Latest / Sessions Canceled / Perfect Draw! | Tabletop Shout-Out Part. 1: Ep. 180

Transcript

Perfect Draw! | Tabletop Shout-Out Part. 1: Ep. 180 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:15
  Hey everybody, So our GM got really into TCGS and wanted to
• 0:19
  play them at the table. And then the new player
• 0:22
  challenged him to his shadow game.
• 0:23
  And the second he didn't take that guy seriously, I, I knew it
• 0:27
  was over. The second he said shadow game,
• 0:28
  I walked out and apparently he's he's just gone.
• 0:31
  So we don't know where the new player is.
• 0:33
  We don't know where the GM is. Sessions.
• 0:35
  Cancelled and motherfucker's in the shadow realm, baby.
• 0:38
  Do you know the story behind the Shadow Realm?
• 0:44
  Yes, it was. They had to.
• 0:46
  They had to invent an alternative to Yuki absolutely
• 0:49
  killing people. Yes, yeah, I love that.
• 0:52
  It's so good. It's funny because it it it
• 0:55
  loops back around to being Canon in the Japanese version because
• 0:58
  they referenced the shadow realm in later shows.
• 1:00
  Well, because they it was a censoring thing, but everybody
• 1:04
  fucked with the shadow realm so heavy that the Japanese version
• 1:08
  just made it official. Yeah, they're like, oh,
• 1:11
  everybody likes this, so we're just going to make it a thing.
• 1:16
  Yeah, I thought that was. It I love that.
• 1:18
  I love that whole bit every once in a while. 4 kids nailed it.
• 1:25
  Hey, look, when it came to. Every once in a while.
• 1:28
  I think a lot of their casting decisions, I think they were
• 1:30
  pretty good openings always slapped.
• 1:33
  Openings always for the longest time, like because you know when
• 1:39
  you're a kid that we haven't even whatever when you're a kid,
• 1:44
  it's like, you know, you don't, especially when you were a kid
• 1:48
  watching anime, right? You could, you could
• 1:50
  intrinsically understand you're like, there's something
• 1:53
  different about this show, but you're not smart enough or aware
• 1:57
  enough to know why. Like you don't know it's from
• 1:58
  another country and that's why it feels different, right.
• 2:02
  But the fact that they would always change the openings to be
• 2:06
  in English and be more like American palatable.
• 2:10
  I, I really kind of wish they didn't do that because I feel
• 2:15
  like I would have had a way better appreciation as a child
• 2:18
  for what I was watching if I saw the original Japanese openings
• 2:21
  and was like, wait a minute, what is this?
• 2:23
  What is this different language going on here?
• 2:25
  You know what I mean? Yes, I I see what you're saying,
• 2:30
  but I don't think I I don't think my childhood would have
• 2:32
  been anywhere near as good without the OG Yu-gi-oh opening.
• 2:37
  Like, I get it. Yeah, like, but I don't know, I,
• 2:40
  I think I would have appreciated, like it would have
• 2:43
  activated some neurons to hear like, oh, if this is in a
• 2:46
  different language, you know what I mean?
• 2:49
  I, I think, well, OK, I, I, I didn't know Pokémon was
• 2:51
  Japanese. I, I didn't know that Pokémon
• 2:54
  was necessarily anime, but I knew that there was like I, I
• 2:58
  had that appreciation because I, I caught on to Adult Swim really
• 3:03
  early. So I was watching like Inuyasha
• 3:06
  at like 8. Sure.
• 3:07
  Yeah. So I, I got that in a different
• 3:10
  format, you know what I mean? Like I got to have my fucking,
• 3:13
  my pirate rap and also all of the banger Inuyasha ending.
• 3:17
  Sure, yeah. You know, I will say actually I
• 3:23
  it's funny 'cause I was watching it.
• 3:24
  We will get to the topic eventually.
• 3:26
  I swear I was watching it episode or I was listening to
• 3:29
  the episode of trash taste and they did like they had viewers
• 3:32
  submit their like anime 3 by threes and a bunch of the
• 3:38
  viewers, you know, would have whatever anime in the in the
• 3:41
  three by three and they would explain their reasonings for the
• 3:45
  what they picked. And a lot of them said like, oh,
• 3:47
  this was my first anime right? Like a lot of them said that.
• 3:51
  And I was sitting there thinking to myself, I'm like I literally
• 3:55
  have no fucking clue what my first anime was.
• 3:58
  I have absolutely no idea because I.
• 4:03
  Had to assume for me it it. You don't know either, right?
• 4:07
  It was probably Yu-gi-oh or Pokémon.
• 4:09
  I think for most people it's Yu-gi-oh, Hermon and then so
• 4:11
  that's, you know, in our age group.
• 4:13
  In my head I was like it was either Yu-gi-oh, Pokémon or
• 4:16
  Dragon Ball Z I'm pretty sure. But I really don't know because
• 4:20
  like I also have memories of watching random shit like Gundam
• 4:23
  and stuff on Tsunami and so like I have I have no idea.
• 4:26
  I really don't know, you know, So like, I was like, huh, that's
• 4:30
  weird. It probably was Pokémon, which
• 4:32
  is hilarious because Pokémon has like very little of relevance to
• 4:36
  my life now, but it probably. Was Pokémon?
• 4:39
  I mean, I don't know, maybe cancelable offense.
• 4:42
  I think Pokémon is as a series, so whatever.
• 4:47
  Yeah, I, I think, I mean, Pokémon's fine.
• 4:49
  I like I like a lot of the ideas of Pokémon and stuff but like
• 4:53
  Digimon's better. Hey, where's the lie though?
• 4:58
  Where's the lie? You know, where is it I like?
• 5:02
  Knock shakes hand, shakes hand. Digimon is.
• 5:04
  Better serious Digimon is better.
• 5:06
  So like, but there's like, don't get me wrong, I do.
• 5:08
  Also, you know what? Another weird thing, another
• 5:10
  weird thing of Japanese culture infecting my brain that I didn't
• 5:13
  even know it. Fucking Power Rangers.
• 5:15
  Oh hell yeah, dude. Had no clue that was a Japanese.
• 5:19
  I mean, it's it's not 100% right.
• 5:22
  Obviously like Super Sentai is different, but the fact that
• 5:24
  Power Rangers was affected by Super Sentai and the fact that
• 5:28
  they used I didn't realize they use footage from Super Sentai in
• 5:33
  Power Rangers like the Zordite. Yeah, are just are just the
• 5:37
  Japanese footage just dubbed over.
• 5:39
  And. They're not doing that anymore.
• 5:42
  Did you know that Sentai only got the idea of zords with
• 5:49
  Mighty Morphin and every series before that did not have zords?
• 5:54
  I didn't, but that's kind of crazy.
• 5:56
  Yeah. Like the first kind of love
• 5:58
  that. It was like, hold on, I think
• 6:02
  there was like 10 or 11 Sentai series before Zoo Ranger.
• 6:10
  Yeah, that did not have the idea of giant robots.
• 6:13
  And I believe the only reason why they got they started doing
• 6:16
  it is because they wanted more like young kids to get into it,
• 6:19
  like younger, younger. They wanted the Gundam audience.
• 6:23
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, something like that,
• 6:25
  yeah. I All of this is to say Japan
• 6:28
  really rewired me and Isaiah's brain chemistry.
• 6:30
  I. Think a lot of I think it it
• 6:33
  rewired a lot of people's brains and they don't even know it.
• 6:35
  Like don't even realize. Yeah, if you like Kill Bill,
• 6:38
  congratulations. Your brain was rewired by anime.
• 6:41
  You just don't know it when Tarantino is a massive weeb.
• 6:43
  Congratulations. Oh yeah, Quinton's a huge weave.
• 6:45
  I I think he's a self professed weave though I don't think he
• 6:48
  hides that. No, no, I don't think he does.
• 6:51
  Either I, I, I remember what the first time I watched the Matrix
• 6:54
  'cause I didn't watch the and I've only watched the first
• 6:56
  Matrix, but I didn't watch it until I was like 21 or 22,
• 6:59
  something like that. Maybe I was you.
• 7:01
  Wait was the was the first time in our the the?
• 7:04
  Yes yes yes. That was the first time I
• 7:08
  watched the Matrix and I thought it was so funny because the
• 7:11
  entire time I was watching it I just I was just looking at the
• 7:14
  screen. I was like this is just anime.
• 7:17
  Y'all motherfuckers just made an anime.
• 7:19
  This is just anime nonsense the whole way through.
• 7:21
  Like the entire movie is just anime.
• 7:23
  I was like the reason this blew all the normies minds is 'cause
• 7:27
  they never watched anime in the 90s.
• 7:29
  Like I'm sitting here like, what the fuck?
• 7:33
  So funny, so funny. I was like, wow, OK, the
• 7:36
  Wachowskis are just big fucking weebs.
• 7:40
  Which. Is still true.
• 7:41
  It's so funny. It's nuts.
• 7:43
  It really is. My my my dad was was hugely
• 7:48
  impacted by because he was a, you know, Macross, but like he
• 7:52
  was a Robotech fan back in the dizzy.
• 7:56
  Like you have to mention, you know, like one of the biggest
• 8:00
  Godzilla fans. I've ever right, Godzilla.
• 8:02
  Yeah. I mean, yeah, come on.
• 8:05
  Huge. I mean, anyway, the reason we're
• 8:09
  talking about all this weeb shit is because we're about talking
• 8:11
  about a weeb. Game baby.
• 8:12
  The reason we're talking about all this shit?
• 8:15
  Well, there's there's OK, no, wait, there is history to this
• 8:18
  that goes beyond just this game. So oh, we took a month off in
• 8:22
  December. Can I just say this might be the
• 8:24
  weebiest tabletop game I've ever seen?
• 8:28
  More than fucking Kamagakari God hunters.
• 8:31
  Yes, because this game is a niche on a like Karagakami is
• 8:36
  like you know battle shown in anime as tabletop.
• 8:40
  This is perfect. Draw is a niche on a niche on a
• 8:44
  niche like. I suppose.
• 8:48
  Like it's a tabletop game. OK niche #1 tabletop obviously
• 8:55
  emulating TCGS. Another niche that is TCGS but
• 9:01
  not actual TCGS. How TCGS feel and play in anime
• 9:07
  specifically. It is.
• 9:10
  It is. It's a niche on a niche on a
• 9:11
  niche. It's a tabletop role-playing
• 9:13
  game trying to replicate the feeling of feeling Toy battle
• 9:19
  shown in. Yeah, not actually how they
• 9:22
  work, but how they feel in the shows.
• 9:25
  Yeah, that is crazy. So yeah, but before before we
• 9:31
  went on break, I started re watching the original Yu-gi-oh
• 9:33
  while I was looking for a job or some guy someone, someone said
• 9:38
  something about the OG Yu-gi-oh. I think we were joking about
• 9:41
  Joey Wheeler. And I was like you know what?
• 9:43
  I haven't seen that show in 12 ever.
• 9:46
  So I'll just give it a re watch. I'll re watch, you know, Duelist
• 9:49
  Kingdom because special place in my heart.
• 9:53
  And as I was re watching it, I looked up the difference in the
• 9:58
  openings because I had heard that there was different
• 10:00
  openings for the original series and I don't remember them being
• 10:02
  different opening series. So I looked that up and then I
• 10:06
  got recommended a video for a tabletop game called perfect
• 10:10
  draw. I'll pick up today's episode and
• 10:13
  I watched that. I watched a piece of it and then
• 10:15
  I I went away on for a month and then Matt sent me out of the
• 10:19
  blue that same video. So I rewatched that, like I
• 10:23
  watched the video all the way through, came back and started
• 10:26
  re watching Yu-gi-oh in earnest. And then I was like, that game
• 10:30
  did seem kind of cool. Let me actually look into that.
• 10:32
  And then I did and read it and I think it's really fucking cool.
• 10:35
  So now that's why we're talking about it now, because of some
• 10:39
  niche comment that was made in like mid-october.
• 10:46
  The weirdest of all butterfly effects.
• 10:49
  I I mean, I guess that is kind of a butterfly effect, yeah.
• 10:57
  That is to say, today we are talking about Perfect Draw, a
• 11:03
  fascinating dive into tabletop mixed with the gimmick toy.
• 11:11
  Battle shot him and I think it's pretty cool.
• 11:14
  Again, tabletop for, for the anime specifically, like that's
• 11:22
  a really important, that's a really important element to how
• 11:24
  the game is designed. Yes, they like.
• 11:28
  For better and for worse, this game strives to first and
• 11:36
  foremost replicate the feel of watching Yu-gi-oh on a Saturday
• 11:40
  morning. Yeah.
• 11:43
  And I think it's really cool, honestly, the this game is so
• 11:48
  crazily designed. Like I can't believe the writers
• 11:51
  gave us ATTRPG with our with our simplified tabletop, with our
• 11:55
  simplified TCG, honestly, because there are actual real
• 11:59
  baked in TCG mechanics into this game.
• 12:01
  You could just play. You could just play ATCG in this
• 12:04
  game. Pretty.
• 12:06
  Close. I mean, it wouldn't be, it
• 12:08
  wouldn't, it wouldn't get you that much satisfied.
• 12:11
  Like I think you'd run, you'd get bored pretty quick.
• 12:14
  But like, yeah, I, I got to, I got to OK, I want to, I want to
• 12:20
  say something up front here because some people, maybe you
• 12:27
  as a are going to potentially get a little mad at me when we
• 12:30
  start talking about this game. So I just want to, I just want
• 12:32
  to make a point. The premise of this game, in my
• 12:37
  opinion is incredibly fucking difficult.
• 12:42
  And if somebody said to me, hey I want you to make a tabletop
• 12:50
  game that emulates TCG anime, I would look at them and be like
• 12:56
  my brother in Christ you better pay me an obscene amount of
• 12:59
  money because this is a fucking impossible task.
• 13:04
  Because card game anime have such a specific vibe that they
• 13:12
  are hitting where they are emulating playing a game with
• 13:16
  actual rules, but they also simultaneously completely ignore
• 13:19
  their own rules or adjust their own rules or play incredibly
• 13:25
  fast and loose with their rules for the sake of the drama.
• 13:28
  Right? Like Goku going Super Saiyan is
• 13:33
  easy to emulate in the tabletop game conceptually.
• 13:36
  You just have some kind of an ability where he goes into power
• 13:38
  up mode and he gets a bunch of bonuses blah blah blah.
• 13:42
  But something like Yu-gi-oh or card fight Vanguard or Dual
• 13:46
  Masters or fucking what's another one?
• 13:51
  I'm blanking but you get the idea.
• 13:55
  It's like the character has their cool power up thing, but
• 13:58
  they also pretend like they're obeying the rules, like they
• 14:02
  happen to draw the card that they perfectly need to do the
• 14:05
  thing, but they have to pretend like they're also sort of still
• 14:07
  using the rules of the game, but they still have to have the
• 14:10
  shonen moment where you have your cool super Saiyan thing.
• 14:12
  Like it's I, this is such a hard concept to make into a six, like
• 14:18
  a a functioning tabletop game. Just putting that out there.
• 14:23
  So I I commend the designers for going going for the GOAT and
• 14:28
  doing something that I don't know that I would ever have
• 14:30
  tried. All that being said, yeah, I
• 14:33
  mean, I'm a little iffy on this game, I'm going to be honest.
• 14:38
  Fair enough. OK, so worth mentioning in
• 14:43
  preparation for this, I read the entire rule book through 1 1/2
• 14:49
  times. Josh read the.
• 14:53
  The quick start and I jumped around in the main rules.
• 14:56
  Yeah, far as I can see though, jumping around in the main
• 14:59
  rules, the quick start has the main meat and potatoes.
• 15:01
  Like I don't think that doesn't seem like I missed too much.
• 15:04
  No, you so you didn't miss necessarily anything, but the
• 15:07
  game does take a lot of time to extrapolate on the ideas it
• 15:11
  presents in the quick play stuff.
• 15:15
  So I might bring up things that you might not have thought about
• 15:19
  or or something like that. I don't think it'll happen much
• 15:22
  this episode because again, I in the five pages of notes, I, I, I
• 15:26
  wrote, I only hit the 1st 50 pages, so. 5 pages of size 11
• 15:33
  font y'all. 5 pages of single spaced size 11 font Yeah, yeah,
• 15:38
  yeah. With several highly truncated
• 15:42
  lists. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:44
  So this game is a thick boy. It's actually it's.
• 15:50
  In terms of rules, it's actually not that thick.
• 15:54
  It's it's a lot of like assistance text.
• 15:59
  It's a lot of like, like a huge chunk of the, the, the text is
• 16:06
  how the fuck do you make your own cards?
• 16:08
  Like that's a big chunk of shit. You know it it.
• 16:11
  It is, yeah. So yeah, I mean the the the the
• 16:13
  most rules dense part of this book for sure is the card
• 16:17
  creation and and TCG combat section making up about a.
• 16:24
  The card it. Really is.
• 16:27
  It makes up like 2/5 of the book.
• 16:32
  Yeah, like the which doesn't. Seem like a lot but.
• 16:35
  The baseline rules are actually not that dense.
• 16:38
  The baseline rules are actually quite easy to understand.
• 16:43
  Yes, that being said, the game follows a mostly basic PBT
• 16:49
  Powered by the Apocalypse format with playbooks, moves, character
• 16:52
  creation and like general role play loops.
• 16:55
  Yes. Which, by the way, can I just?
• 16:57
  I just want to throw out too mentioning PBTAI.
• 17:01
  Don't know that PBTA was the right decision in terms of
• 17:05
  framework for this. I agree with you on the player's
• 17:09
  side, but I don't exactly know how.
• 17:12
  I would have rather it be done on the judges slash GM side.
• 17:17
  Well, so that was the other thing I was going to say.
• 17:19
  I don't know that PBTA was necessarily the best option.
• 17:22
  I don't know how else I would have done it though either.
• 17:25
  Yeah, exactly right. I I.
• 17:27
  Don't really know how else I would have done it.
• 17:29
  I, I think this game had to make some concessions to get its vibe
• 17:35
  across. I think so we, we, I think we
• 17:38
  disagree on exactly how well it worked.
• 17:40
  I think it worked quite well. It seems that you'd think it
• 17:42
  worked less well. In in certain areas that yeah.
• 17:47
  Yeah, but like I said it pretty basic Pbta format save for the
• 17:52
  80 pages of in depth card game combat including generic cards,
• 17:57
  gimmick tips and most importantly the card creation
• 18:00
  system. Card, that's right.
• 18:01
  And card creation. Yeah, you get to make your own
• 18:06
  cards. We'll get more into that later.
• 18:07
  It's fucking cool as shit in my opinion.
• 18:10
  Which which, well, I I would argue that the card creation is
• 18:14
  both a selling point and a detriment point.
• 18:19
  Like I would say it's it's both because.
• 18:24
  Interesting. OK, but.
• 18:26
  Like some people are going to look at that and be like, oh
• 18:29
  fuck yeah, dude. And some people are going to
• 18:31
  look at that and go, I think I'd rather study calculus, you know
• 18:35
  what I mean? Like.
• 18:37
  Yes, certain people are. Not going to vibe with that.
• 18:41
  Well, the cool thing with that is, is that as part of the quick
• 18:46
  play startup stuff, it comes with five or sorry, it comes
• 18:51
  with three premade characters with premade.
• 18:54
  Slots. For sure, and not only does it
• 18:57
  come at the pre made decks, it comes with information that you
• 19:00
  would need in order to invent more cards to boost and
• 19:04
  strengthen your deck, which is a key mechanic of the game.
• 19:07
  So the game does a lot of the work for you, so much they try.
• 19:12
  So much so that the character creator and card creation
• 19:20
  sections of the book, the book itself denotes as optional.
• 19:25
  Yeah, and I don't necessarily disagree.
• 19:27
  Yeah, that being said, something that does bug me about this game
• 19:36
  more specifically with the book is the general organization of
• 19:41
  its contents. I think there are huge swaths of
• 19:45
  the book that should not be where they are.
• 19:47
  Like there's a bunch of stuff in the card game combat section
• 19:51
  that I think should be squarely in the GM section because it has
• 19:56
  it holds no relevance to the players, it only matters to the
• 19:59
  judge, and it really inflates that chunk of the book.
