9:18

I can also you, I was gonna say tell you, you're you have a very different because you don't have as much experience with DD, so you really came with like a fully fleshed character concept, and then we had to have the discussion of like and now what is this class-wise? So Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

I think for me that's exactly right, which is I started with uh I mean it is in a way an archetype, right? But it's a particularly sort of archetype figure that I've been interested in in the last years, which is playing sort of older characters, playing characters that um are not necessarily in the either young about the start or in the prime of their life. Not to say that he's not, you know, as a character an expert, but he's not exactly like your he won't be the front person in the DD movie. You know what I mean? Which is he won't be the front. Which I think is interesting. So we really started, I started around that, and a lot of inspirations are figures uh like that, or older or more rugged or everything, right? Uh and from that sort of be like, oh, so then clearly he's he's in the fighter class, he's just like he moves into sort of a and I don't even it's even say fighter class, I would just say more of the melee, whatever that means, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Which is he showed up, not uh to our first like rehearsal, not even being like fighter, just I'm like not sure if he's a fighter or a monk.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Yeah, was on the table for the table, right?

SPEAKER_03 10:35

And paladin, and yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

And sort of ended in the rune knight. Uh but even you know, rune night uh is the closest thing in D to question mark?

SPEAKER_05 10:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Not necessarily fixed by that, right? But like I think it was like, sure, they can operate within within this set of rules, right? Yeah. He would just operate like this.

SPEAKER_03 10:54

Which is a very fun exploration that we're gonna continue to have.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

This every time we change systems.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

Yeah, when we go to that call of Cthulhu and you're all investigators. I know.

SPEAKER_04 11:03

Um I'm so interested to be like, he tries his woo- his runes, they don't work. Like what or do they work, but they do something else.

SPEAKER_03 11:09

I have so much lore written of how does magic act in other worlds.

SPEAKER_04 11:17

I'm scared. I'm scared.

SPEAKER_03 11:18

Yeah, I'm nervous.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

But it what I think is interesting is that you know we if you've been following our podcast, uh if you've been following us for now, you know that we have these sort of two forms of of uh engaging audiences, right? We have these long, the long podcast, the story, long form storytelling, and these sort of short um one-offs where we get to see all the mechanics, right? Which is it's very different to be in a in uh what I will call the long burn or a long ride for mechanics, right? It is easy to think this is a just this type of podcast and this other type of podcast, right? How do we find ways, I think? I mean, for you or Sarah is your idea, how do you bring those mechanics in the fore and not just sit so much in them? You know what I mean what I'm trying to explain, right? Which is like a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 12:03

I mean, it was interesting recording today, um, because because we're all such storytellers and we'll get into scenes sometimes. I have to constantly remind myself, oh, we need to roll. Like, we need to roll dice. I don't think that's true. I think we should we're just having a conversation. Oh shit, yeah, you should roll for persuasion. We're not just having a convincing conversation. Um, and I think that's an interesting thing that we'll find over switching systems is will that affect our storytelling at all? Or is our storytelling really going to seem very familiar no matter what scene we're in? And it's just the tools that we have at our disposal that change.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

And what is your hope?

SPEAKER_03 12:44

I don't know if I have one. That's the thing is that's the great thing about this podcast, is it's fully an experiment. It's a complete hypothesis. I'm like, I don't know what's gonna happen. Let's figure it out. Um for science. For science was originally when this was more of a comedic podcast, uh, was one of the things. But what do we see? There was a whole, there was a whole thing. They were no, listen, it's still comedic, but there was gonna be this whole like multiversal, like they were trying to build a toll road through it all. Anyways, not very like hitchhikers gonna be a little bit more. It was a little too hitchhikersy guide, and I was like, well, let's not do that. But um, there was a lot more tongue-in-cheek before.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Oh my god, the great secret of the mechanic skills is they're going to charge us to use the toll.

SPEAKER_03 13:25

They charge us to use the toll. They're capitalists! Kill them!

