Latest / Sessions Canceled / Your Players Hate You For This, But That's Okay: Ep. 185

Transcript

Your Players Hate You For This, But That's Okay: Ep. 185 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:08
  All right everybody, so we were here to fight the boss and we
• 0:18
  got pretty damn close and the bastard ran away again.
• 0:22
  It's been like 5 times and we're getting really tired.
• 0:24
  So one of our team players flipped the table and it just,
• 0:28
  it just all went to hell after that it was all FUBAR.
• 0:31
  So I guess sessions cancelled. We're starting to run out of
• 0:34
  tables in the table fund. It's getting.
• 0:37
  Expensive. We keep flipping these tables.
• 0:40
  Maybe we should. Use the table fund to pay for
• 0:43
  it. No, it's for tables.
• 0:46
  That's why it's the table fund. That money's been earmarked.
• 0:53
  Fair enough. Do we have extra money in the
• 0:59
  the bridge builder fund considering the last guy didn't
• 1:01
  enter? We do, but I don't want to give
• 1:06
  it to him just in case. It's dirty, buddy.
• 1:16
  It's it's. It's tainted, buddy.
• 1:19
  Oh my God. This is a dumb joke.
• 1:22
  We really need to stop opening up with jokes that nobody has
• 1:25
  any. Content.
• 1:27
  That's kind of my favorite part. Just say it wild and shit for no
• 1:33
  fucking reason. Exactly.
• 1:35
  Look, that's what you can say the most out of pocket shit when
• 1:38
  there's no context, I mean. I I guess.
• 1:44
  Oh God, it's so funny. Anyway, hey, it's us.
• 1:49
  It's Sessions cancelled hey? Boy skinny peen.
• 1:55
  It's me, you boys. It's me as I am here with Josh.
• 2:00
  I somehow, somehow, somehow, and today we're kind of piggybacking
• 2:09
  off of what we talked about. Oh no, not Iris out.
• 2:12
  We're we're kind of piggybacking what we talked about a couple
• 2:15
  weeks ago with the making memorable villains and it's a
• 2:23
  bit more of a we. Didn't talk about it the last
• 2:27
  week, it was the week before. I said a couple weeks ago, no,
• 2:31
  OK, it's kind of an op-ed to the op-ed because I, I, we were
• 2:40
  reference after our last session of Fabula, we fought what I
• 2:45
  think is probably the halfway boss of the campaign, right?
• 2:48
  My my right to assume that? I mean, I guess a little more
• 2:55
  than halfway, but sort of kinda. OK, We fought the kind of sort
• 3:00
  of halfway boss for the campaign and he got away and a.
• 3:06
  Secondary big boy, to be sure. Yeah, and it was after a very
• 3:11
  long and hard fought battle on our parts, although Josh would
• 3:15
  disagree with us on that. I didn't say it wasn't hard
• 3:18
  fought. You were like, oh, you guys got
• 3:21
  this, this, this, this. Like, you'd be fine.
• 3:23
  Yeah, I knew you were like, 'cause.
• 3:26
  You, you got to a point, you got to a point where I was looking
• 3:29
  at the numbers and I was like, oh, they're good.
• 3:34
  Yeah, so after a battle long and hard fought, Seth the Lich used
• 3:41
  a fabulous point to escape from the battle, like a Pokémon using
• 3:44
  Flee, and we were unable to apprehend and promptly murder
• 3:49
  him. And after session we talked
• 3:53
  about it. And I think, I think a lot of
• 3:56
  players when you hear that, oh, you know, our the boss got away,
• 4:01
  I think there's an immediate like reaction.
• 4:05
  And we had sort of touched upon that where in character, my
• 4:11
  character Goro Maru was definitely frustrated that that
• 4:15
  Seth got away. But me as a player understand
• 4:20
  exactly what we were talking about a while ago, which now
• 4:25
  that he's going to come back and be a recurring villain, he is
• 4:27
  much more memorable than he would have been otherwise.
• 4:31
  And, you know, we talked about our I, I had posed the question
• 4:37
  of if we could have even caught him.
• 4:40
  But I kind of realized that that doesn't matter.
• 4:46
  Like whether or not we could catch him in that moment is kind
• 4:50
  of irrelevant to the fact that we are going to find him again.
• 4:54
  We're going to have this fight again.
• 4:56
  And we weren't sure we were going to win anyway.
• 4:58
  Gosh knew, but we didn't. So even if we did find him, we
• 5:02
  didn't have a guarantee that we could have won.
• 5:06
  So just as well, I think it's better that he got away because
• 5:08
  it makes a more interesting story.
• 5:09
  It's more dramatic. And now we could achieve the run
• 5:12
  backs like never before. The salty run backs.
• 5:16
  The saltiest of run backs. How many times we've got to
• 5:19
  teach you this lesson, old man? He's very old.
• 5:24
  He is he's, he's definitively quite old.
• 5:27
  He is so old he is in fact only a skeleton.
• 5:30
  Hundreds of years. Skeleton.
• 5:36
  Wolverages, I was resisting. OK, OK, good.
• 5:41
  In my head, every time you the we fought those fucking night
• 5:45
  swarm skeletons, I said it in my head and the first time I
• 5:48
  vocalized it, Josh was like, I was trying, I was trying not to
• 5:51
  say it. And then after that he said it
• 5:53
  every signal. Was trying to resist.
• 5:57
  Every single time after that, I sat there very smug, knowing
• 6:01
  that I did my part. Stupid ass vocal tick.
• 6:08
  Oh my God. And as we were talking, Josh
• 6:13
  came to the conclusion or or sort of voiced the idea that
• 6:18
  players on average should be more OK with not getting the
• 6:23
  kill immediately, in that more games should contain mechanics
• 6:26
  that allow for the aforementioned salty run back
• 6:29
  with their favorite villains. In so many words, yeah.
• 6:34
  Yeah, And for my part, I actually, I agree with this.
• 6:39
  I think this is a pretty good take, all things considered.
• 6:41
  I don't know why I said it like that.
• 6:43
  I I think this is a good take, but it was, it was a, an
• 6:49
  interesting idea to ruminate on, to fester on, if you will.
• 6:52
  There's no good kind of festering fin.
• 6:56
  I thought about how I personally felt about it and I felt like it
• 6:58
  was a good idea to dig into that here.
• 7:02
  So before we begin, follow us on your podcast platform of choice
• 7:08
  and shoot us a donation over at the coffee.
• 7:12
  Appreciate it Kisses. I think let's dig into that.
• 7:19
  So let's begin with the opening statement.
• 7:22
  Players should be more OK with villains getting away.
• 7:27
  To reiterate, I agree, but I it does serve as an interesting
• 7:32
  dichotomy in my mind. Right, because as AGM I totally
• 7:37
  understand the pain of having a villain you really like it
• 7:41
  absolutely dogged on and you not have any resources to save them
• 7:47
  from their untimely fate. And like this goes especially
• 7:51
  right if you if you planned for this super cool, super epic boss
• 7:55
  fight. And it just does not go the way
• 7:59
  you imagined it either. The player's kit complete out
• 8:01
  completely outmatches their kit, or they find out some weird
• 8:05
  ludicrous strategy that you weren't thinking about and they
• 8:08
  absolutely clown on him. Like that one time I used a sack
• 8:11
  of flour to almost single tap the evil lizard and that's
• 8:18
  fucking annoying. It really is.
• 8:20
  And I know the at least like 4 GMs who listen to this are now
• 8:24
  shuddering in fear knowing exactly what the fuck I'm
• 8:27
  talking about. I do want to say though, for me
• 8:32
  personally, it's not Even so much about the the pain point of
• 8:40
  I really like this villain or I put in a lot of work, you know,
• 8:44
  to make this villain interesting, and then I'm sad
• 8:47
  when they just immediately go away.
• 8:49
  It's not Even so much about the my personal frustration for me,
• 8:56
  the reason that I advocate for this idea is more because I see
• 8:59
  the utility in it, like the utility of having the villain
• 9:04
  reoccur and what that the potential that has for the the
• 9:08
  story of the game. And and by story, I mean the
• 9:11
  story that everybody tells about the game after the game is over.
• 9:14
  You know what I mean? Like, I see the value in keeping
• 9:18
  the villain around in the same way that there's a reason that
• 9:22
  shows and movies and TV don't just kill the villain off at the
• 9:25
  first time they're on screen, right?
• 9:27
  Because there's a value in having that Marvel problem, kind
• 9:32
  of the Marvel, I mean, they wait till the end of the movie.
• 9:34
  But yeah, kind of the Marvel problem a little bit.
• 9:36
  Yeah. And you know that that utility
• 9:39
  is really what I'm more concerned about than anything,
• 9:42
  you know? I mean, there's I, I get that.
• 9:46
  It, it definitely, like I said it, it provides much more
• 9:52
  narrative suspense and drama when the villain does get away,
• 9:55
  right, because then it adds another layer to the plot.
• 9:58
  The plot literally thickens because you have to go, OK,
• 10:01
  well, what's his plan now? It gives the villain his
• 10:03
  original evil plot. It gives the villain more
• 10:05
  weight. Exactly.
• 10:06
  And the players, despite the initial potential frustration
• 10:11
  they might feel that they got away, that interest builds
• 10:14
  immediately because then you go, oh shit, what are they going to
• 10:16
  do next, you know? And also when they do eventually
• 10:20
  get to fight him again and when they do finally stop him, the
• 10:24
  hype is higher when you finally like take him out.
• 10:28
  Crew. Most of the time, I mean not
• 10:32
  always. I suppose it kind of.
• 10:33
  You can sometimes screw up the landing a little bit, but for
• 10:35
  the most part. No, Yeah.
• 10:38
  I mean, assuming all things go right, yes.
• 10:40
  It it, the ultimate payoff is better because it's it's, you
• 10:44
  know, the players have gotten stronger, the villain has gotten
• 10:47
  stronger. It is sort of it's the Frieza
• 10:50
  thing, right? It's like every time one side
• 10:53
  like UPS their power level, the other one rises to meet it.
• 10:56
  And then it just becomes this like, really climactic battle.
• 10:59
  Yeah, I get that. I mean, don't get me wrong, the
• 11:04
  feeling of, oh, I thought this villain was cool and now they're
• 11:07
  just, you know, irrelevant that that can that can be big sage.
• 11:12
  Like, I'm not I'm not immune to that sensation either.
• 11:15
  No, no. Surely not like everyone.
• 11:17
  Like I said, every GM has felt this where you're like this is
• 11:20
  going to be so sick and then it isn't, you're just cool.
• 11:23
  Fuck. Now I'm sad.
• 11:26
  Exactly. You know, on the inverse to that
• 11:29
  point, though, as a player, I do totally understand the
• 11:34
  frustration of like, working really hard and strategizing and
• 11:38
  cooperating and like messaging other players outside of
• 11:41
  sessions to, to build some sort of strategy only for the boss to
• 11:47
  escape and you to feel, you know, a little robbed of the
• 11:50
  satisfaction at the cusp of victory.
• 11:53
  Ultimately, it is a fine line, right?
• 11:56
  It's something that you have to walk.
• 11:58
  You let every villain get away. Clearly not, but.
• 12:01
  I mean, it is still a victory, though, I think is an important
• 12:04
  point, right? Like, you still win the fight,
• 12:07
  you know, if the villain, yeah, if the villain is escaping, that
• 12:11
  means they got their ass beat and they're like, oh shit, I got
• 12:13
  to. I got to get the hell out of
• 12:14
  here. They're going to kill me.
• 12:15
  You know what I mean? Like you just still win.
• 12:17
  Yes, but it's where I bet you like, you know, not all
• 12:19
  victories feel like a victory, right?
• 12:21
  Like a Pyrrhic victory. You did technically win, but
• 12:24
  sure doesn't feel like it. So I also, like I said, I'm not
• 12:29
  saying 1 is more right than the other, but I do understand it's
• 12:32
  both side of this coin. As someone who's been a player
• 12:33
  for a very long time and someone who's who's run games at this
• 12:36
  point for a very long time, it's a balance you had to strike,
• 12:40
  right? And you as a player don't want
• 12:45
  to feel like you've wasted your time.
• 12:46
  But GMs also don't feel like or feel like they want the, the
• 12:52
  drama and suspense that they're building to have like a real
• 12:54
  meaningful payoff. So to this end, you know, what
• 13:00
  is the recourse? Well, I think the, the, I think
• 13:09
  the middle ground has to be found in, in two ways
• 13:12
  specifically, right? I think you need to to find
• 13:14
  compromise in the narrative aspect, but I think you there
• 13:17
  also needs to be some sort of pay off on both sides in the
• 13:22
  mechanical aspect. Odds rephrase it.