• 20:05
  There are also problems where the game reiterates things like
• 20:09
  two or three times and each time it takes up like 3 to 6 pages to
• 20:14
  reiterate that information. Don't think we need that either.
• 20:18
  There is a lot of reiterating, which I get to a point, but
• 20:26
  yeah, it's, yeah, I don't know, 'cause like I, I've often said
• 20:30
  that I do like when tabletop games reiterate when, you know,
• 20:34
  information is relevant. But yeah, I don't know, maybe
• 20:38
  it's just the execution. The reiterating does feel a
• 20:42
  little like annoying in this, in the way that this book is
• 20:45
  written almost. Well, so I think the issue is,
• 20:48
  is that when you reiterate information, your main point is
• 20:53
  to say the information was a couple pages ago.
• 20:57
  Here is a shortened version of that info, right?
• 21:01
  The game unfortunately does not truncate that info.
• 21:04
  It just gives it back to you wholesale.
• 21:07
  So you're you, you're reading and especially if you're like
• 21:10
  really trying to get to the book, you're like, wait a
• 21:12
  minute, what? I just read this like 5 pages
• 21:16
  ago. Like, why are you giving this to
• 21:19
  me again? Game.
• 21:21
  So I will admit that is something that frustrated me
• 21:25
  quite a bit. Yeah, not not great.
• 21:31
  Ironically enough, I really appreciate that the game does
• 21:34
  specifically point out how much of the book that a player should
• 21:38
  look into. Like I said, there's optional
• 21:39
  section for the character creator in creation section and
• 21:43
  all that jazz. So that that's cool.
• 21:45
  It also it it does the thing that I like that that Powered by
• 21:52
  the Apocalypse games do, which is it gives you the information
• 21:56
  and then it puts that information in context.
• 22:02
  I think a lot of games don't do this.
• 22:03
  A lot of Powered by Apocalypse games do it.
• 22:05
  It's not a unique idea, but it is nice to see it here,
• 22:07
  especially because this game gets real noodly.
• 22:10
  It's good to have that context. Yeah, noodly than most Pbta
• 22:13
  games for sure. Like.
• 22:16
  It it is, I mean, like, let's be real, A.
• 22:18
  Substantial jump in noodlyness. Let's be real, this game is 2
• 22:22
  games in one. It is, yes.
• 22:24
  You are effectively playing a game and like, you know when we
• 22:27
  talk about when, well, you're playing something like Shadow
• 22:29
  Run and you're doing like the Decker stuff and you go in the
• 22:32
  Matrix and we joke like you're just playing a different game
• 22:35
  than everyone else? No, that is going to happen a
• 22:37
  lot in this game. The one.
• 22:39
  The the the important key difference here is that though
• 22:42
  everyone is a Decker. So it's yes less annoying right.
• 22:45
  Everyone plays the card game mini game.
• 22:47
  You have to, by the way, before we continue fucking hit
• 22:52
  followers, subscribe by the podcast platform of choice
• 22:54
  before we keep yapping. Hey, segue, segue.
• 22:58
  There was no segue anyway. No, no segue at all.
• 23:02
  Yeah, it's two games in one. Yes, it is.
• 23:04
  It is, it is the cyberpunk thing of everyone does the cyberpunk
• 23:08
  thing and then the Decker does the Decker thing.
• 23:10
  The benefit is that everyone is the Decker.
• 23:12
  So it's not as annoying because everyone can understand it.
• 23:16
  Like because part of the thing that's annoying about the the
• 23:19
  Decker situation in the Shadowrun game, right?
• 23:22
  Is that the player who's playing the street samurai probably
• 23:25
  isn't very familiar and like didn't read the hacking rules.
• 23:29
  Or if they did read them, they didn't read them very closely.
• 23:32
  So when the Decker's doing stuff and they're like, oh God, but I
• 23:35
  don't know what to do. The Street Samurai player is
• 23:38
  like, oh, I don't know how your rules work, but so I can't help
• 23:40
  you, right? And that's a problem.
• 23:43
  Whereas in this game everyone has to do the card fight
• 23:46
  mechanic unless you're AI don't know.
• 23:48
  Unless you're a loser who doesn't want to play the game or
• 23:50
  something. Unless you want to be the Taya
• 23:52
  Gardner of the group. Yeah, yeah, unless you want to
• 23:54
  be Taya, that's. Not fair.
• 23:55
  Tristan also doesn't duel, let's be real.
• 23:57
  That's true. Tristan also doesn't duel, but
• 23:58
  yeah, it's like, so because everyone has to interact with
• 24:02
  that rule set, everyone can also be invested.
• 24:05
  And it's like when you're watching football, right?
• 24:07
  If you don't know the rules of football, it's a little hard to
• 24:09
  be invested. If you understand the rules, a
• 24:12
  lot of the little weird minutiae shit that happens on a play by
• 24:15
  play basis, it is a lot more interesting.
• 24:17
  It's the same kind of idea. Everyone has to engage with the
• 24:20
  card fight rules. So when someone else is in a
• 24:22
  card fight and like a bad thing happens or whatever and everyone
• 24:26
  else can go, oh shit, they did the thing right.
• 24:28
  Like everyone's like invested in the situation.
• 24:30
  So it has the Decker problem, but it's less of a problem than
• 24:33
  it would be in something like literally Shadow Row.
• 24:37
  Yeah, it is worth mentioning if you're thinking about running
• 24:43
  this game after we talk about it, if you're thinking about
• 24:45
  running this game for A1 shot, no, this game doesn't do one
• 24:50
  shots it. It's almost impossible unless
• 24:54
  you play with a very small amount of people.
• 24:57
  And to be clear, the game does say there should be a Max of
• 25:01
  four players, and one of those players is the judge.
• 25:04
  Yeah, yeah, it. Recommends 3 man parties or
• 25:07
  three players what the game suggests.
• 25:10
  And I think, I think the main reason that that the main reason
• 25:13
  they say that is because this isn't D&D.
• 25:17
  When you get into a fight, everyone isn't involved, right?
• 25:20
  Only one person is involved. Or you could do A tag battle
• 25:23
  where two people are involved. And it's like, yeah, so the game
• 25:27
  is acknowledging that there's going to be situations where one
• 25:29
  player is doing the thing and the other two players are not
• 25:31
  doing a thing. So having a bunch of party
• 25:34
  members makes that worse. Yeah.
• 25:37
  So yeah, also you could step on each other's card gimmicks and
• 25:41
  like there's a lot of reasons that I think it makes more sense
• 25:43
  to definitely have a smaller group for this game.
• 25:46
  You could do a one shot with like two players and just do
• 25:49
  like a make the main battle A tag battle.
• 25:52
  I think that's OK. I could work.
• 25:54
  Yeah, you could do that. But interesting it's the first.
• 25:58
  I would just say run the run the pre written adventure because I
• 26:01
  think it's only meant to be like a five session at Max type thing
• 26:05
  or something like that. Yes, yeah, I think it's, it's,
• 26:08
  it said 5 to 6. I think No 4 to 5, five to six.
• 26:11
  One of those 2, Not a ton of sessions.
• 26:14
  Not a ton of sessions. Yeah.
• 26:16
  And yeah, I mean, I, I, it's interesting.
• 26:18
  It's one of the only RPGs where I've ever read where it was
• 26:20
  like, having two players is good.
• 26:24
  That's a good number to have. Usually games are like you want
• 26:27
  the three to four but this game is like 2 is fine.
• 26:30
  Most games recommend the four to six range.
• 26:34
  That's like the most common number I see, which is like, you
• 26:41
  know, I mean, I've, I've said my opinions on that, but yeah.
• 26:45
  Yeah. Look, I'm always, I'm always
• 26:47
  team smaller parties, so not even a question.
• 26:50
  For me. But are you on a team?
• 26:51
  Are you on team's smallest party 2?
• 26:54
  Is small. I mean 2 is small.
• 26:57
  Like I don't get me wrong, 2 is kind of crazy.
• 26:59
  I would prefer probably 3, but you know, I could do 2 I'm sure.
• 27:04
  I've done 2 man one shots and when you have somebody who is
• 27:10
  like on it, you're good. You don't really feel bad
• 27:15
  because there's two people and it's really easy as AGM to give
• 27:18
  two people spotlight. So if the other player just
• 27:20
  doesn't want it and they kind of want a vibe, that's fine, right?
• 27:25
  It's not a huge problem. Yeah, yeah.
• 27:28
  But when neither of the players are in it, running for two
• 27:32
  people, you're like, please, I beg you.
• 27:35
  Yeah, I need somebody to bite. Fucking kill me.
• 27:38
  I need someone to do something, anything, so that shit can be
• 27:44
  tough. Yeah, I will.
• 27:47
  I will say too, this is this is a backtrack, but I don't know
• 27:51
  what just popped it back into my head, the idea of the PBTA
• 27:56
  framework and and me saying like I don't know if it would have
• 27:59
  been the best option. I should slightly rescind that
• 28:02
  statement. I think the PBTA framework is
• 28:06
  really good for the the anime drama of the game right?
• 28:13
  Like the part of the card game anime that doesn't involve the
• 28:16
  card game. I think the PBTA framework is
• 28:18
  really good for that Like the I like the baggage system.
• 28:21
  I like the idea of like having to overcome your baggage and the
• 28:26
  serious baggage. I like the idea that that's how
• 28:29
  you get XP, because card game anime are often sort of weirdly
• 28:34
  melodramatic even though everyone's just playing card
• 28:36
  games, you know? I like, I think it.
• 28:40
  I think the like the general moves.
• 28:42
  I really like the general moves in this game because I think
• 28:45
  they basically all hit the tone of the anime without getting
• 28:54
  like, overly noodly. You're obtuse basically.
• 28:59
  And and it also it it kind of works like the ability like
• 29:03
  reveal a new possibility is feels very Yu-gi-oh to me like
• 29:09
  ah, this random guy up here. Don't worry, friends, I have
• 29:12
  just the tool we need to solve the problem and you're like, OK,
• 29:16
  yeah, sure. In that regard.
• 29:20
  Yeah. So like that.
• 29:22
  So half the game I guess is what I'm saying.
• 29:24
  Half the game I think really works really well in the Pbta
• 29:27
  framework and half the game I don't think does.
• 29:32
  Yeah. I mean, like I said, I, I don't
• 29:33
  necessarily know how you would do it any other way.
• 29:38
  Like, I don't know, the whole system that you could use that
• 29:41
  would work. I'm I'm sure there's someone,
• 29:44
  there's someone in the universe was like, you know, I think
• 29:46
  Garps could really do that. Gerps Baby.
• 29:49
  It always comes back to Garps. I mean, me personally, I
• 29:52
  probably would just come up with my own like if I had to do this,
• 29:55
  Not that I, again, not that I would ever tackle this project,
• 29:58
  but if I had to, I'd probably just come up with my own system
• 30:02
  of some kind. I wonder if the PD car stuff was
• 30:08
  a using Pbta was a second, it was a secondary thought, right?
• 30:16
  Like because there's so much work that was put into the
• 30:19
  actual card game combat in creating a pretty fun, flexible,
• 30:25
  easy enough to balance system that they were like, OK, we this
• 30:29
  other thing. The closest approximation we can
• 30:32
  think of is PBCA. So we'll just use that.
• 30:36
  You know what I mean? Maybe.
• 30:39
  Maybe, I mean, it's kind of funny.
• 30:44
  It feels weird that the game effectively has like the card
• 30:50
  battling is kind of a mini game in the game, right.
• 30:54
  But if you think about it, the combat in D&D is also kind of a
• 30:58
  mini game to the game, right? So like it's actually not that
• 31:02
  out of the question. And then that kind of that the
• 31:10
  idea of the mini game extending from the core rules and using
• 31:15
  the same Pbta framework. Like, yeah, I guess I could see
• 31:17
  that. I don't know, maybe I'm talking
• 31:19
  myself into this more. I'm not really sure.
• 31:22
  I'm having thoughts as I'm talking and I'm not.
• 31:24
  I can't fully like, yeah, I don't know.
• 31:26
  Before we we get lost in the sauce, let's let's hit it on
• 31:29
  chapter 1 in which the game goes over.
• 31:32
  It's literally just the play in the game section.
• 31:35
  It goes over the core gameplay loop, talking about general
• 31:38
  resolution of moves, introduction of the unique
• 31:41
  mechanics of the game being baggage and the cardigan combat.
• 31:48
  As an aside, I really like the idea of baggage.
• 31:52
  It's really cool. It's it is the first of the
• 31:54
  unique mechanics of the game. I mean, it serves, it makes both
• 31:58
  sense. It does, yeah.
• 32:00
  And it serves as a really cool benefit and detriment insofar as
• 32:04
  it is the direct punishment for failing checks.
• 32:09
  So on one end it's a bad thing. But given that it is Pbta game,
• 32:13
  it is the main method by which you fail checks to get XP, and
• 32:18
  it also translates into fun in gameability.
• 32:21
  Sorta you you you've resolved them to.
• 32:25
  Get the baggage. You then resolve it to get the
• 32:27
  Yeah, but the thing that's because the baggage is the XP.
• 32:32
  It ends up meaning that you are going to constantly be like
• 32:37
  clearing baggage, getting baggage, clearing baggage,
• 32:39
  getting baggage over and over and over and over again.
• 32:41
  Which, yeah, it just adds to the melodrama.
• 32:45
  Like fucking card game anime or just I'd like, there's no other
• 32:50
  way to put it. They're like fucking soap opera
• 32:52
  dramatic, you know every. Single time he's like, don't
• 32:58
  worry guys, I fucking got it. Does the Ash Ketchum spins hat
• 33:02
  backwards and then someone's like trap card though and Yugi's
• 33:05
  like? Yeah, like that's what I mean.
• 33:09
  They're so the gravitas and the drama in card game anime are so
• 33:14
  over the top that the idea that the way you get XP is because of
• 33:18
  your emotional trauma that you have to deal with is like, yeah,
• 33:21
  that makes sense. I, you know, of all of the early
• 33:25
  anime screamers, OOP, absolutely.
• 33:27
  Of all the early anime screamers, you know, you're Sean
• 33:30
  Chamel, you're Chris Sabbath. I, I feel like Dan Green a la
• 33:34
  Yugi Moto, both Yugi and Yami fame really deserves to be on
• 33:38
  that list because he is screaming to the back seats
• 33:41
  every single episode. It's frankly really impressive.
• 33:47
  And bro, if you get on Yami's bad side, the vitriol in which
• 33:53
  he says your name, it would make your generations feel bad.
• 33:57
  Every time he says Merrick, I'm just like, bro, he Merrick.
• 34:01
  Yeah, Merrick. You're like oh did he kick your
• 34:05
  dog too bro? He got that stank on it.
• 34:08
  Oh, it's bad dude. Every time he says Merrick's
• 34:10
  name I laugh because it just. It seems like he wants to use
• 34:13
  some very coarse language. He wants to call bro a slur.
• 34:19
  Yeah, it seems like it. I mean, the thing that's really
• 34:22
  funny too, like card game anime often end up being more
• 34:28
  melodramatic than regular shonen, which is hilarious
• 34:31
  because the stakes are often way lower until they aren't.
• 34:35
  They're lower until they aren't. Yeah.
• 34:37
  Because. Yeah.
• 34:38
  Because every TC just randomly ends with if we don't win this
• 34:41
  children's card game, we will literally die.
• 34:44
  Yeah. The universe will explode or
• 34:46
  invert on itself for some bullshit.
• 34:47
  Yeah, Yeah. Which is.
• 34:53
  I will say, if I if I were to play this game, oh, you best
• 34:58
  believe I'm playing Kiba. No, fuck you, I want to play the
• 35:04
  Prodigy is just the. Prodigy.
• 35:07
  Of all of the playbooks and there's a lot, there's like 9 of
• 35:11
  them. Of all of them the prodigy is
• 35:15
  low key the most fun because it's just all of its abilities
• 35:20
  are revolve around you being like a Kiba level hater.
• 35:23
  Yeah, yeah, just a. Straight of their moves is
• 35:27
  literally screw the rules. I have money which basically
• 35:31
  lets you before a game invent a card like before a match.
• 35:36
  You can invent an interview like I bought it before this match
• 35:38
  because I have money. Also, I love the art of the
• 35:44
  Prodigy. What a Jackass.
• 35:47
  Did you? Okay so fun fact, I looked into
• 35:49
  the Lord. Did you know that he hasn't?
• 35:50
  He has a God card. Oh my God.
• 35:54
  Is demo deck has an actual Prometheus is a God card?
• 35:57
  Yes, yes, for me, that's right, He has the Titan Prometheus.
• 36:00
  Yes, yes, I do remember. That yeah, which explains why
• 36:02
  Prometheus is so fuck off strong.
• 36:05
  Yeah, because I was like. That's a really strong ace card
• 36:09
  compared to everyone else. Chain Titan, Prometheus.
• 36:12
  Yeah, Yeah. And I was like to the point
• 36:14
  where I was like, the game doesn't the game literally say
• 36:16
  that a card like shouldn't have this much abilities as a strong
• 36:19
  level card? It's just because he has a God
• 36:22
  card, OK? I'd also be willing to play the
• 36:28
  Pegasus style character too though.
• 36:30
  Oh dude, Pegasus style character.
• 36:31
  What are they called again? They're the I don't remember.
• 36:35
  Oh God, I don't. Know if there's a playbook that
• 36:37
  maps maps to him perfectly to be honest.
• 36:39
  They're kinda they're, it's more of it's more of Bakura, Pegasus
• 36:45
  and Merrick all put together because you have like actual
• 36:47
  psychic abilities. Oh.
• 36:48
  Right, right. The like evil.
• 36:49
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, some of them have to
• 36:53
  do with you being like a magnificent bastard.
• 36:55
  So like it, it works. Anyway, we're getting we're
• 36:59
  getting wildly off topic. We're still in Chapter 1.
• 37:01
  I know. The stats in this game are cool.
• 37:04
  They're a little atypical for a Power by the Apocalypse rule
• 37:06
  system in that there's only three stats, that being Passion,
• 37:09
  Skill, and Friendship. I don't really have to explain
• 37:13
  what those. That's actually not that
• 37:15
  atypical, to be honest. Like, yeah, there's quite a lot
• 37:19
  of PPTA games that have crunched the stats down to like 3, or at
• 37:24
  least that's. A surprise to me.
• 37:27
  Yeah. I to be honest, I don't really
• 37:28
  have to go into what each of those three skills do.
• 37:30
  They're pretty self-explanatory. Action, skill and friendship.
• 37:35
  Yeah. Like it kind of E what Ed they.
• 37:39
  Do what they say on the tin. Yeah, the game does come with
• 37:44
  its own set of principles, that which I think is cool and I like
• 37:47
  that those principles pertain to both the judge and the players.
• 37:53
  They are one in the same. Those principles are take the
• 37:58
  game seriously, keep stakes high and personal.
• 38:01
  A card game is more than mechanics.
• 38:03
  Play the fool. Card games decide everything and
• 38:06
  work together with your rivals. There's explanations on what
• 38:10
  each of those mean, but like, I like that the game is sort of
• 38:15
  just telling. It's setting a baseline of like
• 38:19
  you kind of have to feed into it a little bit, right?
• 38:22
  You kind of have to, you kind of just got to go along for the
• 38:26
  ride. Like inherently this kind of
• 38:29
  game is ridiculous. Like the stakes are ridiculous
• 38:33
  when you realize that the the medium is a children's card
• 38:36
  game, yes. So you just have to be OK with
• 38:41
  that. You have to be OK with leaning
• 38:42
  into it. And you as the judge have to be
• 38:45
  OK with the fact that your BBEG world ending villain, you know
• 38:49
  what's his name, Kosiboro Kaiba, leader of the original Kaiba
• 38:53
  Corp military like industrial complex, decides to battle his
• 38:57
  son in a children's card game. Like you just have to be OK with
• 39:00
  that. One thing that I think the game
• 39:03
  does not do super well on though is that they reference the fact
• 39:07
  that like characters can die. Like player characters and
• 39:12
  enemies can die, but there are no actual damage mechanics or
• 39:17
  combat. But they're like, Oh yes, a
• 39:19
  character can get shot and you're like, but how does that
• 39:22
  happen? So how can that happen within
• 39:24
  the confines of this series or this?