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Shocking. But it almost seems like you want us to sit in a system long enough to be like, oh, I think I get it, and then flip it around and then pull out, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

A little bit, yeah. I mean, I don't want us to ever feel too comfortable, but I think that because I want us to really think about what we're doing, because I think I I think that it was the right choice to start in DD, but the con of starting in DD is many of us know it so well that we don't think about it. We'll say, Oh, can I do this thing? Can I can I roll this thing? As opposed to us really having to sit and say, now how are the mechanics interacting with the story? Because we're not as familiar with the mechanics. Um so I'm curious, and that's why I started introducing things like um, if you've listened to this podcast, if there are episodes otherwise spoiler for either episode or three or four, one of the two. Um I am homebrewing some rules already of like the studying rules and the things, you know, over ex over prepared over-exerting yourself in preparation will give you, you know, some things. Um a couple of you had moments where, ooh, we'll get into this. Um, what the other fruits were. Um could have done other things. But um, I I will start homebrewing a little bit because I do want to keep you on your toes. Um, and I think that's the hope in terms of like pulling rug under you. Even when we're playing DD that we are so comfortable with, I want there to be some things that are unfamiliar.

SPEAKER_02 14:45

And just to for people who maybe don't know so much, but homebrewing. Do you mean when you fudge fudge with the rules a little bit?

SPEAKER_03 14:52

It's that I understand the structure that DD is built on, and I say this is technically not a thing in DD, but I know how dice rolls work, I know how these things work. How can I build something new that uses these mechanics or this structure that it is built in?

SPEAKER_04 15:09

Which I love because I feel like homebrew rules are almost as intrinsic to DD as like the core handbook. I think every DM always has something they want to play with, something they want to add, you know, a way that they can put their own personal stamp on the game. And I think that's so beautiful that this game like really allows creatives to kind of take ownership of something that's been created for them to have fun and storytelling. So I love that we're incorporating that as well in each of our characters a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

And in DD, Lavinia is homebrewed, specifically her race, is um the fawning is very exciting.

SPEAKER_04 15:40

I think it was like a slight reskin of Seder and like a couple other little things, like maybe a little tabaxian there. Tabaxian there, yeah. I think so. It was really exciting. I think um, because like one of the first things I thought of her was her like one of her other like mononyms is like the dough eyed deceiver. That was like the concept that I made of her. That's why she's like kind of sneaky but looks really innocent. Um so like one of the things I really wanted her to do was be able to look at people and kind of evoke disadvantage or something. That was like my like thought, and we worked together to be able to come up with something for that that we haven't gotten to yet. That we'll get to in comment.

SPEAKER_03 16:13

And it was such a fun conversation though, because this group of four kept like the way we all added to it in our knowledge of things was a very cool, like cohesive cauldron in creating that.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Very fun. One thing I add to every game I DM is uh at some point I give my players a wand of speak to stones. Because a wand of speak to stones, because I think uh NPC interactions, like roleplay interactions, are the heart of everything that we're really trying to do as roleplay game players, roleplay gamers. Um, and so in a dungeon in a cave, you often don't have NPCs.

SPEAKER_03 16:58

You don't have a lot of NPCs.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

You don't have a lot of NPC interaction, but if you've got that wand of speak to stone in your pocket, you can at any time be like, hey, I'm feeling a little bit stuck. Cast it on the boulder, and then I, as the DM, get a treat of, okay, what does a boulder sound like? What can I do for you? If you cast it on a pebble, what do you mean? Yeah, that's very cute. And then you just have a little chat, a little conversation with a uh a rock, and maybe it's helpful and maybe it's not, but no matter what, it's like kind of fun and propels things forward a little bit. That's very effective. I love that.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

I was gonna say, not to get into the weeds of it, but that is, in my opinion, the biggest challenge as a DM is making sure that like there are ways to justifiably in the story guide you and point you in the direction that you need.

SPEAKER_04 17:48

I get it. Because it's always like you want to be helpful, you don't want to be too helpful, you don't want to take agency. I get it. It's a very fine line to walk, and you're doing a great job.

