bonus
Oops! All Talkpocalypses - Episodes 1 to 20
SPOILERS ARE ALL UP IN THIS. We mention specific things that have happened all throughout, so if you aren't caught up you should go back.
This is a recap episode that goes over the first 20 episodes we have recorded, followed by some Q&A, and then a lot of random rambling about TTRPGs.
Transcript
Hey everyone, Stu jumping in at the front here to let you know that this is a special bonus episode where we just chat about the first 20 episodes of Oops!
Speaker:All Apocalypses is.
Speaker:Because of that, there are a ton of spoilers.
Speaker:So if you have not listened to the first 20 episodes, prepare to be spoiled on every single thing that happens, which is pretty much the first thing we talk about.
Speaker:So if you don't want to hear that, skip this one.
Speaker:Love you back.
Speaker:Welcome to Oops!
Speaker:All Talk Apocalypses, a show where we talk about the apocalypse.
Speaker:This is a fun recap episode where we go through some of the things we've already experienced in these first 20 episodes.
Speaker:Let me just say Stu, you were not kidding about making this one an explosive one.
Speaker:Man.
Speaker:Every 20 episodes, explosion.
Speaker:That's the rule.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:Every 10?
Speaker:You guys are a little loud.
Speaker:What happened to episode 10 now that I think about it?
Speaker:Was that an epic, was that a big episode?
Speaker:That may have been the one where you threw a shovel in someone's chest.
Speaker:Oh, I got to check.
Speaker:That was a good episode.
Speaker:That was a good episode.
Speaker:That might have been 14.
Speaker:I don't remember.
Speaker:Let's kick this off by a quick recap of everything that's happened off the top of my head.
Speaker:Let's just read every episode description.
Speaker:Let's just read every episode title, and we'll cover what it's a reference to.
Speaker:Nope, that will take way too long.
Speaker:There's only 20.
Speaker:Nope, this is going to be real quick.
Speaker:Ocean and Book are two friendly fellows who met each other in this underground apocalypse.
Speaker:They had some adventures before we recorded anything because we kind of came in after their relationship had blossomed to a good partnership.
Speaker:Things got off to a pretty rough start with Book getting kidnapped by a couple of chaos cultists.
Speaker:Ocean kind of saving him, but really only driving halfway there before his vehicle broke and taking out one of the cultists.
Speaker:They made it back while Book stole one of the jeeps.
Speaker:You guys interrupt me when I forget anything at all, because I'm not joking, this is all off the top of my head.
Speaker:When they saw one of the chaos cultists' jeeps, and started off on their first kind of real adventure in our story, which was to recover a through-the-earth communication device for their friend that they made during that episode, Johnny Hertz, who is one of my favorite characters.
Speaker:Also one of mine, and an associate of Frida in an unknown way.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:They headed off to go collect this for Johnny Hertz.
Speaker:They learned the TTE was owned by a local warlord named Crandall, who talks like a frog.
Speaker:On their way there, they met a good friend, Vesuvius.
Speaker:My favorite character.
Speaker:Which was a fast-talking redneck character, who was quickly won over by their willingness to share beef jerky.
Speaker:When they made it to Crandall, they found a warlord who has a bunch of random bullshit that isn't actually useful, that it looks like he got from a Sky Mall catalog.
Speaker:They were able to trick him into accepting a trade with a mostly useless piece of equipment by quickly fashioning it into a useful screen for controlling Crandall's iTunes collection, which was the entire discography of Weird Al Yandic.
Speaker:And a massive electrical hazard.
Speaker:Yes, and is not very safe.
Speaker:From that, they got the TTE, and were safe to return to Hamlet Opening, the place they live.
Speaker:But unfortunately, they decided to go through the sewers and met a very horrific monster with visibly growing fingernails, that was not fun for them to play with.
Speaker:They escaped it, made it back to Hamlet Opening, and gave the TTE to Crandall.
Speaker:That's what, nine episodes?
Speaker:Yeah, that was literally episode nine.
Speaker:I just read through it.
Speaker:Yeah, episode 10 was us going, was no.
Speaker:Episode 9 was Ocean throwing a shovel into someone's chest, because episode 10 was Book dying.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So yeah, every 10 episodes is a good one.
Speaker:It's a very good episode.
Speaker:Everyone only listened to every 10 episodes.
Speaker:Back in Hamlet opening, they hung out with some of their friends.
Speaker:They had some good chats with each other.
Speaker:But mostly, yes, they met a very important character named Spade based on a mural that was painted presumably by a local underground artist named Frida, who makes cool graffiti art everywhere and seems to have a vaguely anti-authoritative message to try to spread.
Speaker:They tracked down this person, tried to figure out what their whole deal was, and didn't get anywhere with that.
Speaker:That is true.
Speaker:They then decided to start a revolution.
Speaker:We did.
Speaker:We got harassed.
Speaker:Yeah, you completely forget the fact that they...
Speaker:by another frog character.
Speaker:Pistachio Jones decided that you owed him a small cut of your plundering, and you guys decided to make a very strong stand against that that kicked off a revolution, as you used Johnny Hertz's radio equipment to radio to everyone, and cause a standoff in the middle of town.
Speaker:That was resolved by Ocean, who frequently gets horrific visions, having a vision where he kicked a bunch of ass underground near some large sort of reactor thing.
Speaker:Unfortunately, he also played that out in real life and hurled a shovel through someone's clavicle, killed at least one person, and ran off towards Subtropolis.
Speaker:Book kind of calmed down that situation, and then went searching for Ocean, who was not in Subtropolis at that time, but actually crying in his car.
Speaker:It's probably our worst.
Speaker:He ran towards Subtropolis.
Speaker:That was probably our absolute worst miscommunication we have had so far.
Speaker:It was intentional on my part.
Speaker:I knew that Ocean wasn't there, but I thought it would be fun, because Book didn't know.
Speaker:That was the best acting I've ever done.
Speaker:Book decided for no discernible reason to mess with that long fingernail monster yet again.
Speaker:It effectively killed him, but he was able to call for some wolves of the Maelstrom to attempt to save his life.
Speaker:Then he blacked out.
Speaker:Doesn't know what happened.
Speaker:True.
Speaker:Ocean went plundering after him and found a group of very high-tech, equipped people driving yellow Humvees and wearing full bodysuits and helmets.
Speaker:He escaped them and found a mysterious tower that seemed to bloop and bloop out of existence.
Speaker:When he broke into there using a password that he found in his brain visions, he discovered a book hooked up to medical equipment sleeping.
Speaker:They got out and after way too much conversation, made it towards Hamlet opening, where they ran into a Vesuvius that had a much deeper and sonorous Georgia gentleman voice, which immediately concerned them and threw them into a spiral of confusion that lasted at least four more episodes.
Speaker:Trying to track all that down, they asked all their friends if anything strange was happening, concerned that some sort of body-snatching entity was invading their town.
Speaker:They decided to send Vesuvius to go work with their mortal enemy, Hickory Fleek.
Speaker:Damn it.
Speaker:This is a tangchong, I'm gonna cut all of this.
Speaker:It's good for us, though.
