Latest / Sessions Canceled / Tabletop Shout: Monsterhearts 2: Post Game Chat: Ep. 155

Transcript

Tabletop Shout: Monsterhearts 2: Post Game Chat: Ep. 155 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:08
  All. Right everybody, so I'm too
• 0:19
  broke to play do an awakening and all my friends are playing
• 0:21
  it and I'm just so sad. So you know, I just didn't have
• 0:25
  it in me to run session today. So we're just going to keep
• 0:27
  talking about Monster hurts. Wow wow, harsh harsh vibes.
• 0:36
  Oh dude, the vibes are fucking abysmal right now.
• 0:39
  Are you kidding? The vibes are, in fact, not
• 0:42
  Immaculate. No, not Immaculate.
• 0:44
  Not even a little bit in the toilet.
• 0:50
  So how's it doing Awakening? It's good, good stuff.
• 0:54
  Yeah. I'm sure.
• 0:56
  Good stuff. Yeah.
• 0:58
  It's still got that fun con jank though, don't, don't you worry.
• 1:00
  Oh. Baby Euro jank for the win.
• 1:03
  Still like yesterday and the day.
• 1:06
  Before I opened up the inventory of the vehicle and and then I
• 1:10
  opened the chat at the same time like the chat window and the
• 1:15
  game just locked up and I just could not escape from either the
• 1:19
  chat window or the vehicle inventory and I couldn't hit
• 1:23
  escape to bring up the menu. I was just soft locked.
• 1:27
  Oh funcom. I had no choice but to alt F4
• 1:30
  the game. That was the only thing because
• 1:35
  I just got permanently trapped in the menu.
• 1:39
  Oh, Funcom never changed. Because I dared.
• 1:42
  I dared to open the chat menu as the same time as another menu.
• 1:46
  Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, really.
• 1:47
  That you should have known better.
• 1:49
  Frankly, I should have. It's true.
• 1:54
  Welcome back to to the Sessions cancelled.
• 1:57
  I almost said the other podcast that I I almost did the thing
• 2:00
  again from 100 episodes ago. Yeah.
• 2:05
  Welcome back to the sessions cancel podcast.
• 2:06
  It's me. I'm here with Josh.
• 2:09
  I am indeed here. It's true.
• 2:11
  And we? Return.
• 2:13
  We return from the nether, the nether regions, the nether
• 2:16
  years. Yeah, basically what had
• 2:18
  happened was. So what happened was, you see
• 2:20
  what happened? Crazy respiratory infection.
• 2:24
  I think I had pneumonia, frankly, because I was fucked
• 2:26
  up. A.
• 2:28
  Good chance I would say. For like, like I was running
• 2:30
  like 1O21O3 fevers for like almost a week straight.
• 2:34
  I was miserable. And then my little brother
• 2:36
  graduated high school, the last one to do it.
• 2:38
  We really didn't think it was going to happen and it did.
• 2:40
  So I guess miracles are possible.
• 2:42
  You really didn't. Think it was going to happen?
• 2:44
  That's not honestly that's not true.
• 2:45
  The middle brother, we were like he OK, fun fact I don't no one
• 2:48
  knows. But then I was told this.
• 2:50
  So my middle brother was on track to be expelled in 2020 and
• 2:59
  then COVID hit and the principal was like look.
• 3:03
  COVID saved him. Literally COVID saved him from
• 3:05
  expulsion. Yeah.
• 3:07
  Oh my fucking God, dude. Yeah, Yep.
• 3:10
  And you know which brother I'm talking about too.
• 3:12
  And it's, it makes so much sense, doesn't it?
• 3:15
  I mean, the one who stole the car, yeah.
• 3:18
  Other one, Other one. The one who stole the.
• 3:19
  Construction equipment. Wait, what?
• 3:21
  No, no. Youngest one.
• 3:22
  Youngest one did GTA, middle one stole construction equipment.
• 3:26
  Oh, that's right. He stole the construction
• 3:27
  equipment. Right, Right, right, right.
• 3:28
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. How can I forget?
• 3:31
  I I know right? It's nuts.
• 3:34
  I dude, I, I was talking to the youngest and he was like he was
• 3:40
  like, y'all really doubted me. Y'all really didn't think I was
• 3:42
  going to do it and I was like bro you committed GTA and not
• 3:48
  the game. You committed actual, real Grand
• 3:50
  Theft Auto. Yeah.
• 3:54
  Did you what the fuck do you mean you didn't think we were I
• 4:00
  like brother, you know I didn't think you were going to make it
• 4:04
  to 18. Let us graduate I.
• 4:09
  Think you would make it to 18? You know, it's funny too because
• 4:14
  like obviously it's graduation season right now.
• 4:17
  And so my one Co worker who is 18, she was like, she's like, oh
• 4:23
  Josh, I'm graduating. I was like, oh, that's good.
• 4:26
  And I thought in my head I was like, I assumed you were going
• 4:29
  to fail. I didn't think you would
• 4:30
  graduate. And then she goes, I know it's a
• 4:33
  surprise, right? And I'm like, I'm glad you said
• 4:35
  it because I'm thinking of myself.
• 4:39
  I'm like, holy shit. She graduated and she was like,
• 4:42
  I know it's a surprise. That, hey, is at least she knew
• 4:46
  like. She knew she bro, she oh, man,
• 4:52
  she's fucking. She's something, dude.
• 4:54
  I really can't with that girl. She's she's kind of just an
• 4:59
  idiot, like, I don't know. Oh.
• 5:01
  My God, like fucking brutal I. Know, but like the shit she says
• 5:08
  to me, I'm like, I just look at her like Doug, what?
• 5:12
  How did you how did you get up? In the morning.
• 5:15
  And like, how did you get here alive?
• 5:19
  I dude, so tell me how you know most you know, we Oh no, the
• 5:24
  cough's back. We didn't like dress up super
• 5:29
  nice to go to the youngest graduation, right?
• 5:31
  Like it's a graduation. It's not a fucking wedding,
• 5:34
  right? Yeah.
• 5:34
  So I like, I put on a nice, like a nice, like one of my like,
• 5:38
  nicer Hawaiian shirts. I know, like very cliche.
• 5:40
  I I was on vacation, you know. You didn't tux it up.
• 5:45
  Absolutely look I will overdress to everything except the fucking
• 5:47
  graduation. So like, I know, but like a
• 5:52
  bunch of my family dressed super nice and there here comes the
• 5:55
  middle one who showed up from work in oil, oil soiled
• 6:02
  trousers, work boots and an oil stained ruined white T-shirt,
• 6:10
  hands still caked in an axle grease.
• 6:13
  And I was like dog, what the fuck?
• 6:16
  And he's like, I just came from work, what do you want from me?
• 6:18
  I was like, you couldn't put like a normal pair of jeans in a
• 6:22
  not disgusting T-shirt in the car.
• 6:25
  And he was like, no, I'm not doing that, dude.
• 6:29
  This is why. This is why.
• 6:31
  Like why? Why what you might ask?
• 6:35
  It says speaks for itself. This is why.
• 6:37
  Middle one. This is why.
• 6:39
  Yeah. He literally, he was like the
• 6:43
  second. The youngest walks across the
• 6:44
  stage. I'm going out.
• 6:45
  I'm leaving. What?
• 6:49
  What? OK.
• 6:51
  Because he was like, oh, I want to go, I want to go home.
• 6:53
  I want to, I want to take a shower and I want a beer.
• 6:55
  Dude, you're such an asshole. He he ended up staying, but like
• 6:59
  I dude, we're going to kill him. Can.
• 7:01
  That cock bite like 19 or 20. Yeah, I think he just, no, he
• 7:06
  actually, no, he's not 21 yet. He's 20 because he was telling
• 7:08
  me after we left that his fucking his fake.
• 7:12
  IT got yoinked in the Bronx. That was that.
• 7:18
  Felt good. Nice.
• 7:20
  Fucking got him. Anyway, we're not talking about
• 7:23
  Isaiah's weird interfamily issues.
• 7:25
  We're here to talk about Monster Hearts.
• 7:27
  Because as much as I want to talk about Cain, and believe me,
• 7:30
  we're going to talk about Cain, the RPGI.
• 7:33
  Feel like I owed it to you guys to talk about a little bit about
• 7:36
  my thoughts about Monster Heart's now that I've played it
• 7:39
  for two sessions. Going to be going on three
• 7:41
  because Brett has once again abandoned us for this thing that
• 7:43
  he calls a job Bros. So we can't go back to Lancer
• 7:48
  until he's back because I need the full party to not explode on
• 7:51
  the hardest mission they've done yet.
• 7:53
  And. Yeah, kind of a kind of tight
• 7:57
  encounter design for that game, huh?
• 7:59
  Yeah, yeah. And I, I, I can change it.
• 8:01
  I've told them like I can balance the game.
• 8:03
  I just don't want to. I already do enough work on that
• 8:06
  campaign as. Fabulous.
• 8:08
  Kind of like that too. I yeah, I I had a feeling, you
• 8:12
  know, when when you were really hype about like the monster
• 8:16
  building, I was like this. I feel like this is this is a
• 8:18
  lot and it's just, it's just to me, I feel like Fabulous would
• 8:22
  feel like a lot, even though Lancer doesn't.
• 8:24
  But it seems to be the opposite for you.
• 8:26
  I'm still hype about the monster building and I do still like it,
• 8:31
  but it is it is a bit, I was going to say unwieldy, but
• 8:37
  that's not the that's not the right word.
• 8:39
  It's, I don't know, dense like you have to plan ahead quite a
• 8:49
  bit, let's put it that way. Like I do like it and when it's
• 8:52
  working, it's working great, but it does require quite a bit of
• 8:57
  planning ahead and it's not super on the fly friendly.
• 9:03
  It's all safe for now. Without.
• 9:06
  Getting too into it. It it seems like that was likely
• 9:09
  on purpose, you know, just considering that they were like,
• 9:13
  you know, if it's not a real combat, just make it clocks that
• 9:15
  makes it easier so you can sort of get a little bit more away
• 9:19
  with the on the fly stuff. Yes and no stuff and things.
• 9:28
  There's some other info I I don't want to go down the
• 9:31
  fabulous train too much right now, but let's just say there's
• 9:32
  a play test document out there that's addressing it so.
• 9:36
  Yes, yes, Paladin when I were looking at it, yeah.
• 9:40
  So yeah, he was like, oh, they're getting rid of
• 9:41
  initiative. That's that's interesting.
• 9:43
  And I was like, oh. Getting rid of the role.
• 9:47
  The role, Yeah, yeah, yeah. But not yeah, which I don't know
• 9:50
  if I love that or not. I don't know.
• 9:51
  I'm a little iffy on how initiative works in Fabio to be
• 9:53
  honest. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those
• 9:56
  things where I, I feel like because it's a little unorthodox
• 9:59
  that. I'm in two minds about it.
• 10:02
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I am too, frankly.
• 10:05
  No, but anyway, this is not about fabulous.
• 10:07
  We're here with our monster hearts.
• 10:08
  And I mean, quick disclosure, I'm not going to have a lot bad
• 10:13
  to say about this game. I really like this game.
• 10:17
  So it's going to be mainly. Most of the bad things we did
• 10:21
  address. When we talked pretty much the.
• 10:23
  Game broadly, like the fact that it doesn't really teach you,
• 10:26
  teach you how to play the game very well.
• 10:28
  Yeah, I mean, I'm going to make reference to that.
• 10:30
  Yeah. So most of this episode is going
• 10:31
  to be be glazing monster hearts. So just prepare for that if you
• 10:34
  want, if you want healthy critique, you're not going to
• 10:36
  get it here. Glazed doughnuts.
• 10:40
  I I can't do the like the the noise.
• 10:43
  I can't do that really loud tongue click that he does.
• 10:45
  I know, I wish I could do that Click.
• 10:47
  That I do too. I can't I.
• 10:51
  Side note, I I know that the the glazing becoming a term is very
• 10:56
  like weird to me because I know that it it's probably referring
• 11:02
  to the idea of glazing A doughnut, right?
• 11:04
  Like, but I'm going to be honest, the phrase glazing, when
• 11:09
  I first heard it, it didn't make me think of doughnuts, made me
• 11:16
  think of some more 18 plus things.
• 11:20
  No, I mean it's absolutely a double entendre like.
• 11:23
  Yeah, that was where my brain went and I was like, I don't
• 11:26
  know if that's. So I I think The funny thing
• 11:29
  about is that I think a lot of people think it means when it
• 11:37
  almost certainly does not actually mean that.
• 11:42
  Well, glazing something just means you're talking it up like
• 11:44
  you're. Right, right.
• 11:46
  But I don't, I don't actually think it it means what a lot
• 11:50
  like. You don't think it means
• 11:52
  fellatio? Yeah, no, I don't I that's.
• 11:54
  Not where I was going actually. No, I, I think I know exactly
• 11:58
  where you're going. I think we're sharing the our
• 11:59
  single brain cells. On the brain cell, Yeah, yeah.
• 12:01
  Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:03
  But what was that joke? Or it's like, I want, it's like
• 12:08
  I want to be his Eclair, not his his frosted or something.
• 12:15
  Yeah. Something like that, Yeah.
• 12:16
  Yeah. Anyway, Foster, I mean like
• 12:17
  we're kind of on topic of bosters.
• 12:20
  In a in a sense, we are. Yes, it is true.
• 12:23
  Yeah, OK. I mean general thoughts The
• 12:29
  game, which is to say running the game because I am not a
• 12:32
  player in Bostards is, is quite fun.
• 12:37
  We kind of talked about it in our initial review like eons
• 12:41
  ago, back in the old time. That MH1 and MH2 being part of
• 12:48
  the first wave of Pbta games greatly behooves you to read
• 12:53
  Apocalypse World first, because in a lot of ways mod starts
• 12:56
  feels like a toolkit similar to Hellscapes and DND.
• 13:00
  That aside, what it is and how it flows in the vibe like this,
• 13:09
  the the the synchronicity it hits between the admittedly
• 13:14
  light mechanics, but the mechanics you do have and the
• 13:17
  feel of the role play and what it wants you to do is Immaculate
• 13:24
  vibes Immaculate. It's genuinely peak.
• 13:28
  I just need to take a mental pause.
• 13:30
  The word synchronicity has been ruined for me forever because of
• 13:34
  fucking Baki. I just.
• 13:40
  It just makes me think of that old man being like
• 13:42
  synchronicity. Shut the fuck.