SPEAKER_03 17:58

Oh, thank you. I I felt a little bad on the one puzzle first. Like, listen, like puzzles are hard. I was like, I don't I can't help you with this one. Um it's fine.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

We could I bet I could brute force it.

SPEAKER_03 18:08

Which thank God for it. I did make it possible to brute force. You're so welcome for that. Um yeah, okay, so we did a bunch of recording today. Is there anything from today's episodes? Because we're gonna drop this episode after the actual incident drop. Is there anything that happened today that you wanna like dig into more? Yes.

SPEAKER_04 18:31

I want to know. Yes, definitely. I want to know why uh my friend fell on the floor.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there are four types of fruits. Yes. Um there is memory, um, possibility, sabotage, and curse.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Ah, yes.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

And you ate a sabotage one.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Um but it still asks for a name to curse.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

Ah, okay, okay, okay. Got it, got it, got it, got it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

And so what does Lucius have to do with her friend? With Ken.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

With with uh basically it would have taken any name and would have just redirected it somewhere.

SPEAKER_04 19:11

Oh. But if he had given a name of someone who was part of the It would have directed directly to the the way that the the magic of the guild works, right, is like if you think of it like a computer, it has X amount of elements.

SPEAKER_03 19:25

And so if you name something that is directly in it, it will send to that. If you name something that is not, it will find the best substitute.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Kaelin was the best substitute. She might have been. I was gonna say it may. I thought I thought we've discovered that Kaelin was Lucius the whole time.

SPEAKER_03 19:40

That's the secret. What if she was the bully the whole time? She was the bully the whole time. Um yeah, since since there was, since Lucius is not here and there was not a pledge named Lucius, it just basically like randomized until it found a suitable target.

SPEAKER_04 19:54

And that sabotage um wasn't like detrimental, like she would have she would have gotten up without us. Um but I imagine that that like minute of time off of her like finishing, I is there gonna be like a list of everyone's names and where you're placed?

SPEAKER_03 20:08

Cool, like a cast list, cool. That's why we did it in initiative of like there could have been a world where one of you finished way before. You kind of worked out that you mostly all finish roughly the same times. But there could have been one where you know Argo finished last.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

Yes, because Argo rolled the.

SPEAKER_03 20:25

Which if I was actually making your all of your brute force attempts be six seconds only, I feel like Argo would not have finished last. Get him, get him there in almost closing. But yeah, no, they're they're definitely. We should have actually timed how long it took him to get out of that puzzle and added that to his time. How did that go? Um, yeah, it was a race for sure. It was a race to see who who finished and how. Um so great. Another sabotage was the bridge, right? That in a way you did sabotage that pledge. They had to go back and find a completely different path through, um, which definitely would have taken them a while. How many more rooms were there? That I made or like total because I knew I wanted each of you to go through like three. Yes. Um, there's like 20-something. Yeah, there's a lot.

SPEAKER_02 21:08

Was Blueprints an inspiration?

SPEAKER_03 21:11

You know, here's the thing about Blueprints, everyone. Everyone should play Blueprints. And I'm not the we this podcast is not sponsored by Blueprints. I need to be so for real about this. We don't see anything.

SPEAKER_02 21:25

Yeah, sponsored by Blueprints.

SPEAKER_03 21:28

I just think everyone should play good games, and Blueprints is a fucking great game, and everyone should play this game. Um, I don't, it wasn't directly inspired. I I've been playing this game for months, so I think that any media you consume is going to seep into what you are creating. Um in the same way that like I'm trying to think of other media that I can mention here that won't be spoilery. Um, I mean, I definitely noted while making a lot of this like Hunger Games is creeping in. And I'm like, oh, I don't want to squid games. Yeah, Squid Games is coming in. The Locked Tomb series is peeking in, which you'll see a little bit of.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

I hope what we do is a bit more straightforward than the Locked Tomb series.

SPEAKER_03 22:13

You'd better be.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Tamson. Tamson. It's just it's a it's a bit convoluted. Bit convoluted. You're great stuck after the second one, I can't.

SPEAKER_03 22:22

But that second book OofA d messed me up.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Still excited for the fourth one. Hope you're doing well. Sponsor our podcast.