• 39:26
  Game, so they they say so getting injured is baggage, so
• 39:32
  that's kind of the first way they handle it and then the
• 39:36
  other thing is oh God, there was a move for it.
• 39:42
  Ah shit, which move was it? Was it?
• 39:47
  I'm, I'm scrolling. I'm viciously scrolling right
• 39:50
  now. Use the moment to recuperate.
• 39:55
  No, that's like, that's like the getting over it.
• 39:56
  But there was like a Oh my God, there was like a.
• 40:07
  Overcome your weakness. There.
• 40:11
  Damn, I can't remember now. Maybe it wasn't a move.
• 40:15
  There was a bit in the book that I was reading where they kind of
• 40:17
  talk about how it could cut, it could potentially go.
• 40:22
  Basically it needs to be all narrative, right?
• 40:25
  Like it needs to just if it narratively makes sense that the
• 40:27
  character's like shot and dead, then they're shot and dead type
• 40:29
  kind of vibe. And that like, yeah, basic
• 40:33
  injuries are baggage. And if you get really fucked up,
• 40:37
  turn it into serious baggage is pretty much.
• 40:42
  That's I'm going to be honest, I think the game it's one of those
• 40:44
  things where I feel like the game should not have brought up
• 40:47
  like bringing up like getting hurt.
• 40:49
  That makes sense. But like the fact that they're
• 40:52
  like, Oh yes, a character could get like, you know, beat up or
• 40:55
  wounded. It kind of breaks its own
• 40:57
  principle insofar as resolve everything with the card game
• 41:01
  like you can't. I mean, I get.
• 41:03
  What it say? I get what it means though
• 41:05
  because it is a thing in card game anime that like you know
• 41:10
  guns are pulled and like characters lives are threatened
• 41:13
  and shit like it does happen. Right.
• 41:16
  But in when you're watching a show, you don't have to think
• 41:18
  about, you don't really have to think about the how, how, how
• 41:20
  you would resolve that thing. It just kind of revolves,
• 41:23
  resolves in front of you. Like I, as the judge wouldn't
• 41:29
  know how I would resolve that because I, I, if I know that I
• 41:33
  have to resolve everything with the card game, I can't introduce
• 41:37
  something that can't be resolved in the card game, you know?
• 41:39
  I mean, I think if you're in a situation where the the security
• 41:43
  goons bust into is it was it they pointed guns at Kiba and
• 41:48
  they censored it as fingers. Was that the?
• 41:50
  Yes, yes. And then Bandit Keith did.
• 41:52
  It's Pegasus. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 41:53
  So I think if it's that kind of a scene, right, you, you use the
• 42:00
  the general moves to kind of follow the fiction and just
• 42:05
  establish with the player. Like if this goes badly for you,
• 42:10
  you could die or be badly injured, you know what I mean?
• 42:12
  And then just follow the fiction of the moves as much as
• 42:14
  possible. But don't, I would say don't put
• 42:20
  the player into that scenario until it has been like they need
• 42:25
  to have fucked up quite a few times to be put into that
• 42:28
  position. You know what I mean?
• 42:31
  Yeah. And I and I definitely.
• 42:32
  Goes beyond just fucking up I think.
• 42:33
  Like they have to have actively made bad decisions.
• 42:36
  That's what I mean. That's what I mean by fucking
• 42:38
  up. Yeah.
• 42:38
  They have to have done something actively unwise that like break
• 42:41
  into the they have to been like, I'm going to ninja sneak into
• 42:45
  the Super secret security of the fucking, you know, the the
• 42:48
  military corporation and then the guards point guns at them
• 42:51
  and then, you know, they don't they resist and blah, blah,
• 42:54
  blah. Like yeah, they have to make a
• 42:56
  bunch of bad decisions at one after another.
• 42:57
  And then make a couple of moves and if they fail a couple of
• 43:01
  moves, it's like, well, here we go, bud, you know, and you could
• 43:06
  also just ask, you know, I, I, this is the kind of game where
• 43:10
  if a player was put into a situation where their character
• 43:13
  is potentially going to die, right?
• 43:15
  Because baseline you assume death is not on the table in
• 43:20
  this game. So if the character gets into
• 43:22
  such a situation where death is on the table, I would say to the
• 43:25
  player, I'd be like, OK, are you cool with your character dying
• 43:30
  here? Or do you want to do a different
• 43:32
  thing? And if they're like, I want to
• 43:34
  do a different thing, I'd be like, OK, you're going to get
• 43:37
  like brutally injured or captured or so we'll, we'll go a
• 43:39
  different angle. Like you, you still lose, you
• 43:42
  still fucked up, but we'll go a different angle.
• 43:43
  You know, like I would ask in this in this game, because but a
• 43:47
  character might say like, oh, it would be really narratively
• 43:51
  dramatic if my character died. So like, yeah, let's have my
• 43:53
  character die. And then like my new character
• 43:55
  is going to be his sister or whatever.
• 43:57
  Like they might be down for that, you know what I mean?
• 44:00
  Yeah, I suppose. And this is the kind of game
• 44:02
  where if you ran a campaign and you had one character die, it
• 44:06
  would be like a huge deal that people would talk about all the
• 44:09
  time, you know what I mean? Like, oh shit, remember, your
• 44:11
  character fucking died in perfect in perfect draw, You
• 44:13
  know what I mean? Like that would be a real as
• 44:15
  opposed to like D&D like, oh, well, I went through three
• 44:18
  characters in that campaign. You know, it's like less of a
• 44:20
  thing. So there might like me
• 44:23
  personally as a player if the GM is like, all right, listen, bud,
• 44:27
  you got guns pointed at you. Death is on the table here.
• 44:29
  Are you cool with dying? I'd be like, yeah, kill my ass,
• 44:32
  you know what I mean? Because it makes a good story
• 44:35
  afterward, I guess. If I were to not that I would
• 44:40
  necessarily want to run this game, I'd want to play it really
• 44:42
  bad, but I don't know if I'd want to run it.
• 44:43
  I'd probably should be like, look, we're going to we're going
• 44:45
  to do the shadow realm. We're just going to shadow run
• 44:46
  that right? I mean, that's basically death
• 44:49
  anyway. Well, yeah, but like people, you
• 44:52
  know, you can get saved from the shadow realm, you know, it's the
• 44:54
  Ori calcos thing. Sure.
• 44:56
  Or it's like you're gone until the end of the arc.
• 44:58
  Right, Right. Yeah.
• 45:00
  Well, that's kind of what I well, that's why I'm saying
• 45:01
  that's why I would ask the player, do you want your
• 45:03
  character to die? And if the players like, no, I
• 45:05
  don't want to, I'll be like, all right, you get shot in the legs,
• 45:08
  you're like disabled and in the hospital until the end of this
• 45:10
  arc or whatever. You know what I mean?
• 45:11
  Like, you could go that angle too.
• 45:15
  Especially because if your characters, if your PCs are
• 45:18
  children or mostly children and they break into a place and the
• 45:22
  guards are like, time to murder this child.
• 45:24
  I mean, they might fictionally, it could make sense that like,
• 45:27
  well, we're not going to kill the kids, so we'll shoot them in
• 45:29
  the kneecaps. You know what I mean?
• 45:32
  Yeah, that. Yeah, yeah.
• 45:34
  That's what I mean. There's a lot of angles.
• 45:35
  You could go with it. You just have to basically,
• 45:40
  yeah. Just ask, I think is the easiest
• 45:41
  way to go about it because, yeah, there's no health mechanic
• 45:45
  in this game. Well, there's no health for your
• 45:47
  character. There's there's a health
• 45:48
  mechanic in the card game, obviously.
• 45:49
  In the card game, the game does talk about using the health in
• 45:54
  the card game to certain things. They all point.
• 45:55
  It's like if, if one player's in a duel and there's two other
• 46:00
  players, you can have them like in a situation where there's a
• 46:03
  terrorism attack and you're trying to to defuse a bomb.
• 46:06
  Maybe the you're the player and enemy's health are like directly
• 46:10
  tied to the bomb. Kind of like the the in Battle
• 46:12
  City where on the they're on the rooftop and the they've got the
• 46:14
  bombs attached to the glass. I was thinking about, I was
• 46:19
  thinking about is it Yugi duels like mind control Joey and
• 46:25
  they're in the they're at the like the pier.
• 46:27
  And if they do, they draw in the water and drown.
• 46:29
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that shit was wild.
• 46:34
  Bro This is why I'm like Merrick doesn't get a redemption arc.
• 46:37
  He did actual terrorism. Like no fuck this kid.
• 46:42
  Absolutely fuck Merrick. I hate Merrick so much.
• 46:46
  All my homies hate Merrick. Damn, I just lost my trip
• 46:51
  Anyway, yeah. Yeah, after after the principles
• 46:58
  we can read the game talks about its general moves.
• 47:02
  Worth noting that the general moves are, you know, usable
• 47:06
  during the general role play loop, but are technically also
• 47:09
  usable during card game combat. It's sort of just ends on the
• 47:13
  situation. You're probably not.
• 47:15
  Going to use them during card game combat.
• 47:17
  But you could. You could, yeah.
• 47:20
  I mean, like there's a couple of them.
• 47:22
  Like what is it? The one where you like plea with
• 47:25
  someone's humanity or whatever. Yeah, convey your ideals.
• 47:29
  Understand someone's true feelings.
• 47:30
  Yeah, I could see those being used in a card combat.
• 47:33
  Yeah, the overcome your weakness.
• 47:36
  There's I mean, now that I look about it, there are a couple
• 47:38
  like reveal a new possibility is exactly what you would do in the
• 47:41
  middle of a card game combat. Like, you know, it's the the
• 47:45
  your your your player, the enemy's got you like locked in a
• 47:49
  in a combo that you can't get out of and then you roll for it
• 47:52
  and the GM can tell you how to get out.
• 47:55
  Not that they will let you get out, but they're, you know,
• 47:57
  like, oh, you know, if you if you destroy this thing, then you
• 48:00
  can get out, But I'm not going to make it easy for you.
• 48:05
  Stuff like that. As far as the general moves go,
• 48:07
  you have I'm just going to read them all out and then I'm we're
• 48:11
  going to go into just a little bit of detail on each just for
• 48:14
  the sake of time. Enter a dangerous situation
• 48:17
  brandish your skills, reveal a new possibility, investigate
• 48:21
  your surroundings and Fay your ideals overcome your weakness,
• 48:26
  understand someone's true feelings, resolve baggage,
• 48:29
  become vulnerable and take time to recuperate.
• 48:33
  Enter a dangerous Enter a dangerous situation is pretty
• 48:37
  like self-evident. It's kind of what it says on the
• 48:39
  tin. It acts kind of as your I have
• 48:42
  to do something strenuous and or dangerous and it's it's.
• 48:46
  Use it's act under fire. Yeah, it's act under fire.
• 48:50
  You roll with passion on that one. 10 up you do whatever you
• 48:55
  want without a problem. 7 to 9 you have to pick one
• 48:57
  complication on a list. 6 or less you fail, suffer the
• 49:02
  consequences of whatever the failure is, and gain baggage.
• 49:06
  Brandish your skills is you saying hey you'll watch this
• 49:10
  play and do some sick nasty tricks on something.
• 49:14
  You roll with skill. 10 up, you succeed proficiently, no issues.
• 49:18
  Again, 7 to 9 overcome a complication.
• 49:21
  On a six or less, you fumble your attempt, make things harder
• 49:24
  for yourself and gain baggage. Reveal a new possibility.
• 49:27
  Baggage, right? Yes, yes, they they all gain
• 49:31
  baggage. Except.
• 49:35
  Recuperate. Doesn't obviously recuperate
• 49:38
  become vulnerable and resolve baggage well, so result become
• 49:42
  vulnerable is exactly how you get back.
• 49:44
  It is a move specifically used to give yourself baggage.
• 49:49
  If if it makes sense in the yeah.
• 49:51
  Like if you agree in the scene then it makes sense.
• 49:54
  Yeah, After that reveal a new possibility I like, I'm going to
• 49:59
  go into a little bit more detail on this one because I really
• 50:02
  like how this this move works because it works similarly to
• 50:09
  the Gaze into the Abyss ability, where if you don't know what to
• 50:15
  do, if you're confused, you essentially can just ask the GM,
• 50:23
  Hey, we don't know what to do, we're confused.
• 50:25
  Can you give us a tip? Yeah, it's effectively the the
• 50:28
  move to ask the GMII think pretty much every Pbta game has
• 50:32
  this because Pbta games like Apocalypse World specifically in
• 50:41
  the beginning sort of rejected the idea.
• 50:46
  Like old school DND had this idea of doing everything
• 50:49
  diegetically right. We talked about this before of
• 50:51
  like you have to figure out everything in character.
• 50:54
  Apocalypse World very explicitly rejected that idea and it was
• 50:58
  like, no, your characters have powers or have abilities or can
• 51:03
  do stuff. That is just the Ask the GM
• 51:05
  button. And the reason that you have
• 51:07
  that is to keep the fiction moving and keep the fiction
• 51:10
  interesting. So by extension, pretty much
• 51:13
  every PBAPBTA game has at least one move where it's like GMI am
• 51:19
  asking you directly as the player does, does this make
• 51:23
  sense or like can I get this answered or like you know,
• 51:26
  whatever. They all have some kind of ask
• 51:29
  the GMA question very directly. Yes, it like it's so much oh oh,
• 51:34
  actually real like I mixed up the names.
• 51:36
  System. Yes, I'm sorry, I missed the
• 51:38
  name. Investigate your surroundings is
• 51:40
  the one that we're talking about.
• 51:41
  Reveal new possibilities. You investigate your surrounding
• 51:45
  ones. I really like because the the
• 51:47
  options that it gives you are as follows.
• 51:50
  What don't I understand about Blank?
• 51:52
  What happened at Blank? What could we do to stop Blank
• 51:56
  or why is Blank happening? Those are really direct, really
• 52:00
  poignant questions that you can ask the judge that they have to
• 52:03
  answer truthfully. The the way that those questions
• 52:06
  are worded, it does not really give the, like, room for a kind
• 52:12
  of like cryptic response, right. If you say what can we do to
• 52:16
  stop Maximilian Pegasus? Like, yeah, the answer could
• 52:20
  just be you beat him in a duel. But like, it's you have to
• 52:23
  understand how he's cheating. And then you go, OK, so we know
• 52:27
  that he's cheating. OK.
• 52:28
  You know what I mean? Like I mean.
• 52:32
  Well, so investigate your surroundings is the Rita Sitch
• 52:36
  equivalent, which is a little bit different to something like
• 52:40
  gaze into the abyss or gaze into the maelstrom.
• 52:45
  I I like the IT is still the direct questions to the GM, but
• 52:50
  it's slightly different from those moves.
• 52:52
  I would say reveal a new possibility.
• 52:57
  Actually, I think is weirdly closer to gaze into the abyss or
• 53:02
  to get or look into the psychic male strip.
• 53:04
  What's that fucking move called? Well, the maelstrom one because
• 53:08
  reveal a new possibility lets you like sort of Deus Ex
• 53:13
  machina, make an opportunity out of nothing kind of vibe.
• 53:20
  So it kind of applies to both is basically what I'm saying there.
• 53:23
  Like the idea I think that pull from the GM directly.
• 53:29
  Yeah, I mean, I, I think you hit the the difference on the head
• 53:31
  on that one is that reveal a new possibility allows you as the
• 53:33
  player to create a solution if there isn't 1, and that you're
• 53:37
  going to have to talk to the GM about that, right?
• 53:39
  You can't just be like, well, we just ignored the mechanics of
• 53:42
  the game, right? Like you have to be like GM.
• 53:44
  I mean, it is to to give them this thing.
• 53:47
  I want to explain this thing to them.
• 53:49
  What is the best way for me to do that?
• 53:51
  Yeah, I mean, it is worth pointing out that reveal, a
• 53:53
  possible reveal, a new possibility explicitly is
• 53:59
  helping somebody else. So that does recontextualize it
• 54:03
  a little differently. Also, there isn't a direct
• 54:06
  correlate to gaze into the abyss or look into the maelstrom in
• 54:10
  this game. There's no one to one on that.
• 54:13
  Open your brain. That's what the fucking move is
• 54:15
  called. Jesus.
• 54:16
  There's no one to one on that. But those two moves kind of they
• 54:19
  still operate in that space for the most part.
• 54:21
  I do think it what I, I just thought about this now slightly
• 54:27
  missed opportunity. I feel you could have had a move
• 54:30
  called speak to the spirit of the cards and that could have
• 54:33
  been your gaze into the abyss Move where you like ask the
• 54:38
  cards for 'cause you know, Yuki does that thing where he's like,
• 54:41
  please deck, tell me what to do. And then the fucking little
• 54:44
  Kiribo goose, like give some advice.
• 54:46
  I feel like that could have been a move.
• 54:47
  I'm actually now a little sad now that I just thought about
• 54:49
  that. It's not a move.
• 54:51
  It is a move. It's a card to combat called
• 54:53
  literally a card to combat move. Literally called pull the
• 54:55
  perfect card. Yeah, but like, I want like a
• 54:59
  Gaze into the Abyss ability, but you talk to your deck, you know
• 55:02
  what I mean? Like out of out of.
• 55:04
  Combat. Fair enough.
• 55:06
  That's true. That is close.
• 55:07
  That's that's similar, but not exactly.
• 55:11
  After those two, you have conveyor ideals.
• 55:13
  This is the I I don't want to say it's the the persuasion
• 55:18
  check. It's the thing in in any battle
• 55:20
  shown in where the characters like I need you to understand my
• 55:24
  point of view. Even though we're shooting
• 55:27
  planet busting lasers at each other, you are sort of appealing
• 55:31
  to someone's pouring your heart out of the enemy and hoping that
• 55:36
  they they understand. On the inverse, you have
• 55:39
  understand someone's true feelings.
• 55:41
  This allows you to ask questions about another player or an NPC
• 55:48
  to understand their point of view so you can better
• 55:51
  communicate your point to them, which I think is kind of neat.
• 55:55
  And you have the overcome your weakness, which is to say, if
• 55:59
  you are currently being hit with baggage, which is to say there
• 56:06
  are detriments being made to your roles, you can roll to
• 56:09
  overcome those and essentially ignore it for a moment.
• 56:15
  You can sort of push past it, which is kind of cool.
• 56:20
  Then you have resolve baggage, which you do essentially after
• 56:24
  every major event or when the baggage is no longer relevant.
• 56:28
  So if you know you do end up overcoming your weakness, that
• 56:33
  is a situation where you could potentially resolve the baggage
• 56:36
  if it's narratively important. Or if you've confronted the
• 56:39
  baggage during a duel and you're in the recuperation phase, you
• 56:43
  sort of roll this move into that.
• 56:46
  Become vulnerable is interesting because it's something that
• 56:50
  happens in the narrative that is not influenced by a role.
• 56:54
  It's just something that happens during natural role play that
• 56:57
  you believe is relevant enough to give you baggage.
• 57:03
  Yeah. Yeah, and then finally you have
• 57:07
  take a moment to recuperate. This one's cool.
• 57:09
  Like I said, this is when you resolve baggage.
• 57:11
  You define new baggages that may have happened during a dual or
• 57:15
  any action scene. You can create new cards and add
• 57:19
  them to your deck. You can take your old Ace card
• 57:22
  and turn it into a standard card, thus replacing it with a
• 57:24
  new Ace card. You can remove cards from your
• 57:26
  deck. You cannot remove an Ace card
• 57:28
  with your deck. You always need to have at least
• 57:30
  one, and you can replace a generic staple card.
• 57:33
  We'll explain what that is later and add a new one to your deck.
• 57:37
  Got it, got it sick again. One thing I really like is that
• 57:42
  the game goes out of its way to explain the context of when each
• 57:46
  of these moves would be relevant to you.
• 57:48
  I really appreciate that because sometimes I struggle earning the
• 57:51
  DND off in my brain and thinking about things in the Powered by
• 57:54
  the Apocalypse way. I'm sure a lot of people suffer
• 57:57
  from that, especially if you started with one game first.
