Latest / Sessions Canceled / Getting The Campaign Rolling Again: Ep. 177

Transcript

Getting The Campaign Rolling Again: Ep. 177 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:08
  Never mind. What's going on?
• 0:16
  Right? Who are you people?
• 0:18
  Why is the red? Why is the button red?
• 0:20
  Why is it counting up? What's going on?
• 0:23
  I was here for session. Oh, sessions cancelled.
• 0:26
  Oh, OK, I guess we're recording then.
• 0:30
  Shit. Anyway, how's it going
• 0:34
  everybody? How y'all doing?
• 0:37
  You doing good? Did you have a good Christmas
• 0:38
  break? I did, I got sick.
• 0:43
  That shit sucked. You made that sound.
• 0:46
  You made that sound a little awkward.
• 0:49
  That that got weird. That got a little weird.
• 0:52
  What what was what was the I don't know what the tone was
• 0:54
  supposed to be there. You just say no either.
• 0:56
  On one hand, you were a confused man in in the scene in the movie
• 1:00
  scene when they like that he forgot they were rolling cameras
• 1:04
  and then you turned into like student in trouble.
• 1:06
  I don't what's going on there. I was kind of going for John
• 1:11
  Travolta in Pulp Fiction, the meme, but he's just looking.
• 1:14
  Around the house, I mean that that's where you started.
• 1:19
  I don't think that's where you ended.
• 1:20
  You know, it's fine. I'm a lot out of practice, as we
• 1:23
  discussed. Anyway, welcome back, everybody
• 1:29
  to the sessions against the vodkas.
• 1:31
  It's me, Isaiah, back from New York.
• 1:34
  I'm here with Josh. Still in New York.
• 1:38
  Say still in New York and it has been a while I think our last
• 1:45
  recording was like number first so that's a little crazy I.
• 1:51
  Don't know if it was, I don't know if it was the first, but.
• 1:57
  Check checker right now might. Have been like the. 3rd the
• 2:01
  third, yeah. Oh God.
• 2:03
  Yeah. It's been over a month.
• 2:07
  That is how time works, yes. Look at us, forgotten couple of
• 2:13
  old fogies kind of relive the glory days.
• 2:16
  Of who's this us? I didn't forget nothing.
• 2:18
  What are you talking about? I didn't forget nothing.
• 2:21
  I'm not saying you don't talk listen talking to listeners.
• 2:26
  OK, I'm confused who you're accusing here.
• 2:33
  You know, you made me start thinking about it, then I'm
• 2:34
  going to start questioning myself, and then this is going
• 2:36
  to go to hell even faster than it already is.
• 2:37
  So it's better if we don't ask. I'm waiting.
• 2:54
  I need to help you brother. I need your.
• 2:56
  I I don't think I can help you. I'm not really sure what's going
• 2:58
  on anymore. I look what you're feeling right
• 3:02
  now is exactly how I felt and trying to prep for this today.
• 3:08
  Like how do I do this? How do I put words together in a
• 3:11
  semi coherent fashion? How do you talk?
• 3:15
  Yeah, how do I talk? I dude, I don't know what has
• 3:19
  happened to me, but like in the last week, trying to form even
• 3:23
  moderately coherent sentences where I'm not babbling like a
• 3:26
  moron just seems like it ain't happening no more.
• 3:29
  I don't know what what the fuck is going on anyway.
• 3:37
  You're saying you forgot how to talk over Christmas?
• 3:39
  Apparently. Yeah, apparently I did.
• 3:45
  Which is weird because I spent most of that break sober.
• 3:50
  It's like. Yeah.
• 3:52
  Like 75% of that stone cold sober.
• 3:55
  Yeah, much to my chagrin, unrelated now that we are back
• 4:05
  actually before, please do us a favor and follow us on your
• 4:09
  podcast platform. But just really appreciate it.
• 4:12
  Maybe toss us a coffee for Brett.
• 4:15
  Thank you anyway. That was almost unintelligible.
• 4:20
  No, it wasn't. It was, it was a little, I mean
• 4:24
  it was a little bit are. You going to do this?
• 4:29
  You can do this the whole time. Just saying, your execution was
• 4:32
  a little awkward there. Brother, you know what, next
• 4:37
  time we go on a break, it's going to be you're kind.
• 4:39
  Of just. You're it's going to be your
• 4:41
  turn and you're going to have to deal with this fucking, I mean.
• 4:43
  To be fair, I would have done it.
• 4:44
  It's just this is just kind of how things lined up so.
• 4:49
  Not really, when your brain has turned to mush from the brain.
• 4:52
  You could have asked me. Yeah, but then that wouldn't be
• 4:55
  fair. That wouldn't.
• 4:57
  I'm just saying you could have asked.
• 4:58
  You never even asked. Why would I do it?
• 5:01
  You know? I don't know, but you could
• 5:04
  have. I'm going to kill one of us in
• 5:06
  the next hour. I still have a couple of ideas
• 5:10
  all. Right, well, you can.
• 5:13
  You got next. One Fabula related.
• 5:17
  What for what we're talking about today, or for what you're
• 5:19
  doing next time? For an idea?
• 5:22
  I don't know, silly. I'm not going to commit to it
• 5:24
  when I'm going to do it. But one of them's fabulous.
• 5:26
  Related. Yeah, interesting.
• 5:30
  You should be able to surmise what it might be, to be honest.
• 5:35
  I probably could if I had a little bit more information.
• 5:39
  Well, something, something interesting, something exciting
• 5:44
  just happened for Fabulous. Is the best theory out?
• 5:52
  Yes, I'm talking about the best theory.
• 5:54
  OK. You know the PDF that I LinkedIn
• 5:56
  our discord jet. The one that I definitely did
• 5:59
  not see. Evidently not.
• 6:03
  Who the fuck? Did you do that?
• 6:05
  Oh we we want the receipts. I think it was 3.
• 6:08
  Days ago before session? Yeah, the day before session the
• 6:14
  11th. Who sent that thumbs up?
• 6:17
  Oh, there's no So what was I even doing?
• 6:24
  Something doesn't matter. I don't know.
• 6:26
  Evidently players don't be looking at my messages though.
• 6:28
  That's what I'm learning. You know what, maybe if you
• 6:32
  pinned it or added me. Why would I need to pin?
• 6:35
  Why would I need to add or pin you?
• 6:36
  There's only four people in that chat, or maybe 5.
• 6:39
  I mean, why would I need? Apparently because of this, This
• 6:45
  is why you wouldn't should have pinged everybody.
• 6:47
  Well, maybe you should. Well, evidently everybody else
• 6:49
  saw. Well, I know technically the
• 6:52
  only at least. Two other people I know at least
• 6:54
  two other people saw so. I guess anyway, before we get
• 7:01
  any more off topic in 7 minutes than we've ever been, I don't.
• 7:07
  Know if I'd ever been stab you that's that's a bold ever been
• 7:12
  would be is a bold statement I would say.
• 7:16
  Anyway, now that we're back in action, both in terms of
• 7:20
  recording the podcast and running our perspective games,
• 7:24
  because I had my session of Lancer last week and you had
• 7:27
  Fabulous this week, there is something on my mind that has me
• 7:31
  both curious and filled with a mild sense of dread.
• 7:41
  Basically, and as, as I've spoken about for a couple
• 7:47
  episodes now, when I was hosting before I went on, we went on
• 7:52
  Christmas break for Running Lancer.
• 7:54
  You know, I had done the big climactic battle at the end of
• 7:57
  Act 2 of the story. And with that, you know, came
• 8:04
  all of the fallout that I had stated that I was kind of
• 8:08
  worried about the players maybe not taking super well.
• 8:13
  And I was kind of worried, you know, something, something
• 8:18
  culmination of about a year's worth of planning coming to this
• 8:21
  point. But I did, I committed, I did
• 8:24
  every, I did everything for the most part, the way I had planned
• 8:28
  it there, there was a little bit of like figuring some stuff out
• 8:32
  at the end there, but it is done.
• 8:35
  And now that it's done and the players are, you know, cast into
• 8:38
  the far reaches of space because they've lost their home planet
• 8:41
  and everything I am, I'm still like a little worried that maybe
• 8:50
  something is wrong. Something is wrong.
• 8:54
  Not wrong necessarily, like the game's pacing.
• 9:02
  And I know it's only been one session and it has been a month,
• 9:05
  but yeah, the, the, the energy has noticeably dipped it feels
• 9:14
  like in that one session. And it's not just because of
• 9:18
  that session, because the last time I did something like this,
• 9:24
  basically the same thing happened.
• 9:26
  Like, what can I say? I'm unoriginal.
• 9:30
  The last campaign I ran followed a similar story beat where you
• 9:33
  know, the halfway point in the campaign, big battle, several
• 9:37
  sessions, guest players, all this fun shit.
• 9:41
  And then the battle was done and you're in the like pick up the
• 9:46
  pieces phase of the pyrrhic victory.
• 9:50
  And it felt like it took, you know, out of a game months to
• 9:56
  build the same drive and excitement and initiative and
• 10:02
  like, on some level passion from the players to the point that,
• 10:06
  you know, at several times while running Hellscapes, I kind of
• 10:11
  was just contemplating ending the game, just being like, OK, I
• 10:16
  guess we're kind of done now because it it things are feeling
• 10:19
  a little low, you know what I mean?
• 10:28
  Well, I mean, there's a whole, there's a whole lot of different
• 10:33
  elements going on there. I would say there are yes,
• 10:39
  because. I mean.
• 10:41
  On one hand, the idea, sorry, my cat is being a spaz.
• 10:51
  The idea that the session after I think, I think a lot of people
• 10:58
  slight, slight Side Story. I thought that the whole like
• 11:02
  taking a break in December and not trying to run any sessions
• 11:05
  or anything was not necessarily that common of a practice.
• 11:12
  But now I keep seeing people posting memes and shit about it
• 11:14
  online about like, oh, we haven't played since like the
• 11:17
  end of November. Oh, we stopped playing in like
• 11:20
  October or some shit. Like people keep making jokes
• 11:22
  and memes about that shit. So apparently this is the thing
• 11:24
  that like kind of a lot of people do, which I thought was
• 11:28
  kind of funny. That doesn't surprise me.
