Latest / Sessions Canceled / Tabletop Shout Out: CAIN, The Jujutsu Chainsaw Kaisen Man Game: Ep. 158

Transcript

Tabletop Shout Out: CAIN, The Jujutsu Chainsaw Kaisen Man Game: Ep. 158 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:08
  Hey. Everybody.
• 0:15
  So we were supposed to have session, but we hadn't heard
• 0:18
  from the DM in a couple days and and then this crazy storm
• 0:24
  appeared like directly around his house and we just decided
• 0:28
  maybe we're going to leave that alone.
• 0:29
  He might be going to do something right quick.
• 0:30
  So I guess sessions cancelled. Sorry, I'm I got I just got
• 0:41
  really, really distracted. Oh, did you?
• 0:45
  I was looking at Tom Bloom's inch dot IO page for a second
• 0:49
  and I just Scroll down and I see the eponymous gobblins.
• 0:53
  With a fat ass. Baby.
• 0:54
  And of course I already knew about gobbles with a fat ass,
• 0:56
  but I noticed the footnote said. Please don't let this become my
• 1:00
  most popular project it. Did and I just?
• 1:05
  I just really love that. For those curious, the game
• 1:11
  we're talking about today will be by the guy who wrote Goblins
• 1:14
  with a fat ass. So we're dealing with Chad
• 1:17
  himself. We're dealing with good stuff.
• 1:18
  Here. Yeah.
• 1:19
  Yes, Sir. Oh my God.
• 1:28
  Well, I was kind of proud of that segue and now it's been
• 1:30
  destroyed. I'm.
• 1:31
  Sorry, I just, I couldn't. I saw it.
• 1:33
  I was like, I can't not say anything about this.
• 1:37
  You're crazy, dude. Wow.
• 1:40
  With with the with with another glorious intro out of the way.
• 1:47
  Welcome back to the settings cancel podcast.
• 1:51
  It's me as I am here with Josh. Greetings for our line, Guten
• 1:56
  Morgan. Uh huh.
• 1:58
  Yeah. What?
• 2:02
  Nothing. That just mean good morning.
• 2:06
  No, it I just this, this might be racist to me to say just
• 2:11
  because it's German, but I the way you said it just gave me
• 2:13
  like Elsing flashbacks. I I mean, you know, for reasons.
• 2:21
  I look, I mean like. Anyway, the London Bridge or no
• 2:27
  the Holocaust resume 9. No one will deny what we did.
• 2:34
  Have I ever told you there? There's a great story, that of
• 2:38
  Lenny Petor, voice of the Major in the abridged, going to a con.
• 2:41
  Yes, you told me about this. OK, OK, OK, OK.
• 2:44
  They made him do the speech. Yes.
• 2:46
  Yeah, yeah, I love that so much. But yeah, today we're going to
• 2:54
  be talking about the the new brain worm that's infected me
• 2:58
  for the, I don't know, yes time, because this keeps happening
• 3:01
  with RPGs where I'm reading this.
• 3:02
  I'm like, this is the coolest thing I've ever read and it just
• 3:05
  keeps going. I mean, this one, is this one's
• 3:08
  really up there? Dude, it's so right.
• 3:12
  So you are. Really.
• 3:12
  Right. No, no, Yeah.
• 3:14
  I mean, I mean, I have a little bit of nuance to say about it,
• 3:17
  but yes. It's it's pretty big.
• 3:20
  We're talking about Kane and if I well, OK, so just some
• 3:28
  background information. This game is created by, you
• 3:30
  know, Tom Bloom goblins with a fast.
• 3:32
  He also made classics such as the comic book 6 kill 6 billion
• 3:37
  demons, Maledictum Malagathica Lancer and his magnum.
• 3:42
  As we've spoken about goblins with a fat ass, yeah.
• 3:45
  I mean Lancer probably being the most well known game that he
• 3:48
  worked on I would say. Yes, in terms of games for sure,
• 3:51
  yeah, it'd probably be Lancer and then obviously the comic
• 3:53
  that kind of put him on the map for those 6 billion demons,
• 3:56
  which is ending soon, I think. Interesting.
• 3:59
  Yeah, I hear a lot of people talk about Lancer, so yeah.
• 4:03
  So good 62nd elevator pitch Kane is what you get.
• 4:07
  You take Jiu Jitsu Kaizen and then you mix in a little
• 4:10
  chainsaw man. You know, sprinkle some persona.
• 4:13
  Then you mix a lot of Chainsaw Man.
• 4:15
  A lot of Chainsaw man, a lot of there's a supernatural and then
• 4:19
  you garnish it, you salt Bay it with with a touch of Akita.
• 4:23
  That sounds sick, right? I know just general thoughts on
• 4:30
  the vibes. I I think, I don't think I can
• 4:33
  really capture how Immaculate the vibes of this game are.
• 4:37
  Yeah, I mean, honestly, I would say probably half of the selling
• 4:40
  point of this game is the vibes. Like it, it is, it is deeply
• 4:47
  vibe. Here's what I would say if I
• 4:50
  were reviewing like, not that we do formal reviews, but if I were
• 4:52
  to like formally review this game, this would be a really
• 4:55
  hard game to review because if you like the vibe, it's 10 out
• 5:02
  of 10. If you think the vibe is weird,
• 5:05
  it's going to be a really tough sell.
• 5:08
  You know what? That's true.
• 5:09
  It is. It is deeply focused on the
• 5:12
  vibe. It's.
• 5:14
  Actually really interesting. I'm going to bring this up a
• 5:15
  little bit later. This game managed managed to
• 5:20
  accomplish the like terrifying brutal atmosphere that you would
• 5:28
  get out of something like a Warhammer or like a hardcore
• 5:31
  DND, but managed to do so in a way that I don't feel like is
• 5:36
  mean or bullying to the player. Yeah.
• 5:44
  And I mean. Yeah, yeah.
• 5:50
  I mean, yeah, I think I got what you mean.
• 5:53
  I didn't think about it, but yeah.
• 5:55
  I I think it's it it managed to hit, and yes, I am biased when I
• 5:59
  say this, it managed to hit a a level of sweet spot.
• 6:03
  I wouldn't necessarily say on level with Vincent Baker, but
• 6:07
  like close. I would say mechanically it's
• 6:14
  not necessarily pushing in the quite that same way, but in
• 6:18
  terms of of tone and really pulling from the source material
• 6:26
  in a in a meaningful way, yes. Yeah, that's kind of what I
• 6:30
  mean. Well, like we've talked for
• 6:33
  literally 4 episodes on how 15 head Vincent Baker's mechanical
• 6:39
  design. Yeah, yeah.
• 6:40
  Is and I think. It's.
• 6:43
  It's almost impossible to replicate.
• 6:46
  Yes, correct. With that in mind, yeah, again,
• 6:51
  it just, there are a lot of really delicate sweet spots that
• 6:55
  I think this game nails in a lot of really interesting ways.
• 6:59
  And I, I, I mean, I, I can't wait to talk about it.
• 7:02
  So I, I, you know, I think we should just get into it.
• 7:05
  Before we do, though, please follow us on your podcast
• 7:08
  Platform of choice. Appreciate that kisses.
• 7:12
  Oh yeah, I should get one of the ASMR mics with the ear.
• 7:19
  No, no, no, like you don't. Want to hear my my dulcet tones
• 7:24
  that I'm still getting over that sickness 6 weeks later.
• 7:27
  My voice still has this fucking annoying rasp to it.
• 7:31
  Nope. Damn, I'll never be a voice
• 7:35
  actor. Sad.
• 7:40
  Anyway, if I've already hooked you on that 62nd elevator pitch,
• 7:43
  and I'm sure I have, because it's peak.
• 7:45
  And you, I'm sure you, dear listener, have good taste.
• 7:48
  Yeah, I mean, basically, listen, if you're a fucking weeb and you
• 7:51
  thought Jujitsu Kaizen and Chainsaw Man were cool, you're
• 7:56
  in. It really, it draws from so many
• 7:59
  things right 'cause you're like, you could be really into JJK and
• 8:02
  not vibe with Chainsaw Man and still find something you like.
• 8:05
  You could be super into Chainsaw Man and you know nothing else
• 8:09
  and be sold. You could be really into like
• 8:11
  shown in battle manga and not give a shit about supernatural.
• 8:14
  I mean JJK. Is a shown in battle manga.
• 8:17
  Yes, or my mom doesn't give a fuck about anime.
• 8:22
  She loves this game. I ran it for her because I was
• 8:25
  like, well, it's kind of like supernatural.
• 8:26
  You're you're kind of investigating paranormal things
• 8:29
  and then solving them with with violent murder.
• 8:31
  And she went, yeah, OK, I like that.
• 8:33
  Like there's something for anyone to glom onto with this
• 8:37
  game. There's certainly a lot of
• 8:38
  things, but for me the chainsaw Man in jiu jitsu Kaizen vibe hit
• 8:43
  the hardest I think particularly when you start talking about the
• 8:46
  sins, like especially the way a lot of them are described.
• 8:50
  I mean the Minotaur one in the ogre section immediately made me
• 8:53
  think of that episode of Chainsaw Man where they're like
• 8:55
  in the like hotel. Building, yeah.
• 8:58
  The tournament apartment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 9:01
  So. Yeah dude the Minotaur is so
• 9:03
  sick looking. I really like Bucephalus.
• 9:06
  That just has such vibes. Also it's named Bucephalus.
• 9:11
  That's like, have you? Did you see the one for the
• 9:14
  hound? Oh God, what's it called, Dulon?
• 9:20
  Yes. The CAT5 one that's on the
• 9:22
  highway and it's like the size of a fucking skyscraper.
• 9:27
  So cool. Oh yeah, you're hooked.
• 9:31
  Awesome. What's the game actually about,
• 9:33
  Isaiah? Don't worry, I'm going to tell
• 9:35
  you so in cane. And yes, you need to, you
• 9:39
  really, it's cane. But it's cane 'cause you have to
• 9:41
  say. You have to spell it, say it and
• 9:43
  think it in all caps. It's an all caps cane.
• 9:46
  You play the role of a psychic exorcist.
• 9:49
  You pray a sorcerer, I mean exorcist.
• 9:51
  Right, right right right right right right.
• 9:54
  Totally not a jujitsu sorcerer, a legally distinct sorcerer.
• 10:00
  You could. Honestly I think there is a cool
• 10:02
  head cannon that you could make an argument that that JJK is
• 10:06
  just the Japanese branch of cane.
• 10:09
  I could see that, yeah. That'd be cool, yes.
• 10:13
  You're a psychic exorcist tasked with investigating and the
• 10:16
  hunting of the manifested traumas from people's collective
• 10:19
  unconscious. Basically if someone has a bad
• 10:22
  enough time, they manifest an SCP that you have to hunt or die
• 10:28
  trying. You as the eponymous Exorcist
• 10:33
  are part of the Cane or the Cane organization, a para
• 10:37
  governmental global org that deems you dear exorcist as
• 10:43
  something other than human due to the manifestation of a sin
• 10:46
  seed titled Grace, thus making you akin to like a partial sin
• 10:50
  yourself. This is what gives you your cool
• 10:53
  psychic pounds. Yeah, again, much like Chainsaw
• 10:58
  Man, the the the main characters cool psychic powers are the same
• 11:02
  thing that that fuels the bad guys.
• 11:05
  Right now you might be like a sin seed.
• 11:08
  What's that? Wow.
• 11:09
  A sin, as we've said, are the name given to the totally not
• 11:14
  her spirits Ala JJK In the setting.
• 11:17
  They are big scary monsters that represent the aspects of human
• 11:23
  trauma, either through grief or idolatry and narcissism.
• 11:29
  The like desire for death on a mass scale.
• 11:33
  Somebody has a deep a deep emotional trauma and it turns
• 11:37
  them into an awful, grotesque monster through weird negative
• 11:42
  power called grace. Yes.
• 11:46
  And yeah, they turn into like, yeah, kind of a weird SCP
• 11:51
  monster in a way. Well, so either you turn into
• 11:53
  one or you are haunted by. One, or you're haunted by one,
• 11:56
  or you merge with one. Yeah, there's a couple of
• 11:58
  different ways, but the point is 1 spawns.
• 12:00
  One spawns, yes. Typically when a sin spawns it
• 12:04
  is known as a sin event, which depending on the category
• 12:08
  there's a whole power scaling category.
• 12:10
  There's shown in Power scaling. Yes, depending on that people
• 12:15
  just die in mass numbers of just like straight up brain
• 12:20
  hemorrhaging you just they just keel over because the sin.
• 12:24
  The scary monster is born and everyone's mind pops like a
• 12:26
  great. Yes, it's very honestly you can
• 12:30
  add like Fire Force and Warhammer 40K to this growing
• 12:34
  list of shit that you'd be like, yeah, this is fair.
• 12:36
  It it. Also has a little bit.
• 12:38
  There is also a lot of like, how do I want to put it?
• 12:48
  I don't want to say the game is Christian.
• 12:50
  That's not what I mean. But it uses a lot of like the
• 12:53
  negative, darker elements of actual Christianity to sort of
• 13:00
  represent it. So the idea of the sin being
• 13:04
  born and everyone loses their mind is, you know, it has that
• 13:09
  kind of vibe of like when the Angel shows up in Christianity
• 13:12
  and nobody can comprehend it kind of thing going on there.
• 13:15
  You know, like there's some of that weird Christianity thing
• 13:17
  going on too. It actually, it's really funny.
• 13:23
  It basically says if a normal person looks at his sin and
• 13:26
  they're invisible to our people, but if something happens and you
• 13:29
  look at it for more than three seconds, you just, you just have
• 13:32
  a stroke. You just stroke out.
• 13:34
  Yeah, you just like. No, they're not always invisible
• 13:36
  to normal people. It depends.
• 13:37
  Yeah, the idols typically aren't.
• 13:39
  Yeah, but. Idols aren't, and also if it's
• 13:41
  one that's merged with a human then you can see the person and
• 13:45
  it can still fuck with your brain if they're like partially
• 13:47
  fucked up or whatever. Yeah.
• 13:49
  Like it describes, it actually describes in one of in the like
• 13:52
  example investigation, it uses an ogre, but it says that the
• 13:55
  ogre is like possessing the guy and that somebody saw him and
• 13:58
  then like went catatonic. Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 14:02
  Oh, we're going to talk. I have notes about that.
• 14:04
  In the end the the sample investigation is master class
• 14:08
  work. Is that what you ran?
• 14:10
  No, I made my own, but I ran an ogre, so that one just happened
• 14:15
  to be really helpful for me. Yeah, I mean, I do like the
• 14:18
  yogurt. I just it just has I think the
• 14:22
  best vibes is the centipede, but.
• 14:29
  Yeah, look at that one. I don't think I looked at that
• 14:31
  one. Oh, interesting.
• 14:33
  OK, we'll get. Well, we might talk about it a
• 14:35
  little bit. I think the one with the best
• 14:38
  vibes is the centipede. I think the easiest to run is
• 14:41
  the ogre and the most fear inducing is the hound.
• 14:49
  OK, I I like the Lord because it's sort of an amalgam of other
• 14:53
  ones and it also is just a reality warper.
• 14:56
  It's just like it's literally the like be not afraid Angel
• 15:01
  thing. And the toad I arguably care
• 15:04
  about the least. I I just don't find it.
• 15:07
  We're jumping ahead too much, though.
• 15:09
  We are jumping ahead too much. Yeah.
• 15:11
  Now, I mentioned before that like, this game hits a weird
• 15:14
  sweet spot. And you might be like, what do
• 15:15
  you mean by that? What do you mean by that, white
• 15:17
  boy? What do you mean by that?
• 15:19
  This game and it's, you know, playing to its greater battle
• 15:24
  shown in heart, has a lot, has not many fights, but very
• 15:27
  important ones. And battles in Kane are rare,
• 15:31
  very visceral. Rare, but yeah, visceral and
• 15:34
  and. Rudal.
• 15:36
  Like, yeah, it, it takes the, it takes the approach kind of kind
• 15:40
  of like what Fabulous says, don't be doing a fight unless
• 15:43
  it's like worth it, right? It needs to, there needs to be a
• 15:47
  reason that needs to be worth it.
• 15:48
  So you don't, you don't tend to fight a lot of grungos.
• 15:51
  There are grungos in the game. It's kind of funny actually,
• 15:53
  'cause when I was reading, I was like, OK, so it keeps talking
• 15:57
  about fighting the sins. I was like, but it also
• 15:59
  explicitly says that exorcist are going to get their shit
• 16:02
  rocked by sins a lot of the time because sins are generally just
• 16:06
  a lot stronger. I was like, so are there grungos
• 16:09
  for me to beat up on from time to time just for the fun of it?
• 16:12
  And there are, but they're towards the back of the book and
• 16:15
  the game is basically like grungos are less important.
• 16:19
  Yes, every every sin type has their own little grungos that
• 16:23
  you can fight. So the Ogre has the the
• 16:26
  stumblers, the idol has cultists, the Hound has,
• 16:30
  Remember what they're called Miradins.
• 16:34
  Centipede has zombies, Yeah. Toad has Z.
• 16:39
  And it does give. You some.
• 16:41
  It does give you a little bit of breakdown towards the very, very
• 16:44
  end to fight like humans or like weird cultists, worshippers of
• 16:47
  sins and stuff. So like there is also some of
• 16:49
  that in there, Yes Yeah, I'm curious.
• 16:54
  It's not like that They have it's real Illuminati.
• 16:57
  Yes, yes. It's not only fighting the boss
• 17:01
  monster, but the boss monster fight is the most.
• 17:03
  Important by far right and I something I really like that
• 17:07
  they did is that they didn't give you a bunch of randos in
• 17:11
  the thing like they very specifically gave you shit that
• 17:13
  you are probably going to be fighting as a cool psychic
• 17:16
  exorcist. So like security police, right?
• 17:19
  Like normal people, mercenaries, like military outfits that
• 17:23
  you're going to be fighting and then crazy sin worshipping
• 17:26
  cultists. Like that's, that's not going to
• 17:29
  cover everything you need, but that's, that's pretty close.
• 17:32
  It can cover a lot. Yeah, that covers a lot, A lot.
• 17:39
  And yeah, I mean, I think that that's the the like the
• 17:42
  preamble, I think we can get into some general thoughts.
• 17:46
  This game is sick, everything from the lore to the insanely
• 17:51
  good design and layout of the book.
• 17:53
  This game packs like a ridiculous amount of quality
• 17:55
  into just 162 pages. Oh yeah, it's a pretty short
• 17:58
  game, which may or may not be a selling point for someone
• 18:02
  depending. I will.
• 18:04
  I do want to briefly bring up the layout.
• 18:09
  There are some bits of the game where the game goes for
• 18:14
  aesthetic over legibility. So there are some parts here.
• 18:18
  Not not the whole book, it doesn't do it all the time, but
• 18:20
  there are some parts of the book here and there where you're
• 18:23
  going to be like, what's the next part that I'm supposed to
• 18:26
  be reading? Because it's like a big cool,
• 18:29
  like a mishmash. The the text is on notes and is
• 18:32
  like scrawled around the screen kind of thing.
• 18:35
  There's a couple of parts that'll be like that.
• 18:38
  So, you know, be aware I guess. Yes, I mean the the game is the
• 18:42
  the book is designed to replicate a mission briefing.
• 18:46
  So you get like. A lot of it, I wouldn't say even
• 18:48
  all of it is, but a lot of it is, yeah.
