Latest / Sessions Canceled / Should You Use Cutscenes In Your Table Top Game?: Ep. 168

Transcript

Should You Use Cutscenes In Your Table Top Game?: Ep. 168 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:15
  Hey everybody. So the GM had this super cool
• 0:18
  narrative thing planned. He's had it planned for months
• 0:20
  and it was great. It was perfect.
• 0:22
  He had map prepared, NPC speech prepared.
• 0:24
  It was going to be super melodramatic and the players
• 0:27
  just decided to fuck off to have like a beach episode and all
• 0:31
  that shit became irrelevant. So the GM just sort of broke
• 0:35
  down into tears and ran away. Like literally ran away.
• 0:37
  We don't. We haven't seen him in about an
• 0:39
  hour and a half. And in the woods.
• 0:41
  We're getting worried he's in the woods just taking his rage
• 0:45
  out. Anyway, welcome back.
• 0:53
  You were supposed to be to. Follow something up with that
• 0:55
  or. Yeah, Something, anything.
• 0:57
  You fight. I did OK.
• 1:00
  I don't know. I didn't have AI, didn't have a
• 1:03
  follow up so that it was just a, it's just a very general
• 1:06
  statement. I swear to God.
• 1:09
  Anyway, welcome back to the session Scale the podcast BSA.
• 1:12
  I'm here with Josh. I am indeed here.
• 1:16
  And today is going to be a simple episode I had.
• 1:20
  It's why it's one it's another one of those things where I go,
• 1:23
  well, this happened to me in my campaign and I kind of want to
• 1:25
  talk about it. So I think we're just going to
• 1:29
  get some pretty basic like back and forth going.
• 1:32
  I got a couple questions I've asked myself in my notes and
• 1:35
  sort of we'll put forward to Josh to see what his opinion is.
• 1:37
  And then we'll just kind of go from there.
• 1:41
  But before we do that, feel free to follow us on your podcast
• 1:43
  platform of choice and, you know, check out our Kofi So we
• 1:46
  can get Brett Brett, get Brett paid and, you know, give it
• 1:50
  maybe upgrade the the editing dungeon that we have him in that
• 1:53
  cage is kind of old. He a little rusty.
• 1:55
  Maybe we could spring for a new one.
• 2:00
  He's starting to complain about it.
• 2:01
  I feel like we, we owe him. Now I do be getting a little
• 2:02
  stanky. Yeah, yeah, we got to wash that
• 2:06
  bed. Like a dog bed.
• 2:17
  You're also getting us at 11:30 in the AM, at least in for my
• 2:21
  time zone. So different energy today we're
• 2:24
  a little more a little more bright eyed and bushy tailed.
• 2:27
  So we'll see. We'll see how this goes.
• 2:33
  That being said, as my my wonderful cold open may suggest,
• 2:38
  I ran into a situation not last week, but the week before the
• 2:42
  last session I had where I had this scripted event planned.
• 2:48
  And when I say like had a plan, I've I mean, I had a plan since
• 2:50
  like before the campaign started.
• 2:52
  So we're talking like at least a year and a half at this point.
• 2:55
  And now with the end of Act 2 like on the horizon and this
• 3:02
  event supposed to be kicking off at the start of next session, I
• 3:08
  feel like I've ruined it. And I'm a little upset about it.
• 3:13
  I'm going to be honest. And you might be asking, you
• 3:18
  know, how. And that's fair.
• 3:22
  Essentially, I, I think how I ruined it was was through a mix
• 3:28
  of like fear of it not being taken well and like maybe a
• 3:32
  little bit of cold feet for not wanting to start a lot of my
• 3:36
  world building over again because it was kind of on that
• 3:38
  scale. And this didn't ruin it.
• 3:41
  But, you know, some what did throw a spanner into the works
• 3:44
  was some admittedly good detective work on the part of my
• 3:47
  players that I had not expected in that moment.
• 3:51
  And I don't typically expect things for my players.
• 3:53
  You know, I'm I'm happy to be pleasantly surprised, but this
• 3:56
  one threw me for like a straight up loop and I kind of had to
• 4:00
  improvise. And I don't feel like my
• 4:02
  improvisation in this instance was very good.
• 4:06
  And I'm sort of reckoning with that.
• 4:12
  For further context, there was essentially like a big party
• 4:16
  scene after the the big halfway campaign mission.
• 4:20
  And it was mentioned in gossip that, you know, ever the it's
• 4:26
  sort of the the the question was posed right, that they fought
• 4:30
  this giant like death robot fortress thing.
• 4:34
  And that crazy death robot fortress came from like a vault,
• 4:38
  like a Borderlands style vault that all the factions were
• 4:40
  fighting over. And even though one faction
• 4:43
  claimed ownership of that vault, the thing inside of it, while
• 4:47
  it's technically up to them, no one is going to let that sit
• 4:49
  because it's a giant death fortress robot thing.
• 4:52
  So now everyone's kind of looking at this with a new
• 4:56
  perspective, including the players and with everyone vying
• 5:02
  for it, the the faction that they have been actively digging
• 5:06
  over for the whole campaign. And it didn't matter like which
• 5:10
  faction it was, but any faction that they would they were
• 5:12
  actively working against. I kept a tally for it and that
• 5:15
  faction was going to act against them in that moment.
• 5:18
  They were going to steal the giant robot fortress thing and
• 5:20
  attack the world. And it was kind of they're going
• 5:22
  to be very Chroma Conclave and they would like get chased off
• 5:27
  the planet and all this crazy stuff would happen.
• 5:31
  And I gave them that that information and I intended to
• 5:35
  have that that big event happen before the end of the break.
• 5:40
  And that shit didn't happen just because timing never works the
• 5:43
  way you want it to in tabletop games.
• 5:45
  You know, pacing is is the eternal nightmare that I suffer
• 5:48
  through and I I the detective work comes in or or so the the
• 5:59
  first part right? Having to start over again from
• 6:02
  scratch, a bunch of NPCS dying and having to meet new ones.
• 6:05
  I was worried that my players would be like, well, we don't
• 6:09
  want to do this now. Like we have put time and effort
• 6:11
  into these characters and there was no guarantee that they that
• 6:13
  everybody was going to die, but at least a few of them would
• 6:15
  have been. So I was kind of worried about
• 6:19
  that. And I had thought about it
• 6:20
  throughout the whole campaign and I was like, no, I'm going to
• 6:22
  go through with it. No, I'm going to go through with
• 6:23
  it and I want to go through with it.
• 6:24
  And then I got to it and kind of panicked and I feel like I I
• 6:31
  should have just stuck to my guns and not like tried to
• 6:34
  lessen the blow. So what I did and.
• 6:38
  Wait, so you're saying it didn't you didn't do it?
• 6:42
  Well, I didn't, I didn't get the chance, but I, I, the lessening
• 6:48
  the blow kind of came in where I may have given my players more
• 6:53
  information than they needed and it lessened the shock value a
• 7:01
  little bit, you know, like it, it lessened the potential impact
• 7:04
  that the scene would have had had they not been given the
• 7:08
  extra information. All right, wait 2.
• 7:11
  And to be clear that they. 2 Two things here.
• 7:13
  One Did you do it yet? Or no, no, I've set it up to
• 7:19
  where like it's it's going to happen next session and you then
• 7:22
  you might be asking why I'm doing this now that it hasn't
• 7:25
  happened yet in our my players listen to this podcast.
• 7:29
  It's that's kind of the issue I've run into.
• 7:31
  They are expecting it now, you know, they have very strong
• 7:36
  suspicion. But it is big doomsday event,
• 7:39
  destroy planet nobody can stop it type situation.
• 7:43
  That was the idea, yeah, OK. Continue.
• 7:51
  Yeah, so the that was the lesson in the blow part, the.
• 7:55
  How did giving information lessen the hello?
• 8:00
  Basically, you know, I, I had been hinting at it, hinting at
• 8:03
  it, hinting at it that like, you know, the people that they've
• 8:06
  been screwing over weren't at the big party.
• 8:08
  No one has seen them. They they provided the least
• 8:12
  amount of forces to the big joint offensive than anybody
• 8:14
  else. Like I've been planting these
• 8:15
  seeds for a while, but at the end it was more of like a well,
• 8:22
  you know, if say, you know, they don't like you admittedly, and
• 8:28
  they're not here and they've made it very clear that they
• 8:34
  always provide retribution when they've been slighted.
• 8:36
  So maybe you should be prepared for that is basically what it
• 8:41
  like what an NPC shared with them.
• 8:45
  And, you know, the, the basic detective work that they did was
• 8:50
  like, Oh, well, you know, they're not here.
• 8:53
  They're probably going to try to steal the giant death robot
• 8:56
  thing and then they're going to try to attack us.
• 8:58
  And, you know, just following basic logic, a character was
• 9:01
  like, well, you know, that's possible.
• 9:03
  Like, I don't know, I don't think they'll be able to pull it
• 9:05
  off, but theoretically that is possible, right.
• 9:10
  So that was, that was the sharing too much information.
• 9:12
  I, I could have sort of dug my heels in a little bit, not too
• 9:15
  much, but you know, having characters be like, well, I
• 9:17
  don't know, like I, it's, it's, they could have been more
• 9:21
  adamant by being like, that's not possible.
• 9:23
  That place is like so heavily guarded that it couldn't happen
• 9:25
  and then it happens anyway. And then you can have the
• 9:27
  character be like, well, I didn't expect it to.
• 9:28
  Happen. Wait, that that which part
• 9:30
  couldn't happen? That they could steal the giant
• 9:33
  death robot fortress. OK.
• 9:36
  You know, I could have had a character and, you know, I'm not
• 9:38
  lying to them. I could have that character
• 9:40
  believe genuinely that that's what they think is like.
• 9:43
  They think that that is. Impossible.
• 9:44
  Or the character could be lying to them.
• 9:46
  Or could be lying to me. Always worth pointing out, I
• 9:48
  think a lot of players have a tendency to be to assume like
• 9:52
  well the GM is telling me through the MPC so it must be
• 9:55
  true when there could be all sorts of contexts where it's NPC
• 9:59
  could tell you and it will absolutely not be true.
• 10:02
  Right. And I'm usually an advocate for
• 10:04
  that, which is kind of why I'm frustrated at myself for not
• 10:07
  sticking to my guns, you know? Oh, like you could you?