Speaker:Their mortal enemy, Hickory Fleek, who took him on as one of his security guards because he was pretty good with shot.
Speaker:They had some pre-existing business with Hickory that they were trying to work out and also wanted to warn him of the dangers of Vesuvius, so they decided to start poking around Hickory Fleek's main compound, which is a courthouse.
Speaker:While they're there, they found a shack that had some very advanced code written in it.
Speaker:They didn't figure that out till they came back and forth a few times, but they figured out there was an AI that was written by presumably Book's mother to combat an AI that was controlling the town or the city of Soptropolis's power to try to trick it into giving Hamlet Opening enough power for these people to be happy and cool.
Speaker:When they came back to really dig into that, they accidentally got a little bit discovered drawing Vesuvius into the building where his torso exploded taking out most of the building.
Speaker:They took his head, which was still alive and working, and was a pretty big hint that things may not be all normal with him, and escaped back to try to recover.
Speaker:Since then, they decided to go solve their problem and figure out once and for all what is going on with Vesuvius and Crandall.
Speaker:So they headed back into Soptropolis, ran into the real Vesuvius, who talked like normal, and was very surprised to see this head that looked just like him, and got reintroduced to Crandall, who seemed pretty normal, except for the fact that he has been receiving some instructions from a mysterious printer that prints off exactly what he should retrieve, where it's at, and in exchange for that, he's allowed to get things from various catalogs.
Speaker:While they were there, they were interrupted by the Yellow Humvee people, who started assaulting the complex, blew up a bunch of the building, and the tide was quickly turned by Ocean coming around the corner with a very large machine gun he had borrowed from Crandall.
Speaker:They pushed them off and have re-secured Crandall's building for now with probably a few dead people.
Speaker:And that's where we're at right now on episode 21.
Speaker:Well, you missed the fact that Ocean may apparently be one of the Yellow Humvee people?
Speaker:Yeah, maybe.
Speaker:You've had a vision where you kind of looked a little bit like them, and you just now were in a vision of Book, where he was looking into the psychic maelstrom, and he saw a giant wolf of the maelstrom tackle him to save his life from a rocket coming to kill him.
Speaker:A lot happened last episode, good god.
Speaker:And I do want to say, the first time that Book opened his mind to the psychic maelstrom, he saw one of the wolves investigate Ocean's body.
Speaker:Oh my god, I forgot all about that!
Speaker:So my first question for you, Stu, was Ocean always a wolf with a maelstrom in your planning?
Speaker:He's definitely involved with them in some way, I would say.
Speaker:Was that influenced by my unlocking the mystery about whether the psychic maelstrom was man-made or not?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:I would say he was always going to be somewhat involved with it just because I was interested in it.
Speaker:I very much agree.
Speaker:Again, I'm not saying he is or is not exactly a wolf or exactly a people yet.
Speaker:I mean, he was a wolf last episode.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:He's definitely involved in some way, I think.
Speaker:And I've always had that as a good idea.
Speaker:I didn't make it happen until obviously.
Speaker:It makes sense, honestly.
Speaker:I agree.
Speaker:I think it was clear from the wolf poke around at Bush and Spidey that there was definitely an interest there.
Speaker:But as far as the man-made aspect of the psyche Maelstrom goes, does that influence your interpretation of what the wolves are?
Speaker:And how you...
Speaker:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker:Yeah, no.
Speaker:Oh, I think that's a good thing to talk about.
Speaker:So I didn't have an answer to that question until you asked that question.
Speaker:Definitely.
Speaker:And I think I only said that it was man-made because you thought it was the other one.
Speaker:I believe I just did contrary to what your opinion was at the time and went with that.
Speaker:All of the AI shit, all the robots and that stuff, all came from one thing, one single role that happened, I think, in episode two.
Speaker:And it was a role I wasn't even going to have you guys make, but you guys were just paranoid where you were leaving Crandall's place.
Speaker:At that point, you had, in my brain, you had finished the mission, mission accomplished.
Speaker:I was going to let you guys just walk back all the way to Hamlet opening and finish it.
Speaker:Because I was trying to rush through that part, because this was back when I was more concerned about how long is the session and things like that.
Speaker:So I was trying to like in the session, and it was like, maybe even do it that episode, like do the end of session moves.
Speaker:Because that was like your first exponential out, and you guys were like, I want to read the situation.
Speaker:And one of the questions you asked, I just pulled out of my ass that there was a very high def camera that was looking at you guys.
Speaker:And then after that session, I'm like, why would Crandall have a really high def camera there?
Speaker:Like that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker:He doesn't need any of that.
Speaker:So I was like, okay, someone's watching Crandall.
Speaker:Who would have a really high def camera?
Speaker:That all evolved into there's some crazy AI shit.
Speaker:Man, wow, we are our own worst enemies.
Speaker:I assumed that Crandall just was surveillance.
Speaker:Yeah, the whole reason I was so paranoid back then was I thought Crandall was trying to backstab us.
Speaker:That's the whole reason Vesuvius's head.
Speaker:We should have been hiding your head walking past.
Speaker:Oh, God.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I guess that ties into my first question that I asked.
Speaker:And this has been a question that has I've been curious about, and I thought would be very fun to discuss ever since you made this reveal to us.
Speaker:And the question is, what big things were literal and what were figurative in our initial psychic?
Speaker:Because you're like, I got to clarify, you guys.
Speaker:It's a metaphor.
Speaker:And that was like session 18.
Speaker:So prior to then, fairly recently, what big things did we completely take as literal that were figurative?
Speaker:And what big things did we just completely gloss over that were literal things we were seeing?
Speaker:And I would like to add the addendum to that addendum to that question, because we've seen wolves of the maelstrom as wolves outside of the psychic maelstrom.
Speaker:But then we've also seen wolves of the maelstrom as wolves inside of the psychic maelstrom, but they don't look like wolves outside of the psychic maelstrom, aka Ocean last episode.
Speaker:So the wolves are nebulous and ill-defined.
Speaker:And when they were outside of the psychic maelstrom, they just looked like furry ass creatures, right?
Speaker:And then when you were inside of it, you saw them kind of peel back their...
Speaker:They opened their mouth too wide, peeled back, and a humanoid person came out, right?
Speaker:That was the first time you experienced them.
Speaker:So that was like some of their like shape-shifter kind of nature.
Speaker:They're not exactly what they seem, more like that.
Speaker:So that's both figuratively and literal in that example.
Speaker:Stuff like ocean's visions are a weird one because some of it, I'm just trying to come up with shit that may have happened in his past that is interesting to hear.
Speaker:And then while other things, I want to throw in some more metaphorical elements, like the vision you had with a bunch of that same person repeated in a bunch of rooms.
Speaker:That was someone you loved that was in a place of incomprehensible technology.
Speaker:Something like that.
Speaker:That was the vision you asked for.
Speaker:And you said, incomprehensible technology, right when we were dealing with the AI and the tower.
Speaker:And I was like, oh, that'd be a cool idea to start talking about some clone stuff.
Speaker:That would put some fear in them.
Speaker:At that point, I had no intention of introducing fake Suvius in the next probably 10 episodes.