• 58:00
  I mean that does that too. It does, but not as well.
• 58:04
  I think you get like little blurbs under the skills, but
• 58:09
  this game takes like 1/4 of a page to half a page each to
• 58:16
  explain to you. Not even like 2 pages per skill
• 58:20
  or per move to explain the context of the move.
• 58:24
  So I appreciate that it's a lot of reading, but it does help you
• 58:28
  think about things. After the moves, we get into the
• 58:35
  baggage again. This is the first big mechanic
• 58:38
  of the game or the first unique mechanic of the game.
• 58:41
  And as we said before, it is the primary punishment that you
• 58:44
  suffer for failing roles in Perfect Draw.
• 58:48
  It describes a situation that causes doubt or conflict within
• 58:52
  your character or your character and the relationships that they
• 58:55
  maintain with their allies. A big thing that they talk about
• 58:59
  with gaining baggage is maybe an NPC reveals a lie that you kept
• 59:03
  hidden. Maybe you had a crush on
• 59:05
  someone. Maybe you had slighted another
• 59:07
  player in the past and they didn't know about it.
• 59:09
  That's enough to give you baggage.
• 59:11
  Being wounded, that's enough to give you baggage.
• 59:15
  If you take it can be pretty much anything.
• 59:17
  It can be pretty much anything, and if you suffer to experiences
• 59:22
  of baggage that relate to each other or overlap.
• 59:25
  So if you get beat up and then, you know, over the course of a
• 59:29
  duel, if you're playing a shadow game where your injuries become
• 59:32
  real, that can stack on your standard baggage and give you
• 59:36
  what's called serious baggage. The difference between this and
• 59:40
  this was not clear to me. I had to look this up.
• 59:43
  Is that standard baggage outside of it being, you know, just the
• 59:48
  thing that you have gives you a -1 to any role after modifiers?
• 59:54
  Which is to say, if you have a + 2 in a friendship stat and you
• 59:58
  need to roll a move with friendship.
• 1:00:00
  If you have one baggage that pertains to that, you roll at 2
• 1:00:04
  D 6 + 2 - 1 however. No, yes, no, no.
• 1:00:09
  You would roll AT2D6. You would roll 2D6 plus one
• 1:00:13
  because you have a two in the stat.
• 1:00:15
  Your baggage subtracts one. You'd roll 2D6 plus one.
• 1:00:19
  If you had serious baggage then it would automatically become a
• 1:00:22
  -1. So that's what I'm saying.
• 1:00:24
  Plus 2 -, 1 it it. It still comes out to a + 1 but
• 1:00:29
  the way it comes. Out to a + 1.
• 1:00:31
  Yes, but the way it's it's worded.
• 1:00:33
  You said it comes out to a -, 1. I said plus 2 -, 1.
• 1:00:38
  OK, well that's a weird way to phrase that.
• 1:00:41
  It's what made the most sense for me.
• 1:00:43
  I don't like the way the game worded it and I get like I said
• 1:00:45
  I had to look this up. Well, the way you would describe
• 1:00:47
  it is if you have a + 2 in a stat and you subtract 1, your
• 1:00:51
  overall modifier becomes a plus one as opposed to +2.
• 1:00:58
  Yes, if you have serious baggage, it automatically sets
• 1:01:01
  your modifier to -1. Yes, it sets it to -1 regardless
• 1:01:05
  of where the stat is at. Yes.
• 1:01:08
  Which can be anywhere from 1:00 to 3:00.
• 1:01:10
  Yeah, personally for me, I think it was worded weirdly.
• 1:01:14
  I had to look it up but that is how it works I mean.
• 1:01:19
  Like, I don't know. I, I guess I don't know.
• 1:01:21
  I I knew what they meant. I like I didn't, I don't know
• 1:01:25
  what tell you the I think it's just the yeah, I don't know.
• 1:01:31
  The way it's worded in the passage is when you make a role
• 1:01:34
  for a general move, for each piece of baggage your character
• 1:01:36
  has that's relevant to the action, take a -1 to the role.
• 1:01:39
  This cannot reduce the modifier of the role below -1.
• 1:01:43
  For instance, if your character normally has a + 1 to friendship
• 1:01:46
  and roles plus friendship with one piece of relevant baggage,
• 1:01:49
  instead roll with a + 0 and three pieces of relevant
• 1:01:52
  baggage. It would roll with a -1 instead
• 1:01:54
  of a -, 2. So I think that part right there
• 1:01:56
  is what confused me is the fact that it cannot go below -1.
• 1:01:59
  Well, yeah, it can't below, below, it can't go below -1 it's
• 1:02:02
  just it. They're just locking the the
• 1:02:05
  floor of negative because the numbers are small.
• 1:02:09
  The numbers you're operating with are smaller.
• 1:02:12
  Apocalypse World doesn't go below or -2 so that's all that
• 1:02:16
  is. Worth noting you can go above
• 1:02:19
  +2. You can get a maximum I believe
• 1:02:21
  a + 3 or no. I think you can get to a + 4.
• 1:02:27
  If you have, I don't know if there's a limit on bonuses, but
• 1:02:30
  I think your stats will go to a Max of +3.
• 1:02:36
  I think the bonuses could technically go stack forever.
• 1:02:40
  You're not going to stack them forever because there's just not
• 1:02:42
  enough ways to do it, but I think they technically could.
• 1:02:46
  Maybe I I have to double check that's a little bit later on in
• 1:02:48
  the book when they talk about advancement.
• 1:02:52
  Now, like we said before, you might not believe it, but it is
• 1:02:55
  true. If a baggage is not just a net
• 1:02:58
  detriment, it actually is a bonus to you in more ways than
• 1:03:02
  just gaining experience. The more baggage you have during
• 1:03:07
  a dual, the more advantage you gain during that dual, which is
• 1:03:10
  a special resource slash ammo type that we'll explain further
• 1:03:13
  on advantage can get pretty crazy.
• 1:03:16
  So if you have a bunch of baggage in a dual, it's not
• 1:03:20
  necessarily a bad thing because the baggage does not equate to
• 1:03:25
  every single role. You have roles with baggage.
• 1:03:28
  The the baggage does not the what they're doing here in terms
• 1:03:32
  of invoking the genre, right, is that the baggage effects you
• 1:03:39
  emotionally when you're doing everyday, you know anything else
• 1:03:44
  in your life right when you're doing it, whatever the baggage
• 1:03:47
  is a boon when you're activating this when you're going into the
• 1:03:50
  Super dramatic card battles because the drama of the card
• 1:03:54
  battle is fueled by the drama of the baggage.
• 1:03:57
  So you when you have baggage in a card game, you're actually
• 1:04:00
  stronger and better than if you don't?
• 1:04:04
  Yes. And it's.
• 1:04:06
  It's invoking that feeling of the the like that melodramatic
• 1:04:10
  nonsense of like, the character is sulking because their sister
• 1:04:14
  is in the hospital with a terminal illness.
• 1:04:16
  But then when they play the card game, their sister being in the
• 1:04:19
  hospital with a terminal illness is what fuels their rage and
• 1:04:23
  gives them the strength to continue on and win the card
• 1:04:25
  game. Right.
• 1:04:26
  It's that whole, that whole vibe.
• 1:04:28
  Yeah. It's it's, it's, it's a great,
• 1:04:30
  it's, it's hitting the the genre trope perfectly.
• 1:04:33
  It is, yeah. Generally speaking, you don't
• 1:04:36
  interact with baggage directly in card game combat unless
• 1:04:41
  you're using general moves or or some reason.
• 1:04:45
  If one of the card game combat moves, you're using Woodprocket,
• 1:04:48
  but I don't think that'll happen Very.
• 1:04:50
  Well, no, but basically it gives you points.
• 1:04:54
  It gives you points of advantage to spend on doing better shit.
• 1:04:58
  Yeah. And pulling, you know, doing
• 1:05:00
  things like pull conveniently pulling the car that you needed.
• 1:05:06
  You know, it's like I'm so I'm such sad boy hours.
• 1:05:10
  I just want my sister to get out of the hospital.
• 1:05:13
  The fusion card I was looking for.
• 1:05:17
  The game actually does have like a like a fuckery chapter where
• 1:05:23
  it talks about if you wanted to add mechanics from other card
• 1:05:25
  games, and Fusion was one of them.
• 1:05:26
  And I was like, oh hell yeah, dude.
• 1:05:30
  Like one of the really good way, like the the move that Isaiah
• 1:05:35
  mentioned, the draw the perfect card.
• 1:05:38
  The way you draw the perfect card is you spend advantage and
• 1:05:41
  the way you get advantage is a having baggage during the duel.
• 1:05:45
  Yeah. So yeah, again, this game is
• 1:05:50
  very specifically not emulating actual TCGS.
• 1:05:53
  It's emulating anime nonsense TCGS.
• 1:05:59
  It's funny, I was, I was talking to Sam and he was like, he
• 1:06:04
  literally was like, I can't believe this game is going to
• 1:06:06
  fix TCGS for me. Yeah, right.
• 1:06:10
  Yeah. I mean look, I played TCGS very
• 1:06:14
  very casually my teenage years like.
• 1:06:18
  Yeah, Isaiah wasn't on that tournament grind set like me.
• 1:06:21
  I did go to tournaments, not many, but I went to like two or
• 1:06:23
  three and I was, it was just so funny.
• 1:06:26
  I was so nervous in my first ever tournament playing
• 1:06:28
  Yu-gi-oh. I kept forgetting to draw at the
• 1:06:30
  start of my turn and my was getting really mad at me, but I
• 1:06:33
  was like, I'm so scared. I'm sorry.
• 1:06:35
  I was like 11 dude. I there was a point where I was
• 1:06:40
  so deep in the Yu-gi-oh sauce, I was playing at tournaments
• 1:06:45
  pretty much weekly. I was playing on an online
• 1:06:50
  browser version of Yu-gi-oh like damn near daily, and I was
• 1:06:56
  playing APSP game of 5DS on my PlayStation on my PlayStation
• 1:07:02
  Portable like all the time. Damn.
• 1:07:06
  I was on that triple threat, triple avenue of Yu-gi-oh.
• 1:07:12
  Nope, that's respectable. That was deep in the sauce.
• 1:07:15
  I wish I could remember what that browser game I played was,
• 1:07:18
  but I honestly have no fucking clue and I don't think it was
• 1:07:20
  legal so it might not exist anymore.
• 1:07:24
  So funny the but what's the that Pokémon game that's that's was
• 1:07:29
  basically Pokémon Stadium but you could use any Pokémon like
• 1:07:31
  it was? I don't know.
• 1:07:36
  It was pretty much, it was pretty much a game where you
• 1:07:38
  could just pick whatever Pokémon you wanted and whatever gimmicks
• 1:07:40
  you wanted and go up against other people.
• 1:07:43
  Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure fucking Ant knows.
• 1:07:47
  Oh oh, oh, oh, smog on. Yeah, I think that's it.
• 1:07:51
  Yeah, Pokémon Smog on. Yeah, I played, I played Smog on
• 1:07:53
  for a good year or two. Yeah, that was how I played
• 1:07:56
  competitive Pokémon. Oh, nice, yeah.
• 1:08:00
  Yeah, I played. I played that rank Pokémon.
• 1:08:03
  Nice. Speaking of the TCG, the thing
• 1:08:07
  that I'm sure you're most curious about is the actual card
• 1:08:09
  game combat of the game, which unsurprisingly, is the most
• 1:08:14
  ruled nense section of the rulebook.
• 1:08:16
  Given that it it it pretty accurately follows the motifs
• 1:08:21
  found in games like Dual Masters and Yu-gi-oh.
• 1:08:24
  And for this chapter, having some knowledge of the genre will
• 1:08:30
  go a long way to help you understanding the system as it
• 1:08:33
  can seem really daunting. I I don't I don't think you
• 1:08:38
  could really play this game at all.
• 1:08:40
  Like if you don't know, if you don't know card game anime I
• 1:08:46
  like or or TCGS at all. Good fucking luck playing this
• 1:08:50
  game. Like I think it just asked too
• 1:08:54
  much of you. I think it, I don't think it'd
• 1:08:56
  be impossible, but I think like if you were willing to do the
• 1:09:01
  research and watch like the first five episodes of Yu-gi-oh
• 1:09:05
  or whatever, or like the first couple episodes of Dual Masters,
• 1:09:08
  if you were willing to do a little bit of research, I think
• 1:09:10
  that's all the information you'd need.
• 1:09:13
  What? Maybe it gets.
• 1:09:15
  Started I I agree with you in so far as you couldn't just off RIP
• 1:09:21
  into this game. Like I know prior knowledge and
• 1:09:24
  no desire to gain prior knowledge.
• 1:09:26
  I I don't think you can do it. Like like honestly, like the the
• 1:09:34
  thing you got to keep in mind about this game is that imagine
• 1:09:39
  to give it the DND to to compare it to DND right as the
• 1:09:44
  touchstone. This game is kind of like if you
• 1:09:50
  had a game where everyone was playing Wizards, but also every
• 1:09:55
  wizard had to come up with their own spells, right?
• 1:10:03
  Like. Pretty much, yeah.
• 1:10:04
  Because you have to make your own deck and like, that's a tall
• 1:10:12
  order I would say. It it is, but in the game's
• 1:10:17
  defence, it does actually give you some pretty good basics for
• 1:10:20
  how you want to think about building a deck right?
• 1:10:23
  Like, you want one, maybe 2-2 monsters.
• 1:10:27
  You want to make sure that one monster is easier to summon and
• 1:10:30
  has a lot of abilities and 1 is a little harder to summon and
• 1:10:33
  has less abilities but its strength will back it up.
• 1:10:36
  You want some spells that take care of what are invocations,
• 1:10:38
  that take care of niche circumstances, and items to
• 1:10:41
  upgrade your monsters so they can be more effective.
• 1:10:43
  Like that's a pretty basic formula that kind of that I
• 1:10:47
  think can help people make a pretty easy like basic bitch
• 1:10:51
  starter deck. You know what I mean?
• 1:10:54
  Now granted, if you understand the ID, if you understand the
• 1:10:57
  assignment right, you can get pretty buck wild and come up
• 1:10:59
  with some wacky wild shit. But the game does ask both the
• 1:11:03
  judge and the players to maintain a certain level of like
• 1:11:05
  casual nature to the game, right?
• 1:11:07
  Like don't build infinite OTK wombo combo decks please.
• 1:11:12
  Yeah, like you're not. So yes, the game doesn't
• 1:11:16
  necessarily encourage you to make the most hardcore of decks
• 1:11:19
  or anything like that, but it it's just it's just a tall order
• 1:11:26
  no matter what to be like, yeah, in order to play this, you have
• 1:11:30
  to like design all of your spells first and then you could
• 1:11:33
  play the wizard, you know, like, no matter what way you slice it,
• 1:11:37
  that's a that's a tall ask for players.
• 1:11:40
  And it can be for sure. That's why I think that's why
• 1:11:44
  I'm saying, that's why I said the card battling system is both
• 1:11:49
  going to be the big draw and the big detriment.
• 1:11:53
  Because certain people are going to hear that they need to come
• 1:11:56
  up with their own cards and be like, I have to do, I have to
• 1:12:00
  make, I have to make how, how many cards?
• 1:12:02
  I have to make eight different cards with different effects.
• 1:12:05
  Oh, and also I can make cards on the fly during a duel, which is
• 1:12:09
  crazy by the way. It's so cool dude.
• 1:12:13
  Like it's fun, but like, God damn brother.
• 1:12:16
  Yeah. So yeah, it's just a, it's just
• 1:12:19
  a tall order. Like that's that's kind of my
• 1:12:22
  thing with this game is I like the idea of it.
• 1:12:27
  I like what they're going for. I I understand the vibe that
• 1:12:33
  they're trying to hit and how they're doing it.
• 1:12:35
  But the idea of coming up with my own deck is so daunting to me
• 1:12:41
  that I'm like, I'm just like, I don't know if I want to deal
• 1:12:44
  with that. Wait, you so have you come up
• 1:12:47
  with an idea of like, did you, did you brainstorm a little bit
• 1:12:50
  of what you'd want out of a deck?
• 1:12:52
  No, no I didn't. You didn't.
• 1:12:54
  You didn't think about it at all?
• 1:12:55
  No, because I I just it it, it, it like stressed me out.
• 1:13:00
  As soon as I started thinking about it, it stressed me out.
• 1:13:04
  Oh, I'm not going to lie, I got super hype.
• 1:13:06
  I like I've been talking with both Sam and Kate about like
• 1:13:09
  what if you did a deck like this?
• 1:13:11
  Like what it like I know Sam was like, oh, I'd want to do
• 1:13:14
  something that's that's kind of like the strike, you know, not
• 1:13:17
  with a Mecca idea, but like something like the strike
• 1:13:19
  Gundam, like a decent generic strong or or like normal
• 1:13:24
  strength monster that you can upgrade using different items
• 1:13:28
  like the striker packs. And I was like, that's fucking
• 1:13:31
  genius. That's awesome.
• 1:13:32
  I. I mean, here's the thing for me
• 1:13:36
  specifically. And, and you know, obviously,
• 1:13:42
  like Sam has also played TC GS for same amount of time as I
• 1:13:46
  have, Sam has also been on the tournament grind set and shit.
• 1:13:49
  So like, yeah, to him, like he's immediately conjuring up ideas
• 1:13:54
  and shit. And that's why I'm saying in in
• 1:13:58
  that regard, the card system is a a boon to the game, right?
• 1:14:02
  It's a selling point. My problem personally is playing
• 1:14:07
  TC GS in real life. My least favorite part, like
• 1:14:13
  I've played Yu-gi-oh, I played Cardfight Vanguard, I've played
• 1:14:18
  Hearthstone. I think I played a little bit of
• 1:14:20
  dual masters around the time when it came out.
• 1:14:23
  Like I've dabbled in in a quite a few different things.
• 1:14:26
  Yu-gi-oh being the one that I got the most like into.
• 1:14:30
  I don't like making decks like I think the the deck building
• 1:14:40
  process is like the least fun part of the entire hobby for me.
• 1:14:46
  And like collecting the cards to me is frustrating and annoying.
• 1:14:50
  And so the idea that this game is asking me to build my own
• 1:14:54
  deck not not from scratch, but like with like from a negative,
• 1:15:01
  almost a negative deficit of I like ideas like I can come up
• 1:15:05
  with anything like I have. I'm stressed out trying to
• 1:15:09
  figure out how how many of existing cards in real life to
• 1:15:14
  put into the fucking game, to put into my deck.
• 1:15:17
  And this game is like, not only do you have to decide, you know,
• 1:15:20
  what cards to put in, you also have to make up the cards.
• 1:15:22
  And I'm like, that's a lot. That's just a lot, Gabe.
• 1:15:26
  I don't know if I want to do that.
• 1:15:29
  I don't know, it kind of isn't it isn't right because to your
• 1:15:31
  to your point, yes you do have to invent the cards, but when
• 1:15:34
  you're playing the actual PCG you have to worry about is this
• 1:15:37
  card good, Is it bad? How does it fit the meta?
• 1:15:40
  Does it not fit the meta like in this game?
• 1:15:43
  Because the the the meta is is explicitly stated to not exist.
• 1:15:48
  You're what you're really doing is you're creating the idea of a
• 1:15:51
  deck. You're creating a vibe.
• 1:15:52
  I get it right. You're creating a field, which I
• 1:15:54
  under a, a feeling, a field. I just looked at the word field
• 1:15:57
  in the text. You're creating a feeling, which
• 1:15:59
  I understand, but like, it's just, it's like putting this
• 1:16:06
  emphasis on my like, I really love playing TCGS.
• 1:16:10
  I don't want to have to. I don't like coming up with my
• 1:16:13
  own deck. I like, I was the guy who is net
• 1:16:15
  decking all the time. I'd be like, what cards do I
• 1:16:18
  have? What deck can I make?
• 1:16:20
  And I'd be like, when I was playing in tournaments at locals
• 1:16:23
  and shit, I'd be like asking buddies at the tournament.
• 1:16:25
  I'd be like, what deck can I make that's effective for the
• 1:16:28
  cheap or on the cheap? And they'd be like, Oh, look up
• 1:16:31
  this or look up that And I'd be like, all right, cool.