• 11:31
  I mean, for me in particular, you know, not only, you know,
• 11:35
  December is obviously Christmas and New Year's, but also my
• 11:39
  birthday, a cousin's birthday, your birthday, cousin's friend's
• 11:43
  birthday. Like, so you know, like for me,
• 11:46
  it just kind of happened that way because I was like, well,
• 11:48
  this is too much nonsense going on.
• 11:50
  But apparently a lot of people do that.
• 11:54
  But anyway, the, the sort of post the post extended break
• 12:02
  return session, I don't think is ever going to have like the
• 12:09
  chutzpah and energy is never going to be there quite the same
• 12:13
  because it's been it's been a while.
• 12:16
  And you need to like get your shit back together and like
• 12:19
  reacquaint and like remember what's going on.
• 12:22
  Maybe remember what your character does mechanically,
• 12:25
  depending on the kind of player you are or how much you've
• 12:28
  played that particular system, which in the case of Lancer, I
• 12:31
  have a feeling that's a big factor is like remembering how
• 12:34
  the fuck that game even works. You know, like that.
• 12:39
  I feel like the energy is going to be a little different on the
• 12:41
  comeback game no matter what. I, I don't think you can unless,
• 12:49
  unless you manage to land the story on such a fucking like big
• 12:56
  Dick, big brain cliffhanger that the that the session everyone
• 13:00
  comes back. They just like, I need to
• 13:02
  fucking know what's going to happen next.
• 13:03
  Like unless you nailed that cliffhanger, Florida State,
• 13:06
  which I feel like is really hard to do tabletop wise.
• 13:10
  Like you could do cliffhangers, obviously, but they're I, I feel
• 13:13
  like they never, they're never quite as good as you want them
• 13:16
  to be. You know what I mean?
• 13:17
  Like they always are, just a little short of as as good as
• 13:20
  you want. No, I mean hard agree.
• 13:22
  I yeah, I know exactly what you're talking.
• 13:24
  About like you could you could do it, but be by the nature of
• 13:27
  how the how the hobby, how the games work, it's impossible to
• 13:30
  perfectly nail it because it's just it.
• 13:33
  There's too many factors out of your control to be able to hit
• 13:36
  it perfectly like that. But yeah, so I because of that,
• 13:41
  I just don't think that coming back session is ever going to
• 13:43
  have that amount of hutzpah. I mean, even for we both just
• 13:47
  did a comeback session in the same month, same week.
• 13:50
  I mean, and you know, I, I don't feel like our fabulous session
• 13:54
  was like crazy exciting or anything either, you know what I
• 13:57
  mean? No, you're right.
• 14:00
  There was like. There was a desire to come back
• 14:03
  and play, but it it wasn't like the session itself was popping
• 14:06
  off or anything, you know what I mean?
• 14:08
  Yeah, yeah. And like, you know it, I'm aware
• 14:11
  that for both of us, it is also sort of the nature of the
• 14:14
  session. If we dropped back into combat,
• 14:15
  I'm sure things would have gotten a little more high
• 14:18
  energy, a little more quickly. But it just so happens that both
• 14:21
  of us are in like a weird transitory state where we're
• 14:24
  going into the next. I don't even, I don't even know
• 14:27
  that I would bank on jumping straight back into combat would
• 14:29
  work either, to be honest, because I think there would be a
• 14:35
  lot of how do I play this? What do I want to do?
• 14:38
  What's my best Strat? Hold on.
• 14:40
  I got to think about this kind of vibe if you went straight
• 14:43
  back into some sort of combat scenario.
• 14:44
  So I don't even know. I don't even know if that would
• 14:49
  100% solve the issue. You know what I'm saying?
• 14:52
  Potentially. But yeah, so there's that
• 15:01
  factor, but it also sounds like narratively, and now if I'm
• 15:06
  remembering correctly, I guess I should maybe just clarify the
• 15:12
  like narrative beat thing that happened was big scary enemy
• 15:16
  super weapon showed up out of nowhere.
• 15:20
  The Empire revealed their Death Star blew up the planet and
• 15:23
  everyone was like, holy fuck. And they weren't prepared,
• 15:25
  right? That was kind of the the thing
• 15:28
  that happened. Pretty much, yeah.
• 15:30
  Yeah. OK.
• 15:31
  So like, from a narrative standpoint, we are, you know,
• 15:37
  effectively on. Not in Kansas anymore.
• 15:41
  Like, kind of, well, we're we're we're we're Return of the Jedi
• 15:47
  right now, right? Like which hilariously, I'm now
• 15:51
  blanking on how Return of the Jedi starts.
• 15:54
  Jabba's Palace. It is Jabba's palace.
• 15:58
  Yeah, OK, so yeah, we're Return of the Jedi, right?
• 16:01
  Like Hans and Carbonite Laius capture the, the Rebellion is
• 16:06
  all fucked. Like shit's in a bad way.
• 16:09
  So the, the the return has an element of we need to like reset
• 16:17
  the energy. So the beginning is going to be
• 16:20
  a little quieter no matter what. Now, you know, depending on your
• 16:27
  execution, like, or depending on what you want to do, you could
• 16:32
  potentially be like, all right, everything's bad and now we're
• 16:37
  going to jump into some more crazy shit.
• 16:39
  But if you do that, you risk sort of, you know, like
• 16:43
  emotional exhaustion. So.
• 16:46
  Pros and cons. It's funny because I just
• 16:49
  started, I just watched the 1st 2 episodes of JJK season 3 this
• 16:52
  morning and JJK season 3 starts basically like shit just went
• 16:59
  down and shit is still going and you're like, oh, OK, we're still
• 17:03
  doing this. All right.
• 17:03
  Yep, all right. We're back in.
• 17:05
  Like it it, it almost doesn't give you a lot of breathing room
• 17:08
  at the start of Season 3. Like the whole Color game thing
• 17:12
  is just like, we're doing this and you're like, OK, I guess
• 17:14
  we're doing this. You know, I mean, it is, it is a
• 17:16
  bit of an emotional roller coaster, that is true.
• 17:19
  Yeah, so like there's an element of like of like, oh, this is a
• 17:23
  lot. I'm tired.
• 17:24
  Yeah, But yeah, you're you're on the so you're kind of going with
• 17:31
  you're at the the the action has fall.
• 17:33
  The what's it, what is it, you know, rising X climate, What or
• 17:36
  no, you're at the what's it called?
• 17:41
  The part of the no because the falling actions after the
• 17:44
  climax, which is not what you've done yet.
• 17:47
  Well, no, I mean that that was intended to be the climax not of
• 17:50
  the game, but of the the arc. Of the arc, I guess, but but no,
• 17:55
  there's the I forget what they call it, but there's that time
• 17:57
  period where the main character like has lost or something has
• 18:01
  gone poorly and now they're at their lowest point.
• 18:04
  You know, like that, that like Valley of oh, we're so fucked,
• 18:08
  everything's fucked vibe. You know what I mean?
• 18:11
  Again, actually using JJK where Yuji's at in the start of season
• 18:14
  3, right? Like he killed a bunch of people
• 18:18
  kind of sort of he sort of killed a bunch of not really his
• 18:22
  fault, but that's a whole other thing.
• 18:24
  He killed a bunch of people, a bunch of his friends died.
• 18:26
  Everything's fucked. He's now at his lowest point,
• 18:29
  right? You're basic, you're there with
• 18:30
  the characters. So there's no, I don't feel like
• 18:34
  there's any scenario where you're coming back to a session
• 18:36
  and with that set up and everyone's like jonesing to go,
• 18:42
  you know what I mean? Like.
• 18:45
  I just, that just makes sense to me that they're a little like
• 18:50
  that. The energy's lower almost by
• 18:52
  necessity. It is and, and you're not wrong
• 18:55
  and I, I sort of acknowledge that.
• 18:57
  I even put it like later on in my notes, like I'm aware that
• 19:01
  this thing happens, right? The emotional roller coaster, we
• 19:03
  were on the high, now we're at the low.
• 19:05
  But the thing that worries me is, you know, the, the, the, the
• 19:11
  post arc slump, as I'm calling it.
• 19:15
  The thing that worries me is that the last time this
• 19:17
  happened, it took a while. Forever.
• 19:20
  Yeah, to get that going again. And for a really long time, even
• 19:27
  after things started to pick up, it didn't feel the same there.
• 19:31
  I didn't feel. And like, you know, I could be,
• 19:34
  I could be 100% misreading this and just thinking way too far
• 19:37
  into it because I, you know, have paranoia and that's what
• 19:40
  happens. But it just, it feels bad, man.
• 19:46
  Like I don't know how else to put it.
• 19:48
  Feels bad man. Like, I even, like I was
• 19:52
  prepared. Yeah, right.
• 19:53
  Like I knew it was coming because, again, you're right.
• 19:55
  But also, I've seen this happen before and, you know, I, I the
• 20:05
  thing that's got me a little worried at this point.
• 20:08
  Because I while I have gotten better with my pacing and how
• 20:12
  the story is delivered, I made it very clear to my players that
• 20:15
  this arc sort of by necessity, has to be character driven.
• 20:23
  Well, that was a that was a questionable choice, yes,
• 20:30
  knowing what I do about your group.
• 20:31
  Yes, I yes, I know also. Correct me if I'm wrong here,
• 20:39
  but the game has not been up until this point and Lancer
• 20:43
  doesn't really assume that it will be right.
• 20:46
  You're right. No, it doesn't.
• 20:48
  And I was aware of that when I made this decision because of
• 20:53
  the fact that it's not like it's character driven in so far as
• 20:57
  you know, the characters need to make decisions and decide what
• 21:00
  part of the mission they want to do and how they want to get
• 21:02
  paid. But like, this game is not
• 21:05
  really great at having the characters tell their own
• 21:07
  stories and going into deep back story stuff in the way that a
• 21:09
  lot of people feel about it when it comes to things like D&D.
• 21:14
  Well, yeah, because I think the expectation with the setup and
• 21:17
  the premise of Lancer is that they're being handed missions
• 21:20
  from someone on high. And that premise doesn't
• 21:24
  necessarily lend itself to like self motivated characters doing
• 21:30
  their own shit, right? It's not, it's not open enough.
• 21:33
  There's there's there's an element of the game expects you
• 21:38
  as the GM to give them a mission guy, right.