• 18:50
  Most of it, yeah. Everything from like the way you
• 18:53
  build your characters that they're all written on like
• 18:54
  sticky notes or or, you know, pieces of booklet that are taped
• 18:58
  into the book. And you get a lot of like actual
• 19:01
  pictures that have been distorted in Photoshop.
• 19:03
  You get a lot of really cool stuff.
• 19:07
  Yes, there is a lot of like slapping into actual photos in
• 19:10
  this book. I I think it's very effective.
• 19:14
  No, it is. I just think it's kind of funny.
• 19:17
  It, it's very evocative. It just, it just hits.
• 19:20
  It hits right, right. It's a box to legally distinct
• 19:26
  gojo. I dude I love legally distinct
• 19:29
  Gojo, he's my favorite. So funny every time you look at
• 19:32
  it. It's I, I think one of the
• 19:34
  really funny thing if you, if you look at the, the, like the,
• 19:41
  the outfit for Kane Exorcist, that's basically the, like the
• 19:45
  Gojo outfit, except it comes with a Cape.
• 19:47
  Yeah. And you, you see it on the first
• 19:49
  page that the, the chick who looks real angry, she's just got
• 19:53
  this fucking Cape on. And you're like, yeah, why is
• 19:55
  this part of your standal batter trans uniform?
• 19:57
  You're walking around public with this thing.
• 20:00
  She's dripped out dog. Also.
• 20:02
  It seems like a lot of them get us wrong, which I approve of.
• 20:05
  Yes, yes, 'cause they're, they're wearing Cossacks like
• 20:08
  priest uniforms, Yeah. Yeah, like I said, there's a lot
• 20:12
  of like kind of Christian vibe thing going on.
• 20:15
  Yeah, so fun fact at at as a first time exorcist you just get
• 20:19
  like a shitty fucking Pulp Fiction suit, like literally the
• 20:23
  suit from chainsaw man. Just like a standard polyester
• 20:26
  suit with like I'll fitted plastic shoes.
• 20:28
  They give you nothing. Yeah, the game also specifically
• 20:32
  says you don't You get like shitty uncomfortable shoes.
• 20:36
  Yes, and one of the upgrades you can get is actual nice fitted
• 20:40
  shoes and like casual clothes, like pajamas.
• 20:47
  It's great. Yeah, I mean, I I can't say
• 20:50
  enough the the vibes for this game is great.
• 20:52
  It captures a lot of really fun shit and it's insane, you know,
• 20:58
  again, how well the game is balanced.
• 21:01
  And I like, I keep, I feel like I'm repeating myself over and
• 21:03
  over again, but it just hits it. I don't know well in so far as
• 21:10
  to like like the game. What do?
• 21:12
  You mean I guess what do you mean by balance in this case?
• 21:15
  Cause. The the way in which the game
• 21:17
  manages to capture the, the feeling of a meat grinder,
• 21:21
  grinder styled game, but it gives players several quite
• 21:26
  reliable means to avoid brutal murder at the same time, each
• 21:33
  time your character does survive that brutal murder, it it is
• 21:36
  literally described how their personality, physical form and
• 21:40
  mental state are changed and scarred.
• 21:43
  Frankly, it's a genius design. Like the way that that some of
• 21:45
  these severe attacks can like lop off limbs and like, yeah,
• 21:48
  you can go back to Kane and have a flux master regrow that arm
• 21:51
  for you, but it's never going to be perfect, right?
• 21:54
  You're going to have that phantom pain.
• 21:56
  Your character's going to think about how they got their arm
• 21:58
  crushed horribly under a car. Flux Master, what the hell?
• 22:01
  You did what? Flux, like someone who's a
• 22:04
  master of the flux blasphemy and turn back time to heal wounds.
• 22:08
  Oh, OK, fair enough. Damn you, I lost my train of
• 22:13
  thought. Oh yeah, yeah, sorry.
• 22:16
  There. There's an interesting
• 22:16
  conversation to be had, and I talked about this with the the
• 22:18
  Vincent Baker thing, how the game manages to play with
• 22:22
  perceived difficulty versus practical difficulty, because
• 22:26
  the game seems like it's fucking impossible sometimes.
• 22:30
  Like the the sins do so much damage when they hit you and the
• 22:36
  way it's described that you're just constantly fighting for
• 22:38
  your life and it literally says only 40% of first time exorcists
• 22:44
  survived their first time. That's nuts.
• 22:49
  And and given actual practical play, that makes sense because
• 22:54
  on on the first mission, on the first time I ran it, every
• 22:58
  player took at least two injuries, which permanently
• 23:01
  reduces the strain that they can take by one point each.
• 23:05
  So 2. And on the second one, the
• 23:08
  players almost died or they they've took taken injuries
• 23:12
  before they even found the sin host.
• 23:14
  Once again, we'll explain what that is later, But at no point
• 23:18
  did I feel like, oh, the game is kind of screwing them.
• 23:21
  You know, it it was usually, Oh, I don't think they made the
• 23:25
  right decision here. They could have done things
• 23:28
  differently, but it's not like, oh God, the game is just
• 23:30
  bullying them. It's just they took decisions
• 23:32
  that either made the game more difficult, you know, it imposed
• 23:36
  something like hard or risky on them, or they were a little rash
• 23:40
  and didn't look around as much as they probably could or should
• 23:43
  have. But it never doesn't.
• 23:45
  It never. It never feels unfair.
• 23:47
  I don't know why I can't speak today.
• 23:49
  It, I mean, yeah, it gives you, it gives you quite a few ways to
• 23:53
  basically set your set or to like hedge your bets and set
• 23:56
  your set yourself up for success before you go straight towards
• 24:02
  the meat grinding session. Yes, Mr. Bloom's art also.
• 24:07
  Again, we've talked about it several times.
• 24:08
  Already his art's very good. Well, it's I don't remember if I
• 24:13
  if I said this like on recording or not.
• 24:15
  I don't, I don't think I did. His art is, is kind of funny to
• 24:20
  me because it is good, but you can also get the immediate sense
• 24:24
  that he's probably didn't go to school for it.
• 24:28
  Like kind of artist like taught himself.
• 24:30
  Oh, just through like sheer practice.
• 24:33
  Because there's there's these little elements, there's these
• 24:35
  little things here and there where I'm like, oh, you're doing
• 24:40
  it that way because you didn't get the formal training, but you
• 24:43
  kind of figured out how to draw it on your own kind of vibe.
• 24:46
  You know what I mean? Which I mean is not, I'm not
• 24:51
  even really saying it as a negative.
• 24:52
  It's just kind of as a thing and it gives a there's like a weird
• 24:57
  there's like it actually kind of worked out in his favor because
• 25:00
  it gives him a little bit of like this, this distinctive
• 25:04
  feeling to his art that is hard to pinpoint, particularly when
• 25:09
  you're talking about his robots. The robot designs are fucking
• 25:14
  crazy in Lancer. Oh, they're great.
• 25:16
  Yeah. I mean the I think again, he
• 25:19
  managed to hit a cool sweet spot where the the machines in
• 25:22
  Lancer, save for the ones that are like directly referencing
• 25:26
  other shit like the fact that the death's head is a touch coma
• 25:29
  from ghost the shell or I mean all of the the SSC ones are
• 25:35
  anime references right? Like they're they're either
• 25:37
  Avangelian or or Mac crosses or just the touch coma.
• 25:41
  Besides those, every Mac has a unique feel that doesn't feel
• 25:45
  like anything else, and I think it's because they all look so
• 25:49
  humanoid. They look like giant dudes in
• 25:52
  like power armor. Yeah, he's good at robots.
• 25:55
  He's also very good at monsters. Oh yeah dude, the syn artist.
• 26:00
  It's the it's the people where you notice some of what I'm
• 26:03
  talking about. You know what I mean?
• 26:07
  Yeah, I will. I mean on page 20 there's the
• 26:09
  the cool exorcist chick at the the suit who's doing the like
• 26:13
  throwing the peace sign up or the wankers.
• 26:14
  I don't know, like her hand is a little.
• 26:18
  Yeah, there's these little. Little elements of awkwardness.
• 26:21
  Yeah, it's again, it kind of ends up almost intentional it
• 26:26
  like I don't know. Well, it kind of works and it's
• 26:28
  not. Potential.
• 26:29
  It's confident, it's done confidently.
• 26:31
  Oh. Yeah, it's definitely done
• 26:33
  confidently. I think this is like a weird
• 26:36
  thing that I I think is really understated to people who aren't
• 26:39
  artists who like don't know. When you understand art and how
• 26:45
  it's made, you can tell when someone makes brush strokes
• 26:48
  confidently and confidence. Or with Yeah or Yeah being
• 26:51
  unsure of themselves, Yeah. Yeah, it it, it's, it's
• 26:54
  immediately evident I suffer from this problem real bad.
• 26:57
  My brush strokes are not very confident.
• 26:58
  I'm not particularly confident. My 2D.
• 27:00
  My 3D is quite good though. You can also notice that
• 27:05
  particular problem less than 3D. You do?
• 27:08
  Yeah. Well, so I mean it's still.
• 27:10
  It's there, but it's different. I think one of the biggest
• 27:13
  mistakes our 3D professor ever told us was if you want
• 27:18
  something to look good, make it dirty.
• 27:20
  I like fundamentally disagree with that because that that
• 27:23
  kills all nuance. I mean it, yeah.
• 27:26
  It depends on the context. Well, so like most of the time
• 27:29
  if you're doing product vis, because he told us this for our
• 27:31
  lighting and texturing class, when you're doing product
• 27:34
  visualization, you're typically not going to be making things
• 27:37
  that have been out in the elements for 20 years, right?
• 27:39
  You're making like a cell phone right off the factory floor.
• 27:42
  But I think what he was, I think the point he was making is that
• 27:45
  if you're trying to make something that looks like it's
• 27:48
  lived in and used and stuff it's going to have, it's not going to
• 27:51
  be perfectly clean because nothing can stay perfectly
• 27:53
  clean, you know? No, no, right.
• 27:55
  Yes, that's what he's saying, but that's he didn't provide the
• 27:58
  nuance to the statement. And a lot of our classmates like
• 28:01
  I'd be through, I'd be like texturing something that had
• 28:04
  like that was made with a specific situation in my mind.
• 28:08
  And they were like, make it dirtier.
• 28:09
  Like it doesn't need to be dirtier.
• 28:11
  It it needs to be maybe more lived in, but I'm not going to
• 28:14
  throw a bunch of of dirt, grunges and scratches all over
• 28:17
  it because it's not going to need that.
• 28:20
  Yeah, narrative context is relevant.
• 28:22
  Yeah, I think, I think he should have given the the caveat he did
• 28:28
  not. And it it still haunts some of
• 28:30
  the 3D classmates I have. Anyway, you've been sort of
• 28:36
  rattling on about the vibes of this game.
• 28:38
  Let's We might as well get down to the.
• 28:39
  Well, the vibes are very. Important like, right.
• 28:42
  Yeah, I should say Rattling. We've been talking about them
• 28:44
  quite a bit. The vibes are really again, if
• 28:46
  you don't like the vibe that this game is presenting, I think
• 28:49
  you're going to have a really hard time finding other things
• 28:52
  to like in the game because the vibe suffuses everything in the
• 28:55
  game. It does, yeah.
• 28:58
  You know, as opposed to a game like a, you know, as opposed to
• 29:02
  most of your standard fantasy fantasy S games where the vibe
• 29:08
  it's trying to sell you is kind of a starting point.
• 29:11
  But you can, you can create and work within that starting point
• 29:16
  and create lots of different things, right?
• 29:18
  Like DND has a set vibe, but it's pretty easy to like mess
• 29:22
  around with it and change it and reorganize it.
• 29:25
  This game, like this game, is only designed to play one thing
• 29:31
  and is really only going to let you play one thing and that's,
• 29:35
  you know, Exorcist hunting down sins.
• 29:38
  Like, yeah, you're. Not you're going to have a
• 29:41
  really hard time trying to make this game do anything else.
• 29:45
  Yes, the the iteration is going to be very difficult.
• 29:48
  You know Lancer? You can unless.
• 29:49
  You're hacking up a literally new game.
• 29:51
  Yeah, with something like Lancer, as long as you're doing
• 29:54
  mecha Jason shit, you're going to be pretty much OK.
• 29:59
  But this game you are hard limited to investigative
• 30:03
  paranormal execution squad. It's because those are literally
• 30:06
  the main things of the game. It's very similar to how Blades
• 30:10
  in the Dark is. Right, yes.
• 30:13
  Honestly, there's a lot of blades in this game.
• 30:15
  There's a ton of blades in this game.
• 30:17
  Like a ridiculous. Amount.
• 30:18
  Yeah, it's. This game is Honestly, you
• 30:21
  could. I don't know if the creator has
• 30:23
  stated it as such, but this game is basically a Forged in the
• 30:26
  Dark game. It's pretty fucking close.
• 30:29
  I I think I brought up Blades of the Dark like 6 or 7 times in my
• 30:32
  notes. Yeah, it's all over here.
• 30:34
  I don't know if he said it explicitly as such, but that's
• 30:36
  pretty much what it is. On to Kane's gameplay.
• 30:41
  You can separate the game into essentially 3, if not 4 main
• 30:47
  parts. You have your briefing, your
• 30:51
  investigation, your hunt, and your downtime.
• 30:55
  The reason why I say kind of four is because downtime in this
• 30:59
  game isn't formalized, Isn't formalized like it is in Lancer
• 31:04
  or Blades for that matter. Yeah, it's a thing that happens.
• 31:08
  It's a thing where you spend resources.
• 31:10
  But in in Lancer and Blades, downtime is a formalized,
• 31:14
  bespoke thing with like phases and actions and all that and.
• 31:18
  Mechanics that you can use to give yourselves benefits and
• 31:20
  shit. Yeah, You don't really have that
• 31:23
  here. It's pretty much OK, you guys.
• 31:25
  You know, you're taken away on the Blackhawks and you're
• 31:27
  brought back to Cane, and you can do some stuff like, you
• 31:30
  know, get a kitchen installed in your room or talk to your
• 31:33
  family. But then you're right back out
• 31:35
  on the next helicopter, doing your next mission.
• 31:38
  Yeah, it doesn't. It didn't attach any mechanics
• 31:43
  or specific order of operations to downtime.
• 31:48
  And I think the reason for that is to reinforce the meat grinder
• 31:52
  vibe of like, all right, mission done, back, back to the next,
• 31:56
  back to the next mission, dork, you know, like that.
• 31:59
  Kind of, absolutely. Yeah, it is The exorcists in
• 32:02
  Kane. You are not.
• 32:04
  You are literally not seen as people.
• 32:06
  You do not have human rights because you are not seen as a
• 32:09
  human. You are expendable assets and
• 32:12
  you will be expended and maybe you will live long enough to
• 32:16
  retire because that's just an option.
• 32:20
  Kind of funny because I feel like this is one of those
• 32:24
  situations I don't, I don't, they don't really get into it
• 32:26
  that much. But I feel like this is one of
• 32:28
  those situations where the the corporate structure of Cain, the
• 32:31
  company is probably run by a bunch of douchebags in suits.
• 32:35
  So if all the exorcists were like, you know what, let's
• 32:38
  revolt, they probably would have zero chance.
• 32:41
  They have the virtues, which is kind of the itch.
• 32:44
  Right, but if the virtues were like, fuck it, screw, screw the
• 32:48
  bosses, you know? Well, yes, if retribution was
• 32:51
  like, I think I'm done here. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:55
  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if you're.
• 32:57
  I don't know anything that can stop retribution given given her
• 33:01
  A2 paragraph description of a walking calamity that exceeds
• 33:06
  cover category. Yeah.
• 33:09
  So it's like, it's one of those funny things.
• 33:13
  And this is actually also probably intentional, where it's
• 33:17
  like, yeah, you don't have any powers, you're expendable.
• 33:20
  But also if you revolt, they're going to be a big trouble.
• 33:23
  Yeah. It feels like some social
• 33:25
  commentary. Yeah, I know for sure which
• 33:28
  this. Author is a fan of So You Know.
• 33:30
  Yes. I mean, yes, espoused Marxist
• 33:34
  Tom Bloom. Yeah, absolutely.
• 33:36
  Yeah, yeah. I, I, it's, it's it, it strikes
• 33:40
  a really funny middle ground because, yes, you're an
• 33:42
  expendable asset, but they're like, but hey, survive your
• 33:45
  first couple missions. You're going to Fiji, bitch.
• 33:49
  Yeah, yeah. 'Cause you can, you can spend
• 33:52
  the resource called script. I hate that word.
• 33:55
  It's a real thing. It just sort of means like, you
• 33:57
  know, your resources, currency, money.
• 34:00
  Yeah, you can spend it to, to add on to your, your either your
• 34:04
  living quarters or do things like have visitation rights for
• 34:06
  your family. And one of them is like, you get
• 34:08
  a week paid vacation and some spending money.
• 34:11
  And Can you imagine like you're the only one to survive your
• 34:14
  mission? You're scarred, you're
• 34:16
  terrified. The PTSD is cranking out in your
• 34:19
  head. And your handler is, you know,
• 34:22
  in a bikini and a sun hat. Like, guess who's going to
• 34:26
  Hawaii? Yeah, and you're just like,
• 34:29
  cool. Good news, you get all your
• 34:31
  teammates spending money. A right Look who's look who's
• 34:36
  living, who's living the life? Bad news, they're still dead.
• 34:41
  They are still dead. Yeah, I I looked like you had a
• 34:44
  crush on that one, that is. That's.
• 34:46
  Tough. But hey, Hawaii, Hawaii.
• 34:52
  I really, I want to do that next.
• 34:54
  If I run one of these and like I run a campaign, I want several
• 34:57
  exorcists to die and the handlers like who's ready for
• 35:01
  Tahiti? Y'all want to go to the Dr. Oh
• 35:07
  my God, that'd be amazing. Sorry, I'm not getting we keep
• 35:13
  getting sidetracked. This is this is terrible.
• 35:17
  The briefing phase in in the game is very very similar to
• 35:22
  Lancer in that it is in fact a bespoke thing where the admin,
• 35:27
  the GM, provides players with mission critical information
• 35:31
  that will, amongst other things, extrapolate on what is going on
• 35:36
  in the situation where the area of the Sins manifestation will
• 35:40
  preside. And very specifically the Sin.
• 35:44
  It's category type because Sins can manifest in one O 3 to
• 35:47
  category one to three formation categories, and the most
• 35:52
  specific thing being the trauma questions, which are essentially
• 35:57
  narrative devices that emerge in the form of like whodunit clues.
• 36:02
  You use the trauma questions to decipher who the host of the sin
• 36:06
  is, why that thing happened to them, and the cool mechanical
• 36:10
  benefit to solving these questions is that they become
• 36:14
  the actual main methods of attack against the sin.
• 36:18
  You essentially, you know the power of Christ compels.
• 36:21
  You hold the book up to the sin and deal an ass load of damage
• 36:25
  to it, including using it to interrupt the sins moves, which
• 36:29
  is really cool. Oh see, I thought it was more
• 36:32
  like you espouse the trauma to the sin and that sort of fucks
• 36:36
  it up and gives it pause because you're like getting in its head.
• 36:40
  You are, yeah, but it also does physical damage to it.
• 36:42
  It like unravels its physical form.
• 36:44
  Right, but because it's a weird psychic monster, I assume those
• 36:47
  two things were just kind of linked.