• 1:16:33
  And then I'd go, and that's what I would make.
• 1:16:35
  Like I at one point like I had a a deck that was called chain.
• 1:16:39
  Burn. And it was just this shitty
• 1:16:42
  asshole net deck I looked up where basically you just every
• 1:16:46
  little action your opponent does, you just deal damage to
• 1:16:49
  them via traps or spells constantly.
• 1:16:52
  And you just sit there on the defensive until you burn all of
• 1:16:55
  their life away slowly. And it's called chain burn
• 1:16:57
  because you can chain all of the damage cards together.
• 1:17:01
  And there's a specific spell card that was called like, is it
• 1:17:05
  Infernal chain or something like that, that would literally do
• 1:17:08
  more damage the more the more chain effects you had.
• 1:17:13
  And like, I didn't come up with that.
• 1:17:15
  I just looked up with, I just looked that nonsense up because
• 1:17:19
  I was like, yeah, just give me something that's like fun to
• 1:17:21
  play. And I know what it is.
• 1:17:23
  You know what I mean? So I, I agree with you because
• 1:17:26
  I, I, I agree that making the deck I, I, like I said, I like
• 1:17:30
  playing the game. Like that's, that's kind of why
• 1:17:33
  I liked dual dual masters because you could do multicolor
• 1:17:36
  decks in the same way you can play magic with multicolor
• 1:17:39
  decks. But, and then I didn't play, you
• 1:17:43
  know, I didn't have anyone to play dual masters competitively
• 1:17:45
  with, but I had a lot of family members who played dual masters.
• 1:17:47
  A lot of my cousins played it. And it was cool to know that
• 1:17:51
  each colour deck had like a thing it was good at.
• 1:17:55
  So you could go like, oh, you know, I'm playing a fire deck.
• 1:17:58
  My cousin always played a dark deck and like the dark deck was
• 1:18:02
  brutal because it it didn't exclusively do burn mechanics,
• 1:18:06
  but it it had a lot of abilities that just didn't ignored your
• 1:18:09
  monsters and and broke Shields on you, which annoyed the shit
• 1:18:12
  out of me. But you could sort of learn how
• 1:18:17
  to counter it in a really basic way.
• 1:18:18
  Because because of that, I got, I literally had, I think you
• 1:18:22
  could only have two shield triggers in your deck, but I
• 1:18:25
  made sure that every deck I had had as many shield triggers in
• 1:18:28
  it as I could. Yeah, because I was like, he's
• 1:18:31
  going to play a dark deck. I need my shield triggers.
• 1:18:33
  I need my trap cards to fucking smack the shit out of him.
• 1:18:35
  So side note, the card, I was thinking it was called chain
• 1:18:40
  Strike, but yeah, like I, I get it, listen.
• 1:18:49
  And, and if I were to play it, if I were to play in a campaign
• 1:18:52
  of this game, I, I, I'm sure I could get over it and put myself
• 1:18:57
  in the right mindset. Because here's the thing, I am
• 1:18:59
  the right person to do it right? I've played the actual games in
• 1:19:03
  question a lot and I've watched the animes in question that they
• 1:19:08
  are pulling from and IA 100% understand what they are doing
• 1:19:12
  and the feeling that they are trying to invoke.
• 1:19:14
  So I know what they're asking me to do.
• 1:19:16
  Like I just don't want to. I just, I don't want to do it.
• 1:19:20
  Like as soon as I saw it, I was just like, that's work.
• 1:19:24
  I mean, you also could just play a a one of the one of the
• 1:19:27
  premades, which again I. I thought about that 80.
• 1:19:30
  Percent of that work for you. Yes, and and for sure I had that
• 1:19:33
  thought like, all right, well, maybe that would be the best way
• 1:19:35
  for me to deal with it. So I don't like, yeah, I don't
• 1:19:39
  get like overly annoyed, but yeah, it's just one of those
• 1:19:43
  things basically that element of the game is such a tall order in
• 1:19:48
  my to me that it makes me almost feel like, it almost makes me
• 1:19:56
  feel like the game is going to be a turn off for a lot of
• 1:19:58
  people. And and I also know it's fine.
• 1:20:03
  To I think yes, to some people. I think that the people that
• 1:20:09
  this game will 100% appeal to is the people who are really toxic
• 1:20:14
  about their OCS and are like no, I need to think about everything
• 1:20:17
  my OC does things or cares about.
• 1:20:19
  I need to know what their most niche hobbies are because you
• 1:20:23
  could use that for card creation.
• 1:20:24
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:20:28
  I mean, I think that'd be perfect.
• 1:20:31
  Me, I'm calling myself out here. Sure, sure.
• 1:20:34
  Yeah, look, and don't get me wrong, that element of the game,
• 1:20:37
  like the idea of designing your deck thematically around your
• 1:20:42
  character and shit like yeah, absolutely love that.
• 1:20:46
  So like I I do get what we're again, I get what we're doing, I
• 1:20:49
  get what we're going for. I I understand it.
• 1:20:51
  I just yeah, I don't know, I think my other.
• 1:20:56
  So like that's one of my main complaints with this game.
• 1:20:58
  My other big complaint is I do feel like this game mechanically
• 1:21:04
  is not the most elegant execution of PBTA I've ever
• 1:21:08
  seen. But like we said at the
• 1:21:09
  beginning, I don't know how else she'd really do it.
• 1:21:12
  So. Yeah, and it's clear that the
• 1:21:15
  PBTA section of the game is what the the creators were less
• 1:21:18
  interested in and as compared to making the card.
• 1:21:21
  Game feel fun. Yeah, it's like, it's like my
• 1:21:24
  criticism is I don't know if what you did works, but also my
• 1:21:28
  criticism is kind of null void because I don't really have a
• 1:21:31
  better suggestion. So yeah, it's kind of where
• 1:21:37
  we're at. And yes, like Isaiah said, the
• 1:21:39
  layout and stuff and and some of the writing, some of the text I
• 1:21:42
  do think is overly dense. I do really like the art in this
• 1:21:45
  game actually. Oh the artist is such vibe.
• 1:21:47
  Sufficiently weep. I mean it's clearly like not the
• 1:21:50
  most expensive thing in the world.
• 1:21:52
  It's all black and white and it's like not hyper rendered or
• 1:21:55
  anything but it's it's perfectly hits the TCG anime nonsense like
• 1:22:04
  exactly like you as you would want.
• 1:22:06
  Hell yeah. That being said, back onto the
• 1:22:11
  TCG itself. Yeah.
• 1:22:13
  I mean, yeah, describe. It the ultimate point of the
• 1:22:15
  game, as you can assume, is to reduce your enemy's life point
• 1:22:18
  count to 0. Life points are variable and
• 1:22:21
  they change depending on the severity of the dual.
• 1:22:24
  There are actually that was dual severity is what I think is kind
• 1:22:26
  of neat. I don't 100% agree with it, but
• 1:22:28
  I get why you do it. Yeah, so that was a really weird
• 1:22:32
  thing to me because I get 100% again, going off of because
• 1:22:36
  they're not trying to emulate actual TCGS, right?
• 1:22:39
  They're trying to emulate anime TCGS.
• 1:22:42
  The idea of varying life points indicating the significance of
• 1:22:48
  the of the battle, I understand because that is a thing they do
• 1:22:53
  in Yu-gi-oh and that is a thing that anime will do in general,
• 1:22:57
  is the idea that some fights aren't as important so they go
• 1:23:00
  by quicker. Like the character does one cool
• 1:23:02
  move and the fight's over kind of vibe.
• 1:23:05
  But it is one of those weird things where I'm like, in
• 1:23:09
  universe, how do you explain that some duels have different
• 1:23:13
  life point values than others? That feels weird.
• 1:23:17
  They actually talk about this. It is like a a a diegetic thing
• 1:23:22
  where people will play games like quick games for fun.
• 1:23:26
  And it's literally like a it's like queuing up a quick match in
• 1:23:30
  in Marvel rivals. Yeah, I mean, I I do remember
• 1:23:33
  the Lord of this game is pretty funny.
• 1:23:35
  It basically this the card game in universe started at the at
• 1:23:41
  crosswalks because there is so much.
• 1:23:43
  Traffic in the city that. People started playing little
• 1:23:47
  starred card games while they were waiting for the light to
• 1:23:49
  turn green so they could walk across the street.
• 1:23:51
  Yeah. And then eventually, like, all
• 1:23:54
  of the different. This is so wild.
• 1:23:55
  All of the different card games kind of amalgamated into one
• 1:23:59
  card game. Because it turns out the one
• 1:24:01
  card game came from Athens, from a tablet that was found under
• 1:24:05
  the Parthenon that may have been made by the goddess Athena.
• 1:24:08
  Dude, the game gets fucking. I mean.
• 1:24:12
  I mean, that's no more ridiculous than the ancient
• 1:24:14
  Egyptian Pharaohs making dual monsters, so yeah, sure.
• 1:24:17
  Yep, Yep. So yeah, it started the game
• 1:24:20
  started at crosswalks. So there is actually a hyogenic
• 1:24:22
  reason as to why filler matches only have two hit points.
• 1:24:26
  Because you got to I got to get to work home he's.
• 1:24:28
  So you got to catch this L real quick.
• 1:24:32
  OK, I missed that bit, but that's funny.
• 1:24:35
  Yeah, I mean, like I said, I don't.
• 1:24:37
  I don't love. OK, no, maybe I do.
• 1:24:39
  Maybe I'm talking myself into it.
• 1:24:40
  I do kind of love the idea. I'm going to say I like the idea
• 1:24:42
  of it. I like the idea of it.
• 1:24:44
  I mean I do remember their scenes in Yu-gi-oh where they
• 1:24:46
  did that they play played with reduced life points they would
• 1:24:51
  definitely back to. To battle city life point or to
• 1:24:53
  to duelist Kingdom life points when it wasn't like super
• 1:24:55
  important. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:59
  It's dude. Seeing there are times in the
• 1:25:02
  show where they reference play, like they don't specifically say
• 1:25:05
  it, but they'll like they'll play by Battle City, which is
• 1:25:07
  like what most people would assume, you know, Yu-gi-oh was
• 1:25:11
  like, you know, 2003, 2004 or, you know, sacrifice or tribute
• 1:25:15
  summoning, occasional special summoning, stuff like that.
• 1:25:19
  Yeah, emphasis special. Summoning was actually special,
• 1:25:22
  Yeah. Yeah, did you know that in in
• 1:25:26
  Duelist Kingdom rules or Yu-gi-oh you couldn't attack
• 1:25:29
  directly, You could only reduce life points through monster
• 1:25:34
  destruction? You couldn't attack life points.
• 1:25:37
  Yeah, in in Battle City you could not in.
• 1:25:39
  The first main arc? What?
• 1:25:40
  Oh yes, what? Yep.
• 1:25:42
  Wait, No, no, no, no, wait, no. Battle City is the the one when
• 1:25:45
  Kaiba puts it on puts on the turn right?
• 1:25:46
  So in in Battle City you can attack life points directly.
• 1:25:49
  Kaiba makes a specific mention about it.
• 1:25:52
  Oh, but. When it was.
• 1:25:54
  When they're on the island, they can't.
• 1:25:56
  Yes, that. That's why they're that's why it
• 1:25:58
  feels like turns go by super quickly in Duelist's Kingdom,
• 1:26:01
  because no one's actually attacking each other.
• 1:26:04
  You can only do, you can have a a board full of monsters.
• 1:26:08
  You can't do anything until the enemy has a monster on the
• 1:26:11
  wheel. That's so fucking stupid.
• 1:26:14
  Like in terms of actual card game logic rules?
• 1:26:17
  That's so dumb. It does make sense why the hit
• 1:26:20
  point, like the hit point counter, was so low at the start
• 1:26:22
  of that. Would make it lower.
• 1:26:23
  Yeah. Because it was only 2000, right?
• 1:26:25
  Yeah, yeah. And a monster like you know, yes
• 1:26:29
  red eyes, sorry blue eyes has 3000 attack points but most
• 1:26:33
  monsters are in the like 800 to 1400 range so that isn't
• 1:26:39
  actually a one hit kill. Yeah.
• 1:26:41
  So it does. In a weird self reliant logic it
• 1:26:46
  does make sense. That's weird too because I don't
• 1:26:48
  think that was ever the case in real life.
• 1:26:50
  I'm pretty sure attacking direct attacks were always a thing in
• 1:26:53
  the actual game. We should look that up after the
• 1:26:56
  fact and report back to me. Perhaps, yeah, but I'm I'm
• 1:26:59
  pretty sure that's so weird anyway.
• 1:27:04
  Yeah, like most TC GS, there are designated plate zones with on A
• 1:27:11
  and on any particular board you have your deck, your hand, your.
• 1:27:15
  Field and your. Graveyard.
• 1:27:18
  Look, everything I've seen in the last three weeks has
• 1:27:21
  referred to it as the board, so leave me alone.
• 1:27:23
  It's a mat. It's a play mat.
• 1:27:25
  Everyone calls it a board. I don't know what you want me to
• 1:27:27
  say. I always called it the field.
• 1:27:30
  They're wrong. It's a mat, OK.
• 1:27:32
  Well, argue with the rest of the TCG community, don't argue with
• 1:27:36
  me. Oh bye.
• 1:27:37
  The interesting fact when you play the TCG in this game, you
• 1:27:42
  actually play a trading card game.
• 1:27:44
  The game tells you that like there is a a card creation tool
• 1:27:48
  that you can make your cards and then line them out on like a you
• 1:27:51
  know what, 11 by 8, print it out, cut it out and literally
• 1:27:55
  play a card game. Like I don't know how you do
• 1:27:57
  this on a on a VTT. On a virtual I had the same
• 1:28:00
  thought. I was like, this would be, I
• 1:28:02
  mean you, I. Tried.
• 1:28:03
  I tried fucking around with the the like card deck system in
• 1:28:06
  roll 20 that every game comes with and I couldn't.
• 1:28:10
  I was like, the game doesn't allow you to search your deck,
• 1:28:13
  it doesn't allow you to put specific cards back in and
• 1:28:16
  reshuffle the deck. It doesn't you.
• 1:28:18
  Would you would have to basically, I don't know that
• 1:28:23
  one. Yeah, I had the thought.
• 1:28:24
  I don't know how you would do it.
• 1:28:25
  You'd have to figure out some kind of like weird proprietary
• 1:28:31
  API handout thing where like you basically would make a a handout
• 1:28:39
  folder that represents a person's deck.
• 1:28:41
  And then you would have to generate like an API that lets
• 1:28:44
  you randomly pull from it. But also you have to be able to
• 1:28:48
  search from it. Like it's doable, but it's you
• 1:28:52
  need to make like a custom tool. I'd have to check you.
• 1:28:55
  You probably. Yeah.
• 1:28:56
  You'd have to use a table plugin.
• 1:29:00
  Well, they'd be in. That's why I said it'd be an
• 1:29:01
  API. Yeah, because you.
• 1:29:04
  Know what I mean? It it couldn't like yeah, roll
• 1:29:08
  20's default settings would not allow, but if you could make a
• 1:29:11
  custom sheet set up there would you could figure something out.
• 1:29:16
  But yeah, I I had that thought. I don't, I don't know what I
• 1:29:19
  would do. Like, I mean, some kind of
• 1:29:23
  honour system where everybody makes their deck on like note
• 1:29:26
  cards IRL and then just tells the GM what they're drawing, I
• 1:29:32
  guess. Yeah.
• 1:29:34
  I mean, it's not great. No, I mean, here's the thing, I,
• 1:29:37
  I don't know, playing with like our friends, I wouldn't, I would
• 1:29:43
  trust people to abide, to abide by an honor system, right?
• 1:29:45
  Like. Certain games where when we're
• 1:29:47
  playing D&D, someone's like, I'm going to roll this real dice.
• 1:29:50
  You don't know if they actually rolled it.
• 1:29:51
  But most of the time people are like, I still roll the 10.
• 1:29:53
  You know, it's it's not so much the lying about it that I'd be
• 1:29:57
  worried about so much as the like keeping track and the
• 1:30:01
  keeping everyone on the same page and the managing, because
• 1:30:05
  your deck is going to change a lot in this game, right?
• 1:30:08
  Because you swap out cards pretty often.
• 1:30:11
  You can literally create new cards on the fly during a match.
• 1:30:15
  Like it's just the management of it all.
• 1:30:18
  Not so much about the someone cheating at that I'm worried
• 1:30:21
  about, you know what I mean? Fair enough.
• 1:30:23
  Yeah, Yeah, on the topic of the cards, we'll start actually on
• 1:30:28
  the topic of the severities. I think it's worth mentioning
• 1:30:31
  you have three different severities.
• 1:30:32
  You have filler, significant and finale level severities.
• 1:30:37
  What they dictate specifically are your starting life points,
• 1:30:41
  the starting cards in your hand. You actually have different
• 1:30:43
  cards that you can put into your hand at Round 1 based on the
• 1:30:46
  severity on the opponent's side, which is to say the NPCS.
• 1:30:51
  It shifts how many response moves they have, which we'll
• 1:30:53
  talk about those later, as well as their oh God, what are they
• 1:31:00
  called their threat moves. There we go.
• 1:31:06
  It shifts how many threat moves you have.
• 1:31:08
  Yes. As far as the actual cards that
• 1:31:11
  you get to play with concerned, there are typically there are
• 1:31:14
  there are 4 main categories of card.
• 1:31:17
  You have your Warrior card. Warrior cards are synonymous
• 1:31:20
  with monster or creature cards from other TC GS.
• 1:31:23
  They are the primary means of combat that you're going to be
• 1:31:25
  interacting with as a player. Neither you nor the opponent can
• 1:31:32
  be attacked directly as long as there are warrior cards on the
• 1:31:35
  field, and they exist in three strength categories.
• 1:31:38
  We have Weak, normal, and strong.
• 1:31:41
  Generally speaking, stronger monsters will always beat weaker
• 1:31:44
  ones in clashes, which are to say attacks.
• 1:31:47
  If monsters of equal strength attack each other, the player
• 1:31:50
  and the judge will roll to see who wins.
• 1:31:52
  Or sorry, the the player will roll to see who wins.
• 1:31:55
  No, it is both of them using the decide the outcome of a Clash
• 1:31:58
  CJC move. Weak monsters cannot deal direct
• 1:32:03
  damage to players at all, again unless stated otherwise.
• 1:32:07
  And when it comes to damage, strong monsters always deal 2,
• 1:32:11
  and as you can expect, normal monsters always deal one unless
• 1:32:15
  stated otherwise. After that you have item cards.
• 1:32:19
  Freedom cards acts as both field field cards, kind of like field
• 1:32:23
  spells in Yu-gi-oh, and equip cards also like Yu-gi-oh and act
• 1:32:28
  similarly to warriors in that they can destroy warriors, they
• 1:32:31
  have a strength rating, and they can deal damage directly to the
• 1:32:34
  opponent, not through attacking. However, they don't actually
• 1:32:38
  need to be destroyed to attack someone directly, and they can't
• 1:32:42
  necessarily make tax make attacks themselves.
• 1:32:45
  They can be targeted and attacked.
• 1:32:50
  Third, you have your invocation. Invocations are spell cards
• 1:32:53
  like. These are most spell trap cards.
• 1:32:56
  Yes, they are usually usually singled use effects that can
• 1:33:02
  affect the field or in a bunch of ways.
• 1:33:07
  Implications when you design them can be some of the
• 1:33:10
  strongest cards in the game due to their temporary nature and
• 1:33:13
  they provide you the most effect points that you can slap onto
• 1:33:17
  them in the the card creation system.
• 1:33:21
  The final category are staple cards, which are essentially
• 1:33:24
  generic weaker cards that you can customize in terms of their
• 1:33:28
  name and their their their theme, but the mechanics always
• 1:33:32
  remain the same. I did.
• 1:33:34
  I did find it slightly odd that staple cards are weaker.
• 1:33:38
  That was a little counterintuitive to me.
• 1:33:41
  Be it's because staple cards cannot have effects on like they
• 1:33:45
  they can't come with any effects.