• 21:44
  So you're kind of working. You're kind of both working
• 21:47
  against your group and working against the system to a degree.
• 21:51
  I am, yes, and yet. Is a choice.
• 21:58
  It's a choice, but it it's, I put this farther down in the
• 22:02
  notes, I want the players to to have this moment where they can
• 22:10
  feel like their characters have like a reason to do what they
• 22:13
  do. But it is a lot of work,
• 22:18
  especially in Lancer, to try to slot people's back stories into
• 22:23
  the mission format given how linear the story is presented.
• 22:27
  Right. And you know, on a personal
• 22:31
  note, the mission thing, like I said, is a lot.
• 22:34
  It can be a little tiring. It's just not really something I
• 22:38
  want to have to think about right now.
• 22:40
  You know, And you, Gary, you run into that unfortunate situation
• 22:44
  where like I have presented players with back story things
• 22:48
  like, you know, ways for them to bite and then they don't bite.
• 22:52
  And then I go, OK, well, that was a completely missed exit.
• 22:55
  Like what do now? And you know, the, the, you
• 23:01
  know, the, the clinical answer is just, you know, if you're not
• 23:05
  going to make any attempt to do your back story stuff, that was
• 23:08
  it. You missed it.
• 23:10
  But that feels shitty. I don't want to do that.
• 23:13
  Well, it's kind of true to a point, though, yeah.
• 23:17
  If you're, if you're, if the player is simply not interested,
• 23:20
  then they're simply not interested.
• 23:21
  No point in pulling teeth. Well, I don't think it's that
• 23:24
  they're not interested in general.
• 23:26
  I think they either didn't understand that I was trying to
• 23:30
  give them an end to their back story or, you know, for role
• 23:34
  play reasons, they didn't take the bait.
• 23:38
  And like, I can I get that right.
• 23:40
  That can be, perhaps. You should be a little more
• 23:42
  explicit in those scenarios. Going forward, yes, I, I'm seems
• 23:45
  like I'm going to have to be, but this was my attempt to
• 23:50
  remedy that or, or to present the players an option, which is
• 23:54
  if you want your back story stuff to come up, you have to
• 23:57
  chase it. I can put those pieces in front
• 24:00
  of you, but if you're not going to take the bait, I'm not going
• 24:02
  to, you know? Right, but if they're not going
• 24:06
  to take the bait, then just then just continue forward, right?
• 24:10
  Like if the player doesn't take the bait, then you do the kind
• 24:12
  of Apocalypse World style thing of go, all right, well, the
• 24:15
  enemy is still going to do their thing and you just keep keep the
• 24:18
  ball rolling. Like tabletop isn't a video
• 24:23
  game, right? So in, in the video game, when
• 24:26
  you as the main character decide not to do anything, the game
• 24:29
  world pauses and does nothing, right?
• 24:31
  Like it does not move forward. In tabletop, the players can
• 24:35
  choose to do nothing. And then you as the GM are like,
• 24:37
  OK, that's fine. The world is going to move
• 24:39
  forward without you. And that's just that's, that's
• 24:43
  the scenario you you'd be in. So you can set up all the
• 24:46
  dominoes. If they don't take the dominoes,
• 24:47
  you go, all right, and now we're going to next thing that's going
• 24:51
  to happen is this. And like, I don't give a shit.
• 24:55
  Like and if the players then could be annoyed or something,
• 24:58
  but you go, well, you ignored the previous signs, so I don't
• 25:02
  give a shit. We're moving forward now.
• 25:03
  Because at the end of the day, it's more interesting for you as
• 25:06
  the GM to move things forward and show the consequences of
• 25:10
  their actions than to pause the game world for them.
• 25:13
  Like that's boring, pausing the game world for them or like
• 25:18
  putting things on hold because they didn't do XY or Z is.
• 25:20
  That's not interesting and is kind of defeating the purpose of
• 25:23
  the medium in question, you know what I mean?
• 25:26
  Yeah, that's true. And the, the, the main thing I
• 25:35
  think you're going to, I don't see any scenario in this
• 25:39
  particular setup where you are not on the struggle bus here
• 25:43
  because Lancer doesn't strike me.
• 25:48
  Now I haven't played it, but Lancer does not strike me as the
• 25:52
  kind of game that really gives a shit about your back story and
• 26:00
  is not a game that expects you to have this like self
• 26:04
  motivated, we're going to go on an adventure to find my lost
• 26:08
  brother type situation. So like, I just don't see, I
• 26:16
  don't know exactly how you're going to do it.
• 26:17
  I mean, it might work. There might be something that
• 26:19
  I'm missing that might make it work.
• 26:21
  I don't know. But from a distance, I don't see
• 26:23
  how you're going to make it work.
• 26:24
  It does it about as well as D&D does in terms of like that
• 26:29
  framing of storytelling, right? D&D is not actually good at that
• 26:33
  at all. D&D is not necessarily good at
• 26:36
  it, but I think D&D expects a level of openness in the design
• 26:41
  more than Lancer. In terms of openness in your
• 26:46
  adventure design, I should say like yeah, DND doesn't
• 26:50
  necessarily help you to do the back story quest, but it doesn't
• 26:57
  hinder you either. Whereas I feel like Lancer maybe
• 27:00
  hinders you a little bit to do the back story quest.
• 27:03
  Yes it it does because of the mission format.
• 27:07
  Yeah, because so like if the players so, well, I mean, here's
• 27:13
  let me pause at the question. If the players decide, one of
• 27:17
  the players, you know, is like I'm looking for my long lost
• 27:20
  brother that was established in session one.
• 27:23
  And then they're in this scenario where they're like,
• 27:27
  well, we don't have anything we have to do right now.
• 27:30
  Our planet's fucked, our organization's fucked.
• 27:33
  We're kind of free agents at the moment.
• 27:37
  Should we try and look for your long lost brother and the
• 27:39
  players like the player character or the the player in
• 27:42
  questions like, yeah, let's do that.
• 27:45
  What then do you as the GM, how do you set that mission up?
• 27:53
  Because. So the game does actually have
• 27:54
  an answer for this. Basically, you can turn those
• 27:56
  story things into missions by sort of presenting them in a
• 28:01
  conveniently correspondent way of like, well, we're getting a
• 28:07
  distress signal from the planet that your brother was last seen
• 28:10
  on, you know what I mean? And then you sort of do it that
• 28:14
  way. And that is what you're
• 28:16
  describing is basically what I'm expecting of the players.
• 28:20
  Like exactly the way you put it. Oh, well, you know, so we have
• 28:24
  nothing now. We can sort of go off and figure
• 28:27
  that out. It's kind of like Mass Effect 2
• 28:33
  loyalty missions. Yes, that is exactly how I'm
• 28:36
  trying to do it exactly. And the game basically tells you
• 28:43
  to set up the mission again, like the loyalty missions to set
• 28:47
  it up it like basically how convenient for XY and Z planet
• 28:52
  that we were just looking at is where your brother like it
• 28:55
  expects you to do that basically.
• 28:57
  Kind of like not not in a way that makes it like necessarily
• 29:00
  quote UN quote plot relevant, but you can turn a personal
• 29:03
  mission into a paid mission through like, you know, some
• 29:07
  good old fashioned plot could be.
• 29:09
  Right, OK. I mean, all right.
• 29:13
  So it's somewhat doable. I would, I mean, I think it's
• 29:19
  also worth pointing out to you did kind of hit your, your
• 29:22
  players with like catastrophe. So they might also just kind of
• 29:27
  be like, what the fuck do we do? Like you know you, you may have
• 29:32
  everything, may be so fucked that they are unsure, you know
• 29:35
  what I mean? Yes, which is why I told them as
• 29:38
  things were getting fucked up. I'm like clacking dice, but I, I
• 29:44
  told them specifically before the the ACT ended like, hey,
• 29:49
  this next act is going to be super reliant on you guys
• 29:54
  figuring your own objectives out, whatever that means.
• 29:56
  Personal back story stuff, jobs that you want to do, pieces of
• 30:01
  kit that you want, stuff like that.
• 30:03
  That is what is going to become the impetus for a lot of the
• 30:06
  next arc. So it's not like I I threw them
• 30:09
  in the deep end with nothing. OK, can I posit a question here
• 30:15
  and this might sound like I'm being snarky.
• 30:17
  I'm not being snarky, I'm being very literal here.
• 30:21
  Why are you doing this? Doing what?
• 30:26
  Why? Why are you setting up a an arc,
• 30:31
  an adventure, however you want to call it?
• 30:33
  Why are you setting up a chunk of the game to explicitly be
• 30:37
  players who need to now be self motivated?
• 30:40
  Oh, simple answer. I thought about this because I
• 30:43
  don't feel confident in my ability to fold the characters
• 30:47
  backstories into the game as I've set it up.
• 30:49
  I feel like I've kind of written myself into a bit of a corner
• 30:52
  and I'm sort of pleading, for lack of a better word, with the
• 30:59
  players to do some down and dirty self motivated action to
• 31:04
  get the stuff. Not necessarily out of the way,
• 31:07
  but at least rolling before the final two arcs get going.
• 31:10
  Because I don't know how much free time they're going to have
• 31:13
  once that shit happened. See, I don't know.
• 31:20
  I'll be honest, I don't know if that's the best way to handle
• 31:23
  this problem, but in the interest of of peeling the.
• 31:32
  Coloring lines, yeah. Yeah, in the interest of of
• 31:36
  operating under the premise here and trying to do something with
• 31:38
  it, sure. OK, that is, I mean, I mean, I
• 31:49
  suppose that's a valid enough reason.
• 31:50
  I, I again, I, I don't know that that's how I would have
• 31:53
  necessarily handled that issue. But if that's what you're trying
• 31:59
  to do, I mean, perhaps then try to dangle some carrots If the,
• 32:08
  if the self motivated thing doesn't go over very well, which
• 32:12
  is kind of what I'm expecting, perhaps start dangling some
• 32:19
  carrots and being like, you know, using the do the do the
• 32:28
  Jacob from Mass Effect 2 loyalty mission where you know, you're
• 32:31
  chatting with him and he's like, oh, by the way, I got this
• 32:34
  really weird distress signal from my dad.