• 13:46
  Oh, Yanagi, you mean or? Yeah, at the very beginning of
• 13:49
  the Prisoner arc, when he's explaining how all of them might
• 13:52
  miraculously break out at the same time.
• 13:53
  He's like synchronicity. Sorry.
• 13:58
  Anyway, yes, I mean, the magical sauce of of monster hearts is
• 14:04
  basically just, if you play it correctly, which is to say how
• 14:07
  Apocalypse World tells you to play it will be fun, But pretty
• 14:12
  much no matter what, like the, the Apocalypse World framework
• 14:19
  is just so woven, it's just woven together so well that
• 14:27
  it's, if you just follow the rules, it's like kind of hard to
• 14:32
  fuck it up. Yeah.
• 14:35
  You know so. It a.
• 14:38
  Monster. Yeah, Monster Arts is an
• 14:39
  extension of that. Yeah, yeah.
• 14:42
  And, and I mean, I don't really know it.
• 14:46
  It's I I'm trying to figure out what other ways to put it, but
• 14:49
  no like it it really in what you get from it, in the way the
• 14:54
  reactions feel, the way the player moves feel.
• 14:58
  It really strikes a perfect balance between mechanic, light,
• 15:04
  narrative, first gameplay and genuinely thrilling.
• 15:13
  I mean narrative. Like I don't really know how to
• 15:14
  put it while while playing it. Every single time a player did a
• 15:20
  thing I immediately was staring at the the reaction sheet being
• 15:24
  like like like someone going through a rolodex.
• 15:27
  Like, I think I'm going to pick this one.
• 15:29
  Right. Which is, which is exactly what.
• 15:32
  So that's kind of The funny thing about that's The funny
• 15:37
  thing about the whole like Pbta movement is everyone's playing,
• 15:44
  you know, before Apocalypse Royal, everybody is like, you
• 15:48
  know, playing DND or whatever, you know, fucking White Wolf
• 15:51
  game or whatever. And you're already doing GM
• 15:57
  moves like all the time, right? You're you're always doing GM
• 16:01
  moves. But nobody framed it in that
• 16:03
  way. Nobody described it that way.
• 16:05
  Then Apocalypse Royal comes along and gives you like this
• 16:09
  little like grocery list of GM moves and it and like you just
• 16:13
  described when you first start GM ING any kind of Pbta game,
• 16:18
  assuming that Pbta game still uses the moves, which for the
• 16:22
  most part they do. There are some that don't you,
• 16:28
  you look at your little grocery list every time roles come in
• 16:31
  and be like, hmm, what do I want to like?
• 16:33
  What do I want to pick from? You know, you're looking at the
• 16:35
  menu, and then after playing it for a little while, you stop
• 16:40
  looking at the menu because you've been to the restaurant so
• 16:42
  many times that you know what the menu is.
• 16:44
  And you just start riffing and going.
• 16:47
  And then you start appreciating like newer things about the menu
• 16:52
  because you didn't think about like, oh, I could I could use
• 16:55
  this ingredients with this ingredient and slap some things
• 16:58
  together. Oh, that might be fun.
• 16:59
  And yeah, it really is a fun thing on the GM side to just
• 17:05
  contemplate your list as like you, every time you see that
• 17:09
  six, that six or below, you're just like, ah, yes, now I get to
• 17:14
  have some fun. Yeah, you just look at them and
• 17:16
  go. My turn.
• 17:18
  Oh, it's going to get in. Yeah.
• 17:20
  And because of the chaotic free form nature of how the basic
• 17:28
  moves and how the players moves work, works, work, works, works.
• 17:35
  You as the GM will end up surprised or intrigued or like
• 17:44
  slightly caught off guard. Like stuff will happen and
• 17:47
  you'll be like, huh, I didn't think I would have to respond to
• 17:52
  this or I'm not sure how I was going to have to respond to
• 17:55
  this. Because you know, in a game like
• 17:57
  DND, you plan everything out, you have your ideas and you
• 18:03
  leave some things open, right? You never know how players are
• 18:05
  going to respond 100%. But there's certain things that
• 18:08
  you plan out that you're like, this is pretty much how this is
• 18:11
  going to go. And I know it's going to go to X
• 18:13
  and then Y and then Z. And because there's no rules is
• 18:19
  written in DND, there's no rule that if you fail a role,
• 18:25
  anything in particular has to happen.
• 18:27
  In fact, rules is written. If you fail a role in DND,
• 18:30
  nothing happens, right? Like the game tells you nothing
• 18:34
  at all happens. Whereas in a Powered by the
• 18:37
  Apocalypse game, not only does something happen, but the thing
• 18:41
  that happens has to actively upend what was previously
• 18:45
  happening in some some form or another.
• 18:49
  Like the degree tuition upends things, obviously is, you know,
• 18:53
  you can play with that, but it has to fuck with the current
• 18:57
  status quo, which goes back to there is no status quo in
• 19:01
  Apocalypse World. And you could extend that out
• 19:04
  to, you know, Monster Hearts and Dungeon World and Saga, the
• 19:06
  Icelanders and all those other games.
• 19:08
  So. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:10
  I mean I, I think. That is the fun of GM ING the
• 19:13
  game in a lot of ways is looking at your, your shopping list,
• 19:17
  your, your, your menu. Right.
• 19:19
  And like as, as like a little aside, I really appreciate that.
• 19:22
  And I don't, I don't know if Apocalypse World did this, but
• 19:24
  for Monster Hearts you get in the like the, the online
• 19:28
  resources part, they give you little handout sheets that
• 19:31
  summarize pretty basically like what the player moves and the GM
• 19:35
  reactions are. And it really helps me juggle
• 19:41
  figuring out what like a how to help guide the players, right?
• 19:45
  If they're like, oh, I think this works.
• 19:47
  And I go, oh, well, you can do this or this.
• 19:48
  It helps me switch those things quickly on the fly while all
• 19:52
  like while doing my FF14 double weaving with my own reaction
• 19:57
  sheet. Because I have these two things
• 19:59
  that I can look at because frankly, anything that helps me
• 20:02
  not have to crack the rule book every two seconds and ruin the
• 20:05
  pacing. Good.
• 20:06
  Give me more of that, especially for like someone who's running
• 20:09
  for the first time. Yeah, I mean, me personally, I
• 20:12
  cracking the rule book is something I do very, very little
• 20:15
  if I'm doing a PBTA game, mostly because I don't feel the need
• 20:21
  to. Like obviously I know this the
• 20:26
  system now, but even before I did, I don't feel this deep need
• 20:31
  like there's no pressure to crack the rule book most of the
• 20:37
  time because I know I can make a call on the fly.
• 20:41
  And nine times out of 10, it will fall within the moves list
• 20:45
  in some fashion. And the minutiae of how should
• 20:51
  this work mechanically is just not as big of a concern.
• 20:56
  And the few times it is, maybe you pause, but most of the time
• 21:02
  it won't be because all the games, the the, the core
• 21:07
  mechanic of the game and the way the 2D6 and the failure middle
• 21:12
  success and full success, that core mechanic just loops into
• 21:15
  everything. So see like just seamlessly
• 21:19
  basically that just you don't need to reference much 'cause
• 21:24
  you're always referencing the same mechanic 90% of the time.
• 21:30
  Yeah, it's true. And like it.
• 21:31
  It just, I really like the game that doesn't break my rhythm.
• 21:37
  Like I love, I love Lancer, I love my favorite tabletop game.
• 21:41
  But when like, and when I'm, when it's just me running right,
• 21:45
  like doing my thing very, it's very like I don't break with
• 21:49
  them very often. But part of being AGM is helping
• 21:52
  the players, especially with a game that, you know, we've been
• 21:55
  playing it for a year, but they have not read that rule book
• 21:57
  backwards and forwards 3 times. I have.
• 22:00
  So they're going to have questions about, at this point,
• 22:03
  not even about basic shit, but it's like, how does this really
• 22:06
  obscure thing interact with this thing?
• 22:07
  And then I have to go, oh, it's a good question, let me look
• 22:09
  that up. You know what I mean?
• 22:11
  Well, and also, I feel like personally, a game like Lancer,
• 22:18
  you have to break the rhythm because the minutiae of like the
• 22:26
  minutiae of is this ability going to affect my, I forget,
• 22:32
  you know, you don't have stats in Lancer, but actually here
• 22:37
  I'll use Fabula, right? If you inflict a status effect
• 22:40
  in Fabula, the minutiae of is this affecting my might or my
• 22:46
  decks or my will or my insight? Which one of those stats are
• 22:53
  being affected is really important, right?
• 22:56
  If if the player says I inflict weak on the enemy and I don't
• 23:01
  check and I miss and I'm, you know, incorrectly assume that
• 23:06
  weak affects the enemy's dexterity die as opposed to its
• 23:10
  might die. That can be a really big deal.
• 23:13
  I might be actively screwing over the player because the
• 23:17
  enemy has a high might die and if they had dropped their might
• 23:19
  die that might have made them miss the last three attacks they
• 23:22
  just swung. But I incorrectly assumed right.
• 23:24
  So like that minutia in a game like a Lancer or Fabula or DND,
• 23:29
  you're checking the rule book because that minutia can be a
• 23:32
  really big deal because it could swing it for the players or
• 23:35
  swing it against the players. A game like Monster Hearts, that
• 23:40
  minutia's just not gonna come up up as much because there's not
• 23:45
  as much minutia to stress about, especially in Monster Hearts.
• 23:49
  Monster Hearts is even lighter, I think than like Bass Bass.
• 23:53
  Apocalypse World is absolutely. So it's like, yeah, the stress
• 23:56
  of that minutia is not gonna come up as much.
• 23:58
  And if you do take a swing and a guess, and you take a slightly
• 24:02
  wrong guess, you have more leeway to be wrong in Apocalypse
• 24:06
  World because the numbers don't swing is crazy.
• 24:11
  And like, you know you could, I don't know, you could maybe
• 24:17
  incorrectly say that a player has a plus one when they should
• 24:20
  have a + 2 and that will fuck with their role.
• 24:23
  But because you have the window of success, you know it might
• 24:28
  not have actually. Like the plus one might have
• 24:31
  taken them from A7 to an 8 if you had remembered the rule
• 24:34
  correctly. But A7 is still a middle
• 24:36
  success, so it didn't matter. You know, like all that little,
• 24:42
  there's little intricacies about how it's designed.
• 24:45
  So yes, the idea of not referencing the rule book is
• 24:47
  definitely a good one. I agree with that take for sure.
• 24:53
  I actually, I had AI had a fun little thing where I got to use
• 24:57
  a action and I, I had a fun time.
• 25:07
  I, I kind of flipped it a little bit where I used when my player,
• 25:11
  my werewolf player transformed for the first time, right,
• 25:13
  because I'm, I'm basing a lot of this iteration of monster hearts
• 25:16
  in like very light rule of darkness, right?
• 25:20
  Obviously when a when a werewolf World of Darkness transforms,
• 25:23
  all non magical creatures suffer the delirium.
• 25:26
  So I I was like, I feel like enact drastic measures make
• 25:30
  sense for like it's a werewolf. People are literally shitting
• 25:33
  themselves and their psyches are breaking because werewolves
• 25:35
  aren't supposed to exist. You know?
• 25:38
  And you can really you can just go well, you know, what does an
• 25:42
  enact drastic measures even fucking mean?
• 25:44
  Great question. Whatever the fuck, I want it.
• 25:47
  Whatever the fuck you want, right?
• 25:48
  Like that's the thing. That's why everything is.
• 25:50
  That's why all of the reactions are phrased just specific enough
• 25:56
  to give you an idea, but vague enough to apply in lots of
• 26:00
  different ways. Yeah, I had a.
• 26:03
  It it is literally, I mean, I know it's a joke because I feel
• 26:07
  like I bring her up all the time, but it is literally the
• 26:10
  thing Dale Kingsmail always says about vague and evocative,
• 26:13
  right? It's just a vague enough
• 26:15
  statement to give you some ideas, but evocative enough that
• 26:18
  it's going to spring something to your brain.
• 26:21
  I, so I, I think it's really funny and I, I believe failing
• 26:25
  forward was first like really codified in a backups world.
• 26:28
  I don't know, but I think that's like that's the first time I
• 26:30
  ever saw that's. Where I know it from?
• 26:33
  I yeah BBCA is the most fun I've ever had having characters fail
• 26:38
  forward. Like for example, when the
• 26:40
  werewolf player wanted to attack the vampire, she rolled like I
• 26:45
  think she rolled she may have rolled A1 like are are two.
• 26:52
  She wrote like terrible either way bad.
• 26:55
  But I was like, well, I feel like the fail forward here is
• 26:58
  that you hit you just do way more damage than you thought.
• 27:03
  And like I described in brutal detail how like she crumpled the
• 27:07
  vampire like a pretzel and like embedded her into the concrete
• 27:11
  wall over like a banister. And it that really helped with
• 27:16
  the delirium because everyone went Oh my God.
• 27:22
  OK, now I, OK, I just not that it really matters 'cause, you
• 27:26
  know, obviously session's over. But I'm, I am curious.
• 27:29
  So what was she, what was her objective in the role she made?
• 27:37
  Was her objective to hurt the vampire?
• 27:40
  Yes, it was to to to basically backhand her over like a a
• 27:44
  balcony. The the context of the Brett
• 27:50
  Brett's character who because he wasn't there, we I turned it to
• 27:53
  an NPC and he was like kidnapped by vampires and was used as like
• 27:56
  a blood bag for a week. The players were looking for him
• 28:00
  at the house party that they went to and found him upstairs,
• 28:04
  and the vampires were like trying to lead him back deeper
• 28:06
  into the house as he was trying to escape.
• 28:09
  And in attempting to help, Siffy's character's boyfriend
• 28:13
  punched one of the vampires out and got stabbed for it.
• 28:16
  And that was her. Like, that was my reaction to
• 28:19
  trigger Darkest Self. And the whole thing about
• 28:23
  werewolf is that you, like, revel in causing as much damage
• 28:26
  as you. Can you go ballistic?
• 28:28
  Yeah. Yeah, so I was like, well,
• 28:30
  you're, you know, you're not trying to kill her.
• 28:31
  You are trying to hurt her by pushing her over a banister.
• 28:34
  But given that your boyfriend is dying out, is bleeding out,
• 28:37
  you're probably going to hit a little harder than you wanted to
• 28:41
  with your giant werewolf body. So.