• 1:33:47
  Yeah, like I get it it it's Yugi playing Celtic Guardian, but my
• 1:33:51
  initial reaction was like, oh, staples are weaker.
• 1:33:55
  Yeah, they also another reason why they're weaker is because
• 1:33:58
  they don't enter the graveyard. So they you have, you don't have
• 1:34:02
  reliable ways of replaying one once it's lost.
• 1:34:07
  When it comes to playing a staple, you can't play the same
• 1:34:09
  staple 2 times or you can't play it two turns in a row.
• 1:34:14
  So that can change a lot of things, especially if you're, if
• 1:34:17
  your deck relies on staples to keep your, you know, keep
• 1:34:19
  yourself defended if they wipe them, you can't activate an
• 1:34:24
  invocation and bring 1 back. You'd have to do something that
• 1:34:26
  lets you play another one, but you can't because of the twice a
• 1:34:30
  turn thing. Side note, Invocation as a name
• 1:34:34
  I I don't love Invocation, I'm going to be honest.
• 1:34:37
  No, I I I feel like they could have gotten away with spell
• 1:34:39
  cards I I like. Spell cards spell, right?
• 1:34:42
  I feel like like spell isn't can't you can't copyright the
• 1:34:45
  word spell. Like, yeah.
• 1:34:48
  Yeah, a weird thing is that technically you can't use trap
• 1:34:53
  cards in the conventional way. No, Yeah, there's no trap.
• 1:34:57
  Card. What you can do is when you
• 1:35:00
  create an invocation card, you can make it a permanent card
• 1:35:04
  which will affect the like effect point layout and you can
• 1:35:08
  give it the fumble clause or the fumble effect, which is to say
• 1:35:12
  it can counter an enemy move when they do that thing.
• 1:35:16
  So it it it's a trap card in so far as the player can know when
• 1:35:22
  that thing. Oh, no, no, actually you can
• 1:35:23
  treat it like a trap card because you as a player can.
• 1:35:27
  What's it? What's the move called?
• 1:35:29
  Respond to an enemy or respond to a threat.
• 1:35:32
  So you can use an invocation like a trap card and then you
• 1:35:34
  can use like a fumble. But rules is written without
• 1:35:36
  that CGC move. You can't use it that way.
• 1:35:40
  Yes, there aren't cards that are explicitly called trap cards.
• 1:35:45
  Yeah, by the way, CGC just means cardi in combat.
• 1:35:49
  I'm just not going to say Cardi in combat every two seconds
• 1:35:53
  during that players and opponents or players and players
• 1:35:58
  will take turns making moves and we're trying to reduce their
• 1:36:01
  enemy's life points to 0. On your turn, you have a a
• 1:36:06
  sequence of events that you can follow.
• 1:36:08
  I don't believe that you have to do them all, but you can do all
• 1:36:11
  of them. And that is draw a card, play a
• 1:36:15
  card from your hand, play a staple or invocation attack with
• 1:36:18
  warriors, and turn the rules is written.
• 1:36:22
  You can play at least or at most 2 cards a turn unless a card has
• 1:36:27
  an effect that says otherwise. Assume that that's the case.
• 1:36:30
  If I say you cannot do a thing, assume that an effect can
• 1:36:33
  override that in a niche situation because that's how
• 1:36:38
  that's kind of how the game treats it.
• 1:36:39
  It's like you can't do that and then 20 pages later it says
• 1:36:42
  effects can actually make that happen.
• 1:36:43
  So just assume that that's where we're going to go from.
• 1:36:46
  I mean, that's how you have to treat TC GS in general.
• 1:36:48
  Like you can't do X unless the special effects as you can.
• 1:36:52
  Yeah, that's kind of just TC GS. It's it's true.
• 1:36:58
  I had to look this up too because it apparently it was a
• 1:37:01
  little bit of a source of contention.
• 1:37:03
  You can do everything on the your turn section in one turn.
• 1:37:08
  I saw some people asking like can I only draw a card or play a
• 1:37:11
  card or play an invocation or staple?
• 1:37:13
  No, you can do them all. One thing I know is.
• 1:37:18
  It's phases like in Yu-gi-oh right?
• 1:37:19
  You have draw phase standby phase main phase one into same
• 1:37:23
  idea. Yes, I like given the like
• 1:37:28
  expedited nature of the game, I could see a situation where if
• 1:37:31
  you're playing a you could only do one.
• 1:37:34
  But yeah, the only thing I don't know is if you can like let's
• 1:37:37
  say you're 1 card away from decking out, which will always
• 1:37:39
  reduce you one life point. I don't know if there's a
• 1:37:42
  situation where you can just not draw a card or if you can, yeah,
• 1:37:46
  I don't know. I'd have to look into that more
• 1:37:48
  or maybe I missed it somewhere. But no.
• 1:37:51
  Yeah, well, actually, hold on. Because it says you can choose
• 1:37:53
  to draw a card. Yeah, so you could not draw.
• 1:37:56
  So you could, so that's interesting because I would,
• 1:37:58
  there's a, there's a playbook called the Ally and the starter
• 1:38:02
  deck for that one is actually pretty cool.
• 1:38:03
  It's based on tabletop role-playing games and the card
• 1:38:06
  relies on the fact that the cards can't be sent to the
• 1:38:08
  graveyard. Whenever they're destroyed, they
• 1:38:10
  go back to your hand. But if you always have a full
• 1:38:13
  hand of cards, you sort of auto deck yourself out just by having
• 1:38:18
  them. It's really the Slifer thing.
• 1:38:20
  So how would you get away from that?
• 1:38:22
  But you know, if you don't have to draw, you could just have
• 1:38:23
  your your hand and just be big chilling and not worry about it.
• 1:38:27
  Is there a hand Max? Did they say there's a maximum
• 1:38:29
  hand? I don't remember seeing that.
• 1:38:30
  No, no, there's no hand Max. No, right.
• 1:38:32
  Yeah, OK. No worth mentioning.
• 1:38:36
  You can have a or you can. You need a minimum of four cards
• 1:38:39
  at level 1. You have to create 4 cards.
• 1:38:42
  Your deck can always always has to be at least 4 cards.
• 1:38:45
  Yeah, decks are not huge. No, you can only have a maximum
• 1:38:50
  of 88. The game recommends 4 to 6.
• 1:38:54
  Given how fast the game moves I I can't imagine the game is
• 1:38:57
  going to go farther than like 5 turns at the longest.
• 1:39:02
  I mean the longest card battles you can have are four life and
• 1:39:06
  any attack. Any attack from basic warrior is
• 1:39:10
  subtracting one life, so. Yeah, I I can't imagine do the.
• 1:39:14
  Math on that. If a strong.
• 1:39:16
  Warrior takes 2 life. Yeah, I can't imagine a game
• 1:39:24
  lasting longer than an hour and a half like a standard
• 1:39:29
  significant dual. I can't see lasting more than an
• 1:39:31
  hour. I don't.
• 1:39:32
  Yeah, I was going to say probably an hour at most.
• 1:39:35
  And, and honestly, this seems like the kind of game that once
• 1:39:38
  you get pretty good at it, you could turn through battles
• 1:39:42
  pretty fast. You could well, given how like
• 1:39:45
  actual Yu-gi-oh like tournaments play out where it's like 20
• 1:39:49
  minutes to a round in tournament like if that like I've seen how
• 1:39:55
  many times were like it's like the the who's the, the chess
• 1:39:58
  player Magnus something where he like sits down and wins a
• 1:40:01
  championship match and yeah, when he wins a match and like. 2
• 1:40:06
  minutes and 45 seconds and the guy like his opponent's just
• 1:40:09
  like, how did he do that to me? So yeah, that is that does
• 1:40:14
  actually make the the idea of having like, you know, three or
• 1:40:19
  two other players that aren't doing anything, like, yeah,
• 1:40:21
  they're sitting around for an hour.
• 1:40:23
  But it's not like D&D where everyone is sitting around,
• 1:40:27
  where every person is sitting around for 20 minutes, does
• 1:40:30
  something for 5 minutes, and you sit around doing nothing again
• 1:40:32
  for 20 minutes. Like, well, it's also not even.
• 1:40:34
  Well, yeah, there's, there's, there's two things.
• 1:40:37
  There's two elements to it, right?
• 1:40:38
  In D&D, sometimes you do nothing for 25 minutes and then do
• 1:40:42
  nothing for five seconds and then go back to doing nothing,
• 1:40:45
  right? So there's that.
• 1:40:47
  But the other thing too is in this situation, if you're
• 1:40:50
  playing a finale game, right, which is the highest amount of
• 1:40:54
  life points that you could potentially have, you're the
• 1:40:58
  other two players. If it's a singular player doing
• 1:41:00
  it, the other two players know they're like, OK, I don't need
• 1:41:04
  to pay attention right now. And it's not like I because like
• 1:41:07
  AD and D, you have to wait for your turn to come around.
• 1:41:10
  So you need to be paying enough attention to know when it's your
• 1:41:12
  turn. But in this you don't even you
• 1:41:14
  won't even have a turn, so you could just zone out until the
• 1:41:17
  game's over and you're good. No, you're not going to get
• 1:41:20
  randomly called on. So you can kind of just be like,
• 1:41:22
  all right, I'm chilling for an hour.
• 1:41:24
  I'm just going to watch and you don't need to stress it too
• 1:41:27
  much. And then also again, there are
• 1:41:30
  team battles and group battle rules, so you can do multi
• 1:41:33
  person rules. And if most of the fights are
• 1:41:35
  going to be, I feel like the game kind of intends to do
• 1:41:38
  filler fights like most of the time until you get to the
• 1:41:42
  important shit. So those are going to go pretty
• 1:41:44
  quick. Oh, see, I feel like you're
• 1:41:47
  probably going to do significant fights, but even then your Max
• 1:41:50
  HPS 3 like you can't attack on your first turn.
• 1:41:56
  So that does help things. But yeah, the second you get to
• 1:42:00
  turn 2, if I spent turn 1 pulling out my oh, actually, you
• 1:42:05
  can't summon your eight. No, you can.
• 1:42:07
  So the ace thing is a is a unique mechanic that gets a
• 1:42:09
  little noodle. But like if I dropped a strong
• 1:42:12
  two strength ace and then on the second turn played an
• 1:42:16
  invocation, yeah, played in a vacation, destroyed a monster
• 1:42:23
  and summoned A staple, that was another strong, another strong
• 1:42:26
  monster You could win on on round three, like start of round
• 1:42:33
  three you'd win ideally. Yeah, that's like a rough down
• 1:42:39
  in dirty math. I don't know if that's 100% like
• 1:42:41
  checks out, but it passes this melt.
• 1:42:43
  So that's all that really matters on that one.
• 1:42:45
  It gets the point across. Yeah, what I was going to say is
• 1:42:50
  there is actually a reason why you'd have people like standing
• 1:42:54
  around watching your duel. Because there are situations I
• 1:42:56
  could see where you as the audience can you pull general
• 1:43:01
  moves to to create effects in the duel.
• 1:43:07
  Right. If you're dueling like, you
• 1:43:08
  know, your friend mind controlled by the evil Seros
• 1:43:12
  seal of whatever the shit you can use things like, you know,
• 1:43:17
  appeal to their feelings and you know it says for the judge, let
• 1:43:22
  your let your NPCS do things that are suboptimal if it makes
• 1:43:26
  sense. So like having a player have
• 1:43:29
  them play stupid. Yeah, have them play stupid if
• 1:43:31
  it makes sense. And like, don't play
• 1:43:34
  specifically to counter your players unless the NPC is an NPC
• 1:43:39
  who would study the players before dueling them so they
• 1:43:41
  could counter them. Like so there is things that you
• 1:43:45
  can do out of combat to effect in combat to potentially speed
• 1:43:48
  up or slow down the fight for your discretion.
• 1:43:51
  To that point though, there are specific card game combat moves
• 1:43:57
  and we are going to go over them once again, just going to
• 1:44:01
  describe them all quickly. And then we're going to go into
• 1:44:04
  a little more detail. The card combat, the card combat
• 1:44:07
  moves are as follows. Begin card game combat beside
• 1:44:12
  the outcome of a clash. Risk everything to win.
• 1:44:16
  Play your ace. Take control of the game.
• 1:44:19
  Draw the perfect card. Counter your opponent's play.
• 1:44:23
  Protect against a response. Reflect after card game combat.
• 1:44:29
  Now, you may have realized that some of these are they're just
• 1:44:34
  sort of the natural events of things like no matter what, you
• 1:44:39
  will always use the begin card game combat move because
• 1:44:43
  whenever you start a card game, you have to use that move,
• 1:44:46
  right. So I almost don't know why
• 1:44:50
  they're called moves. I feel like they should have
• 1:44:52
  just been called phases of combat and then have, you know,
• 1:44:54
  the card game combat moves maybe a separate thing that's folded
• 1:44:57
  into the general moves. I don't really know because like
• 1:45:02
  I said, there are some that come up once and never again.
• 1:45:04
  That being said, getting into them obviously begin cardigan
• 1:45:08
  combat. It's basically the initiative.
• 1:45:10
  You decide who goes first. If you've prepared for the
• 1:45:14
  fight, which to say that in the narrative you understand that
• 1:45:16
  there is a fight coming up, you can specifically create a card
• 1:45:20
  and shuffle it into your deck before the fight starts.
• 1:45:22
  Or if you're the prodigy, say screw you I have money.
• 1:45:27
  After that you decide whether or not the fight is filler,
• 1:45:30
  significant, or a finale. Then decide again or I'm sorry.
• 1:45:34
  That's when you decide the order of turn.
• 1:45:35
  Warriors cannot attack if it's the first start of the game, and
• 1:45:39
  you cannot draw if it's the first start of the game. 2nd is
• 1:45:44
  decide the outcome of clash. This is pretty much the attack
• 1:45:48
  move anytime that a monster or a warrior.
• 1:45:52
  In Yu-gi-oh things, anytime a warrior attacks another warrior
• 1:45:56
  of equal strength, then you roll a clash.
• 1:46:01
  The clash is rolled by the person who is making the attack,
• 1:46:06
  so I don't necessarily know how this is supposed to work on the
• 1:46:11
  opponent's side. I may have missed something
• 1:46:13
  because I don't know what what modifiers the opponent is
• 1:46:16
  putting on their roles, but on A10 Plus, obviously your card
• 1:46:19
  wins. On a 7 to 9, both cards are of
• 1:46:22
  equal strength. Decide if neither or both of
• 1:46:24
  them wins, which is to say if they're neither or both of them
• 1:46:28
  are destroyed or on a six or less, your opponent wins.
• 1:46:35
  Like we said before, Warriors can destroy both other warriors
• 1:46:39
  and item cards, although items are not necessarily needed to be
• 1:46:44
  destroyed in order to deal damage.
• 1:46:49
  One use of advantage that then we talked about before is if you
• 1:46:52
  lose a clash, you can actually spend an advantage to win a
• 1:46:56
  clash, which I think is pretty cool.
• 1:46:58
  Yeah, again, baggage making you better at the card game.
• 1:47:02
  Yeah, this is the the you know, when Kaiba has Obelisk and he
• 1:47:05
  sacrifices the two guards and someone's like, I have a trap
• 1:47:08
  card and he just goes, it's it Obelisk isn't a card, it's a
• 1:47:12
  God. And then just ignores the TCG to
• 1:47:16
  do a big button. Dude, that's my favorite line.
• 1:47:22
  You can there's no card that can do that.
• 1:47:24
  Obelisk isn't a card. He's a God.
• 1:47:29
  Yeah, except he's literally a piece of fucking cardboard that
• 1:47:31
  you just played on because shut the fuck up.
• 1:47:34
  Fuck. What the fuck does that mean?
• 1:47:36
  Kobe Bryant? I'm sorry.
• 1:47:41
  I just. I love that line.
• 1:47:42
  No, I mean it's it's just Kaiba being Kaiba things.
• 1:47:45
  It's dude. He's dude.
• 1:47:46
  Kaiba is my favorite diva. He's so good bro.
• 1:47:51
  He's the only character in that show who actively sees real
• 1:47:56
  magic happening with no hologram projectors, insight.
• 1:48:00
  And he's like, these holograms look pretty real.
• 1:48:03
  Yeah, Dog, you at some level you have to know and you're just
• 1:48:08
  rage baiting. You have to know, you know, your
• 1:48:12
  technology isn't in this fucking city.
• 1:48:14
  We're not in Domino's city, Dog. What the fuck are you talking
• 1:48:18
  about? Bro don't give a fuck, he knows
• 1:48:22
  how he built. Bro refuses to believe magic
• 1:48:26
  exists. It's it's had his soul stolen by
• 1:48:30
  magic and afterwards was like that shit didn't happen.
• 1:48:34
  Bro literally gets so deep. He he he gets so deep in the I
• 1:48:38
  have money sauce. He invents technology to go to
• 1:48:41
  the fucking to go. To the afterlife.
• 1:48:44
  He goes to the afterlife for salty run backs.
• 1:48:48
  For the salty run back, the saltiest run back in all of
• 1:48:51
  time. It's so good bro.
• 1:48:55
  Kaiba's built different. He is Kaiba is literally built
• 1:48:58
  different. Speaking of which, the next move
• 1:49:01
  is risk everything to win. Which is to say, essentially
• 1:49:06
  what it does is it is a move that forces you to gain baggage,
• 1:49:11
  but it always it gives you it gives you more advantage than
• 1:49:17
  you have baggage. So if you succeed on A10 plus,
• 1:49:21
  you still gain baggage, but you gain two advantage on a 7 to 9,
• 1:49:26
  you get 1 baggage, one advantage on his sixth or less, you just
• 1:49:30
  gained baggage. He had just gained baggage.
• 1:49:32
  This is cool because you essentially it's the you know,
• 1:49:36
  it's it's the the Joey like passing out to beat Merrick and
• 1:49:40
  he does still lose the end. But like the fact that he took a
• 1:49:42
  real physical damage to like push through to fight.
• 1:49:45
  Still, it forces your character in a disadvantageous position
• 1:49:49
  narratively to put them in a better position mechanically,
• 1:49:53
  which I like a lot. After that, you have play your
• 1:49:57
  Ace card. Your ace is a specific tag that
• 1:50:01
  one of your cards gets. Like I said, you always need to
• 1:50:03
  have one ace. I believe that it can be an item
• 1:50:07
  card. It can't be an invocation as far
• 1:50:09
  as I'm aware. It can be a.
• 1:50:10
  Warrior or an item I think. So if I'm reading this
• 1:50:15
  correctly, you don't need to pull this move to play your ace.
• 1:50:19
  You can play your ace whenever. But it says when you are behind
• 1:50:23
  in a game and you play an ace card, describe how the card
• 1:50:27
  makes you feel assured in yourself and you gain one
• 1:50:29
  advantage. After that you have take control
• 1:50:33
  of the game. Essentially you can spend
• 1:50:38
  advantage to get different different abilities so you can
• 1:50:41
  draw an additional card. You can place a card of your
• 1:50:45
  choice from your deck to the top.
• 1:50:47
  You can top deck. You can literally mechanically
• 1:50:49
  top deck, which is great, or you can do the thing where you
• 1:50:53
  survive a game losing strike and then you can you narratively
• 1:50:57
  explain how you did that, you know, pulling your your Karibo
• 1:51:00
  out of your ass and doing whatever after that you have
• 1:51:04
  draw the perfect card. So when you feel like you are
• 1:51:10
  going to lose the card game, and this is important when you feel
• 1:51:14
  as though you're going to lose a card game and you are going on
• 1:51:17
  your you're at the draw phase of your turn, you can spend
• 1:51:20
  advantage to create a card straight up wholesale, create a
• 1:51:24
  new card and add it to your hand.
• 1:51:27
  This card is added to your deck after the battle and remains a
• 1:51:31
  part of it until removed by, you know, something like a banish.
• 1:51:36
  Removed by choice basically. If you have an ace in your deck,
• 1:51:43
  you can use this mechanic to create a new Ace.
• 1:51:46
  This is the like, you know, this is Joey doing the like red eyes
• 1:51:52
  to the flaming swordsman. Yeah, yeah, or or and Yugi being
• 1:51:56
  like surprised motherfucker. Dark magician girl.