• 32:38
  Can you help me with this? You know, do something like
• 32:40
  that, like have you know, whoever, I don't know if their
• 32:44
  boss is still alive necessarily, but like in NPC, you know,
• 32:48
  relevant to them in some capacity, be like, oh, we got
• 32:52
  this really, you know, going with the long lost brother
• 32:54
  thing, we got this really weird distress signal from somebody we
• 32:57
  don't recognize. We think it might be relevant to
• 32:59
  you guys and like show it to them.
• 33:01
  And then of course you do the name drop of the brother and
• 33:03
  then the player in questions like oh fuck right, Perhaps do
• 33:06
  some carrot dangling. I definitely, I'm, I'm kind of
• 33:15
  trying that right now. So I mean, it's, it's, it might
• 33:19
  be relevant. I don't know if she's going to
• 33:20
  hear this by the time that we get to it in game, but there's
• 33:25
  going to be some stuff going on with with Cassie's character's
• 33:31
  dad in the next mission because we're doing like a tournament
• 33:35
  arc as a, you know, it's the first official mission of Act 3.
• 33:39
  But it's really just a pallet cleanser for the players to like
• 33:43
  just have some fun in a not potentially necessary because
• 33:48
  plot demands that they have to try to win to get money to fix
• 33:51
  their ship so they can go off into the Galaxy and do things
• 33:54
  again. But I have I've already prepared
• 33:58
  ways for them to get that money even if they fail the
• 34:00
  tournament. So it's not 100% mission
• 34:03
  critical, but to be honest I don't see them failing just
• 34:10
  given how strong they are. Failing which?
• 34:15
  Failing which? Pit just just like losing in the
• 34:17
  tournament arc. Ah OK.
• 34:22
  I just don't see them but not that I'm not going to try but
• 34:25
  I've tried before and failed a lot.
• 34:31
  Uh huh. Uh huh.
• 34:38
  Yeah. I, I think, I think, yeah, I
• 34:43
  think that's going to be your best bet is, is doing that kind
• 34:46
  of a carrot dangle to try and basically reminding them of
• 34:50
  their own back story to them. Make them be to then get them to
• 34:53
  be like, Oh yeah, that might be a good idea.
• 34:55
  You know what I mean? Yeah.
• 34:57
  Because sometimes, and this might seem a little like
• 35:05
  oxymoronic almost, but sometimes you as the GM know, like you
• 35:13
  sometimes remember player back stories more than the players
• 35:17
  do. Because you're just, you've got
• 35:22
  all these things going on in your mind more than they do.
• 35:25
  So you're thinking about it more.
• 35:27
  Whereas the players are, especially if they haven't
• 35:29
  brought it up in a while, the player is getting to the point
• 35:32
  where they're just comfortable, you know, just going along and
• 35:37
  doing whatever plot hook thing comes their way and they're
• 35:39
  doing the do to do. And they're like, Oh yeah, this
• 35:41
  is fun. And then you remind them of
• 35:42
  their back story and they're like, Oh yeah, I was looking for
• 35:45
  my brother. I completely forgot about that.
• 35:46
  You know, like that. That happens a lot.
• 35:49
  So you know, it's it's funny with some characters, yes, that
• 35:53
  is absolutely what the fuck is happening.
• 35:57
  And I have several times been like, here's here's a carrot,
• 36:01
  want the carrot, want the carrot.
• 36:02
  And then they're like, so with them, I've kind of like, I, I
• 36:08
  don't mean, I don't know, spoilers for Snubby's character.
• 36:12
  The like lady that was working at the cloning facility where
• 36:17
  she was born died. And to be clear, she can still
• 36:22
  get to the cloning facility and all that stuff.
• 36:25
  But the most obvious character that could have given her that
• 36:28
  info died because she didn't chase down that leap.
• 36:34
  And I didn't do it necessarily to punish her, but I did have it
• 36:38
  scripted that, yeah, that character dies.
• 36:41
  And now she's got to figure something else out.
• 36:44
  It's a punishment for inaction. Yeah.
• 36:45
  Yeah, Makes sense. I.
• 36:49
  However, some characters like Sippy are like where the fuck is
• 36:52
  my sister GM? Where is she?
• 36:55
  And it's funny because the answer is much closer than she
• 36:59
  thinks, but that one is a little more based on her asking the
• 37:04
  right question. Like it never, it'll never go
• 37:08
  away. It'll never be completely locked
• 37:09
  off to her. But she's not asking the right
• 37:11
  question to get the right answer, you know?
• 37:17
  I mean, it's worth pointing out that there is no there, there's
• 37:22
  no, there's no failure state in this scenario.
• 37:25
  You realize that too, right? Yes, I know that like there is
• 37:32
  no failure state technically, but it feels like a failure for
• 37:35
  me. Well, but that's what I'm no,
• 37:39
  no, that's what I'm saying. There is no, there is no failure
• 37:43
  to like if you dangle a bunch of things in in front of the
• 37:48
  players and the players ignore those things and then the world
• 37:51
  moves on without them and stuff happens, then the story goes
• 37:56
  from being about how the players save the, you know, the player
• 38:01
  character in question save their brother and the story becomes
• 38:04
  how they chose to ignore their problems and failed their
• 38:07
  brother. It's just a different kind of
• 38:09
  story, right? Like it's not, it's not a
• 38:13
  failure state, it's just the story has shifted, right?
• 38:16
  It's like when video games give you the option to not do
• 38:19
  anything, but then the game moves forward, right?
• 38:22
  So it's not really a failure. It's just a different state of
• 38:26
  the game. Yes, you're right.
• 38:28
  I don't know. I, I, yes, it just, it feels
• 38:31
  like a failure for me personally.
• 38:32
  It feels like I have failed as AGM because I can't.
• 38:35
  I couldn't get them to bite but. That's what I'm saying.
• 38:39
  You can't control their actions as players.
• 38:41
  I know, I suppose they're human beings.
• 38:43
  They are human beings, so you can't control that.
• 38:45
  So ergo, there is no failure state.
• 38:49
  Like there's no way to. The only failure state is if
• 38:51
  they're bored and say that sucks.
• 38:53
  Like that's the only actual failure state.
• 38:55
  Right, and that's kind of what I'm afraid of is them being
• 38:57
  like, but I didn't get to do my back story stuff.
• 38:59
  That sucks. What the fuck, GM?
• 39:02
  And you know, I could get mad and be like, well, I I gave it
• 39:05
  to you, but you didn't fucking want it now did you?
• 39:07
  You know what I mean? Like I don't want to have to do
• 39:09
  that. Well, you don't get mad, but if
• 39:11
  the if you dangled it in front of the players, the players
• 39:14
  ignored it, then you look at them and go like I presented it
• 39:18
  to you. You didn't you didn't do
• 39:20
  anything with it. So so the story changed, right,
• 39:24
  Like we got a different story because you chose not to do
• 39:26
  anything, right. And that's not I unless that
• 39:34
  somehow there's, it doesn't, it doesn't make any sense if if the
• 39:40
  player, if the player in question, the person was so
• 39:43
  invested in their character's back story that if they don't
• 39:47
  get to play out their back story, they feel like the game
• 39:50
  was was boring and not fun. If they're that invested, then
• 39:53
  they wouldn't ignore the signs that you put out for them.
• 39:57
  You know what I mean? Yeah, that's true.
• 39:59
  Like you can't have one. You can't have both of that
• 40:01
  scenario either. You care enough that you're
• 40:04
  going to you're going to bite when the carrot is presented.
• 40:08
  Or you don't actually care that much and you're not going to
• 40:10
  bite. And so you just had a, you just
• 40:13
  got a different set of events that happened and you had a
• 40:16
  different kind of fun, but. I mean that that can happen, and
• 40:20
  I'm not saying that any of my players are like this, but the
• 40:22
  theoretical that can happen where it's like, I want my story
• 40:25
  handed to me. I don't want to work for it and
• 40:27
  I can. I will get mad if it's not
• 40:28
  handed to me again. That's not how my players are
• 40:31
  necessarily. But if you put a but if you put
• 40:33
  a carrot in front of them, is that not handing it to them?
• 40:36
  Yeah, essentially. Not.
• 40:40
  Enough like I. I mean, yeah, but they're not
• 40:43
  fucking five years old. How about you get a baby them?
• 40:45
  No, I know. And again, like I said, that's
• 40:47
  that's not necessarily my players, but that is a thing
• 40:50
  that I have seen on the interview.
• 40:52
  Have a player who's like, I, I give it, I I'm so invested in
• 40:56
  my, in my long last brother. Like I want to make sure we do
• 40:59
  that at some point in the game. And then the GM dangles the
• 41:02
  obvious carrot related to long rest brother, and then it is
• 41:04
  ignored. And then the player gets mad at
• 41:06
  the GM for not making it more obvious.
• 41:10
  Like the brother kicks him in the balls or something.
• 41:13
  Then I, I don't know what to tell you dog.
• 41:16
  Like you're just being fucking stupid.
• 41:17
  Like, like I'm not playing with you anymore.
• 41:20
  You're just being annoyed, you know what I mean?
• 41:22
  Like. Like that's the that's so overly
• 41:25
  petulant that like, I don't even think we should.
• 41:28
  I don't even think there's any point in US entertaining that
• 41:30
  premise. Fair enough.
• 41:33
  You know, like, fuck off. That would be my response to
• 41:38
  that. I mean, like, fuck off.
• 41:39
  Like, you're just being annoyed. Yeah, because you have to.
• 41:46
  Like, part of the point of tabletop games is that player
• 41:49
  characters and and play, oh, players and their characters
• 41:53
  have limitless agency or near limitless agency because, you
• 41:59
  know, the GM is a human being who could respond to pretty much
• 42:02
  anything they do. So if you're just ignoring that
• 42:07
  agency and expecting it to be handed to you like a video game,
• 42:10
  what? Why?
• 42:11
  What are we doing here? You know what I mean?
• 42:15
  Yeah. No, I get you.
• 42:16
  I, I, I do. It's some goofy ass shit.
• 42:19
  Shut up and go play Baldur's Gate.
• 42:22
  Like that's where I'm at with that one all.
• 42:29
  Right, I have to we, we got a little, I didn't say off topic,
• 42:34
  but we we shifted then I have to find where we are in the notes.