• 28:45
  That's interesting, 'cause like 'cause if she so, she failed the
• 28:51
  role. Yeah.
• 28:53
  But you still kind of gave her what she wanted, which that's an
• 28:56
  interesting choice for me. I don't know if I would have
• 28:57
  thought to do that because like she wanted to hurt them but so
• 29:05
  like she got what she wanted but not how not how she wanted.
• 29:09
  It was so I I very literally used turn their move back on
• 29:12
  them. Right.
• 29:14
  True. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's a
• 29:16
  good point actually. Yeah, yeah.
• 29:17
  Like the, the fact that that werewolf is dead, there is now a
• 29:21
  body that is at like that the police are going to have to
• 29:24
  figure out. And then another player tried to
• 29:28
  well, actually no, my one of my, my, the poltergeist character,
• 29:33
  the ghost in the machine. She also was like I want to kill
• 29:37
  this guy because this jock punched my girlfriend in the
• 29:40
  face and she didn't literally mean kill this guy.
• 29:48
  But given that she's also in her darkest self and she triggered
• 29:52
  it herself by bashing out to. Kill this guy.
• 29:55
  Yeah, that I didn't say specifically if he died or not,
• 29:59
  but like he got smashed by a giant picture frame and like the
• 30:03
  the glass like embedded itself in his throat.
• 30:05
  So you get the good like aortic spurt.
• 30:07
  Nice. And so that's maybe 2 bodies.
• 30:10
  And then Sarah's character, the Faye, she's straight just murked
• 30:15
  a guy. She was like, oh, I turned into
• 30:17
  a fire elemental and I try to roll to inflict harm.
• 30:20
  And I was like, you're you're literally made of fire.
• 30:24
  And then she rolled it really well.
• 30:28
  And I was like, look, this guy's already taken damage.
• 30:31
  He doesn't have enough like harm left to not die.
• 30:34
  So yeah, you just burn his face. Nice.
• 30:39
  So potentially 3 bodies were stacked over the course of one
• 30:42
  night. Yeah, so I, I, I must ask, since
• 30:46
  we're talking about you, you know, responding to rolls and
• 30:51
  everything. So how did you feel about never
• 30:55
  rolling dice? I like it.
• 30:58
  I like it a lot. Yeah, OK.
• 31:01
  It's good. So this is one of those things,
• 31:03
  right? That good shit, I'm not gonna
• 31:05
  lie. Listen, I, I don't want to be
• 31:10
  like that guy who's like, listen, I know what I'm talking
• 31:14
  about. But it's one of those things
• 31:17
  where people look at Powered by the Apocalypse games and they
• 31:20
  see that the GM basically never rolls dice or incredibly rarely
• 31:25
  rolls dice. And they are like, you know,
• 31:31
  they're like, what? But I'm, I, I, I want to roll
• 31:35
  the clicky clack math rocks. Like that's the fun of tabletop.
• 31:39
  And I understand the sense of it.
• 31:42
  But I almost always say to some of them like, just give it, give
• 31:46
  it a little twirl, 'cause you're probably going to like it more
• 31:50
  than you think. Well, so like, I think if it's
• 31:54
  one of those things where it's like, I want to roll my clicky
• 31:56
  clack math rocks. That's a very player idea,
• 32:01
  right? When you're AGM you have to like
• 32:03
  when you're rolling DMD, you roll.
• 32:06
  You roll way more dice than a player when you GMD.
• 32:10
  Yeah, yeah. Because you're rolling for every
• 32:12
  initiative, every attack, every damage die, every tractor, every
• 32:17
  spell. Like, you're doing all of that
• 32:20
  shit if the player is not doing it, frankly, that's a lot of
• 32:23
  fucking dice to have to keep track of constantly and prepare
• 32:26
  for constantly. And you want to make sure that
• 32:28
  your dice or balance your damage or balance all that shit that
• 32:31
  gets fucking stressful. And it absolutely gets stressful
• 32:34
  for me and Lancer and I love Lancer and playing this.
• 32:38
  And then Kane, which literally says you as the GM don't roll a
• 32:40
  God damn thing. I was like, that's fucking go
• 32:43
  gamers. And you can literally people
• 32:45
  want to have their Matt Mercer moment where they're standing up
• 32:48
  at the table and just calling things out.
• 32:51
  This is how you do that. Yeah, I've never had Like, I was
• 32:56
  playing with my family. I ran, I ran Kane for my family
• 33:00
  while I was in New York. And I got to do that thing where
• 33:05
  it's like it's one player. It was like, you know, you know,
• 33:07
  you're against the clock. What do you do?
• 33:09
  And a player's like, oh, OK, I do my thing.
• 33:10
  Oh, my God. Roll your two D6.
• 33:12
  OK, what are you doing? Oh, I do my thing.
• 33:13
  OK, You roll your two D6. What did you roll?
• 33:15
  OK, this OK, this happens. All right.
• 33:16
  What did you roll? OK, this OK, this happens.
• 33:18
  Like, you just turn into like an auctioneer.
• 33:21
  Give me one. Can we get 2?
• 33:23
  Let me get 2. Can I get 3?
• 33:24
  Can I get 3? Like you're just moving with the
• 33:27
  quickness and it's so nice. Yeah, I, I think, I mean,
• 33:36
  everything you're saying right now is basically all of the,
• 33:39
  the, the stuff that hit me when I first ran Apocalypse World
• 33:42
  and, and, and Dungeon World and, and felt the magic.
• 33:47
  So like, yes, I everything you're saying, I'm sitting here
• 33:50
  like, aha, yeah, yeah, been there.
• 33:52
  No, look, I I will allow you this one time to be like, no, I
• 33:56
  was right. Yeah, well.
• 33:57
  Because it's not Even so much about being right.
• 34:01
  It's just, I just, I like it because it, it opens people's,
• 34:10
  it opens your mind, right? Like you take the spice and you
• 34:13
  see, you see the multiple realities.
• 34:15
  You, it opens your mind to like how RPGs can be done.
• 34:20
  And even if you at the end of the day decide to, to, to slide
• 34:25
  back to D&D Daddy, you, you come back with a fresh new
• 34:30
  perspective and then that that betters the perspective of DND
• 34:35
  or whatever you're running, You know, like it's, it's just a
• 34:38
  good, it's kind of, it's kind of like where if the like the rich
• 34:43
  white guy who's like a little bored with his life goes on like
• 34:49
  a retreat to a temple or something.
• 34:52
  And like, does the Monk experience for a week or
• 34:55
  whatever and then he goes back to being a banker.
• 34:58
  But you know, there's like a different part of his mind he
• 35:01
  tapped into that he didn't think about.
• 35:03
  And so he looks at things a little bit differently.
• 35:04
  Like, you know, it's like, it's that perspective idea.
• 35:08
  Oh, can I be so honest with? You.
• 35:10
  Now that I've played so many different RP GS, I have
• 35:14
  literally genuinely 0 desire to go back to.
• 35:19
  Yeah, welcome to my world. Welcome.
• 35:23
  And like, I felt this way for a while, but like, I, I just like,
• 35:28
  I just don't, I don't want to do it.
• 35:29
  Like I, I was looking at Daggerheart again recently and I
• 35:32
  was like, I kind of want to play this again.
• 35:35
  If I want to do my like, my high fantasy, you know, special
• 35:38
  snowflake character, I'd rather just play Daggerheart because
• 35:40
  that was fun as fuck. Yeah.
• 35:42
  And that game is way easier to home through.
• 35:45
  I think. I think DND has fallen into a
• 35:49
  similar trap as AAA gaming. Where or AAA games, I should
• 35:55
  say, where there's a comfort and like a familiarity and
• 36:02
  expectation in the AAA space, right?
• 36:05
  Like if it's a if it's a AAA RPG like the Final Fantasy 7 remake
• 36:12
  series, you know, you expect awesome visuals and it's going
• 36:17
  to be amazing mocapped animation and you know you're going to
• 36:20
  have great facial rigging and voice acting.
• 36:23
  You know, there's like this expectation, but AAA games are
• 36:27
  not pushing the boundaries anymore.
• 36:31
  You know, like they always play it safe.
• 36:36
  It's very rare that AAA, AAA title these days does something
• 36:41
  in terms of the game design that really kind of catches you off
• 36:44
  guard and makes you be like, oh, that's a crazy idea that has all
• 36:48
  shifted into the indie space. And I think tabletop is kind of
• 36:52
  the same way where D&D has the the high quality art, the
• 36:57
  excellent book layout, you know, the, the continue the continuous
• 37:04
  product line up, right? They're always coming out with a
• 37:06
  new book, a new book. It it has the high quality
• 37:11
  website, it's got the now it has the well integrated character
• 37:15
  sheet, you know, the online character sheet, all that stuff
• 37:19
  is, is nice. But D&D, the game mechanically
• 37:23
  is not pushing the boundaries in any way.
• 37:28
  And so once you shift into the indie space and you see all
• 37:31
  these different ways you can go about things, yeah, it gets kind
• 37:35
  of hard to like, go back to the Playing it safe system
• 37:39
  sometimes. It really did it.
• 37:42
  It does. Like, and you will a little bit,
• 37:44
  right? Like at the end of the day, you
• 37:46
  know, sometimes you go back and play a little Fortnite.
• 37:48
  Yeah, you go back and play a little Fortnite, but it ain't
• 37:51
  the same after you've played every other option.
• 37:54
  No, it's really not. So here's the thing.
• 37:58
  Lupo was talking to me. The granted, this is like a
• 38:01
  little, this is over a year ago, right?
• 38:04
  He was like, oh, I'm playing DND.
• 38:05
  It's like we're playing, you know, heavily inspired by the
• 38:10
  Demon Slayer anime. And in my head I was like, I I
• 38:15
  would that does I don't want to do that in DND.
• 38:18
  That doesn't sound fun in DNDI want to do that in literally any
• 38:21
  other system because it could be peak.
• 38:23
  It could be so fucking peak. And it, you know, it's probably
• 38:27
  a lot of fun. He probably loves it.
• 38:29
  I mean, he says he's really enjoying it.
• 38:30
  So like, I'm going to assume that train's going to keep on
• 38:32
  rocking. Right.
• 38:33
  Yeah. But Can you imagine doing like,
• 38:38
  and I'm not even saying Pbta is the game for this, but like
• 38:40
  something like a Lancer where you get to like customize your
• 38:44
  own breathing style and it's super intuitive and you get to
• 38:47
  take a technique from other breathing styles and incorporate
• 38:49
  it into your own. This is, yeah, I mean.
• 38:54
  D&D. Well, you can, but there's so
• 38:57
  many barriers to doing it. And what ends up happening is
• 39:01
  you you realize is that there's other games that will serve your
• 39:05
  need. It's this is literally OK.
• 39:09
  I'm having a conversation with with the V Boyd.
• 39:13
  Oh, no, no. That's just point.
• 39:17
  I'm just saying. I just say it to bother her at
• 39:19
  this point. I remember her conversation with
• 39:21
  my girlfriend. She was saying how her other DND
• 39:25
  group who are vehemently anti learning new games, right, They
• 39:30
  are not the kind of players that are going to go out of their way
• 39:33
  to learn a new system. They are just like we know D&D,
• 39:36
  we play D&D and you know, they're the kind of people who
• 39:43
  like they use Zoom to play. They've never tried to use Roll
• 39:48
  20. They tried to use Discord one
• 39:50
  time and somebody had an issue and then they all gave up.
• 39:54
  You know they're not going out of their way to like, try other
• 39:58
  shit, you know what I'm saying? Yeah.
• 40:00
  And that's fine, whatever, do your shit.
• 40:02
  It's not. I'm not like it's frustrating to
• 40:05
  me, but I'm also like, I'm not going to tell you how to have
• 40:08
  fun, but it is frustrating to me.
• 40:10
  I. Will, But I'm talking to her.
• 40:12
  Cringe. Maybe, yeah, maybe I'll call you
• 40:14
  cringe, but I'm talking to her. And she was like, yeah, for our
• 40:18
  next campaign, the GM wants us. So like the previous campaign,
• 40:23
  the players, I don't remember if they failed or something went
• 40:27
  wrong when they did the final boss fight, but basically the
• 40:30
  world like fell apart. There was like a big like the
• 40:32
  the bad guy one type situation or something akin to that.
• 40:37
  So the player, so she's like you characters now are going to be.
• 40:43
  Oh, excuse me. They're going to be orphan
• 40:46
  children after the apocalyptic event.
• 40:50
  And I was like, wait a minute, orphan children?
• 40:52
  She's like, yeah, we're all like 16 year old characters who live
• 40:56
  in like, an orphanage. And because we're child
• 40:59
  characters, she nerfed all of our stats to represent, like, to
• 41:04
  make it so that we're not as strong.
• 41:06
  And I'm like, OK, first of all, that's not even going to really
• 41:10
  achieve that because you still have all your other DND
• 41:14
  character bullshit that you can use.
• 41:17
  Even if your stats aren't as good, you're still going to
• 41:19
  have, you know, the ability to cast fireball or whatever.
• 41:23
  Yeah. But I'm like, I'm like, so I'm
• 41:26
  like, what is the game going to be?
• 41:28
  And she's like, I'm not really sure, but she was like, we're
• 41:30
  not going to fight much. It's going to be about about
• 41:32
  trying to run the orphanage or like make the orphanage better
• 41:36
  or something like that. And I'm sitting here and my
• 41:38
  brain immediately goes, OK, there's literally a game where
• 41:42
  you could do this perfectly and it would work in every single
• 41:44
  way. And the game would work like
• 41:46
  with you, you could just play Kids on Bikes.
• 41:49
  I was just saying I was just thinking you should play fucking
• 41:52
  kids on bikes. You play kids on bikes and it
• 41:54
  will do exactly that and but they don't want to.
• 41:58
  And again, I can't tell you how to have fun but.
• 42:02
  It just frustrates me because of your.
• 42:04
  Friends, I can't. I mean, sure, but it just
• 42:08
  frustrates me because I look at it, it's like if you, if you
• 42:11
  just looked out at the other systems a little bit, yeah, you
• 42:13
  could find like it would be like you could do it with DND and
• 42:18
  have fun or you could do it with kids and kids on bikes and have
• 42:21
  like fun. Plus, you know, it's like kids.
• 42:26
  I did not. If I said that, I didn't need to
• 42:28
  say that. It's five months, I'm going to
• 42:31
  say. Fair enough, but it's like you
• 42:34
  could have fun, plus, you know, like you could take it that
• 42:37
  extra step. Yeah, so.