• 36:48
  Yeah, no, I'm not. That's what that's pretty much
• 36:50
  what I was saying. I didn't imagine of you waving
• 36:54
  the holy book at him. No, no, I'm, I'm being sort of
• 36:57
  facetious with that. No, but you basically, you know,
• 37:00
  you run them to the sin and you, you say the host's name, you
• 37:03
  tell them, you know, you, you are this way because your wife
• 37:07
  left you or whatever. And it, it does physical damage
• 37:10
  to the sin. Yeah, after the investigate or
• 37:16
  after the briefing, you get your investigation.
• 37:18
  This is the majority of the game.
• 37:22
  I would argue about 60 plus percent of the game takes place
• 37:26
  in the investigation. You got your characters get hot
• 37:29
  dropped into the area and that is where the actual ascertaining
• 37:33
  of information comes from. Typically there is an inciting
• 37:36
  event like a forensics team and you go and do some light
• 37:41
  investigation. There you find out about, you
• 37:43
  know, the Jane Doe who showed up in the middle of the night.
• 37:46
  And then you go, OK, well, let's try to find this person that
• 37:48
  takes you to a PlayStation. That PlayStation brings you to a
• 37:50
  hospital and from there you start to gather information.
• 37:54
  I actually, when I ran this, I bought little dollar store like
• 37:58
  pocket notebooks, the ones that are like, you know, only a
• 38:00
  couple inches by a couple inches in, in dimension.
• 38:03
  And I bought a bunch of pens and I just handed them out to my
• 38:06
  family and, and the people I was running for.
• 38:08
  I ran it for Paladin Mat and Sarah and I was like, here,
• 38:13
  here's your little notebook. You're going to need this.
• 38:15
  And they they used them actually the game.
• 38:19
  It'll throw a lot of information at you for sure.
• 38:25
  It's at this point where you really hone in on the whys of
• 38:31
  the game. And I think it's where the game
• 38:32
  works a lot of it's magic in in a way that is again similar to
• 38:37
  Vincent Baker. Once you start to unravel the
• 38:39
  mystery of a sin, the like aha moment just keeps happening in a
• 38:45
  really satisfying and constructive way.
• 38:49
  And it, it actually, it has this double effect where you found
• 38:53
  one piece of evidence that might unravel one of the trauma
• 38:56
  questions and you go, oh, OK, so if we do this and then you, your
• 39:00
  players literally start doing that thing that they dread doing
• 39:03
  in D&D, the like actually putting the mystery together
• 39:06
  crazy. When the game provides you tools
• 39:08
  to do it, it's fun. Well, so I, I actually wanted to
• 39:12
  talk about that. The game actually doesn't really
• 39:16
  provide you tools to do it, and that's kind of what makes it a
• 39:19
  good mystery or investigation game.
• 39:23
  Interesting. And what I mean by that is so a
• 39:27
  lot of the time part of the reason that investigations don't
• 39:33
  work in something like DND or of a game will say it's about
• 39:38
  investigations, but doesn't end up really feeling like it's
• 39:40
  about investigations is because, excuse me, because they will
• 39:50
  give you like a skip the investigation ability, right?
• 39:54
  So in D&D you literally have a skill called investigation.
• 39:58
  You have insight, you have perception.
• 40:01
  Those skills kind of let you skip over the problem.
• 40:04
  You don't really need to investigate.
• 40:05
  You just roll and the GM will tell you what you want to know,
• 40:08
  right? Monster of the Week has a
• 40:10
  similar thing where it talks about investigations, but it's
• 40:13
  not really an investigation game because there's a move that is.
• 40:16
  The investigation move that's just going to give you all the
• 40:19
  answers you need if you like roll well enough.
• 40:22
  This game does not give the characters any specific
• 40:26
  mechanics other than maybe a couple of the like blasphemy
• 40:30
  powers, but those are essentially spells.
• 40:32
  It doesn't give them any specific mechanics to find the
• 40:37
  answers to the questions. What it does is it gives them
• 40:42
  like starting points and a clear objective.
• 40:45
  Remember when we talked about actionable phrases?
• 40:49
  This game gives you a whole bunch of those.
• 40:53
  And then it basically says to the to the GM, it says, all
• 40:57
  right, admin, these are the things they need to find out.
• 41:02
  And it specifically says in the section about running the game.
• 41:06
  Basically what I said when we were talking about it in Fabula
• 41:09
  where you want to keep nudging them towards the answer.
• 41:12
  It says if they go to look for the answer and it makes sense,
• 41:16
  you should just reasonably give it to them, and if they don't
• 41:19
  get it then you should give them another piece of information to
• 41:24
  push them in the correct direction.
• 41:28
  So the reason? It actually works as an
• 41:30
  investigation game is you have very clear things to look for
• 41:34
  and it doesn't give you a way to skip over that.
• 41:36
  You as a player have to engage with that no matter what, and
• 41:39
  you get very directly rewarded once you go for the clear, very
• 41:43
  clear objective, right at the end of the day, the final
• 41:46
  objective is always the same, which is get to the palace.
• 41:49
  Right. And I think something that is
• 41:51
  really effective that this game does and it tells the GM to do
• 41:56
  is create through lines where almost any piece of information
• 42:03
  can lead into another. The game actually describes to
• 42:06
  you like a flow chart. It shows it to you and it it
• 42:09
  creates it in terms of tiered information.
• 42:12
  So you have critical information, you have secondary
• 42:15
  information and tertiary information.
• 42:17
  I'll get into those later. But essentially what the way it
• 42:19
  works is that you get fed a piece, not all of it, but a
• 42:22
  piece of critical information that will inform the majority of
• 42:26
  your investigation. Through that, you're able to
• 42:29
  acquire secondary information, things that will inevitably
• 42:33
  either lead you back to critical information or expand into
• 42:37
  tertiary information. The tertiary information are
• 42:42
  through lines that guide you back to important pieces of
• 42:45
  secondary information, which will help you find the next
• 42:49
  piece of critical information. It's a massive web that is
• 42:52
  designed from top to bottom to make it so the players are
• 42:56
  always finding something and it's giving you pieces to go.
• 43:00
  Oh well, they're here. OK, I can take this piece and
• 43:02
  drag it here for them. Yeah, effectively the game has
• 43:05
  really, really good guidance on how to run the actual
• 43:10
  investigating part and doesn't just leave it for you to figure
• 43:14
  out on a whim. It's very clear about how you
• 43:17
  should go about it. I honestly I would go as far as
• 43:19
  to say I find this to be the gold standard for how to run
• 43:22
  investigations. I haven't run it twice now it
• 43:26
  it's so effective I haven't. Looked at enough other games to
• 43:31
  say on that one, but it definitely is doing its job
• 43:34
  well. I can tell just by looking at
• 43:36
  it. I don't even really need to run
• 43:37
  it. I can just it's, it's it's
• 43:39
  explaining things in a way that I'm like, yes, this is good
• 43:42
  idea, good way to put do it. One little thing I do it.
• 43:47
  There is, I should point out, there is an investigation skill
• 43:52
  that does exist, but the investigation skill does not
• 43:55
  just let you skip the investigating.
• 43:58
  It's just for investigating minute details about certain
• 44:03
  like scenarios. So for example, it says things
• 44:06
  you could use it for. Decoding physically engraved
• 44:09
  occult symbols, determining the origins and properties of a
• 44:13
  mysterious slimy substance, calculating the trajectory of a
• 44:16
  bullet fired as a murder weapon based on blood splatters and
• 44:19
  skull fragments. So it's like the investigation
• 44:22
  skill is to pick up on stuff about the clues, but what it
• 44:26
  doesn't do is it doesn't say figure out where the palace is,
• 44:30
  right? There's no skill that just tells
• 44:31
  you where the sins palace is. You have to figure that out.
• 44:33
  Like that's part of your work as a player.
• 44:36
  Right. It's kind of like, again with
• 44:39
  old school DND where you went into the dungeon room, you
• 44:43
  didn't just roll dice. You had to say, my character
• 44:46
  physically lifts the bed, my character checks the desk, my
• 44:49
  character looks under the drawer, you know, under the
• 44:52
  desk, my character moves the chair.
• 44:53
  Like you had to like describe that kind of stuff.
• 44:55
  This game is. We're operating in that similar
• 44:57
  space, but key difference being the game explicitly tells the GM
• 45:04
  to always push the characters in the correct direction, which old
• 45:09
  school D&D didn't really as far as I'm more.
• 45:11
  No, it didn't. And like, the reason why I call
• 45:14
  it the gold standard is I've seen, you know, I've read
• 45:18
  investigations in modules, right?
• 45:22
  Yeah. And they always seem to either
• 45:26
  be more linear than I want or sort of aimless, like the death
• 45:32
  house. The Death House is aimless.
• 45:34
  It's very aimless, yeah. You're just sort of poking shit
• 45:36
  until something fucking happens. Cause the death house goes in
• 45:40
  there and you don't have any actionable clear objective,
• 45:43
  right? You don't know why you're there.
• 45:45
  You're just there. In this game, the death house
• 45:49
  would be like the sin is in the building.
• 45:51
  Find the sin in the building you know.
• 45:53
  Yes. On the flip side, you get the
• 45:55
  descent into a furnace. Figure out what the cultures are
• 45:58
  doing and the game presents it to you as an investigation, but
• 46:02
  the only thing the game can really give you is a dungeon
• 46:03
  crawl. Yeah, you just follow a specific
• 46:06
  path. Yeah, so either there's nothing
• 46:09
  to go off of, or it's a straight line or a dungeon.
• 46:12
  Yeah, and this game very specifically goes.
• 46:14
  Nope, it's a web. We're going to figure it out.
• 46:17
  Yeah. And they take you by the hand.
• 46:19
  And also ultimately this game also basically has a built in
• 46:24
  RIP cord, which is if you don't find the answer, shit's gonna
• 46:29
  get real bad and then the sin's basically just gonna kick your
• 46:32
  teeth in at the end. Well, so you know what's funny?
• 46:34
  It has a literal Matt Colville orcs attack thing going on.
• 46:39
  Yeah, because one of your reactions 'cause you as the
• 46:42
  like, much like APBTA game, you as the GM get reactions in in
• 46:47
  your tension and pressure moves and one of them is just the
• 46:51
  syntax. Yeah, they just get attacked,
• 46:54
  Yeah. And the cool thing about the
• 46:56
  syntax, right, is that it's going to wallop the shit out of
• 47:00
  you. But it's very specifically not
• 47:02
  at its strongest because it's not in the palace.
• 47:04
  It's designed to be beat. It doesn't even have as much
• 47:06
  health as it otherwise would have.
• 47:08
  Yeah. But when you do damage to it, it
• 47:11
  runs away. It doesn't like flip out of
• 47:13
  existence. It just retreats.
• 47:16
  And that gives the player something to follow, which will
• 47:19
  lead them to the next piece of evidence.
• 47:22
  And even if they still somehow fuck it up, at the end of the
• 47:25
  day, if the pressure gauge maxes out, there's the the
• 47:28
  catastrophic breakdown thing that happens and then the
• 47:31
  mission fails and you have to bail out basically so.
• 47:34
  You have to, yeah, you have to bail out, regroup and then come
• 47:37
  back. Yeah.
• 47:38
  So no matter what, something is going to happen, whether the
• 47:42
  players are doing good or not, like the GM is going to push it.
• 47:46
  It's that thing. I was saying again when we were
• 47:48
  talking about this with the investigation episode where I
• 47:51
  was like, even if the players aren't doing anything, still
• 47:56
  push the story forward, still have the MPCS do something.
• 48:00
  If the Exorcist don't do shit in this game, the sin is still
• 48:03
  getting stronger, growing and fucking things up, and there's
• 48:07
  no stopping it from doing that. Right.
• 48:10
  The cool thing too that that this game does, which I like a
• 48:12
  lot, is because it has the two very specific countdown clocks
• 48:17
  being your tension and pressure gauges.
• 48:19
  It's very difficult for players to not do anything.
• 48:22
  It's difficult for players to not understand the passing of
• 48:25
  time because every time a scene changes, you tick up once on the
• 48:29
  tension clock. It's a three tick clock every
• 48:32
  time. They explicitly says they always
• 48:34
  need to be able to see that tension clock.
• 48:36
  Yes, they always see that and the pressure clock.
• 48:39
  Yeah, they have to be able to see the players.
• 48:40
  Have to be able to see those. You can't hide them.
• 48:43
  And once per scene if they I think it's if they roll, I think
• 48:52
  it's they either have to roll all one no, if they roll A1 on a
• 48:55
  risk, a risk a risk die. Risk risky roll, Yeah.
• 48:59
  That will automatically tick up once to a maximum of once per
• 49:02
  scene. So that's what you know it's
• 49:05
  supposed to explain or extract or or or not explain.
• 49:08
  What's the word I'm looking? For.
• 49:09
  Abstract. It's supposed to abstract the
• 49:11
  idea that something has gone critically wrong and now it's
• 49:14
  taking you more time to fix your the the thing your fuck up.
• 49:18
  Yeah. I'm like struggling to put words
• 49:21
  together today. It's killing me.
• 49:23
  Only just like 3 days. I don't know what I'm doing.
• 49:29
  Rain, please. Anyway, yes.
• 49:32
  And we talked about this. Oh, God.
• 49:34
  What did we talk about this end? I think it was the monster
• 49:39
  Hearts episode. I really like the idea of
• 49:42
  tension and pressure removes because it allows you to be
• 49:45
  meaner or more severe with your GM reactions because the players
• 49:50
  have active ability to see what's going on and try to
• 49:54
  prevent it, right? Yeah, I talked about how in
• 49:56
  monster hearts, the fact that they're not forced someone's
• 49:59
  darkest. Self they're not, for they're
• 50:01
  not faffing about the dark. Yes, like the fact that the the
• 50:06
  the MC can force darkest self in monster hearts is cool and it
• 50:13
  tells you, you know, do it sparingly.
• 50:16
  And I'm not saying that it's it's not accounting for
• 50:19
  assholes, but sparingly is kind of an abstract right Is
• 50:23
  sparingly per character or sparingly per person or
• 50:27
  sparingly per session. There's there's no real right or
• 50:33
  wrong on that. But when you're doing a pressure
• 50:36
  move and it says when pressure gets this high, you have these
• 50:39
  specific moves you can do, you go, oh, OK, So I can only use
• 50:43
  them when things get this level of FUBAR.
• 50:46
  Yes, yeah. I get it.
• 50:48
  I understand. Yeah, yeah.
• 50:49
  It's like, yeah, you can only bust out the the fuck you button
• 50:54
  when the players have fucked up enough to warrant it.
• 50:57
  Yes, and I appreciate that. I appreciate that the game
• 51:02
  accounts for it, but isn't coddling you or is trying to to
• 51:06
  sort of backseat GMU into doing things the right way.
• 51:10
  It's just telling you this is what you should expect from this
• 51:13
  level of Tom fuckery going on. Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of
• 51:20
  saying, hey GM, your players are going to be operating on the
• 51:24
  back foot basically all the time, so you need to give them
• 51:28
  enough information to try and level the playing field in their
• 51:32
  favor as much as humanly possible.
• 51:34
  Yes. It's like it's self aware of the
• 51:39
  what the issue could be. I just not realized that we're
• 51:44
  we have we haven't talked about the final two steps of the game,
• 51:47
  which is the hunt and downtime. So let's do that real quick.
• 51:51
  The Hunt is effectively the opposite face to the
• 51:54
  investigation in so far as it coincides with the players
• 51:58
  discovering the truth of any like particular situation during
• 52:02
  the Sin event. But the game does specifically
• 52:05
  suggest that you hold off on the hunting of the Sin until you've
• 52:11
  gained as much information about the Sin as you are comfortable
• 52:15
  with, to stack as many dice on your side as you can, because
• 52:19
  you will need them. You can if you're lucky, right?
• 52:22
  You can stumble upon the palace at pressure 0, tension one.
• 52:27
  But there is a very good chance the sin is still going to kick
• 52:30
  your ass because you don't know what you're going to getting
• 52:33
  into. You're just sort of going to be
• 52:35
  stumbling, stumbling around blindly in the dark, and then
• 52:39
  it's going to kick your ass. So the game says players
• 52:42
  exorcists, put your thinking caps on and do some
• 52:45
  investigating. It behooves you to do so, and
• 52:50
  it's that reward of if you find the right information, you get
• 52:53
  to do just free damage to the sin that would otherwise either
• 52:58
  cost you a sin overflow or extreme stress.
• 53:05
  Thoughts on the hunt? No, I mean, yeah, that's it's,
• 53:15
  it's cool. You have to go in, you have to
• 53:16
  investigate like, yeah, there there's there's very clear
• 53:21
  steps. And again, the game does not
• 53:22
  give you a skip the investigation button.
• 53:24
  So you really have to go out of your way and do it.
• 53:26
  And assuming that the the GM is doing as the game asks of them,
• 53:30
  you know that you're always going to be nudging towards
• 53:33
  something. The pressure clock is a good
• 53:38
  idea for a multitude of reasons. Yeah, like it also has that
• 53:43
  shown in vibe. Like, you know, it has a, it has
• 53:47
  almost like a JoJo vibe where it's like beginning of the
• 53:50
  episode, we're just wandering around and we're duped to do it.
• 53:52
  And then middle of the episode some weird shit happens and
• 53:55
  we're like, huh, OK. And then like, you know, 3/4
• 53:59
  into the episode we're like, what is going on?
• 54:01
  Why? Like what's happening?
• 54:02
  We're getting attacked. And then the last step of the
• 54:04
  episode is, oh, we figured out what the sand user can do.
• 54:08
  Now we can beat them, right? It has that kind of a vibe to
• 54:10
  it. It's very shown in anime.
• 54:12
  Very much so, yeah. Actually, this game does a very
• 54:15
  good job in a lot of its mechanics reinforcing the shonen
• 54:19
  anime vibe, like not just in terms of tone and like monsters
• 54:24
  and powers and all that, but also in terms of story beats and
• 54:29
  like episodic structure and all that.
• 54:31
  Like it it, it hits the shonen thing quite well.
• 54:38
  It even has, like we said, it even has a power scaling system.
• 54:42
  I can't wait to talk about the the category system.
• 54:44
  It's it's in my notes. I'm don't worry, we're going to
• 54:46
  talk about it. The final step of gameplay is
• 54:50
  downtime, which again, much less mechanically driven than.
• 54:54
  I mean execution to me. Well, that's why I'm I'm lumping
• 54:57
  that in with the hunt. Maybe I should have called it
• 54:58
  the execution, but fair enough. Yeah, well, the execution part
• 55:03
  is, you know, it's just at the end of the hunt.
• 55:06
  Once you've done the investigation and you find the
• 55:08
  scene, you go to their palace. Once you corner the sin in the
• 55:12
  palace, you have no choice but to execute them.
• 55:15
  Or, well, you have no choice but to fight the sin.
• 55:19
  You can sometimes spare sins, apparently, but it's frowned
• 55:23
  upon by the Kane administration. Yes, you are.
• 55:27
  Literally it's, it's like congratulations, you saved that
• 55:30
  person and now we might have a new exorcist.
• 55:31
  We are paying you less though, so be aware.
• 55:35
  It's it's generally frowned upon because they would much rather
• 55:38
  you just kill them all because that's how they keep the
• 55:40
  paychecks rolling, as it were. There's also some kind of
• 55:44
  interesting commentary where the book specifically points out
• 55:47
  like, hey, you might notice that Kane's business plan doesn't
• 55:51
  seem like it's really solving any problems.
• 55:56
  Yeah, you might be right about that.