• 42:50
  Yeah, I talked about that. Yeah, sorry.
• 42:57
  I think it's, it's sort of, you know, it's your point.
• 43:04
  Yes, a bit of this is sort of inevitable and and I can't
• 43:09
  really control my players agency and maybe it is a bit futile
• 43:11
  that I am trying or not. Well, I wouldn't even say I'm
• 43:14
  trying to control it. I'm trying to guide it because
• 43:17
  you're right, if ultimately they don't want to do it, there's
• 43:20
  nothing I can do to force them to do it.
• 43:23
  But I don't know it it I, I'm, I'm almost afraid that if my
• 43:38
  players don't push that I, I don't know necessarily not where
• 43:48
  to go. That's not the right one.
• 43:49
  I. I I guess what I'm trying to say
• 43:57
  is, is, is I'm so focused on on finishing the the linear story
• 44:08
  or not not, I'm really struggling.
• 44:13
  With this, I, I, I, I would, I would help you fish it out here,
• 44:19
  but I'm I'm not sure where you're trying to go.
• 44:23
  I almost wish the players would take the strain off my shoulders
• 44:27
  a bit because I'm trying to give them as much agency as possible,
• 44:32
  right? I don't want to do the like
• 44:33
  Super Railroadie. You don't really have a choice
• 44:36
  in anything and the missions are the missions and that's all
• 44:37
  there is to it. But I am trying to, to run the
• 44:42
  game the way that I am, as far as I'm aware, supposed to be
• 44:47
  running it and to, to, to sort of get the best of both.
• 44:53
  I, I kind of need a bone to be thrown my way.
• 45:00
  And I know that this is sort of shifting from the original
• 45:03
  premise of of, you know, the IT. Sounds like you're it sounds
• 45:07
  like you're trying to not run the game the way it's supposed
• 45:10
  to be run. Sounds like you're trying to run
• 45:13
  the game at almost in in such a fashion that it almost kind of
• 45:16
  doesn't want to be run. But it does though, right?
• 45:20
  Like the game has accounted for this like that.
• 45:22
  That's kind of what I was saying.
• 45:24
  Well, accounted for and intending that you run it that
• 45:28
  way are not necessarily the same thing.
• 45:30
  Do you know what I mean? I yeah, I guess, but yes, I I
• 45:38
  get what you're saying. Yeah, I just, I am sort of
• 45:42
  trying to have my cake and eat it too, I admit, but like, is
• 45:44
  that so wrong It? Almost sounds like you want to
• 45:47
  play Blades at this point, you know what I'm saying?
• 45:49
  Like. A little bit, but the game is
• 45:51
  sort of like, I would say it's built on blades, but there's a
• 45:54
  lot of blades in it. There's blades in it, but I
• 45:58
  think also. Requires very self motivated
• 46:01
  players, which again. Yeah, well, Blades doesn't have
• 46:06
  to you. You can do Blades without self
• 46:08
  motivated characters, but Blades is a lot better set up for that
• 46:11
  self motivation because Blades very specifically puts puts
• 46:16
  information in front, in front of the players that they can
• 46:21
  specifically point at and go. I want that.
• 46:23
  We're getting that, you know what I mean?
• 46:25
  Which is something that Lancer's not doing right.
• 46:29
  Like, for example, you're playing Blades and you're like,
• 46:32
  all right, what do we want to do?
• 46:34
  You know, we're trying to get rich here, guys.
• 46:36
  What do? What do we need to do?
• 46:38
  What's the plan? And then the players look at
• 46:40
  their turf map on their gang sheet and go, all right, let's
• 46:44
  get that turf next. And then we'll hit that turf
• 46:47
  there because we can get the plus one coin and then we can
• 46:50
  get the stash or the gear or whatever.
• 46:51
  You know, I forget what's on what buffs are on there, but
• 46:53
  like we get this buff and then this buff and then we could do
• 46:55
  this mission to try and hit these guys, right?
• 46:58
  That information is all in front of the players to look at and
• 47:01
  go, all right, we can strategize.
• 47:04
  Lancer doesn't have anything like that.
• 47:07
  You know, it's, it's it's the same it's the same argument for
• 47:10
  putting magic items in the player's handbook instead of in
• 47:13
  the DMG because it lets the players open up the player's
• 47:16
  handbook and go, I want that flaming sword GM, where do I get
• 47:19
  flaming sword? Give me flaming sword And then
• 47:21
  the GM could go, ah, allow me to conjure up mission where we
• 47:24
  acquire flaming sword. You know what I mean?
• 47:27
  And and again. And as far as I'm aware, Lancer
• 47:31
  is lacking that element. Not it's not because one of the
• 47:36
  the downtime activities is the like power at a cost.
• 47:39
  And that's literally the I want this thing, you know, had it
• 47:44
  like let's go out. And one of the things is you can
• 47:46
  make a mission around it. The players have a down.
• 47:51
  But but a downtime activity isn't meant to be like a whole
• 47:56
  arc or a whole mission, right? Isn't it kind of intended to be
• 47:58
  like a short, quicker thing? Again, it's one of those things
• 48:02
  where it says typically no, but they can be made into one if
• 48:05
  it's relevant enough. It is admittedly a little vague
• 48:09
  on it, but you know, again, the impetus is there.
• 48:13
  Right. But if that's how it phrases it,
• 48:14
  then if I'm a player and I look at that, that doesn't
• 48:17
  necessarily tell me, oh, if I go for this thing, it's going to
• 48:21
  turn into a whole ass event, right?
• 48:23
  That doesn't firmly tell me that.
• 48:25
  It sounds like maybe it might, but it it leaves it a little
• 48:29
  ambiguous. It's like if the players do not
• 48:34
  have an obvious goal that they can point directly at, it's
• 48:39
  harder for them to have that self motivated element.
• 48:44
  So you really got to, you have to put it, you have to put it in
• 48:50
  front of them in a different way.
• 48:54
  And I don't necessarily know how like I.
• 48:58
  Well, that's why I'm saying that that that was my point about
• 49:00
  dangling the carrots in front of them for their back story stuff.
• 49:07
  Right. But what that's what I'm saying
• 49:08
  is like I have, I have done that a couple times.
• 49:13
  Well, do it again now that they're in a situation where
• 49:15
  they can operate more freely. True enough, right?
• 49:20
  Because you were doing it before, but they were under a
• 49:23
  little bit more of a constraint of some nature, But now they can
• 49:30
  operate more freely. So if you say to them like, all
• 49:33
  right, you have no boss telling me what to do.
• 49:37
  And also here's a bunch of carrots.
• 49:40
  Go buck wild, right? Like, is there any reason you
• 49:47
  can't say all right at the start of the session?
• 49:51
  Players, you know, your, your, your friend NPC.
• 49:55
  The mechanic tells you about a weird distress beacon she picked
• 49:57
  up on from this planet. You player A.
• 50:02
  You're pretty sure that's the planet that your brother
• 50:05
  disappeared on, right? Is there any reason you can't do
• 50:08
  that? Other than I just hadn't thought
• 50:12
  about it in that way. No, I mean, I'm sure I could.
• 50:16
  Yeah, so like that's probably the angle I would go on.
• 50:21
  And if they just, if they ignore every carrot and every little
• 50:25
  hook and just, it just doesn't happen, then just fuck it, orcs
• 50:30
  attack, move on, you know what I mean?
• 50:33
  Yeah. Right, like you got the RIP
• 50:36
  cord, you always have the RIP cord of orcs attack.
• 50:39
  If you get to that point, move the story forward and just, all
• 50:44
  right, let's do the next thing. Like they want me to feed them
• 50:48
  the next step. Here's the next step, you know,
• 50:51
  and, and maybe if, if your intention, if we think about it
• 50:57
  in like a, in like a video game structure where it's like, all
• 51:01
  right, you know, the, the first act of the game is a little more
• 51:04
  linear. And then the second act of the
• 51:05
  game is like disc 2 or Final Fantasy 7 where you get the
• 51:09
  airship and you can travel all around the world.
• 51:12
  And then once you hit a certain point after the all around the
• 51:15
  world part, the game collapses back into a more linear thing
• 51:19
  once shit hit starts hitting the fan.
• 51:21
  If the players kind of ignore the travel around the world bit
• 51:24
  and don't care that much about that part, then skip over it and
• 51:29
  collapse back down into linear bit like which maybe which might
• 51:35
  mean you're skipping an act like an act that you have sort of in
• 51:39
  your head. Which also might mean the game
• 51:42
  is going to end a little sooner than you expected.
• 51:45
  But is that really the end of the world?
• 51:48
  No, but God, that'd be a headache.
• 51:49
  Well, there's only, yeah, I mean, there's, there's two acts
• 51:51
  left, this one and then the last one.
• 51:56
  Well, seeing as how long it took you to do one act, that's saying
• 51:59
  a lot. Yeah, yeah.
• 52:03
  I mean each each act is about 12 to 15 beat.
• 52:08
  About seeing as how you just finished act one, it took you
• 52:12
  this long to finish act one? OK act it's still been a while,
• 52:18
  which it's been a while. Two more acts.
• 52:20
  You're assuming a shit load more game.
• 52:23
  Yeah, I, I am I ideally I want to be done.
• 52:28
  Sounds like you're expecting 2. More years of this game?
• 52:30
  No, absolutely. Well, it's Lancer's only been a
• 52:32
  year. I, I'm, I'm hoping for like 9
• 52:35
  more months of this game at maximum, but that's like
• 52:38
  assuming the players are moving at a, you know, pretty self
• 52:41
  motivated rate, doing the things they want to do and we're not
• 52:46
  meandering trying to figure out what to do next like.
• 52:50
  So if we cut down from 9 months to four or five months, is that
• 52:54
  a big deal? I don't think it is.
• 53:03
  I don't know, like I didn't have, I didn't have a good
• 53:05
  answer to this question when I ran Hellscapes that I don't
• 53:07
  think I have one now like. I think less is more most of the
• 53:12
  time. Yeah, but I like I wasn't really
• 53:16
  satisfied with the less is more approach I had last time.
• 53:20
  You didn't have a less is more approach last time you ran a
• 53:23
  four year game. Yeah, but at the end I was like,
• 53:26
  we're just wrapping things up. Yeah, but that's not, that's not
• 53:30
  a that's not the same thing. That's different.