• 1:52:00
  I do. I love dark magician girl.
• 1:52:01
  I don't like that she took over as his ace because I like my boy
• 1:52:05
  dark Magician too Dark magician better.
• 1:52:06
  Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah later in after after the
• 1:52:12
  season where she shows up, they sort of both become because he
• 1:52:14
  uses them like as tandem cards a lot.
• 1:52:17
  But yeah, for a lot of battle cities, she wasn't as a was the
• 1:52:20
  ace and I was a little sad. But yes, you can essentially use
• 1:52:23
  this to replace your your ace with a new one.
• 1:52:26
  That old ace loses its tag, which is important because
• 1:52:31
  giving the ace tag gives it a couple of abilities.
• 1:52:34
  For example, your ace tag always costs less.
• 1:52:40
  It gives you additional effect points to spend on because your
• 1:52:43
  special card gets to be a little cooler than all the other cards.
• 1:52:45
  Your crystal cars gets to be a little more powerful than most
• 1:52:48
  other cars generally can be. Yes.
• 1:52:51
  So like loses that at card creation when you make it?
• 1:52:54
  Yes, when it loses that effect. You might have to have a talk
• 1:52:58
  with your DM about removing one of the extra abilities because
• 1:53:00
  it's no longer the ace of your deck, but that is sort of
• 1:53:04
  happens when it happens. Yeah, this game has a lot of
• 1:53:07
  like, there's a lot of. Ability.
• 1:53:11
  Yeah, there's a lot of abilities that the game lets you do where
• 1:53:14
  your opponent's going to be. Like that's some bullshit you
• 1:53:15
  just pulled. Yes, that is that is sort of
• 1:53:18
  hard baked into the game on purpose.
• 1:53:20
  I think it's awesome. I I mean again, it it fits the
• 1:53:23
  genre of anime quite well, but it is very funny.
• 1:53:26
  Also the idea that like this card is no longer my specially
• 1:53:29
  awesome card so it just its effect just magically changes is
• 1:53:33
  like what? Ow don't.
• 1:53:37
  Worry about it? Yeah, Don't.
• 1:53:39
  Don't ask. After you draw the perfect card,
• 1:53:43
  you have counter your opponent's play.
• 1:53:44
  This is the trap card ability. You do have to spend advantage.
• 1:53:49
  You also have to roll with tension.
• 1:53:52
  The thing I like about this, and there are a couple abilities in
• 1:53:54
  this game that follows rule. You only have to roll A7 up.
• 1:53:59
  You don't have to roll the full 10 to get the the result you
• 1:54:01
  want with no complications. So with this, you roll A7 up.
• 1:54:04
  You counter the effect or game action on a six or less.
• 1:54:08
  If you fail to counter, you cannot attempt to counter the
• 1:54:11
  same effect again. So if the opponent has a card,
• 1:54:15
  has an effect that wipes all your monsters off the field and
• 1:54:20
  you try to counter it and fail, you cannot use this move again
• 1:54:23
  even if you have advantage. That effect just has to go
• 1:54:25
  through. Finally, you have protect
• 1:54:29
  against a response. So this move you use, both of
• 1:54:32
  these moves I should say you use specifically when your opponent,
• 1:54:36
  be it another player or the GM acts against you.
• 1:54:40
  Protect against a response is also kind of the trap card, but
• 1:54:44
  it doesn't negatively affect the other player.
• 1:54:47
  This is the like this is the magical hats card, right?
• 1:54:51
  When someone tries to destroy Dark Magician and he puts in the
• 1:54:54
  magic hats and you can't destroy it, it's that.
• 1:54:58
  Yeah. And that's it for the card game
• 1:55:03
  combat move. I think they're interesting
• 1:55:06
  because did you mention draw the perfect card?
• 1:55:10
  Did I forget that one? I did, yeah.
• 1:55:13
  Don't we talk about when you draw your ace?
• 1:55:15
  Oh, right. Right.
• 1:55:17
  Like I said, I think these moves are interesting because a lot of
• 1:55:20
  them just occur naturally. You don't have to try to do
• 1:55:23
  them, they just happen. Oh yeah, also reflect after
• 1:55:28
  reflect after card game combat. Oh yeah, yeah, sorry.
• 1:55:31
  The last one is reflect after car rated card game combat.
• 1:55:34
  Essentially this is this is the point in the game that sort of
• 1:55:38
  leads into the see if any of your baggage was resolved during
• 1:55:44
  add new baggage. If not, you have a chance to
• 1:55:47
  remove cards from your deck if you don't feel like it was
• 1:55:49
  working at that time. You also get XP.
• 1:55:53
  It's also when you get XP. Yes.
• 1:55:58
  Quick addendum, the section at directly after the the card game
• 1:56:04
  combat moves. They talk about the keywords
• 1:56:06
  when designing cards. We're going to save that for a
• 1:56:10
  later episode because it's just kind of weirdly placed that it
• 1:56:14
  makes more sense if we talk about this within the confines
• 1:56:17
  of describing card creation. Especially have a week in
• 1:56:19
  between. So which evolves basically
• 1:56:22
  advanced calculus to do? It's not that bad.
• 1:56:27
  It's not, but it feels like it. It's funny.
• 1:56:31
  Instead, and you might be like, oh this feel like it should be
• 1:56:35
  in the duty on section. It's not I agree.
• 1:56:37
  Don't worry. We're going to speak about the
• 1:56:39
  opponent's turn for the sake of this opponent refers to
• 1:56:44
  characters under the the the judge, which is to say the GM is
• 1:56:48
  control. Opponents are unique because
• 1:56:52
  they lack decks. They don't have a hand, they
• 1:56:55
  don't have a graveyard. Yeah, this really threw me for a
• 1:56:58
  loop. Dude, I know.
• 1:57:01
  I'm really why? I do understand why I I don't
• 1:57:05
  know if I understand how you're supposed to do it.
• 1:57:12
  So here's The funny thing. You create.
• 1:57:17
  You create a deck, but you don't create a deck.
• 1:57:19
  You create deck gimmicks and deck mechanics without needing
• 1:57:23
  to create specific deck cards. So when you look at the back of
• 1:57:28
  the book, the the opponents, they have like a list of
• 1:57:32
  different encounters you can have and all of them have deck
• 1:57:35
  mechanics in them. Like yes, this plays a monster
• 1:57:39
  that's this and it has this effect.
• 1:57:41
  It has this and has it. So you do all that and then use
• 1:57:45
  the specific card game combat opponent rules to riff and fuck
• 1:57:49
  with them. Or sorry, the opposite, you use
• 1:57:51
  the the deck gimmicks to riff and fuck with the opponent
• 1:57:55
  cardigan combat moves. Like I get it conceptually, I
• 1:57:59
  don't know if IA 100% understand how to run it mechanically.
• 1:58:04
  Fair. I mean, to be clear, I don't
• 1:58:05
  necessarily know how to run it mechanically, but I I think I
• 1:58:08
  got it. Yeah, the worth again, another
• 1:58:11
  thing worth mentioning, if you as a player design a card that
• 1:58:16
  lets you take cards from your opponent's graveyard and the
• 1:58:18
  opponent in this situation is an NPC, that card does still
• 1:58:22
  resolve. It basically just tells the GM
• 1:58:26
  you don't have to create cards, but if you like have the idea of
• 1:58:30
  what a card of this nature would be so.
• 1:58:33
  Which is kind of a pain in the ass, I'm not going to lie.
• 1:58:37
  It it can be, but I think they're what they're, they're
• 1:58:40
  basically just accounting for this could be fun to use against
• 1:58:44
  other PC players, less fun to use against GM, but you can't
• 1:58:49
  tell a player that they can't use 25% of their four card, you
• 1:58:53
  know? Right.
• 1:58:54
  I, I mean the problem is that most of the time you are going
• 1:58:57
  to be facing in PCs. So like, that's just this like a
• 1:59:02
  frustrating thing to deal with as GM.
• 1:59:05
  Yeah, I mean, I think there there are a couple things that
• 1:59:06
  frustrated GM like the the idea that you are expected to lose
• 1:59:13
  like it it doesn't like it basically says you have to
• 1:59:16
  design every duel to be beatable, which.
• 1:59:18
  Yeah, you're going to lose more than you win.
• 1:59:20
  Yeah, and it's expected that you do.
• 1:59:22
  And you shouldn't, you shouldn't try to lose.
• 1:59:25
  Like don't throw the game, but the game is basically like don't
• 1:59:29
  try too hard. Like try to win.
• 1:59:31
  Like win, like, like play like you kind of want to win, but
• 1:59:33
  don't play like you need to win, you know?
• 1:59:39
  Yeah, it, it, it, the game does require a a good amount of GMs
• 1:59:44
  to just be OK with resolving. GMs have to be OK with resolving
• 1:59:56
  balance issues out of the game and not punishing the player
• 2:00:00
  within the game. You know what I mean?
• 2:00:03
  In DND we talk about like, you know, if your party is pub
• 2:00:06
  stomping everything and they're using annoying mid maxing
• 2:00:08
  munchkin combos and just, you know, drop a tarasque on them
• 2:00:11
  and laugh, which you know is only really half wrong.
• 2:00:16
  You know, like you shouldn't do it, but it is a little funny.
• 2:00:19
  This game is specifically says no, Yeah, if there's a problem
• 2:00:21
  with a card or a specific player using broken combos, don't
• 2:00:26
  resolve it in the dual. Just talk to them outside of it.
• 2:00:29
  Have a conversation. All that to say, or was I?
• 2:00:37
  Rather than having a deck and rather than having cards,
• 2:00:41
  opponents exist as a series of moves built around what are
• 2:00:45
  essentially prompts and wind conditions.
• 2:00:48
  Air moves replicate the effect and form of cards in the action
• 2:00:52
  economy, but are used as a means to counter the players and
• 2:00:56
  basically just establish challenges for them to fight
• 2:00:59
  against. Yeah, establishing a plan to win
• 2:01:05
  really confused the shit out of me.
• 2:01:08
  I'm gonna be honest. You sort of have to treat the
• 2:01:12
  the establish a plan to win like creating a puzzle.
• 2:01:14
  Like every duel is essentially a puzzle that the players are
• 2:01:17
  using their cards to solve. So the the sure the the tools
• 2:01:23
  that the that a judge has in a duel are as follows.
• 2:01:30
  Establishing a plan to win. Power card moves, simple card
• 2:01:33
  moves, response moves and then threat moves which are lash out
• 2:01:38
  against losing and reveal a back up plan.
• 2:01:40
  This. Is the other thing I was
• 2:01:42
  confused about. Power card moves also have
• 2:01:45
  simple card moves in inside of them I so I'm confused as to
• 2:01:49
  which one is which. So power card moves all have
• 2:01:54
  simple card ribbon ability and the idea and the reason why they
• 2:01:58
  separated them out was a just a catalog what the simple moves
• 2:02:01
  were like you, you will you always use power card moves, but
• 2:02:07
  as a part of a power card move, you do a simple card move and if
• 2:02:10
  you're really losing. Like in addition to.
• 2:02:13
  Yes, so you do the power card move and then you, for example,
• 2:02:21
  like after you do your move, you create a monster.
• 2:02:24
  The game says if you feel like the opponent was really losing
• 2:02:28
  hard and you weren't expecting them to lose as quickly, you can
• 2:02:32
  choose to to give the their turn a second simple card move.
• 2:02:37
  So let's see attack again, gain one health back, all those
• 2:02:41
  things. On average the the judge will be
• 2:02:47
  doing more things than the player because their cards have
• 2:02:50
  less effect or their abilities can do less.
• 2:02:54
  OK. So they give them a higher
• 2:02:56
  number of things to do, if that makes sense?
• 2:02:58
  Sure, right, they do more shit at lesser impact per per move.
• 2:03:04
  Yes, exactly. As far as the establishing a
• 2:03:09
  plan to win goes, like I said, it effectively works like a
• 2:03:12
  puzzle. It's some sort of challenge.
• 2:03:14
  You're kind. Of just you're, you're just,
• 2:03:16
  you're just making up effects and responses on the fly on the
• 2:03:22
  GM side of things, basically. Yeah, pretty much the game comes
• 2:03:28
  with four. It does expect you to riff on
• 2:03:30
  them, like on a create your own after the fact, but it does give
• 2:03:34
  you 4 to start with. That is, create a payoff, create
• 2:03:39
  an impenetrable threat, severely disadvantage the player, and put
• 2:03:43
  a timer on the game. The first one, create a payoff.
• 2:03:47
  Basically it's the the it's the Exodia, right?
• 2:03:50
  You put one piece of Exodia on the board, and every turn you
• 2:03:53
  add another piece. And maybe they can't necessarily
• 2:03:55
  be destroyed in combat, but they can be destroyed through card
• 2:03:59
  effects. So you have to figure out how to
• 2:04:01
  either circumvent it by doing burn damage or banishing the
• 2:04:06
  card from play. You have to circumvent a brute
• 2:04:08
  strategy. The second one is plain
• 2:04:12
  impenetrable threats. So that's the the obelisk.
• 2:04:15
  There's one monster on the field that's really hard to destroy,
• 2:04:19
  and it might have specific immunities, it might have like
• 2:04:25
  tags that stop it from being destroyed.
• 2:04:27
  But the ultimate way to beat the enemy is destroying that card,
• 2:04:31
  figuring out how to break the defence and destroy that card,
• 2:04:34
  because then they'll be defenseless, severely
• 2:04:37
  disadvantaged. The player is essentially just
• 2:04:40
  debuffing them into a relic or trying to debuff them so much
• 2:04:44
  that their cards are just going to be less effective and might
• 2:04:47
  be they might find extreme difficulty in fighting.
• 2:04:51
  So for example, if the game says if one of the cards that the the
• 2:04:57
  judge or the the opponent plays is a invocation, that makes
• 2:05:01
  every warrior played have the underwhelm tag, which
• 2:05:05
  essentially means it always loses clashes and the player
• 2:05:11
  needs to find a way to remove that card so they can start
• 2:05:14
  winning fights. Finally, the put a timer on the
• 2:05:18
  game. That's just a what's that?
• 2:05:22
  What's that card in Yu-gi-oh where it's like you put it down
• 2:05:24
  and in 20 turns you just win the duel?
• 2:05:26
  You can Oh. It isn't fucking doom clock or
• 2:05:30
  some shit. Something like that.
• 2:05:32
  Yet you essentially play a card that makes it so that no matter
• 2:05:36
  what happens, no matter where you are, you must say clock.
• 2:05:39
  No matter how much health either side of the party has, after a
• 2:05:43
  certain amount of turns, the opponent just wins.
• 2:05:47
  So you have to defeat them within that time.
• 2:05:52
  I was like, damn it, I lost myself in the news.
• 2:06:00
  Oh yeah, after the establishing plan, we do go out.
• 2:06:02
  We we'll talk about the power cards.
• 2:06:05
  Like I said, they are essentially they're effectively
• 2:06:13
  just streamlined combo moves. Like each individual power move
• 2:06:20
  does multiple things at once. So the first one, protect your
• 2:06:24
  game plan says play a normal warrior, a normal item or a
• 2:06:27
  normal invocation that protects your game, your DEXA game plan,
• 2:06:30
  much as making it harder to remove a key game piece or
• 2:06:33
  harder for the player to perform a disruptive action.
• 2:06:38
  Then you play a simple card move.
• 2:06:40
  So the idea being you play, for example, a warrior with blocker,
• 2:06:44
  which is to say a warrior that you can play at an intercept
• 2:06:48
  attacks, and then you play another normal warrior that you
• 2:06:53
  can then attack with. So it's always a this sort of
• 2:06:55
  1/2 play with power card moves. After each power card move,
• 2:07:00
  again you would do a simple card move which are weaker, typically
• 2:07:03
  ribbon abilities that just give the power move a slightly more
• 2:07:07
  of a punch and you can tune them up and tune them down as you see
• 2:07:11
  fit. The power card moves are protect
• 2:07:15
  your game plan, create a new threat, create an advantage,
• 2:07:19
  remove the immediate problem and disrupt the players plans and
• 2:07:24
  dawdle. I kind of love the last one.
• 2:07:27
  It's just dawdle spoilers. It lets you just play.
• 2:07:31
  It just lets you play 4 simple card moves.
• 2:07:34
  You just get to faff round and drop some shit on the board and
• 2:07:36
  see how the player deals with it.
• 2:07:37
  I think it's really funny. Yeah, like slow, slow them up.
• 2:07:41
  What if I played four normal warriors, dipshit?
• 2:07:44
  How are you going to deal with that?
• 2:07:47
  Like shit, that is actually pretty strong.
• 2:07:51
  If you if you're on turn 2 and you drop 4 warriors and then
• 2:07:54
  four warriors can attack, that in theory could wipe somebody.
• 2:07:57
  They aren't playing smart. That'd be pretty funny.
• 2:08:02
  I mean, yeah. Create a new threat is allows
• 2:08:09
  you to play a normal, a normal warrior with one or two effects
• 2:08:12
  effects like the keywords we spoke about before.
• 2:08:14
  Like I said, we'll talk about those later.
• 2:08:18
  If the monster is strong, it can I don't know why it just it can
• 2:08:22
  attack directly. Oh it it can attack directly
• 2:08:25
  because you should give it something like piercer or
• 2:08:27
  sniper. Create an advantage, play a
• 2:08:31
  normal warrior strong item in the form of protection.
• 2:08:34
  So something that has blocker something that stops it from
• 2:08:36
  attacking someone or another monster directly.
• 2:08:38
  Remove immediate problems. This is the trap card or the,
• 2:08:41
  you know, the giant trunade. This is just like wiping cards
• 2:08:45
  off the board or forcing people to stop drawing.
• 2:08:49
  Stuff like that. Disrupt players plans.
• 2:08:53
  This is explicitly the like activating trap cards,
• 2:08:56
  circumventing the players attacks and pulling interrupts.
• 2:09:02
  The simple cards are the simple card moves are pretty simple.
• 2:09:06
  Create a weak monster with blocker.
• 2:09:08
  Strengthen a warrior you control to the end of your turn.
• 2:09:11
  Create a normal warrior. Sacrifice a warrior you control
• 2:09:15
  to destroy your warrior your opponent controls with less or
• 2:09:18
  equal strength. Target warrior or opponent
• 2:09:22
  Target a warrior your opponent controls and that warrior loses
• 2:09:25
  all effects. Effect text until the start of
• 2:09:28
  your next turn. Give a warrior or item your
• 2:09:31
  opponent controls. Underwhelm.
• 2:09:33
  Gain one life or play an invocation that produces a minor
• 2:09:37
  benefit based on your gimmick slash plan to it.
• 2:09:39
  That last one is a little vague, but I don't think so vague is to
• 2:09:44
  make it unusable. After that you have response
• 2:09:51
  moves. They are reactionary moves that
• 2:09:53
  the judge can use to interrupt a player mid move, a literal trap
• 2:09:56
  card style move and disrupt their strategy.
• 2:10:01
  Like I said, it's the Yu-gi-oh trap card or the dual monster
• 2:10:04
  shield trigger my baby tornado flame of you dual monsters.
• 2:10:10
  I think the phrase response move is a little bit of a misnomer
• 2:10:16
  because there are no actual listed response moves.
• 2:10:20
  The response move is just any move that you make that
• 2:10:24
  interrupts a player that I feel like I would struggle with a
• 2:10:28
  lot. Well, it's a move in the PBTA
• 2:10:31
  parlance of the word. Right.
• 2:10:34
  But like the the moves in this game have specific effects and
• 2:10:38
  abilities. So going from specific back to
• 2:10:41
  nebulous through me for a little bit, I don't know if it through
• 2:10:43
  you as well. I mean no, because this is just
• 2:10:47
  how PBTA it's looks no different than any other PBTA move to me.
• 2:10:53
  Right, but this game is not in specifically in the cardigan.
• 2:10:56
  Combat is not built like other PBTA games.
• 2:10:58
  So like how would you use a response still given what you
• 2:11:02
  we've talked about right now? Your opponent uses a game action
• 2:11:05
  or activation effect. Counter the game action or
• 2:11:07
  effect and describe how this happens.
• 2:11:08
  I mean, it's exactly as that first sentence implies.