SPEAKER_03 22:35

That's what these talkbacks are. It's just just a sponsor. That's what it's called.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Kojima Sun and Tamson both check out the Patreon. We'll put the link in the thing. Incredible. What were you gonna say?

SPEAKER_03 22:49

Talking about inspiration, the Love Tim series. Oh yeah, I just like the way the media seeps into it. I think that you bought me the Steal Like an Artist book, which is so good that it's just like that's what we do. There are six stories in the world, and we're all just telling our own versions of them and flavors and refolding and forms of the floor. Yeah, we did a lot of flirting today, yeah. We did flirt.

SPEAKER_02 23:12

One person did most of the flirting.

SPEAKER_03 23:13

Who, me? I didn't technically by volume. I think I did.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

Actually, we did not expect to flirt the most. Did flirt a lot.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

And I don't know if Argo really has any awareness of what flirting is.

SPEAKER_04 23:28

Yeah. I don't know if Errol does that. I just might not have been flirting. I think I was being friends. Two golden retrievers and a dog car.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

So cute. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:37

I think Carlina personally sweat the most, being like, mmm, who's hot? Something that I used to have in one of my old like home games is I would roll for hot a lot. So sometimes that does like creep in. A charisma. Yeah, but I think like not, yeah. Just to be like, eh, I'm bored. Is anyone here hot? Great. Get out of here. Just as like a big thing.

SPEAKER_03 23:59

My very first OC. Um, her name was Pandemonium. Um, she went by Pan, and I would often joke that pandemonium is not the only thing Pan is short for. Um and truly, I mean, this was a fade to black game, so we didn't play it out too much, but like and me where she went. I was like, and who am I taking home tonight? Um, and this was 10 years ago and really probably should have told me a lot about my personal sexuality and identity. Um I was blind then, now I know.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

We're still blind now. There's so much we have to say. I love the joke. Pandemonium. You're okay.

SPEAKER_03 24:31

Pan. Uh also short for pansexual.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Oh I love you, man. You you you as a person are such a great vehicle for explaining things to the audience at home.

SPEAKER_03 24:45

It's true. Um speaking of explaining things, are there any terms today that we hit that we feel like we should explain a little bit? Well, we have a list of things. Um we do have a list of things. I was realizing that, like, again, because we are so comfortable with DD, we're using ver vocabulary that we have been using forever and are so comfortable with, and realizing, oh shoot, actually, this might not be common knowledge. Um, so we talked about cantrips, um, which are spells you can cast without expending a resource. Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Um which is something that's new to fifth edition. We didn't really have cantrips before 5e.

SPEAKER_03 25:18

Well, because before there was like the things you could do daily. There were the things you could do. Fourth edition counters dailies and at wills. And then at wills. Yeah, which I actually liked a lot.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

We don't talk about fourth edition because just because it's shoehorned.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

It's a lot better than people think.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

We it should pump those breaks. You can fight in the comments. It shoehorned the whole game into like every class ended up feeling the same when everyone had similar abilities.

SPEAKER_03 25:45

I think I I admire it for the base game design, and then I think any any trapping on top of that box, you're right, felt the same.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

It just disappointed DD players because they were used to the specific freedom that comes from all the creativity that like necessarily for them. Well, it was Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, probably for the DD play. But I was trying, I feel like there's It was trying to be different. It was trying to be different. It really took a big swing. And there's I think the equipment section in fourth edition is is endless, and I still pull ideas from that when I'm thinking about levels. Which would be very fun to get.

SPEAKER_03 26:21

I was gonna say combat in 4U is good. Um we're currently playing 2014 5e DD, um, to clarify. That is because we will get to 2024. In the 2024 ones, there's the weapon mastery stuff. Yes, that I think is pulling inspiration from 4. And I'm very excited to get into that and see um how some of that stuff works. Because it's it is more of a swing than it is in the 2014.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Yeah, just to remind me. That means that four lasted like nothing.