• 53:33
  That's this you, you wrapped things up because you were like,
• 53:38
  this game has been going on for too fucking long, I want to be
• 53:40
  done with it, which is not the same thing as all right, maybe
• 53:44
  I'll just tighten things down and shorten this up a bit.
• 53:47
  Not the same thing, right? What you did was the producers
• 53:54
  greenlit you for five seasons and then you got to season 3 and
• 53:59
  they were like, actually, we can only do Four Seasons.
• 54:01
  And you're like, ah, fuck, all right, let me just all right,
• 54:03
  we'll just ignore that plot point.
• 54:05
  Wrap this shit up. This character's dead now Fuck
• 54:07
  them. As opposed to the producers are
• 54:10
  like, you're cleared for Four Seasons and you go, I think I
• 54:13
  could do 3 and probably have it be pretty good.
• 54:15
  And they're like, all right, you know what I mean?
• 54:19
  Those are those are not the same.
• 54:21
  Same situation using my. Yes.
• 54:27
  TV analogy, right? Like you, you weren't as sad
• 54:35
  quote UN quote as satisfied with Hellscapes because Hellscapes
• 54:37
  overstayed it's welcome. Not we're not quite there yet
• 54:41
  with Lancer, so it will probably be better off, especially if
• 54:46
  your players just look, let's just be honest, if your players
• 54:50
  just don't give a fuck about doing any kind of like we're
• 54:53
  doing our own missions shit, then just don't do it.
• 54:56
  If they just don't care, just don't do it.
• 54:59
  You know like at a certain point you have to just be like, all
• 55:02
  right, fuck it, never mind, that idea didn't work.
• 55:04
  You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
• 55:10
  Because again, if would you rather try and drag the players
• 55:17
  along like kicking and screaming to do something that they don't
• 55:23
  really want to do that much, or would you rather just shorten
• 55:27
  the game down and get to the cooler bits?
• 55:30
  My Do you want? My worry is not that they don't
• 55:32
  want to do it that much. My worry is that for one reason
• 55:37
  or another, they're not taking advantage of the time they have.
• 55:42
  So when we are at the end, everyone's going.
• 55:45
  But what about my thing which like that's did happen a little
• 55:51
  bit in the last campaign? I don't know how that happened
• 55:55
  with the last game, but fair enough.
• 55:59
  I doesn't really sound like that's what's occurring here.
• 56:02
  It sounds like what's occurring here is they don't care that
• 56:06
  much because you're giving them the opportunity and they're
• 56:11
  ignoring it. So.
• 56:15
  I'm I feel like I'm getting mixed messages.
• 56:19
  I mean, from the outside, it certainly sounds like they're be
• 56:21
  giving, they're they're being given an opportunity, they're
• 56:25
  ignoring it. And so you go.
• 56:27
  All right, nevermind. Well, so like, like, you know,
• 56:30
  this is not a call out, but like Brett's character, I've sort of,
• 56:35
  I have presented some back story stuff and Brett or his character
• 56:43
  for one reason or another is like, no, I can't do that right
• 56:46
  now. But you know, I, I, I appreciate
• 56:52
  the desire to like take it at his own pace, but at some point
• 56:56
  that pace is, is going to have to be fucking breakneck and it's
• 56:59
  not going to feel very good. And it's going to, you know, on
• 57:02
  some level frustrate me a little bit.
• 57:04
  Sounds like a prison of his own making.
• 57:07
  A little bit, but like I'm trying to help him with that.
• 57:15
  I mean, I don't see any yet, like, but if it's a prison of
• 57:22
  his own making, then what's the big deal?
• 57:23
  Just be like, OK. Because I'm still the GM and I
• 57:28
  still want like, because I am aware of of the general
• 57:36
  proddings of the story better than he is.
• 57:40
  So he might not know when the point of no return is, but I
• 57:45
  kind of do. And if I can help, even if you
• 57:50
  could just. Tell you could just tell them
• 57:52
  that. Well, I'm that's what I was
• 57:54
  going to say. If, if that's what it comes to,
• 57:58
  that's what I'll do. But it is a situation where I'm
• 58:01
  like. You could literally just say
• 58:05
  right now, all right, this current arc, this current
• 58:08
  chapter, whatever you want to call it is the intention is that
• 58:12
  you guys kind of do your own thing for a little bit.
• 58:15
  I'm leaving things a little bit open-ended so you have the room
• 58:18
  to do your own thing. Once we get out of this arc, we
• 58:22
  have hit the point of no return. So do what you want now because
• 58:26
  shit's going to get crazy after this and just say that to them
• 58:30
  and then they'll be like, OK, well, if that's the case, at
• 58:33
  least a couple of them will probably be like, all right,
• 58:35
  then let's go. I have AI have a thing I want to
• 58:37
  do. Yeah, I've pretty much said
• 58:40
  everything other than the point of no return, but yeah.
• 58:43
  I think you should just say that.
• 58:44
  I mean, I think you should just do the video game thing and
• 58:48
  flash the warning sign. Point of no return here.
• 58:52
  Maybe. I, I I don't see any reason not
• 58:56
  to. I, I don't know, I don't know
• 58:58
  that there is a reason not to. It just doesn't feel good.
• 59:02
  Like I, we've, we've talked about it several times in the
• 59:04
  podcast where it's like, sometimes you just got to like
• 59:06
  pull back the, the curtain. Yeah.
• 59:08
  And I'm fine with it for the most part, but there are some
• 59:11
  things where it's like, I almost wish that I didn't have to, but
• 59:15
  I know that like just that's just kind of how it is
• 59:17
  sometimes. I'm not even, I'm taking it a
• 59:20
  step further. I'm not even saying pull back
• 59:22
  the curtain. I'm saying like that, like that
• 59:23
  curtain bitch on fire. We don't need it.
• 59:28
  I, I, I just don't use it anymore.
• 59:29
  I just don't. I don't care.
• 59:30
  I don't need it like that. This kind of goes back to that
• 59:34
  whole thing about the idea of, of the GM who wants to do
• 59:37
  everything diegetically right. Like why?
• 59:43
  You know, like, yeah, why? There's no, there's no reason
• 59:47
  to. It's not like your game.
• 59:49
  There's no, there's no RPG purity test.
• 59:51
  Your game is not more pure or more true if you do everything
• 59:55
  in universe and never ever explain to the to the players
• 1:00:00
  what you're thinking or what's in your notes.
• 1:00:02
  Like your game is not somehow more holy and better if you do
• 1:00:05
  it that way. You know, you're right, but
• 1:00:07
  there's like something to be said about like, in my mind
• 1:00:09
  space, it felt like it looked like this.
• 1:00:11
  And like, yeah, I know that it's never going to match up with
• 1:00:14
  reality, but like, there's no reason to not at least try.
• 1:00:18
  Right, but if you want it to match closer to your mind space,
• 1:00:22
  remove the curtain to get the result you want.
• 1:00:24
  The curtain contains the mind space that it's a little self,
• 1:00:28
  you know. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:32
  Show them what's going on in there.
• 1:00:34
  OK. That's what I'm saying.
• 1:00:36
  Like I, I just don't. I just don't think there's any.
• 1:00:41
  I don't think there's any benefit to like playing
• 1:00:47
  everything close to your chest, especially if the players are
• 1:00:50
  not are not picking up what you're putting down.
• 1:00:54
  You know, like, what's the point of playing it close to the chest
• 1:01:00
  if it's just unsatisfying? I admittedly I don't know.
• 1:01:11
  So yeah, I mean, that's pretty much how I would go that I would
• 1:01:13
  say like, you know, after this there's going to be a no return
• 1:01:18
  point where like shit's going to pop off so.
• 1:01:22
  Giving. You the room to do this thing.
• 1:01:23
  Now, if you don't want to do it, you don't have to, but I'm
• 1:01:27
  informing you. I think I do know.
• 1:01:29
  I, I, I think a part of me, it feels specifically like a if I,
• 1:01:33
  if I'm good enough, then they'll get it.
• 1:01:35
  You know what I mean? Yeah, that's just not true.
• 1:01:38
  I know, but I it's hard. That's just that.
• 1:01:41
  That's just not true. I know that, but this is the
• 1:01:43
  like, this is the like anxiety. Just tell yourself not to be
• 1:01:47
  anxious forehead kind of thing. Like it just it, it isn't how it
• 1:01:50
  works in my brain. Unfortunately, there's not a
• 1:01:52
  whole lot I can do about how it feels.
• 1:01:56
  I mean, I guess, but this idea that if I'm magically a good
• 1:01:59
  enough GM, my players will be able to read my mind, it's just
• 1:02:02
  not. It's just not a thing.
• 1:02:04
  I, I don't necessarily want to read my mind.
• 1:02:06
  I just, you know, a, a part of me is like I, I know I can't
• 1:02:11
  expect them to pick up what I'm putting down all the time.
• 1:02:15
  No, most of the time. Most of the time, yeah.
• 1:02:18
  Most of the time. But then I I just kind of go
• 1:02:20
  back to, well, if I was good enough at portray at at, at
• 1:02:24
  delivering the message, maybe they could.
• 1:02:27
  Right, but that's a fallacy. It is.
• 1:02:31
  It's, it totally is like you, I think you, I, I think you got to
• 1:02:36
  think about the, you have to, you have to think about the
• 1:02:41
  medium with which you're operating in, right?
• 1:02:45
  If you were writing a book and you're writing like a detective
• 1:02:49
  story and you say to yourself, all right, if I am a good enough
• 1:02:53
  writer, I can plant enough seeds that the reader can solve the
• 1:02:59
  mystery if they're paying enough attention, right?
• 1:03:02
  That is true, but being a good at but.
• 1:03:09
  But what you can't do is be such a good writer that every scene
• 1:03:13
  that you as the author are picturing in your head, the
• 1:03:17
  reader will perfectly translate into their mind.
• 1:03:20
  That simply cannot happen, no matter how good of a the
• 1:03:22
  greatest writer on the planet. No matter what, what they what
• 1:03:25
  they put on paper is going to be translated through the reader's
• 1:03:29
  mind and is going to look slightly different no matter
• 1:03:32
  what. Right?