• 10:12
  You made the statement that couldn't happen, and then you
• 10:14
  decided it actually couldn't happen?
• 10:16
  No. No, like on podcast I've said
• 10:19
  before, right? Like your GM isn't lying to you
• 10:22
  if an NPC tells you something that's not true, right?
• 10:24
  They're not trying. No, no, I know to maliciously.
• 10:26
  What I'm saying in this specific scenario, you had an NPC, an NPC
• 10:32
  say that couldn't happen, and then you decided as the GM that
• 10:38
  that was a true statement it could not happen, is that.
• 10:41
  Kind no, no, no. So I I should have said that.
• 10:45
  I should have said it couldn't happen and then just have it
• 10:47
  happened anyway. Didn't have them say what
• 10:49
  happened. The NPC said it's possible.
• 10:52
  OK, OK, OK. That was that was where I gave
• 10:56
  them too much out the wires by just being like, yeah, sort of,
• 10:59
  you know what I mean? That was the first misstep, I
• 11:02
  think, is that that one statement is what cemented in
• 11:06
  their heads, oh, it's going to happen and that will lead into
• 11:09
  something later on. OK.
• 11:11
  Beyond that, I think I personally got kind of cold
• 11:14
  defeat because of how hard I worked on the planet they're on
• 11:18
  the setting the the like infrastructure within it.
• 11:24
  You know, I, I've, I've grown comfortable with this norm that
• 11:27
  I specifically told myself at the beginning of the game that I
• 11:31
  wasn't like, I can't become comfortable with it because
• 11:33
  there has to be this massive upheaval.
• 11:36
  Why does there have to be a massive upheaval?
• 11:40
  Just because it's something I had planned, like I, I, it was a
• 11:45
  big story event that I kind of wanted to, to put the players
• 11:48
  through just to have it happen and like, well, not just have it
• 11:50
  happen to to I wanted it supported through the narrative,
• 11:53
  but it was like a big plot to us.
• 11:54
  I wanted I wanted my Luke, I am your father moment.
• 11:57
  Essentially, you need to and that will lead to when.
• 12:00
  You need to take the burning burning boat approach to the
• 12:04
  game. I, yes.
• 12:06
  And I, that was my initial philosophy and I, I waned on it,
• 12:12
  it seems, yeah. Put the fire out.
• 12:18
  I did. I did put the fire out.
• 12:19
  The fire wasn't even that big yet.
• 12:21
  It was like it wasn't even rolling.
• 12:22
  It can get a little bigger. Yeah.
• 12:23
  It was like it could, you know, it's, it's just, you know, the
• 12:26
  boat's on fire. But like, the masks haven't
• 12:28
  caught yet and the Stern's fine, so.
• 12:30
  It is weird. And then I went, yeah, but what
• 12:33
  if I can't control it? What's not fire?
• 12:34
  Oh, got it. I got it.
• 12:35
  And then I put it out. I have it entirely.
• 12:38
  But I've, I've, I've smothered it a bit.
• 12:43
  And then, you know, the, the final situation that I feel like
• 12:46
  I've run into is the players made a really good role that I
• 12:54
  wasn't prepared for because they had never used it before.
• 13:00
  What? And.
• 13:01
  Never used it before well so. Yes, so the the the, you know,
• 13:05
  in Lancer you have the downtime actions.
• 13:07
  I vaguely remember, and they just so happened to of, you
• 13:11
  know, of all of them, they'd never used this one before.
• 13:13
  OK. They never even like talked
• 13:15
  about it. So what?
• 13:17
  I wasn't thinking about it when it came up.
• 13:19
  What is it? Buy some time.
• 13:23
  OK, what does it do mechanically?
• 13:26
  It essentially pushes something like.
• 13:31
  It's kind of hard to describe it so I'll just read it.
• 13:33
  When you buy some time, you stave off A reckoning, extend a
• 13:35
  window of opportunity, or merely buy time in breathing room for
• 13:39
  you and your group. You might be trying to dodge
• 13:41
  some heat, survive stranded in the wilderness, or cause
• 13:44
  distractions so another plan can reach its climax.
• 13:47
  You use that distraction or bought time as reserves for the
• 13:49
  next mission. On a 9 or less, you can buy a
• 13:52
  little time only if drastic measures are taken right now.
• 13:55
  Otherwise whatever you're trying to stave off catches up to you.
• 13:58
  On a 10 through 19, you buy enough time, but the situation
• 14:01
  becomes precarious or desperate. Next time you get this result
• 14:04
  treated as a nine or less. On a 20 plus, you buy as much
• 14:07
  time as you need until the next downtime session.
• 14:09
  Next time you get the result for the same situation treated as a
• 14:13
  10 through 19. So it's it's for exactly this
• 14:16
  kind of scenario. It's exactly for this kind of
• 14:20
  scenario and I was running into a real a very real scheduling
• 14:23
  situation where I took this time off because I needed a break
• 14:26
  from the game of just like running, prepping every week
• 14:29
  doing my usual thing. And I wanted to start the post
• 14:34
  break campaign from after everything has gone down and
• 14:39
  they did it the session before last.
• 14:41
  So I now have one session to try to figure out how to postpone
• 14:46
  this thing that I've been building up to for.
• 14:48
  So how to? Like narratively justify their
• 14:52
  postponing. Yes.
• 14:55
  So I settled on a compromise rather than.
• 14:59
  Postpone it. Postponing Just give.
• 15:01
  Them, I gave them time narratively to say, OK, you
• 15:06
  know, this could be happening. You can choose some NPCS to
• 15:11
  warn, and hopefully they'll listen to you, but you can
• 15:14
  choose some NPCS to warn and they could potentially get out
• 15:18
  in time. Yeah, that's that's pretty much
• 15:20
  all I was going to say is, yeah, give them the ability to make
• 15:23
  the situation less bad. And this is where I fucked up
• 15:28
  again, because one of the players made a very good
• 15:32
  argument of well, in a world where we have cell phones and
• 15:35
  group chats, why could we not just warn all of our friends?
• 15:39
  Yep, Yep. And I went, fuck, that's true.
• 15:49
  So then I have to now on the fly arbitrate.
• 15:52
  OK, Does it become a you needn't you have enough space or is it
• 15:57
  you have a certain number of NPCS like I have to set a rule
• 15:59
  somewhere. I feel I don't actually I
• 16:01
  realized now I in my in that moment I was like, I have to set
• 16:04
  some ground rule because they only rolled A partial success.
• 16:10
  But they are credible people who like, unless someone is like,
• 16:15
  no, I have the children to feed who would be like, no, I'm not
• 16:18
  just going to pick up and leave if I'm getting a free ride out,
• 16:22
  right. And they have two ships now and
• 16:26
  one ship. The guest player ship is bigger
• 16:30
  than theirs and it holds more people 'cause it's not like a,
• 16:34
  it's not a battleship. It's like a, like a freighter.
• 16:37
  It's a freighter ship essentially.
• 16:40
  So now I'm in this situation where I feel like all of the
• 16:45
  suspense is gutted because even if they get attacked, all of
• 16:49
  that consequence out the fucking window.
• 16:52
  The consequence of a bunch of MPCS dying.
• 16:56
  Like a bunch of MPCS dying, they lose access to like certain
• 17:00
  services, right? Like mechanics could die, a bar
• 17:05
  that they go to to do a downtime action is destroyed.
• 17:07
  So they can't do that anymore. You know, like it.
• 17:10
  It was more than just the NPCS but they were tied to the NPCS
• 17:12
  cause the NPCS serve dual function in this game as
• 17:15
  resource and character. Is is not it a giant fuck off
• 17:20
  death robot that's just going to destroy everything anyway
• 17:23
  regardless of people being warned, right?
• 17:30
  Yes, I see what you're saying. Like the?
• 17:31
  Planet is still cooked in some capacity, right?
• 17:35
  Yes, yes. And and they could lose out on
• 17:37
  those services regardless, right?
• 17:39
  Yeah. And that's something I thought
• 17:40
  about. After the fact, unfortunately,
• 17:42
  like a lot of this is retroactive.
• 17:43
  Like, yeah, the bartender might live, but if the bar explodes,
• 17:46
  it's kind of like, well, he's just kind of Jim now.
• 17:51
  That's that's Jim. He doesn't, he used to work at
• 17:52
  the bar, you know, like, right. Like that's still a pretty heavy
• 17:57
  consequence if like the planet that they stay on or whatever is
• 18:02
  fire bombed. Yes, and do oblivion.
• 18:06
  So I like to to answer my own question.
• 18:10
  Have I ruined it? No, realistically it can still.
• 18:14
  Fix it. You don't even really have to
• 18:16
  fix anything. It's just what's what's going to
• 18:17
  happen has shifted. It's shifted, yeah.
• 18:22
  And this is partially my fault, right?
• 18:23
  I was so married to this, this, like, tragic narrative event as
• 18:28
  opposed to a, you know, what I wanted was a category 10
• 18:37
  earthquake. What I got is a tsunami 50 miles
• 18:41
  off the coast that you can evacuate for, right?
• 18:47
  And I wasn't prepared for that swap up, especially not on the
• 18:51
  fly, you know what I mean? So yeah, this is kind of where I
• 18:57
  find myself at the moment and I'm not 100% sure what to do.
• 19:03
  There are things I, I know that there are things I can do, I
• 19:05
  just don't know what to do. And that sort of will lead into
• 19:09
  a further discussion in for jamming in general about are
• 19:14
  these scripted events worth it? Are they a mistake?
• 19:18
  Would you consider them railroading all those things?
• 19:25
  Well, it's OK. Well, which bit do you want to
• 19:29
  start with? It's.
• 19:32
  Well I mean I think the the how fix I think is where I want to
• 19:35
  start. How do I deal with this?
• 19:36
  Specific scenario. Yeah.
• 19:40
  I mean, it's still happening, right?
• 19:44
  Big fuck off. Robot is still attacking, right?
• 19:47
  That's not off the table. Yeah.
• 19:49
  OK, so bad shit's still happening.
• 19:52
  Yes, bad shit is still happening.
• 19:53
  OK, and people are still dying. They can't warn an entire
• 19:56
  planet. Yes, yes.