• 2:11:13
  It's like your opponent does your, your opponent does
• 2:11:17
  something, and then you shut down what they do right, like
• 2:11:22
  your opponent. Right.
• 2:11:22
  But like, are you playing a card?
• 2:11:24
  Are you using a card effect? Yeah, you're playing a card or
• 2:11:27
  you're, or you're being like, or you're doing the thing where
• 2:11:30
  you're like surprised I had a trap card you didn't know about.
• 2:11:32
  Right. Like it's the thing in the anime
• 2:11:34
  where the, the the the opponent uses mirror Force and the, you
• 2:11:40
  know, Yugi didn't realize they had put a trap card down or
• 2:11:42
  whatever. That's it.
• 2:11:48
  I think that's the thing about, that's the thing about the NPC,
• 2:11:53
  like how the NPCS interact with the card game.
• 2:11:56
  They don't follow the card game rules.
• 2:11:58
  They're just responding to effects that the players are
• 2:12:01
  doing for the most part, which is true of normal PBTPBTA.
• 2:12:05
  Also, it just feels weird because there's this added layer
• 2:12:08
  of the card game rules. But yeah, it would just be like,
• 2:12:15
  I mean, there aren't traps in this game.
• 2:12:18
  So in in this particular game, I'd be like, I play this
• 2:12:21
  invocation from my hand called mirror blocker.
• 2:12:27
  It stops your attack, you know, shit like that.
• 2:12:31
  Fair enough. The final move options that
• 2:12:35
  opponents are given are threat moves.
• 2:12:38
  They serve as an additional layer of shaking up the status
• 2:12:41
  quo, and it's essentially just designed to stop players from
• 2:12:46
  taking immediate wins and extending the duel a couple or a
• 2:12:50
  little bit longer, potentially giving the opponent an ability
• 2:12:53
  to eat out their win condition. There are two primary threat
• 2:12:57
  moves available to judges. We have the Lash Out against
• 2:13:00
  Losing move, which essentially just allows the player the the
• 2:13:04
  NPC to introduce a new threat or aspect to the match.
• 2:13:07
  This could be threatening NPCS the players care about.
• 2:13:11
  This could be like revealing a player's deepest darkest secret
• 2:13:16
  if it specifically has something to do with their baggage.
• 2:13:18
  You do get the mechanical ability of gaining access to
• 2:13:22
  another use of Response move. Then there is Reveal a backup
• 2:13:28
  plan. This one's pretty simple.
• 2:13:29
  You get to just implement a new plan to win.
• 2:13:33
  You can start building towards a new plan to win.
• 2:13:35
  I don't necessarily know how effective this would be unless
• 2:13:39
  you were already thinking about a win condition in your head and
• 2:13:44
  then just established a new one. But assuming that you were, you
• 2:13:48
  know, were really trying to 5 headed like that, I I suppose
• 2:13:52
  that could be effective. I mean I think the idea is just
• 2:13:55
  that if the player shut down your initial your initial win
• 2:13:59
  condition plan too fast on the NPC then you can just roll up a
• 2:14:02
  new one. OK.
• 2:14:05
  Fair enough, because the the because it says when your first
• 2:14:08
  plan has been dealt with right? Like the activating phrase of
• 2:14:13
  the move is when your first plan has been dealt with.
• 2:14:16
  So implying that your the player shut down your your initial plan
• 2:14:21
  to win. Right.
• 2:14:25
  Interesting. You always got to look at the
• 2:14:27
  bolded text for moves and how they are intended to activate
• 2:14:32
  and operate, right? Like the bolded text is the
• 2:14:37
  triggering point. I see.
• 2:14:41
  OK, that does actually recontextualize a couple of
• 2:14:45
  things, so. That's always how that's always,
• 2:14:48
  I mean, as every Pbta game I've seen, that's pretty much always
• 2:14:52
  how it's formatted, where the bolded part of the phrase is the
• 2:14:56
  thing that because, you know, moves have to be activated or
• 2:14:59
  triggered. Triggered is the word that they
• 2:15:02
  use generally. And yeah, the bolded part of the
• 2:15:05
  move is the triggering part of the move.
• 2:15:11
  Got you. All right.
• 2:15:15
  That is kind of all I have to talk about this week.
• 2:15:18
  We are who was in 15 minutes in and Brett will murder us if we
• 2:15:24
  go any farther. I'm probably going to have
• 2:15:26
  another 5 or so pages of augmented.
• 2:15:28
  So I think we'll be up. Yeah, I, I, I will say, man,
• 2:15:39
  it's it's I feel like I going over it again.
• 2:15:42
  I now understand how I'm I'm getting how opponents are meant
• 2:15:46
  to be handled a little more now, but man, I feel like the
• 2:15:50
  potential to just like given that the opponents, the NPCS
• 2:15:57
  effectively have like free form decks that they just activate
• 2:16:02
  whatever card effect they conveniently needed.
• 2:16:04
  Which again in a PBTA context makes sense.
• 2:16:08
  Like that is how you GM like Apocalypse World right?
• 2:16:11
  Player does the thing, you as the GM say how the opponent
• 2:16:14
  responds and follow the fiction. But I feel like in this
• 2:16:17
  particular scenario, it's going to be a little tricky to not
• 2:16:22
  just make it so that the opponent pulls out exactly the
• 2:16:25
  bullshit thing they need to win every time.
• 2:16:29
  Like like you have to like nerf yourself consciously because
• 2:16:34
  when you have something like a response move where you're like,
• 2:16:37
  oh, your opponent uses a game action and activates an effect,
• 2:16:40
  and then you can just be like, no, I respond with this.
• 2:16:43
  You could make that response anything.
• 2:16:47
  So like you have to kind of intentionally nerf the NPCS and
• 2:16:50
  not make their response too. Good, you know, Yes, but you can
• 2:16:55
  as a player, respond to a response move, try to knock it
• 2:16:59
  out. Sure, and you only get.
• 2:17:00
  One response move until you get. You're, you're focused on the
• 2:17:04
  wrong thing. It's not just about the response
• 2:17:06
  move, it's everything they can do.
• 2:17:07
  Like that's one example, but the way that they can play like
• 2:17:11
  simple card moves, they can play anything they need.
• 2:17:14
  Essentially. They can constantly give
• 2:17:16
  themselves one life back every turn with a simple card move.
• 2:17:19
  The idea of a power move where you create an advantage.
• 2:17:22
  Like there's so many ways that the GM can abuse what the NPCS
• 2:17:26
  could potentially do because they don't have a set deck.
• 2:17:30
  They have moves that are like invoking the gimmick of the
• 2:17:35
  deck. Yeah.
• 2:17:38
  Can I just it's? Just tricky.
• 2:17:40
  You can. It's tricky to not go for the
• 2:17:44
  best option. Yeah, I guess.
• 2:17:47
  Well, it's sort of I think if you have like a specific, like
• 2:17:49
  if you have a burn deck, you're not going to focus on, you know,
• 2:17:55
  the, the create monster side of the deck, right?
• 2:17:57
  You're going to focus more on the sacrificing whatever
• 2:17:59
  monster. Sure, but that's my that's my
• 2:18:01
  choice. Like you could just say like,
• 2:18:03
  oh, he conveniently also has a really strong monster in his
• 2:18:06
  burn deck because like in real life that could be how ADCG
• 2:18:09
  would go, you know what I mean? Like.
• 2:18:11
  It could be, yeah. It's just, it just seems really
• 2:18:14
  easy for the GM to abuse their power with an NPC and like.
• 2:18:21
  I, I don't know, I think it's. And not even on purpose.
• 2:18:25
  They could abuse their power by accident too.
• 2:18:27
  Like I'm not even saying they might do it on purpose.
• 2:18:29
  They might come up with something that's a cool idea,
• 2:18:31
  but it's like, too good. Yes, you could.
• 2:18:34
  I don't know, I think you're it runs off of like a weird mutual
• 2:18:38
  destruction thing because I think it's also pretty easy for
• 2:18:42
  a player to create a really meta deck that's hard to find even
• 2:18:46
  with your your. Players.
• 2:18:48
  The only thing with a player is that the players have to
• 2:18:52
  establish what their deck is ahead of time, whereas the GM
• 2:18:55
  does it 100% on the I mean, the players can do it somewhat on
• 2:18:57
  the fly also, but the GM does it 100% on the fly.
• 2:19:01
  You know what I mean? Within, yeah, I mean within
• 2:19:05
  reason. When you look at the the example
• 2:19:08
  decks for the the NPC's you get a feel for the way that they're
• 2:19:12
  supposed to be run. No, yeah.
• 2:19:15
  That's that focus around summoning on that focus.
• 2:19:17
  I understand what the intention is supposed to be.
• 2:19:21
  I can just see how AGM could either fuck it up and make the
• 2:19:28
  NPC too good or want the NPC to be good and then make them like
• 2:19:35
  just obnoxious. Fuck off OP.
• 2:19:37
  Like I just, I see the abuse potential both intentional and
• 2:19:42
  unintentional and that would leaves me to be a little
• 2:19:45
  worried. Like if I was running this game
• 2:19:48
  I would be, I would be really stressed out and conscious of
• 2:19:51
  constantly being like OK I have to make sure I don't make the
• 2:19:55
  NPC do something too obnoxious, you know what I mean?
• 2:19:58
  I constantly have to be like is this too good?
• 2:20:02
  In that situation, could you not just say, you know, if you if
• 2:20:05
  you stumble upon something like a simple card move that breaks
• 2:20:09
  the deck and it doesn't fit the gimmick, would you not just say,
• 2:20:13
  OK, I'm going to say that he can't use that card like it.
• 2:20:17
  Like for example, the gain one life card if you if you just go,
• 2:20:20
  oh, well, based on this, if he has a way to of reliably regain
• 2:20:24
  health, they just cannot die. So I'm just going to say that
• 2:20:27
  they don't have that card in their back.
• 2:20:32
  I mean yes, but that requires you to have that wherewithal
• 2:20:40
  which. Well, the game.
• 2:20:41
  The game reinforces that wherewithal it tells you.
• 2:20:43
  If you're new, yeah. But just because it tells you,
• 2:20:46
  it doesn't mean you're going to do it.
• 2:20:47
  Like if you're new to the game, like just as a tabletop game and
• 2:20:52
  maybe you're not that familiar with TC GS conceptually, you
• 2:20:56
  know it, it can be easy to sort of overstep your bound
• 2:21:01
  potentially. This game is at.
• 2:21:07
  The point I'm getting at is this game is asking a lot of both
• 2:21:11
  players and GMs to come up with this mini game themselves
• 2:21:19
  effectively on the fly. And that is rife for abuse, both
• 2:21:28
  in terms of the min maxing munchkin guy, but also in terms
• 2:21:32
  of I just wanted to do a cool thing and oops, all you know,
• 2:21:36
  all 6000 warriors. I ought to win every match.
• 2:21:40
  Like basically it goes back to my original point about like the
• 2:21:44
  card creation system. Shit.
• 2:21:46
  This game has a is a tall order in terms of what it wants you to
• 2:21:53
  do with the like primary combat system.
• 2:21:57
  Again, the comparison. Again, the comparison of
• 2:22:01
  everyone's playing a wizard, but also you make your own spell
• 2:22:04
  list. Yeah, like.
• 2:22:06
  I think that the one benefit that the the potential for
• 2:22:10
  accidental abuse has is that because typically the results of
• 2:22:15
  who wins the card game is not usually life or death, and it
• 2:22:18
  can be at the highest levels, but it usually isn't.
• 2:22:21
  You have a situation where even if you do beat the players in
• 2:22:25
  what feels like a shutout, the players can learn from that
• 2:22:29
  technique and potentially build a card that, yeah, they could
• 2:22:31
  respond that bullshit effect and then they can come back and do
• 2:22:34
  it again. And as long as you use the same
• 2:22:37
  strategy, you know that the players with setup will be able
• 2:22:42
  to beat that strategy, and then they'll be able to beat that
• 2:22:44
  character. And then it could indeed feel
• 2:22:46
  even better when they win as long as you again, you're not
• 2:22:49
  like, well, now I'm just going to to meta my way out of their
• 2:22:52
  new strategy that that's. Just a right, right.
• 2:22:55
  No win situation. Which, but the potential is
• 2:22:57
  there, though, That's what I'm saying.
• 2:22:58
  Like you shouldn't, but the potential's there.
• 2:23:02
  So it's like it's, it's just, I don't know, it's just a very
• 2:23:08
  this, this game is asking a lot of trust, putting a lot of faith
• 2:23:13
  in the players. Yeah, it it is.
• 2:23:15
  I I probably about as much probably say around as much
• 2:23:19
  faith as is a different kind, but as much faith as like
• 2:23:23
  Monster Arts is asking you with the like, don't be a weird
• 2:23:25
  creeper in the game about like going through your traumas and
• 2:23:29
  like, yeah, kinda. I don't know, I just the whole
• 2:23:40
  time I'm like the whole time I'm reading through this game, my
• 2:23:45
  brain is going like, how could I make this sick combo to do XY
• 2:23:50
  and Z? But then I have to kind of be
• 2:23:52
  like, oh, I probably shouldn't like don't do that because
• 2:23:54
  that's abusing the system, you know, like, especially because
• 2:23:59
  that's like the thing that that also makes it a little weird is
• 2:24:03
  that is the point of of actual TCGS, right?
• 2:24:08
  Is how can I make this sick combo that's going to fucking
• 2:24:11
  clown on everybody, right? Like that's actually how you're
• 2:24:14
  supposed to play him. So the, the, the idea that like
• 2:24:21
  I'm supposed to make the cool combo, but I can't make the cool
• 2:24:24
  combo too good is, is like antithesis to how actual TCGS
• 2:24:29
  are. It's just a weird the whole
• 2:24:33
  game. Like I said, if somebody asked
• 2:24:34
  me to make this game, I would I demand like a $2,000,000 payout.
• 2:24:38
  Like I just this game is a tall order.
• 2:24:41
  The premise is a tall order. It is like, I'm not like I said,
• 2:24:46
  I'm not going to argue with you. It is a, it is all order.
• 2:24:49
  I, I think the game 100% is crazy a lot of you, but I think
• 2:24:53
  it's asking a lot of a lot of you with the idea that the
• 2:24:56
  payout, if done correctly, will feel really fun.
• 2:25:00
  No, yeah, it it definitely has that potential.
• 2:25:03
  It's like Lancer, right? You have to do a lot of work to
• 2:25:05
  to make Lancer. Lancer has hard math.
• 2:25:12
  You have you. Can you obey the math you know?
• 2:25:15
  True, you do obey the math, but the game, like so Lancer expects
• 2:25:17
  you to, you know, build your own MEC, have a MEC gimmick, eat
• 2:25:21
  into that MEC gimmick. Like understand how the, the, I
• 2:25:25
  don't know, 20 separate licenses interact with one another.
• 2:25:28
  Like, I mean, not the same kind of investment, but it's a big
• 2:25:32
  investment. Just casually scrolling there
• 2:25:36
  are a shit load of like sample and PC decks there are.
• 2:25:41
  And there's one NPC who's just a common writer.
• 2:25:44
  He's he's, he's literally called Henshin Astra is the nice
• 2:25:46
  gimmick of his deck. There's one that just says life
• 2:25:51
  finds a way, which I kind of love.
• 2:25:55
  Yeah, I, I get it. I get what we're doing.
• 2:26:01
  But the more I read and the more I think about it, the more I'm
• 2:26:03
  like, oh, what about this problem or this problem or that
• 2:26:05
  problem? It's just hard for me to avoid
• 2:26:09
  that like mentality with this. I think at some point you got to
• 2:26:17
  like detach, just be like, look, if it happens, it won't be on
• 2:26:21
  purpose. Like I'm not going to worry
• 2:26:23
  about it too much because if I start worrying about it, I'm
• 2:26:26
  going to feed into it and then sort of self, fulfill the self,
• 2:26:30
  fulfill the prophecy. I think that the idea is that
• 2:26:33
  this way. I'm not running this bitch,
• 2:26:37
  that's for sure. I'm not either.
• 2:26:40
  I I like, I want to play this so bad, but I, I, I'm maybe I can
• 2:26:44
  gaslight Sam just enough to will he'll run like a quick, you
• 2:26:47
  know, like. A5 I mean, I I don't even know.
• 2:26:50
  I think I would even have a hard time being a player, but I'm
• 2:26:52
  definitely not running this game.
• 2:26:54
  Oh, I want to. I want to play this so bad.
• 2:26:56
  This is a. It's a weird.
• 2:26:57
  Scenario fucking bad dude. This is an.
• 2:26:59
  It's an. Incredibly weird scenario that
• 2:27:01
  this game is because it's it's, it's a game that I like, don't
• 2:27:04
  want to play, but not because the game is bad, it's because
• 2:27:07
  I'm like intimidated by it, which doesn't happen very often
• 2:27:12
  for me. It it do be intimidating, that's
• 2:27:17
  sure. That's for sure.
• 2:27:21
  But also, like any game, I mean, ultimately haven't played it.
• 2:27:26
  And once you play it, you know it could all lock into place
• 2:27:29
  too. So there's that element of it
• 2:27:31
  too. True.
• 2:27:33
  I do really want to experience like just to to.
• 2:27:36
  I want to get a feel for this game just so we can do an
• 2:27:38
  episode of it. Like how did this work out?
• 2:27:43
  Yeah, of course we'd have to figure out how to play it on a
• 2:27:45
  VTT first. I, I don't think that's going
• 2:27:48
  to, but I think we're just have to turn our fucking just have to
• 2:27:51
  turn our cameras on and run it. I how does that what because?
• 2:27:59
  Then you could actually see someone play the TCG and you
• 2:28:01
  could like, well, actually what you could do is you could, we're
• 2:28:05
  running out of time. What you could do is you could
• 2:28:08
  make images of your cards, right, and upload them to a VTT
• 2:28:14
  and you could, when you play them on whatever your format is,
• 2:28:18
  you play it on the on the VTT, the players can look at it and
• 2:28:23
  reference it and you just, you know.
• 2:28:26
  No, what you do is I just figured, Oh no, OK, I just
• 2:28:29
  figured out you make handouts in roll 20.
• 2:28:31
  The handouts are your deck. So you make a folder for each
• 2:28:34
  player. That's your deck.
• 2:28:36
  You name each of your cards that you have out of the via the
• 2:28:39
  handouts. You know, either make it a
• 2:28:41
  picture or just write it into the handout.
• 2:28:44
  You number them or yeah, you have them be numbered.
• 2:28:48
  And then when you go to draw, you roll the die, and then the
• 2:28:51
  die is which card you draw. And then for when you're playing
• 2:28:56
  them, you drop, drag and drop the handout image onto the field
• 2:29:01
  onto the board in roll 20. You could do that you you get
• 2:29:06
  into a weird spot at like you know you have to just keep re
• 2:29:08
  rolling if you keep getting the same number over and over again.
• 2:29:12
  Unless there would be a way to, there's a sort of plug in you
• 2:29:15
  can put into the die that ignores previously rolled rolls.
• 2:29:20
  I mean I'm sure you could do that, but you could also just
• 2:29:22
  manually re roll. Like that's not a big deal.
• 2:29:23
  You're only rolling, you're only dealing with like 8 cards at
• 2:29:25
  most. True.
• 2:29:28
  So I rolled a three again. Hold on.
• 2:29:30
  OK, I got a 5. You know, like that's not a big
• 2:29:32
  deal. Fair enough.
• 2:29:34
  OK right, 2 1/2 hours. We got to cut it now.
• 2:29:38
  So please follow us on your your social media platform of choice.
• 2:29:43
  Do us a favour and maybe toss some.
• 2:29:46
  I mean, not your platform. Of choice, not your platform of
• 2:29:48
  choice. We only got 2 but you can find
• 2:29:51
  it. But this is.
• 2:29:51
  Two yeah, you know, toss some dosh at us at the coffee so we
• 2:29:56
  can pay Brett because his editor Dungeon needs a good cleaning.
• 2:30:01
  It's getting a little stanky. He needs a new litter box.
• 2:30:08
  Oh my God, yes, yeah, that's been us.
• 2:30:11
  As we'll see you next week, motherfuckers.
• 2:30:14
  Peace.