• 1:03:35
  Your opera, what you're operating in a medium where
• 1:03:42
  there is no, there's not no visual element, but there is
• 1:03:49
  distinctly less visual element, right, more or less.
• 1:03:57
  And you're operating in a medium where essentially everyone is
• 1:04:02
  agreeing to have a group hallucination, and we're all
• 1:04:06
  using words to convey the hallucination to each other so
• 1:04:10
  that we're all on the same page as much as is humanly possible.
• 1:04:15
  But because we are not robots or aliens who can mind meld, the
• 1:04:20
  collective hallucination is going to shift slightly
• 1:04:24
  different for everyone no matter what.
• 1:04:27
  So there's no degree of throwing out hints that is going to
• 1:04:35
  Florida State make it so that yes, the players get it.
• 1:04:39
  Everything is working now. It it just, it's just not how
• 1:04:42
  your human brain works. Like you have to think about
• 1:04:46
  what are the what, what are the strengths of the medium that
• 1:04:51
  you're operating in, right. If you were dealing with a video
• 1:04:53
  game, your your primary strengths are visual and
• 1:04:58
  gameplay mechanic to convey the point.
• 1:05:01
  If you were writing a book, your primary strength is like writing
• 1:05:05
  and literary prose and all that shit.
• 1:05:08
  If you're doing a movie, you know, a lot of your strengths
• 1:05:10
  will be via dialogue and visual choices and how that blends
• 1:05:14
  with, you know, cinematography in in the tabletop space.
• 1:05:21
  Effectively, the greatest strength you have is that
• 1:05:26
  everyone is agreeing to collectively hallucinate and
• 1:05:29
  tell a cool story together. So whatever information you got
• 1:05:34
  to convey to the other people so the cool story gets told,
• 1:05:41
  that's, that is the that is the primary strength.
• 1:05:45
  So ergo, and I'm now losing the plot a little bit as I'm going
• 1:05:49
  here, I'm losing, I'm losing my own plot.
• 1:05:55
  Ergo, by extension, there's no universe where you're going to
• 1:05:57
  be quote UN quote, good enough. Instead, you should lean into
• 1:06:01
  the strengths of the medium in question, which in this case is
• 1:06:05
  basically just good communication is, is what I'm
• 1:06:08
  getting at, right? And the good communication is
• 1:06:14
  going to involve basically just directly saying to the players,
• 1:06:20
  XY and Z is happening. Yes.
• 1:06:22
  If we were to go back into the sex analogy.
• 1:06:25
  Oh, please don't. OK, yes, I understand what
• 1:06:27
  you're saying. At some point you do have to to
• 1:06:29
  to make concessions to achieve the the shared goal.
• 1:06:33
  I I get it. It's not even, it's not
• 1:06:36
  concessions though. See, you're calling it
• 1:06:38
  concessions. I'm not calling it concessions.
• 1:06:40
  I'm just saying it's just what you do.
• 1:06:42
  It's just part of the thing. It's just part of the hobby.
• 1:06:45
  Right, but the like the the compromise is, is understanding
• 1:06:50
  the the translation from medium of storytelling to medium of
• 1:06:55
  group improvisational storytelling.
• 1:06:57
  There has to be a concession made to achieve the end goal of
• 1:07:00
  satisfying story. Right.
• 1:07:04
  I'm, I, I, I'm, I'm rejecting the premise that it's concession
• 1:07:06
  of any kind. I'm saying it's part of the base
• 1:07:09
  formula. It's just like it just is part
• 1:07:14
  of it. Right, I'm not.
• 1:07:15
  I'm not disagreeing that it's part.
• 1:07:16
  Of the baseball concession, would making a concession would
• 1:07:21
  imply that like I am making the product inferior in order to get
• 1:07:27
  the point across and I'm saying no, you're not making the
• 1:07:30
  product inferior, you are doing what the product.
• 1:07:32
  Intends that's yes, but that's not what I mean when I say
• 1:07:35
  concession. Concession is just understanding
• 1:07:37
  that there are limitations to the medium and you have to move
• 1:07:41
  forward understanding that there are limitations to the medium in
• 1:07:44
  comparison. Well, yeah.
• 1:07:45
  Limitation and concession I would say are are different
• 1:07:49
  though I. That's what I meant.
• 1:07:52
  I I don't know. OK, fine.
• 1:07:55
  I mean, once again, as we just established, I can't read your
• 1:07:57
  mind. So, but yeah, basically being
• 1:08:05
  direct with what your point, like it's, it's, it's the same,
• 1:08:10
  it's the same idea as when you start a campaign and you give
• 1:08:15
  the players the pitch dock, which everyone should do, by the
• 1:08:19
  way. Not that the pitch dock has to
• 1:08:23
  be written, but there needs to be a pitch dock of some kind.
• 1:08:25
  You know, like I write mine out, but you don't necessarily have
• 1:08:27
  to write them. But they're the point is when
• 1:08:29
  you give that initial pitch, you say to the players, this is the
• 1:08:35
  kind of campaign I want to do, right?
• 1:08:40
  Like we're all going to play, we're all going to play DND, but
• 1:08:47
  I want to do an open, open world hex crawl game.
• 1:08:52
  This is the kind of campaign I'm running.
• 1:08:55
  So when you're thinking about character idea, premise, what
• 1:09:00
  might be interesting, keep that in mind so that you can make a
• 1:09:04
  character that makes sense for that.
• 1:09:06
  In other words, you know, don't make a wizard who wants to be
• 1:09:09
  locked in his room 24/7. That's not a good hex crawl
• 1:09:13
  character, right? Might be a good, I don't know,
• 1:09:17
  Vampire the masquerade character or something.
• 1:09:18
  Maybe, I don't know. It's the same idea.
• 1:09:23
  We've you're you're you're shifting the players into a
• 1:09:28
  slightly different like campaign premise.
• 1:09:33
  So you tell them up front, you basically kind of need to re
• 1:09:36
  establish a new pitch dock because what you're doing is
• 1:09:41
  players we've been playing in style A for a year.
• 1:09:46
  We're now going to play in style B for a little while.
• 1:09:49
  But if you don't tell them that we're style switching, then
• 1:09:53
  they're probably not going to assume that right?
• 1:09:57
  Like if we've been playing the campaign for a year and up until
• 1:10:01
  this point, it's always been the game.
• 1:10:06
  It's always been the GM has an NPC who gives us a mission and
• 1:10:10
  we tackle the mission and that's been the game.
• 1:10:13
  Now that we're not doing that, you and like the, your, your,
• 1:10:19
  your idea on the GM side is we're not doing that anymore.
• 1:10:22
  Or at least for a little while, we're not doing that.
• 1:10:24
  But if they don't know that, then they're sitting there
• 1:10:27
  waiting to get that mission that's not going to come.
• 1:10:30
  And they're like, what's going on?
• 1:10:33
  You know, it's, it's like when a video game like drastically
• 1:10:36
  shifts mechanics on you halfway through and you're like, oh,
• 1:10:40
  this is weird now I don't know what to do.
• 1:10:42
  Wait, hold on, what's going on? And you have to like reassess,
• 1:10:45
  like, OK, we're doing a different thing now.
• 1:10:48
  This is not a great example, but it's kind of like when you play
• 1:10:51
  Abby in The Last of Us 2, sort of right, Like, oh, we're like
• 1:10:57
  restarting now. OK, I was not expecting that.
• 1:10:59
  OK, now I have to re like re like familiarize myself with
• 1:11:03
  what the fuck's going on. So and and changing the premise
• 1:11:09
  of a campaign like halfway through is not like not a bad
• 1:11:14
  idea. Actually.
• 1:11:15
  It can be pretty fun sometimes, but you got to make that clear.
• 1:11:19
  You know, it's like a lot of open world games.
• 1:11:23
  We'll have this thing where as you get towards the final act of
• 1:11:27
  the game, it stops being an open world game and it becomes really
• 1:11:30
  linear. Like it, it focuses way down.
• 1:11:33
  Final Fantasy 15 did this where you hit a, you hit a point of no
• 1:11:36
  return and you get booted from the open world and you can't go
• 1:11:40
  back to the open world at all. And it becomes like a totally
• 1:11:42
  linear game for the last couple of hours or whatever it is.
• 1:11:47
  And that's fine. And it works for N 15 because
• 1:11:52
  it, from a story standpoint, it actually is cool and interesting
• 1:11:56
  when that happens, right? But the game tells you before
• 1:12:01
  that point, hey, once you start this mission, you're going to
• 1:12:06
  get booted from the open world and things are going to change.
• 1:12:09
  Just so you know, you know what I mean.
• 1:12:14
  So you've effectively, that's pretty much what you've done.
• 1:12:16
  You've taken, you've gone the opposite way.
• 1:12:18
  You've taken your players from linear mode to open world mode,
• 1:12:22
  but you didn't tell them. You kind of told them you're
• 1:12:25
  like. Yeah, I told them I, I pretty
• 1:12:27
  explicitly told them like this is what the next arc is going to
• 1:12:31
  be. This is what I expect of you.
• 1:12:33
  Like I, I did pretty. Explicitly tell them, but did
• 1:12:36
  you mention the other part of? Also, there's a point of no
• 1:12:40
  return thing. Eventually, no, because I didn't
• 1:12:44
  like I am not 100% sure when that point of no return is like,
• 1:12:49
  right. I have, I mean vague notions of
• 1:12:51
  at some point, yeah, it's going to be too late.
• 1:12:53
  If they're, if I'm they're not the second to last mission of of
• 1:12:56
  act four, yeah, it's going to be too late.
• 1:12:57
  But I don't know what Act four 100% looks like.
• 1:13:03
  You don't need to. I don't.
• 1:13:04
  I don't think you need to know. I think you just need to tell
• 1:13:07
  them that like eventually I'm going to push things into that
• 1:13:12
  point of no return. So now what?
• 1:13:15
  We aren't at that point make, you know, make the best of it.
• 1:13:21
  And it doesn't need to be specific because you know, you
• 1:13:24
  have you have lots of room to like play around with that what
• 1:13:29
  that point is. And you might even, you might
• 1:13:32
  even if the players get really invested a particular thing
• 1:13:36
  they're doing, you might stretch that point of no return further,
• 1:13:38
  like further away or or you know, shift how it starts or
• 1:13:42
  whatever. But just being clear that like
• 1:13:45
  that's on the table. I will certainly make that more
• 1:13:50
  clear, but at some point it's just not going to.