• 20:00
  But here's the thing, right? They don't give a shit about the
• 20:04
  planet or the people on it. They care about the people they
• 20:07
  like on it, right? They're not heroes in D&D,
• 20:09
  they're mercenaries. They've got no loyalty to this
• 20:13
  planet. They're here because their boss
• 20:15
  lives here. So that's kind of a a situation
• 20:21
  I also have to deal with. Well, I mean, if they're
• 20:30
  particularly selfish in character, then you have to hit
• 20:39
  them in benefits to them would be so like they give it they you
• 20:49
  know, they save the quartermaster guy who gives them
• 20:53
  all their weapons, but the entire stock of weapons is on
• 20:58
  fire and explode, you know, like, so then the NPC guys like,
• 21:03
  well, you know, I can maybe help, but it's going to take me
• 21:07
  a while to like get all my shit back.
• 21:09
  So you know, you're going to have to deal with like shittier
• 21:13
  equipment or no equipment or, you know, I, I can't come up
• 21:19
  with exact mechanical answers because I can't remember how a
• 21:22
  lot of the a lot of that shit works in Lancer.
• 21:25
  But you know, like if it to D&D it a little, you know, the
• 21:33
  potion seller, the magic shop guy lives, but the magic shop
• 21:36
  explodes. It's like, well, you know, I
• 21:39
  can't get you magic ammunition or quality high quality potions
• 21:45
  or anything. I could like maybe get you some
• 21:47
  shitty healing potions and not that many of them.
• 21:50
  And you're going to have to tank it for a little while until I
• 21:52
  can figure out, you know, a new supply or whatever.
• 21:55
  That's the easiest step one. Because ultimately, if the, you
• 22:02
  know, if they're not actively stopping the giant fuck off big
• 22:06
  robot, which it sounds like that they couldn't even if they
• 22:09
  wanted to. Yeah, they cannot.
• 22:12
  Yeah. Then then they're going to do
• 22:16
  whatever they can to mitigate the damage, but the damage isn't
• 22:18
  going to be 0. So you got to figure out where
• 22:22
  you can hit him. If the NPCS aren't going to die,
• 22:26
  what other places could you potentially hit him?
• 22:28
  That might still cause an issue. And then if the NPCS aren't
• 22:35
  going to die, but you still want there to be some narrative
• 22:39
  consequence, then figure out a different kind of narrative
• 22:45
  consequence, you know, whatever that might be.
• 22:49
  Like, you know, maybe maybe there was somebody that they
• 22:56
  were working with or something, or maybe their boss was had some
• 23:01
  plans he was making on said planet, planet go bye bye.
• 23:05
  And now he's like, well, my plans are really fucked.
• 23:08
  So now we're going to have to do like, maybe it was a situation
• 23:13
  where, oh, we had this great contract set up and we were
• 23:17
  going to get the fucking sweet payout, but that guy died and a
• 23:21
  horrible fiery explosion. So now we're not going to get a
• 23:24
  sweet payout. So now we're going to have to do
• 23:26
  this other really shitty couple of missions to like kind of make
• 23:29
  up for it. But the person we're getting the
• 23:32
  job for fucking hates us. So they're going to make sure
• 23:35
  that they make our life as difficult as possible.
• 23:38
  But you know, if we can pull it off, we, you know, it might be
• 23:40
  worth it. You know, like stick them in,
• 23:44
  make them, put them in a situation where it's like you
• 23:47
  still have to do something, but it's not going to be as easy or
• 23:51
  as good of a time as it might have been before.
• 23:54
  Right. And I, I think to sort of pair
• 23:56
  at this, I think where I did myself no favors is that no
• 24:00
  matter what, I am resolute on this turn of events, right?
• 24:07
  It's kind of got to happen because everything's LED up to
• 24:09
  it now. I can't just sort of defang the
• 24:11
  situation because that kills tension, right?
• 24:15
  I mean, yeah, at this point you can't really know.
• 24:17
  So I have to do that, start over no matter what.
• 24:22
  And I have sort of screwed myself by not just ripping the
• 24:24
  Band-Aid off because that work's got to get done no matter what.
• 24:28
  So now I have to think about this shit while I'm actively
• 24:32
  prepping act three and four for the game and having to build new
• 24:36
  places where they can get those resources, or figure out how
• 24:39
  their old suppliers can get them new resources, so on so forth.
• 24:45
  Well, maybe, maybe Act 3 is just that, getting our shit back.
• 24:52
  That's what it was going to be. That's sort of was the plan from
• 24:55
  the start as well, like the Rebuild arc, essentially the
• 24:59
  like everything's cooked, what do we do?
• 25:01
  Now, because like again, the, you know, they save the weapon
• 25:06
  master so he's not dead, but he's like, I don't have any
• 25:11
  bullets for you. So like, I'm gonna need you to
• 25:14
  go steal some bullets for us, you know what I mean?
• 25:18
  Like go find this fucking this, you know, this space pirate
• 25:24
  gang, they're on this like mining colony.
• 25:27
  Go fuck them up and take all their guns and bullets because
• 25:30
  we ain't got shit, you know, like.
• 25:33
  Right. Because essentially if you if
• 25:35
  you take all of the resources away from the MPCS, the MPCS
• 25:38
  become kind of useless. If, if, if this is a situation
• 25:42
  where the players are or the characters are the type of
• 25:46
  characters that don't give a fuck as much about the MPC
• 25:49
  themselves, then if the MPC loses their resources, they're
• 25:55
  kind of worthless, right? Like the, the characters are
• 25:58
  going to be like, well, you fucking don't do anything for us
• 26:00
  anymore. So I don't know, go sit in a
• 26:02
  corner now, right? So you're still like they're
• 26:06
  still getting cut off in some capacity if the resources and
• 26:12
  the place are destroyed, because again, you can evacuate, but the
• 26:17
  plan is still fucked. Like the planet is still the
• 26:20
  planet's fucked no matter what. And if the planet's fucked no
• 26:22
  matter what, then they're going to lose all their stuff or a lot
• 26:24
  of their stuff. So it, it hasn't really, it
• 26:31
  hasn't really changed that much. The only thing that's the, the,
• 26:34
  the, the framing that has changed a little bit.
• 26:39
  But ultimately the end situation is going to be the same, right?
• 26:44
  I don't see any. I don't see any scenario where I
• 26:47
  don't see any reason why you can't just go back and go go
• 26:53
  with your original plan and Act 3 is the rebuild.
• 26:56
  The difference is just that you know, they're taking jobs from
• 27:00
  the NPCS who are going to die now because they lived.
• 27:04
  So they're, they're getting jobs from them instead of getting
• 27:07
  jobs from some new randos who are going to show up or
• 27:09
  whatever. This that might honestly you
• 27:13
  might be in a better scenario there because.
• 27:17
  That's true. I, I, I did not.
• 27:19
  I genuinely didn't think about that having the NPC that they
• 27:21
  save sort of take on a role of. Give them the jobs.
• 27:24
  OK, well, we need to get, you know, we need ammo, we need
• 27:28
  resupply, we need this, this that the other before we even
• 27:32
  have a a thought that we could try to take the planet back if
• 27:34
  that's what we want to do. Because ultimately the other the
• 27:41
  the scenario prior is they all die horribly, so now new NPCS
• 27:44
  have to come in as like the job people.
• 27:47
  Which isn't inherently a problem, but it might actually
• 27:51
  be a little easier if it's characters they already know.
• 27:53
  They might be more willing to cooperate with the character
• 27:55
  they already know to try and go find like weapon supplies and
• 27:58
  food supply and shit. It's true.
• 28:01
  That's very true. Even even if the players are
• 28:03
  selfish bastards, they still might be like, OK, well, we
• 28:07
  don't really give a shit about Jim, but he has been giving us
• 28:11
  bullets and we do need bullets. So I guess we're going to do
• 28:14
  this for this asshole, even though we don't really care that
• 28:17
  much. But somebody's got to give us
• 28:19
  bullets, you know? And you're, you're, you're
• 28:25
  almost forcing them a little bit to be.
• 28:29
  It's like you're almost forcing them to give a shit emotionally
• 28:32
  about the characters in like a weird stockholmy kind of way.
• 28:36
  Yeah, yeah, you're not wrong. Which is maybe perhaps not what
• 28:41
  your the intended plan was, but you know, no.
• 28:44
  Certainly not the intended plan, but.
• 28:46
  It is ineffective. Yeah.
• 28:47
  I mean, roll with you when when stuff like this happens, that's
• 28:50
  what you kind of do, right? You got to roll with whatever
• 28:53
  the scenario is now. So you go, OK, well, this was my
• 28:57
  original plan. This is the original plan has
• 28:59
  now shifted. How can I recontextualize,
• 29:01
  Right. It's that thing.
• 29:03
  It's the it's kind of the quantum ogre, right?
• 29:08
  Do you know about the quantum ogre thing?
• 29:10
  No. All right, so there's this.
• 29:14
  This is one of those things you'll see people talk about on
• 29:16
  like Reddit and shit or, or in videos or or, you know, comes up
• 29:21
  in lots of different places. But the quantum ogre is the idea
• 29:23
  that when you're play, I should specify first, the quantum ogre
• 29:29
  is framed as a negative, right? People don't.
• 29:34
  People often say it's a bad thing.
• 29:38
  I don't I, I don't, I think they're being dumb, but just to
• 29:44
  just through the context, people often frame a negative.
• 29:47
  It's the idea that if the players have, you know, let's
• 29:50
  say 2 paths in front of them, right?
• 29:51
  Like, you know, the, the guard captain who gave them the
• 29:54
  mission is like, you can go, you know, E down the road and then
• 30:00
  hook back around to get to the next town over.
• 30:02
  Or you can try and cut straight through the forest.
• 30:04
  But, you know, I, I don't know what's gonna be in the forest.
• 30:07
  So cutting through the forest may or may not be dangerous or
• 30:09
  whatever. And then you as the GM go, OK,
• 30:12
  regardless of if they pick the road or the forest, they're
• 30:15
  going to fight an ogre. That's like an ogre's going to
• 30:18
  attack them. And the idea is that it is a
• 30:21
  quantum ogre ogre because the ogre is in quantum super super
• 30:26
  position and does not exist until observed, right?
• 30:30
  It's. Got you.
• 30:31
  It's Schrodinger's Ogre. Kind of.