• 55:58
  I do like that they're like, yeah, some people have have, you
• 56:02
  know, voice complaints. Those people were not heard from
• 56:05
  again. Yeah, like it's basically saying
• 56:07
  that like, yes, the throwing exorcist at the sins over and
• 56:12
  over again does not actually fix the problem of sin spawning all
• 56:16
  the time. What would probably actually
• 56:18
  solve the problem of sin spawning all the time would be
• 56:21
  making people's lives better, but Cain doesn't have any
• 56:23
  interest in that. Again, there's a lot of social
• 56:25
  commentary like under seeding things, but yes, the execution
• 56:29
  is basically the final conflict with the sin that you are
• 56:32
  hunting down. The sin in question cannot run.
• 56:37
  That's just not on the table. You they have to fight in their
• 56:39
  palace because their palace is their weird extra dimensional
• 56:42
  home that they existed. And yeah.
• 56:48
  You can. So this is something that's
• 56:50
  funny. You can actually momentarily
• 56:54
  like fuck off. You can run away, you can leave
• 56:56
  the palace because you're not stuck there it.
• 56:58
  Is no, you're not, but yeah, this it is.
• 57:01
  And I had a situation where one of my players found the palace
• 57:05
  and was like, I wish to poke the snip, poke the bear with a
• 57:09
  stick. And I went, you know, you're
• 57:12
  alone, right? And she went, yeah, but I just
• 57:15
  want to see it. I want to see what's in there.
• 57:17
  And I was like, OK, and went in, saw the sin regenerating because
• 57:25
  they had gotten attacked by it and then went, OK, I want to hit
• 57:29
  it. And I went that's not a good
• 57:32
  idea. And.
• 57:33
  She went no. Well, I can just leave, right?
• 57:36
  If things get bad, I can just leave.
• 57:37
  And I was like, potentially. Question.
• 57:41
  Yeah, you could maybe leave if you're lucky enough.
• 57:43
  And she was like, I'm willing to take those odds.
• 57:47
  I don't have any injuries yet. She got an injury immediately.
• 57:51
  No, no, no. This was actually this is my
• 57:53
  cousin, OK, The one who I found out is really into Harry Potter
• 57:58
  fan fiction. It sounds like something Sarah
• 58:02
  would do. I believe Sarah is also into
• 58:05
  Harry Potter. I I I meant the I'm going to
• 58:08
  poke it with a stick thing. No, look, she is the I poke it
• 58:12
  with a stick player for sure. She is very similar to Ant,
• 58:15
  where she's just like, well, God gave me thumbs to hold this
• 58:18
  stick for a reason, so I'm just going to poke everything with
• 58:21
  the stick. I'm just going to do it.
• 58:25
  And you know, I appreciate her for that.
• 58:27
  She a real one. But yeah, no, my, my, my little
• 58:30
  cousin poked the sin with her proverbial stick and got
• 58:34
  immediately pieced up by it and took an injury because the sins
• 58:39
  work. They work a lot very similar
• 58:42
  rather to the way that monsters work in Apocalypse World and
• 58:46
  Dungeon World, where they don't have their own turns, they just
• 58:49
  react to whatever you do, essentially meaning they have as
• 58:53
  many turns in the initiative in quotations as you do.
• 58:57
  Which is funny because that that is a really effective way to
• 59:00
  scale difficulty. It like effectively eliminates
• 59:03
  the need for for what sort of looking for challenge rating,
• 59:08
  assuming that the sin is not ridiculously much higher
• 59:10
  category than your exercise. Yeah, you.
• 59:12
  Yeah, you rely on the category instead.
• 59:14
  You don't need to worry about any kind of meta math to make it
• 59:18
  work. It does say that you're unless
• 59:22
  they royally fuck up and trigger a sin event, your exorcist
• 59:26
  should always be going on hunts against sins of their category.
• 59:30
  Their level, yeah. Like, basically, yeah.
• 59:32
  The corporation's not going to throw them against enemies they
• 59:35
  can't handle type of thing. Yes, this again.
• 59:37
  That's one of the really funny odd double sided coins about the
• 59:41
  cane organization where they care about you just enough.
• 59:44
  Just enough. Yeah, just enough as.
• 59:47
  The Rick and Morty, I've put enough.
• 59:48
  I've put so much money in working to you, I'm not just
• 59:50
  going to throw you away for a new model yet.
• 59:52
  Well, yeah, it's it's the idea of like, you care about your
• 59:56
  gun, you know, that you bought because you paid a lot of money
• 59:59
  for it, and you clean it and maintain it so that you can
• 1:00:02
  shoot people with it. You don't care about the gun's
• 1:00:04
  feelings. But you care about the gun
• 1:00:06
  working, so you're not going to, you know, you're not going to
• 1:00:10
  throw the gun in a VAT of acid just to see what happens.
• 1:00:13
  That defeats the point of having it.
• 1:00:15
  So it's like, yeah, we're not going to throw these idiot
• 1:00:17
  sorcerers or category one at a category 5 ogre.
• 1:00:20
  We know they're going to die. We're not that dumb.
• 1:00:24
  They're actually I believe somewhere in the book it does
• 1:00:26
  say that there was a, a, a, some sort of clerical error with seer
• 1:00:31
  to telemetry. And I think it's one of the, it
• 1:00:35
  might be one of the hounds where it was just like, yeah, the
• 1:00:38
  whole team died. We had to send in a stronger
• 1:00:39
  team. Yeah, we've had we fucked up
• 1:00:41
  there. It was stronger than we thought.
• 1:00:43
  Yeah, it's like, like not our best.
• 1:00:47
  Moment you know our math was a little off.
• 1:00:56
  I'll find it. I'll find it at some point when
• 1:00:57
  we talk about it. It was, it was very good.
• 1:01:00
  And yeah, finally we have downtime, which like I said,
• 1:01:03
  much less mechanically driven than in Bloom's previous game,
• 1:01:06
  though it does serve a similar purpose.
• 1:01:09
  During the downtime between missions, you can spend your
• 1:01:11
  script, like we said, which gives you certain buffs or
• 1:01:15
  otherwise, and I use this word in quotations, useless but still
• 1:01:19
  powerful narrative tools for you, you know, you and your
• 1:01:23
  likely not long for this world Exorcist.
• 1:01:25
  This is the like I get to go on vacation thing.
• 1:01:29
  It's powerful for the narrative. It's powerful for your
• 1:01:31
  character, but not in any sense that it gives you a buff.
• 1:01:35
  It it might just provide your character with the mental state
• 1:01:40
  that they need to keep going because you can.
• 1:01:42
  Like I, I think this game carries a similar vibe to
• 1:01:49
  Apocalypse World where it kind of takes on a mind of its own
• 1:01:51
  with The Exorcist in the way that they're designed, where
• 1:01:54
  their agendas work and all that fun stuff.
• 1:01:58
  How do you mean? Well, so the agenda informs how
• 1:02:02
  the character acts, right? Players can act however they
• 1:02:05
  want, right? But you are rewarded for acting
• 1:02:08
  in accordance with your agenda. And presumably you are building
• 1:02:10
  a character very specifically that acts in accordance with a
• 1:02:13
  specific agenda that the player wants to unfold.
• 1:02:17
  But the agendas provide you with two different items or what
• 1:02:22
  they're called, essentially little tag lines that describe
• 1:02:25
  how you get rewarded. So for something like the, I
• 1:02:28
  believe it's the, the, the beast or the animal, whatever it's
• 1:02:31
  called. Or is it the demon, The one that
• 1:02:33
  just wants to fight everybody? One just wants to fight, yeah.
• 1:02:37
  You get rewarded for starting fights.
• 1:02:39
  It literally one of the items is start a fight.
• 1:02:42
  Yeah, get into a fight, yeah. The other one is hold back and
• 1:02:46
  use diplomacy. And I think it's cool that the
• 1:02:50
  game tells you, Yeah, well, your character is going to question
• 1:02:55
  their own sense of morality, their own sense of purpose.
• 1:02:59
  And if that keeps happening, the game also says you can change
• 1:03:02
  agendas if you want to. You're not recommending that you
• 1:03:05
  do it constantly because you will lose whatever agenda
• 1:03:07
  ability you have to take up a new one, but you can do it So in
• 1:03:12
  the sense that your character is a demon.
• 1:03:13
  Rewarded. You get rewarded.
• 1:03:16
  It is beast. By the way, you get rewarded
• 1:03:19
  extra if you tap into your bolded 1 and the bolded agenda
• 1:03:24
  item is always opposite the non bolded agenda item.
• 1:03:27
  Yes. So you can imagine a situation
• 1:03:32
  where a beast character keeps losing fights, right?
• 1:03:35
  They keep picking fights with sins or their, you know, their
• 1:03:38
  little hangers on and keep getting walloped.
• 1:03:41
  And getting clapped. Or even worse, they pick a fight
• 1:03:46
  and cause one of their friends to die.
• 1:03:49
  That character might not want to go on anymore.
• 1:03:50
  And unfortunately then you don't get a choice.
• 1:03:52
  You don't get to retire your character until that character
• 1:03:54
  fucking dies or you buy your way out with script.
• 1:03:57
  But the fact that your character can go to Fiji for a week with
• 1:04:01
  the friends that they still do have might be what that
• 1:04:04
  character needs to potentially change their agenda and keep
• 1:04:07
  going and not self sabotage. Because I could totally see if
• 1:04:11
  you really wanted to, like, get into character for this game, a
• 1:04:14
  like your extras is just giving up.
• 1:04:16
  Like, imagine fighting a centipede with all the zombies
• 1:04:19
  and you just walk into the horde because you're like, I'm done.
• 1:04:21
  I I just don't care anymore. Yeah, that would be.
• 1:04:28
  That's one of those things you get a lot of discussion about
• 1:04:32
  this. I believe this happened in
• 1:04:34
  campaign 2 of Critical Role with Erica Ishii's character.
• 1:04:36
  I think it's Erica Ishi's character.
• 1:04:38
  No, it was Ashley Birch's character freezing up in the
• 1:04:42
  fight with the slaver dude. And that's why Molly dies,
• 1:04:45
  because she like actively does not do the optimal thing and
• 1:04:48
  take an action to help him. Oh, and.
• 1:04:50
  I've heard about this. I didn't watch it but yes I've
• 1:04:52
  heard about this. Yeah, and she got a lot of shit
• 1:04:55
  for that. Yeah.
• 1:04:58
  And like. Well, because in DND there's
• 1:05:01
  kind of no reason to do that, you know?
• 1:05:03
  Right, but the way that they're playing DND as a narrative first
• 1:05:06
  game, not that it necessarily is by design, but the way that they
• 1:05:09
  are using it, and it likely informed a lot of the way that
• 1:05:12
  they designed Daggerhart. Yes.
• 1:05:15
  Is to be more narrative facing. So the fact that she would do
• 1:05:18
  that because that's the more powerful thing to do in the
• 1:05:20
  narrative. As a victim of a slave master,
• 1:05:24
  yeah, bad things are going to happen when you freeze up in the
• 1:05:27
  middle of a fight. I personally I think as as a
• 1:05:31
  game master if someone wanted to have that moment and players at
• 1:05:36
  the table were like cool with it, I don't see why you have any
• 1:05:39
  problem with letting it happen. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily
• 1:05:42
  have a yeah problem with it, but I don't know, I, I might
• 1:05:47
  discourage doing it because I don't, well, I don't know,
• 1:05:51
  discourage. I guess if a player had that
• 1:05:54
  thought and it was very clear that another player's character
• 1:05:57
  was going to die because of that, I would look at the other
• 1:06:00
  player and be like, are you OK with them making this clearly
• 1:06:04
  stupid move? You know what I mean?
• 1:06:05
  Well, that's what I'm saying, like assuming, assuming you had
• 1:06:08
  that talk and everyone's OK with it.
• 1:06:10
  And I, I don't think this is going to happen often.
• 1:06:11
  I think it, it requires a very specific set of circumstances
• 1:06:14
  for a character to, to self delete like that.
• 1:06:17
  That's a pretty heavy thing to do, you know?
• 1:06:20
  Yeah. But I still think you can be
• 1:06:22
  really interesting and really moving in the narrative for that
• 1:06:24
  to happen and the fact that your character going on vacation
• 1:06:27
  could otherwise stop that because it's just the like,
• 1:06:30
  slight human connection they need to power on with their
• 1:06:32
  awful life as an exercise. The game, like it even talks
• 1:06:38
  about, you know, in its safety tools about how this game is
• 1:06:41
  going to get heavy. You're dealing with trauma
• 1:06:43
  intrinsically. Your characters cannot,
• 1:06:46
  literally cannot escape trauma themselves.
• 1:06:50
  The sins have specific moves that can give you additional
• 1:06:53
  agenda items that typically suck.
• 1:06:56
  They're really not like you get experience for them, but it's
• 1:06:59
  like, you know, talk down to a player because they, you think
• 1:07:03
  they're going to let you down intrinsically or lash out
• 1:07:06
  angrily at somebody. Your your character's getting
• 1:07:10
  fucking traumatized but he's having a bad time.
• 1:07:16
  Yeah. It's it, this is not where my,
• 1:07:21
  in my notes, but I, I don't know, I, I really appreciate how
• 1:07:25
  the game really presents mental illness and suffering in a way
• 1:07:29
  that isn't played for shock value.
• 1:07:34
  You know, right, Because it could be like, Oh yeah, you
• 1:07:38
  figure out what people's trauma things are and then you kill
• 1:07:41
  those things. But if it's like, Oh yeah, this
• 1:07:44
  person's life wife left them and the game encouraged you to go
• 1:07:48
  murder a random woman for filing divorce, that doesn't make so I
• 1:07:56
  I get why you'd come to that conclusion, but that doesn't
• 1:07:58
  feel right. You know what I mean?
• 1:08:00
  As opposed to. Murdering the person you're
• 1:08:02
  murdering, their like, awful sense of despair that's ripped
• 1:08:04
  out of their body, right? But it like it's more much more
• 1:08:07
  powerful to tell. It's like confront somebody
• 1:08:10
  about the thing that they did wrong or the thing that happened
• 1:08:12
  to them and your exorcist being like, your feelings are valid
• 1:08:17
  and you need to help us fight back against the giant rage
• 1:08:21
  monster because Jimmy just got his fucking leg ripped off.
• 1:08:25
  So can you please help us, you know?
• 1:08:30
  Yeah. I, I think it, it, it gives me a
• 1:08:33
  similar emotional response to the, the safety features that
• 1:08:37
  they talk about, you know, the, the diversity stuff that they
• 1:08:40
  talk about monster heart where it's clearly done with in clear
• 1:08:43
  intent and very powerful emotional meaning behind it.
• 1:08:47
  And I appreciate that. That being said, we must move on
• 1:08:54
  because we can talk about the mechanics now.
• 1:08:56
  Josh's favorite is mechanics, yes.
• 1:08:59
  I mean, I mean, this game, I would say the mechanics are
• 1:09:02
  equal to the vibe, so, you know, yeah, but yeah.
• 1:09:07
  First and foremost, let's start off basic with the way that
• 1:09:10
  roles work. Kane works off of a a pretty
• 1:09:14
  basic D6 dice pool system. It's a yeah, it's a dice pool
• 1:09:17
  system, pretty similar to blades.
• 1:09:19
  Yeah, the game works with static DCS and two technically 3
• 1:09:23
  distinct role modifiers that the GM slash admin can impose upon
• 1:09:26
  the players to shift the way things are going to work.
• 1:09:29
  Those are the hard and technically impossible tags and
• 1:09:33
  the risky tag. The difference basically being
• 1:09:36
  is that any standard tag is it or it requires rather A4 up on
• 1:09:42
  any single die in the pool to be successful, and the more
• 1:09:46
  successes you get, the more effective that your success is.
• 1:09:48
  Similar to Blades slash Star Wars.
• 1:09:51
  Well, by for a regular role extra successes doesn't
• 1:09:54
  necessarily matter, but for talismans it does.
• 1:09:58
  Well, yes, but we'll get into talismans for a second.
• 1:10:01
  Everything works off of talismans so as long as you're
• 1:10:04
  not doing like basic investigation stuff like can I
• 1:10:08
  hack the computer right? Like 2 successes are not going
• 1:10:10
  to help you hack better. Although you could argue that
• 1:10:13
  you could get more you know you know you can ask more questions
• 1:10:17
  with those successes, but given that most things are done
• 1:10:20
  through tags or not tags clocks, the more successes means the
• 1:10:24
  more ticks. The more ticks, the more
• 1:10:25
  successful. Which are clocks, Yeah, yes,
• 1:10:31
  yeah. I mean, I mean the dice pool
• 1:10:33
  system is it. So it's, it's a little, I, the
• 1:10:39
  terminology I find a little confusing 'cause it has like, so
• 1:10:43
  basically the game's like you have normal roles, then you have
• 1:10:46
  risky roles and you have hard roles and you would think, oh,
• 1:10:52
  risky. It's like, it's like easy,
• 1:10:54
  medium, hard. It's not.
• 1:10:56
  It's not, Yeah. Normal roll is like there's
• 1:11:00
  basically no consequences, you're just rolling to kind of
• 1:11:03
  see what happens. Risky is there's a chance
• 1:11:07
  something bad can happen, so the the admin will roll a risk die.
• 1:11:15
  This is basically how the game does its equivalent of partial
• 1:11:18
  successes, sort of. So if you roll a risky roll and
• 1:11:25
  then you succeed but you rolled A2 on the wrist die, the admin
• 1:11:29
  gets to respond with something you know bad and then hard is
• 1:11:34
  the same as a risky role. The difference is instead of a
• 1:11:37
  four up, your successes are only on sixes, so you are less likely
• 1:11:40
  to succeed, but it doesn't make a hard roll.
• 1:11:44
  Is not riskier inherently. Yes, a a hard roll does not
• 1:11:49
  automatically incur risk. They are often used in tandem,
• 1:11:52
  but they do not necessarily require that tandem usage.
• 1:11:55
  Yeah, you can have a normal roll that is hard but not risky.
• 1:12:01
  So like, I guess, I guess a normal role that isn't hard is
• 1:12:05
  like you go to hack the computer and it's got a really tight
• 1:12:09
  security system, so it's hard for you to get through, but
• 1:12:13
  there's no immediate problem if you don't do it.
• 1:12:15
  I guess would be kind of the example of that.
• 1:12:18
  It's kind of like so. You can fail on a normal role
• 1:12:21
  and have consequences incurred. The risk is when that
• 1:12:25
  consequence is on a sliding scale, the difference between,
• 1:12:30
  you know, you're trying to, to I, I thought straight out of a
• 1:12:32
  speeding ticket to like getting arrested.
• 1:12:35
  No, I thought straight rolls was there's literally no damage at
• 1:12:37
  all 'cause it says I don't believe so.
• 1:12:42
  Not all it says. Not all action rules are risky.
• 1:12:44
  If there is no clear and present consequence or danger, there's
• 1:12:48
  no risk involved and the roll is a straight roll without the
• 1:12:51
  wrist I being rolled at all. A player might make a straight
• 1:12:55
  role. Might might make straight roles
• 1:12:57
  when making general tests of ability, knowledge or skill,
• 1:13:01
  investigating, survey or exploring, persuading someone
• 1:13:03
  who has a receptive attitude, working on a project, taking
• 1:13:07
  action when the result is unclear.
• 1:13:08
  But the outcome isn't necessarily dangerous, right?
• 1:13:14
  So like a straight role is like there is no consequence.
• 1:13:19
  Well, the consequence is just, you know, in the case of trying
• 1:13:22
  to persuade someone, they don't help you.
• 1:13:23
  Yeah, it just doesn't. Work.
• 1:13:24
  They fail, but there's no there's.
• 1:13:26
  There's no reaction. Break your legs.