• 13:32
  I think in order for this balance to work, there has to be
• 13:35
  pay off on both sides of of the field, both narratively and
• 13:40
  mechanically. Oh, yeah, yes, yes, yeah.
• 13:45
  Like there has to be like a real tangible.
• 13:47
  Yeah, you can't. Yes, the the the secret, I don't
• 13:57
  know, the like the trick, the secret sauce, as it were, is
• 14:01
  that even when the villain does run away, yes, there still needs
• 14:05
  to be an element of forward progress.
• 14:07
  There still needs to be the players need to have achieved a
• 14:12
  thing and the villain needs to have not achieved a thing.
• 14:17
  It's just that the achievement doesn't have to be the villain
• 14:20
  dies, right? The achievement can be any other
• 14:22
  number of things. But yes, you don't want to have
• 14:26
  a situation where the villain runs away and then because the
• 14:31
  villain ran away, there was no forward progress, no narrative
• 14:35
  achievement, right? If you have a situation where
• 14:38
  the players are attacking or like the town has been besieged
• 14:44
  by the evil wizard and the players go to fight the evil
• 14:46
  wizard and they, they kill it, you know, they, they, they
• 14:49
  defeat him and then he escapes. The town that they were
• 14:53
  liberating cannot still be, you know, trapped, right?
• 14:57
  The defeating of the evil wizard still has to free the town or at
• 15:01
  the very bare minimum, has to make forward progress towards
• 15:04
  the freeing of the town. Like maybe there's some more
• 15:06
  work to be done, but they have made a significant chunk of
• 15:09
  progress because ultimately they did still win the fight, right?
• 15:13
  The villain escaping does not mean the players failed.
• 15:17
  They still succeeded. The villa just got out of there
• 15:20
  with their tail between their leg, right?
• 15:21
  That's still a victory. That's still a success
• 15:23
  ultimately. And in the in regards to if
• 15:27
  you're playing, it's like when you're playing the video game,
• 15:29
  right, Like a a great example at the very beginning of Final
• 15:33
  Fantasy 10 two. I know this is a weird
• 15:35
  reference. I don't know why this came to
• 15:36
  mind, but it did at the very beginning of Final Fantasy 10
• 15:40
  two, you meet this, these, this, this trio of characters who kind
• 15:44
  of like fuck with you throughout the entire game as like sort of
• 15:48
  parallel. They're not, they're not like
• 15:50
  the antagonist, but they they, they mess with you.
• 15:52
  They're another group of sphere hunters who are like looking for
• 15:55
  the same treasure you're looking for.
• 15:57
  And you fight them in the beginning of the game and then
• 16:00
  you beat their ass and they're like, well, you know what?
• 16:03
  We're just going to, we're just going to head out real quick.
• 16:05
  And they leave. But you still get XP for the
• 16:08
  fight, right? Like you still beat them, you
• 16:10
  still get the experience points. It's not like because they leave
• 16:13
  you don't get any XP, which is another example of why XP 4 kill
• 16:19
  monster is a bad system, right? Agreed.
• 16:23
  Yeah. So yes, there still needs to be
• 16:25
  a. Victory.
• 16:28
  Yeah, for sure. Like that.
• 16:30
  That's the very minimum, yeah. Like there, you still need to
• 16:32
  achieve some level of victory. You need to be able to
• 16:34
  accomplish your goals while setting your opponent's goals
• 16:36
  back somewhere. If we're talking about a
• 16:38
  situation where the players lost the fight and then the villain
• 16:43
  leaves different, you know, like that's it, we're operating, Then
• 16:48
  you're operating in a different way because you can't have a
• 16:50
  situation where the villain beats the players, chooses not
• 16:54
  to kill them, and leaves to go do something else.
• 16:57
  Then the players don't, then the players didn't win, and now
• 17:00
  you're in the space of what is the outcome of losing.
• 17:05
  Right. And, and in that point, you get
• 17:07
  an interesting opposite reaction where the players live, they
• 17:11
  don't die, their goals are massively set back and the, the
• 17:15
  villains goals are forwarded. And now the players have to deal
• 17:18
  with that side of the stage. To this end, I think the place
• 17:25
  where this sort of has to start, at least in my opinion, is at
• 17:29
  session 0, right? I think, I think you need to be
• 17:32
  able to find this the, the, the through line of this compromise
• 17:36
  at the very start. And you don't have to like give
• 17:39
  it a bunch of time, right? I think it's just worth
• 17:41
  mentioning to players, hey, major villains may escape to
• 17:45
  fight another day, right? Just because it sets a
• 17:48
  precedent, it tempers players expectations and they know that
• 17:53
  it's not always a guarantee that the villains are going to bug
• 17:56
  out. It is something that could
• 17:58
  happen and it helps them. It helps inform their role play
• 18:04
  as to the events that are going to occur later on.
• 18:06
  You know what I mean? If players know that the enemies
• 18:09
  are going to get away, when the enemy does get away, they won't
• 18:13
  fight as hard out of character, right?
• 18:17
  Right. To get the kill.
• 18:18
  You know what I mean? They won't argue as much.
• 18:21
  Yeah, this is the like. So this is a weird thing for me,
• 18:25
  right? Turn your mind back to 2008 when
• 18:29
  when fucking Super Smash Brothers Brawl comes out, right?
• 18:33
  That weird little wizard dude who turns out to be robbed in
• 18:35
  Sub Space Emissary, every time you fight him, he jumps on the
• 18:39
  little platform and flies away. Right.
• 18:42
  The characters, like, they try to chase him a little bit, but
• 18:44
  ultimately do the like, shake my fist at you, I'll get you
• 18:47
  someday thing, right? Yeah, that's kind of what you
• 18:50
  want, right? You want the players to be in
• 18:53
  that state where they are after the boss fight.
• 18:56
  They're tired. They've just gone through it.
• 18:57
  And yeah, sure, they might. They might be at full health,
• 18:59
  but narratively they should be exhausted after this much
• 19:02
  fighting and they should've got, you know.
• 19:05
  They should know in the back of their minds, oh, we'll, we'll
• 19:07
  get a chance. Yeah.
• 19:11
  So ultimately it, like I said, it allows them to temper their
• 19:13
  expectations and and it gives you less headaches later on when
• 19:19
  when the player inevitably just keeps fighting for the kill and
• 19:23
  you're like, my guy. Please.
• 19:25
  Yeah, just just. Stop.
• 19:27
  Just let it go. Yeah.
• 19:31
  After that, I think what we talked about before comes into
• 19:37
  play a lot. I will say I, I, I didn't
• 19:43
  necessarily, I didn't necessarily establish the whole
• 19:47
  villain escaping thing in Fabula being on the table, you know, in
• 19:52
  a session 0 or early on. I just kind of assumed you guys
• 19:56
  would know it's on the table because it's a mechanic.
• 19:59
  But yes, perhaps I should not have made that assumption.
• 20:04
  No, I mean, I, so I was OK with that because and you know, I
• 20:10
  can't speak for, for, you know, Lita or Paladin or Serath, but
• 20:16
  like, you know, you and I read that rule book collectively 3
• 20:19
  times backwards and four. Years.
• 20:21
  Yeah, Yeah. So I was aware that the ultimate
• 20:24
  points could be used for things like letting the enemies escape,
• 20:26
  which is why I wasn't really bothered and why Goro several
• 20:29
  times was like fuck it let's just go home right?
• 20:35
  Because it, you know. And like I role played it as
• 20:38
  Goro. When the fight ended Goro was
• 20:40
  just on his knees like breathing heavy because I was using my
• 20:43
  entire my entire kit to defend, heal, support and take ass loads
• 20:49
  of damage for my friends. Yeah.
• 20:54
  Yeah, Garo's fucking exhausted. I, as Goro, don't want to chase
• 20:58
  after the fucking necromancer anymore.
• 21:00
  Right, right. Well, and I think that's a part
• 21:03
  of it too, right. Sometimes there's a bit of a a
• 21:05
  Ludo narrative disco biscuit situation when fictionally it
• 21:13
  makes sense that your character would be tapped out, right?
• 21:18
  In a situation where from a narrative standpoint, you've
• 21:23
  done all this crazy shit, you've taken all these crazy blows
• 21:27
  right in a movie. If you if you're watching, you
• 21:32
  know, Batman fight Bane and you know they beat the dog shit out
• 21:36
  of each other. Batman ultimately wins.
• 21:38
  And then Bane opens up a trap door and fucking disappears or
• 21:41
  whatever horseshit he pulls It may.
• 21:45
  You don't question when Batman's exhausted and doesn't follow him
• 21:49
  into the trap door. You don't question that because
• 21:52
  you could clearly tell just from what you know from watching.
• 21:57
  Oh, Batman just doesn't have the energy.
• 21:58
  He's too exhausted. Even if he did try to follow
• 22:01
  him, what would be the point? He's just going to get his ass
• 22:04
  beat anyway or something else bad is going to happen, right?
• 22:07
  So you don't question it in like a movie or in a character in a
• 22:11
  video game does the same thing. You don't question that moment.
• 22:14
  It makes sense. The problem is in a tabletop
• 22:16
  game, you're having the same moment right, where you've been
• 22:20
  through all this shit. The villain hits you with three
• 22:22
  fireballs in the face. The the, you know, you've been
• 22:26
  hit with all this crazy magic and you've been fighting off
• 22:29
  undead swarms. All that shit is still
• 22:31
  happening. But you look at your character
• 22:33
  sheet and go, yeah, but I have 80 out of 100 HP, so like, I'm
• 22:37
  good, right? Which doesn't really make any
• 22:40
  sense. But yeah, because of that
• 22:44
  mechanical dissonance, that disconnect, you have to look and
• 22:48
  go, right? I'm at ADHP, but my character's
• 22:51
  been through all this shit. So the idea of my character sort
• 22:54
  of letting it go because they don't have the energy does
• 22:56
  actually make sense. And that's when you get into
• 22:59
  that whole back and forth of what does HP represent?
• 23:04
  You know, your, your will to fight and your physical injuries
• 23:08
  and your luck and yadda, yadda. And, and I think that's why HP
• 23:12
  is often like a, a somewhat complicated resource to fully
• 23:17
  quantify because it is abstracted to a point that
• 23:23
  sometimes it just doesn't make sense, but you kind of got to
• 23:28
  ignore it a little bit when it really doesn't make sense and
• 23:30
  just kind of roll with it, you know?
• 23:33
  Yeah, for sure. And I get it.
• 23:35
  I do understand, especially if you're, if you're new to
• 23:37
  tabletop games, right? Like if you're playing D&D and
• 23:40
  you've never done it before, I can definitely understand
• 23:44
  looking at your character sheet and being like, OK, but I'm a
• 23:48
  barbarian and I have 40 HP and right now I'm down to 20.
• 23:52
  Like, I'm good and I can absolutely understand why you
• 23:57
  have that disconnect, but what you learn is that, yeah, as time
• 24:02
  goes on, just kind of ignore it a little bit, let it slide a
• 24:07
  little bit, and it's probably better that way.
• 24:11
  Yeah. Agreed.
• 24:12
  I mean, maybe not always. I'm sure there's probably
• 24:14
  situations where you kind of look at that HP number and it
• 24:17
  makes more sense to be like, well, and and have the argument,
• 24:20
  but at the very least you got to leave room for the back and
• 24:24
  forth. Yeah, well, so I think it's one
• 24:27
  thing, right. Like if you to me, I think about
• 24:31
  it in Fabula with how like how many times did I get dropped
• 24:35
  into my crisis a lot. I think crisis is a really good
• 24:39
  metric for how your character is feeling.
• 24:41
  Yeah. I mean, getting dropped into
• 24:42
  crisis once your character took a bad hit, right?
• 24:44
  They, they like, it's that thing where they get like slashed on
• 24:47
  their side and they have to like, they double over for a
• 24:49
  second and muscle through it. Getting dropped twice.
• 24:52
  Maybe they're like, like, it's that thing where it shows the
• 24:55
  like the, the, the X-ray and one of their bones fracture.
• 24:58
  The third time they're like, you know, it's the cutaway where
• 25:01
  they're like bleeding all over the floor and like staring up
• 25:05
  with the hazy eyes. I think I went into crisis like
• 25:08
  5 or 6 times. I I don't know if it's quite
• 25:11
  that many, but you definitely went into crisis a lot in that
• 25:13
  fight for sure. Boro's fucking factor has never
• 25:16
  been. Yeah, I mean, I, I think, and I
• 25:20
  think that's what games, that games that have a wound system
• 25:25
  is really, that's kind of what they're trying to invoke, right.