Speaker:And I ended up introducing him, like, the next episode, I think.
Speaker:Probably a mix between we actually had that vision where I talked about it, and then also you guys just kept failing roles to get out of Subtropolis.
Speaker:And I was tired of it and wanted you back in the town.
Speaker:So I was like, well, here's a real big failure.
Speaker:I can just throw up them and say, you made it back, but there's a big problem.
Speaker:There's a big complication.
Speaker:There's this guy who's clearly not who he seems.
Speaker:And that was a question we got from a couple people actually was, did I just fuck up the Suvius' voice?
Speaker:And did that turn into that whole thing?
Speaker:Was I just feeding off of the paranoia of books slash Brady to make that a storyline?
Speaker:And that's not fully true.
Speaker:No, I definitely, I just thought the first time I made the Suvius' voice randomly, again, that's a character I just came up with on the spot.
Speaker:I was like, they should need a guard, came up with a random ass name off the top of my head, gave him a redneck voice because that's easy to do.
Speaker:And after I did that, I was like, it'd be really funny if suddenly his voice changed something entirely different, but also still southern.
Speaker:And I was like, nah, I'm going to make it more complicated than that, throw an extra character in there.
Speaker:But I would say normally when I was running a game, I would have gone way more with the direction that Book was leaning.
Speaker:Like when he was coming up with his own connections, I think normally a good DM would just go, okay, yeah, that is right in some ways and add some complicating matters in it.
Speaker:Unfortunately, I had basically already cemented that it had to be an AI thing controlling this.
Speaker:Right, yeah.
Speaker:Which, which.
Speaker:I like that, because like when I made those connections, I was like, oh, this makes so much sense.
Speaker:I like the fact that we are going down a completely wrong rabbit hole, but at the same time, there were still plenty of clues that we should have figured out, but we're just so hyper fixated on those small things.
Speaker:I don't remember any AI clues.
Speaker:Okay, I don't necessarily know about AI clues, but I think there were clues that we completely missed about Vesuvius' true nature.
Speaker:Speaking of, that actually brings us to the next question.
Speaker:What foreshadowing did you put in there for Vesuvius wanting to blow up the place?
Speaker:Because you said there were several clues that we missed, and the big one you said was the one where it was very obvious that we didn't even have to roll when it was to come investigate the server room, but were there any others?
Speaker:I can't remember if I said that on air, but yeah, when you guys were walking by the server room, you made some good jokes about how it was bullshit that Ocean didn't even have to roll to convince him to go into that server room, and that was just because for some reason he wanted to go in there, and it was to get information about that thing.
Speaker:He didn't really understand that, I think, is the way it kind of works.
Speaker:Purely subconscious.
Speaker:He's so likable.
Speaker:I don't want him to be a bad guy.
Speaker:He's such a cool dude.
Speaker:So it had to be subconscious.
Speaker:It couldn't be his ulterior motives or anything like that.
Speaker:I made a lot of jokes about him not being wired that way.
Speaker:Anytime I could, I made jokes that were related to him being an actual robot, even though you guys already did think he could be a robot.
Speaker:I did that a lot.
Speaker:And then to me, again, I'm biased because I realized where it came from.
Speaker:But if I was making books, crazy person board, I would have put that high def camera on there and been like, why is he like this?
Speaker:Or something like, why does Crandall have such weird shit?
Speaker:Those things to me are both.
Speaker:Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker:We kind of were wondering that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I just assumed he was just an eccentric guy.
Speaker:That is true too.
Speaker:And paranoid.
Speaker:Like if I was a warlord, I would put a camera on my gate, you know?
Speaker:But it was facing weird.
Speaker:It was facing towards the front.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I was about to say, it wasn't looking at like, it wasn't like your typical camera where you spy on people.
Speaker:It was more like he was monitoring the inside of his own place.
Speaker:Which is why the fake body of book had a super good version of the back because you walked in not giving a fuck.
Speaker:But when you guys came out, you wisely hid your bodies in a good way.
Speaker:Ooh, I didn't put that together.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So it only had a view of your back at all.
Speaker:And if like, if you guys waited a bit and didn't like care about any of this weird shit, like if you ignored Crandall and start doing other stuff, if you're like, let's go find my parents and left, you would have gotten eventually maybe a book that was like a little bit better.
Speaker:Shit like that.
Speaker:But it would have not been super convincing as being you.
Speaker:I never had an idea of doing a you're actually the robot all along thing.
Speaker:I think that would have been really cool and interesting, but it also would have been a little bit too out there for a player.
Speaker:You would have handled it well.
Speaker:Oh, I would have had a blast with it.
Speaker:I would have had so much fun with it.
Speaker:Like imagine if we found my parents and there was already a book with both.
Speaker:You don't give them ideas.
Speaker:Don't give them ideas.
Speaker:Yeah, I feel like one thing, one thing that's super obvious in hindsight that we were, I think we were close to figuring this out, but we were harping on it for the wrong reasons, was the Crandall picking things up that were weird, that were not things that he would normally pick up, that were like cool stuff.
Speaker:We were like, oh shit, has Crandall been strained?
Speaker:What's going on with Crandall?
Speaker:What's changed about him to where he went for picking up all these goofy things to now be much more weird, eccentric things that his people didn't understand?
Speaker:We should have probably, we were thinking like, oh shit, Crandall's been replaced.
Speaker:What's going on with Crandall here?
Speaker:Vesuvius, we got fake Vesuvius now.
Speaker:Is there a fake Crandall?
Speaker:And we were so fixated on that, I guess we didn't even think of the most obvious answer that Crandall isn't gathering things for himself.
Speaker:He's being told to get stuff.
Speaker:Because when we met Crandall, he doesn't seem like the sharpest tool in the shed.
Speaker:So why would he be having all this shit?
Speaker:I mean, I assumed he was picking up the stuff for someone else.
Speaker:I just assumed that he was also being literally puppeted by that person.
Speaker:As opposed to figuratively puppeted with the dot, what is it called?
Speaker:The dot matrix printers.
Speaker:Dot matrix, yeah, yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, that was super interesting.
Speaker:As far as the doppelganger situation goes, I was expecting this to become like an epic, like a secret invasion thing, not the TV show, but the comic, where it starts being revealed that there are already doppelgangers in place.
Speaker:So I was expecting more of like an invasion as opposed to like, this was a target, this was a sniper.
Speaker:Yeah, this is a single guy being sent for a single purpose to manipulate us into putting him where he needs to be.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So how I deal with that sort of distinction on the MC side of things, is basically every threat that exists has an idea of what I write out, is what that threat would do if you guys just pissed off and didn't care about it.
Speaker:So that's like the end of the clock for if you guys ignored what was going on with all the Crandall AI stuff, then they would start infiltrating the town, they'd start replacing people, and that would be your only experience with it.
Speaker:It would be like way too late.
Speaker:But you guys decided to interact with it much more early, try to look for the tower, met the Elahumdi people, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker:So they didn't get basically far along their plan, while other stuff you're ignoring is getting low to that dangerous area.
Speaker:Like the boxcar children.
Speaker:It's like a choose-your-own adventure of what thing's going to really screw you later.