SPEAKER_03 26:49

It did not last long.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

It did not last long. Because I learned the 3.5 in 20. I learned 3.5 in 20. I was college. So I learned 3.5 in 2011, 2012? Yeah. And 2014 was five already. So what four was lasted like two years, three years?

SPEAKER_01 27:05

When uh so maybe 2011, fourth edition might have already been out.

SPEAKER_03 27:09

But just not dipped out. I think a lot of people didn't make the jump because they didn't like it.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

And then something about 5e, they they dipped back in just enough ways to make everybody comfortable and happy with like, oh, we can still be creative with all of these things, but they still had a lot that made it simpler for new players. The whole advantage system is frankly genius. Yeah. And it's been adopted by so many other systems. As a result, because it is just so clever.

SPEAKER_03 27:34

That's another term we should talk about because we use that quite a bit. Advantage and disadvantage. Um, and we'll also get to uh the help action, which we also kept using advantages today. Cups is gonna be. Um advantage is rolling two d20s, it's the uh 20-sided dice. Um and taking the higher of the two numbers and then adding your modifiers, which are the numbers that we've been adding to everything. Disadvantage is rolling two and taking the lower of the two.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

What gives you advantage and what gives you disadvantage? A variety of things.

SPEAKER_03 28:05

There are mechanical things like somebody giving the help action, which is I'm going to use my action, or in some cases bonus action. Cups, as you're familiar, can do this as well. Basically, cups can spend their turn giving help, which grants advantage.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Which is why familiars are busted. If you're taking a few. Completely busted. If you're playing a wizard, take fucking fine familiar. If you're playing a wizard and you're not taking fine familiar, you're not playing a wizard. You're fucking it up. Play a sorcerer.

SPEAKER_03 28:32

I forgive you, but just DM DMs, your wizards are gonna take it. Expect that they're gonna always have advantage on everything, and they're gonna be able to cast spells through their familiar.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Because we don't have bonus action anything else that we can do. So the familiar kind of shores up that little bit of uh the trade-off is though that you can then kill the familiar and cause emotional damage.

SPEAKER_03 28:53

It's true. They will be rematerialized. Yeah, eventually, eventually.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

But can you can you recast cups? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

Cups could die.

SPEAKER_03 29:04

Um and then also I am a big I love to grant advantage and sometimes disadvantage um when it is narratively earned. Yeah. Um, I think if you're in a situation where you are a trained, you know, fighter and you're wanting to do something of like, can I figure out strategy in this mode? I'm like, you probably know this. So I'm gonna give you advantage on this role because you have a higher likelihood of knowing this thing specifically. Whereas the skills can be a little stunted of like, you're always rolling history or you're always rolling, you know, arcana. But if it is specifically an arcana that you have like mastered, I want to give you a boost there. And I can't give you more to your skill, but I can give you advantage to try and hit that number a little bit better.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

I am a big fan of sometimes players. I try to do this as a player. Uh, I'm a big fan of when people say, I'm probably distracted by something else going on. Can I roll this with disadvantage? If you ask me to roll something with disadvantage, I'm giving you inspiration. You just don't even know it. I'm going to give you something back later.

SPEAKER_03 30:13

One of the very first characters I ever made, I was like, she's deathly afraid of fire, and I worked at the DM. I was like, I want to have a handicap. If she's fighting around fire, I want to have disadvantage on shit. And they were like, you know, you're giving yourself like a handicap. Uh huh. Good.

SPEAKER_04 30:25

Yeah, a story, we're not trying to.

SPEAKER_03 30:26

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

But that's something that's interesting, which is not said in DD a lot, but uh some other systems highlighted, for example, called Cthulhu, which we're gonna encounter later, right? Which is like, you know, they're like, you are expected to fail. Please, if a partner, if one of your uh player fellow players wants you to fail, they can just say, Hey, I think they failed that.

SPEAKER_03 30:42

I want to fail, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

Or they say, I want, you know, if I'm playing with Clay, I can be like Clay, you actually fail that role. Yeah, that's like a rule to use.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

That's one of the other things.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

I think in Cthulhu you can say we if like we can all decide, is it interesting for you to fail? It is really interesting for you to fail, so let's fail it.