• 25:27
  Like I remember Star Wars, I, I, I'm blanking on what they called
• 25:32
  the HP in that game, but I, I remember they didn't call it
• 25:34
  HPS. Well, so was wounds.
• 25:39
  And strain. But no.
• 25:41
  But then there was the critical hit thing.
• 25:43
  The the critical injury that is so.
• 25:46
  The words are real injuries. Maybe they were just called
• 25:48
  injuries, the words not not being that relevant.
• 25:51
  But the point was the way that Star Wars worked was you would
• 25:53
  take a bunch of damage and then once you got to the bottom of
• 25:56
  your like health pool, you took an injury.
• 25:59
  You took like a critical hit, and critical hits would accrue
• 26:05
  and stay on your character over time until you dealt with them.
• 26:08
  And effectively what they're trying to say is when your
• 26:12
  character is fighting and losing their regular health pool, those
• 26:18
  aren't major hits. When they get to the point where
• 26:20
  they take a critical injury now they have been majorly hit.
• 26:24
  They have been majorly wounded in some fashion.
• 26:27
  Ergo, now narratively your character's like, oh shit, that
• 26:31
  was really bad. And I that's really what games
• 26:33
  that have that kind of a threshold system are trying to
• 26:36
  do. And Fabulous doesn't have that.
• 26:39
  But you're right that the crisis hitting that crisis point is
• 26:43
  kind of a close. And you can kind of use it to
• 26:46
  approximate that feeling like, yeah, how many times did I hit
• 26:49
  crisis? You can kind of think about
• 26:51
  every time you hit crisis is a really bad injury.
• 26:55
  You know, 'cause there are quite a lot of games actually that
• 26:58
  have a system of like you have your mini HP and then your
• 27:02
  actual HP, right? Like a lot of games, we'll call
• 27:05
  it stress or something like that.
• 27:06
  And then you get hit to your, then you get actual wound
• 27:09
  wounds. I'm trying to think like Blades
• 27:14
  in the Dark sort of kind of works that way because you have
• 27:17
  the resistance role where you can take stress to kind of
• 27:19
  ignore a wound. I'm trying to, I know I've
• 27:25
  played other stuff that like has that, but you get, you get what
• 27:27
  I'm saying? Yeah, there there is.
• 27:29
  There is various ways you can gauge that narrative sensation
• 27:34
  of Oh my character really got hurt this time as opposed to
• 27:40
  just a little winded or whatever.
• 27:42
  I think even if you have HP like just given how bouncy 5E is, I
• 27:47
  think a good metric for 5E is just how many times you got
• 27:49
  knocked unconscious, right? Like.
• 27:51
  Yeah, downed in 5E is a decent metric for sure.
• 27:53
  I mean it depends. I mean 5V is a little weird with
• 27:58
  health so it it that one can be harder to gauge, but it it's a
• 28:02
  metric you can use for sure. Exhaustion can also kind of be a
• 28:05
  metric, although the game doesn't utilize exhaustion that
• 28:07
  much. Unfortunately enough, yeah.
• 28:09
  But yeah, like I definitely, it's definitely a another
• 28:15
  potential metric you can look at.
• 28:18
  Honestly, I, that's literally what I did in hellscapes, right?
• 28:22
  Like the, the, the lingering injuries thing was literally
• 28:24
  that it's like, OK, do you want to drop down to 0 HP and get
• 28:27
  knocked the fuck out? Or do you want to stay up and
• 28:29
  maybe lose an arm, be concussed? Absolutely memory loss, like,
• 28:32
  and it filled that out and like, yeah, maybe should I have
• 28:36
  cranked boss HP to to, you know, to give them some sustain
• 28:40
  against that? Yeah, because my players were
• 28:43
  putting out some stupid numbers, but like, it worked pretty well
• 28:47
  and. You know, the numbers in general
• 28:49
  got a little wonky in Hellscapes.
• 28:51
  They did they they? Really.
• 28:53
  I do remember looking at the book and being like these seem
• 28:56
  inflated. Well, I, I, I sent you some
• 28:58
  like, boss stats and you're like, that's a lot of damage.
• 29:00
  I'm like, yeah, believe me. Yeah, I do remember.
• 29:04
  Yeah. And I, I have to say this
• 29:08
  because you might think that this is like a low key call out
• 29:12
  to our fabulous party. No, actually, pretty much all of
• 29:15
  us were on the same boat of like, we need to get the fuck
• 29:18
  out of here. Like the the second Seth ran
• 29:20
  away, we were like, OK, good, we can leave now.
• 29:25
  And it was, it was, it was the NPC, it was Rod Wolf who was
• 29:28
  like, I'm charging in and we're us going like, no, you fucking
• 29:32
  idiot, get back. And I think that was cool.
• 29:37
  I, I think I like that our, our party gets it.
• 29:40
  You know what I mean? They sort of understand the
• 29:42
  assignment. And that.
• 29:44
  Sort of. They do understand the
• 29:45
  assignment technically. I think, and and I would have to
• 29:51
  double check, but rules is written, I'm pretty sure 'cause
• 29:58
  when the villain escapes in Fabula, they're leaving the
• 30:01
  scene, right? And so if you were to re engage
• 30:03
  them, it would be a new scene, which I think that means they
• 30:07
  would come back into the new scene at their crisis score at
• 30:11
  the at the very least. Oh.
• 30:13
  Jesus, I'm pretty sure because when you when you down an enemy,
• 30:19
  right, when you make an enemy surrender, if you don't choose
• 30:22
  to kill them right 'cause they're at your mercy.
• 30:25
  The game says they reappear in the next scene at at crisis,
• 30:30
  which is to say at half health. So I'm pretty sure that would be
• 30:34
  the case where the villain escapes then, yeah, you would
• 30:36
  meet them back at that halfway point, which means you're
• 30:39
  you're, you know, kind of restarting the fight.
• 30:41
  So. Yeah, we would be.
• 30:44
  It would be Bad News Bears. The taste, that probably would
• 30:46
  be a bad idea. I mean, granted, in that
• 30:48
  particular scenario, maybe you might have had a decent chance
• 30:52
  just by sheer numbers. But like, yeah.
• 30:55
  There was a lot of us. Yeah.
• 30:57
  Yeah. Well, honestly, I don't even
• 30:59
  know because, you know, Don was running out of his fire
• 31:04
  infusions. He had no more light infusions.
• 31:07
  Santa was almost completely out of mine.
• 31:09
  Points I I don't think. Yeah, but Seth only had three
• 31:16
  turns. True.
• 31:20
  There was more of us, yeah, I mean, and and if I was focusing
• 31:22
  on attack, we definitely would be able to.
• 31:23
  Granted, Granted, would I have probably, if you did chase him
• 31:27
  down, would I have probably said he had more minions around him?
• 31:30
  Probably, yeah. Oh.
• 31:32
  God. Right, like it it, it would be a
• 31:35
  little silly for him to not have more backup right?
• 31:38
  Like he's. Yeah, he's a necromancer.
• 31:40
  Like, yeah, it's one of those things where it's like they
• 31:43
  literally a dime a dozen, you just can make more.
• 31:46
  So yeah, it's fair. Yeah.
• 31:50
  And just like it it, like I said it, it was really funny that all
• 31:55
  of us it like usually you get the one that the one player
• 31:57
  who's like, no, he's mine. But no, pretty much all of us
• 32:00
  were like, now we want to go. Yeah, well, in a.
• 32:04
  Good way. We were like, we were, we were
• 32:06
  tapped. We were like, we're tapped.
• 32:06
  We're out. Well, and I think there was a
• 32:08
  relatively good acknowledgement of we, we, you know, mission
• 32:12
  accomplished what we wanted to do.
• 32:14
  You know, we, we hit, we hit the thing we wanted to hit.
• 32:18
  So chasing him down, is it going to do that much more?
• 32:25
  Yeah, I mean, there was definitely a big sense of like
• 32:27
  wind condition met for sure. And you know, for the narrative
• 32:32
  like we were talking about, we saw the ramifications of that
• 32:37
  immediately, right as we were leaving.
• 32:38
  The zombies, the skeletons that that he had resurrected were
• 32:41
  like shutting down and they were they either weren't fighting
• 32:46
  back or they were just collapsing in on themselves
• 32:48
  because he wasn't there to maintain them anymore.
• 32:52
  And on even on our way back to our our like little resistance
• 32:57
  base, there was like no undead signs anywhere.
• 33:01
  So it was like from the second we left the boss fight to the
• 33:04
  second we were there for downtime, we were like, OK, we
• 33:07
  have done something meaningful, we can fight to take the city
• 33:10
  back now. Yeah, a step has been made
• 33:12
  towards, you know, and that's what I was saying before.
• 33:16
  The players still won the fight, so they still have to make
• 33:18
  progress, right? It's kind of like the when you
• 33:22
  get a middling success in in Apocalypse World, the GM still
• 33:28
  has to give you what you want, because a middling success is
• 33:31
  still a success, right? The complication is a rider on
• 33:36
  the success, but the complication cannot negate the
• 33:39
  success, you know? Yeah, yeah, the middling
• 33:43
  success, it's a, it's a yes, but.
• 33:45
  Yeah, and it. Is yes, you succeed, but this
• 33:48
  happens. It is worth pointing out that
• 33:50
  sometimes hitting that middling success and making it feel like
• 33:56
  the player succeeded, but there's a complication.
• 33:59
  Sometimes it is a little hard to hit that point and you as AGM
• 34:02
  will sometimes screw that up a little bit.
• 34:04
  And in the same way, there may be a situation where the players
• 34:08
  beat the boss, the boss escapes and you as AGM don't really give
• 34:13
  them the victory all the way. And then you have to kind of go
• 34:17
  back and reassess the situation that will happen.
• 34:20
  But as long as you're trying to make sure that you're giving
• 34:23
  them a victory of some kind, that's the important thing.
• 34:28
  Because you know, there could be a situation where you're like,
• 34:30
  oh, well, the boss escapes, but you know, his troops don't know
• 34:33
  he escapes. So his troops are still around.
• 34:36
  And the players are like, OK, but that doesn't that like
• 34:39
  completely negate our victory here?
• 34:42
  And then you as the gym go, it does kind of negates.
• 34:46
  And then you have to be like, all right, maybe maybe some of
• 34:48
  the troops are out and some of the troops stay or you know, and
• 34:51
  then you have to start doing that back and forth.
• 34:54
  But as long as you're making an attempt, right, that's the
• 34:56
  important thing. Yeah, and like, here's the thing
• 35:00
  in in our situation with the undead, it was a lot easier for
• 35:03
  Josh to to gauge like the immediate effects.
• 35:07
  But if if if you're fighting like a boots on the ground, just
• 35:11
  guys, it's just one army against the other, Yeah.
• 35:13
  I mean, you're not going to see those effects immediately, but
• 35:15
  you will see them eventually, right?
• 35:17
  The word will get around. You might just have to fight
• 35:19
  your way back out still though. Yeah.
• 35:21
  I mean, sure, yeah. And I think a a a fun little cap
• 35:26
  on this point is something that I like.
• 35:31
  It's something that I've done right is when the boss that
• 35:37
  you're fighting, when they do come back, they come back
• 35:42
  change, right? Like how cool would it be if you
• 35:45
  were fighting like a death knight or something or an evil
• 35:48
  wizard and you just lopped one of their arms off and then they
• 35:52
  get away. And when they come back later,
• 35:55
  you know, that Death Knight is using like a smaller sword, or
• 35:58
  maybe his like, his weird great sword was snapped in half, so
• 36:01
  now he can use it with one hand. Or maybe if you, you know, you
• 36:05
  broke his armor. Maybe he's just like, you see
• 36:08
  what his face looks like now? Like it.
• 36:10
  It creates this sort of narrative stepping stone where
• 36:13
  you feel like you are, you are. It doesn't feel like a redux of
• 36:18
  what happened before. It feels like a next step in the
• 36:21
  story. Yeah, it it's well, and it's a
• 36:26
  sense of, of persistence, right? A sense of the like player
• 36:33
  actions affecting the world vibe, which is often the thing
• 36:38
  that players want, especially in a tabletop context, because you
• 36:43
  as a human GM have the capability to to reflect that
• 36:47
  change in quote UN quote game state.
• 36:50
  That's why the mechanic in Shadow of Mordor was so not not
• 36:59
  ground breaking, but it was so like it left such an impact on
• 37:02
  people. Because when you were playing
• 37:05
  through Shadow of Mordor, whether you would defeat a
• 37:08
  random orc or you would get defeated by a random orc, it
• 37:12
  would cause a permanent change in game state.