Speaker:I was about to say, we can only focus on one thing, so we can always progress the car that's tracked a little bit, delay it for others.
Speaker:Both parents are being tortured as we speak.
Speaker:Yeah, but who knows what horrible things are happening that are just going to explode on us.
Speaker:So that's, I guess, another question that I thought would be kind of fun to talk about, because again, I think this is all stuff that we might have talked about at a session, but talking on air with everybody listening and just getting a peek around the corner, I always find this kind of stuff interesting whenever I'm listening to a D&D podcast or whatever.
Speaker:I like the talking about behind-the-scenes stuff, because basically, this is like the first game I've played in a million years.
Speaker:I am normally a forever DM, so I like the DM and peeking around and stuff, but what big things have you planned that has occurred?
Speaker:And what big things have you just pulled straight out of your ass so far?
Speaker:I plan very little in general.
Speaker:The main things I plan are scenes that I think would be cool and dramatic and fit apocalyptic media really well.
Speaker:So I always knew I was going to force you to actually commit violence on people during one of your visions.
Speaker:I was like, I didn't know when.
Speaker:It could be anywhere, but you gave me a good opportunity with a role that wasn't fully successful for me to do that.
Speaker:And it ended up being the best part.
Speaker:That's a perfect timing for it.
Speaker:That could have been a very lame time.
Speaker:Like, there could have been some other lame moments.
Speaker:It was a great fail.
Speaker:It was a great time for a fail.
Speaker:So most of my planning is waiting for good moments like that to more naturally come up, like something as big as the server room exploding.
Speaker:I kind of knew that could be an option when I think between the session before that and then, I was like, that would only happen if they fail super bad, though, which is exactly what happened.
Speaker:I did not expect that at all.
Speaker:I thought you guys were going to definitely be able to come back, and Book was right that that was exactly what Hickory wanted to work on anyway.
Speaker:But I thought you guys were most likely just going to get like captured or something like that.
Speaker:The cheese monster, which you guys unfortunately call him, was literally just supposed to be an example of things the psychic maelstrom crazy monsters that happened to spawn because of it are created from this weird environment, that there's all this strange psychic energy passing around, creating these horrific beasts.
Speaker:So that was never intended to be a very big thing.
Speaker:I came up with it while you guys were in the sewers the first time, and then it was definitely a heavy focus because I didn't make the connection between having a kind of deformable face and there being an actual clone of someone, which I think is a reasonable connection to me.
Speaker:So, yes.
Speaker:And from my perspective, I also felt like Book, because he's that mystery-obsessed person, he would not be able to let go of the monster that he saw.
Speaker:It would haunt his dreams.
Speaker:He needs to know why it's there, all this stuff.
Speaker:So I was like, no, we have to go back.
Speaker:We have to go back because it's there.
Speaker:And he can see it again if he wants to, and he does.
Speaker:Which I wanted you guys to do because I wanted you to fight it better, because we just kind of fled, crushed his fingers and ran.
Speaker:Yeah, I thought that'd be a cool fight.
Speaker:But then you went back by yourself.
Speaker:The one character who just cannot fight was left to fight.
Speaker:But I tried to I guess this was one kind of time back to the previous question.
Speaker:And this one, that was one of the clues I kept trying to give is I kept intentionally wording it from Vesuvius as horrors of the Maelstrom.
Speaker:Instead of you experiencing the actual Maelstrom when you had that confusion to try to get you guys to be like, what do you mean by that?
Speaker:Because in a lot of people's minds, especially certainly Vesuvius, that weird shit would just be a horror of the Maelstrom, not necessarily you guys going into the Maelstrom, which was one of the things you guys kind of hung on to was like, how did he know we were there?
Speaker:But to him, that's just, oh, yeah, the weird monster with the crazy nails.
Speaker:That's a horror.
Speaker:And he knew that because he was made by the wolves, the Maelstrom who saved me from the monster.
Speaker:Hey, and with that knowledge, you can throw more creepy crawly creatures at us and we'll now realize, OK, this is just a real horrible thing.
Speaker:Oh, no, I've been thinking of some new cool creatures.
Speaker:I drew up a couple of concept creatures that I sent us to as well.
Speaker:And I realized after the fact that there's literally a character, there's a character sheet that literally lets you create animals.
Speaker:Like, where is it?
Speaker:I was just looking at it.
Speaker:And I was like, that should have been me.
Speaker:You almost played that class.
Speaker:I was like, that would have been great, because I could have come to each recording with like a new drawing of something that we could fight.
Speaker:I can't remember what that one's called.
Speaker:It's a cool one.
Speaker:But no, that was your actual first idea for a character was that one.
Speaker:And then you ended up switching because you wanted to be more sleuthy.
Speaker:The rest of it.
Speaker:My first idea for a character was going to be a tinkerer.
Speaker:I was going to be a tinkerer, and I think I was going to be like a female tinkerer too.
Speaker:So I went in the complete opposite direction.
Speaker:If you died, I'd be like a tinkerer.
Speaker:I went that way because when Book created, when literally just on the spot from, I think we briefly discussed it, and I was like, that sounds like an interesting class, but I still hadn't decided.
Speaker:But when Book basically was becoming like a less physical, more smart, more charismatic, dealing with people better, can figure things out, puzzle-solving kind of person, I was like, okay, we can't have two of those.
Speaker:We can't have two of those.
Speaker:That's too boring.
Speaker:I think it would have been fine.
Speaker:I think it would have been fine because it would have put us into like really, we would have had to get really creative.
Speaker:We wouldn't have been able to fight.
Speaker:But I think because I didn't make that situation, I'm very happy with the character I made.
Speaker:I think our characters are.
Speaker:I'm very happy with our characters for this.
Speaker:I am too.
Speaker:I like both of your characters a ton.
Speaker:I think the combination of your two playbooks is possibly the coolest, where it's someone who's obsessed with mysteries, and then someone whose whole background is mystery.
Speaker:I think it's about to start tying together even more, now that our book is becoming more involved with Ocean's mysteries.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm thinking of Frieda right now.
Speaker:And I know you can't answer this, but I want to know why the fuck she took that thing so bad.
Speaker:Yeah, just some background.
Speaker:I told the players this afterwards.
Speaker:But so that whole thing was because of a move that had a negative consequence forever ago.
Speaker:I don't even remember specifically what move at this point, but I never adjudicated it.
Speaker:So I was just like, I'm going to move one of these ticks, one of these threat things further along.
Speaker:And that was what happened.
Speaker:So I decided at that point to make that happen.
Speaker:You guys will learn soon.
Speaker:It'll come up pretty quick.
Speaker:That's cool.
Speaker:So how do you guys like the system in general?
Speaker:Apocalypse World.
Speaker:I love Apocalypse World.
Speaker:I think it's great.
Speaker:Are there any things you find annoying or I think wish were done a little different?
Speaker:No, as far as the system itself, absolutely not.
Speaker:I think it's great.
Speaker:The thing that I find frustrating is that everything is sort of documented sporadically.
Speaker:So as far as finding what you need and like tracking all of the different moves and sub moves.
Speaker:And I know that they account for that.