SPEAKER_04 30:55

Yeah, you had a you had a note, Selena. While we were talking about advantages, I was curious about the um the pocket watch that I got in that like um RP encounter. Because I know that uh what Jax had told me that other people had gotten it. I'm curious, was it given to me because I had a good encounter with other people?

SPEAKER_03 31:14

Cool. That was exactly it. There were about a dozen NPCs in that scene that any of you could have interacted with, right? And all of them were judging your interactions with them, and if they felt that you had done a satisfactory job, they gave you a boon, which was that thing. And if you had entered into there were a couple, every not every room, but any of the rooms that had a star had that color. Um, and originally when I designed it, you were only gonna get one clue that was a color and then it would correspond with the room. And then I was like, the I'm rolling a D20 over here to see what room you go into. Like the chance that the favor you got matching the room you're in, that was just blueprints. Frankly. And so I was like, great, I'm just gonna have it. It it would give you any clue for the room you were in. Okay, that's what the city was. I don't think you hit another one that had a clue. Oh, really? Not all of them needed it.

SPEAKER_04 32:08

So I was like, oh, another star.

SPEAKER_03 32:10

Yeah, not all of them not all of them needed a clue. Because you had an expo room, and then the secrets was sort of that one was open-ended enough that you could figure that out without a clue. So not all of them had one. Um both of you ran into ones with clues but had no way of accessing the clue.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Thanks for nothing, Mervenia.

SPEAKER_03 32:29

Yeah. So I went, then I follow you. That was just the color of your clue, but you didn't have a compact, so you didn't get a clue.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

Ah, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Well, I kind of just lucked into breaking the shit. When it when I broke the first one and like the puzzle didn't reset, I was like, okay, well, let's let's see this one through. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:51

Yeah. Gotta smash stuff. Gotta smash it.

SPEAKER_03 32:53

Smash, or you could have just covered them.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Great.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

Ooh, they just couldn't see you.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

That was the whole thing. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to see you. Cool, cool, cool.

SPEAKER_03 33:01

All right, wow.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

I I did there was a big part of Clay wanted really to go over to at least one of those other NPCs and be like, Where are you from? Like, just like try to have a thing. And then I was like, Argo would not. Argo would not. He's found this one person who's tolerating him right now. This is all we're sitting here all night long. This is it.

SPEAKER_04 33:22

Yeah, when you said it was timed, it was the like one thing to be like, Oh, do I rally these people? Do we figure out how to get through this all together so that we all definitely move on? And then you were like, it's timed. I'm like, well, we just gotta go. That's gotta go to the race.

SPEAKER_03 33:34

Yeah.

unknown 33:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:35

No, there were there was like a dozen of those that you could have gotten depending on who you talk to and how well you did.

SPEAKER_04 33:42

Uh so they were giving out boons. Did they also give out biffs? Or if you had a bad counter.

SPEAKER_05 33:48

Oh, that's pretty simple.

SPEAKER_03 33:48

I didn't call it a word, but I've been calling them burdens.

SPEAKER_04 33:51

Burdens and burdens.

SPEAKER_03 33:53

I think biffs is uh they wouldn't have given you a burden that like directly impacted your um run of that maze, but they would have reported it. Because the the guild is watching everything you do and they are taking comprehensive notes about everything.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

They already know that I shared my secret. Probably. Probably.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

Probably.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

It said don't share with anyone. Well, don't fucking tell me what to do.

SPEAKER_03 34:18

That that is clay speaking, not Argo.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

That is clay. That is clay. You're not my dad. Yeah. Um, except in the game. Uh yeah, I mean, Argo is Argo is such a like a team, he's so idealistic. Like he hasn't had great uh experiences of like companionship before, but he does have such a an idealized view of the mechanics of like these are all team players and they're working to make every world they go to a better place. Um so like that's that sort of like openness just feels like the right move.