• 37:14
  And then you would come across that random guy who is no longer
• 37:19
  a random guy. Now he's a sick badass general.
• 37:21
  And that game was a particularly good where, for example, if
• 37:25
  you're, if you kill him and then you do like an execution
• 37:28
  animation where you cut off his hand, the game would recognize
• 37:32
  that that's the execution you got on that character.
• 37:34
  And the next time you see him, he would have a big robotic arm,
• 37:38
  you know? And so there is this feeling in
• 37:41
  that game in particular where you're like, holy shit, the
• 37:43
  random fights I'm getting into 'cause, you know, Shadow Mordor
• 37:48
  was an open world game that for all intents and purposes was
• 37:53
  just a basic Ubisoft style open world game game.
• 37:57
  You know, you go around from point to point, you clear
• 38:00
  checkpoints, you like pick up random gobbledygook nonsense,
• 38:04
  you clear out encampments, you climb up towers, right?
• 38:07
  Like it was, it's that kind of open world game, which was, to
• 38:10
  be fair, in vogue at the time when that game came out.
• 38:14
  But the thing that made that game stand out was these random
• 38:20
  jobs, these random things I'm doing in the world could have a
• 38:25
  lasting impact out of nowhere because I got overconfident.
• 38:30
  And so one random orc named Gamuka the ball cruncher killed
• 38:35
  me. And now he's General Gamuka the
• 38:37
  ball cruncher. And he's got a sick flame
• 38:39
  throwing crossbow and you're like, oh fuck, right.
• 38:43
  Like. And so it has this narrative
• 38:46
  persistence feeling and tabletop, you can do that same
• 38:49
  thing on an even greater scale. So you want to try and do that,
• 38:55
  you know, pretty much anytime you can, it needs to, you want
• 38:58
  to make sure that the players feel like they are hitting and
• 39:01
  influencing the universe. And anytime that it makes sense
• 39:08
  and feels like it is, you know, the right thing to do.
• 39:12
  Because nothing, nothing would feel shittier than if you're
• 39:15
  playing a tabletop game and you beat the big boss and then
• 39:20
  nothing is acknowledged in regards to beating the boss.
• 39:25
  Like, you did it and the king pays you your money or whatever,
• 39:28
  but there's no follow up, you know, Like, yeah.
• 39:32
  Like, you know, you don't, they're not like, oh, you guys
• 39:35
  did a thing. It's like, all right, moving on.
• 39:36
  Your next job is doing this and you're like, wait, but we just
• 39:38
  did something awesome. What the fuck?
• 39:39
  Right, right. Like if if the king sends you on
• 39:41
  a mission to go liberate the nearby city from the evil wizard
• 39:45
  guy who took it over, and you do that and the king knows you did
• 39:49
  that but doesn't give you any praise or acknowledgement for
• 39:53
  it, that would feel very weird. And then the players are going
• 39:57
  to be like, I mean, yeah, we got XP and money, but.
• 40:02
  Like recognition is is part of the deal.
• 40:06
  Yeah. Right, because it would it
• 40:08
  feels, you know, it's the DND it's that DND vibe of at the
• 40:14
  beginning of the campaign, nobody knows who these random
• 40:17
  murder hobos are. At the end of the campaign,
• 40:20
  everyone knows who they are and they did all sorts of crazy shit
• 40:23
  that everyone recognizes, right? Like that's that's supposed to
• 40:26
  be the narrative arc of AD and D campaign.
• 40:29
  That's like how it's supposed to roll.
• 40:31
  So if you deprive them of that, they're going to be grumpy like,
• 40:39
  no, boy, no. To say the least, yeah.
• 40:46
  And like we were saying before, I, I, I agree with you that I
• 40:49
  think, you know, it's good that Fabula has this built into it,
• 40:54
  right? Like the fact that the Fabula
• 40:55
  points are there, they give. They give GMSA tangible way of
• 41:03
  interacting with this I think is good and it's it's a good start
• 41:08
  for what I would want when it comes to mechanical mechanical
• 41:14
  incentives for this kind of thing.
• 41:18
  The only other thing I would I I could really suggest like is was
• 41:23
  what I was saying before, right? What I would want to see is, you
• 41:27
  know, changes on that boss's stat block.
• 41:29
  For example, you know, if you're if you fought a dragon that flew
• 41:32
  around a lot, maybe you destroyed its wings and now it
• 41:34
  gets a burrowing speed. So it's the same villain under a
• 41:37
  different scenario. It's not just the same fight
• 41:39
  over again, you know, to the one arm death knight thing using a
• 41:43
  different sword. Maybe they get an extra attack
• 41:46
  that you know roughly equals out to the same damage, maybe a
• 41:49
  little bit less or maybe a little more, but it the the
• 41:53
  strategy you need to take to beat him now has to shift to
• 41:57
  match it. Yeah, you, you want it to feel
• 42:01
  like something has changed in some regard.
• 42:03
  Yeah, you don't want it. You don't.
• 42:04
  You definitely don't want the the villain to feel completely
• 42:08
  stagnant. No, that is that is arguably the
• 42:11
  worst that you can do. Like just doing the same boss
• 42:15
  fight again is not fun, right? It's not interesting.
• 42:20
  It it just kind of feels like a I kind of like it.
• 42:23
  Oh shit, here we go again. You know what I mean?
• 42:26
  Like. I mean, especially, especially
• 42:29
  if it's a situation where the boss hasn't been around for a
• 42:31
  little while so the PCs have gained a bunch of levels and
• 42:35
  then they go and fight the exact same stat block, then they're
• 42:39
  just going to absolutely dunk on his ass, which most of the time
• 42:44
  I feel like is going to feel kind of unsatisfied.
• 42:47
  It is and and I I would go as far as to say if it's the same
• 42:51
  stat block with some boosted stats, it's still not going to
• 42:55
  feel that interesting because at that, at this point, the players
• 42:58
  will likely have built their characters at least somewhat in
• 43:01
  response to that stat block. They'll have a plan.
• 43:04
  So even if the numbers are higher, it just becomes a war of
• 43:08
  attrition. There's not a whole lot of
• 43:09
  thought. They've done it already.
• 43:13
  So shift your stat block up, keep things interesting and
• 43:16
  like, I don't know, honestly, if you if you like, if you really
• 43:20
  think it'll work, you can kind of you can kind of quantum ogre
• 43:24
  it where maybe, you know, maybe you had an idea for a cool
• 43:27
  werewolf and the wizard was like, I will get my final
• 43:32
  revenge, man, and then turn themselves into a weird
• 43:34
  werewolf. You know what I mean?
• 43:36
  Right, right, right. Still the same guy still is
• 43:38
  going to monologue, but now he's a big werewolf.
• 43:41
  And now you have a completely different stat block to rely on.
• 43:43
  And now the characters have to reckon with that, which can be a
• 43:46
  lot of fun. Yeah, because ultimately the
• 43:49
  important part is that narratively it's still the same
• 43:52
  guy which has that narrative impact, which is at the at the,
• 43:58
  at the core of the whole concept is to make sure that villains
• 44:03
  have narrative weight, right? That's what we're trying to get.
• 44:05
  We want to make sure they have that narrative paunch.
• 44:08
  So yeah, even if mechanically they're completely fucking
• 44:11
  different. Like you turn the wizard into a
• 44:14
  dragon. We still know that the dragon is
• 44:17
  that wizard guy we fought. So from a narrative standpoint,
• 44:19
  like we still got beef with that dragon.
• 44:21
  Now I. Didn't actually put this in my
• 44:24
  notes, but I think there are there are a couple of things to
• 44:26
  to reckon with. There are a couple situations
• 44:29
  where you don't want to do this. Like there are situations where
• 44:33
  you just want to let the boss die.
• 44:35
  And I'm speaking from like player experience here.
• 44:41
  If you as the GM really push into your players heads like,
• 44:46
  hey, this fight coming up, it's real big, It's real important.
• 44:49
  Make sure you get yourself, make sure you're prepared and you
• 44:51
  know, it's you keep setting the idea that it's going to be this
• 44:57
  big climactic thing. You have sort of put yourself in
• 45:01
  a corner, not necessarily narratively, but as AGM, you've
• 45:05
  written yourself into a bit of a corner because if you don't pay
• 45:08
  off that initial climactic victory, it will feel a little
• 45:17
  unfounded, even if the narrative supports it.
• 45:19
  And it can work. You put yourself in a position
• 45:22
  where the players have such a high expectation of how that
• 45:26
  fight is going to end that doing it another way isn't really
• 45:30
  going to work, right. And, and I've brought this up
• 45:33
  before. This has happened to me.
• 45:35
  This happened to a party I was in, right?
• 45:36
  This is the, the, the mythical first campaign where we fought
• 45:42
  the, where we fought the werewolves in the, you know,
• 45:44
  the, the, the porch on the, the Rivertown, right?
• 45:51
  We were told by our GM for weeks that we had to make sure we
• 45:54
  panned, we had to bring our A game.
• 45:56
  We had to pull out all the stops because we were going to lose
• 45:58
  otherwise. And we did.
• 46:00
  We pulled out all the stops and we got through some weird
• 46:05
  rulings like, you know, if you get, usually you get bit by a
• 46:08
  werewolf, it's like a couple sessions before you lose control
• 46:11
  with those werewolves. You got bit, you immediately
• 46:14
  turned, you lost control of your character, and then it took a
• 46:17
  remove curse and two separate skill checks to get your
• 46:21
  character back. So we were putting up with some,
• 46:24
  some shenanigan area to say the least.
• 46:27
  And then after everything, we only cut the guy's arm off and
• 46:33
  then he ran away and did all the other crazy stuff we described.
• 46:35
  I described a million times, right?
• 46:37
  Like at that point, you can't have your he runs away because
• 46:46
  you know, it, it, it would be like, let's use Star Wars, for
• 46:50
  example, right? If if at the end of our, you
• 46:55
  know, after A New Hope, all of the trailers, all the
• 46:59
  advertisement was like the climactic final battle between
• 47:03
  Luke and Vader, but then we got the ending that we got, which is
• 47:08
  a very good ending. You'd feel kind of robbed about
• 47:11
  that, right? You have built an expectation in
• 47:13
  your mind that one ending was going to be the case and then it
• 47:17
  feels like you got rug pulled. I don't think you're describing
• 47:20
  a situation where the villain can't escape necessarily though.
• 47:25
  I think the problem that's occurring is just getting is
• 47:29
  just your victory getting robbed.
• 47:32
  Right. Like, the way the werewolf
• 47:36
  situation went down felt like a cheap rug pole.
• 47:42
  And if, like, you didn't, the. I think the main problem with
• 47:46
  that werewolf situation is that you didn't really achieve a
• 47:51
  victory despite beating him. You know, like, you didn't
• 47:54
  really gain anything. And it sort of it didn't.
• 48:02
  Yeah, it didn't. It didn't hit as densely as you
• 48:06
  wanted. But I don't think that that
• 48:08
  situation means that you can't have the villain escape.
• 48:12
  It just means that that victory punch needs to really land.
• 48:17
  You know what I mean? Like.
• 48:20
  I see what you're saying. I yeah, you're basically saying
• 48:22
  you can still do that delay thing, but when it eventually
• 48:25
  does finish, it absolutely needs to land.
• 48:28
  It's got to land hard, yeah. Like if you build it up, then
• 48:31
  basically if you build up the the anticipation, then the
• 48:37
  landing needs to hit that much harder.
• 48:41
  And I think the big problem with that particular scenario is not
• 48:44
  only did the landing not hit that hard, the landing arguably
• 48:47
  didn't hit at all because the villain escaped.
• 48:49
  And you kind of didn't achieve anything, you know what I mean?
• 48:54
  Like, it wasn't like, you beat the werewolves and then everyone
• 48:59
  was like, yay, the city is saved.
• 49:01
  It was like, you beat the werewolves and then everybody
• 49:03
  showed up and was like, yeah, but you guys still kind of suck
• 49:06
  ass though. And like, that's not really a
• 49:08
  victory. Well, it's worth right?
• 49:10
  Because because the situation was again, it like we, we were
• 49:15
  told that it was going to be the final battle, right?
• 49:18
  Like we were going to do all this stuff.
• 49:22
  Lives were on the line. We have to kill the werewolves
• 49:24
  now. And we were like, OK.