• 1:13:28
  Trying to jump a gap, yeah. Yeah, it's like you could fail
• 1:13:33
  the objective but nothing happens.
• 1:13:36
  Whereas A risky role, something is going to happen for sure.
• 1:13:40
  If you fail, fuck up. Yes.
• 1:13:46
  Yeah. And then there's impossible
• 1:13:48
  roles, which is it's not a roll, there's impossible actions, I
• 1:13:54
  guess it technically calls it, which is to say you just can't
• 1:13:57
  fucking do it. The the point I'm making is that
• 1:13:59
  the dice paradigm is a little confusing.
• 1:14:03
  It doesn't 'cause when I started reading it, I assumed it works
• 1:14:06
  like blades. It does not work like Blades.
• 1:14:09
  It doesn't, no. I I think so.
• 1:14:11
  The thing with impossible that's worth mentioning is that AGM
• 1:14:16
  says a thing is impossible that is impossible with your current
• 1:14:22
  capabilities. So for example, if you as an
• 1:14:27
  exorcist try to use your, your I don't know, your Ardent's
• 1:14:33
  blasphemy right to like blast through a wall and the GM goes
• 1:14:37
  sorry, that won't be possible. But if two exorcists team up and
• 1:14:40
  use both of their Ardent's abilities to blast the hole
• 1:14:44
  through the wall, that role could therefore go from
• 1:14:46
  impossible to just hard. Yeah.
• 1:14:49
  So it's a, it's a state, not a, not an, it's.
• 1:14:52
  A. It's a state informing you like
• 1:14:54
  there's a chance, but you need to do something else to make it.
• 1:14:56
  Work yes yeah, I mean I I think that's important because I think
• 1:15:01
  someone sees impossible and just goes Nope, can't do it nothing
• 1:15:03
  can just nothing can be done and it's like well game specifically
• 1:15:06
  says that the category system negates impossibilities by
• 1:15:10
  normal human standards yeah no, it's worth.
• 1:15:14
  There is, there is also fate roles.
• 1:15:16
  If you as the GM just want to kind of see what happens, you
• 1:15:18
  just roll up, you roll a singular D6 and it's either A1
• 1:15:23
  is like the worst result. A 2 to 3 is not is a bad result.
• 1:15:27
  4 to 5 is good, 6 is best. Yes.
• 1:15:30
  I think that's very interesting that they have a little bit of a
• 1:15:32
  roll roll thing. Yeah, it's interesting that they
• 1:15:34
  have both faith roles and what are essentially fortune roles.
• 1:15:39
  This is one of the two times, right?
• 1:15:42
  I think it makes sense because the risk role is in specific
• 1:15:45
  response to something the player is doing, whereas the Fate role
• 1:15:48
  could be like you as the GM being like, I'm not sure, let me
• 1:15:51
  just see what the dice say kind of thing.
• 1:15:53
  You know what? I.
• 1:15:54
  Mean right, right. So I, I think I, I almost feel
• 1:15:56
  like I want to just call any role with risk a fate role and
• 1:16:00
  say there are player fate roles and GM fate roles.
• 1:16:08
  I, I say this because it that way, like looking back, I
• 1:16:11
  definitely made players roll things risky when it could have
• 1:16:14
  just been a fate roll, right? Like literally they're like, oh,
• 1:16:18
  is this character armed, Which is one of the examples of for
• 1:16:21
  fate rolls. I was, you know, roll
• 1:16:23
  persuasion. They rolled low and I went OK,
• 1:16:26
  that character's armed and they pull a gun on.
• 1:16:31
  You, yeah, I mean, that just sounds like a a just a slight
• 1:16:35
  misunderstanding of the system because you had to run it that
• 1:16:37
  much. Yeah, for sure.
• 1:16:39
  I'm not going to say it's not true.
• 1:16:42
  I, I, I think, I think the word risk, I think the reason they
• 1:16:45
  use risk as a distinct thing is to point out that player, the
• 1:16:50
  thing you are doing can have immediate consequences.
• 1:16:53
  Whereas a fate role is just sort of like reading the bones.
• 1:16:57
  It doesn't necessarily have to have immediate consequences.
• 1:17:02
  Fair enough. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:17:05
  Yeah, yeah, I get you. Something that I want to bring
• 1:17:08
  up is that I like a lot about this game is that, you know, the
• 1:17:14
  game is aware that that dice pools by nature can be kind of
• 1:17:19
  swingy, right? If if the if the dice just said
• 1:17:23
  no, there is a distinct lack of modifier to alter those roles
• 1:17:27
  for you, which is why the game gives you several means by which
• 1:17:33
  to stack those like to stack those odds in your favor.
• 1:17:39
  Those being there's four of them.
• 1:17:40
  Specifically, there is the setup action, the teamwork action,
• 1:17:44
  psychic bursts, and then finally Divine agony.
• 1:17:49
  And I really like that they made a distinction between teamwork
• 1:17:52
  and setup because those are treated as two different things.
• 1:17:55
  Teamwork allows a player to or two players to pull their dice
• 1:18:00
  together, which potentially allows them to break the three
• 1:18:03
  dice limit on any particular role.
• 1:18:06
  They could in theory, hit six dice if one player is using
• 1:18:10
  their force and the other one's using their coordination or
• 1:18:13
  their psychic skill to, you know, double team a sin.
• 1:18:19
  The idea being that if they succeed or they're they're,
• 1:18:22
  they're very likely to succeed, but if they fail, they both will
• 1:18:27
  inevitably be taking that concept.
• 1:18:31
  Set up is a little bit different insofar as both players can
• 1:18:37
  incur consequence, but it's not a guarantee that they will.
• 1:18:41
  Rather, set up can be it. I believe it.
• 1:18:44
  The point is that it's supposed to be used in tandem with things
• 1:18:48
  like teamwork to bring a roll down from impossible to hard or
• 1:18:52
  to risky or sorry hard to normal or from risky to standard.
• 1:18:56
  It's really about shifting what you need to roll in the 1st
• 1:19:00
  place. It can also just incur a + 1 die
• 1:19:02
  to anything up to I still I believe a maximum of three, but
• 1:19:07
  it serves an equal but distinct difference in the team.
• 1:19:13
  Psychic bursts are. They're just the ammo for your
• 1:19:18
  psychic abilities. You get three of them at
• 1:19:20
  standard and then you have a number of sin points that you
• 1:19:23
  can use to do additional psychic abilities.
• 1:19:26
  At any point when you make a roll, you can just burn, I
• 1:19:29
  believe it's any number of psychic bursts up to a maximum
• 1:19:33
  of three to just give yourself additional roll dice.
• 1:19:37
  The idea being basically being is that I thought.
• 1:19:38
  It was only one at a time. Is it I?
• 1:19:41
  I might. I'm going to be honest, I reread
• 1:19:43
  this book. For some reason I'm struggling
• 1:19:47
  to bring back some specific memories.
• 1:19:49
  I don't remember. I mean, it doesn't really
• 1:19:51
  matter. Basically the idea is you can
• 1:19:52
  tap into your psychic powers to give yourself roll roll bumps.
• 1:19:56
  Yes, the final thing you get is your divine agony.
• 1:20:01
  Essentially what this is, is whenever you roll a check and
• 1:20:04
  you get no successes on anything, you build a a ammo
• 1:20:09
  essentially called a pathos and at any point in once per session
• 1:20:15
  on a player basis and once per seen on a team basis, there is a
• 1:20:19
  distinction. You burn any number.
• 1:20:23
  Of those pathoses to perform a divine agony which essentially
• 1:20:27
  just adds to a roll and is allowed to break the three die
• 1:20:30
  limit. So you could.
• 1:20:33
  This is really funny. You could do a teamwork for six
• 1:20:36
  die and then go fuck it. I'm burning my divine agony for
• 1:20:40
  9 dice on a on a move. Which you could get some pretty
• 1:20:44
  cool like father, son, Kamehameha stuff out of that if
• 1:20:47
  you're fighting a sin, if you're really sick.
• 1:20:50
  It would it. Would literally just be the the
• 1:20:52
  the the Toto Itadori just fucking jumping the shit.
• 1:20:58
  The black flash. The black flash kick.
• 1:21:03
  Yeah, yeah, just they're like, hey, put those hands up, put
• 1:21:06
  those. Hands up.
• 1:21:08
  Oh yeah, or or Toto and Itadori fucking boogie woogie in on
• 1:21:13
  enemy. Yeah, on Honomi.
• 1:21:15
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just clapping the shit out
• 1:21:17
  of her. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:20
  God, I love Toto so much. Such a good character.
• 1:21:29
  I will say if I do it to level a little bit of a criticism at
• 1:21:33
  this game and this is I think this is one of those things I'm
• 1:21:39
  always in two binds about because I have complained about
• 1:21:43
  this in the past in both tabletop and video games.
• 1:21:47
  But I do also like it sometimes because it does reinforce the
• 1:21:53
  vibe basically. So this game kind of does the
• 1:21:58
  what I refer to as the War Warframe naming convention where
• 1:22:06
  things that could have like a pretty simple straightforward
• 1:22:08
  name, they name it something like cool and edgy sounding
• 1:22:11
  basically to just make it cooler and edgier.
• 1:22:15
  The Warframe devs are literally on record saying that internally
• 1:22:20
  when they name something once they've completed the like
• 1:22:23
  mechanic or the subsystem or the lore or whatever, they go OK
• 1:22:27
  now, now we have to Warframeify the name, which basically just
• 1:22:30
  means turning it into some sort of sci-fi gobbledygook nobody
• 1:22:33
  knows how to say. In the case of Warframe,
• 1:22:36
  fantastic. In the case of this game calling
• 1:22:40
  the power Divine agony and you gaining pathos.
• 1:22:44
  It's to reinforce the vibe. But it does make it a little
• 1:22:47
  harder to remember the mechanics with those words because they
• 1:22:50
  don't immediately tell me anything with them, you know
• 1:22:54
  what I mean? Yeah, they they don't inform
• 1:22:56
  what the fuck you're actually trying to do with this ability.
• 1:22:59
  Yeah, yeah, what the fuck? It's actually doing mechanically
• 1:23:01
  there isn't. There is some stuff in this game
• 1:23:04
  where they do that, like even the the the Blasphemies, right?
• 1:23:10
  Blasphemies are effectively the this game is mostly classless,
• 1:23:13
  but if the closest thing it has is like Blasphemies are kind of
• 1:23:16
  your class, but the name Blasphemies does not really tell
• 1:23:19
  you that. So like that's one little 1
• 1:23:25
  little criticism of like how they do it.
• 1:23:28
  And in some parts of the game they do explain the word, the
• 1:23:32
  weird verbiage they use. So like with talismans, right?
• 1:23:36
  When I was first reading the game, I was not clear on what
• 1:23:40
  the fuck talismans were. And then at one point in the
• 1:23:42
  book it was like, if you're familiar with clocks in other
• 1:23:45
  games, that's what talismans are.
• 1:23:47
  I was like oh OK thank you for now I know exactly how this
• 1:23:50
  works. So do you know what it did?
• 1:23:52
  You know what caught me about talismans?
• 1:23:55
  What is that? They are the talismans don't
• 1:24:02
  look like clocks. They are strips of paper that
• 1:24:04
  you mark down that you. Yeah, you strike.
• 1:24:07
  Yeah. So I was really struggling to,
• 1:24:13
  like, visualize them. And I eventually I just had to
• 1:24:17
  to like, they're clocks, but they're different clocks.
• 1:24:20
  They're clocks, but they're different clocks.
• 1:24:21
  They're clocks, but they're different.
• 1:24:22
  Clocks. Yeah, they're clocks that fill
• 1:24:24
  in down. They fill down instead of a
• 1:24:28
  round. Yes, yes, they fill down instead
• 1:24:30
  of round. You basically could like just
• 1:24:32
  RIP a piece of a Talisman off every time you succeed on it.
• 1:24:35
  When you're done ripping shit off then you're done.
• 1:24:37
  All that works. I just brain just didn't want to
• 1:24:40
  do it. I struggled for I don't even
• 1:24:42
  know why. I didn't even make that sense
• 1:24:43
  that I would struggle with, I think the word.
• 1:24:44
  Talisman makes you want to think it's some sort of like spell
• 1:24:48
  based mechanic. Yeah, it.
• 1:24:52
  Almost makes you want to think about it as a physical thing
• 1:24:54
  happening in the narrative, right?
• 1:24:55
  Like. Yes.
• 1:24:56
  When you're fighting the sin, you're looking at the execution
• 1:24:58
  Talisman like it's got fucking life points in Yu-gi-oh.
• 1:25:02
  Yeah, yeah. Which it kind of is.
• 1:25:06
  It kind of is, yeah. But your characters don't know
• 1:25:08
  that, right? They're, they're just fighting
• 1:25:09
  for their lives. Yeah, I almost, I, you know
• 1:25:15
  what? If I were to run this as a game,
• 1:25:17
  I would almost want to implement an execution Talisman as a
• 1:25:19
  physical item that the characters can look at.
• 1:25:22
  You know what kind of fun? Imagine, if you will, they're
• 1:25:25
  fighting the The Hound and they're having a DBZ Broly
• 1:25:29
  moment where one of the characters just getting pieced
• 1:25:32
  up like Frieza did, and they're just like, are we close?
• 1:25:35
  Yeah. I was like, no.
• 1:25:41
  I did have the thought when I was reading about the talismans,
• 1:25:46
  I was like, how would I set this up in roll 20 to make it so I
• 1:25:49
  could actually like strike the paper through?
• 1:25:52
  Because I feel like that is the cooler vibe, you know?
• 1:25:55
  Yes. And the aesthetic is very
• 1:25:57
  important for this game, so. There is unfortunately no API
• 1:26:01
  for Kane on Rule 20. I know.
• 1:26:04
  I know. There's no sheet or anything.
• 1:26:06
  I know. No, Yeah, sorry.
• 1:26:09
  It's a fucking bleeding shame. It's such a good like, I want
• 1:26:13
  this game to get so much more. Hopefully there will be
• 1:26:15
  eventually because Lancer's on there so.
• 1:26:18
  It is, yeah. So I'm.
• 1:26:19
  I'm. Confident we'll do it.
• 1:26:21
  I'm talking with someone who's adjusting the fabulous Ultima
• 1:26:25
  sheet for us, by the way. Oh really?
• 1:26:28
  Hell yeah. What are they doing?
• 1:26:30
  Adding an NPC tab to make my life a little easier and I will
• 1:26:35
  potentially ask them to nudge a couple of other things on the
• 1:26:38
  main sheet. Very cool.
• 1:26:42
  But anyway, back to it. Yes, I, I distracted slightly, I
• 1:26:49
  know. But yeah, I, I just wanted to
• 1:26:51
  point out that there is a little bit of that.
• 1:26:54
  There's a little bit of that naming frustration for me
• 1:26:56
  personally. No, you're, you're valid.
• 1:26:59
  So if I did have one frustration with this game is that the, and
• 1:27:04
  we talked about it at the beginning, you are absolutely
• 1:27:07
  sacrificing legibility for vibes because the game talks about
• 1:27:14
  several times. Like just looking at the rule
• 1:27:16
  book, the game brings up your agendas, but it does not list
• 1:27:22
  the agendas until 12 pages later.
• 1:27:28
  Yeah, yeah, same thing with blasphemies.
• 1:27:32
  The actual blasphemies, they talk about the blasphemies on
• 1:27:35
  page 26. They don't actually list them
• 1:27:39
  until page I'm still scrolling. Still scrolling.
• 1:27:48
  Yeah. Would you believe that I'm still
• 1:27:50
  scrolling? I would 54.
• 1:27:57
  OK. I did that to prove a point.
• 1:28:01
  Lately, yes. Yeah.
• 1:28:03
  So yeah, there is some legibility problems, especially
• 1:28:06
  if you're trying to use it as a reference book like I was trying
• 1:28:08
  to do while running the game. I went, wait, hold on like
• 1:28:15
  several times. Yeah, I'll give you that for
• 1:28:18
  fair. It's the design is not perfect.
• 1:28:20
  It it it's definitely not beating fabulous.
• 1:28:23
  Immaculate layout. I think it's beating fabulous in
• 1:28:28
  terms of vibes, but in terms of actual legibility night, it's
• 1:28:33
  not it's not holding a candle. I love this game.
• 1:28:36
  I might like this game more than fabulous, but I got to call a
• 1:28:39
  spade a spade. No, yeah, I mean, sometimes, but
• 1:28:41
  I think it was also vibes over legibility was like a, you know,
• 1:28:45
  a distinct choice, like a. You know, much like his art
• 1:28:50
  style, everything seems to be done with intent.
• 1:28:52
  So yeah, yeah, let's see. Oh, we actually talked about
• 1:28:56
  clocks. So I can we can jump right down
• 1:28:58
  to the category system baby. I mean, well, we sort of talked
• 1:29:03
  about the talismans, I feel. Like we have.
• 1:29:05
  To spend a little more on them. Do you fair enough?
• 1:29:10
  Well, just so the thing about the talismans in this case, so
• 1:29:14
  the the game calls them talismans, but if you play any
• 1:29:17
  other games with clocks, they are a clock system, right?
• 1:29:19
  You, the clock starts at 0, you fill up the clock, it completes
• 1:29:22
  some kind of objective, or you know, it starts full and you
• 1:29:26
  have to run it down. You know, any kind of use that
• 1:29:28
  you'd have for clocks. The main thing with this game is
• 1:29:33
  that the talismans are really the main meat and potatoes of
• 1:29:39
  how you track if the players are doing, like if the players are
• 1:29:44
  succeeding or not. Like so much so that when the
• 1:29:48
  players finally engage the sin, the sin doesn't have a health
• 1:29:51
  bar, they have a Talisman and the Talisman is the health bar.
• 1:29:55
  So this game relies on the clocks a lot.
• 1:29:58
  Like it is the main mechanic and you're basically using it all
• 1:30:01
  the goddamn time, so. Like literally all the time.
• 1:30:04
  The players don't have health bars either.
• 1:30:06
  They also have execution talismans just like the sin does
• 1:30:11
  that that's worth mentioning. Yeah, everything in this game.
• 1:30:15
  Wait, I thought. The players had like a stress
• 1:30:17
  counter and then injuries I thought was how they.
• 1:30:21
  Their stress counter is a clock. Oh, is it?
• 1:30:25
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:30:28
  Hold on, where? What page is it?
• 1:30:30
  I may have missed that making. I mean, I believe you.
• 1:30:32
  I just. I'm trying, I'm trying to
• 1:30:35
  remember for my. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:36
  So the players have on their page one they have, yeah.
• 1:30:39
  It's just, it's just called the execution Talisman for them as
• 1:30:41
  well. Oh, it is.
• 1:30:44
  Oh, you're right. Yeah.
• 1:30:46
  OK. And then injuries.
• 1:30:49
  And actually, how does it work again?
• 1:30:52
  They accrue stress and then if they tick over, it becomes an
• 1:30:56
  injury, Right? Yes, so players there.
• 1:31:00
  Is a non lethal stress. Yes.
• 1:31:03
  So if players accrue stress, that stress would push them over
• 1:31:08
  into, you know, maxing out they start at six.
• 1:31:12
  That will accrue an injury. If something deals non lethal
• 1:31:17
  stress, what that essentially means is in the game if you get
• 1:31:22
  pushed, no, you can be pushed over and it will still cause an
• 1:31:26
  injury, but it can't kill you. If something were to drive you
• 1:31:30
  your entire stress bar like to like deal enough damage to bring
• 1:31:33
  you from nothing to full stress, you just die unless you take a
• 1:31:39
  step like a sin overflow or what have you to not do that non
• 1:31:44
  lethal can push you to stress, but no matter how much injuries
• 1:31:47
  you have, it can't kill you. OK, yeah, hooks are something
• 1:31:54
  that would that what's worth bringing up on the the clocks.