SPEAKER_03 34:53

And for the record, again, like it said don't tell anyone, but it is part of what they're watching, is also just how what you do with that. Because there are maybe times that you need to break the rules in order to save something. We're finding out what the right answer is. There is no right answer, and that's a fun fact. It's an open-ended test.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

That is the thing. There's been go. No, you are you are talking directly to the There's been there's been a lot of like open-ended things so far, even just all of the lights turning off and go and not having a heading is confusing for Argo, but also confusing for Clay.

SPEAKER_05 35:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:33

I work best with a clear objective and having to just throw my hands up and sort of trust Sarah's got me, and just like start walking forward is a is an important lesson for I think every player out there to place faith in your DM. People who've been playing tabletop games for a long time, I'm sure, have also had instances where your DM very quickly shows you don't trust this person. Don't, yeah, don't the the number of like combative DMs I've had over the years, things like that. Oh, it's it's just gonna happen. Some people want to go on a power trip, and that's why they play games, and that's a shame. But you know, for every one of those, I'm sure there's another person who's just interested in telling that interesting story. So trust your gut, find your people.

SPEAKER_04 36:19

I was gonna say while we were talking about um uh that trial, which was as we talked about earl uh a little bit earlier, that we're supposed to be like one-on-one, like you're supposed to do it more individualized. And um I knew this and Lavinia knew this, but we just like decided I had people, why would I do it by myself?

SPEAKER_03 36:38

Um I think it never like explicitly like you must do this on your own.

SPEAKER_04 36:43

And that's the thing, it's like there's no explicit rules yet. Yep. I think there I was curious if there's like an explicit like code of conduct of this, or is it gonna be or is it like all really hunger games? Like, I don't know if there's like a don't steal from each other, don't do this, don't do that, like that kind of like general rules over like the whole the guild as a whole.

SPEAKER_03 37:03

I'm sure they're you know the guild as a whole definitely has a code of conduct. I really haven't told you yet that yeah, because again, part of this is just finding your organic personality because they can shape anyone into any shape they want, but it is better to find someone who naturally fits the mold that they want, that they can then refine rather than here's a list of rules you must follow, and we think that's gonna be a problem for you.

SPEAKER_02 37:31

And the quota contact could be survive at all costs, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 37:35

Because especially when you're in other verses and it's you three and nothing else, because the guild really doesn't have a lot of communication with you when you're in other verses until you can establish that pathway. So it is, yeah, you three against whatever the fuck you run into there. It is survive and it is get back. Like that is effectively the code of conduct. That's what I'm planning. Yeah, no, thank y'all for letting me throw you into things that don't have rails. I hate rails. I simply hate it. I've noticed that.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

I've noticed that. I don't like to rail against rails. I know you rail against Rails.

SPEAKER_03 38:10

I rail against rails. Because I here's the funny thing, we keep talking about being storytellers, and like there is a story, but more importantly, there's a world. Um I think I'm more of a world builder than a storyteller. And I say, here's a world, go play. What do you want to do? Um and so it is always it's great to have a group that lets me do that and not constantly be like, well, but what's our table of contents? Right, right. We'll find it along the way. Yeah, we'll pick up all those pages.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

It's so interesting. The idea the the question of railroading is something that is such a hot point of like contention in so many playgroups. And I think people worry, this is my personal philosophy, I think people worry about it way, way, way more than they actually need to.

SPEAKER_05 38:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

I think if your DM, if your game master is has decided there is one correct way to do anything, and if you don't do that, then like, um, okay, I guess you, you know, pet the cat this guy. This guy. Yeah, like like that sort of shit, that's clearly not fun. Like, don't play in the space with that person. Um but I I think that I think that giving players a path, like setting them on the beginning of this journey and going, like, you're an adventurer, you want to save the world. Like, there are certain things that I'm so happy to assume about my myself as a player or the people in my party. One thing I always start doing now uh is as a DM is going, we're starting this adventure, like if I if it's with a new group of players players, we're starting this adventure in Media Res. Yep. Like you already know each other. You already know each other, you've been traveling together for a couple of months. There are still some secrets you don't know, but generally you know and trust each other. Because I started most of my campaigns originally in a tavern, and there was always at least one and sometimes a party full of edgelords who were like, I'm not sure I would, I don't, I'm not sure I want to work with you.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

And well, what makes you think that I'm gonna cowtow to you?