• 30:33
  Well, it it's I think the phrase comes from the idea of like
• 30:38
  electron clouds, and that you can't.
• 30:40
  Like, yeah, like quantum. Yeah, like.
• 30:41
  You can't set a position of the thing until you observe and
• 30:45
  interact with the thing. So the idea is like the yeah, no
• 30:49
  matter which way they go, the ogre's gonna show up.
• 30:52
  And you as the GM are putting the ogre in that quantum
• 30:54
  superposition before anything, before they decide anything.
• 30:58
  You know, you have a quantum superposition ogre in waiting.
• 31:02
  And people frame this as a negative thing because people
• 31:10
  who don't understand what the word railroading is, which is a
• 31:12
  lot of people. Yeah.
• 31:16
  We'll we'll say, oh, that's really bad rail roading because
• 31:21
  no matter what, you're not letting the players actions
• 31:26
  influence anything, right? Like you're not giving the
• 31:28
  players any agency, which of course is stupid because you're
• 31:32
  giving the players agency of how they get there, which route they
• 31:35
  take, who they interact with, what abilities they want to use
• 31:38
  to cover the situate, right? You're giving them all these,
• 31:41
  all these other things are left wide open, right?
• 31:44
  It's not like you said to them, if you go down the forest path,
• 31:47
  you must do this. And if you go down the dirt
• 31:49
  path, you must do that. Like you're still leaving every
• 31:51
  other thing open on the table. So you're not railroading how
• 31:55
  they solve the problem or, or who they solve it with or like
• 32:00
  any of that other any of the other usual options you would
• 32:02
  have. The only thing you're
• 32:04
  predetermining is there will be a fight and the fight actually,
• 32:07
  you're not even necessarily predetermining a fight, right?
• 32:09
  You're just predetermining Ogre will appear.
• 32:13
  They might dodge the fight on the ogre depending on what game
• 32:16
  you're playing and how, what kind of tools they have, right?
• 32:18
  So it's not true. It's not really railroading.
• 32:21
  It's not railroad. It's not even, it's not
• 32:23
  railroading at all because you're just, you're still
• 32:28
  letting them do pretty much whatever they want.
• 32:32
  The only thing it's it's what you're doing is prepping, Right?
• 32:35
  You are. You are as AGM doing your job
• 32:37
  and prepping an encounter, which is part of the game and making
• 32:42
  sure you have an encounter ready to go.
• 32:44
  Now the argument could be, oh, why didn't you prep two
• 32:49
  different encounters for the two different pathways?
• 32:51
  At which point you go, OK, yeah, I could do that.
• 32:56
  But that's the same scenario, just with two separate
• 32:59
  encounters instead of 1 encounter, right?
• 33:00
  You're still determining there's going to be encounter here or
• 33:03
  encounter here. Yeah, it's the same scenario.
• 33:07
  I think on a lower level than that, it's I'm a human being
• 33:09
  with responsibilities and a life.
• 33:10
  Yeah. Yeah, that too.
• 33:12
  But like if you're looking at it in a in a vacuum, the idea of
• 33:17
  well, then you should prep two different encounters.
• 33:19
  OK, so the forest, they encounter giant spiders.
• 33:22
  On the road, they encounter an ogre.
• 33:25
  I'm still predetermining encounter is happening in the
• 33:28
  forest or encounter is happening on the road and I'm
• 33:30
  predetermining what it is. That's really how is that any
• 33:34
  different than just deciding it's going to be an ogre in both
• 33:36
  places, right? Like it's it's not.
• 33:40
  So that's the idea of the quantum ogre.
• 33:42
  Essentially what's happened here is you are in a quantum ogre
• 33:46
  scenario where the attack on the planet is the ogre, right?
• 33:50
  It's happening. No matter what they do, it's
• 33:52
  going to happen. And the other, the, the thing
• 33:56
  that's important to note here is you're still preserving
• 34:01
  verisimilitude because the idea that the attack is going to
• 34:07
  happen no matter what is not breaking logic, right?
• 34:12
  Like the players are like, well, we can warn people, but we know
• 34:16
  we can't get every single person off the planet or we know that
• 34:19
  we can't stop the big robot, so it's going to happen.
• 34:23
  That follows the logic that you have established in the same way
• 34:27
  that the ogre attacking them in the forest or on the road still
• 34:32
  preserves verisimilitude because you know, last, you know, last
• 34:37
  session or at the beginning of the campaign, you established
• 34:40
  that there's a lot of ogres wandering around in this area.
• 34:43
  So it makes sense that they would get attacked by an ogre,
• 34:45
  right? You're still preserving that
• 34:47
  internal logic, which is the most important part.
• 34:50
  So now with your quantum planet exploding, your quantum planet
• 34:55
  destruction, now it's just a case my.
• 34:58
  Quantum spirit of Mother will. That's too long to say, but like
• 35:04
  now it's just a case of, OK, what is the outcome on the other
• 35:10
  side and what are they doing beforehand?
• 35:12
  And we've pretty much already established what they did
• 35:14
  beforehand and now what are they going to do on the other side.
• 35:19
  You don't really need to change that much.
• 35:20
  You just need to have the event happen and then respond to the
• 35:25
  prep that they did prior to the event.
• 35:28
  The only scenario, the only situation where you'd be like
• 35:35
  really fucking it up would be if the players did a bunch of work
• 35:41
  to save a bunch of their NPC allies, right?
• 35:45
  Save a bunch of their teammates or whatever.
• 35:47
  And then after they did all that work, they all still die
• 35:52
  horribly because of XY and Z reason.
• 35:55
  That's the only scenario that that's the, that's the scenario
• 35:57
  you can't go with now that's off the table because that would
• 36:02
  just feel shitty at that point because you're actively just
• 36:04
  like lol get fucked nerds. I don't care what work you did,
• 36:07
  it's just going to happen. That's actually railroading,
• 36:12
  right? Yeah, so that that was a thought
• 36:14
  that crossed my mind. It was one of the first ones,
• 36:17
  but it was also one of the first ones I had to throw out, the
• 36:20
  only now that would piss me off as a player.
• 36:23
  Now, granted, this is the I, I'm saying that based on the context
• 36:28
  you've given me, if there's a reason in universe that it makes
• 36:32
  sense that they wouldn't be able to survive, like like maybe some
• 36:37
  of the NPCS die because there's just not enough ships to get off
• 36:40
  the planet, right. And that was established in some
• 36:44
  fashion. Like, you know, maybe another
• 36:46
  NPC was like, well, we could try to leave, but we got to be quick
• 36:49
  because there's not a lot of escape ships or whatever, you
• 36:51
  know, like something like that was established, then it
• 36:53
  wouldn't feel as railroad and shitty because you're, you know,
• 36:56
  you're establishing that information and again, you're
• 36:58
  maintaining the verisimilitude. So again, that internal, that
• 37:06
  internal consistency and internal logic of the setting or
• 37:10
  the game is really, really important always right.
• 37:14
  That's why that's that, that's the thing where if somebody is,
• 37:21
  you know, you're playing some sort of, you know, D and DS high
• 37:24
  fantasy nonsense and the the the players get a job from the high
• 37:31
  wizard Lord and he's like, I need you to travel many moons
• 37:36
  far in the distance to acquire the ancient blade.
• 37:39
  And when the player goes, didn't we establish this dude can like
• 37:42
  put portals wherever he wants? Can he just portal us over
• 37:44
  there? Right.
• 37:46
  It's all about maintaining that internal consistency.
• 37:48
  Whatever that internal consistency is is up to the
• 37:50
  game. But it needs, it doesn't need to
• 37:51
  make real life sense. It needs to make game sense.
• 37:53
  You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
• 37:57
  Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, So we killing the MPCS is
• 38:01
  pretty much off the table at this point.
• 38:03
  You know, I don't know, maybe there's a couple of edge case
• 38:05
  scenarios where it still makes might make sense or something.
• 38:07
  That's up to you. I don't know.
• 38:08
  But that's pretty much off the table.
• 38:13
  So now you just got to go, OK, attack happens.
• 38:18
  What are the repercussions of the attack?
• 38:20
  If the repercussions are not the MPCS dying, then the
• 38:22
  repercussion has to be something else.
• 38:24
  What would that be and which one will what set of repercussions
• 38:29
  makes the most sense? You know, because I I you're not
• 38:35
  in a you haven't backed yourself into a completely fucked, no
• 38:42
  other option scenario right, it isn't it's not that bad.
• 38:45
  You know, yes, if the players like remembered some plot hole
• 38:51
  and we're like, oh, you know, we we can actually destroy the
• 38:59
  giant robot because we have this interplanetary super super laser
• 39:03
  of doom death and we know where the robot is now.
• 39:05
  So we're just going to use the laser.
• 39:08
  That would be bad, because then you'd be now you're really up
• 39:12
  Schitt's Creek, right? Yeah, now I'm.
• 39:15
  Actually, that scenario you'd be really fucked, but you're not in
• 39:17
  that scenario. So yeah, it's basically just
• 39:20
  adjust the the it's it's the, it's the yam.
• 39:27
  It's the yam shaped. Have you heard about the yam
• 39:31
  thing? No, OK, there's a different
• 39:34
  phrase. I I think slide flourish is the
• 39:36
  one who calls it yam shaped. There's definitely a different
• 39:39
  phrase I've heard, but I can't think of it right now.
• 39:41
  But it's the idea that you know, so that the shape of a yam is
• 39:46
  like you can also say lemon shaped, I guess the the two
• 39:49
  point, the two points on either end, right converge, but the
• 39:51
  mid, the middle section is the widest.
• 39:54
  The oblong shaped I guess, Huh. You could.
• 39:59
  Argue you could call it oblong. Shape, I guess, but the point
• 40:02
  being the the players are in that middle position right now
• 40:06
  doing whatever they can and all the options are open to them.
• 40:09
  They're going to come out the other side and it's going to
• 40:11
  contract back down to planet gets fucked up.
• 40:16
  Then after that you go, OK, what what do I do from here?
• 40:21
  So it's like they're in the open bit, they started on the
• 40:23
  contracted bit, they're currently in the open bit,
• 40:25
  they're about to hit the contracted bit again.
• 40:28
  And then after that initial contracted bit, you then chain
• 40:31
  chain on the next yam and get to the next open bit, right?