• 1:13:56
  And then also, if none of that works at a certain point, maybe
• 1:14:00
  just ask, all right, players, do you even want to do this
• 1:14:04
  particular bit? You know what I mean?
• 1:14:06
  Like, do you actually care about doing any kind of like self
• 1:14:10
  motivated personal missions or do you not give a shit about
• 1:14:12
  that? Like just ask, you know?
• 1:14:15
  No, because I know that they do care.
• 1:14:18
  I know at least some of them care.
• 1:14:21
  Like like I said, Sippy cares 100%.
• 1:14:24
  I know she. Does OK, so start start with the
• 1:14:27
  one who does care. I think that's ultimately that
• 1:14:32
  might be something I have to do kind of on a, on a a like player
• 1:14:38
  by player basis and just ask like, what would like what are
• 1:14:44
  you expecting out of this section?
• 1:14:48
  And like do you think that you have a back story thing that?
• 1:14:52
  You give a shit about. Yeah, that you give enough of a
• 1:14:54
  shit about to like, chase down. Right, that's my point, yeah.
• 1:14:58
  Because ultimately if they don't care then it's going to be
• 1:15:01
  pulling teeth no matter what you do.
• 1:15:04
  True. And that that pulling teeth
• 1:15:07
  always sucks balls so. So.
• 1:15:18
  That's how I look at it, Like just clear, clear communication
• 1:15:22
  on what your intention is. Stuff to think about.
• 1:15:27
  For tomorrow, I mean, sure, yeah.
• 1:15:32
  I mean, you have, I was going to say you have time.
• 1:15:34
  You don't have that much time, but you have a little bit of
• 1:15:35
  time. Yeah.
• 1:15:41
  And again, like I said, ultimately there isn't really a
• 1:15:46
  failure state here or there is, but it's pretty unlikely to
• 1:15:51
  happen. So you don't need to stress it
• 1:15:54
  too much. Yeah, I mean, we definitely like
• 1:15:59
  I have a couple weeks because we're going to do this
• 1:16:01
  tournament thing, which I, I God, I did not get as much done
• 1:16:05
  on that as I wanted to. This week.
• 1:16:08
  Oh wait, you're already in the tournament thing.
• 1:16:11
  No, I'm it, I introduced it like last week as a this is what
• 1:16:16
  we're looking at. This is what the next mission is
• 1:16:18
  going to be because we need money to fix the ship and I at
• 1:16:22
  the very least by tomorrow have to prep the like the sitrep not
• 1:16:26
  the sit wrap the the briefing. That seems like something that
• 1:16:32
  would complicate what you're trying to have them do.
• 1:16:39
  Because. You're, you're telling them,
• 1:16:42
  you're telling them, hey, we're in the open world section of the
• 1:16:45
  game, by the way, mandatory tournament coming up.
• 1:16:48
  That's kind of Those two things are contradicting each other,
• 1:16:51
  are they not? Like yes, a little bit, but
• 1:16:56
  again, I I'm throwing it at them as a palate cleanser to sort of
• 1:16:59
  get them back in the mood to play after a break and after all
• 1:17:03
  that shit that happened to give them a direction while
• 1:17:06
  introducing some stuff forecast as character specifically.
• 1:17:11
  And then pretty much after that, once they get their shit back,
• 1:17:15
  their ship back, then I will kind of like take the leash off.
• 1:17:24
  I mean, OK, that that's, that's slightly confusing to me, I'll
• 1:17:28
  be honest, but all right, see how it goes.
• 1:17:33
  So. Let's put it this way.
• 1:17:35
  If they, if they had taken it at 100% what I had said originally,
• 1:17:41
  and then we're like, OK, I want to do this, I want to do this, I
• 1:17:46
  want to do this with my character.
• 1:17:47
  I probably would have pushed it back like after they got some of
• 1:17:52
  that stuff out of the way. I would have like, you know, the
• 1:17:53
  ship isn't as bad as maybe we thought it was.
• 1:17:56
  You can get it to, you know, it's not going to be running at
• 1:17:58
  full capacity, but we can move around.
• 1:18:01
  But no one made any like active statements to be about chasing
• 1:18:05
  anything down. Nobody made any moves.
• 1:18:08
  Yeah, so because I don't want to sit around for them to have
• 1:18:14
  something ready, right? Because I we still have to play
• 1:18:17
  the game every Thursday. I am giving them something to do
• 1:18:21
  while they figure that out. And also, you know, you would
• 1:18:25
  tournament arc because those are always fun and a good way of
• 1:18:27
  getting people it. Like literally they were like,
• 1:18:30
  what are we doing now? And I was like, well, there's a
• 1:18:32
  tournament arc we can do. And they were like, yeah, I want
• 1:18:34
  to do that. That's what I want to do.
• 1:18:37
  So I mean OK. It's kind of, I don't know, it's
• 1:18:46
  really sounded like the backstories don't fucking
• 1:18:48
  matter. I don't know what to tell you.
• 1:18:53
  I'm being told otherwise, but you know.
• 1:18:56
  OK, All right. Sounds like, sounds like you're
• 1:18:59
  being told one thing, but they're not reacting like that.
• 1:19:06
  But I mean, I'm not at the table, so I'm I'm speculating
• 1:19:09
  from a distance, but you know. I bet, But there's not a whole
• 1:19:13
  lot you can do, right? That's kind of the nature of
• 1:19:15
  this podcasts that we both have to kind of do this from a a
• 1:19:18
  slight distance. Like I am at your table, but I'm
• 1:19:20
  not you. Right.
• 1:19:22
  Yeah, I, I'm, yeah, I don't know.
• 1:19:28
  I mean, I, I would, I would have to talk to your players directly
• 1:19:31
  to really get an answer, but I don't.
• 1:19:33
  I don't know. A lot of the things you've been
• 1:19:34
  saying to me are just sounding like GM.
• 1:19:38
  We we like it if you hand us missions more.
• 1:19:45
  You could also just make just go through, comb through their back
• 1:19:48
  story stuff and make missions out of that shit.
• 1:19:53
  Admittedly, you probably should have done that sooner, but you
• 1:19:57
  know. I mean, that goes into the thing
• 1:20:00
  I was saying before, right? Is like figuring that shit out
• 1:20:04
  is a lot. Especially fitting it into the
• 1:20:06
  mission format that I kind of just decided I didn't 100% want
• 1:20:12
  to. Well, that's kind of why I said
• 1:20:14
  do it sooner because it probably would be easier sooner on in the
• 1:20:17
  narrative, but now you are where you are, so.
• 1:20:21
  Yeah, I mean, like there was a little bit of that.
• 1:20:22
  Like like Brett's character, the weird AI piloted Max that they
• 1:20:32
  fought 3 Times Now are directly connected to Brett's back story.
• 1:20:37
  And I've like given him some seeds and like resources to
• 1:20:43
  figure that out. But he hasn't bitten on that
• 1:20:45
  hook yet. So will he?
• 1:20:47
  Probably, but he hadn't done it at the point where I'd given it
• 1:20:50
  to. I mean you can.
• 1:20:53
  Also, another classic trick is taking multiple characters
• 1:20:59
  backstories and smashing them all together into a mission.
• 1:21:05
  Yeah. Great.
• 1:21:07
  Like conveniently, this mission involves your long lost brother,
• 1:21:13
  your guy, your friend that owes you money and your dad.
• 1:21:17
  Weird, you know, like that can help sometimes.
• 1:21:22
  Too true. I mean, don't make it too
• 1:21:26
  contrived, but you know, a little contrivance, little
• 1:21:31
  contrivance ain't kill nobody. Fair enough.
• 1:21:41
  That's a that's pretty much all I got that is that is pretty
• 1:21:52
  much the end of my nose. But yeah, I will pry these
• 1:21:57
  things out in the next couple weeks once I figure everything
• 1:22:01
  out, and I will. First comes to worst drop
• 1:22:04
  another giant nuke monster death Robot on them.
• 1:22:06
  I you know I've got one locked and loaded.
• 1:22:11
  Just be like, hey, you know that funny thing that happened with
• 1:22:14
  the death machine? What about a second one?
• 1:22:17
  I had, like I said, I got. There's no joke.
• 1:22:18
  I have a second. I yeah, I mean, just just whip
• 1:22:23
  it out maybe. It's going to come up like they
• 1:22:25
  they. Don't really have a choice about
• 1:22:26
  the robot whip. Whip without the robot.
• 1:22:28
  Not the, you know, Yeah. OK, Yeah.
• 1:22:34
  I'm just, I'm just, I'm just clarifying.
• 1:22:37
  OK, all right, that's that's been us.
• 1:22:44
  Follow us on the social media platforms of choice.
• 1:22:48
  They all suck, but we'd appreciate it.
• 1:22:52
  Ideally I'd like to get to 300 subscribers on YouTube by the
• 1:22:57
  end of the year. So that would be.
• 1:23:00
  Did you just pick a number out of your ass?
• 1:23:01
  No, I mean we're at 100 and we're at 120, so I guess 200.
• 1:23:08
  It's because it felt like a number out of your ass.
• 1:23:11
  No, I kind of like I I the out of my ass was the math, but not
• 1:23:15
  necessarily the number. OK, fair enough.
• 1:23:18
  Yeah, the risk I took was calculated, but man, I'm bad at
• 1:23:21
  math. Pretty much, yeah.
• 1:23:23
  Yeah, I'd like to get started by the end of the year.
• 1:23:25
  So thumbs up and. If you don't, he's moving to a
• 1:23:34
  remote island. That'd be so nice, Oh my God.
• 1:23:38
  Disappearing from the entire world.
• 1:23:40
  That's fine. I'll go off grid.
• 1:23:41
  That's all right. Live with the fucking.
• 1:23:45
  It was at the tribe in Guyana that's never had human contact
• 1:23:48
  or outside contact. Yeah, something like that.
• 1:23:50
  Yeah. No, look, I'm, I'm ready to go
• 1:23:54
  full James Cameron's avatar. Let me, let me just be one with
• 1:23:58
  the fucking planet. At the Pandora Sadness.
• 1:24:01
  Yeah, OK, I have. I have nothing else to add.