Speaker:And they say like, hey, if this is too much, don't even worry about it.
Speaker:But I'm one of those people who like, I like to make use of all of the things at my disposal.
Speaker:And so like knowing that there are things on the table that I can't keep track of is frustrating.
Speaker:So we're playing a just kind of written addition to second edition.
Speaker:So it's not even like a full ass thing.
Speaker:There's a kind of annoying combination of the rules are anything we read in the rulebook supersedes second edition.
Speaker:But if not, you have to go read second edition to understand it.
Speaker:So it makes it very easy to miss things and hard to know where those distinctions are.
Speaker:I think the creator Vincent Baker said he's going to kind of I think there's a third edition maybe coming that should roll in some of these things.
Speaker:I'm not sure.
Speaker:I really hope there is.
Speaker:And if there is, we'll get it and we can switch to it immediately.
Speaker:But I like it.
Speaker:This is the first time I've played Burned Over.
Speaker:I've played Apocalypse World first and second edition before and like them a lot.
Speaker:But I like some of the changes he made in this.
Speaker:They're all pretty in the weeds.
Speaker:The reason I like them are all pretty in the weeds and technical.
Speaker:But I like all the playbooks are cool.
Speaker:Most of the changes I think are positive.
Speaker:I'd recommend anyone playing Apocalypse World to just start with Burned Over.
Speaker:And I would recommend more people to play it because it's super good.
Speaker:You've been enunciating Burned Over really well.
Speaker:I've been trying very hard.
Speaker:I can tell because you paused for half a second before you say it.
Speaker:That's all going to be edited out so I sound smooth and...
Speaker:smooth.
Speaker:I like a little bit of crunch in my games, I'll be honest.
Speaker:I do like that Pathfinder 2nd Edition 3.5 D&D, that kind of stuff.
Speaker:Yeah, I like that.
Speaker:I like the crunch in doing stuff.
Speaker:But I've always felt it doesn't really work very well in a visual medium, like in a non-visual medium, like over a podcast or stuff.
Speaker:I know there's a lot of appeal for D&D podcasts and stuff, but for me, the moment you pull out minis and grit or anything like that, it starts getting really hard to follow, especially combat when you're listening.
Speaker:So I think combat can grind to a halt with a lot of D&D.
Speaker:Yeah, I hate the six second system.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I feel like purely when I do, I do like the storytelling aspect of like RPGs probably more than anything else, ultimately.
Speaker:So I love that on the pot powered by the apocalypse systems.
Speaker:That's kind of a highlight.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:It kind of forces you to have ties to the other players from the beginning.
Speaker:So many games, it's like it's just four completely unrelated people that are just there because they met in a bar.
Speaker:And that's their connection with the apocalypse world.
Speaker:Everyone is kind of forced to have some tie to the other to make for an interesting, more interesting beginning.
Speaker:But also, it's just it's a lot easier to follow when you're listening.
Speaker:It's there's no diet.
Speaker:You don't really even have to pay much attention to the dice.
Speaker:You can just hear us groan and moan and complain when things go poorly.
Speaker:Yeah, the only thing I ever worry about are when there's like a list of things you can choose from.
Speaker:But I think we repeat them enough.
Speaker:And again, that doesn't really matter.
Speaker:That like as long as you guys are saying what you're choosing, like it like you couldn't if you didn't understand the system, you could just listen to us talking and be like, oh, they can answer ask him any three questions, and they just happen to choose these three.
Speaker:Each day, why are they wording them so dumb?
Speaker:It's so those are all from a list.
Speaker:It just intrinsically leads better to like an auditory medium of Apocalypse World and powered by the apocalypse games, because it's just like a collaborative story.
Speaker:I think it's distilled down the most, more than most other systems where it's just like a collaborative story, and the DM has tools and the players has tools to kind of spur the story in whatever way they want.
Speaker:It's not really, it's very flexible, and I like that a lot.
Speaker:Yeah, one of the things that I really like about is that like the DM is exclusively adjudicating our roles as opposed to acting with his own, not his own agency, but you know what I mean.
Speaker:Whereas in D&D, it's like you're, I'm rolling to hit you, you're rolling to dodge, then you're rolling to hit me, and I'm rolling to dodge, and then it all happened in the last six seconds, but it has to happen in order.
Speaker:So, you know, it just gets very, it's like very, like I appreciate the system.
Speaker:I know why it exists, but at the same time, I'm like, why does it have to be, like, I don't know.
Speaker:I just feel like that's not how things happen.
Speaker:Not that it has to be realistic, but like, that's not how it works.
Speaker:I think you kind of hit on this for a second, but it made me remember one of the things like, like, so in D&D and most D20 systems, I can make a dragon that has plus 50 to hit you, and it's going to hit you.
Speaker:Like, you can find enemies that are too strong for you and things like this.
Speaker:The way these systems are work, they're like completely self-balancing, where you can take on whatever you want.
Speaker:And if you're good at your roles, it's going to be successful.
Speaker:Like, it requires a kind of agreement with the players to not do absolutely insane stuff, which that's why I chose YouTube specifically, because I didn't think either of you would do that too often.
Speaker:But that can be a big ask in some of the D&D games I've played, where people do try to do absurd things, even though...
Speaker:Isn't that so?
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Like, if you took some of those players and threw them in this system, I think it would not run well.
Speaker:It would be...
Speaker:You guys have...
Speaker:Like, everyone has to agree you're trying to create a good story without having ideas for how that story's planned out.
Speaker:And let's just do things that make that happen.
Speaker:Which, to me, is easier than D&D.
Speaker:I like...
Speaker:Like I mentioned, I plan very little of this out.
Speaker:I just have kind of a few ideas in my brain, and it all rolls together and becomes solidified as we play.
Speaker:Like, oh, here's this new thing that...
Speaker:There have been a few things that tie together, and I should make a thread that fits that into one neat little bucket.
Speaker:Well, like, running a module from a book, to me, is miserable and difficult and hard.
Speaker:And I feel like I need to...
Speaker:My brain has to obtain all of the information in that book and then present it back in a good way, which I don't like doing.
Speaker:I think a really cool distinction as well is that, like, in D&D, when you break character and you're discussing, like, oh, what spell slots you have left and, like, all of this stuff, like, it gets very...
Speaker:There's a lot of metagaming involved, and I feel like it's really hard to do in Burned Over because you're just like, what does your character want to do?
Speaker:You either do it or you don't.
Speaker:And when Jacob and I do sort of try to collaborate and, like, figure out what we're doing next, it's usually, honestly, like, I feel like 90% of the time we break character, it's for read-a-situation roles, and I'm like, what do I want to know?
Speaker:What do we want to figure out here?
Speaker:And the nice thing about that is that it works out of character because you're determining what you want your character to notice, not, you know, necessarily, you know, the best action for them to take.
Speaker:You know what I'm saying?
Speaker:Like, you hit it very clearly, and when the servers exploded, and you're like, if I shot them in the chest, what would it have saw?
Speaker:I can't remember if I cut that from the episode or not.
Speaker:No, I left it in, yeah, I left it in.
Speaker:If I shot them in the chest, would it have changed anything?