• 42:39
  Yeah, you're just experiencing, you're experiencing the same
• 42:42
  thing I experienced where I played a bunch of different
• 42:44
  other, you know, I played a bunch of other games and I look
• 42:46
  at DND and I'm like, you're just not, you're just not doing the
• 42:50
  thing I want. And now even the thing that DND
• 42:53
  does is getting pushed out by other games, right, Like DN DS
• 42:59
  thing is heroic high fantasy, save the universe type shit.
• 43:05
  But now we have Draw Steel, we have Daggerheart, we have Grim
• 43:12
  Hollow which is still using DND but is adding so much shit at
• 43:15
  this point it's kind of becoming its own thing.
• 43:19
  And we have fucking what's that other one?
• 43:21
  That D20D20 something D Oh God, what's it called?
• 43:27
  Cogent role. I can't remember the that other
• 43:29
  YouTube is who's making like another like DNDS style blanket
• 43:34
  on the name. Hard here for my my cogent role
• 43:36
  play jab dad. Oh, Co General.
• 43:39
  I mean, sure, I guess it's in there somewhere, I guess.
• 43:43
  Yeah. I.
• 43:44
  Fucking emphasis on somewhere. DC 20.
• 43:48
  That's the game I was trying to remember.
• 43:49
  DC 20. Oh, yeah.
• 43:50
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's like that those
• 43:53
  games are doing that and, and and going out of their way to
• 43:57
  try to push that genre phone, right.
• 44:01
  So yeah, you look at DND and you're like, at this point the
• 44:06
  only reason I'm sticking around with D&D is 'cause you guys pay
• 44:09
  the nice artist, you know, you pay a lot of money for good
• 44:12
  artists. Like it's got to how I'm feeling
• 44:15
  right now. Yeah, I mean, this is not a jab
• 44:19
  at you. This is just a jab at that, that
• 44:21
  concept where it's like, it couldn't be me.
• 44:23
  My my favorite game writer does all his own fucking art now.
• 44:29
  Yeah, yeah. I I shout out to Tom Bloom a
• 44:33
  designer of fucking Lancer and Kane and and Magna goth Magna
• 44:38
  gothica Malagast didn't fucking kill 6 billion demons.
• 44:42
  Does that do to art styles? It fucks.
• 44:44
  And like very interesting RSL Yeah, it's funny, 'cause I said
• 44:48
  when I was looking at the Kane book deal, I was like, in some
• 44:51
  ways you can tell he's not the most experienced artist.
• 44:55
  Like in some ways it's bad and he probably is very self-taught.
• 44:59
  But in other ways it's really good because he has honed down a
• 45:03
  a look in a really good way that that hits.
• 45:09
  It's interesting. It's an interesting, I don't
• 45:12
  know. I don't know what to there's
• 45:13
  probably a, there's probably like a phrase for that.
• 45:15
  But yeah, he's he's hit this interesting weird, like middle
• 45:17
  ground, like he doesn't have the traditionalist training, but he
• 45:20
  figured out his own thing. I don't know.
• 45:23
  It's interesting. Yeah.
• 45:30
  Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't know
• 45:32
  where else to go with this. You're just, you're just
• 45:35
  reiterating things I say all the time at this point, you know,
• 45:39
  like. Look, I mean, I, I'm, I'm, I'm a
• 45:42
  big enough boy to go. I finally get it.
• 45:45
  Yeah. Well, because you, you ran a,
• 45:48
  this is the thing, right? This is the secret.
• 45:50
  You ran a game, which in this case was Monster Hearts.
• 45:54
  You ran a game that the, the theming and the, and the tone
• 45:59
  and everything was what you were looking for.
• 46:02
  And then the mechanics intrigued you enough to to dip your toe
• 46:07
  in. And then once those two, once
• 46:14
  those two things overlap and and, you know, start to work
• 46:19
  together, that's how you find your like new favorite game, you
• 46:23
  know, and and that's how you yeah, it's like how your your
• 46:29
  ideas for like game design and style of game and all these
• 46:32
  things. Like that's how you hit that
• 46:34
  next step. So yeah, it, it, but it, I will
• 46:41
  acknowledge it requires, it requires the right, the right
• 46:50
  concoction of ingredients, you know, like it requires the right
• 46:54
  time, right? You need to be in a point in
• 46:56
  your life where you can, you know, sit down and absorb the
• 47:00
  new game. It requires the right headspace
• 47:05
  in terms of the kind of game you're looking at.
• 47:08
  It requires interest in the theme and the style of the game.
• 47:12
  And then it requires that open mindedness of trying to figure
• 47:19
  out a thing that might not immediately gel with you, You
• 47:24
  know, it, it, it does. I, I acknowledge that it, it,
• 47:26
  it, it, it necessitates a perfect storm to a certain
• 47:30
  degree. But man, once you hit that
• 47:32
  perfect storm, it really fucking, you're off to the
• 47:34
  races. You know what I mean?
• 47:36
  Yeah. And like honestly, I, I, I don't
• 47:39
  know that I that I think it needs that perfect storm.
• 47:41
  I just think it needs a certain like, yes, have an open mind,
• 47:45
  just require a very specific set of circumstances, But I I think
• 47:48
  it's just as simple as being more comfortable stepping out of
• 47:52
  your comfort zone. Like that's kind of part of this
• 47:57
  podcast. I certainly would not have read
• 48:00
  any of these games, but part of this part of us running this
• 48:05
  podcast is I have to constantly step out of my comfort zone and
• 48:08
  read a bunch of books and not know if I'm going to like them
• 48:11
  or not. And more often than not, even
• 48:13
  like, even if I don't love the book, I will love things in the
• 48:17
  book. And that just makes me a better
• 48:19
  player. It makes me a better GMA, better
• 48:22
  content. Creator Like, yeah.
• 48:25
  And pretty much every game there's going to be something,
• 48:27
  you know, it's not impossible, I think, to read.
• 48:30
  Even the shittiest of role-playing games will have one
• 48:32
  or two ideas where you're like, oh, it's kind of cool, you know?
• 48:35
  Yeah, I mean that the we don't have a good title name for him.
• 48:41
  When Moogie's boyfriend showed us the like index card RPG that
• 48:45
  had a like, I wasn't thrilled about that rule set.
• 48:49
  Yeah, but it was a fun, like some of the stuff like the the
• 48:51
  using a seating chart for your initiative and like there was
• 48:56
  some really interesting stuff they were doing for like attacks
• 48:57
  and damage that I was like, oh, this is kind of neat.
• 48:59
  Like, you could, I could see someone using this as like a,
• 49:03
  you know, crash course. Let's play a tabletop RPG while
• 49:06
  we're around the dinner table kind of thing.
• 49:08
  That can't that. I will say, looking at that
• 49:10
  game, not that I read it super thoroughly or anything, but my
• 49:13
  immediate impression of that was I was kind of looking at that
• 49:16
  game. I was like, oh, this designer
• 49:18
  sort of kind of trying to do what Apocalypse World did, but
• 49:22
  doing it in a little bit of a vacuum.
• 49:26
  You. Know sort of yeah it it seemed
• 49:28
  like I I because I 100% see what you're saying I to me it it
• 49:33
  breathed more of I want even less prep time than apocalypse
• 49:40
  yeah, I want like yeah, I want 30 seconds yeah like I it's like
• 49:45
  I this I this game has to fulfill a niche for people with
• 49:50
  the highest degree of ADHD. It's, it's almost a, it's almost
• 49:54
  like a board game in that way. Yeah, yeah.
• 49:57
  And for what it did, I think it was successful in that.
• 50:02
  So you know, good on you. And next card up between.
• 50:04
  Yeah. Ah, shit.
• 50:08
  What was I going to? What was I saying before I did?
• 50:14
  Perfect, Sir. Oh, I was just going to say in
• 50:18
  reference to what I was saying about the perfect storm thing,
• 50:20
  just to give an example of like how I started to find all this
• 50:26
  other shit. For me.
• 50:27
  It was kind of funny because this is going to sound a little
• 50:31
  depressing, but don't worry, it's fine.
• 50:33
  I'm fine. I went away to school, right to
• 50:37
  to college, to my first college before Mercy and you know, I, I,
• 50:46
  it was literally the I don't know anyone.
• 50:48
  I don't have any friends scenario right.
• 50:49
  I I went away to Boston and didn't know anyone.
• 50:53
  And the dorming, the dorming community of my school is quite
• 50:57
  small. I mean, the school itself was
• 50:59
  pretty small by the point I got there.
• 51:01
  By the time I got there, This is a school that shut down, so they
• 51:04
  were dwindling. I feel like.
• 51:07
  Did I not have I not told you this whole story, Isaiah?
• 51:09
  I feel like I have. So I didn't know the school shut
• 51:11
  down, but I think you have told this story.
• 51:14
  OK, well, yeah, they shut down. But the doorman community was
• 51:18
  small, had no friends. And so I was doing a lot of like
• 51:21
  playing video games in my room. You know, I was doing a lot of
• 51:25
  like playing video games, talking to my girlfriend on like
• 51:27
  Discord basically, or, or maybe my father, I don't remember.
• 51:30
  I don't remember if I had to. No, I probably did.
• 51:32
  And it was a long distance situation, so there's that too.
• 51:37
  And you know, I would I, I don't even remember how, but I came
• 51:45
  across an actual play of Shadowrun which I know is like
• 51:53
  lol fucking Shadowrun. But yeah, I mean.
• 51:56
  Shadowrun and that was how I found a, you know, a YouTube who
• 52:01
  now who now I watch all the time and still watch a lot of his
• 52:04
  content and you know, like a lot of shit.
• 52:06
  He did a lot of role-playing content and I came across this
• 52:11
  and I was and I was like, wow, this is interesting.
• 52:13
  And then I found some other things and then I watched them.
• 52:15
  They did like a little minis mini couple of mini campaign
• 52:20
  mini couple of sessions of Apocalypse World.
• 52:22
  And I was like, what the fuck is this?
• 52:24
  And then I don't even remember how, but they mentioned Dungeon
• 52:29
  World or something. And at some point Adam Cobell,
• 52:34
  who is one of the designers on the original Dungeon World GMs
• 52:38
  for them. And so Dungeon World came up
• 52:40
  through that and then I started following Adam and then I looked
• 52:42
  into Dungeon World and then I found out that Dungeon World is
• 52:44
  based on Apocalypse World. Then I looked into Apocalypse
• 52:46
  World and it was kind of this like chain reaction thing.
• 52:48
  And I ran Dungeon World because I had run D&D and then it and
• 52:52
  then there was the, you know, 4th edition.
• 52:55
  And then there was this big long break and I didn't, you know, I
• 52:58
  was kind of like it. It reignited like I had gotten
• 53:04
  the the flame lit when I was in high school and then it died out
• 53:07
  and then it reignited it for me. I was like, shit, I want to run
• 53:10
  stuff again. And when I was watching the
• 53:12
  actual play of them playing on Shadowrun, they were using roll
• 53:15
  20, which I didn't know existed before.
• 53:17
  And I was like, Oh my God, you can play DND or the likes online
• 53:24
  and there's like a functioning, you know, way to do it that is
• 53:28
  designed for this exact purpose. Let's fucking go, 'cause now by
• 53:31
  this point I had gone away to Boston.
• 53:33
  All my friends were in the fucking military or back in New
• 53:36
  York or whatever, several as far away.
• 53:37
  I was like it. Is kind of wild that so many of
• 53:41
  your friends were like, I'm doing it in the Air Force Four.
• 53:44
  Yeah, yeah. One of them's in the Navy, one
• 53:51
  Navy, 3 Air Force, but either way, everyone's far away.
• 53:55
  So I was like, Oh my God, I can play D&D online with my friends.
• 53:58
  Let's fucking go, gamers. So yeah, it was like, and it was
• 54:03
  just this, it was this perfect storm because I was looking for
• 54:08
  something to play. We had this thing online.
• 54:11
  I was trying to figure out, you know, I had time to kill cause
• 54:13
  so I had lots of time on my hands.
• 54:16
  So I'm sitting there listening to an actual play for hours and
• 54:19
  hours, 'cause I was fucking bored and lonely, you know?
• 54:23
  And it just happened to be that the GM for one of the shows was
• 54:31
  the guy who designed Dungeon World.
• 54:33
  Actually, he yeah, that's right, Adam was, Adam was the one
• 54:35
  running the Shadowrun campaign, happened to be, he was the
• 54:38
  Dungeon World designer. I look into, I look into Dungeon
• 54:41
  World and this unlocks my brain onto this whole new thing where
• 54:45
  I'm like, this game is crazy. And it's so funny 'cause I
• 54:48
  distinctly remember reading Dungeon World and I didn't
• 54:51
  understand how the game worked. I was like, I was like, I don't,
• 54:54
  I was like, there's no initiative.
• 54:55
  There's no, there's no armor class.
• 54:57
  There's no like, there's like kind of an attack role, but kind
• 55:00
  of not an attack role. I was like, I don't understand
• 55:02
  how the fuck this game works. There's a, there's a, a write up
• 55:07
  on the, I don't know if it's still there, but there was a
• 55:10
  write up on the Dungeon World website that says that's called
• 55:14
  How to play Dungeon World. And it was basically a really
• 55:17
  long extended write up of how like you know, how an hour or so
• 55:24
  of a Dungeon World game goes and explained with, you know, like
• 55:29
  actual play example, how the moves work and how the GM
• 55:33
  responds and all this shit. And then I was like, oh, I'm
• 55:35
  kind of getting it now. And then that just got the ball
• 55:38
  rolling. So that's what I mean about
• 55:40
  there being a perfect storm in that just this weird, you know,
• 55:46
  congruence of stuff going on in your life that hits just right.
• 55:51
  And then all of a sudden, yeah, now you're on this whole other
• 55:55
  path that you would have never known about before.
• 56:01
  It's. AI mean it applies to a lot of
• 56:03
  things in life, but we're talking about tabletop so I'm
• 56:05
  just applying it's tabletop at the moment.
• 56:07
  All right. But yeah, it's just a, it's just
• 56:11
  AI don't know fascinating thought or not thought
• 56:16
  experiment, but fascinating like thing to contemplate upon it, I
• 56:20
  guess. Oh.