• 40:38
  Right. So yeah, I think, I think it'll
• 40:41
  be just a case of dock their resources.
• 40:43
  I think that's the easiest way to go about it, especially if
• 40:45
  they're particularly selfish characters.
• 40:50
  Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, they, they are selfish.
• 40:52
  It's that like some of them more than others.
• 40:56
  Like I, you know, Sippy's character is like a lawful good
• 40:59
  character. Like no, no one left behind kind
• 41:02
  of character. I would say 2 characters are
• 41:06
  opportunistically good. Like, yeah, we'll help people
• 41:09
  out as long as it doesn't like cut too much into either a, our
• 41:12
  profits or two, our physical health.
• 41:15
  And then I've got 2 characters who are like that sounds like a
• 41:20
  whole lot of not my business. And then just.
• 41:22
  Fuck off. OK, so the characters who are
• 41:23
  like questionably good then are still going to feel bad because
• 41:26
  ultimately, you know, ultimately a lot of people are still dying,
• 41:35
  right? So the two, the two like some or
• 41:39
  the two or three somewhat good characters are still in a
• 41:42
  scenario of that fucking sucks, you know?
• 41:47
  And. Maybe maybe for the initial,
• 41:52
  maybe for the initial set of initial like couple of missions
• 42:01
  or the initial opening scenario after this a big event.
• 42:04
  Maybe you just you prey on the characters who are like somewhat
• 42:08
  good. Maybe you prey on their emotions
• 42:09
  a little bit and be like, hey, you should feel bad because this
• 42:12
  happened or something like that. You know what I mean?
• 42:14
  If you if you want to, if you want to go for the the guilt
• 42:18
  angle a little bit or not even guilt.
• 42:20
  But like the, you know, feels bad, situation's fucked.
• 42:23
  Yeah, the the, the tragedy, yeah.
• 42:24
  Yeah, if you want to go for that angle, then just lean on the
• 42:26
  characters that that will bother more.
• 42:31
  Yeah. Ultimately, I don't think you're
• 42:35
  backed in that much of A corner. No, no, you're right.
• 42:38
  And I, I sort of, like I said, as the days kind of came on
• 42:42
  since last two weeks, I've realized that I'm less fucked.
• 42:45
  But I did still want to present this to you because I knew you
• 42:47
  could give me some good insight. Yeah.
• 42:50
  Now that being said, the exact what you're going to do
• 42:55
  afterward that that one's on you.
• 42:56
  I don't have enough information to no I.
• 43:00
  I was very, I was very careful on what information I provided
• 43:05
  in this in my notes section, right, because I could easily
• 43:09
  hit 5 pages of context and then we're both like leaking out of
• 43:13
  our ears because our brains aren't working anymore.
• 43:17
  I was very aware. Yeah, I think that that answered
• 43:22
  most of my questions in a in a nice, nice, clean 43 minutes.
• 43:24
  Perfect. But I did kind of want to pose
• 43:27
  the question in a broader sense of ours, Should you try to have
• 43:33
  scripted events and what is the difference, if any, between this
• 43:40
  and railroading? We kind of talked about that.
• 43:41
  Well, no, we did talk about it. So I guess the the real question
• 43:45
  now is would you try, would you recommend people try these
• 43:50
  scripted events? Would that be something that you
• 43:52
  would advocate for or just say no?
• 43:54
  Just sort of play everything by ear?
• 43:55
  Play it how how it falls. Complex question right now,
• 44:03
  yeah. OK.
• 44:04
  So are you saying like broadly should you, you, should you do
• 44:08
  stuff like this is that? Yes, I mean in, in a, in a broad
• 44:14
  sense, do you personally advocate for it like.
• 44:18
  Advocate. I mean, I don't know if I don't
• 44:22
  know if advocate feels like a strong word maybe.
• 44:26
  But do I do I think that this might be something that you
• 44:32
  could use in your like GM repertoire?
• 44:34
  I mean, yeah, like I think that's an easy, an easy yes.
• 44:39
  Because ultimately it's a cutscene, right?
• 44:46
  Like right. At the end of the day, you are
• 44:51
  you're running a cutscene in the game.
• 44:54
  And just like the purpose of a cutscene in a video game, the
• 44:58
  purpose of the cutscene is to be like, all right, players, you
• 45:01
  can't fuck with this. I am conveying to you an event,
• 45:06
  an information, and I don't want you to fuck with this because
• 45:10
  this is important, right? That's really what it is.
• 45:14
  Now there are certain people who are like, oh, well, video game
• 45:19
  cutscenes are bad. We don't associate with those
• 45:23
  people. I don't.
• 45:27
  They can eat my whole ass. Well, so that, that, that sort
• 45:32
  of person is why I brought this up in the 1st place, right?
• 45:35
  You often see people like horror stories of people saying things
• 45:38
  like, oh, well, you know, I've planned out this super detailed,
• 45:42
  super important thing to happen in the campaign.
• 45:44
  A lot of people, you know, common advice is you shouldn't
• 45:48
  do that because then that forces you to have expectation.
• 45:52
  And expectation is typically, you know, antithesis to what you
• 45:56
  want as a dungeon master. Like the the thing about it
• 46:05
  again, it's the comparison to video games here is like not one
• 46:10
  to one, but they compare very tightly, right?
• 46:15
  A cut scene, a cut scene in a video game, right?
• 46:20
  Forgot for there you as a obviously a video game's a
• 46:23
  little different because when you play a video game, you
• 46:26
  understand that a video game has to put you on the rails and
• 46:29
  control what you're doing to a certain degree.
• 46:31
  Like we all understand that the the, the computer that is the
• 46:35
  video game cannot be an infinite pool of thoughts the way a human
• 46:40
  can. So you accepted a little bit
• 46:43
  more. But people will get annoyed at
• 46:45
  cutscenes when stupid shit happens in a cutscene that feels
• 46:48
  like it doesn't make sense and shouldn't have happened and
• 46:51
  doesn't or doesn't flow with the character, whatever.
• 46:54
  Like again, the verisimilitude argument, it's the thing where
• 46:58
  the character gets stabbed in a cutscene and then the player
• 47:03
  standing there is a healer and they're like, I could just, I
• 47:08
  could just heal him. He could be, he's dying.
• 47:11
  I could just heal him. I know he got stabbed in the
• 47:13
  liver, but I have magical healing powers.
• 47:16
  He he could, he'd be fine. Just let me heal it, right?
• 47:19
  Like it's that kind of a problem?
• 47:22
  Yeah, it so it reminds me of back before the world was fucked
• 47:26
  when Matthew Mercer was playing 14 and he was like, these
• 47:30
  cutscenes drive me crazy. I'm a white mage and I not do
• 47:33
  anything Asuna anything. 14 people comment about that joke
• 47:38
  in 14 constantly, all the time. Granted, there is actually
• 47:43
  somewhat of a Lord justification for why you can't just magically
• 47:46
  heal everyone in 14, but we don't need to get down that
• 47:48
  rabbit hole right now. But there is actually rules
• 47:50
  about how healing works in 14 that the gameplay does not
• 47:53
  convey, but they do talk about a lot in the narrative.
• 47:57
  But let's forgot this. It doesn't matter the yeah it,
• 48:04
  it is literally that. It is literally the 14 White
• 48:06
  Mage problem, right? I'm playing my Warrior of Light.
• 48:08
  I am playing as a White Mage. Why can't I?
• 48:10
  I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure my girlfriend made the exact
• 48:13
  same joke not that long ago, 'cause she had that exact
• 48:15
  moment, 'cause she's been playing Astro through the MSQ
• 48:18
  and I'm pretty sure she was like, please just let me heal
• 48:20
  it. I'm like, yeah, well, but like,
• 48:26
  yeah, so people get pissed off in that kind of shit.
• 48:28
  Or, or the thing where another example is when a character does
• 48:32
  something where people are like, that doesn't make any fucking
• 48:34
  sense, right? If you're playing, you know, Oh
• 48:41
  no, I gotta, I gotta whip one out here.
• 48:43
  Off the top of my head, all I can think of is Mass Effect.
• 48:46
  So if you're playing Commander Shepard and, you know, a random
• 48:51
  innocent civilian gets attacked by a bunch of husks and
• 48:55
  Commander Shepard's kind of like that's not my problem.
• 48:58
  And then just shoots the person who walks away instead.
• 49:00
  Like, people be like, what the fuck, dude?
• 49:03
  Like, that's not that doesn't line up with the character I
• 49:06
  have in mind. Not yes, I know there's like
• 49:08
  renegade Shepherd and stuff, but renegade Shepherd is not evil
• 49:11
  Shepherd, right? They're just dickhead shepherd.
• 49:12
  There's a distinct difference there, but it it not making
• 49:18
  sense in character, right or another.
• 49:21
  Or like you're playing the Witcher and Geralt walks into a
• 49:24
  situation where there's a bunch of monsters like attacking some
• 49:27
  guards. He's not going to like cut the
• 49:29
  guards legs off and watch them get eaten by the monsters and
• 49:31
  then laugh about it, right? Like that's not, that's not how
• 49:35
  Geralt is, you know? So when when the when the logic
• 49:41
  breaks again, when the verisimilitude doesn't work,
• 49:44
  that's when people get annoyed. Taking it to now tabletop,
• 49:51
  basically you're operating in the same space.
• 49:53
  If the situation feels like the players got gypped because the
• 50:00
  verisimilitude is not being adhered to, they will get mad.
• 50:06
  But if it if it makes sense and they there wasn't any scenario
• 50:12
  where they feel like they could have completely put it to a
• 50:14
  halt, they're must, they're much less likely to be mad about it.
• 50:19
  Now, they might not like the way you did it, or they might not
• 50:23
  like the implication on the narrative, or they might feel
• 50:26
  like that was a bad idea, but they won't be mad if it is
• 50:32
  logically consistent and, you know, feels correct.
• 50:40
  So if you have a scenario, you know, if the again to to DND it,
• 50:49
  the town near the evil spooky undead ruins gets taken over by
• 50:55
  the lich, The players might be pissed off about it.
• 50:58
  But you know, we did establish the undead spooky ruins are like
• 51:02
  right down the road. That town was in danger, you
• 51:05
  know, like, OK, and the players are like, well, we couldn't have
• 51:08
  done anything about it, but you know, it happened.