Speaker:And the real answer, like you said, is if you rolled good, yeah.
Speaker:If you rolled a full success on stream.
Speaker:So what the fiction changes based on, like it's easy to hear all this and go, choices don't matter.
Speaker:It's just how good you roll.
Speaker:But that's really not it, because the fiction does change and the actual situations you're in impacts what that success actually means.
Speaker:Shooting them in the chest is very different than tackling them.
Speaker:But if you tackle them on a full success, I'm probably not going to explode you to death, even though that may make sense for exactly what's going on.
Speaker:Like there's a bomb counting down and you tackle someone to one.
Speaker:He might have tackled them really well, and I would have gave him a couple more seconds to get in, pull the shirt off, and see exactly what was going on, and maybe tinker with something to defuse it.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:It would be something like that.
Speaker:And if you shot them in the chest, maybe a full success may have just stopped it, and a mixed success may have stopped it and killed them, which could have been just as bad from your perspective as where we're at now with an exploded thing and no proof of a weird Vesuvius head.
Speaker:Yeah, we could have lost our Vesuvius, our fake Vesuvius.
Speaker:It's the difference between, like, Vesuvius doesn't roll to hit, so it's like me rolling bad is the same thing as an enemy rolling well in D&D, you know?
Speaker:And it's just a different interpretation of it.
Speaker:And I think that also kind of circles back to, like, sometimes no matter how hard you try, things don't go your way.
Speaker:So that's a really cool, I think we just talked about this recently off air, but that's a really cool self-balancing aspect of Powered by the Apocalypse, where as a DM, I can just ask for more and more rolls to make things harder and harder.
Speaker:Or easier.
Speaker:I used to do that all the time.
Speaker:Or less rolls to make it easier.
Speaker:I used to do that all the time in our Monster of the Week game, Jacob, where if a fight was going too well, I'm just, well, make them roll more.
Speaker:Like, that happened very explicitly when you guys were trying to escape after the exploded server room, where you guys only did one roll.
Speaker:But I did that intentionally because I knew the situation you guys were at.
Speaker:You both had one health.
Speaker:Any mixed success basically meant you were going to be caught or dead.
Speaker:And then any full success means you got out.
Speaker:Or if you only got full successes, that means you got out.
Speaker:So to me, it was a pretty binary result anyway.
Speaker:There's two places the story can go.
Speaker:They either escape or get caught, or I guess die.
Speaker:Both die.
Speaker:Which is really the same as them both getting caught, and they come back weirder.
Speaker:Because of that, I was like, okay, you're gonna just do one roll to try to escape, so we don't have to do a roll for getting out of the fence.
Speaker:Do a roll for finding where the best place to go is.
Speaker:Do a roll for getting there without being seen.
Speaker:All that stuff isn't that interesting.
Speaker:In some circumstances, it could be interesting.
Speaker:If you guys were completely healthy and trying to get out quickly, that's where tension can come from.
Speaker:But when you're on the edge of dying and one single mixed success causes you to get caught, might as well just make it one and see, is it this or the other?
Speaker:See what happens.
Speaker:And you both rolled over ten.
Speaker:Both killed it, which is not what I expected.
Speaker:I was completely ready for you guys to get caught.
Speaker:That was probably the best, luckiest role that we probably ever got.
Speaker:And I think last episode made up for it.
Speaker:Oh, yeah, for sure.
Speaker:Speaking of like failures and stuff, that's another thing.
Speaker:And in a lot of games, when you fail, it kind of drags things to a grinding halt.
Speaker:Like that means you didn't do this something.
Speaker:You can't do it or you failed at doing it.
Speaker:That's not necessarily a bad thing.
Speaker:I think the different approaches have their different pros and cons.
Speaker:But in a system where the rules are really just kind of meant to exist to kind of help you tell a collaborative story, the way Powered by the Apocalypse does it, where even failing a role moves the plot and the story forward rather than changes things.
Speaker:So no matter what happens, something is going to occur that's going to make something go on.
Speaker:Like you could fail a role and still succeed in whatever the task you were trying to do was.
Speaker:It's just now you have a huge problem that arised from you succeeding.
Speaker:Instead, like D&D, try to kick down a door.
Speaker:You roll your strength.
Speaker:You get a poor sack.
Speaker:You can't break down the door.
Speaker:You kick it.
Speaker:Duds, nothing happens.
Speaker:This one, you try and kick down the door.
Speaker:You roll poorly.
Speaker:You kick down the door.
Speaker:It splinters and shatters.
Speaker:You now have the door open, but your leg has a gaping wound, and everybody in the dungeon knows that you're there.
Speaker:Or even worse, in D&D, if you're trying to kick down a door, and your party's just taking turns trying to kick the door open.
Speaker:Everyone tries to kick the door open.
Speaker:So it's just six strength rolls in a row.
Speaker:We just roll.
Speaker:We just entered a new dungeon room.
Speaker:Everybody, take turns rolling perception checks.
Speaker:See what happens.
Speaker:Or you're passing around your new item, and everyone's rolling Arcana, Arcana, Arcana, Arcana, Arcana.
Speaker:Can I read it?
Speaker:And then as a DM for like D&D style games, I let my experiences with Power by the Apocalypse certainly flavor the way I run games.
Speaker:But like two common DM issues in D&D are either the not being flexible at all with what your players want to do versus what you expected them to do.
Speaker:So, oh, my players want to go sneak through this dungeon and do like a heist versus when I expect them to kick in the door and try to kill these people.
Speaker:If they are trying to sneak and there's no way for that to happen and there's enemies where you had them set up for an actual combat and it just doesn't work.
Speaker:That's just you not being flexible, but that's kind of how the system's made.
Speaker:So it's not your fault.
Speaker:And then DMs do the like quantum troll thing where I want to do a troll fight.
Speaker:The left door, there's a troll behind the right door.
Speaker:There's also trouble.
Speaker:Your choices don't actually matter where in these PVTA games, it's the opposite where the players go, I want to try to sneak and I rolled good on my sneaky.
Speaker:What is behind that door re-melds to be a good way for them to sneak through it.
Speaker:A sleeping three headed.
Speaker:And I don't want this to be like me shitting on D&D.
Speaker:I like D&D a lot.
Speaker:I love D&D a lot.
Speaker:It's so much fun.
Speaker:It just has different strengths.
Speaker:Every system has different strengths and pros and cons.
Speaker:D&D is more crunchy.
Speaker:It's more playing.
Speaker:It feels more like you're playing an actual game.
Speaker:And I think that's the appeal.
Speaker:And the combat's way more.
Speaker:Yeah, I think that's the appeal of D&D is that you are physically sitting down, and you're essentially playing an interactive board game, storytelling kind of thing, which is fine.
Speaker:It's got its own appeal.
Speaker:It doesn't do as well in the storytelling medium because the rules kind of make it hard to do so.
Speaker:You can still tell great stories with D&D.
Speaker:There is no system that you can't do anything you want, really.
Speaker:It's just different systems make it easier to do certain things.
Speaker:Just with the way rules are cut.
Speaker:If I really wanted to, I can do a D&D session where I haven't planned out a single thing, we do it powered by the Apocalypses style.