• 56:21
  No, you're right. So it's just, it's just
• 56:23
  interesting that you're saying all this to me and I'm like, I
• 56:26
  know, I know exactly where your headspace is at.
• 56:32
  Honestly, so apologies dear listener, my throat and chest
• 56:37
  are still a little fucked up for me.
• 56:40
  He's like the general thoughts out of the way.
• 56:42
  I mean, I feel like the the thing that I really wanted to
• 56:44
  talk about was session 0, because I can say without a
• 56:49
  doubt that Monster Hearts has the most fun session zero I've
• 56:53
  ever done. That's interesting.
• 56:57
  It really so it takes something that I already love, which is
• 57:03
  the PBCA backstories, right? And that in of itself is awesome
• 57:08
  because you know, a lot of my players are doing PBCA for the
• 57:11
  first time and watching them bounce off each other.
• 57:16
  It took so much pressure off of me.
• 57:18
  It felt like because usually I'm the one who has to text them
• 57:23
  prior to the campaign and be like, So what are you thinking
• 57:25
  about for NPCS? What are you thinking about for
• 57:27
  like shared back story? Have you been talking to
• 57:29
  anybody? And my players usually have like
• 57:32
  the one or two people they talk to about their back story stuff.
• 57:36
  But then for the most part, no one else in the party knows each
• 57:38
  other. And that's a little annoying,
• 57:40
  right? Like, because it it the the
• 57:43
  dynamic gets a little stale. Whereas in Apocalypse World it
• 57:49
  just, you know, it grabs you by the face and says you're not
• 57:52
  allowed to do this shit on your own.
• 57:54
  You got to do it together. And through that, a bunch of
• 57:58
  really interesting character dynamics just came out through
• 58:02
  the woodwork. And that's awesome.
• 58:05
  But the thing that I loved even more than that is the seating
• 58:10
  chart. The seating chart is so cool.
• 58:14
  It's so fun. And like, I don't know, I, I
• 58:19
  struggle to put into words to give you a bit of a, a
• 58:22
  description of what, what I'm talking about, One of monster
• 58:26
  heart score rules for session 0 is that you build your homeroom
• 58:30
  class together. These are the student.
• 58:32
  These are the other like NPCS, the characters that like your
• 58:37
  characters will interact with it.
• 58:38
  They, they are essentially the main cast of the ensemble,
• 58:43
  including your teacher. And the game tells you that you
• 58:47
  should think about them or their, their, their dynamics as
• 58:52
  being complicated and overlapping.
• 58:56
  So what I did, and I did this a little bit weird because this
• 59:01
  monster arts campaign is like a, of AU essentially of my Lancer
• 59:06
  game, right? My players are playing their
• 59:08
  Lancer characters as 18 year old monster people in high school.
• 59:12
  So the NPCS are just characters they knew from Lancer, which is
• 59:15
  not typically are supposed to do things.
• 59:17
  And it was a little weird, but we figured it out.
• 59:20
  And essentially what I did was I told them prior to session one
• 59:25
  or prior to session zero, like think about a couple characters,
• 59:27
  friend and foe, right? Like ally and adversary that
• 59:31
  your character would know and would share the class with you.
• 59:35
  And that was super cool because it, it did exactly what I
• 59:38
  wanted. It created really social, really
• 59:41
  complex social dynamics where 1 character's friend was like
• 59:45
  another person's like rival essentially.
• 59:49
  Like a really good example was one of my guest players, Cade,
• 59:53
  his character's NPC best friend and Sippy's character, her
• 59:59
  character's NPC boyfriend, do not get along with each other.
• 1:00:04
  They have like a like a weird mysterious beef, but they both
• 1:00:08
  get along with Shin, who is Kate's character and they both
• 1:00:11
  get along with Mina, who's Sippy's character.
• 1:00:15
  And that's super interesting where you have this definitive
• 1:00:17
  conflict that like. Kind of ruffles the waters, so
• 1:00:22
  to speak. Like it's tough to have those
• 1:00:23
  characters in the same room together, but they're sort of
• 1:00:26
  inseparable from their players. They're going to have to exist
• 1:00:29
  in the same room together. I don't know.
• 1:00:37
  I just, I just giving you time to like end your thoughts.
• 1:00:39
  It's just, I love this so much. Yeah, Well, I, it's kind of
• 1:00:42
  funny because the session 0 seating chart thing in Monster
• 1:00:47
  Hearts is it's, it's pretty brief.
• 1:00:50
  It really doesn't, it doesn't give you that much in terms of
• 1:00:54
  what you should or shouldn't do or it doesn't really give you a
• 1:00:57
  list of a big list of questions or anything, but it is, Yeah.
• 1:01:04
  It's, it's just enough of a, it's basically a prompt, right?
• 1:01:11
  It's just enough of a prompt that it gets that ball rolling
• 1:01:15
  and it tells you how to string the characters together.
• 1:01:22
  And, like, that's really ends up being all you need.
• 1:01:24
  Yeah. There's just a little bit of
• 1:01:27
  question here, question there. How do you know this guy?
• 1:01:30
  How do you know that guy that it just snowballs into?
• 1:01:36
  Yeah, a big, a big mess of relationships and shit.
• 1:01:39
  And it is it. It is exactly like, yeah, you,
• 1:01:44
  you, you hit on exactly what the game hit wants you to wanted you
• 1:01:48
  to hit on. Basically, you know, that's the
• 1:01:53
  history questions in Apocalypse World doing the same thing,
• 1:01:56
  right? Like it gives you these
• 1:01:58
  questions that are very provocative and in some, in some
• 1:02:01
  scenarios, kind of weird. And the provocative question
• 1:02:07
  launches the player into thinking about, Oh yeah, how
• 1:02:11
  would my character do that or how would they respond to that?
• 1:02:14
  That's a weird question. I didn't think about that.
• 1:02:16
  You know it's. Oh, I mean, dude, the
• 1:02:18
  provocative questions are my favorite part of this because
• 1:02:20
  they just the amount of times where I asked the players a
• 1:02:24
  question and my response was, or their response was like, oh
• 1:02:27
  fuck, like now they have to figure this out and like it.
• 1:02:31
  It. The, my favorite 1 was Moon's
• 1:02:35
  character's best friend, who in Lancer, she's an engineer who
• 1:02:41
  got arrested or she got expelled from her like super prestigious
• 1:02:45
  college or making contact with the, oh God, what are they
• 1:02:51
  called? The children of RA in Lancer who
• 1:02:54
  are just straight up a terrorist group because her, her thesis
• 1:02:58
  was on paracausal studies. And you know, when you let the
• 1:03:02
  terrorists into the school, they're going to do terrorist
• 1:03:03
  shit. So I had to ask in monster
• 1:03:06
  hearts in session zero, I was like, OK, why did Nana get
• 1:03:10
  arrested? And everybody was like, Oh no.
• 1:03:16
  And that created a lot of really fun dynamics because we we, we,
• 1:03:19
  we realized, you know, we discovered that an NBC who also
• 1:03:25
  exists in Lancer, who was just like the bane of several
• 1:03:27
  people's existence, screwed her over, cost her a scholarship.
• 1:03:32
  So she kind of lost it as a, you know, hormonal high schooler and
• 1:03:37
  tried to throw a Molotov through his window.
• 1:03:39
  Nice. And because she tried throwing a
• 1:03:42
  Molotov through his window, Shin's best friend, who was into
• 1:03:47
  her for a while was like, no, this bitch is crazy, actually.
• 1:03:52
  So now those two characters have a weird situation ship It's
• 1:03:58
  dude, it's the drama is so fucking juicy.
• 1:04:01
  It's so I love it. I was I so much fun.
• 1:04:07
  Yeah, and you know, the, it's, it's funny because the what
• 1:04:12
  you're talking about here, the provocative questions and the
• 1:04:19
  the way that a PBTA games often guide you through that session 0
• 1:04:25
  stuff. And again, Monster Hearts does
• 1:04:27
  this. So like, it barely does it, you
• 1:04:32
  know, it like other PBAPBTA games have done it, have guided
• 1:04:38
  you on this session 0 stuff. More so, the fact that you got
• 1:04:42
  so much of A reaction out of Monster Hearts is kind of funny
• 1:04:44
  because it gives you such a such a brief, you know, like
• 1:04:52
  descriptor of it. You know what I mean?
• 1:04:54
  It does, yeah. But I think it's it's, it was so
• 1:04:57
  evocative. It was so effective, despite how
• 1:05:00
  little it gives you. That's.
• 1:05:01
  What I mean? I think that's what really
• 1:05:03
  attracted me to it and it's just such a really cool idea and it
• 1:05:08
  it does the thing that I love so much, which is the players get
• 1:05:11
  to build the world with you. I don't like it really comes
• 1:05:14
  down to it makes my life so much easier.
• 1:05:18
  It does. It does make your life easier,
• 1:05:20
  absolutely. Yes.
• 1:05:21
  That is some of the PBTI magic. But you know what the other
• 1:05:24
  thing too is, is that the evocativeness of it, it often
• 1:05:33
  gets players to think about things that they would have
• 1:05:36
  never thought about before. And then that causes them to go
• 1:05:40
  down rabbit holes about their own character that they probably
• 1:05:46
  would have never even considered.
• 1:05:48
  And it just helps you build out a more, you know, like a more
• 1:05:53
  complex character. And then that generally ends up
• 1:05:56
  in turning into a character that feels more fleshed out.
• 1:05:59
  And then ergo, a more fleshed out character feels more real.
• 1:06:03
  And then ergo, a more real character is often more fun to
• 1:06:06
  play because you have all of these different angles to how
• 1:06:12
  you can respond to things like you do as a real human being.
• 1:06:16
  You know, like real human beings are not one-dimensional.
• 1:06:22
  You know, it's not like everyone in real life doesn't walk around
• 1:06:24
  being like, I am the edgy rogue character, I am the heroic
• 1:06:28
  fighter character, I am the smart wizard character, right?
• 1:06:30
  Like people are more complicated than that.
• 1:06:32
  So these provocative questions that come up send you down these
• 1:06:39
  rabbit holes about your character that you would have
• 1:06:41
  never in a million years thought about.
• 1:06:43
  The thing that's kind of funny about it is that I have seen
• 1:06:47
  people resist, even in Apocalypse World with the
• 1:06:50
  history questions, I have seen people resist these questions a
• 1:06:55
  little bit. Because DND kind, you know, sort
• 1:07:01
  of teaches you that you sit down and you make your character and
• 1:07:06
  your character is your character and that's it.
• 1:07:08
  And you get to decide who they are.
• 1:07:11
  Because, you know, in DND you don't have a lot of control over
• 1:07:15
  the world. The only thing you do have
• 1:07:17
  control over is your character, or at least that's what the game
• 1:07:19
  tells you. I don't think this is actually
• 1:07:21
  how you should play DND, but this is what the game says to
• 1:07:23
  you. Broadly speaking, I think DND is
• 1:07:27
  much better if you do let the players influence the actual
• 1:07:29
  world and stuff outside of just their character.
• 1:07:32
  But the game as is, essentially says you can influence your
• 1:07:35
  character and that's it. So there's a resistance to the
• 1:07:39
  questions because from the DND mindset, you're like, no, no,
• 1:07:42
  no, I've already decided on what my character is.
• 1:07:44
  I don't want to change it now. Don't take away control of the
• 1:07:48
  only thing that I have control of.
• 1:07:52
  But what you find out is you. If you embrace the questions,
• 1:07:57
  they expand your character in ways that you wouldn't have not
• 1:08:02
  have initially thought of, but are more interesting to you just
• 1:08:07
  as a player. Because you have.
• 1:08:12
  Because The thing is, when you come up with a character in a
• 1:08:14
  tabletop game, you probably have these ideas like, oh, I bet this
• 1:08:19
  character really likes coffee, but this is never gonna come up.
• 1:08:22
  But you just had that thought. And then one of the questions,
• 1:08:25
  you know, let's say you're doing Apocalypse World and one of the
• 1:08:27
  history questions is like, I saw you in a weird place.
• 1:08:32
  Where did I see you? And the player goes, oh, you saw
• 1:08:36
  me in this coffee shop that everyone thinks is really bad.
• 1:08:41
  And you know, I go there all the time.
• 1:08:43
  And now all of a sudden this random thought you had comes up
• 1:08:45
  as an idea and now it's like a notable character thing.
• 1:08:49
  So this, it's like people resist the questions, but once they
• 1:08:53
  embrace the questions, they realize that the questions
• 1:08:56
  actually let them do. It's like they look at the
• 1:08:59
  questions and they think to themselves, oh, these questions
• 1:09:02
  are going to get in the way of me making my character and
• 1:09:05
  restrict me. What they find out is the
• 1:09:07
  questions actually let you make your character more than you
• 1:09:10
  would have before. Expands what you were already
• 1:09:14
  doing. I actually, I, so I had to have
• 1:09:16
  a, a conversation of a similar ilk with Kate himself because he
• 1:09:21
  was getting kind of caught up on the, the stat layouts and how
• 1:09:29
  like, there's not many stats and you have to be bad at one of
• 1:09:31
  them. And you know, we were having
• 1:09:34
  this talk and basically what I was explaining was like, rather
• 1:09:40
  than not be like annoyed that you have what like 1 stat that's
• 1:09:44
  not good and one stat that's straight up bad.
• 1:09:47
  Think about why your character, who to your like his character
• 1:09:50
  is a demigod and is like, you know, he's an athlete and all
• 1:09:54
  these things, but he has really low volatile.
• 1:09:57
  And I was, he was like, Oh well, he's probably trained to fight.
• 1:10:00
  And I'm like, yeah, but he's got bad volatile.
• 1:10:01
  And he's like, yeah, I don't like that.
• 1:10:02
  And I go, OK, well, think about it this way.
• 1:10:05
  Think about what what the game describes the volatile stat to
• 1:10:08
  be and think about why a character who's good at fighting
• 1:10:12
  would be bad at lashing out physically.
• 1:10:17
  Is he better? Is it just that because he won't
• 1:10:19
  use his like, you know, his fighting knowledge to hurt
• 1:10:23
  people? Maybe, you know, maybe he's a
• 1:10:25
  Katateka. He's very like defensive.
• 1:10:27
  Maybe he's a defender kind of personality where he's not going
• 1:10:30
  to hurt people, but he can use cold to shut people down and,
• 1:10:35
  you know, put someone in a joint lock as opposed to punching them
• 1:10:38
  in the face. And when I explained it to him
• 1:10:41
  like that, it it started to click for him and he was like,
• 1:10:43
  oh, OK, interesting. All right.