• 51:11
  They're probably not going to be bad.
• 51:12
  So ultimately what I'm getting at doing the cutscene thing is
• 51:17
  only a problem if it feels like bullshit, right, right.
• 51:22
  But doing it that's that's the bad scenario.
• 51:26
  The good scenario is you do it to to push a sense of narrative,
• 51:33
  right? Like to push the story forward,
• 51:35
  to make a big event happen, to change things up and change
• 51:40
  things up is probably the most important one.
• 51:42
  I mean, with this particular scenario, you are drastically
• 51:45
  changing the status quo, right? Which is important.
• 51:48
  Completely overhauling it, yeah. Which is important because much
• 51:51
  like when we were talking about why combat gets boring in D&D
• 51:54
  because nothing changes over several, several rounds,
• 51:57
  narrative and the scenario of the game can get boring if
• 52:04
  nothing changes over long periods of time, right?
• 52:08
  The status quo is established that the players are doing XY
• 52:10
  and Z thing and you go, OK, cool.
• 52:14
  If the players do the same thing for 20 sessions and nothing has
• 52:19
  shifted at all, they're going to be like, all right, well, this
• 52:22
  is starting to get dull. Like, we do a job, you know, we
• 52:26
  go out to the dungeon, mission complete, we come back to town,
• 52:28
  we get paid. That's all we've done for 20
• 52:31
  sessions and nothing has changed.
• 52:34
  Characters haven't really, you know, reacted that much to us.
• 52:38
  Like they acknowledge it, but nothing they haven't done
• 52:40
  anything major about. Like us doing these missions
• 52:43
  over and over again. They just keep rolling along.
• 52:47
  That feels dull at a certain point, 'cause you want, you're
• 52:51
  like, you need the novelty, like something needs to change.
• 52:53
  And it might be in some cases, it might be really small, right.
• 52:56
  If you establish we're playing the the exploration dungeon
• 53:01
  fucker game, then the players probably are OK with the idea
• 53:07
  that the world itself is not going to shift up that much.
• 53:10
  Because then the style of game you're doing might not be
• 53:13
  doable. It might not make sense, but
• 53:16
  they're going to want like the NPCS in the town that they keep
• 53:19
  going back to, to like change and do things and ask them of
• 53:23
  things and like recognize their accolades, you know, like
• 53:26
  respond to what they're doing. And that will be the change in
• 53:29
  that game. So you can vary the degree of
• 53:31
  change, but the point is doing a big cutscene thing like this is
• 53:36
  a big change, is a change to the scenario.
• 53:40
  And that's generally good. It just keeps things
• 53:43
  interesting, you know, like the chroma conclave moment using the
• 53:48
  using that since that's a what you reference and B is pretty
• 53:51
  much the exact same scenario. The chroma conclave was cool in
• 53:58
  Critical role because it changed up the status quo.
• 54:04
  Characters died, characters, you know, got new jobs, characters
• 54:08
  like changed and how they acted. The PCs were like, you know, had
• 54:14
  a moment of, oh, we're not as invincible as we thought, right?
• 54:17
  There was all this like, oh, fuck, shit going on.
• 54:21
  And that makes it a cool moment because now the next episode, or
• 54:26
  in the case of you, you know, when you're running a game, the
• 54:28
  next session, you're like, the players are going to come to the
• 54:31
  next session and be like, what the fuck's going to?
• 54:34
  What are we doing now? Like, what is this session?
• 54:36
  What is the next couple of sessions going to look like?
• 54:38
  Because our home base just exploded and like a bunch of
• 54:42
  friends of our friends died. What the Hell's going on?
• 54:46
  You know what I mean? And then that's exciting because
• 54:48
  now you're in this nebulous, I don't know what's going to
• 54:50
  happen as opposed to, oh, well, we're going to go back to town
• 54:53
  and we're going to get a mission.
• 54:54
  We're going to go out to another dungeon.
• 54:55
  Because that's what we've done every single time.
• 54:58
  And there's no reason for us to think that's going to change
• 55:01
  anyway, right? Doesn't that sound terrible?
• 55:04
  Like I I've pretty much tried to throw curveballs of some kind of
• 55:09
  my players for every campaign I've run, you know, even shorter
• 55:12
  ones, because that's what I would want while running a game,
• 55:15
  like while playing in a game like Well, and you can certainly
• 55:19
  overuse this, right? And when there's when there's
• 55:20
  nothing when when you Ryan Johnson and there's nothing but
• 55:24
  curveballs, you know what? That's let's do a less
• 55:26
  controversial one. If you M night Shalam Alam Alam
• 55:29
  it and then there's nothing but curveballs, then you just get
• 55:31
  fucking annoyed, right? Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I think
• 55:36
  there's a healthy amount of subversion of expectation is
• 55:39
  100% what you eat. Story's interesting, especially
• 55:41
  one where you don't have full control of the narrative, right?
• 55:45
  When you're watching Legend of Korra or, or I don't know why
• 55:48
  that one came like Avatar, right?
• 55:50
  The idea that ANG is really good at air bending.
• 55:54
  He learned water bending super easy, tries fire bending, burns
• 55:58
  guitar like that's a curveball. OK, so now things have to
• 56:01
  change. He can't.
• 56:02
  He's not going to use this thing.
• 56:06
  When you have full control, the narrative, it's really easy to
• 56:08
  pull those things off, to keep things interesting.
• 56:10
  But when you don't, it does it. It invites a level of whimsy
• 56:14
  because you have to relinquish that control.
• 56:16
  But if the players are comfortable, then you're stuck
• 56:21
  in a loop. Right.
• 56:22
  Yeah, it's, it's a well, there's also the sliding scale of it
• 56:28
  too, right, because. Right.
• 56:30
  Yeah, yeah. Like I said, if if we
• 56:32
  established that we're playing the Elden Ring style dungeon
• 56:35
  fucker game, then you know, the, the sliding scale of how extreme
• 56:43
  the event is going to be is probably going to, you're going
• 56:46
  to keep it tighter, right? So maybe the next town over gets
• 56:51
  destroyed by, you know, some bandits or whatever and maybe
• 56:56
  there's a mission to go like deal with the bandits, but the
• 56:59
  entire world isn't upended from that event, right?
• 57:02
  It's like a little small section of the world and things have
• 57:04
  changed, but it's not going to drastically change the type of
• 57:09
  campaign you're doing. But if you're doing the Final
• 57:13
  Fantasy style, if you're, if you're running Fabio Ultima and
• 57:20
  you know that part of that game is as you go up in levels, much
• 57:24
  like D&D, you're gonna, you're expected to run into crazier and
• 57:28
  crazier shit to fight. Then big crazy events that upend
• 57:33
  the setting to introduce the crazy shit to fight makes a lot
• 57:37
  more sense. So there's there's that sliding
• 57:40
  scale of what what the cut scene event effects and how much of
• 57:46
  things it affects. The other sliding scale is as
• 57:50
  you like you were saying, just how often do you do it right?
• 57:56
  Some styles of campaign having a lot of like upending cutscene
• 58:03
  events might make sense. You know, for actually
• 58:10
  Apocalypse World kind of operates that way because
• 58:12
  Apocalypse world explicitly tells you to not have a status
• 58:15
  quo. So you're expected as the MC to
• 58:19
  have upending events pretty often on a on a somewhat regular
• 58:26
  basis. And again, of course you can,
• 58:28
  you can vary the degree of how big of an upend they are, but
• 58:31
  you know they're expected to do them because that's kind of what
• 58:34
  the game wants of you. I mean, not kind of that is what
• 58:37
  the game wants of you. So you do it more often, but
• 58:43
  that's OK. Whereas again, the dungeon
• 58:46
  fucker DND campaign, that's not as expected.
• 58:53
  So you, you know, you reel it in a little bit, but.
• 58:56
  Well, so you know, it's, you know, not to make us gush about
• 58:59
  fucking Apox World again, but Apox World is sort of a genius
• 59:02
  in the fact that it's like it tells you not to keep the status
• 59:07
  to not to keep a status or but you can't, you actively can't
• 59:10
  keep one because of how fronts work, right?
• 59:12
  Each front has to have a plot twist.
• 59:15
  If there's six fronts, that's six plot twists with minor stuff
• 59:19
  in between, so it is impossible to maintain a status quo.
• 59:22
  Yeah, I mean, mechanically, yes, it, it doesn't let you.
• 59:26
  So yeah, it goes back to that thing.
• 59:29
  If you try to fight Apocalypse World, it will violently fight
• 59:32
  you back. So yes, it is.
• 59:35
  It is literally that, right. And the yeah, I mean, actually
• 59:43
  in in a way, that's really what fronts are, right?
• 59:46
  Fronts are establishing big cutscene, thing is going to
• 59:49
  happen. How are the players going to
• 59:52
  respond to it? Which ones are they going to
• 59:54
  respond to? Now, Apocalypse World does tell
• 59:57
  you to sort of leave the door open to stopping them, which for
• 1:00:00
  that game makes sense. But in a scenario like this
• 1:00:03
  we're talking about with Lancer, the idea that the players can't
• 1:00:06
  stop like something like this is not really that out of the
• 1:00:09
  question, right? So there shouldn't be.
• 1:00:15
  I mean, I don't I mean I don't know, you can tell me how how
• 1:00:17
  your players. Well, OK, it hasn't it hasn't
• 1:00:20
  the full situation hasn't happened yet.
• 1:00:21
  So I don't know, maybe in the future we could see how your
• 1:00:24
  players react, but like, I don't expect them to have a very what
• 1:00:30
  the fuck how could this have happened type response, right?
• 1:00:33
  No, when and that was the original conceit was to have
• 1:00:36
  that happen, but. Well, you wanted them surprised
• 1:00:40
  on like a character level. Yeah, see.
• 1:00:43
  No, no, I I didn't want to. How could this happen?
• 1:00:46
  I wanted a What do we do now, right?
• 1:00:47
  And, and you didn't, your plan wasn't to piss off the players
• 1:00:51
  and surprise them with something where they felt like it was a it
• 1:00:54
  was an asshole, right? Your plan was to asshole on the
• 1:00:57
  characters to get a rise out of the players.