Speaker:Depending on their roles, things change and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:Their role, unless I make it so they have a consequence or they fail a role, that means they still have moved the style.
Speaker:You can do it, but it's just the roles.
Speaker:It's a lot more stuff you got to come up with on the fly than a system that's intrinsically designed to be come up with on the fly.
Speaker:Different pros and cons, different people like different things.
Speaker:You can never run a PBTA game where you wrote this wonderful, beautiful story with three-act structure, and the players hit this story beat, and this story beat, and this one.
Speaker:But you could do something like open D&D.
Speaker:I still wouldn't personally like to run it or play it, but you could do that.
Speaker:I think my least favorite thing about Apocalypse World is also my favorite thing about it, which is the damage clock.
Speaker:I find it inconstruable.
Speaker:I don't understand it, but at the same time, I love my favorite thing about Apocalypse World is that your characters don't somehow get better at surviving the same amount of damage over time.
Speaker:You can get armor, but I guess when I'm a child, I may be more fragile than I am as an adult.
Speaker:But once you're 20, you're pretty much as sturdy as you're ever going to get.
Speaker:You probably get less sturdy as you get older.
Speaker:This may not be seamlessly cut in to the rest of the episode, because we just took a very long break, but we're back to talking Apocalypse.
Speaker:A week and a day, baby.
Speaker:Anyone remember what we were talking about?
Speaker:Nope.
Speaker:I still have some questions that I've been accumulating.
Speaker:I think Jacob has a question.
Speaker:Yeah, I heard that Jacob had a very big question.
Speaker:I was thinking this as I was walking out of work yesterday.
Speaker:I realized Frieda doesn't like us very much.
Speaker:And I was like, why the hell does Frieda not like us?
Speaker:And Stu, you said something along the lines of it has something to do with something we did earlier.
Speaker:My theory, and I don't know if you can confirm this or not, because it's still technically plot relevant, but I'm just sharing it here.
Speaker:Is Frieda mad at us because we broke the Queen of Spades mind?
Speaker:That does tie into one of my questions, actually.
Speaker:I can't answer that fully.
Speaker:But is there anything I've gotten some questions about?
Speaker:Is there any, what are some major things you would take back if you changed anything?
Speaker:Like if you made any blunders or mistakes that you regretted in the future?
Speaker:I was interested in your guys' opinions on that.
Speaker:Nope.
Speaker:I would take back breaking the Queen of Spades mind.
Speaker:Nope.
Speaker:Yeah, that's what I would take back too.
Speaker:She was a threat, and I handled it.
Speaker:I would take that back in a heartbeat.
Speaker:I handled it.
Speaker:Book handled it in the only way he knows how.
Speaker:It's handled, for sure.
Speaker:Is she still on the threat map?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Just a different type of threat.
Speaker:Oh, God.
Speaker:I feel like now we have all the answers we want to give her, so maybe she'll go back to normal.
Speaker:Maybe, maybe.
Speaker:And then I'll tell her a different secret.
Speaker:Oh, God.
Speaker:Tell them a different secret.
Speaker:No, I think the only things I regret are not being harsher on you guys probably.
Speaker:Yeah, those are the only things I ever take back.
Speaker:What would you say you would have been harsher on us in hindsight on of what we did?
Speaker:Maybe, maybe more damage when that explosion happened.
Speaker:Oh, so you would have killed us both?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think we were both one harm away.
Speaker:I like where it went from there, so I don't think it hurt anything, but I think it would have been interesting.
Speaker:Yeah, more sudden violence, I would say, would probably be the only times I would ratchet things up.
Speaker:But I've liked where everything's gone with that, and I usually don't think about it too much.
Speaker:I don't care if you guys are going to die, because you can die a few times.
Speaker:Yeah, it's honestly really generous how many times you can die.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:So basically, if you don't know the system very well, which is almost everyone listening, when you die, just like Book did previously, you basically can come back with a few different options.
Speaker:And the one he took literally is only a bonus.
Speaker:It increases his weird.
Speaker:Most of them are more detrimental.
Speaker:You can lose hard, I believe, or you can come back as a different playbook.
Speaker:A lot of people already have that as a problem.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Oh, damn.
Speaker:Oh, yikes.
Speaker:We're definitely not getting sponsored by Hems now.
Speaker:Or maybe we will be sponsored by Hems now.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Another question we've been getting is, what are we going to do after the story?
Speaker:Or usually framed in the way of, don't stop recording.
Speaker:It feels like you guys are wrapping up toward something, which we're not, first of all.
Speaker:We're in the middle of a bunch of crazy shenanigans.
Speaker:I was about to say, I don't think we're anywhere near wrapping anything up at this point.
Speaker:I think we're less than halfway done with it.
Speaker:I would say we're like a third of the way done with the first part of Book and Ocean's story.
Speaker:Yeah, I was going to say, we haven't even really reached our inciting incident yet.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think there have been some inciting incidents.
Speaker:Yeah, but like, we have to go somewhere, and we haven't gone anywhere yet.
Speaker:Something has to motive, like, the hero's call.
Speaker:We need that.
Speaker:I swear I thought we were going to be exiled by Hickory.
Speaker:I thought that was something that was going to happen when we well, I mean, that's still very well could happen, considering what we have done.
Speaker:But I don't know why you guys want to leave Hamlet opening.
Speaker:So I don't want to leave Hamlet opening.
Speaker:That's why I was 100% confident.
Speaker:You want to go deeper.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And you want to go up.
Speaker:We both want to go.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:That's the thing.
Speaker:We have to have the hero's call.
Speaker:We have to reject the hero's call, and then we have to get it again and take it.
Speaker:That is true.
Speaker:And then we have to do Star Wars.
Speaker:I think you couldn't be more wrong.
Speaker:And then Obi-Wan is going to kill our parents and blame it on the Stormtroopers.
Speaker:Oh shit, I didn't hear that part of the Star Wars story.
Speaker:And then he's going to kidnap us and take us to Han Solo.
Speaker:This is a very different Star Wars than I remember.
Speaker:Basically, the end of the story gets kicked off by the players, actually.
Speaker:It's one of your improvements is when you can start unlocking a game changer, right?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Which I think I am now able to do.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:So yeah.
Speaker:Because I have five improvements.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:So you can start getting those advanced improvements, and one of them is unlocking the game changer, which there are a lot of ways that happens, and it's not like you take that and the story ends, but a significant event basically happens.
Speaker:You move forward more quickly at that moment.
Speaker:So that kind of does put somewhat of a clock on it.
Speaker:But what's my plan for when that happens is we're going to just continue on to a different story, maybe in a more different view of the apocalypse depending on where this goes.
Speaker:But I plan on sticking with Book and Ocean past that probably.
Speaker:If you guys can change playbooks and stuff like that.
Speaker:Yeah, because that is one of your isn't.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:I think one of the game changers is switch playbooks, right?
Speaker:No, that's one of your advanced improvements.
Speaker:So I think my absolute favorite game changer is that you pick the one that says the DM is now a player and now you are the DM.
Speaker:That one sounds terrible to me.
Speaker:I hate it.