• 49:28
  And it, it, it wasn't like it was like 3 weeks, you know what
• 49:33
  I mean? Of, of seeing our GM every day
• 49:36
  and having this talk and him being like, you better get
• 49:38
  ready, you better be prepared. Uh huh.
• 49:40
  And then to not have that follow through, I don't think in that
• 49:44
  situation. And to be clear, there was a lot
• 49:46
  of stuff going on around. There's a lot of shit going on
• 49:49
  too. Anything that was that was less
• 49:54
  than a like a confirmed kill on that boss would have felt bad.
• 49:58
  And it did. And like, to be fair, I got that
• 50:00
  confirmed kill, but we we jumped a lot of hoops and got into
• 50:03
  several arguments with the GM when it came to chasing that
• 50:06
  werewolf down and blowing his head off at long range, you know
• 50:10
  what I mean? Yeah, I, I mean, the use of the
• 50:14
  word final for sure has, has some baggage and I, I can't deny
• 50:20
  that part. But even if you do call a thing
• 50:24
  a final battle and the villain escapes, 'cause, you know,
• 50:28
  here's the here's the thing, right?
• 50:29
  If you envision it, I, I, I can't help but bring up Thanos.
• 50:35
  I try not to be that guy who constantly brings up Thanos, but
• 50:39
  it's kind of working here. The final battle right at the
• 50:43
  end of Infinity War is a final battle.
• 50:46
  Because when they go back and find Thanos later, it's not like
• 50:49
  he fights them again, right? He's given up, right?
• 50:52
  He did what he wanted to do. He's tapped out.
• 50:54
  So if you fought the werewolf dude and the werewolf dude
• 50:57
  escapes and then you find him later and he's just like sad,
• 51:03
  sad old man living in a random Hut in the middle of the woods
• 51:06
  and he doesn't try to like fight back or do anything, then like,
• 51:10
  it was still a final battle, right?
• 51:11
  So I do think there's narrative situations where it can work.
• 51:17
  But again, the punch needs to be that much higher if you're
• 51:23
  building up the anticipation that much higher.
• 51:26
  That's kind. Of what I was saying right is
• 51:28
  like narratively, yes, it can work even when you do that, but
• 51:33
  the the issue is that you have created a scenario outside of
• 51:37
  the campaign that creates an untenable situation within the
• 51:41
  campaign, right? I mean, that's.
• 51:43
  Kind of why I specifically said the advertisement for Emperor
• 51:47
  Strikes Back or The Empire Strikes Back, if they kept being
• 51:51
  like, this is the end final fight with Vader.
• 51:54
  But then like, it doesn't matter if the movie led to the same way
• 51:58
  that the movie ends right now, which is totally good.
• 52:01
  It's very effective. It's very interesting, very
• 52:02
  suspenseful, but that's not what people were sold on, you know
• 52:06
  what I mean? Yeah.
• 52:07
  I mean, part of the problem is a little bit of an overselling of
• 52:10
  the situation for sure, which I don't know that's, that's hard
• 52:15
  to, you always want to, you always want to sell it as AGM to
• 52:19
  some degree. So it's hard to sometimes you
• 52:22
  oversell it too much by accident.
• 52:24
  Yeah. I do think too, the other thing
• 52:27
  you got to keep in mind is there could be a situation where you
• 52:31
  have that final battle and the villain lives, but you have
• 52:37
  changed the game state so dramatically that it does have a
• 52:41
  sense of finality to it. So like maybe the werewolf dude
• 52:45
  lives, but you find him again later and he's not even a
• 52:48
  werewolf anymore, He's just a guy now, you know what I mean?
• 52:52
  And you have completely shut down his werewolf empire or
• 52:58
  whatever the fuck to the point that he's literally just a dude.
• 53:02
  He has stopped being a werewolf. And he is so dejected that yeah,
• 53:06
  he lived, but you did defeat him.
• 53:08
  You defeated him spiritually and emotionally and and like,
• 53:10
  effectively, You know what I mean?
• 53:12
  Right, So yes, to your point, like let's say, because the way
• 53:16
  that that fight ended, I remember this so vividly.
• 53:18
  The paladin got a crit, the the paladin wizard pulled off one of
• 53:23
  the nastiest crits we'd ever seen.
• 53:26
  Like took a critical hit in like right before the fight was in
• 53:30
  single digit health. No one had healing spells left
• 53:34
  like we were. We were almost completely fresh
• 53:36
  out. And then he does the big a crit
• 53:40
  and then he throws that last high level smite into it and we
• 53:44
  were like, we got it. Big money, no whammies, rolled
• 53:48
  an ass load of damage. And then the gym goes and you
• 53:51
  cut his arm off and then he runs out the door and the door shuts
• 53:55
  behind him. And then you you're like, whoa,
• 53:56
  whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know
• 53:58
  what I mean? Like, but if if he had
• 54:01
  described, you know, cutting the vampire, the werewolves arm off
• 54:04
  and then him reverting back to his human form.
• 54:07
  And like the psychic backlash turned all the other werewolves
• 54:10
  in the area back into humans and they all passed out.
• 54:13
  But then he, like, channelled just the final bit of his energy
• 54:17
  to like, turn back into the giant werewolf and punch through
• 54:19
  the roof and run away. Like, yeah, maybe we'd feel a
• 54:23
  little less angry about it, right?
• 54:24
  Because it's like, oh, we did actually do something.
• 54:27
  Like we, we stopped the infestation for the moment.
• 54:30
  It needs to be the feeling of effect, like it needs to feel
• 54:33
  like you affected something. Yeah.
• 54:35
  Yeah, it can't. It can't feel the the problem is
• 54:39
  he was trying to rob the victory, right?
• 54:41
  He wasn't, he didn't want to like give it to you for whatever
• 54:45
  reason. You know, maybe he maybe he
• 54:47
  fucked up, maybe he didn't plan then maybe it didn't go.
• 54:51
  It it, it wasn't as difficult as he was hoping.
• 54:53
  Like who knows what just going through his head at the time.
• 54:55
  But yeah, it it it feel like he was trying to sneak the victory
• 54:59
  out from under you as opposed to letting you have it.
• 55:02
  It it wasn't satisfying is the problem.
• 55:05
  Yeah, right. The satisfaction is the is the
• 55:08
  most important bit to the whole equation.
• 55:14
  And I know you're right. It it really is it like in in
• 55:16
  that situation, there was no satisfaction.
• 55:18
  Yeah, on the flip side of this, the other situation where this
• 55:22
  doesn't work, and I would I guess it can work, but really
• 55:27
  should advise you against it is if if this does feel, let's say
• 55:34
  this is this isn't the Infinity War situation, this is the end
• 55:37
  game situation, right? The the there has been back and
• 55:41
  forth between the villain and the players a couple times.
• 55:45
  Players have spent not weeks but months planning a final battle,
• 55:50
  doing all these side quests, doing all this stuff.
• 55:53
  Execute the plan. The plan goes off.
• 55:55
  Not Florida State, but you know, they'd end up pulling it
• 55:58
  through. And you've got the final
• 56:01
  villain, you know, cornered, right?
• 56:03
  Gun to a sword to his throat, gun to his head, whatever it is.
• 56:08
  And the villain goes, you haven't defeated me.
• 56:10
  And then turns into a giant monster and just fucks off or
• 56:13
  just like, casts a spell and leaves.
• 56:16
  Don't do that. Like definitively don't do that.
• 56:19
  That's just not a good option. And once again, this happened to
• 56:23
  us. I was in a campaign, we planned
• 56:26
  out the plan. It was great.
• 56:28
  Everything went swimmingly. Characters had their own solo
• 56:31
  sessions where they went off to like gather, you know, their
• 56:35
  special weapons, their like loyalty quest items and shit
• 56:38
  like that. We came back, fought through the
• 56:42
  bike, fought into the castle, beat the royal guards, did all
• 56:45
  the shit, beat a boss and then had the evil king cornered.
• 56:49
  And then he turned into AAI think a some sort of great worm
• 56:55
  and just fucked off. And then we were going to.
• 56:58
  We were told, well, he's the post.
• 57:00
  He's the the the post campaign raid boss.
• 57:03
  Don't do that. I mean what Like I don't know if
• 57:11
  I totally agree with you there. Like what exactly is your issue
• 57:14
  with that particular scenario? Because that feels disrespectful
• 57:20
  to the players time, especially if this mission was like a huge
• 57:24
  part of a character's back story.
• 57:28
  All this planning went into getting this person to surrender
• 57:32
  have like, like giving them their their like rightful
• 57:35
  punishment. And not only does the, the the
• 57:42
  big bad get away, they get away with no real repercussion,
• 57:52
  right? Like not only do the players not
• 57:55
  see any actual follow through to all the planning they've done,
• 57:57
  because the evil king is still around, he's still alive, he's
• 58:00
  just away now, you know what I mean?
• 58:06
  And like, even if the players like, ah, yes, I'm king now,
• 58:09
  it's like, right. But like, like, are you, you
• 58:12
  know what I mean? Like it, It creates a weird
• 58:14
  situation where the players don't feel like anything they
• 58:18
  did was worth anything just to be told, well, after you beat
• 58:23
  the campaign, you can go fight this guy and actually finish the
• 58:27
  mission. I'm going to be honest, if that
• 58:29
  was me at that point, I'm like, I don't really want to do that.
• 58:33
  I don't know if I totally agree with that though, because
• 58:35
  essentially what you're talking about is kind of another
• 58:38
  mechanic that Fabula has, which is the escalation rules where
• 58:42
  you defeat the villain and then they escalate into a more
• 58:45
  dangerous version of themselves and and they double down on
• 58:48
  their, you know, whatever their villain shtick is basically.
• 58:54
  Kind of I think again, this is the this goes into outside well,
• 58:59
  so this is this is a rug pull. This is like a rug pull through
• 59:01
  and through, right? We didn't have any idea this
• 59:04
  character was a dragon, and to be fair, he wasn't until the the
• 59:07
  GM Red Fizz bands. This is like right when that
• 59:09
  came out. This was a literal last minute.
• 59:15
  Oh, actually, I think this will be a cool idea.
• 59:17
  You know what I mean? I think that's ultimately the
• 59:19
  bigger crux of the situation. Yeah, but you can't really ever.
• 59:24
  But you can't necessarily know when that is or isn't the
• 59:28
  situation of the GM going, oh, this would be a cool idea at the
• 59:30
  last minute. So I don't know if you can base
• 59:33
  the critique solely on that. You know what I mean?
• 59:36
  Well, from from player to GM, you're right.
• 59:39
  No, but from one GM speaking to another, I would just say don't
• 59:44
  do that. That's just a bad idea.
• 59:48
  I don't know though, sometimes a last minute plan change can be
• 59:51
  worth it though. You know, like sometimes.
• 59:55
  I mean I guess it depends on the on it depends on what the build
• 59:59
  up is to a certain degree. But still, I still feel like
• 1:00:02
  there can come a certain point where the last minute change of
• 1:00:07
  plans can actually make a more satisfying idea.
• 1:00:12
  It can. So I'll I'll put it to you this
• 1:00:13
  way. When you and I were in art
• 1:00:15
  school, our professors always said these are the rules, never
• 1:00:19
  break the rules. But if you do break the rules,
• 1:00:23
  make sure you do it well, right? That is the same advice I would
• 1:00:28
  give to somebody who is thinking about doing this.
• 1:00:31
  I would say don't do it. It's probably not going to work.
• 1:00:35
  But if you are so dead set on doing it, make sure that it's
• 1:00:40
  successful, because if it's not, you could tank your campaign,
• 1:00:46
  which is what happened, you know what I mean?
• 1:00:49
  Yeah. I still think the problem with
• 1:00:50
  the example you're giving though, was ultimately a lack of
• 1:00:53
  satisfaction, right? The a lack of it wasn't so much
• 1:00:57
  that the villain transformed into a dragon and flew away.
• 1:01:00
  It was that there wasn't any kind of, there wasn't any kind
• 1:01:05
  of reward or satisfaction for pushing the villain to that
• 1:01:08
  point, right? Because presumably from a
• 1:01:12
  narrative standpoint, what's happening is that you're pushing
• 1:01:15
  the villains back against the wall.
• 1:01:17
  And so he has no other choice than to whip out his trump card.
• 1:01:21
  And from a narrative standpoint, there's, there has to be, if
• 1:01:26
  you're going to have the, will the villain whip out their trump
• 1:01:29
  card, there has to be a reason that they didn't do it sooner,
• 1:01:34
  right? There has to be some kind of
• 1:01:35
  justification for why they were holding back on that particular
• 1:01:38
  thing. And it sounds like what happened
• 1:01:41
  here is that he whipped out the trump card and it it didn't, it
• 1:01:47
  didn't feel particularly satisfying because it didn't
• 1:01:50
  feel justified or particularly. Earned.