• 1:01:00
  Yes, right. Yes, which is different with the
• 1:01:02
  knowledge that I have been planting seeds for this since
• 1:01:05
  literally which. Is a different scenario and
• 1:01:07
  again the concept of big fuck off destruction robot in the
• 1:01:15
  crazy space setting where everyone has everyone pilots big
• 1:01:18
  destruction robots is like not that like it makes perfect sense
• 1:01:23
  it's not ridiculous right if you're playing DND and the Death
• 1:01:26
  Star shows up you're gonna be like oh hold the phone what are
• 1:01:28
  we doing here right but in this game that makes perfect sense
• 1:01:32
  like yeah of course the enemy has a death star or like sure
• 1:01:35
  right and that that response the initial response of does that
• 1:01:42
  even make any sense is really important right like that is a.
• 1:01:47
  Big deal when you when you've established that the Death Star
• 1:01:50
  exists but no one owns it and everyone wants it and you keep
• 1:01:54
  fucking over the one same group of people over and over who are
• 1:01:57
  known for galactic level crash outs, you know?
• 1:02:07
  So like, yeah, I guess. In it was a fun fact in Lancer
• 1:02:12
  lore the people that would become the the the faction that
• 1:02:17
  of the Harrison armistry had it. Harrison had a crash out so
• 1:02:20
  colossal that it it it got them kicked out of government.
• 1:02:23
  It like caused the full revolt because they crashed out so hard
• 1:02:26
  and caused the only actual genocide in Lancer lore.
• 1:02:30
  That is funny and horrifying at the same time.
• 1:02:34
  Yeah, yeah. They they crashed out, caused a
• 1:02:36
  genocide of an alien race, and then everyone went, no, you're
• 1:02:39
  fired. And they went, no, but we are
• 1:02:41
  the government and they went, we don't care.
• 1:02:42
  You're fired. Yeah, yeah, but we are the
• 1:02:44
  government. Not anymore, bitch, Not anymore,
• 1:02:46
  You're not. Yeah, eat my ass.
• 1:02:52
  What was the the next train of. Oh, yeah.
• 1:02:55
  So I guess in the long roundabout way I'm saying is
• 1:02:57
  like, yes, cut scenes like this, but like, yeah, you should use
• 1:03:03
  them. They just need to make sense in
• 1:03:05
  whatever kind of game you're running.
• 1:03:07
  And again, to go back to the video game analogy, right, it's
• 1:03:09
  the same kind of thing. If I'm playing Marvel Rivals,
• 1:03:15
  I'm not expecting cutscenes, you know, I'll expect, you know,
• 1:03:20
  maybe a little cinematic here and there, a loading screen with
• 1:03:22
  some little bits and doodads, a victory screen, right?
• 1:03:25
  That kind of thing. That is within expectation.
• 1:03:28
  I don't expect that halfway through the match I have to
• 1:03:30
  watch a 5 minute cutscene of like Blade and Dracula fighting
• 1:03:34
  because I'm on the Dracula map. That's not that kind of game,
• 1:03:38
  right? So the X, it's all about
• 1:03:40
  expectations lining up with the game you're running.
• 1:03:44
  And as far as I'm aware with this particular game that you
• 1:03:48
  are running, this is not out of expectation.
• 1:03:53
  You know, like there is a degree of my, my interpretation of, of
• 1:03:58
  Lancer, you know, from you, you talk about it me reading it a
• 1:04:02
  bit and so on and so forth. Is that it?
• 1:04:05
  Kind of like Fabula expects a degree of narrative push forward
• 1:04:11
  from the GM regardless of player.
• 1:04:13
  Action. And it it has to right?
• 1:04:16
  It, it you have to assume that this is the intent when you have
• 1:04:19
  downtime actions that actively talk about pushing those things.
• 1:04:23
  Right. Yeah, right.
• 1:04:23
  Downtime actions that literally interact with that concept, then
• 1:04:28
  yes, clearly the game wants you to do something with that idea.
• 1:04:32
  Yeah, which yeah, all makes sense basically.
• 1:04:39
  So yeah, I, I don't, I don't think you've done anything
• 1:04:41
  particularly. I definitely don't think you did
• 1:04:43
  anything wrong, that's for sure. Right.
• 1:04:47
  Yeah. I mean, I, I, I haven't done
• 1:04:49
  anything yet. Yeah, but you know what I mean.
• 1:04:51
  The action has not been taken, but yeah.
• 1:04:54
  Now, if an does an individual player perhaps feel like it
• 1:04:58
  might not be you did something wrong because they had a
• 1:05:01
  slightly different expectation. Yeah, that can happen, but like,
• 1:05:05
  you can't control everyone, you know?
• 1:05:08
  Yeah. And that's, I mean, I think you,
• 1:05:11
  you just hit on a good point. It is impossible to account for
• 1:05:15
  every player and their ideas and expectations for the game.
• 1:05:19
  Yeah, that's going to differ at some point.
• 1:05:21
  You cannot control it, so don't. Their, their ideas and
• 1:05:26
  expectations for the game you're running and also the game
• 1:05:30
  mechanically, like the rule book, right?
• 1:05:33
  Yeah, yeah, like both of those things.
• 1:05:34
  Yeah. You can't account for you.
• 1:05:38
  You have to, Yeah. And of course, the, the, the,
• 1:05:45
  the remedy to that problem is of course, that the, you know, your
• 1:05:52
  players should have faith in you as GM in terms of your ideas,
• 1:05:59
  the ideas you're having being, you know, interesting or pushing
• 1:06:03
  the narrative in a cool way or whatever, you know, whatever it
• 1:06:05
  might be. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:09
  There was a second question. I have definitely not remembered
• 1:06:12
  what it was now. I mean, we talked about it, the
• 1:06:17
  difference between this and railroading like we, we hit that
• 1:06:19
  pretty. Well, I think yeah, it's just,
• 1:06:24
  yeah, it's just not what railroading is right like.
• 1:06:27
  Yeah, it was a bit of a facetious question.
• 1:06:31
  Like, admittedly it's a reinforcing question to be like,
• 1:06:34
  you know, I don't see this as railroading.
• 1:06:36
  There is agency here because just because an event is
• 1:06:39
  happening doesn't mean that the players don't have control over
• 1:06:42
  how they react to it and how they move forward through it.
• 1:06:44
  Yeah, because right, they still have, they still have agency to
• 1:06:49
  the situation. They can still react to it.
• 1:06:51
  There's that. But also the idea of something
• 1:06:57
  is going to happen that you cannot stop is to like just make
• 1:07:02
  sense on like a basic logic, right?
• 1:07:05
  Like, I mean, not to get too existential necessarily, but if
• 1:07:10
  you just think about real life, right, would you say real life
• 1:07:13
  is railroading you? Like no, but things happen that
• 1:07:18
  you can't do anything about, you know, like shit happens.
• 1:07:21
  So and I feel like the people who are calling it railroading
• 1:07:30
  are probably, I mean, here's the thing.
• 1:07:32
  There is a there's a way you could do it that I do think
• 1:07:35
  would put it under the railroading scenario, which is
• 1:07:39
  bad thing is about to happen and players managed to find out
• 1:07:45
  about the bad thing, right? Like they learn about it, but
• 1:07:49
  they don't. You do not allow them to affect
• 1:07:53
  it in any way, right? Like you completely cut them off
• 1:07:56
  like nothing they do matters at all.
• 1:07:59
  The event is locked in, end of discussion.
• 1:08:02
  They warn the king and the king is still murdered in his sleep
• 1:08:06
  because he just ignores them or something, right?
• 1:08:08
  Like that, that scenario is when you drift into the railroading
• 1:08:15
  because you're ignoring their actions and ignoring their
• 1:08:18
  agency in the scenario. Like it's all about how much
• 1:08:22
  agency do they have, right? If they've learned about a bad
• 1:08:28
  thing happening, but they know that they have methods that they
• 1:08:33
  could potentially stop it, then they have a lot of agency.
• 1:08:37
  If they learn about a bad thing happening and they know they
• 1:08:39
  can't stop it, but they know that they could potentially
• 1:08:42
  insulate themselves from the bad event, then they don't have as
• 1:08:45
  much agency. But as long as their agency, as
• 1:08:48
  long as they are still, you're still allowing them to operate
• 1:08:51
  within the agency that they have and that it makes sense for them
• 1:08:54
  to have, then you're not railroading, right?
• 1:08:58
  If you establish or the game establishes, you know, via
• 1:09:03
  whatever the player's tool kit might be that they have, they
• 1:09:08
  have, let's say the players have a Death Star and they find out
• 1:09:13
  that big giant death robot is going to attack.
• 1:09:17
  And the players go, OK, so we'll just turn the Death Star on the
• 1:09:20
  big giant robot. And then you as the GM say no,
• 1:09:23
  you're not allowed. You just can't.
• 1:09:26
  Now you're in railroading territory because the agency
• 1:09:29
  that they have as players should make sense here and you're
• 1:09:35
  ignoring it. That's when you get in through
• 1:09:38
  them. So with your specific example,
• 1:09:42
  the players learned about the thing and they reacted to it
• 1:09:45
  within the scope of of reactability that they had and
• 1:09:48
  within the agency that they had. And they did what they could do.
• 1:09:52
  If you had said to them, like if you had been like the players
• 1:09:56
  were like, Oh, well, we could just text everybody and you're
• 1:09:59
  like, all of the cell service is down for days mysteriously,
• 1:10:07
  right? Like you're just like, no, your
• 1:10:08
  phones don't work anymore. That would be particularly.
• 1:10:11
  Brutal. Yeah, like now you're getting in
• 1:10:13
  railroading territory because it's like, oh, you're just,
• 1:10:16
  you're just throwing a random kick in the ass to to like,
• 1:10:19
  ignore the bit of agency we do have in this scenario,
• 1:10:22
  especially because in this scenario they they already, they
• 1:10:25
  don't have a lot of agency to begin with.
• 1:10:29
  So now you're like screwing them out of the little bit that they
• 1:10:32
  had a grasp on, you know? So yeah, that's really, yeah,
• 1:10:40
  it's all about that, that scope of what makes sense.
• 1:10:47
  Plus people, plus people over overly fear, fear rail overly
• 1:10:51
  are. They are overly fearful.