• 1:31:58
  The hooks. They're a little confusing, yes.
• 1:32:02
  So hooks are basically clocks that incur conditions or
• 1:32:07
  injuries and effectively bypass the execution Talisman.
• 1:32:15
  So for example, if you get the ogre has a hook for rotting,
• 1:32:20
  that rot once that fills out kills you.
• 1:32:24
  So it's almost it's, it's effectively a delayed condition
• 1:32:27
  or a delayed injury. It's something that you keep
• 1:32:30
  note of, and it can defect you, and it likely will affect you in
• 1:32:34
  due time, but it gives you time to either circumvent it or cure
• 1:32:39
  it or overcome it, wherever it might be.
• 1:32:42
  Right. It's one of the I can be extra
• 1:32:45
  mean because I'm giving you clear time to fix it.
• 1:32:48
  Right, right. I'm pointing out what's going
• 1:32:49
  to. I'm giving you a warning and it
• 1:32:50
  can. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:32:51
  And then afflictions are just like status.
• 1:32:54
  Conditions basically yes yes so one of the rotting is also
• 1:32:58
  technically I believe it's not doesn't kill you it gives you an
• 1:33:00
  affliction which can kill you I believe which.
• 1:33:03
  Can kill you or something. Yeah, yeah, I remember.
• 1:33:05
  Sure. But.
• 1:33:06
  Yeah, fun fact about the centipede, one of its domains
• 1:33:10
  basically says that if at any point the exorcist come in
• 1:33:14
  contact with the zombies, even if no one took any stress, it
• 1:33:19
  can just give you the hook bitten and once that ticks up,
• 1:33:23
  you become a zombie and die. And I you can still not die
• 1:33:29
  doing sin overflow. I'm not entirely sure how those
• 1:33:32
  interact because sin overflow is the ultimate I just don't die
• 1:33:35
  button. Right?
• 1:33:36
  Right. But it's worth looking into
• 1:33:39
  because I really like the sin of you.
• 1:33:40
  Is there anything else worth bringing up for clocks?
• 1:33:47
  No, I think yeah. I just wanted to point out that
• 1:33:50
  this game like heavily leans into them.
• 1:33:53
  It is arguably the main mechanic of the game.
• 1:33:56
  Yeah, that I would say clocks and the the talismans and like
• 1:33:59
  the category and the wrist die, Yeah, categories house with
• 1:34:04
  wrist die are sort of the main mechanics I would say.
• 1:34:07
  That's valid. Now we can talk about the
• 1:34:11
  fucking sick category system. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:34:15
  Everything in Cane is ranked on this category system.
• 1:34:19
  The rankings go from zero to seven and.
• 1:34:22
  It's 7 plus. If you're E to be power level,
• 1:34:24
  yes. And it is essentially a just a
• 1:34:27
  graphic chart that again shows the severity of any sin
• 1:34:32
  situation. Exorcists are also measured on
• 1:34:34
  this scale. Yeah, everything is measured on
• 1:34:37
  it. It's from zero to to 7. 7 from
• 1:34:41
  category 0 to category one at imp, category 2 Geist, category
• 1:34:46
  3 Revenant, category 4 Wraith, category 5 Demon, category 6
• 1:34:50
  God, and the edgiest one at category 7 at Demon God.
• 1:34:56
  Demon. God, feel like we could have
• 1:34:59
  just named it anything else but OK.
• 1:35:01
  Nope. Demon God yes, and normal humans
• 1:35:04
  are 0. Normal humans are 0.
• 1:35:06
  Your exorcist, no matter how what category they are in terms
• 1:35:10
  of their physical abilities, are always category zero.
• 1:35:14
  Their abilities automatically get upgraded when you throw a
• 1:35:17
  cyberst at it to whatever your category of exorcist is.
• 1:35:20
  Or you do the the the the sin bursty thingy or whatever,
• 1:35:25
  right? The sin overflow, yeah, No, no.
• 1:35:27
  The burst, no, yeah, sorry, that's what I said.
• 1:35:29
  Second burst. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:32
  No, there's the blast, but there's also the burst thing.
• 1:35:35
  Those are different, aren't they?
• 1:35:37
  Blast is a. Blast for me, but I I may have
• 1:35:40
  said cyblast. I meant to say Cyburst.
• 1:35:44
  Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:46
  Yeah, if you use a psychic burst, that automatically
• 1:35:48
  upgrades whatever your physical ability is at that moment to
• 1:35:51
  whatever your category is, which is literally cursed energy
• 1:35:55
  because technically no one in Judaism is is above human level.
• 1:35:58
  They just throw cursed energy at a thing to make them punch.
• 1:36:00
  It's it's key. It's just key.
• 1:36:04
  The actual categories that the chart describes is the people
• 1:36:08
  affected by a certain thing, the size of the thing in question,
• 1:36:12
  the general area like volumetric area, that thing that that
• 1:36:17
  specific ability can affect the distance that it's radiate like
• 1:36:21
  it's it's general, well, general anything, right?
• 1:36:27
  It can be it's it's force of will, the destructive blast of
• 1:36:31
  its explosion, the distance of a blast that it can throw.
• 1:36:35
  Anything like that is measured by the distance thing and it has
• 1:36:42
  it has range bands which is kind of weird.
• 1:36:46
  Because the range bands do. Come up I.
• 1:36:50
  Was slightly. Unbearing that one too.
• 1:36:52
  Yeah, I it almost feels like they just shorthanded it to to
• 1:36:58
  so that they didn't say anything from category 3 below.
• 1:37:04
  They just said anything within, you know, short to short to long
• 1:37:08
  range. But it does create some Ludo
• 1:37:11
  narrative disco biscuits when you're trying to read this
• 1:37:14
  thing. After that you have speed, like
• 1:37:16
  just how fast The thing is. At category zero, it's the speed
• 1:37:19
  of an average human. At category 7 it's the speed of
• 1:37:22
  a fighter jet, which I think this honestly speed is the most
• 1:37:26
  anime part of this list. Is it when you think about a a
• 1:37:34
  giant right like the the gun devil from chainsaw man moving
• 1:37:38
  as fast as a jet fighter? That's a really fucking anime.
• 1:37:40
  I mean, yes. For sure.
• 1:37:44
  The final thing that they measure is.
• 1:37:45
  Magnitude. Yeah, I was going to say
• 1:37:46
  magnitude. Also pretty anime.
• 1:37:48
  Yeah, the magnitude just denotes the severity of a situation, a
• 1:37:53
  category 0, which would just be like a normal, like a non sin
• 1:37:58
  era normal activity thing. It's it's considered small
• 1:38:01
  magnitude, like not really worth sending exorcists after.
• 1:38:04
  If an exorcist is in the area, they might check it out.
• 1:38:07
  Noticeable is something that or once something becomes
• 1:38:11
  noticeable, that's when Kane has to get involved.
• 1:38:14
  And if something hits cataclysmic, well, all that hush
• 1:38:18
  money. All that hush money.
• 1:38:26
  See, is there anything else I want to say before we get into
• 1:38:28
  character creation? I don't think so.
• 1:38:32
  Yeah, the important note for also for categories.
• 1:38:35
  Category also dictates because there isn't ADC of this game.
• 1:38:39
  Category kind of acts as your like passive DC where if
• 1:38:44
  something is 3 categories above you, you just kind of can't do
• 1:38:47
  shit to it. Yes, that thing is considered
• 1:38:50
  impossible by nature. And if something's three
• 1:38:52
  categories below you, you can dunk the God damn life out of
• 1:38:56
  it. Yes, if it's three categories
• 1:38:58
  below clown. On it, yeah, just clown on it so
• 1:39:03
  that that that's it is your it is your shown in, you know,
• 1:39:07
  you're you're shown in power scaling, but it is also
• 1:39:10
  mechanically speaking, kind of the way you can have ADC of
• 1:39:13
  sorts without literally having ADC for roles.
• 1:39:16
  Right. It gets it also gets used for a
• 1:39:21
  bunch of things like powers and how much you know how effective
• 1:39:23
  they are, and shit like it does come up in a bunch of ways for
• 1:39:26
  your character. Yes there are.
• 1:39:28
  There are some of the the. Charts kind of like a
• 1:39:30
  proficiency modifier too. It does.
• 1:39:33
  Yeah. I, I did actually have to look
• 1:39:35
  up some of the like, what they were asking about, like the
• 1:39:38
  difference between people and area.
• 1:39:41
  Yeah, because, you know, one says a people, a few and then 2
• 1:39:45
  is a few people. All right, sorry.
• 1:39:48
  Yeah, for the for a number of people Category 1 is a few and
• 1:39:51
  then area says a few people. So like they are sort of
• 1:39:55
  interchangeable, but they do kind of depend. 1 is more of the
• 1:39:58
  actual amount of people and 1 is just well I think physical.
• 1:40:01
  Space 1 is the quantity and one is the space it covers.
• 1:40:06
  Yeah, a few people area a few people.
• 1:40:10
  Meaning like if you're throwing an AOE spell it could hit like 5
• 1:40:14
  people at once. Yes.
• 1:40:18
  Whereas if you're doing a single target punch attack a few
• 1:40:22
  people, you know a few people in the people category is like how
• 1:40:26
  much how much strength you have with that punch.
• 1:40:28
  Yes, exactly. That makes sense.
• 1:40:33
  You got to think about them a little bit, but that makes.
• 1:40:35
  Sense you do Yeah, yeah, like I said, that I, I looked them up,
• 1:40:37
  I I got my answers. But yeah, I had to.
• 1:40:38
  I definitely had to look at it. With that out of the way, we can
• 1:40:43
  begin the talk about character creation an hour and 40 minutes
• 1:40:46
  in. Don't worry, this is pretty
• 1:40:47
  quick. Honestly, Ken's character
• 1:40:50
  creation has to be the quickest and most streamlined I have ever
• 1:40:54
  seen in the tabletop game. Like flat out I.
• 1:41:04
  Don't know if I could say ever, I'd have to think about that,
• 1:41:06
  but it's definitely quick. In any that I've played to be a
• 1:41:10
  fact I don't know, or any I've even honestly any I've read the
• 1:41:13
  the only mechanical choices that you have to make when creating
• 1:41:17
  your exorcist is their stats, their agenda, and their
• 1:41:21
  blasphemy. Yeah, I did this for a group,
• 1:41:25
  which is good. 'Cause you know if you're going
• 1:41:26
  to be dying a lot. Yes, and it makes it really good
• 1:41:30
  for one shots. Yeah, true.
• 1:41:33
  I ran this game for three first time tabletop players and their
• 1:41:37
  character. Their the the creation of their
• 1:41:40
  characters took 15 minutes like each 15 minutes each.
• 1:41:45
  So maybe about 30 minutes total cause one person came late.
• 1:41:48
  It was that quick. It was just, you know, think
• 1:41:51
  about a character that that fits an archetype that you like.
• 1:41:54
  OK, which one of these agendas fits?
• 1:41:57
  OK, what cool power do you want them to have?
• 1:41:59
  OK, it it just you just snap, snap, snap done.
• 1:42:04
  Yeah. The stats themselves, this is
• 1:42:10
  actually can be a little tricky based on how it's worded.
• 1:42:12
  It's worded a little weird. Assigning stats is simple.
• 1:42:16
  It's just it's like I said, there are 10 available stats.
• 1:42:20
  Those stats being forced conditioning, coordination,
• 1:42:23
  covert interfacing, surveillance, investigation,
• 1:42:25
  authority, negotiation, and connection.
• 1:42:27
  And technically a final 11th one with your psyche that's just
• 1:42:31
  you're like weave magical bullshit button in a skill form.
• 1:42:35
  Basically if you have a if you want to do a psychic thing that
• 1:42:37
  doesn't involve a blast me, you roll your psyche for any of
• 1:42:41
  these skills except for psyche. You take two of them.
• 1:42:45
  You have two dots, no skills that can eventually become a
• 1:42:47
  maximum of three dots. And then you take 3 skills and
• 1:42:50
  choose to have a zero dots in those.
• 1:42:53
  Everything else is considered to be 1 dot.
• 1:42:56
  If you have to make a roll with something that has zero dots,
• 1:42:59
  you basically just roll disadvantage.
• 1:43:00
  You roll 2, take the lower number.
• 1:43:03
  Everything else is straight. Once you've assigned your stats,
• 1:43:07
  you choose your agenda. Agendas are, like we said,
• 1:43:11
  essentially your background. The way that the agenda informs
• 1:43:14
  the narrative of your character's personal
• 1:43:16
  personality. Personality.
• 1:43:18
  Fuck me. Their general personality in
• 1:43:20
  Modus operandi. It provides 2 specific traits
• 1:43:23
  that are referred to in the game as items that the player can tap
• 1:43:26
  while they role play to gain experience.
• 1:43:28
  One item support supports their agenda, the other one
• 1:43:31
  contradicts it and actually gives you more experience for
• 1:43:34
  tapping it, giving players several options to either, you
• 1:43:38
  know, enforce or refute their own exorcist beliefs in a
• 1:43:41
  situation. The agendas are cool though
• 1:43:45
  because they come with distinct bespoke abilities that allow
• 1:43:49
  them to do some fun like narrative altering stuff.
• 1:43:53
  Yeah. Yeah, give you some like sort of
• 1:43:57
  passive bonuses you can take on if you do the right stuff.
• 1:44:06
  Oh, oh, I lost him. Isaiah.
• 1:44:11
  I'm here. I'm here.
• 1:44:12
  Sorry. You hit the mute button,
• 1:44:15
  everything went dark. I I did.
• 1:44:17
  I'm sorry something came up. Yes, there's typically five of
• 1:44:21
  them. They have some really fun stuff.
• 1:44:23
  Actually, a personal favorite of mine is the Firebug Agenda's
• 1:44:26
  Always Away ability. It just gives them the if a way
• 1:44:31
  out of a situation doesn't exist, it does now.
• 1:44:34
  It just provides a player with a guarantee that there is a way in
• 1:44:39
  or out of any given situation. I forget.
• 1:44:41
  Can you like use? These anytime or do you have to?
• 1:44:44
  You can, right? Some of them do require cybersts
• 1:44:47
  depending, but for the most part you can use them at any time.
• 1:44:52
  The the caveat to that being right is that just because you
• 1:44:55
  make a thing possible again, like the find a way ability that
• 1:44:58
  specifically says if let me actually let me let me check it.
• 1:45:09
  Where did you go, you son of a bitch?
• 1:45:14
  This is kind of what we were talking about.
• 1:45:15
  When it's a it's a little hard to find things.
• 1:45:19
  Yes, Ma, don't do this to me. Now, what are we done?
• 1:45:25
  There we go, always away. There we go.
• 1:45:29
  If there isn't an entrance or an exit into a place, you can find
• 1:45:32
  one. You always get through, but the
• 1:45:35
  admin picks one. It's dangerous, risky.
• 1:45:38
  It'll only fit one person or you'll have to leave something
• 1:45:41
  or someone behind. So effectively, it's it's it's
• 1:45:45
  kind of what we talked about last episode with the mother.
• 1:45:48
  May I Right. You have to have that narrative
• 1:45:49
  conversation with the GM. Well, then that's what allows
• 1:45:53
  you to pull it off whenever you want.
• 1:45:54
  I had to play both Serif and my mom actually took this one and
• 1:45:59
  used it constantly. It's very effective.
• 1:46:03
  The the fuck out of here one. Yeah.
• 1:46:06
  Interesting. I think it's just the first one
• 1:46:09
  that sticks out to you and you go, oh, that's really cool.
• 1:46:12
  Yes, there are actually. So there are 17 of these things
• 1:46:19
  total 17 agendas. There's a lot.
• 1:46:21
  And something that I think is really cool is that some of
• 1:46:26
  them, like you can, one of them effects a dead character.
• 1:46:28
  When a character dies, you can change their agenda to this one
• 1:46:33
  and it allows them to maintain a level of like narrative
• 1:46:36
  relevance post mortem. Another one which is also fun is
• 1:46:42
  cursed Object, or I guess there's two that you can affect
• 1:46:44
  when you're dead that just lets you possessed an item.
• 1:46:48
  You just become literally like a cursed item from JJK that just
• 1:46:52
  kind of talks to people. You're you're a funny little
• 1:46:55
  magic item, which is cool. It's just a funny little guy.
• 1:46:59
  Yeah, you're just, you're just a goofy little guy.
• 1:47:01
  There's one that you can take if you're the last survivor of the
• 1:47:05
  party. It's just called Survivor.
• 1:47:10
  It gives you plus one maximum stress and there's a 1D6 chance
• 1:47:15
  of you ignoring insta death roles which.
• 1:47:20
  You know, sure, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty good.
• 1:47:24
  I just, I, I, it's they're, they're fun little additions
• 1:47:27
  like that. And if you look each of the the
• 1:47:30
  like special ones are toe tags, which is really funny the way
• 1:47:35
  they're designed. It's great.
• 1:47:36
  I did notice that, yeah. Once you pick your blasphemy and
• 1:47:41
  your sorry, your agenda and your agenda ability then you can pick
• 1:47:44
  your blasphemy. There is technically 13 but
• 1:47:47
  listed 12 of them. The 13th being the blast
• 1:47:51
  blasphemy that everyone gets. It's just the blow shit up with
• 1:47:54
  your brain ability. It's.
• 1:47:55
  Just the yes, the psychic shoot laser ability, your basic
• 1:47:59
  attack. Yeah, you actually can trip, if
• 1:48:02
  you will. Yeah, the game does just say
• 1:48:04
  that you can flavor it any way you want.
• 1:48:06
  My little brother flavored it to shoot Getsugaten shows.
• 1:48:10
  Of course he did. And I was like, hell yeah did.
• 1:48:13
  Of course he did. I mean, I'm not going to lie, I
• 1:48:15
  had a similar thought. No, look that that it's it's
• 1:48:18
  either that or it's the Acura light or it's the the Professor
• 1:48:21
  Xavier 2 fingers on forehead like.
• 1:48:23
  No, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:48:25
  Like, they're the only two I can think of.
• 1:48:27
  Like yeah, you could throw key blasts if you're a nerd, but
• 1:48:29
  like, really, you got to. It can also be your black flash
• 1:48:32
  it. It could actually 100% be the
• 1:48:35
  Black Flash. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:48:39
  Oh, that's great. Yeah, because it does specify.
• 1:48:41
  It can be either melee or range, which is fun.
• 1:48:44
  Yes. Like Josh was saying, the
• 1:48:47
  blasphemies kind of inform your character's class.
• 1:48:53
  This is a classless system, but if if you were going to
• 1:48:57
  roundabout something, it would be the blasphemies.
• 1:49:01
  And I say that because each blasphemy comes with a passive
• 1:49:03
  ability as typically 5 active ones.
• 1:49:06
  Each player starts with their passive and two guaranteed
• 1:49:09
  actives. And as you level up you can take
• 1:49:15
  other blasphemies, effectively multiclassing.
• 1:49:18
  Although it's worth mentioning, it does reduce the amount of Sin
• 1:49:21
  overflows you can go into. Yes, there is.
• 1:49:24
  Yeah, there is somewhat. There is a bit of an incentive
• 1:49:27
  to not multiclass, as it were. Yes you can, and you can do it
• 1:49:31
  as much as you want. You probably should.