• 1:10:46
  And I had to have that talk with a couple players and I, I think
• 1:10:48
  each time it was more and more effective because it's true,
• 1:10:52
  right? It, like Apocalypse World, does
• 1:10:55
  not want your character to be good Everything it wants your
• 1:10:57
  character to. It wants you to explain why your
• 1:11:00
  character isn't good at everything.
• 1:11:02
  Yeah, think about it. Physical limitation?
• 1:11:04
  Is it a personality thing? Yeah, that.
• 1:11:09
  Yeah, it's, yeah, it's exact. It's the same thing as what I
• 1:11:13
  was just saying. It is you, you initially, again,
• 1:11:19
  coming from that DND mentality, you will initially look at it as
• 1:11:24
  restrictive, but what you find out is it's actually the the way
• 1:11:29
  you the way you get the most out of it is it's descriptive and
• 1:11:34
  that it lets you expand out. Like taking taking Cade's
• 1:11:40
  character, OK, so he's bad at volatile, but he's a trained
• 1:11:43
  fighter. Maybe he's trained in the like,
• 1:11:49
  He goes to the Dojo and he's very disciplined, but when he
• 1:11:54
  gets into an actual physical altercation in real life, he
• 1:11:57
  just doesn't have the guts for it.
• 1:11:59
  He kind of freaks out a little bit.
• 1:12:00
  And now you have this new layer to your character that you
• 1:12:03
  probably would never have thought of, but now it's here
• 1:12:06
  and now it's probably going to come up.
• 1:12:08
  Or at least if it doesn't come up, it's always this little
• 1:12:10
  element in the background that you could reference or think
• 1:12:12
  about. So yeah, you shouldn't think of
• 1:12:15
  it as it's not, it's not rules, right?
• 1:12:19
  People look at them like rules. They're not rules.
• 1:12:22
  They're prompts. They're prompts to get your mind
• 1:12:25
  going. They're prompts to make you
• 1:12:26
  think about stuff. They're they're prompts to make
• 1:12:30
  your character more interesting. It's it, it really just goes
• 1:12:34
  back to being open. First you have to be open
• 1:12:39
  minded. If open minded what?
• 1:12:42
  Open minded enough? That was a weird 1.
• 1:12:46
  You have to be open to minded enough to try a new game, right?
• 1:12:49
  That's step one. Step 2 then is to be open minded
• 1:12:53
  enough to do what the game is asking of you to get the most
• 1:12:59
  out of it. Because you could try a new
• 1:13:01
  game, right? Let's say you're playing, let's
• 1:13:04
  say you go from DND to Dungeon World, right?
• 1:13:06
  A game that's a little bit closer to DND.
• 1:13:09
  And then you look at the Bonds rules.
• 1:13:11
  Maybe you don't like the rules for Bonds in Dungeon World.
• 1:13:14
  And so you just ignore. You're like, we're just not
• 1:13:16
  going to use those, we're going to ignore those because I don't
• 1:13:18
  know, those are weird. I don't like those.
• 1:13:20
  Those aren't very D&D esque. It's like, OK, so you're trying
• 1:13:23
  a new game, but you're resisting what the new game is presenting
• 1:13:26
  to you. So you're missing out on some of
• 1:13:30
  the magic of what the new game could be doing for you.
• 1:13:32
  You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I mean, I, I think
• 1:13:39
  that makes sense, right? Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:42
  Yeah, yeah, OK. Like to summarize, sometimes you
• 1:13:45
  just got to. You need to be willing to just
• 1:13:49
  go along with it. Yeah, you got to roll with it.
• 1:13:53
  You know, it's it's I going to resist the sex analogy.
• 1:14:00
  I'm not going to do it. I I'm not going to do it.
• 1:14:03
  You paused and I was like, where's?
• 1:14:04
  I'm not going to do it. It's the thing where like, you
• 1:14:09
  know, maybe your friend wants to go to a certain kind of bar that
• 1:14:14
  plays like loud EDM music or whatever.
• 1:14:16
  And you're not a big EDM guy, but you, you know, you're open
• 1:14:19
  to the experience cause your friend wants to do it.
• 1:14:21
  You want to try it out. You're like, OK.
• 1:14:22
  And then you go and you end up having a good time and like, you
• 1:14:25
  get a chick's number or whatever.
• 1:14:26
  And like it goes, well, you know, it's, it's, but you could
• 1:14:29
  also go to said bar and just sit there and sip water and be a
• 1:14:33
  mopy bitch and not be open to like what's, you know, not be
• 1:14:38
  open to the event and trying things out.
• 1:14:40
  You know, there's, there's, there's those two different
• 1:14:43
  paths when you try something new, you could be like resistant
• 1:14:46
  or you could let it happen to you.
• 1:14:52
  Tabletop is that is a is a very similar kind of thing.
• 1:14:55
  It's You can resist the new game you're trying, or you can let
• 1:14:59
  the new game into your heart and see where it goes.
• 1:15:03
  Yeah, let it in, let it, let it. Let it give you a sweet cresty
• 1:15:05
  undercarriage. You might like it, you might
• 1:15:07
  not, but you might. You might like it.
• 1:15:09
  And that's the thing. If you let if you try it, you go
• 1:15:12
  with it, right? You look at the game, you do
• 1:15:15
  everything it asks. If you you try it out and you go
• 1:15:18
  didn't work out. OK, fine, that's fine.
• 1:15:22
  Like you did you get you tried it, you thought about it and you
• 1:15:25
  said never mind, fuck that noise.
• 1:15:28
  But you got to at least be open to the experience one time, You
• 1:15:34
  know, music it. It's literally, it's literally
• 1:15:39
  your friend showing you a new song, being like, oh, there's a
• 1:15:43
  song I've been listening to a shit load.
• 1:15:45
  I think you might like it. And then they play it for you.
• 1:15:49
  Don't don't decide that you hate it from the beginning.
• 1:15:52
  Try and actually fucking listen to it.
• 1:15:54
  You know it's you're. My relationship of me just being
• 1:15:58
  like you. Just listen to this song.
• 1:15:59
  I, I know and listen. I.
• 1:16:01
  Literally sending you a song right before you recorded.
• 1:16:05
  I did. Is that what you sent me?
• 1:16:06
  I, I, I saw I didn't actually. I didn't.
• 1:16:08
  Actually butcher Vanity by Jamie Page and and rice deity.
• 1:16:12
  God, that song slaps. Like, yeah, that's you need to.
• 1:16:17
  Yeah, it's that same mentality. And sometimes you do and
• 1:16:20
  sometimes you don't. But you should try and do it as
• 1:16:23
  much as you can, yeah. Look, I'm not saying you're
• 1:16:25
  going to love that song. I'm just saying that that song
• 1:16:27
  fucking slaps. Fair enough.
• 1:16:33
  And also sometimes there's a, there's just a certain kind of,
• 1:16:38
  sometimes there's a unique kind of fun to being like, I have no
• 1:16:43
  fucking clue what's going on right now, but I'm just rolling
• 1:16:45
  with it. You know what I mean?
• 1:16:46
  That could be its own fun sometimes.
• 1:16:47
  No, dude, the first time have I ever told you about a first?
• 1:16:51
  The first concert I ever went to.
• 1:16:54
  No. OK, it's just such a tangent.
• 1:16:56
  It's fine. We're only an hour in.
• 1:16:57
  We have time. I mean, it's it's, it's a
• 1:16:59
  related tangent. It is, yeah.
• 1:17:02
  So when I was a junior, no, I just started off as a senior in
• 1:17:07
  high school. Probably September or just or
• 1:17:09
  October or something or no, no, I was a junior the summer of my
• 1:17:14
  junior year or the spring and summer.
• 1:17:16
  I had a friend who I was in track with and his girlfriend
• 1:17:19
  I've known since kindergarten who was the year ahead of me and
• 1:17:25
  they had broken up in like March.
• 1:17:29
  And I was just like starting to like reconnect with her and hang
• 1:17:32
  out And I, I was going to do the nefarious thing of slide in on
• 1:17:36
  my buddies drove right after they broke up.
• 1:17:39
  I look, I didn't do it. I grew A conscience, but I was
• 1:17:44
  trying for a while and she invited me to a concert and it
• 1:17:48
  was Gojira and Meshuga, which is an All Star metal lineup for
• 1:17:52
  your first concert, frankly. That's yeah.
• 1:17:54
  OK. Wow.
• 1:17:55
  Yeah. And I mean, Gojira alone is
• 1:17:58
  wild. I know I know dude, honestly I
• 1:18:01
  wish I was older and went to that show because I would have
• 1:18:03
  appreciated it so much more. But I went in and was like oh I
• 1:18:06
  want to do a mosh pit. I've always heard like heard
• 1:18:08
  about those. This seems really fun.
• 1:18:10
  And for the like 30 minutes I was in it, I had a great time.
• 1:18:15
  I was throwing fists, I was swanging, I was fucking shoving.
• 1:18:20
  And then I got punched in the face.
• 1:18:24
  And I don't mean punched. I've been punched in the face a
• 1:18:26
  lot in my my youth, but I mean punched in the face and my feet
• 1:18:32
  went off the ground. Oh.
• 1:18:33
  No. Just laid the fuck out.
• 1:18:37
  Like, like, give me that fucking Batman impact bubble.
• 1:18:40
  Like floored, like #destroyed. Destroyed.
• 1:18:47
  Oh and I on my back and I'm seeing 4 of everything my face
• 1:18:53
  is on fire and I'm like what the fuck I don't want to do this
• 1:18:58
  anymore this sucks and I get to my feet barely and the song ends
• 1:19:03
  and I I know the etiquette right?
• 1:19:04
  I got I got about 10 seconds to clear the the fucking gate.
• 1:19:07
  To get the fuck out of the flirt.
• 1:19:08
  Yeah, I'm stumbling on and I get I get to the precipice and the
• 1:19:14
  next song's drum fill hits and these two big biker dudes just
• 1:19:18
  close up on me and they look me in the eye and go sorry, man,
• 1:19:22
  and shove me back into the pin. I get pinballed for about 4
• 1:19:29
  minutes. I'm getting wailed on because
• 1:19:32
  I'm so disoriented and I spin around and oh look, there's
• 1:19:37
  another fist. Here comes a giant fist and I'm
• 1:19:41
  back on my fucking back and I know my nose is bleeding and I'm
• 1:19:46
  like, you know, there is regret going on.
• 1:19:51
  Yeah, yeah. Thankfully I was way closer to
• 1:19:55
  the edge, so I managed to get out and I spent the rest of the
• 1:19:58
  concert like sitting down seeing I, I was like, I, I probably am
• 1:20:04
  concussed right now. I like.
• 1:20:07
  Did they really hit you with the sorry chief?
• 1:20:09
  Yeah, yeah. They were like, sorry, man.
• 1:20:11
  It's crazy. Literally the like.
• 1:20:15
  Like the pearly gates shutting on me yo.
• 1:20:18
  They really said sorry I gotta do this to you bud but.
• 1:20:21
  Gigi. Like that's crazy.
• 1:20:25
  Straight hit me with the sucks to suck loser.
• 1:20:27
  Sucks to suck, nerd. Yeah, dude, I just imagine I'm
• 1:20:31
  Spartan. Spartan.
• 1:20:32
  Kicking you back into. The crowd, dude, they may as
• 1:20:38
  well have. I, I I'm the Persian that's and
• 1:20:42
  there Lee and I are doing the to the cliffs.
• 1:20:46
  Meanwhile, wait and you, just like you, just couldn't make
• 1:20:49
  your way back to the edge after that.
• 1:20:51
  No, dude, the the pit was wild. Like there were little pockets
• 1:20:57
  of freedom where you could catch your breath.
• 1:21:00
  And this girl, and we're, we're going to call her Olivia because
• 1:21:03
  it's very close to her actual name.
• 1:21:05
  I like this. It was the most surreal
• 1:21:07
  experience because she was about 6 foot 3.
• 1:21:11
  Wait, she was in the mosh with you?
• 1:21:13
  Oh yeah, oh, both of them were the girl that I was into and
• 1:21:16
  this girl Olivia were both in the mosh.
• 1:21:19
  And again, Olivia's probably 6 foot 3 and maybe 180 lbs.
• 1:21:23
  Oh. Huge woman, be a woman.
• 1:21:27
  I turn around again. I'm like, I think I'm dying, I
• 1:21:30
  think I'm concussed. And she's just being crowd
• 1:21:32
  surfed. Like like it, it played out like
• 1:21:36
  a cartoon, like the music died down and I'm like, what?
• 1:21:40
  It's going. How did the crowd surfing what?
• 1:21:43
  In the crowd surfing in the mosh pit?
• 1:21:44
  What? Oh, yeah.
• 1:21:46
  OK. Yeah.
• 1:21:47
  And as like, someone yanked her shoe off and I saw it go flying
• 1:21:50
  and she left that concert with only one shoe.
• 1:21:53
  All right, all righty. I feel like this has to be the
• 1:21:57
  clip, right? I, I maybe, I don't know, like I
• 1:22:02
  just so did you, did you, so you, you escaped after that, the
• 1:22:11
  second song. Yeah, I escaped and I, I, I came
• 1:22:15
  back into just at the, like, venue proper.
• 1:22:17
  Like, I came back to the the crowd every couple songs, but
• 1:22:21
  like, I was hurt. Like I was like nauseous.
• 1:22:26
  Like, that's how hard I got it. And again, as someone who like
• 1:22:29
  who's trained in boxing since my freshman year of high school,
• 1:22:32
  I've been hit in the face very hard.
• 1:22:36
  And that one was like, negative, chief, we're done.
• 1:22:40
  I mean, you almost certainly had a concussion.
• 1:22:48
  And it happened twice. I think that's the worst part.
• 1:22:50
  Is it it, it? Oh my gosh, it.
• 1:22:52
  It literally felt like something out of a fucking sitcom.
• 1:22:56
  Yeah, yeah. Good times.
• 1:22:59
  What? What made you think of this?
• 1:23:02
  Oh, just the trying new things. Oh.
• 1:23:05
  Fair enough. The moral to the end of that
• 1:23:06
  story is I saw my friend Esther, he graduated looking really sad
• 1:23:11
  about the breakup. And I was like, no, I'm not
• 1:23:17
  going to do that. That's that's a little.
• 1:23:18
  I was going to say, did you? You didn't, right?