• 1:10:56
  Of railroading yeah, not the sentence I was trying to say but
• 1:11:00
  that works. I I completely lost the sentence
• 1:11:03
  I was trying to say but yes like they're overly worried about a
• 1:11:06
  thing that I don't actually think is really that big of a
• 1:11:09
  deal. Be cut to to a point, obviously,
• 1:11:13
  because sometimes you're going to do a railroading thing on
• 1:11:17
  your players and like they're not going to really care because
• 1:11:22
  you know, you railroaded them into something that was cool and
• 1:11:26
  so they're like, oh, that was cool.
• 1:11:27
  You know, like it's not always going to be like you go for the
• 1:11:32
  railroady thing and then your players are immediately pissed
• 1:11:34
  off and they're like fuck you, you know, because if you put
• 1:11:38
  them in a in a situation where the really cool thing happened,
• 1:11:42
  then you know you're not as bothered by it, right like.
• 1:11:48
  Yeah. You know, and some players,
• 1:11:50
  honestly, some players want to be railroaded, right?
• 1:11:56
  Like this is another thing I feel like doesn't get talked
• 1:11:59
  about sometimes players want you to put them on the train.
• 1:12:02
  You know they just want to go for a train ride you.
• 1:12:05
  Know I you know, I've noticed that I have at least one player
• 1:12:10
  who I throw as much shit as I can at them and the bait is
• 1:12:18
  never taken. They just perfectly content,
• 1:12:21
  just chill out and watch the things play out, yeah.
• 1:12:26
  And yeah, you as AGM might be annoyed about that because you
• 1:12:29
  want them to not, but if that's what they want to do, then.
• 1:12:32
  What drives me? God damn.
• 1:12:34
  Right. But sometimes it's it really is
• 1:12:36
  that because, you know, there's different types of players and
• 1:12:41
  some players are like some players, the only agency they
• 1:12:45
  give a shit about is the little window of agency they have when
• 1:12:48
  initiative is rolled, right? Like when initiative is rolled,
• 1:12:52
  they don't want you to tell them what attack they're allowed to
• 1:12:54
  do. But outside of that, they're
• 1:12:57
  like, yeah, just push me into the direction of the next fight,
• 1:13:01
  right? They wanna, they wanna play
• 1:13:02
  Hades. They're like, I go from room to
• 1:13:04
  room to room to room to room and I fight and I fight and I fight
• 1:13:06
  and I fight. And then every once in a while
• 1:13:08
  characters yap at me and I go, uh huh, uh huh.
• 1:13:10
  And then I go fight to fight to fight to fight.
• 1:13:12
  But don't, don't tell me what weapon I have to use and don't
• 1:13:15
  tell me what boons I'm supposed to pick.
• 1:13:16
  I want to decide on that, right? But other than that, I just go
• 1:13:21
  from fight box to fight box to fight box and like, that's not
• 1:13:27
  me. But I know there's people like
• 1:13:29
  that, you know? Yep.
• 1:13:34
  No, it's not me either, but yeah, yeah, it's true.
• 1:13:37
  Some, some, some people, the whole group is basically that
• 1:13:40
  they just want to play the DND dungeon fucker game and all
• 1:13:43
  they're trying to do is go to dungeon and go into the
• 1:13:46
  different rooms and fight the different monsters in the
• 1:13:47
  dungeon. You know what I mean?
• 1:13:50
  Yeah, yeah. That's the thing that people
• 1:13:51
  often call the beer and pretzels game.
• 1:13:53
  And for those characters, the railroad is like, or for those
• 1:13:57
  players, I should say, the railroad is like literally those
• 1:14:03
  players, you say the word railroad to them and they're
• 1:14:05
  like, what are you talking about?
• 1:14:07
  What's a railroad? You mean, like, you think trains
• 1:14:09
  go? So yeah, the, the fear of the
• 1:14:14
  railroad is sometimes just way overblown.
• 1:14:23
  But that's its own little, that's its own little microcosm
• 1:14:28
  of stuff. Nothing more is getting into
• 1:14:31
  this, and that's kind of it. That's kind of all I had.
• 1:14:36
  I just kind of wanted to talk about this.
• 1:14:37
  Didn't have a whole lot of time. I've been in Alabama for the
• 1:14:40
  last two days. Alabama, Alabama.
• 1:14:46
  There's fucking nothing there. Yeah, it's Alabama.
• 1:14:49
  Like what? No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:14:51
  Matt was like, Nah, it was actually pretty nice.
• 1:14:53
  There's nothing there. Yeah, I dude, we went the right
• 1:15:01
  next to our hotel in Alabama was the most packed Waffle House
• 1:15:05
  I've ever seen. I I swear to God this Waffle
• 1:15:09
  House ran the economy of this town in Alabama.
• 1:15:12
  That's actually really funny. It was insanity.
• 1:15:15
  I don't even remember what exactly what town we were in.
• 1:15:17
  That's really funny, actually. Yeah, dude, it was nuts.
• 1:15:21
  Welcome to Waffle. Town.
• 1:15:23
  Yep, we were. We So we were near Birmingham.
• 1:15:26
  I don't know if we were, I don't think we were in it, but or we
• 1:15:29
  may have been in it, I don't know.
• 1:15:30
  But not a lot. Nice.
• 1:15:36
  Yeah. Actually one of the funniest
• 1:15:40
  things we were as we were getting gas to leave, saw this
• 1:15:43
  dude rock up. This is the most Alabama shit
• 1:15:45
  I've ever heard. Baseball.
• 1:15:50
  Like faded olive drab baseball cap, blue faded tank top.
• 1:15:55
  Dude had the biggest beer gut I've ever seen.
• 1:15:58
  Shorts like like like jorts. Yep Yep.
• 1:16:02
  Cowboy boots and a six shooter. Just a full on cult single
• 1:16:07
  action army on his hip. And me and my dad just sat there
• 1:16:11
  like, look at him, champion. I keep that is indeed some
• 1:16:16
  Alabama as shit. Yep.
• 1:16:20
  Oh my God, why do you think Sam wanted to leave so bad?
• 1:16:25
  I dude going to Alabama, I was like.
• 1:16:29
  Yeah, Yeah, Nah, Yeah, Nah. Bro, we went to a gas station
• 1:16:34
  and in the counter, in the like counter to the gas station, just
• 1:16:39
  see through panel glass and bottles of alcohol, just
• 1:16:43
  everything. You literally could go, oh, let
• 1:16:46
  me get one of those and one of those and one of those and you
• 1:16:49
  can just go on with your day. Yes Sir.
• 1:16:51
  The middle America baby, Sir. I know we have some people
• 1:16:57
  losing this. We're from Alabama.
• 1:16:58
  I'm so sorry you live there. I mean, we may or may not, I
• 1:17:02
  have no idea, but yeah, shit, I did have one of the little
• 1:17:09
  thought that pops in my head and I can't remember what it was
• 1:17:11
  now. Damn.
• 1:17:14
  Oh well. You got 20 seconds, you got it.
• 1:17:19
  I don't know, probably was important.
• 1:17:22
  I'm not going to worry about it. It's going to have an emergent
• 1:17:25
  moment right after we end recording, I swear to God.
• 1:17:27
  I would say there's a chance. I don't know.
• 1:17:32
  Any last little tidbit on your mind?
• 1:17:36
  No, I mean, I, I, you know, just sort of piggybacking on what we
• 1:17:39
  were talking about. I know I posed the question, but
• 1:17:41
  I had my own answer to the question, which is just because
• 1:17:44
  I'm having a weirdly finicky time based on a very, very, very
• 1:17:48
  specific circumstance of events. Yeah.
• 1:17:50
  Does not mean that if any of you potentially who want to run your
• 1:17:54
  own game, who has this idea for like a cool scripted event slash
• 1:17:57
  cutscene thing, as long as you have paved the way for it to
• 1:18:02
  make sense, I think you should do it.
• 1:18:03
  It can feel fun. It sort of allows you to have
• 1:18:06
  your cake and eat it too, and you get to sort of wrestle back
• 1:18:11
  a degree of control from the chaos factor.
• 1:18:14
  Right, Yeah, which is the chaos factor that is of the players.
• 1:18:18
  The players and and the dice, right, like true, you could have
• 1:18:22
  a situation, you know, it's the Oh, my super cool assassin will
• 1:18:25
  sneak up on the on the players and then rolls a natural one
• 1:18:27
  true on their stealth. True.
• 1:18:29
  You know, it. It lets you just sort of put
• 1:18:31
  things in place and well, you know, as we said, as long as it
• 1:18:37
  feels earned, it feels like your players could have reasonably
• 1:18:41
  see it coming. It's like a detective novel,
• 1:18:42
  right? If you could have reasonably
• 1:18:44
  come to it to the conclusion of who the killer is, it's a good
• 1:18:47
  story. Same concept.
• 1:18:51
  No, just use them sparingly. Use them intentionally.
• 1:18:54
  And yeah, I don't know, just drop death stars on your
• 1:18:58
  players. Why not?
• 1:18:59
  Fuck it. If you're playing D&D, just have
• 1:19:01
  the Trask show up. But, like, talk about big
• 1:19:03
  dinosaur bones at some point and like a weird wizard.
• 1:19:07
  Yeah. Because then when the Trask does
• 1:19:08
  show up, it's really funny. Correct.
• 1:19:11
  Correct. That's that's about it.
• 1:19:17
  Yeah. You know, toss to subscribe.
• 1:19:19
  We broke 100 subscribers. That's cool.
• 1:19:21
  Follow us on, you know, some sort of social media.
• 1:19:24
  We've got a couple and that coffee for Brett, you know,
• 1:19:30
  because that boy A needs coffee and you know.
• 1:19:32
  He he do be. They do be coffee addicted.
• 1:19:34
  It's true, yeah. I mean, like, we, we got two of
• 1:19:37
  them. We got two of them on this
• 1:19:38
  podcast, I say as I drink my morning coffee.
• 1:19:42
  I'm going to say, wait, why are you coming at me like that?
• 1:19:47
  Because it's easy and it does a lot of damage.
• 1:19:49
  Fair enough, I guess. Verisimilitude is the word of
• 1:19:55
  the day. It's it's often the word of the
• 1:20:01
  day for me. But like, yeah.
• 1:20:07
  My word of the day is often Ludo narrative Disco biscuits.
• 1:20:10
  It's a good one. All right, motherfuckers, that's
• 1:20:15
  been us.