• 1:49:35
  You do not get penalized for taking more skills in your
• 1:49:38
  blasphemy of start it. It also kind of reinforces that
• 1:49:42
  theme pretty well too, because the idea is you're taking more
• 1:49:45
  blasphemies. You're essentially like letting
• 1:49:48
  more grace in and and empowering your sin seed because your
• 1:49:52
  character can just explode and turn into a sin.
• 1:49:54
  So yeah. You can, yeah, that is, that is
• 1:49:58
  what the sin overflow is. We talk about that in a little
• 1:50:00
  bit. There's a special category of
• 1:50:02
  sin that is specifically Exorcist who done fucked up and
• 1:50:05
  turned into a sin The. Imago, I love them.
• 1:50:11
  To activate any particular bassinet, like we said, you have
• 1:50:13
  to burn your psychic bursts and if you run out of those you use
• 1:50:17
  your sin points. The only real difference is that
• 1:50:20
  cybersts are rechargeable essentially.
• 1:50:23
  There's a lot of things that give you them back.
• 1:50:25
  Taking rests for example will give you back some cybersts.
• 1:50:30
  I was slightly confused. I don't know if I missed that
• 1:50:32
  missed this. Do.
• 1:50:35
  Does resting is, is it like you just you just like take a pause
• 1:50:43
  in the middle of mission for 5 minutes or is it implying that
• 1:50:46
  the mission could last over a couple of days and like you go
• 1:50:49
  to bed for that day? Like I feel like it wasn't clear
• 1:50:52
  on like a time period of resting or anything like that.
• 1:50:56
  I don't feel like it described resting, but I may have missed
• 1:50:58
  it. They so they talk about it later
• 1:51:00
  on in the cat in the little paragraph about sin events.
• 1:51:04
  Typically when a sin event kicks off, you only have a number of
• 1:51:07
  hours to solve it before it it levels up into a worse sin
• 1:51:12
  event. So there's no bespoke period of
• 1:51:15
  time for how long a rest is, but it typically isn't.
• 1:51:19
  It probably isn't an hour to be honest.
• 1:51:22
  It's probably like, so it's 15 minutes.
• 1:51:25
  A 15 minute Yes, it's a 15 minute sandwich break.
• 1:51:28
  Yeah, they talk about in the executions how long they take.
• 1:51:32
  So like time to execution 3 hours, time to execution 9
• 1:51:36
  hours. That's pretty long for one. 48
• 1:51:40
  hours is. I think that might be the
• 1:51:43
  longest actually with Scather Hound.
• 1:51:47
  OK, so it's not there is no set time that's why they.
• 1:51:51
  No, but they are typically not brief.
• 1:51:54
  It's. Not going to bed?
• 1:51:56
  No, no, no. If you're if you have to fight
• 1:51:59
  for two days straight, you are fighting for two days straight.
• 1:52:03
  Yeah, yeah. The Calamity the 4th was a oh
• 1:52:09
  that don't tell you what oh the categories redacted.
• 1:52:11
  I don't like that it took two days, six hours and 35 minutes.
• 1:52:15
  Required previously unprecedented deployment of
• 1:52:19
  broad spectrum memory modification. 10 Exorcist team,
• 1:52:24
  10 teams, including the Virtues. Which one is this?
• 1:52:31
  That's centipede #2 Calamity the 4th.
• 1:52:36
  Oh wow, they straight up had a bad time.
• 1:52:40
  Yeah, if you're dropping the virtues in, yeah, they had a
• 1:52:43
  very bad time. It's the Shibuya incident.
• 1:52:47
  Oh my God it fucking is. The Shibuya incident.
• 1:52:52
  That's. Totally what it is.
• 1:52:54
  Jesus Christ, I'm so dead. That's absolutely what that
• 1:52:57
  reference that has to be what that's.
• 1:52:59
  It has to be yeah. Can you again, because we've
• 1:53:01
  learned a little bit about the the virtues before before
• 1:53:05
  episode. Can you imagine how fucked they
• 1:53:07
  have to be to be like, are we doing it?
• 1:53:09
  Are we are we hitting the big red button and it's just the
• 1:53:11
  button that has on it and they go fuck it, deploy.
• 1:53:18
  What is it? Retribution.
• 1:53:20
  I thought it was. Fortitude.
• 1:53:21
  Fortitude, Yeah, just deploy Fortitude.
• 1:53:24
  Just just. Planet drops like a space
• 1:53:26
  marine. They have that.
• 1:53:28
  So one of the things they have Seraf, which is an orbital
• 1:53:31
  defense platform. Yeah, just drop.
• 1:53:35
  Something they did absolutely Hell diver fortitude.
• 1:53:40
  Into the Shibuya incident to fuck shit up can.
• 1:53:44
  You imagine this centipede is like this massive calamity thing
• 1:53:48
  and they're like all the fucking exorcists are getting mauled to
• 1:53:51
  death by zombies and one handlers like locked on target
• 1:53:55
  firing for effect and they look up as this meteorite is raining
• 1:53:59
  down and it's just fortitude at the Superman bones.
• 1:54:04
  It's just raining from the heavens like a fireball.
• 1:54:08
  I feel like my desire if I were to put that character in my
• 1:54:12
  game, I would make Fortitude like a fucking goober.
• 1:54:17
  Like they would just be an absolute clown of a human being.
• 1:54:22
  Like the urge to just make them a dork.
• 1:54:24
  No, I can see that the the it's the like it's the Jiu jitsu
• 1:54:29
  Kaizen thing, right? It's it's Itadori, like actually
• 1:54:32
  one of the hardest ass kickers in the show, but it's just kind
• 1:54:34
  of a goober. Fortitude to me is the Hulk like
• 1:54:37
  pretty even tempered most of the time.
• 1:54:39
  But the second violence is on the table.
• 1:54:41
  It's the only thing on the table.
• 1:54:43
  Incredible violence. Yeah.
• 1:54:44
  They all kind of seem like goobers, I'm not going to lie.
• 1:54:46
  Like Fortitude, you can't be that angry all the time there.
• 1:54:50
  You just don't function like you couldn't do anything with that
• 1:54:52
  person. And then faith is just.
• 1:54:54
  You can't be that. Fuck off.
• 1:54:56
  Like a weird 150 year old old lady in the body of a 22 year
• 1:55:00
  old who really likes arcades. Like I think who said it, Kishi
• 1:55:07
  Bay said it best in in Devil Man or Devil man in Chainsaw Man.
• 1:55:11
  To be an effective Demon Hunter, you need to be a little crazy.
• 1:55:15
  Yeah. Yeah, makes sense.
• 1:55:20
  I dude, I love that. Yeah, so fun fact about the the
• 1:55:24
  the centipedes. Centipedes are such a nightmare
• 1:55:27
  to deal with that more often than not, higher ranked
• 1:55:31
  exorcist. Dump those missions on lower
• 1:55:33
  ranked exorcist is they just don't want to do it.
• 1:55:37
  They literally are like Nope I don't give a fuck let the new
• 1:55:42
  guy handle it. I don't care if they die I I'm
• 1:55:44
  just not doing it. I'm just not doing it.
• 1:55:46
  Let them die. OK, man.
• 1:55:49
  No, we we really need you. I don't think you understand.
• 1:55:52
  I don't give a fuck. I don't want to.
• 1:55:54
  I'm not doing it since we're on the subject of blasphemies,
• 1:55:59
  though. Do you have a favorite?
• 1:56:02
  Oh, they're so good. I kind of love them all.
• 1:56:08
  I have a favorite. I think my favorite is I'm kind
• 1:56:13
  of basic. It's either ardence or tension.
• 1:56:18
  OK, my favorite's bind. Bind is cool.
• 1:56:21
  Look, I love being a Summoner, and I like that there's
• 1:56:23
  literally a faction of Rogue Exorcist called the Binders
• 1:56:28
  that's so sick. I just, I just want to live out
• 1:56:31
  my, my mega me life and shum in my wolf sheep sheep shikagami
• 1:56:35
  and you know, yeah, send Fido out to fuck people up.
• 1:56:41
  I love my favorite thing isn't JJK abridged.
• 1:56:45
  He refuses to call his summons by their names, so he just calls
• 1:56:51
  the fucking hell hounds big boys.
• 1:56:53
  He's like he's like I summoned you big boys.
• 1:56:58
  It's just the fucking boys nice. And Isadori wants to pet them
• 1:57:03
  and they keep trying to bite his hand off.
• 1:57:09
  Although I will say side note, another good blasphemy is the
• 1:57:11
  vector which is just the heat machine.
• 1:57:14
  Yes, just just. Throw thing real hard.
• 1:57:18
  Right, you know what, I was going to do it later, but I, I,
• 1:57:21
  we can do a pretty quick down and dirty explanation as to what
• 1:57:24
  the blasphemies are. So the first one is tension.
• 1:57:27
  It's about creating force fields and it's the cool anime versions
• 1:57:31
  of force fields where you can turn the force field into a box
• 1:57:34
  or you can hyper condense the force field down into a blade
• 1:57:37
  that can cut anything. Ardence is just blow shit the
• 1:57:41
  fuck up. It's just anytime you see a like
• 1:57:44
  a Kamehameha wave, that's Ardence.
• 1:57:46
  But it also is, well, I can just change like weather.
• 1:57:51
  I like Ardence a lot because you get this thing called psychic
• 1:57:55
  instability that allows you to do extra damage for tapping
• 1:57:59
  ticks on a hook. And every time you burn out that
• 1:58:03
  thing, you gain an injury. And if that injury would kill
• 1:58:06
  you, you explode like a nuke. And it says you kill everything
• 1:58:12
  around you up to your category specifically.
• 1:58:15
  Nothing can survive. Oh, nothing can survive.
• 1:58:22
  And I just love the idea of that.
• 1:58:23
  I just like the the risk it for a biscuit.
• 1:58:26
  That's unfortunate. Chef's kiss after Ardent's you
• 1:58:31
  have flux. This one's pretty standard.
• 1:58:33
  It's just you fuck with time. You're just a time wizard doing
• 1:58:36
  all the fun time wizard shit. You can rewind time on wounds to
• 1:58:39
  heal, you can slow down time to avoid injury, all that fun jazz.
• 1:58:45
  Vector is about imbuing items with kinetic energy, and that
• 1:58:49
  can be a la Gambit by making should explode.
• 1:58:53
  Or you can touch a pencil and have it fly at somebody at Mach
• 1:58:56
  12 like a bullet. Or a building if you're strong
• 1:59:00
  enough. Yeah, or a building if you're
• 1:59:02
  strong enough. Gait is the opposite of flux, in
• 1:59:05
  which you sort of treat space like a sculptor would clay, and
• 1:59:10
  you can literally do some JoJo shit like the hand, like a
• 1:59:13
  racing space in between two items to force them together.
• 1:59:16
  It's also teleporting and transpositioning.
• 1:59:19
  It's about, you know, flash fires and all that fun stuff.
• 1:59:25
  Smother is another JoJo Stand ability where you just get to
• 1:59:28
  RIP fundamental like parts of reality off of things like
• 1:59:32
  friction, sound or light. You just real concepts of the
• 1:59:36
  world around you. The description for smother says
• 1:59:39
  suppress the innate properties of the universe lie to God.
• 1:59:43
  Lie to God, Yeah, I love that one's good.
• 1:59:49
  Whisper is really interesting because you basically have a
• 1:59:55
  little sin on your shoulder that talks to you and it can see the
• 1:59:59
  future and it's an asshole. Yeah.
• 2:00:04
  It's it's the it's the Gaze into the Abyss ability.
• 2:00:09
  Like it? It's really not useful in
• 2:00:11
  combat, but it's got some really fun narrative effects.
• 2:00:13
  And it can. It's one of the abilities that
• 2:00:14
  help you solve investigations. Yeah, I was going to say,
• 2:00:17
  there's a lot of reason to have a not necessarily combat
• 2:00:19
  blasphemy. So.
• 2:00:21
  Yes. The next one is edit.
• 2:00:24
  It's pretty much what you get on the tin.
• 2:00:26
  It's shape shifting of all kinds, and it can be anything
• 2:00:30
  from like shape shifting yourself to shape shifting a car
• 2:00:34
  into a better car, turning walls into doors.
• 2:00:38
  You just sort of have the edit button to reality for physical
• 2:00:42
  objects and you use it with reckless event.
• 2:00:47
  Bind is what it describes. You bind weak sins to your will
• 2:00:51
  and you can use them as weapons or summons to.
• 2:00:54
  Fight it, it's the Summoner 1. Yeah, Jaunt I.
• 2:00:59
  Actually I also like I also like the the lore behind bind, that
• 2:01:03
  it's like a heretical method of fighting and that they don't
• 2:01:06
  approve of you using it. Yeah, yeah, it's in.
• 2:01:10
  Also the You Miss Palace. Oh, right.
• 2:01:15
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Palace is in a weird spot on
• 2:01:17
  the table of contents for the sins.
• 2:01:19
  It's second to the last one. Oh.
• 2:01:22
  Yeah, the order is a little fucked up.
• 2:01:26
  I actually don't into oh, jaunt is about astral projecting.
• 2:01:29
  Right, right, right, right. You can, you know, astral
• 2:01:32
  project out of your body to view people's dreams or stuff going
• 2:01:36
  on outside of your specific purview.
• 2:01:38
  It's scrying. It's the DND scrying, but and
• 2:01:40
  it's got a lot of really cool stuff.
• 2:01:42
  Palace is really sick because you as an exorcist get to create
• 2:01:48
  your own sin palace and it's got rooms.
• 2:01:52
  It's like the the fucking magnificent mansion from D&D.
• 2:01:56
  You can create special rooms in your personal mind palace that
• 2:02:01
  have like a Smithy where you can create items that you can pull
• 2:02:05
  out of your palace to use an archive of people's intellect
• 2:02:09
  from the collective unconscious. So you could learn about
• 2:02:11
  anything. You can have a little a little
• 2:02:16
  servant Butler named called a tulpa who specifically cannot
• 2:02:19
  fight but offers you information and can help you with checks.
• 2:02:23
  A lot of fun stuff there. It's I've heard people say it's
• 2:02:26
  the least useful one, but the most fun to use narratively.
• 2:02:31
  I could see that. And then finally sympathy, which
• 2:02:35
  does not at all do what it says on the tin.
• 2:02:38
  Sympathy allows you to communicate with objects.
• 2:02:42
  You can ask objects questions that you can make requests of
• 2:02:45
  them. You can do the cool.
• 2:02:48
  The Gyachta exorcist. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:02:52
  One of the things is literally asking like doors to opening.
• 2:02:55
  Yeah, I, I think I, yeah, I still think it's Gachi Yakuta,
• 2:02:58
  but I don't. Know I don't know, I watched the
• 2:03:01
  first episode. I got to start watching it.
• 2:03:04
  I wanted to read There's only. 2 episodes out so no.
• 2:03:05
  But first episode I was like, we'll see.
• 2:03:08
  OK, All right. My favorite ability in sympathy
• 2:03:13
  is psychometry, where you can read the history of a thing like
• 2:03:18
  you watch it like a video. Yeah, you could do the thing the
• 2:03:21
  fucking savvy head does. An apocalypse world.
• 2:03:25
  Yes, I love that ability so much I there's a there's an anime
• 2:03:29
  where that happens. I don't remember what it is.
• 2:03:31
  I mean Harry Potter does it several times yes, that's not
• 2:03:35
  anime, but it's a thing right now.
• 2:03:36
  This, that was actually honestly psychometry was the blasphemy
• 2:03:42
  ability that helped my first party, which was my family
• 2:03:47
  discover a lot of information. I can see it it, it almost
• 2:03:51
  immediately brought them like just ridiculously close to
• 2:03:55
  finding out the host or information about the host.
• 2:03:57
  It's super useful. Let's see, that's the last one.
• 2:04:06
  That is the last one. Oh, I'm bleeding.
• 2:04:08
  I'm bleeding. I don't know.
• 2:04:11
  I need for my foot. What happened?
• 2:04:15
  Not pertinent information, but I don't know if we have a napkin.
• 2:04:21
  I I was signed my notes. I just kind of lost my input.
• 2:04:25
  I don't know. I mean, we've kind of already
• 2:04:29
  talked about. Yeah.
• 2:04:29
  To activate the blasphemies, you know, you have to spend your
• 2:04:31
  cybersts. If you run out of cybersts, you
• 2:04:33
  have to start spending sin points.
• 2:04:35
  Sin points technically recharge, but like not exactly.
• 2:04:40
  You lose all of your sin points when you undergo sin overflow.
• 2:04:43
  Sin overflow is essentially a near death state, similar to
• 2:04:47
  going unconscious in D&D. Effectively what happens is your
• 2:04:50
  character loses control of their psychic abilities and it at that
• 2:04:53
  point is under threat to turn into a sin themselves.
• 2:04:57
  When this happens you can choose to either resist it or give into
• 2:05:00
  it. If you resist it, you have to
• 2:05:01
  make what is essentially like a Defy Danger roll, not divide
• 2:05:05
  danger, a death saving throw, and you roll against the DC
• 2:05:08
  equal to I believe it's 6 plus the number of sin overflows
• 2:05:13
  you've gone through in the past. That number does not reduce when
• 2:05:16
  you finish missions and eventually the idea being is
• 2:05:19
  you're going to fail at some point and you will become an
• 2:05:21
  imago. And when you do become an imago,
• 2:05:25
  you can, the last thing you can choose to do is flee or fight.
• 2:05:31
  Fight basically being you turn into a super powered sin monster
• 2:05:35
  that will kick the other Sin's ass hopefully.
• 2:05:39
  And then you will flee. In which case your, you know,
• 2:05:42
  your fellow exorcist will have to make you the next hunt or you
• 2:05:47
  just flee the scene and become the next hunt.
• 2:05:51
  I kind of like that. I like that that's the last
• 2:05:53
  decision you make, you know? Does your exorcist go out afraid
• 2:05:57
  or resolute in helping your homies?
• 2:06:00
  Yeah, it's like, it's like the last stand option in Fabulous.
• 2:06:04
  Yeah. I think a lot of games have been
• 2:06:06
  taking that tact of giving you some kind of mechanic to be
• 2:06:12
  like, yeah, you're going down, but you're going down with swag
• 2:06:15
  or, or you choose when you go down.
• 2:06:20
  Yeah, for sure. I, I I.
• 2:06:22
  I've been seeing that a lot more often lately.
• 2:06:24
  It seems like it for sure. Yeah, I appreciate that.
• 2:06:28
  I'm going to be honest. It always feels so because, like
• 2:06:32
  going down in D&D always feels so shitty.
• 2:06:34
  It's like, OK, I'm unconscious, I'm helpless.
• 2:06:37
  OK, someone coup de grace me. I don't even get like a a last
• 2:06:39
  word. Yeah, it's always, I mean, I
• 2:06:43
  don't know it, I, it's, I don't want to say I want it all the
• 2:06:48
  time, but it definitely works in, in specific kinds of games.
• 2:06:53
  No, right, I don't want it all the time.
• 2:06:54
  If I'm playing Wrath and Glory and I'm playing a Guardsman and
• 2:06:56
  I get God, I'm just going to get God.
• 2:06:57
  That's fine. But DN DS whole thing is the
• 2:07:00
  heroic fantasy. It's not kind of heroic to get
• 2:07:02
  fucking your head bashed in with a rock.
• 2:07:05
  They say it's not, but you know, that's a whole other.
• 2:07:08
  Yeah, I mean they. Kind of.
• 2:07:09
  They kind of embrace it now. I don't even know anymore.
• 2:07:12
  Yeah, No, it's not clear. Direction's unclear.