• 1:01:55
  Exactly. Yeah, you hit it right on that.
• 1:01:58
  The players had no way of knowing that this guy was a
• 1:02:01
  dragon. It was never hinted at or
• 1:02:03
  brought up or there was no information that we could have
• 1:02:06
  gotten to have revealed that to potentially have planned for it
• 1:02:12
  or thought about it or anything. Right in in Fabula, there are
• 1:02:15
  rules for this. We know that the escalation
• 1:02:18
  exists. So there has to be in the
• 1:02:20
  player's mind at least somewhere, an idea that the that
• 1:02:24
  the villain can pull off a bullshit last minute power,
• 1:02:28
  right? A la Sephiroth turning into the
• 1:02:30
  Seraph. You expect that and you can
• 1:02:34
  reasonably come to the conclusion that that's on the
• 1:02:36
  table for the players. In that 5 E campaign there was
• 1:02:42
  no ability for that to happen because it went from one week
• 1:02:48
  the week before that wasn't the case, to now this week it is the
• 1:02:51
  case. Yeah, it would like, that's what
• 1:02:54
  I mean. It wasn't particularly, it was
• 1:02:56
  kind of a rug poll cause and it, it, it wasn't particularly
• 1:03:00
  satisfying because of the, the rug polling feel of it.
• 1:03:04
  But I, I don't think that means it's totally off the table.
• 1:03:11
  Get what I'm getting? Right, exactly.
• 1:03:12
  So what what I'm saying is, is, is I would advise against it.
• 1:03:17
  I would tell you don't do it. But if you're not going to
• 1:03:20
  listen to me, you got to make sure it works.
• 1:03:22
  I think that's a pretty fair thing to say.
• 1:03:25
  I guess I would, I would phrase it more as if you're going to do
• 1:03:28
  something like that, make sure there's a little bit of a plan
• 1:03:33
  ahead, you know, an element of, of having it in your back pocket
• 1:03:41
  and, and thinking ahead to a certain degree and how that gets
• 1:03:47
  conveyed in the game and stuff. You know, there's, there's lots
• 1:03:50
  of wiggle room there, but some element of kind of making it
• 1:03:57
  hinting towards it being at the table, being on the table being
• 1:04:01
  a possibility. And and again, the other thing
• 1:04:06
  too is ultimately the players did still win.
• 1:04:09
  So even if the villain transforms into a different
• 1:04:11
  version of themselves, whatever their objective in fighting the
• 1:04:15
  villain at that current moment was, they still got to get that
• 1:04:18
  right. So if they, if they fight the
• 1:04:20
  evil king and the evil king turns into a dragon and flies
• 1:04:24
  off, then the Kingdom that the evil king was ruling over still
• 1:04:28
  needs to fall, right? Because the, the king is just a
• 1:04:33
  random, he's just a dragon now. And from the common person's
• 1:04:37
  perspective, the king was murdered, right?
• 1:04:39
  They don't know that he, that he is, he and the dragon are one
• 1:04:42
  and the same. So the, the king, the evil
• 1:04:44
  Kingdom still needs to fall apart in some fashion because
• 1:04:48
  the players did still do the thing.
• 1:04:51
  Right now I, I don't know exactly what happened with that
• 1:04:54
  particular campaign, if that occurred or not or, or what that
• 1:04:57
  situation looked like. But you know, that would be the
• 1:05:00
  thing I would try and keep in the back of my mind.
• 1:05:04
  Yeah. I mean, as far as I'm aware,
• 1:05:07
  that campaign, one of the reasons it fell apart was
• 1:05:11
  because of that. It just was like.
• 1:05:13
  AI also think it's worth pointing out too, though, with
• 1:05:15
  that particular I, I almost feel like that campaign's maybe not
• 1:05:19
  the best example based on the fact that there was already a
• 1:05:23
  feeling of there was already a feeling of of burnt out going
• 1:05:31
  around the table, a feeling of like we're kind of done with
• 1:05:36
  this was already in the air. And then so if you have a group
• 1:05:41
  that's feeling already a little bit done with the campaign and
• 1:05:44
  then you pull an asshole at the last minute, that can feel
• 1:05:49
  especially frustrating. Like I'm already annoyed and now
• 1:05:53
  you're not even going to give me this final little satisfaction
• 1:05:56
  tidbit at the end? Now I'm really fucking annoyed,
• 1:05:59
  you know what I mean? Well, so that event is what
• 1:06:02
  kicked off that feeling in the 1st place.
• 1:06:03
  People weren't burnt out until that happened.
• 1:06:11
  I, I'm not saying you're lying, but I almost feel like I don't,
• 1:06:17
  I almost don't believe that in the sense of I feel like that,
• 1:06:21
  that burning out feeling had to been bubbling under the surface
• 1:06:24
  at a little bit for them to, to react so, so viscerally to that
• 1:06:29
  moment. You know what I mean?
• 1:06:31
  No, I, I, I, I think you got it. You have to, you have to think
• 1:06:34
  about it this way. That was the second to last big.
• 1:06:42
  Like that was like, yeah, there was like the evil phoenix God
• 1:06:45
  thing that they were going to fight, but it was like, we have
• 1:06:48
  to take the Kingdom, and once we take the Kingdom and reinstate
• 1:06:52
  the like rightful king, then we're going to go fight the evil
• 1:06:56
  phoenix. So the game was basically over.
• 1:06:57
  Most of the campaign was about taking the Kingdom back.
• 1:07:02
  And then, you know, the the overarching villain, which is
• 1:07:07
  the evil phoenix thing kind of showed itself in the Vecna kind
• 1:07:10
  of way. So to be told that the thing
• 1:07:15
  that most of the campaign was gunning towards, which is taking
• 1:07:18
  the Kingdom back, you have to wait until after the campaign's
• 1:07:23
  over to do that, that's a massive gut punch, you know what
• 1:07:26
  I mean? Well, that's not.
• 1:07:28
  What you were saying before. Is it not?
• 1:07:32
  I mean, there's more context to it, but like.
• 1:07:35
  Well I feel like this extra context is important.
• 1:07:37
  So you're saying that the GM established the final villain
• 1:07:41
  will be X and then when this whole king turns into a dragon
• 1:07:45
  thing happened the the GM said actually the final villain will
• 1:07:50
  be Y instead Is is because that does kind of change the.
• 1:07:55
  Situation, it's kind of sort of right because the the the actual
• 1:08:00
  end of campaign villain was going to be the giant phoenix
• 1:08:02
  thing, but then he sort of presented it as a well, after
• 1:08:07
  you're done with that, you can do like an epilogue where you go
• 1:08:10
  fight the dragon. It's, you know, I don't blame
• 1:08:13
  people for wanting to be like, yeah, but I don't want to do
• 1:08:15
  that. That's a little different though
• 1:08:18
  that that I've OK, because now that you've added that context,
• 1:08:24
  I feel like the the situation has shifted slightly.
• 1:08:26
  In that scenario, I think the problem is just that
• 1:08:29
  expectations were set up a certain way and then
• 1:08:32
  expectations were kicked to the curb for like a weird last
• 1:08:36
  minute idea. And the problem is that the
• 1:08:38
  expectations were were shat on a little too much.
• 1:08:42
  Like it's not so much that the king turned into a big dragon,
• 1:08:45
  it's that we were told this phoenix thing was gonna be the
• 1:08:50
  big final goal. And then the king turning into
• 1:08:52
  the dragon kind of upended the final goal, but not in a way
• 1:08:56
  that made a ton of sense, you know what I'm saying?
• 1:09:00
  So. Yeah, that that's kind of what I
• 1:09:02
  was. Fair enough.
• 1:09:04
  I Perhaps I didn't provide enough context I.
• 1:09:07
  Think that context is very relevant here.
• 1:09:09
  Fair enough, but that was what I was trying to convey the whole
• 1:09:11
  time, which is why I would say don't do that.
• 1:09:14
  Just definitely don't do it. Yeah, I mean, if you build up a
• 1:09:17
  certain villain as being the main villain and then you do a
• 1:09:20
  complete shift up of who that main villain is, that's kind of
• 1:09:26
  a different scenario. Like that's a really hard
• 1:09:30
  premise to land. I mean, it's literally what
• 1:09:34
  you're talking about is is an 11th hour villain in like the
• 1:09:37
  worst kind of way. Yeah.
• 1:09:39
  Right, like basically the game is like this guy is going to be
• 1:09:44
  the villain and then at the very last minute they're like JK
• 1:09:47
  nevermind. And the the JK nevermind is
• 1:09:50
  rarely satisfying, mostly because when you pull that kind
• 1:09:56
  of AJK nevermind 11th hour villain, you're probably not
• 1:10:00
  attached to the 11th hour villain very much.
• 1:10:03
  And so it kind of falls apart, right?
• 1:10:04
  It's it's pretty much what Far Cry 3 did and.
• 1:10:09
  Yeah, fucking Hoyt. Yeah.
• 1:10:11
  And like, yeah, so that doesn't really land, but that's that's a
• 1:10:14
  different scenario. I I was understanding when you
• 1:10:17
  were explaining it, I was under the impression of the the king
• 1:10:23
  guy was always the final villain and just the GM at the last
• 1:10:28
  minute decided to give him another form, another phase.
• 1:10:32
  But like, he was always intended to be the final bad guy.
• 1:10:34
  But you're saying is like he wasn't even really 100% the
• 1:10:38
  final bad guy. No, yeah, he like he was the the
• 1:10:42
  stepping stone. He was the Vader to the Emperor
• 1:10:47
  and then they went no, actually he is.
• 1:10:51
  He's the beyond that, he's the Emperor.
• 1:10:53
  Emperor, yeah, he's something else.
• 1:10:56
  And now we have to. And we didn't even really get
• 1:10:59
  confirmation. And maybe this did happen.
• 1:11:01
  I stopped playing shortly after this.
• 1:11:03
  We didn't even get AI, didn't get 100% confirmation if we even
• 1:11:07
  took the Kingdom back like I think we did, but like we don't,
• 1:11:11
  I don't know which is also in a situation where that didn't
• 1:11:14
  happen. Yeah, I mean, that's a big part
• 1:11:18
  of it too, right? If if you didn't take the
• 1:11:22
  Kingdom back in some way, then you're now you're really that
• 1:11:27
  would feel especially like what the fuck?
• 1:11:33
  Yeah, definitely a no. Oh.
• 1:11:38
  It's it's less about in that particular scenario, it's less
• 1:11:41
  about a don't ever do it and it's like more about kind of a
• 1:11:44
  bad execution situation. Well, yeah, don't ever do it,
• 1:11:49
  because that execution of it specifically is bad.
• 1:11:52
  Of that, yes, I mean that specific version.
• 1:11:55
  Yeah. All of this to say or to move on
• 1:12:00
  to the the the second question that Josh posed, which is should
• 1:12:05
  all games have this style of flea mechanic to them?
• 1:12:12
  For my opinion, I, I don't know. I'm not 100% sure which way I
• 1:12:18
  fall on the aisle 'cause I understand Pretty good points
• 1:12:20
  for both. We we've established in the last
• 1:12:22
  hour some pretty good points for both.
• 1:12:28
  On one hand, I I I certainly say that I wish 5E and Lancer
• 1:12:32
  specifically had one. I definitely think 5 E should
• 1:12:36
  have it for sure. Yeah, I'm with you on that one.
• 1:12:38
  I think 5 E should have it and especially for all my butt Matt,
• 1:12:43
  this is a call out and the best way.
• 1:12:44
  I know you've lost bosses to your players and you are like
• 1:12:47
  son of a bitch, but I I I definitely want Lancer to have
• 1:12:55
  it at the very least. There was definitely like I I
• 1:12:59
  talked about it at the end of the the first arc.
• 1:13:02
  I had a boss show up and I, you know, having only been running
• 1:13:06
  the game for like 3 months, was not 100% on the general flow of
• 1:13:11
  a boss monster yet. And they clowned it.
• 1:13:16
  I mean like got a couple hits and destroyed one of the mechs.
• 1:13:18
  But like ultimately they weren't sweating that hard against the
• 1:13:23
  Wolfmother mech that I built, right?
• 1:13:25
  And I kind of wish there was a way for her to come back.
• 1:13:30
  And I, I literally spent about 5 minutes after they got the final
• 1:13:35
  kill, I was like, you killed her?