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Like whatever that doesn't fucking that sucks. That sucks. You can't all be Aragorn, and Aragorn was still out to help. Correct. He still showed up and he was like, a little more discretion from you, young sir. Um and he was like, you have a stout heart half. Uh anyway, I I fucking everybody everybody loves Lord of the Rings. So, but like assuming assuming certain things of like, oh, my players will will be interested in this person. They want to help, they're here to assist.

SPEAKER_03 40:51

Like a meet the party scene needs to be a meet the party scene, not a meet the character scene.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Yeah, yeah, well said, very succinct.

SPEAKER_03 41:03

Okay, well, yeah, let's wrap it up. Is there so um we've done several episodes, we're gonna take a little bit of a break before we record some more. Um, what is one thing that you are excited for and we're nervous for?

SPEAKER_04 41:20

Meeting my other players. I'm really excited and nervous to do that.

SPEAKER_03 41:26

I'm shocked we haven't. Like we did, we did in media rise in the first episode. We've had like some interactions with each other in the world, but right now where we're living, you don't know each other yet. Which is wow, this is a DM did control.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Hey I'm ex I'm I'm also super excited, and I'm I'm not nervous, I'm just very curious about that. Um, it makes sense to me that you're nervous because live it like takes in information about a person and like is a bit more critical in that way. Not to say that Argo's not critical, he's extremely critical to a fault, but he doesn't change anything about him depending on the person that he's with.

SPEAKER_04 42:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:08

So Clay just kind of has full trust that something's gonna work out. It's gonna, yeah, it's gonna have to be okay. The thing that I'm nervous about is uh I know we end up as mechanics, so I feel a tremendous pressure to really, really do well on these tests. I have to do, I actually have to pass.

SPEAKER_03 42:29

Yeah, it's true. What's funny is that like that ties into the non-rail roadiness of this all of like, I haven't given you the right answer because we don't know what the right answer is yet. We know that you get there, but I don't want you to think of like, I know I have to do X, Y, Z because that's what makes me a mechanic. Uh, because that answer is sort of open-ended, it's whatever you do in this arc is going to be the right answer.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

Which is hard for him and me to wrap our heads around.

SPEAKER_03 42:57

I get it.

SPEAKER_02 42:58

Yeah, I would say the more exciting thing for me is that you know, we know point C because we started in media rest. We know our learning point A, and we I just want to know how we get to point B and how we for A goes to B and B goes to C. We know some characters are gonna suffer a lot of losses. We know some characters are gonna grow because of that. We know some characters are gonna get to know each other and have particular relationships. So we just need to figure out that.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

I'm so nervous for the fallout with Errol. Um she already really when you started and introduced yourself during today's session, I had a a thousand thoughts in my mind in half a second. Um, because I kind of went through like, oh, I I wonder if Errol was actually like a long-term friend, and we both came into this together. And maybe the fallout happened before we showed up, but you introduced yourself, and in that moment I was like, full trust, yes, Sam. Hi!

SPEAKER_03 43:48

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Yeah, I thought about that too. And I had your character sheet pulled up, and I knew that you had a best friend in Constantine, and it was not Errol. There's a different name. Um, and so I was like. I think we want, especially because Liv is coming in with hometown friends, I wanted a different dynamic.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

I absolutely agree. And I think it's cooler getting to witness that fall off, that fallout.

SPEAKER_03 44:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:13

Yeah, I mean, I can't wait to see how we figure out how cups dies. Oh shit, sorry, spoiler.

SPEAKER_03 44:18

That's a spoiler.

SPEAKER_01 44:19

I knew you were gonna say it. You're starting to become a little predictable with it.

SPEAKER_02 44:22

I think that's okay. And I think sometimes you need some predictability in this impredictable.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

And that's where we'll end today's episode of the tune up.

SPEAKER_03 44:30

Whatever this is character tune up garage. Oh, you can see that.