• 2:07:20
  Yeah, I mean, that's that's about it for Blast Wings.
• 2:07:23
  The last thing on the player side is your kit and script.
• 2:07:26
  We've talked about this a little bit.
• 2:07:30
  Equipment in cane in general. Oh no, Holden, this is the only
• 2:07:32
  iteration of the word cane in my notes that isn't an all caps.
• 2:07:35
  I have to fix that. Uh huh, Uh huh.
• 2:07:39
  Next OK equipment in Cane works very similar to Blades in the
• 2:07:43
  Dark in that there are no bespoke rules or stats for any
• 2:07:46
  of the gear, but use evocative descriptions to shift the
• 2:07:50
  narrative. Well, there's sort of stats for
• 2:07:54
  some weapons and blades, but yeah.
• 2:07:57
  Some of them like specialty stuff, project stuff has that.
• 2:08:01
  Well, no, regular weapons do have certain mechanical things,
• 2:08:04
  it's just not necessarily based 100% on the weapon itself.
• 2:08:06
  But yeah, I will say I'm slightly disappointed with this
• 2:08:11
  part of the game. I agree, this is my biggest
• 2:08:14
  complaint. As someone who loves equipment
• 2:08:16
  systems, this is my biggest complaint.
• 2:08:19
  Something, I don't know what exactly, but yeah, I kind of
• 2:08:26
  wanted something like, on one hand, it's cool because it means
• 2:08:29
  I can do the anime thing where my character fights with a
• 2:08:32
  really weird weapon, right? Like my character fights with a
• 2:08:35
  fucking, you know, with cracker balls.
• 2:08:38
  Yeah, cracker balls, yeah. Like, which is good.
• 2:08:42
  But yeah, I don't know. I wanted a little something
• 2:08:45
  like, I don't know, maybe like a category system for weapons or
• 2:08:50
  something like that. I don't know.
• 2:08:52
  Yeah. And basically what Josh is
• 2:08:57
  talking about is there is a weapons list in this game that
• 2:09:01
  is just an image. For the vibes.
• 2:09:04
  It's just a an illustration of weapons on a wall, and I get why
• 2:09:12
  they did that because the game does specifically describe the
• 2:09:14
  fact that mundane weapons like guns.
• 2:09:16
  Are just weapons. Are effectively useless against
• 2:09:20
  sins unless use your psychic prowess to bolster them in some
• 2:09:25
  way. You can upgrade the weapons
• 2:09:27
  though. You can yes.
• 2:09:28
  You can spend like part of your script in downtime to like make
• 2:09:33
  a weapon innately magical again, like the cursed tools in JJK.
• 2:09:37
  Yes, yeah, Cursed tools. Do you remember?
• 2:09:38
  Do you remember how cool fucking Yuji's knife was?
• 2:09:40
  That like dagger thing that he had that broke immediately.
• 2:09:45
  I. Don't even remember that when
• 2:09:47
  they fight their first special grade Gojo he's like because yo
• 2:09:50
  you know, you don't actually have cursed techniques, you just
• 2:09:52
  do some cursed punches. Oh, yes, with the like the poof,
• 2:09:55
  the knife with the poof on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:09:57
  And. Remember what that thing had a
• 2:09:58
  name? It was called Slaughter Demon.
• 2:10:01
  Was it red dot? Didn't remember that.
• 2:10:03
  Yeah, because Maki's like, where's my fucking knife?
• 2:10:05
  And he's like, what? He's like, where the fuck She's
• 2:10:07
  oh, she's like, where's Slaughter Demon?
• 2:10:08
  And he goes, what the fuck is that?
• 2:10:09
  And she's like the knife, The knife that Gojo let you borrow.
• 2:10:14
  Where is it? He has to go.
• 2:10:17
  Oh fuck, it broke. I still think the funny the
• 2:10:21
  funniest thing in all of Jujutsu Kaizen for me is just the fact
• 2:10:24
  that the main character is so bad at the cool magical powers
• 2:10:29
  that his only power is to throw hands.
• 2:10:32
  Yeah, I have this one trick and I do it.
• 2:10:34
  Really. Like you suck at everything so
• 2:10:37
  just fuck it. We bawled.
• 2:10:39
  Dude just punch shit. I don't know.
• 2:10:41
  Yeah. It's so funny to me.
• 2:10:43
  They asked them and they're like, So what do you do?
• 2:10:46
  And he's like hands, yeah. He's like, he's like, what's
• 2:10:49
  your ability? Punches Hicks.
• 2:10:51
  And they're like, is that it? And then that's when mega me has
• 2:10:55
  to go. No, no, no, wait, bite, pause.
• 2:10:56
  Don't say that. Because if we fought him all
• 2:10:58
  one-on-one, all using our powers, he probably kicked the
• 2:11:00
  dog shit out of us. Please don't, don't, don't start
• 2:11:02
  this. Don't start this.
• 2:11:05
  I will say I like the occult and medical items.
• 2:11:09
  Yes, those are cool. They are.
• 2:11:11
  Those are essentially consumables.
• 2:11:13
  I don't remember what exactly they are but they're like straw
• 2:11:16
  dolls and shit. I do also love the red herb and
• 2:11:19
  green herb in there. Yes, just a very clear red and
• 2:11:22
  green herbs. Yeah, I was like, all right,
• 2:11:25
  that's the choice. Yeah, those are fun.
• 2:11:29
  But yes, other than that, there's not really anything to
• 2:11:31
  say about equipment. No, not at all.
• 2:11:33
  I do. I love the image that goes with
• 2:11:37
  the equipment where it's like the the three female exorcists
• 2:11:41
  and one of them is just the like tired nun smoking a cigarette
• 2:11:45
  with the heart eye patch at the cat ears on their fucking habit
• 2:11:49
  and the other one is just a grown ass woman in a fucking
• 2:11:53
  like high school girl uniform with a massive scar across her
• 2:11:56
  face and a glicky. The the nun chick just made me
• 2:12:01
  think of the nun with the Golden Gun and Black Lagoon.
• 2:12:04
  Oh God what the fuck is her name?
• 2:12:06
  I don't remember. I love that character.
• 2:12:08
  But she was cool. Yeah, yeah, there's, there's the
• 2:12:14
  one nun that's Remy Remy's friend with the the long barrel
• 2:12:17
  Glock. And then there's the the head
• 2:12:18
  nun who has the Golden Desert Eagle.
• 2:12:21
  Yes. Sick Deedle Deagle.
• 2:12:24
  Sister Yolanda. Yolanda.
• 2:12:26
  There she is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:12:28
  Oh, yeah. And her eye patch.
• 2:12:29
  Her sick eye patch. Oh, yeah, her sick eye patch.
• 2:12:33
  Fuck yeah, dude. Besides the consumables which
• 2:12:38
  yes are called occult items and they like like 1 is like
• 2:12:42
  straight a red herb, green herb, adrenaline pills, straw dolls,
• 2:12:49
  the seed of the emir tree. I believe they're talking about
• 2:12:51
  the iggazil. The clyfoth is fun and they all
• 2:12:55
  do stuff like crush to regain 3 cyberst feel stress, reduce Mac.
• 2:13:03
  Or is it oh like heal a crazy mountain then reduce your
• 2:13:07
  maximum stress for the mission. Can be used well under duress.
• 2:13:14
  Oh, interesting. The black blood medicine allows
• 2:13:16
  you to bring someone back to life.
• 2:13:17
  That's fun. Oh, that's really?
• 2:13:22
  See, that's what I'm saying. Like, Oh yeah, you get insta
• 2:13:25
  killed. Except JK, you're fine.
• 2:13:28
  Yeah. Oh, that's.
• 2:13:35
  What? The the black body condensed sin
• 2:13:38
  seed of a large sin can be broken to lower sin by three D3.
• 2:13:44
  But in like you're just using someone's grace.
• 2:13:48
  So to describe I don't think we've actually talked about
• 2:13:50
  this. Grace manifests as a sin seed.
• 2:13:53
  A sin seed is especially either a weird tumor in the shape of a
• 2:13:57
  tiny Angel or devil that manifests in your brain or
• 2:14:00
  heart. And there is some reason why
• 2:14:03
  they have different manifestation points.
• 2:14:05
  The game does not specifically describe to you why that is, but
• 2:14:08
  suggests that you come up with a reason on your own.
• 2:14:11
  Yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a quite a few things in
• 2:14:13
  the game where it's like, this is how it works.
• 2:14:16
  You can get decide on the details yourself.
• 2:14:19
  Yeah, usually that gets on my nerves, but I I do like the way
• 2:14:22
  it does it in this game. I just think it's very
• 2:14:23
  effective. Well, 'cause it gives you enough
• 2:14:26
  to bounce off of. It's not just like it doesn't
• 2:14:28
  give you, it doesn't leave you totally hanging.
• 2:14:30
  It's like, here's the basic premise and then go from there.
• 2:14:33
  Right. Oh, something I want to bring up
• 2:14:35
  with sin overflow. I think with the the the thing
• 2:14:37
  that I should not be overlooked is that while sin overflow is
• 2:14:43
  not good right, because that brings your character
• 2:14:45
  permanently closer to becoming an imago and or dying.
• 2:14:49
  It actually isn't necessarily a bad thing to get them because
• 2:14:53
  each sin overflow gives you something called a
• 2:14:55
  manifestation, which is essentially like a cool psychic
• 2:14:58
  mutation. And they are always good.
• 2:15:02
  They're always boons. None of them do anything they.
• 2:15:06
  They do make you look like an awful monster.
• 2:15:08
  They do make you look like an awful monster.
• 2:15:09
  You get to choose what they look like though, which is kind of
• 2:15:11
  neat. So for example, if you have,
• 2:15:15
  when you go through Sid overflow, you roll 2D6 and that
• 2:15:18
  informs where the mutation is and what it does.
• 2:15:21
  So let's say you rolled A2 and A2 and A5 so that two would
• 2:15:27
  indicate that your manifestation point is your jaw, and the five
• 2:15:31
  would tell you that the actual manifestation is once
• 2:15:34
  permission. You can give a short one word
• 2:15:36
  command to a human who then immediately attempts to follow
• 2:15:40
  it to the best of their ability. They will not obey obviously
• 2:15:44
  harmful commands so you just get a once emission ability which is
• 2:15:49
  cool. One of them.
• 2:15:50
  For arms or hands you can like spawn weapons or like turn your
• 2:15:53
  arm into a sword a la like Kimimaru from Naruto.
• 2:15:57
  Bullshit. I had I've actually made a
• 2:16:02
  character for this and in my head they have the eye one.
• 2:16:07
  That's when was it again. You are right.
• 2:16:14
  Yeah, it's a they they had the eye one where you can paralyze a
• 2:16:17
  human by looking at them. They had the jaw one that let
• 2:16:21
  them, I believe it was the command 1, and it like, it
• 2:16:26
  showed up as like shark teeth and then had an arm one that let
• 2:16:30
  them like turn their arm into like a cool like psychic laser
• 2:16:33
  sword. Obviously I have to roll for
• 2:16:37
  these things in actual gameplay, but it's fun to like theory
• 2:16:39
  craft. Yeah, I the joke was the
• 2:16:43
  character's name was Sunday. And you kick the shit out of you
• 2:16:46
  and end your week like a Sunday. It's an angry iris, bro.
• 2:16:51
  Oh, it's such a bad pun, but I loved it so much.
• 2:16:56
  Yeah, actually I'm going to have art mission of that character
• 2:17:00
  because Moon wants to run a one shot and I was like, you know
• 2:17:03
  what, like it. I don't get art commissioned
• 2:17:06
  enough. I want to do that for me.
• 2:17:09
  OK, back to the script and kit. Script is a currency that you
• 2:17:16
  get for completing missions you get, if I remember correctly,
• 2:17:19
  I've heard every successful execution 3 for a sparing and
• 2:17:24
  either 0 or just one for a failed mission as like a a pity
• 2:17:29
  reward. You can use script in between
• 2:17:32
  missions to buy things like expansions to your house as we
• 2:17:35
  were talking about. And most of them don't do
• 2:17:38
  anything. Well, that's not not that's not
• 2:17:42
  true. Not most of them, but several of
• 2:17:44
  them don't do anything. So for example, you can spend
• 2:17:47
  script on comfortable shoes that does nothing.
• 2:17:51
  It just says shoes size to fit production based on
• 2:17:54
  availability. You're like, OK, well that
• 2:17:57
  doesn't all right, I guess. Or, you know, issue uniform does
• 2:18:01
  nothing. It's just your standard of
• 2:18:03
  Shocane uniform. But if you get something like a
• 2:18:06
  suit, it also does nothing. I thought it did something I
• 2:18:12
  forgot. You know, it does nothing,
• 2:18:15
  actually. Yeah.
• 2:18:15
  I don't think any of the formal wear does any.
• 2:18:17
  I don't believe so, no. But you get stuff like comfort
• 2:18:22
  in career, so living quarters, expansion.
• 2:18:25
  You get a kitchenette or a window, which is nice.
• 2:18:29
  And it's gained the benefits of a rest once without passing.
• 2:18:33
  Oh, it is an hour during a mission.
• 2:18:35
  That's cool. It actually gives you real
• 2:18:37
  stuff. Private room gives you plus one
• 2:18:39
  stress or maximum stress. Visitation rights which allows
• 2:18:43
  you to see your family gives you plus one injury.
• 2:18:48
  Oh that's cool. The relaxed grooming guidelines
• 2:18:50
  gives you a + 2 sin overflow cap, that's nice.
• 2:18:54
  Improved meal plan gives you additional kit points.
• 2:18:57
  Sanctioned indulgences which I believe are just cigarettes lets
• 2:19:01
  you roll an extra die when resting.
• 2:19:03
  Leave of absence, Your one week off a year to motherfucking Fiji
• 2:19:06
  baby gives you a bunch of good shit, and then finally you are
• 2:19:09
  pieces of silver, which what, let's your character
• 2:19:13
  successfully retire from the company in a combat role, You
• 2:19:17
  still have to take up some sort of administrative 1 that does,
• 2:19:22
  however, take 44 script, which means that your character would
• 2:19:25
  have to, assuming they spent nothing on anything else,
• 2:19:28
  survive 9 hunts. Yeah, that's not likely.
• 2:19:33
  No, no, I don't know. No.
• 2:19:39
  Yeah, look, just stay in the back.
• 2:19:41
  Just whatever you do get out of any centipede missions, stay in
• 2:19:45
  the back, keep your head down and yeah, just just have, just
• 2:19:51
  just take gait and teleport out when everything goes bad.
• 2:19:55
  Just fuck off. You do get some fun stuff in the
• 2:20:02
  possessions category because those actually expand what stuff
• 2:20:07
  you can take into missions. The way that equipment
• 2:20:09
  effectively works in this game is exactly like blades, where it
• 2:20:13
  assumes that you just bring the right stuff for the occasion,
• 2:20:18
  and when something comes up you burn a kit, point of which you I
• 2:20:21
  believe you have 10 to just pull an item out.
• 2:20:25
  So for example, if you take a cleaner's kit for 4 script for
• 2:20:30
  mission, it's always assumed that you have stuff from your
• 2:20:34
  cleaner's kit on you. And if you, for example, are in
• 2:20:38
  the in Ogre's Miasma, you might pull out a gas mask which would
• 2:20:43
  help you fight it off. And once you pull out that gas
• 2:20:46
  mask, it takes you 2 kit points, let's say.
• 2:20:50
  And that's just a thing you have now for the rest of it's a
• 2:20:54
  weird. Dungeon World Adventure Pack.
• 2:20:56
  Yeah, something that I think is a little weird.
• 2:21:00
  The game says that if you pick items up, like if you steal a
• 2:21:03
  cop's gun, that also requires kit points.
• 2:21:08
  Oh, did it? I didn't see that.
• 2:21:09
  Yes. I don't feel like it should,
• 2:21:11
  frankly, but I guess the idea is you don't want your ex just
• 2:21:17
  turning into fucking kleptos because that's just going to go
• 2:21:19
  South really quick. Yeah.
• 2:21:22
  So Edie, what Edie? I guess I don't know.
• 2:21:28
  I I feel like it shouldn't cost anything, but that's just.
• 2:21:30
  Me. I mean, you could just say it
• 2:21:31
  doesn't. You could, yeah, for sure.
• 2:21:36
  See, let me just let me just let me just.
• 2:21:41
  OK. You want to do a second episode
• 2:21:44
  about the investigations? What we already talked about
• 2:21:49
  them. What we did, yeah, I suppose I,
• 2:21:51
  I was going to go into more detail about the idea of open
• 2:21:54
  investigations versus linear investigations, stuff that goes
• 2:21:57
  on with the flow chart more in depth, but we did sort of talk
• 2:21:59
  about it. Yeah.
• 2:22:03
  I mean, I thought we, I thought we covered it.
• 2:22:06
  Fair enough. I mean, no, it's fine.
• 2:22:10
  No, we're good. I mean, we did.
• 2:22:12
  I feel like we should probably stop here either way.
• 2:22:15
  Yeah, I wanted to talk about the sins though all.
• 2:22:18
  Right. Well then fucking you have to
• 2:22:20
  think about it next time. OK.
• 2:22:25
  I, I, I feel like we're, we're running dry here.
• 2:22:30
  We're shooting blanks. Always.
• 2:22:33
  It's always the sex. Now I don't understand.
• 2:22:35
  It's always the sex. You know, that wasn't even
• 2:22:39
  really an intended sex analogy necessarily, but yeah, yeah,
• 2:22:42
  we'll go with it. OK, it's a really big shame that
• 2:22:45
  we can't talk about the sins, but oh, we talked about them a
• 2:22:49
  little. Bit I thought you were planning
• 2:22:51
  on doing fucking talking about your sessions you had anyway.
• 2:22:55
  Oh, that's true, That's true, that's true.
• 2:22:57
  That's worth. That part of it wasn't.
• 2:22:59
  Yeah, I thought that was part of the plan anyway.
• 2:23:01
  Fair enough. OK, perfect.
• 2:23:02
  We can start the next episode talking about the sins.
• 2:23:04
  I wanted to talk about them. They're so fucking cool.
• 2:23:08
  Big monster, but big monster. Yeah, fair enough.
• 2:23:12
  But big monster. All right, yeah, I guess that's
• 2:23:15
  us for now. Episode was a little more
• 2:23:17
  scatterbrain than I would have liked for now, but I'm going to
• 2:23:21
  be honest, my brain is scattered right now.
• 2:23:24
  So yeah, do us a favour or was to follow on your social media
• 2:23:29
  platform of choice. Fuck it.
• 2:23:31
  And there's. Only two to pick.
• 2:23:33
  From we're not on that many true and you know, maybe a like we're
• 2:23:41
  really trying to hit 100 subscribers.
• 2:23:43
  We we really appreciate it. I like how you said a like and
• 2:23:45
  then said subscribers. Those aren't the same thing.
• 2:23:47
  I know dude, the brain is scattered.
• 2:23:49
  Leave me alone. You alright?
• 2:23:50
  Don't listen to subscribe if you could.
• 2:23:52
  Then just stop talking. Stop talking.
• 2:23:56
  You're digging a hole deeper. OK, fine, Sir.
• 2:23:59
  That's been us. We'll see you next time.
• 2:24:01
  It has indeed. It has been us, it's true, and
• 2:24:04
  it will be us in perpetuity into oblivion.
• 2:24:08
  That's probably true. I.
• 2:24:11
  Mean that's just, that's just true of existence, but you know.
• 2:24:15
  Yeah, that's, I suppose. All right.
• 2:24:19
  Peace, my bugs. We'll die.