• 1:13:36
  But let me, I'm looking something up just to see if
• 1:13:38
  there was anything I could do to get this character to survive or
• 1:13:43
  fight another day. And in the moment I didn't have
• 1:13:46
  one. I realized cloning and I think I
• 1:13:50
  paid it off pretty well, but like.
• 1:13:51
  I was going to say, I mean, depending on the genre of your
• 1:13:56
  game, I do think it's OK to pull a little bit of like a surprise,
• 1:14:02
  not actually dead situation from time to time.
• 1:14:05
  You know, particularly if you're playing, you know, if you're
• 1:14:08
  playing fantasy nonsense Game 5 E or, or something like it and
• 1:14:14
  you have a character, you know, the characters defeat the evil
• 1:14:17
  wizard guy and then later down the road, oh, the evil wizard
• 1:14:22
  guy had like a backup spell situation set up where if he
• 1:14:26
  dies, he turns himself into like a zombie wizard or some shit.
• 1:14:30
  I I think that's fine. I think that's fine to pull from
• 1:14:33
  time to time. And depending on the genre, that
• 1:14:36
  will be harder, easier, right? In fantasy, very easy.
• 1:14:39
  Like you could be like, oh, he's a weird zombie monster or oh,
• 1:14:42
  the wizard comes back as a ghost or he comes back as a vengeful
• 1:14:45
  deity thing. Or, you know, you got lots of
• 1:14:47
  wiggle room there. sci-fi. You know, you could be like, oh,
• 1:14:51
  cloning or oh, it's not the same character exactly, but it's the
• 1:14:56
  memories of that character implanted in another character.
• 1:14:59
  Like, you know, you got, if it's like modern day now we're
• 1:15:02
  starting to get like, ah, right. How much wiggle room?
• 1:15:04
  But I I think it's OK to from time to time be like, actually
• 1:15:09
  they are still around, just not exactly the same, you know?
• 1:15:13
  Yeah. That's pretty much what I did
• 1:15:15
  with the with that NPC. Where she came back as like a
• 1:15:20
  clone in progress. Like the first time they saw
• 1:15:22
  her, like two months later, she couldn't speak.
• 1:15:24
  She was really gone, was basically a zombie.
• 1:15:28
  And then they saw her again and she looked a little bit better,
• 1:15:31
  like she looked less sallow. She kind of stood up straighter.
• 1:15:33
  And then when they fought her again for the last time, she was
• 1:15:37
  like almost fully back and like was still a little off.
• 1:15:42
  She kind of lacked that imperial gravitas she had and was a
• 1:15:46
  little bit more unhinged, but she was still back.
• 1:15:49
  You know, right, Yeah, I, I think that that kind of thing is
• 1:15:55
  fine in terms of should every game have a mechanic like this?
• 1:16:00
  I mean, for the sake of being provocative, I want to say yes,
• 1:16:06
  every single game ever should do it.
• 1:16:10
  But like, realistically, every single game?
• 1:16:12
  No, probably not every single game, but a lot of fucking
• 1:16:15
  games. Yeah, probably a lot of games.
• 1:16:18
  So I, I, I kind of posed, I, I turned the question in on itself
• 1:16:22
  and kind of thought about how many games need a bespoke rules
• 1:16:26
  for this. I, so I don't think Powered by
• 1:16:33
  the Apocalypse needs bespoke rules for this.
• 1:16:36
  Probably not. I think it's very easy to just
• 1:16:39
  give the boss a move that says like, you know, I'll be back,
• 1:16:48
  you know what I mean? And the move, the move activates
• 1:16:52
  if they've died under like specific conditions, right?
• 1:16:57
  Like if something allows them to pull the move, they can pull the
• 1:16:59
  move and then they quote UN quote die or they escape or
• 1:17:02
  something and then they come back later.
• 1:17:04
  Because you're sort of creating your own your own custom bespoke
• 1:17:10
  ruling based on what PBTA allows for.
• 1:17:14
  Yeah. So in that instance, I don't
• 1:17:16
  think like they need to hard right rules in but what I was
• 1:17:20
  saying earlier, you know, mention it in in either part of
• 1:17:26
  the GM's pitch dock, right? Like, by the way, you can do
• 1:17:30
  this if it makes sense and you have a move for it.
• 1:17:32
  You know, mentioning it. I think is is I I, I agree with
• 1:17:37
  you. I think you should mention in
• 1:17:38
  every game, but whether or not you need bespoke rules for it.
• 1:17:40
  Maybe I. Don't even know.
• 1:17:42
  I don't even know if you necessarily even like my brain
• 1:17:46
  immediately went to Blades in the Dark.
• 1:17:50
  I don't think any kind of ability to like dodge out of
• 1:17:53
  death in that way really makes sense in Blades in the Dark.
• 1:17:57
  And the reason for that is just because from a genre standpoint,
• 1:18:02
  the idea that this primary, well, first of all, you don't
• 1:18:08
  really have one main villain in Blades in the Dark, right?
• 1:18:10
  That's situation number one. You don't have a BBEG in Blades.
• 1:18:15
  That's not really the style of game that Blades is.
• 1:18:17
  But then on a secondary standpoint, from a genre
• 1:18:20
  convention, it would feel weird if the players sort of defeated
• 1:18:25
  a guy and then he escaped at the last minute, or they thought
• 1:18:28
  they killed him but they didn't actually kill him.
• 1:18:30
  That kind of feels a little off genre.
• 1:18:32
  What's much more common for that genre is, oh, we killed this
• 1:18:36
  gang leader guy, you know, we took him out and all of his
• 1:18:40
  cronies and then some new random loser in the gang who was nobody
• 1:18:45
  before, like Rise, you know, rose up and full filled that
• 1:18:48
  vacuum. And then the narrative crux for
• 1:18:53
  something like that becomes not that it's the same guy that
• 1:18:58
  we're still trying to fight. And the narrative crux becomes
• 1:19:01
  we're trying to fight the system and this guy is an apprentice of
• 1:19:05
  the previous guy and is still an element of the system, right.
• 1:19:11
  So you're coming, it's like a different angle you're coming at
• 1:19:13
  it from. So I don't necessarily think a
• 1:19:15
  game like Blades, for example, would have to have it another
• 1:19:18
  potential scenario or another or not another.
• 1:19:22
  Another point that's worth noting with a game like Blades
• 1:19:24
  is you're much more likely to engage an antagonist in Blades
• 1:19:32
  in a conversational we're not going to fight you type
• 1:19:36
  situation right because Blades is about criminals who are
• 1:19:39
  Wheeling and dealing on each other.
• 1:19:41
  The idea of the player characters engage the villain,
• 1:19:45
  you know, the antagonist, not even the villain, but the the
• 1:19:48
  the current antagonist, they engage him in a peaceful
• 1:19:52
  conversation and talk shit to each other.
• 1:19:55
  That's going to happen a lot more than a game like D&D where
• 1:19:59
  it's kind of assumed when you engage the evil wizard man, you
• 1:20:02
  fight the evil wizard man, right?
• 1:20:03
  Like that's just the default assumption Blades.
• 1:20:06
  You're not operating that assumption because you have a
• 1:20:08
  different genre. You know, if you had a game that
• 1:20:12
  was. Very Game of Thrones themed.
• 1:20:16
  You're not going to try and kill every single person that you
• 1:20:19
  meet. Even if you know they are an
• 1:20:21
  antagonist, you're still probably going to like talk to
• 1:20:25
  them or engage with them in different ways.
• 1:20:27
  So you don't necessarily need that that that ripcord mechanic
• 1:20:34
  of oh, they escaped the fight, you know what I mean?
• 1:20:38
  So essentially, if it doesn't make sense for the genre
• 1:20:43
  convention, then no, I don't necessarily think your game
• 1:20:45
  needs it. But I do think there's a lot of
• 1:20:48
  games that don't utilize it that definitely could be utilizing it
• 1:20:52
  like 5 E because I think for a game like 5 E genre convention
• 1:20:57
  wise, it makes perfect sense. You know I I'm trying to think
• 1:21:02
  of like another anti example but you get what I'm saying.
• 1:21:09
  Largely it's no, Yeah, I I completely agree.
• 1:21:14
  I think it it certainly is the the ultimate.
• 1:21:17
  The conclusion I came to is, is really just, it depends on the
• 1:21:22
  genre convention, yeah. Yeah, You know, for example, a
• 1:21:25
  cyberpunk game too. I, I don't know if I necessarily
• 1:21:30
  want something like that in a cyberpunk game because of the
• 1:21:32
  sort of brutality of the cybershunk cyberpunk genre.
• 1:21:37
  And also, much like Blades, there is a lot of scenarios
• 1:21:40
  where you're going to engage an antagonist not immediately
• 1:21:44
  straight to violence in cyberpunk for, you know, a
• 1:21:48
  multitude of reasons. Right.
• 1:21:53
  Or actually here you want a great example where this this
• 1:21:56
  kind of a mechanic probably I would have a hard time making
• 1:22:00
  make sense, Kane? Yeah.
• 1:22:05
  Right. Like I don't see in a scenario
• 1:22:08
  where you can make it feel really satisfying in something
• 1:22:10
  like Kane, because the whole idea is that slow build up of
• 1:22:15
  information and gathering everything until you get to that
• 1:22:19
  final, like that final crescendo of the confrontation.
• 1:22:23
  It would be a tough sell for the enemy to get away.
• 1:22:25
  And there might be a way to make it work in Kane that I'm not
• 1:22:27
  like thinking about. But my gut reaction, I look at
• 1:22:30
  Kane and go, eh, probably not. Yeah, and like, I think it's
• 1:22:34
  worth mentioning, just because we're saying the game should not
• 1:22:37
  have rules for it doesn't mean that you can't do it, right.
• 1:22:41
  Well, that's the other thing too.
• 1:22:41
  You could do it. Without rules, yeah.
• 1:22:44
  And if in like in Cyberpunk, for example, if you want to turn
• 1:22:47
  your villain into atom smasher, you can do that, right?
• 1:22:50
  Have your, have your guy come back as a full Borg.
• 1:22:53
  Fuck it. And that could be cool in the
• 1:22:55
  Kane version. Maybe you, you know, the, the
• 1:22:58
  way it works right, is the the person who manifests the sin.
• 1:23:00
  You take them into custody and you know, they get trained as an
• 1:23:04
  exorcist. But like maybe there's a
• 1:23:06
  situation where they lose control and the the sin breaks
• 1:23:10
  out again in Kane headquarters, right?
• 1:23:12
  Like that could be cool as fuck. So there's exceptions to every
• 1:23:16
  rule. We're talking about unique,
• 1:23:18
  bespoke written mechanics into the rules.
• 1:23:21
  Yeah. I mean from a narrative
• 1:23:22
  standpoint, you have pretty much infinite possibility to to play
• 1:23:28
  in wiggle room in terms of making it a bespoke mechanic.
• 1:23:34
  It it, it's good to have as a bespoke mechanic when you are in
• 1:23:37
  a situation where the genre would benefit from it.
• 1:23:44
  You know, if it feels like it's gonna come up a lot, then you
• 1:23:47
  give it a bespoke mechanic, right?
• 1:23:48
  The whole reason that Fabula Ultima has a mechanic where
• 1:23:51
  villains can escape and come back later is because that is a
• 1:23:55
  super common trope of JRPGS where you fight the same dude
• 1:23:59
  multiple, multiple times and you slowly build up your hatred or
• 1:24:03
  your admiration or your, you know, or even just your
• 1:24:06
  relationship with him, right? I was saying to Isaiah
• 1:24:09
  yesterday, in Final Fantasy 10, you fight Seymour like 4 times
• 1:24:16
  and every time it's a different fight and he's like upgraded
• 1:24:19
  himself in a different way. And the reason the game has you
• 1:24:22
  fight him four times is so when you finally get to that last
• 1:24:25
  confrontation, there's a ton of emotional weight to it because
• 1:24:29
  yeah, Seymour's an antagonist, but he is also like kinda on
• 1:24:34
  your side and kinda not at the same time.
• 1:24:37
  And you, you hate him and you want to fight him.
• 1:24:42
  But there's a little, there's, there's an element of Seymour
• 1:24:44
  where you look at him and go, oh, under slightly different
• 1:24:47
  circumstances, we would have been really good allies, you
• 1:24:50
  know? Yeah, like Seymour's ultimate
• 1:24:52
  thing is that he is a slave to his faith.
• 1:24:55
  He's not a bad guy. He's just blind.