• 1:23:20
  I know I didn't. I look.
• 1:23:22
  Every fiber of my being was on villain time up until I saw him
• 1:23:26
  look like a broken man. And I just was like, no, there's
• 1:23:30
  my conscience. I.
• 1:23:31
  Have a funny story about that one?
• 1:23:33
  Oh, please do tell. Not.
• 1:23:35
  Not right now, not right now. It's afterwards.
• 1:23:38
  Damn it. OK, no.
• 1:23:41
  And I'm so curious. Fuck.
• 1:23:42
  OK, 555. 5I I will tell you later, don't worry.
• 1:23:45
  All right, on to my final chapter of my notes.
• 1:23:49
  Playing the game, but exhibit one getting weird.
• 1:23:54
  And I, you know, I very specifically remember talking to
• 1:23:56
  you about this where I was like my players.
• 1:23:58
  I love them, but some of them are pretty socially awkward.
• 1:24:01
  I don't know if they're going to have the the the chutzpah to get
• 1:24:06
  weird. And thankfully, Sarath, my
• 1:24:11
  saving grace. Got weird she.
• 1:24:15
  She got weird immediately. I the second she was like I want
• 1:24:18
  to play a Fey. I knew.
• 1:24:20
  I knew in my heart of fucking hearts that she was going to go
• 1:24:24
  places no other player went. She is count em the only player
• 1:24:29
  to use a sex move in the first two sessions and she was going
• 1:24:32
  to have it done in the first session, had another NPC,
• 1:24:36
  another player not taking that NPC from her.
• 1:24:39
  Damn crazy. She the, the so the set up for
• 1:24:43
  the party was that it was essentially like a, like a house
• 1:24:47
  party from the richest kid in town.
• 1:24:49
  And they got, you know, all of the hits that there's a wall of
• 1:24:53
  booze, a huge party bowl for love like Molly and E and
• 1:24:58
  fucking eddies and everything else you could have under the
• 1:25:00
  sun tabs and whatnot. And there's like this, this Hank
• 1:25:04
  miasma that's sort of existing in the air that's having non
• 1:25:09
  supernatural characters act on their like bassist instincts, be
• 1:25:13
  it like violence or sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, whatever you
• 1:25:15
  want to do. And characters were like being
• 1:25:21
  flirty and all this fun stuff's happening.
• 1:25:23
  And she immediately went to her characters, her rival character
• 1:25:25
  who's also a fae, and put the moves on her and the dude that
• 1:25:30
  that character that they were trying to mess with and pulled
• 1:25:33
  the two of them into a threesome and then was trying to smash
• 1:25:37
  Paladin's character. Dude, it was just every time she
• 1:25:43
  took the mic, I was like, oh, baby is finna go down.
• 1:25:47
  And it did every single time. And then she caught a body and I
• 1:25:53
  was so happy because what what I had like what I put my faith in
• 1:26:01
  and what I told you was I just need one person to set the bar.
• 1:26:06
  Yeah, yeah. Because once one person sets the
• 1:26:08
  bar, everyone goes, oh, OK, that's that didn't make me
• 1:26:15
  uncomfortable. I can do that.
• 1:26:17
  And in fact, that wasn't that bad.
• 1:26:19
  Maybe I can push a little farther.
• 1:26:21
  And they were like, every character was like, Mike Moon's
• 1:26:25
  character was handing out condoms to all her male friends
• 1:26:28
  and then was talking to Shin, who was her character's
• 1:26:30
  boyfriend, and was like, I have one extra, you know?
• 1:26:32
  And I was like, hey, yell. Hey, Yell.
• 1:26:37
  So good. I mean, listen, you remember how
• 1:26:41
  how we were talking about how Apocalypse World is a strange
• 1:26:44
  Eldridge being that seems to dive into the weirdness no
• 1:26:48
  matter what you do? I, I counted on it.
• 1:26:52
  I was. I literally gave myself to the
• 1:26:54
  beast. I I I waded into deep waters and
• 1:26:57
  let it take. Yeah, you saw it in real time
• 1:27:00
  happen. And like I said, like I said
• 1:27:02
  when we were talking about Apocalypse World, I don't know
• 1:27:07
  how or why or what, I don't know what's going on, but it is an
• 1:27:13
  Eldridge demon that just pulls you into the darkness every
• 1:27:16
  fucking time. It's crazy.
• 1:27:18
  Every time. Yeah.
• 1:27:20
  And it it went on like a charm. Like from the second the stage
• 1:27:24
  was set, everything just unfolded like magic.
• 1:27:28
  Well, that's the thing. Once the 1st it's, it's got as a
• 1:27:33
  as a game. It very much has that domino
• 1:27:36
  effect where once that first domino gets knocked over, like
• 1:27:41
  you're saying, once the first person does the weird thing,
• 1:27:44
  everyone else is going to start doing the weird thing.
• 1:27:47
  And they absolutely did. And the thing too, the the other
• 1:27:51
  part of it too, because you might say, you know, someone
• 1:27:55
  might hear that and go, OK, but isn't that just the players
• 1:27:58
  being weird? Like what does that have to do
• 1:28:00
  with the game? And the answer is that yes, it's
• 1:28:03
  the players being weird, but the game facilitates the weirdness.
• 1:28:07
  Like the game doesn't resist you when you go down the weird
• 1:28:11
  rabbit hole. The game works with you.
• 1:28:13
  So you end up going further down that rabbit hole than you
• 1:28:16
  initially anticipated it. It goes with you on the journey.
• 1:28:24
  It does, it does. And as to that journey, wow man,
• 1:28:29
  when when I think Apocalypse rolls, Apocalypse rolls is the
• 1:28:32
  one that says it where it's like shit rolls downhill.
• 1:28:36
  Move Snowball is how apocalypse. I think there's a line in that
• 1:28:40
  paragraph that says shit rolls downhill, and it really does,
• 1:28:43
  especially in this game. I really love that the MC
• 1:28:48
  reactions are designed to keep tension and drama steadily
• 1:28:52
  rising. Like my two favorite ones are
• 1:28:58
  leap to a leap to the worst possible conclusion and expose a
• 1:29:03
  dangerous secret to the wrong person.
• 1:29:05
  Those are my absolute favorites because in any other game, a
• 1:29:10
  character randomly jumping to conclusions, that's annoying,
• 1:29:14
  right? That's, that's just the GM being
• 1:29:16
  me. But when you go into the game
• 1:29:19
  knowing that it's high school, it's dramatic, it's
• 1:29:22
  melodramatic, that's just what's going to happen, and you prepare
• 1:29:26
  yourself for it and you're expecting it.
• 1:29:30
  It's the theme it's trying to execute on.
• 1:29:32
  Yeah, it just works. Perfect example, Moon's
• 1:29:37
  character, I'm just going to start referring to my name, Ava
• 1:29:39
  and and Palin's character, Nate. Nate's whole thing is he's a
• 1:29:43
  Cerberus. He's like a guardian of the
• 1:29:44
  underworld. So because Ava is a ghost, he's
• 1:29:47
  like, oh, why are you? What are you doing up here?
• 1:29:50
  That's I don't like that. And because he was like, I'm
• 1:29:53
  just going to go hard from the very start, literally 5 minutes
• 1:29:57
  into session one, hold Ava to the side and was like, I know
• 1:30:01
  you're dead. I know what you are.
• 1:30:04
  And that he got that because of his back story.
• 1:30:07
  Like that's what they shared. So that immediately, like, set
• 1:30:12
  off a chain of reactions where they met during lunch and had a
• 1:30:15
  conversation. And I was like, Oh, well, Moon's
• 1:30:18
  character's kind of a drama magnet.
• 1:30:20
  Not really from her own fault, but, you know, drama just
• 1:30:23
  follows her. So it makes sense that someone
• 1:30:25
  snapped a photo of these two speaking in, like, a little
• 1:30:29
  cubby in the hallway. I wonder what people would think
• 1:30:32
  if that got passed around. And it did.
• 1:30:35
  And when they went to the party she was never free from rumors
• 1:30:40
  just following her and like sick.
• 1:30:45
  As a minor thought though, and this is not a gripe, but since I
• 1:30:49
  have been playing Kane, I almost wish there was like an actual
• 1:30:54
  tension and pressure meter. Like Kane essentially clocks
• 1:30:58
  that say like when enough things happen and like set a set of
• 1:31:02
  parameters that it auto triggers a like more severe reaction, you
• 1:31:07
  know. And Kane, they're called tension
• 1:31:11
  moves and they literally like reused that vernacular moves.
• 1:31:17
  I mean there's sort of kinda is a little bit, and I don't
• 1:31:24
  remember if Monster Hearts addresses this or not, but
• 1:31:28
  Apocalypse World has the idea of soft versus hard moves, which I
• 1:31:35
  think is kind of in line with what you're talking about, where
• 1:31:37
  the idea that some moves are soft moves, meaning that the
• 1:31:43
  consequences of the move are not immediate.
• 1:31:47
  Whereas a hard move is like it's an immediate, like we're doing
• 1:31:51
  this now, like you fucked up. The sort of classic example is
• 1:31:57
  the player character is walking through the forest and the GM
• 1:32:03
  says, you know, you walk into this little ring of trees and
• 1:32:09
  you see the glint of metal in the trees.
• 1:32:13
  And the player character's like, oh, I immediately dodge into
• 1:32:16
  nearby Bush. And you're like, OK, and you
• 1:32:17
  dodge in the nearby Bush. And then goblins let loose a
• 1:32:21
  bunch of arrows, but they miss you 'cause you rolled out of the
• 1:32:23
  way. That would be a soft move
• 1:32:26
  because you were telling them you see an oncoming danger
• 1:32:29
  that's about to happen, whereas the hard move would be you walk
• 1:32:34
  into this little circle of trees and you get riddled with arrows.
• 1:32:37
  You take it, you know, you take 1D10 damage if you're talking
• 1:32:40
  about Dungeon World because you've been shot by a bunch of
• 1:32:43
  goblins. And the reason it's a hard move
• 1:32:45
  is because the GM probably told you some sort of information
• 1:32:48
  that you ignored or you failed to roll prior to that, and that
• 1:32:52
  sets you up into a bad situation.
• 1:32:54
  So that kind of exists. But yeah, it's not, it's not put
• 1:32:59
  in the form of like a clock or a timer of any kind.
• 1:33:03
  I think you'd really like the tension moves because it it
• 1:33:08
  because the way Kane does it is you have a tension clock and you
• 1:33:10
  have a pressure clock and the tension clock only has three
• 1:33:13
  faces. And basically whenever the
• 1:33:14
  players roll A1, they or they, they fail A roll out, right?
• 1:33:17
  They don't have any successes. And you limit that to once per
• 1:33:20
  scene per player. You can put a tick on the clock.
• 1:33:25
  Every time they change a scene, you put a tick on a clock.
• 1:33:27
  And I think there are miscellaneous things that can
• 1:33:31
  increase the the tension clock. And once that fills up, you bump
• 1:33:35
  up the pressure by one, which is like a, you know, abstract for
• 1:33:38
  situations getting more dire. And once you fill out the
• 1:33:43
  tension clock, you get to do a tension move, which is like use
• 1:33:46
  one of the sin domains or, you know, separate the players have
• 1:33:50
  the sin attack, have the sins minions attacks.
• 1:33:52
  It literally is the the apocalypse world reactions, but
• 1:33:55
  they can be more brutal because you're giving the players a
• 1:33:58
  definitive like peek into what they're doing right?
• 1:34:01
  There's a timer. Indicating what's happening.
• 1:34:04
  Yes. It's the it's the Dark Souls
• 1:34:07
  idea. Like a move that does a an
• 1:34:09
  absolute fuck ton of damage is telegraphed.
• 1:34:12
  Yes. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:34:16
  I mean, I, I've seen other games bring up somewhat similar.
• 1:34:19
  I think Fabula actually tells you to do something similar
• 1:34:22
  where basically if there's a move that's going to do
• 1:34:24
  something really crazy, your players should have some kind of
• 1:34:26
  warning for it. So yeah.
• 1:34:31
  Or you know, a clock or something like that.
• 1:34:38
  So yes. I just like in my notes.
• 1:34:43
  Yes, Monster Hearts doesn't strictly have it, but it sort of
• 1:34:47
  kind of has it. Sort of kind of, yeah.
• 1:34:49
  I I, I I just feel like because the like the trigger darkest
• 1:34:56
  self 1 is like the perfect one to put at the end of attention
• 1:34:59
  clock. You know what I mean?
• 1:35:00
  Right, right. Yeah.
• 1:35:02
  You're like, you fucked up a bunch of times.
• 1:35:04
  Time to do this. Yeah, like your, your
• 1:35:06
  character's just going fucking through it, my guy.
• 1:35:09
  Yeah, it's time to turn to a werewolf.
• 1:35:13
  Makes sense. I yeah, I, I just, I would like
• 1:35:16
  to see that. I think, yeah.
• 1:35:19
  I can't wait for you to ring Kane.
• 1:35:20
  You're going to love it. I I know it.
• 1:35:21
  I feel it. I feel it on my bones anyway.
• 1:35:24
  And then this last one, which I have titled coming to a head is
• 1:35:29
  and and we, we brought this up earlier.
• 1:35:32
  The game literally has you as the MC waiting with bated
• 1:35:36
  breath. You want to know what's what
• 1:35:38
  happens next just as much as the players do.
• 1:35:43
  And when the players are like what, they will ask you like,
• 1:35:46
  what are we gonna do? And you're just like, I don't, I
• 1:35:48
  don't fucking know. What are we gonna do 'cause?
• 1:35:54
  That goes back to some of that apocalypse world magic for sure.
• 1:35:59
  Oh 100% I have no doubt. Going back to the it's an
• 1:36:04
  Eldridge beast that just does things.
• 1:36:08
  Yeah, yeah, it, it's so. And again, it's kind of funny to
• 1:36:16
  talk about because you, it almost sounds a little
• 1:36:20
  ridiculous to say this kind of thing.
• 1:36:23
  Like, what do you mean? The GM doesn't know what's going
• 1:36:25
  to happen? The GM always knows what's going
• 1:36:26
  to happen. And you your response is like.
• 1:36:30
  Yes. But also no.
• 1:36:32
  Both of you to assume that I'm not also on the edge of my suit?
• 1:36:36
  Yeah, like. That's kind of the thing about
• 1:36:39
  the way these Pbta games work is that part of the, the appeal to
• 1:36:45
  GM ING them is that you, you don't know because the game is
• 1:36:51
  taking you for a ride as much as it's taking for the the players
• 1:36:55
  for a ride. And you're, you are going for a
• 1:36:59
  slightly different ride than the players, but there is still a
• 1:37:03
  ride to be had, you know? Yeah, no, like we really can't
• 1:37:08
  stress this shit enough. This game is an eldritch
• 1:37:12
  abomination. It just does what it wants.
• 1:37:15
  It just yeah, it's yeah, it's it's the only way I know how to
• 1:37:20
  describe it. It I know and I know it sounds
• 1:37:23
  crazy and I understand someone listening and being like, what
• 1:37:26
  the fuck you out about? But yeah, it's just I don't
• 1:37:31
  know. Vincent Baker hit a certain hit
• 1:37:34
  a certain magic in the game design that just it just works.
• 1:37:41
  He look somehow. It's a debate.
• 1:37:43
  He really did do it to him like. Yeah, he did.
• 1:37:46
  He did it to him. He did it to him.
• 1:37:47
  And, and again, as someone who's played these kinds of games
• 1:37:51
  quite a bit, I don't, I really can't fully identify or explain
• 1:37:56
  what it is. I just know it's there, and I've
• 1:38:00
  heard other designers and shit tried to talk about it and they
• 1:38:05
  kind of can't. I almost wonder if Vincent Baker
• 1:38:11
  himself couldn't even necessarily fully describe what
• 1:38:14
  he did. You know what I mean?
• 1:38:15
  Like I almost wonder if he created a beast and he's not
• 1:38:20
  even really sure how he created it.
• 1:38:22
  Well, yeah, like he There are times when you truly do catch
• 1:38:26
  lightning in the bottle. Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:38:29
  That's yeah, that's what it feels like.
• 1:38:32
  Somehow a mad lad did it. And, and I'm glad you're saying
• 1:38:38
  it too, because it doesn't now it because before it just
• 1:38:42
  sounded like I was just glazing, you know, the system too.
• 1:38:45
  Much don't worry, but I I am I am the one you see I am I am the
• 1:38:49
  still guard in this situation Yeah, that's what I'm saying
• 1:38:52
  something happens anything happens I'm.
• 1:38:55
  Like, let me start off again. That's what, yeah, I'm over here
• 1:39:00
  sitting like, please people, listen to me.
• 1:39:03
  No. Glad I got someone else.
• 1:39:04
  No PPTA games does the thing I'm out here like.
• 1:39:11
  You know, it's kind of funny because I don't know if you
• 1:39:13
  remember this, but there was a point where we were kind of, we
• 1:39:16
  were considering running Mass. I don't even remember who wanted
• 1:39:19
  to run it, but somebody wanted to run.
• 1:39:20
  Maybe it was Sam and Matt. Matt was reading it and he was
• 1:39:27
  like, he said something along the rides of like, how the fuck
• 1:39:31
  do you run this game? It's so fucking vague.
• 1:39:34
  And I got like personally offended when he said like, I
• 1:39:38
  got actively mad when Matt said that because I was like, hell,
• 1:39:42
  Matt is that fucking vague. You just don't know what the
• 1:39:44
  hell you're looking at. Like you know what I mean?
• 1:39:47
  Yeah. It really, it was that thing
• 1:39:50
  where I was like, you just don't understand, motherfucker.
• 1:39:52
  Like I got a little mad and like I tried not to jumped out his
• 1:39:57
  throat, but I wanted to, you know?
• 1:40:02
  Which is why. Side note, it is still my
• 1:40:04
  mission to have Matt play APB old school PBTA game of some
• 1:40:10
  kind. It's it's on the fucking list.
• 1:40:12
  It's going to happen. I don't know how or when or
• 1:40:15
  what, but. Honestly, I I, I think once he
• 1:40:18
  stops ostrich he'll figure it out.
• 1:40:22
  Yeah, I mean, that's part of it. But that's why I think if I run
• 1:40:25
  something like, it probably will be just Apocalypse World
• 1:40:28
  straight up, because, you know, I'll take an excuse to run that
• 1:40:31
  game again. I, you know, what I love is I
• 1:40:33
  can, I can visualize it. And I know you can't do exactly
• 1:40:36
  how he's going to respond when he hears this episode.
• 1:40:38
  He's going to join the Discord and be like, fuck you guys,
• 1:40:41
  Yeah. Yeah, no, I know.
• 1:40:42
  He's going to say no, but he's going to say exactly like that.
• 1:40:46
  That's what happens whenever we call him.
• 1:40:48
  Out yes, he is going to say it that way.
• 1:40:50
  You're right. It's I yeah, I I understand Matt
• 1:40:57
  is the kind of person where it's just it's it's harder for him to
• 1:41:01
  to jump into that rabbit hole sometimes, but I feel like if I
• 1:41:05
  run it for him, you know, he'll it'll unlock something.
• 1:41:09
  Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'll be disappointed, but I don't think
• 1:41:11
  so anyway. I, I believe, I believe in him.
• 1:41:18
  I believe we don't need to keep roasting, Matt.
• 1:41:22
  Look, he still owes me Kamagakari.
• 1:41:24
  I'm going to roast you as much as like, God damn.
• 1:41:25
  Little That shit's never happening.
• 1:41:27
  Brother, I know, I know. Honestly, we don't need it
• 1:41:31
  anymore. We have Kane.
• 1:41:33
  It's true. I just wanted to play jiu jitsu
• 1:41:35
  Kaizen in DND anyway and now I can actually play jiu jitsu
• 1:41:39
  Kaizen in problems. I will.
• 1:41:44
  I would 100% run a A game of Cain.
• 1:41:47
  Did I tell you how hard I went prepping for Cain for my family?
• 1:41:51
  No. So the way you prep for Cain is
• 1:41:55
  you basically create AI don't even know what to call it like a
• 1:42:02
  flow chart. And the flow chart has like the
• 1:42:05
  host to the sin, the location, all the relevant information you
• 1:42:09
  need and it separates it into critical information, secondary
• 1:42:11
  information, tertiary, tertiary information.
• 1:42:14
  And you sort of expand the flow chart in in almost like
• 1:42:22
  concentric rings as the information becomes more and
• 1:42:25
  more unnecessary. So I made that, I wrote look at
• 1:42:30
  first. So first I wrote a document,
• 1:42:31
  then I made the flow chart and then I wanted to give them
• 1:42:36
  something tangible to like look at in reference.
• 1:42:39
  So I found a template for a like a mission briefing like
• 1:42:45
  PowerPoint. Oh yes, the PowerPoint.
• 1:42:46
  Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, so I made a mission
• 1:42:49
  briefing for my players. I also ran this for Sarah,
• 1:42:54
  Paladin and Matt. Yes, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:42:58
  And they bro I don't know how they did it.
• 1:43:00
  My this is not a call out but my my family.
• 1:43:04
  You got Matt to play this game. I, I literally, he was like,
• 1:43:07
  what do you want to do on Saturday?
• 1:43:09
  And I was like, I'm running this game. 50 pages.
• 1:43:12
  I believe in you. And he was like, oh, oh, shit,
• 1:43:14
  OK, nice. And he did it just.
• 1:43:19
  Didn't give them a choice. They hit Defcon 5 so quickly,
• 1:43:23
  like my, like my family. I and I guess it's because of
• 1:43:26
  the inexperience that they were like, we can't get caught.
• 1:43:28
  We got to keep things subtle, can't go off the rails.
• 1:43:31
  My my family played it very safe.
• 1:43:34
  But Sarah, the Paladin and Matt played their investigation like
• 1:43:38
  a burning ship. Yeah, like they didn't.
• 1:43:41
  They still don't know who the host is.
• 1:43:43
  They don't know what the sin looks like.
• 1:43:46
  They haven't met it yet. And they're already at pressure
• 1:43:48
  2 of 6 and got stuck in the ogre's labyrinth.
• 1:43:53
  And all three of them took one injury, and they all took the
• 1:43:58
  injury trying to clear a spike track like a spike pit.
• 1:44:02
  They're just not. Even like a fight or anything?
• 1:44:04
  No. Nice.
• 1:44:10
  They're like, oh, we've got to finish it.
• 1:44:11
  And I I want to, but I'm going to ask them like, OK, is there
• 1:44:13
  anything y'all want to retcon now that you've had like a week
• 1:44:17
  or two to think about it? Right.
• 1:44:24
  Yeah. I mean, I mean I.
• 1:44:27
  Thoughts. No, I mean, I I wanted to talk a
• 1:44:30
  little bit about like AI had a lot.
• 1:44:32
  It was really interesting. This is my kind of my closing
• 1:44:35
  thought. It was really interesting
• 1:44:37
  watching everything come to a head at the end of session one,
• 1:44:40
  because that that is sort of what your ultimate goal is in
• 1:44:44
  Monster hearts, right? Is you're slowly pushing your
• 1:44:48
  players towards the precipice and they are trying to pull back
• 1:44:54
  from it, right? In a very literal way of trying
• 1:44:57
  to not reveal that they're a monster to the world.
• 1:44:59
  So part of your fun is the MC is just to see when they crack and
• 1:45:05
  it happens. And it was magical and it was
• 1:45:11
  really cool because, you know, we had as, as, as Siffy put it,
• 1:45:16
  the sex mist. The Sex Mist.
• 1:45:19
  I, I, I took a lot of inspiration from the episode
• 1:45:22
  troubles with tribbles from Star Trek, where it like the the they
• 1:45:25
  touched the animal, the like little fuzzball that makes them
• 1:45:27
  like simulate being intoxicated. And then I, I mixed in a little
• 1:45:31
  bit of the like lotuses from Percy Jackson a good time.
• 1:45:35
  And I got to do that thing that I talked about in the initial
• 1:45:38
  like talk about the book where because gays into the abyss is
• 1:45:42
  your I can't connect these dots. DM connect the dots.
• 1:45:48
  Yeah, yeah. Tell me.
• 1:45:49
  Something, yeah, you can create less connected but still
• 1:45:54
  congruent storytelling, right? You can present them a problem
• 1:45:58
  that they cannot player logic their way out of because it's an
• 1:46:02
  innately illogical problem. The weird drug mist is an
• 1:46:06
  illogical problem that they maybe could solve with just some
• 1:46:10
  like thinking, but that's literally the stuff that gaze
• 1:46:14
  into the abyss is there for. And because there's no immediate
• 1:46:18
  bad thing to gazing into the abyss, even if you fail, you're
• 1:46:22
  likely going to fail forward and get an get an answer.
• 1:46:27
  Maybe just not the one you want, right?
• 1:46:29
  Because it doesn't say that you don't gaze into the abyss.
• 1:46:32
  It just says. The answer of that kind and some
• 1:46:34
  shit happens to you, Yeah. Yeah, well, that's, that's the
• 1:46:38
  thing about moves, right? You it always, it always pushes
• 1:46:42
  the fiction forward. It never stagnates.
• 1:46:46
  And let me tell you, it did. It pushed forward and it was
• 1:46:52
  really fun to just like let the players start to think
• 1:46:56
  abstractly, like supernaturally about things.
• 1:47:00
  Like the second, I think it was, it was Moon's character where it
• 1:47:03
  was like, is this weird? It's like missed shit, Is this
• 1:47:08
  magical? Because this doesn't seem right.
• 1:47:11
  Like they were trying to follow Brett's character who was not
• 1:47:14
  even in the area. It was just the like the abyss
• 1:47:17
  giving them like weird hallucinations.
• 1:47:19
  So once they started thinking about it in terms of maybe this
• 1:47:23
  mist is supernatural origin, like a it's weird, like a
• 1:47:27
  different part of their brains activated and they started
• 1:47:30
  thinking super abstract about everything.
• 1:47:33
  That was awesome. That's really, that's my closing
• 1:47:42
  thought. Just game, good game.
• 1:47:43
  Cool. Game good.
• 1:47:45
  Yeah. I I have, I have nothing to say.
• 1:47:48
  I I I sit upon my throne of victory.
• 1:47:53
  I need not say more. I sit here for my throne of
• 1:47:56
  being fucking right. Yeah, something like that, yeah.
• 1:48:01
  Like I said, I'll give it to you, but I like I I, if nothing
• 1:48:06
  else, I could admit when I am wrong.
• 1:48:08
  Not that I'm necessarily wrong with this one, but I could admit
• 1:48:10
  when you're right. Yeah, not that you were.
• 1:48:12
  Yeah, you weren't wrong about anything in particular.
• 1:48:14
  But like I said, when I first when I when I was talking about
• 1:48:17
  apocalypse world, I'm like, I know I sound crazy.
• 1:48:22
  I know I do because it's so hard to explain, but once you try it,
• 1:48:28
  it locks into place. It just do how it do.
• 1:48:32
  I don't know that how it. That's what it.
• 1:48:35
  Do that's what it do, yuk. That's not even what that card
• 1:48:37
  does. That's what it do yuk.
• 1:48:41
  Yeah. And yeah, my fucking play
• 1:48:49
  monster hearts, play Apocalypse, role play a little dungeon role
• 1:48:52
  play it really kind of whatever Pbta game tickles your fancy.
• 1:48:55
  Really. You would like a more recent
• 1:48:59
  option? You know, Avatar Legends came
• 1:49:02
  out recently. I still haven't played it.
• 1:49:05
  It's on the list, but you know. Me thinks Paladin doesn't want
• 1:49:10
  to run it anymore. Yeah, no, I know he doesn't.
• 1:49:14
  He was like, if anything, I'm, I'm just going to run fabulous.
• 1:49:16
  I'm like, that's, that's valid. It's.
• 1:49:19
  Valid. Yeah, fair enough.
• 1:49:25
  I'm curious to see how what like how he'll do.
• 1:49:29
  Like character creator stuff or a creature creator?
• 1:49:33
  It's something, let me tell you. It's it's giving me a run for my
• 1:49:36
  money. Anyway, hit followers,
• 1:49:40
  subscribe. We've listened to all this
• 1:49:41
  nonsense because we forgot in the beginning.
• 1:49:43
  Yeah, sorry about. That it's fine that bored.
• 1:49:48
  It was too busy screaming, crying, molding for my
• 1:49:51
  inability. Scrapping, crying, freaking
• 1:49:53
  molding. Nah, molding.
• 1:49:55
  Yeah, exploding and. You buy me doing you fuck.
• 1:50:08
  Goodbye forever.