• 1:24:58
  He's totally blind to a certain to a certain degree and really
• 1:25:04
  doesn't believe that the God he believes in is actually the
• 1:25:06
  harbinger of destruction. And and he also doesn't believe
• 1:25:09
  there's any other option too. Like he doesn't, he's like, this
• 1:25:12
  is the only way to do it. What do you mean?
• 1:25:14
  And the whole thing about the main characters in 10 is that
• 1:25:17
  they're like, no religion makes you think that there's only one
• 1:25:22
  way to do it, but there's not. And it's stupid to just blindly
• 1:25:25
  believe like that. And so the combination of the
• 1:25:29
  tension and the fact that Seymour is kind of a mirror to
• 1:25:34
  Yuna, right? Like Yuna and Seymour are kind
• 1:25:37
  of the same character, just gone down a slightly different like
• 1:25:41
  branch makes that all this emotional weight build up.
• 1:25:44
  So the fact that you fight him four or five, it might be 5
• 1:25:47
  times actually, it's definitely three I can think of.
• 1:25:52
  And then I don't know at. Least three, I can definitely
• 1:25:54
  think of three. There might be two others, one
• 1:25:56
  or two others I'm not thinking of, but all of those fights
• 1:26:00
  contribute to that emotional build up.
• 1:26:02
  And so that genre convention in JRPGS is why Fabula has that as
• 1:26:09
  a as a mechanic specifically because Fabula could have not
• 1:26:12
  made it a mechanic and just given it to you as a suggestion.
• 1:26:17
  But when you make it a hard line mechanic, you kind of give the
• 1:26:21
  GM permission. Like this is a not even
• 1:26:23
  permission you tell the GM when you make it.
• 1:26:26
  When you make a mechanic, you say to the GM, this is a thing
• 1:26:29
  you should do because it's a mechanic.
• 1:26:31
  And if, if the the designer spent time on making it a
• 1:26:34
  mechanic, that means the designer is believes it is worth
• 1:26:37
  your time as opposed to it's worth investing in, as opposed
• 1:26:42
  to general advice, which a game might give you advice, but
• 1:26:46
  advice is a little like lower cost, lower investment.
• 1:26:51
  So a game might say you should do it this way, but that doesn't
• 1:26:54
  mean you absolutely must or that doesn't mean that the game
• 1:26:58
  thinks it's super high value. But if the game makes a mechanic
• 1:27:01
  out of it, they see the value in it.
• 1:27:06
  So that's that's that's the not the seesaw like that's the you
• 1:27:14
  have to play between those two positions of like not saying
• 1:27:19
  anything about it and having a full on specific mechanic for
• 1:27:22
  it. And then somewhere in the middle
• 1:27:23
  is maybe suggesting it as an idea but not committing to it
• 1:27:28
  too hard. Yeah, worth mentioning too,
• 1:27:31
  there is a time and a place for both, right?
• 1:27:32
  Like we've talked about several times, like, OK, yeah, there's a
• 1:27:35
  rule for how to do this, but like, I wish the game would give
• 1:27:38
  you advice for how to implement it versus a game giving you
• 1:27:42
  advice but not providing you any mechanical depth on how to
• 1:27:46
  execute the plan. Actual execution on, Yeah.
• 1:27:48
  No rule to actually execute upon the advice, yeah.
• 1:27:51
  Yeah, both are very important. It's, I mean, yeah, the, the,
• 1:27:59
  the, the grand summation of the whole premise is that it has to
• 1:28:07
  be a delicate balance between keeping the narrative
• 1:28:12
  interesting and still allowing players to have that
• 1:28:16
  satisfaction and how you dance between those two positions.
• 1:28:23
  And sometimes, maybe not even sometimes maybe 5050, I don't
• 1:28:29
  know, there will be situations where you try, you're like, OK,
• 1:28:34
  I'm going to do this because I think it's going to have that
• 1:28:37
  narrative satisfaction and the players will be just straight up
• 1:28:39
  pissed. And you just got to kind of let
• 1:28:42
  them be mad and just roll with it.
• 1:28:43
  Like that will also happen sometimes because that's true.
• 1:28:48
  In the back of your mind, this is GM.
• 1:28:49
  You're like, I know this is going to be worth it.
• 1:28:51
  So I'll just let them be a little mad, you know?
• 1:28:52
  Yes. And like, here's the thing,
• 1:28:56
  sometimes that's a good thing. A A passionate reaction is a
• 1:29:02
  reaction. Right.
• 1:29:04
  What's the saying? The the opposite of love isn't
• 1:29:07
  hate. The opposite of love is is
• 1:29:08
  indifference. Indifference.
• 1:29:10
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Yeah.
• 1:29:13
  You want to have a reaction, you want to get something.
• 1:29:15
  If you get just man, if you get shoulder shrugs, that's the
• 1:29:18
  worst case scenario. Yeah, that is, as we say in the
• 1:29:22
  biz, massive Els dawg. That is big Els.
• 1:29:24
  Yeah, I mean, pretty much across the board, if you're GM Inga
• 1:29:27
  game and you're doing and you do, you do something that you
• 1:29:31
  think might be a little bit of a controversial move.
• 1:29:34
  If you just get like no reaction, they just don't really
• 1:29:37
  care. That is the L If you get them a
• 1:29:42
  little bit mad at you and get a rise out of them, even if
• 1:29:47
  they're genuinely mad still, you still kind of mission
• 1:29:51
  accomplished, you know, like. Yeah, I mean, you shouldn't be
• 1:29:54
  striving to piss your players off, but understand that like.
• 1:29:57
  But there is an element of like, you still kind of did the thing
• 1:30:00
  you were trying to do, and hopefully after they're done
• 1:30:03
  being mad, they will cool down and see the light, right?
• 1:30:07
  See the vision, right? That's what you want.
• 1:30:10
  But yeah, completely, completely blank stares is hell.
• 1:30:17
  You know, it's like when the comedian tells a controversial
• 1:30:19
  joke. The two scenarios are everybody
• 1:30:22
  laughs because damn, that was a really controversial thing to
• 1:30:24
  say, or everybody gets really pissed off and he gets a rise
• 1:30:28
  out of the crowd. Those two scenarios for the
• 1:30:31
  comedian are both good. The bad scenario is everyone
• 1:30:34
  just goes and then there's silence.
• 1:30:38
  The. Silence.
• 1:30:39
  Crickets is the worst. Yeah, for sure.
• 1:30:43
  You. Always want to avoid the
• 1:30:45
  crickets. Yeah.
• 1:30:51
  You know that feeling you you're thinking about it now.
• 1:30:54
  I've had, I've had crickets before, Yeah.
• 1:30:56
  And like everybody asks when, when you're running a campaign,
• 1:31:00
  nothing is worse than crickets. Yeah.
• 1:31:03
  And and that is one of the that is one of those unspoken skills
• 1:31:07
  that people don't bring up a lot when it comes to GM ING is how
• 1:31:11
  do you pivot away from the crickets, right?
• 1:31:14
  What do you do? You have hit crickets now what?
• 1:31:17
  Right. And a lot of people kind of
• 1:31:20
  flounder in that scenario. And it it is a learned, it is a
• 1:31:24
  practice skill to really figure out how to get out of the
• 1:31:27
  crickets, the crickets conundrum.
• 1:31:29
  Yeah, the. Value of crickets.
• 1:31:32
  The secondary skill is knowing what is and isn't crickets.
• 1:31:37
  Sometimes you get crickets because you just didn't provide
• 1:31:39
  enough information, which is good.
• 1:31:41
  That's that's where you want to be, right?
• 1:31:43
  You're like, OK, simple solution, just provide the
• 1:31:46
  information. But if people are just not
• 1:31:48
  interested and then you get that, those crickets.
• 1:31:52
  What breed of crickets have you invoked?
• 1:31:55
  Yeah, yeah, You got crickets. You got locusts.
• 1:31:57
  There's also, there's also the crickets of contemplation, which
• 1:32:02
  is not inherently bad, right? Sometimes you do the thing and
• 1:32:06
  there's a silence of, of contemplation that can be good.
• 1:32:11
  And sometimes you want to let that rock a little bit, like let
• 1:32:14
  it let it Stew for a certain period of time because that
• 1:32:20
  means the players are kind of, you know, actively thinking.
• 1:32:23
  Of course, the trick. In that scenario, the trick
• 1:32:27
  becomes how long do you let it Stew?
• 1:32:30
  Yeah. Which is a different a slightly
• 1:32:32
  different skill. Yeah, you know you're on the
• 1:32:34
  right path if someone mutters fuck under their breath after a
• 1:32:38
  couple seconds or somebody once you once you hear the.
• 1:32:43
  Fuck yeah. Or, or if somebody does the
• 1:32:46
  like, if you if you get silence for a minute and then hear the
• 1:32:50
  like, OK, hold on. Yeah, yeah, that's me.
• 1:32:54
  That's me a lot being like, alright, hold on, hold on.
• 1:32:56
  Hold on, hold on, hold on. Yeah, or or a player actively
• 1:32:59
  said or, or sometimes you as AGM will go to talk.
• 1:33:02
  Like you get the silence and you're like, Oh no, this is a,
• 1:33:05
  you know, bad cricket reaction. And then you go to say something
• 1:33:09
  and the player goes, no, no, wait, hold on.
• 1:33:11
  I'm thinking hold on, hold on. Yeah, I'm thinking, I think, I
• 1:33:13
  think and. When you get that response, and
• 1:33:16
  if you get that response, you as AGM go OK?
• 1:33:19
  And then you just sit back and go.
• 1:33:20
  I'm just, I'm gonna be quiet. Yeah, you're saying?
• 1:33:23
  Oh hell yeah. OK.
• 1:33:23
  Then you let it Stew, because that's a good stewing.
• 1:33:27
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:33:30
  All right. That that was kind of all I had.
• 1:33:34
  I think we did good. Yeah.
• 1:33:39
  Like I said, it just, it got me thinking based on the
• 1:33:41
  conversation we had and like I thought about myself as a
• 1:33:45
  player, myself as AGM players that I've played with, players
• 1:33:48
  that I've run for. And it was.
• 1:33:51
  It was definitely an interesting sort of conversation to help
• 1:33:57
  myself about how often I would like to see it and and how much
• 1:34:02
  how widespread it should be implemented.
• 1:34:05
  Right. I, I mean, I will it, I will
• 1:34:10
  admit that, you know, I, I personally have a tendency to
• 1:34:18
  when I talk about stuff like this.
• 1:34:20
  I am I am aware that I have a tendency to make it sound like a
• 1:34:24
  little bit. I have a little bit of a just do
• 1:34:26
  it forehead energy sometimes when I explain something like
• 1:34:30
  this. A bit.
• 1:34:32
  Which I I'm aware of, it's just, I don't know, it's just the way
• 1:34:36
  I talk. It's just like a weird, it's a
• 1:34:37
  thing. But I will say with this
• 1:34:41
  particular thing, just do it. Forehead is true to a point, but
• 1:34:45
  I will admit that it is a delicate balance, you know?
• 1:34:48
  It's a line, yeah. That yeah, there's a line and
• 1:34:51
  you're going to teeter on both sides.
• 1:34:55
  Even if you've done it a whole bunch and you're kind of
• 1:34:57
  practiced on how to execute this idea of actually the villain
• 1:35:02
  escapes, you're still going to teeter back and forth on both
• 1:35:05
  sides of the line of feeling shitty and feeling good.
• 1:35:09
  You're going to wiggle wobble across both sides no matter what
• 1:35:11
  because it's it's pretty much impossible to stay perfectly in
• 1:35:14
  the middle. So I acknowledge that it's not,
• 1:35:18
  it's not a thing of just do it and you'll be fine.
• 1:35:22
  But I'm saying go for it. Basically, I'm saying go for it
• 1:35:28
  because when you do, it's going to be sick.
• 1:35:31
  And when it doesn't work, you just kind of go.
• 1:35:33
  It didn't work so much that time, you know.
• 1:35:36
  Yeah. Like the the reward is worth the
• 1:35:39
  risk. I guess is is an easier way to
• 1:35:42
  put that. Yeah, it can be for sure.
• 1:35:50
  Oh no, no, yawn. Excellent yawning, yawning
• 1:35:54
  timing. I can talk.
• 1:35:56
  Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think that's that
• 1:35:59
  has been us. Feel free to follow us on your
• 1:36:04
  social media platform of choice. And you think about tossing
• 1:36:08
  Brett here a dono on our coffee. And yeah, we will see you next
• 1:36:13
  time. Maybe he's motherfuckers.
• 1:36:17
  Unless the heat death of the universe.
• 1:36:18
  Consumed us all, of course. God I hope so.
• 1:36:23
  He's some fucks.