Speaker:Jacob wants your job, Stu.
Speaker:I do want your job.
Speaker:No, no, I figured I figured if we would ever.
Speaker:I have no plans on replacing Stu.
Speaker:I figured if we ever had like a like a season two or something like that in a different setting or something, maybe we could have a different DM in that case.
Speaker:But yeah, something that wouldn't that's not related to this story.
Speaker:Like, oh, no, you return to a new playbook.
Speaker:You can do that when you die.
Speaker:Well, you can also do it as an advanced improvement, I think.
Speaker:I don't I can't maybe other players can.
Speaker:Another question we got is what's with all of the names of our episodes being random bullshit?
Speaker:Can you guys answer that?
Speaker:So I have really good ideas.
Speaker:And then Stu says, no, it has to be music related.
Speaker:And then Jacob comes up with a great idea that's also music related.
Speaker:Yeah, the thing is, Stu and I have a lot of weird like knowledge about different musics and songs and stuff.
Speaker:And we just like using music lyrics as titles.
Speaker:And Brady comes up with a clever title and we're like, yeah, but this music lyric is a little bit more relevant.
Speaker:However, however, for you to come up with hurt by Nine Inch Nails was on me.
Speaker:That was a great one.
Speaker:That was actually our first music title.
Speaker:And I think and also our best one is really good.
Speaker:I will say all of our music titles actually do tie into the stuff that's going on.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So if you don't know the song, just listen to the song, listen to whatever song our title is, the lyrics, and then somehow do that thing that people who like read minds do and just make it fit.
Speaker:Yeah, you can make anything fit to anything.
Speaker:I'm looking at our titles right now, and only a couple of weird ones jump out.
Speaker:Pompeii was really good.
Speaker:Yeah, Pompeii was Jacob's idea, which was my second favorite one after Hurt by Nine Inch Nails.
Speaker:I do all the mid ones, and it's usually because I have to come up with a title right before we publish.
Speaker:And we usually go to bed, it's probably like three o'clock in the morning, you're like, for the love of God, I just want to go to sleep, I'm so tired of listening to these two guys' voices.
Speaker:Do you guys remember when we did an intro once, and then never did it again?
Speaker:What do you mean?
Speaker:When did we do an intro?
Speaker:It was the-
Speaker:Oh, your intro thing.
Speaker:Yeah, your legal-
Speaker:This podcast does not, you know, does not represent whatever.
Speaker:Oh, that was a funny little gag.
Speaker:I thought it was funny, except Stu slowed it down and my voice sounded fucked up.
Speaker:You slowed your voice down.
Speaker:No, I deepened my voice.
Speaker:You're George Takei in it?
Speaker:I did my best George Takei impression.
Speaker:I did not slow it down.
Speaker:Oh, maybe it was the mic problem.
Speaker:Yeah, I was all you.
Speaker:I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker:You did slow it down.
Speaker:We can do more intros as long as they're very good, and we record more ahead so we have time to actually edit them.
Speaker:That's the problem.
Speaker:Oh, we were so good at the start, because I remember we'd make jokes about how far ahead we had recorded in episodes, we'd be like, yeah, wow, that was such a, that was something that just happened and didn't just happen three weeks ago.
Speaker:Now we do just in time recording.
Speaker:Now we literally recorded the same day we're releasing.
Speaker:Yeah, same day.
Speaker:God, we've become so lazy.
Speaker:We do Azure VM just in time recording.
Speaker:Our second worst title, I won't say the worst one, because it's throwing shade on one of my co-hosts here.
Speaker:You can say it.
Speaker:Our second worst one is Watch Me Explode, which I just did because I thought it was funny and no one else is going to get the joke of it being the code in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 to unlock every single character in Godmode, while also being a reference to the ACDC song, which does fit what the episode is.
Speaker:It did, yeah.
Speaker:No, you can say the worst one.
Speaker:The worst one is Speak Softly, which...
Speaker:Yeah, that is the worst one.
Speaker:I would agree with that.
Speaker:I liked that one.
Speaker:I didn't come up with that one.
Speaker:I'm not the one that liked that title, because I came up with it.
Speaker:I don't remember which one of us came up with it.
Speaker:It'll be 100% honest with you.
Speaker:Oh, damn.
Speaker:That was our most exciting episode, and it's such a boring title.
Speaker:I thought it was a pretty...
Speaker:It mostly breaks our chain of music reference.
Speaker:I'm sure there's a song called Speak Softly by someone, but that was not an intentional choice, and I hate it.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I think it sounds kind of cool.
Speaker:I think it's a cool contrast between the stuff that occurred and, you know, usually say, Speak softly, carry a big stick, which is, I think, probably why we call it that.
Speaker:I think if we put ellipses at the end, it would have been better.
Speaker:If it was Speak softly, dot, dot, dot, then people would be like, I can carry a big stick.
Speaker:Yeah, but everyone...
Speaker:You throw a shovel.
Speaker:It's a big stick, though.
Speaker:It's a big stick with a knife at the end, basically.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:I like how, like, it's a very ominous-sounding title to me.
Speaker:I think that's why I was okay with it at the time, because to me it sounded very ominous, but in retrospect, looking back, I'm like, what episode is this when I see it?
Speaker:And then I read the description, I'm like, oh, that was my favorite episode.
Speaker:Every gun is just a big stick that also shoots a little sticks.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I want to talk about that.
Speaker:So the reason I thought of Speak Softly, because like that episode, we were supposed to be negotiating, you know?
Speaker:So the idea is it's supposed to be all bluff, all threats.
Speaker:Nothing was supposed to go, nothing was supposed to go violent.
Speaker:And then everything went violent.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:So.
Speaker:No, I think I personally like that title a lot.
Speaker:I've called it Shake It Off, parentheses Taylor's version.
Speaker:I think that would have been a better title.
Speaker:That would have been kind of humorous for a not very funny episode, though.
Speaker:Yeah, that was our least funny episode, but also my favorite until episode 20, which was both funny and awesome.
Speaker:Yeah, we were spit hot fire last episode.
Speaker:I liked episode 20 a lot.
Speaker:That is our new floor.
Speaker:Every episode has to be better than that.
Speaker:So good luck everyone.
Speaker:Except for this one, because this one's definitely not going to be as good.
Speaker:Oh, we could have called it.
Speaker:So I'm just looking through my playlist, and I just scroll to this one, and it just jumps out to me, because it's kind of a menacing sounding title.
Speaker:But it actually has relevant, it's kind of relevant too, and it is Familiar Patterns by Pup.
Speaker:Save it, write it down.
Speaker:I love Pup.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Save it down, write it down.
Speaker:That's a great one for that.
Speaker:I'm going to go re-change the title of the episode.
Speaker:Re-change?
Speaker:It's just change, just do it.
Speaker:No, re-change.
Speaker:It's not re-change.
Speaker:Did you change it before?
Speaker:To a bad title.
Speaker:It used to be called Episode 10.
Speaker:I call it the worst title, which just speaks awfully.
Speaker:Maybe we should just go back to just numbers.
Speaker:That's a good question.
Speaker:I don't think we got this one, but one of my favorite podcasts does that, which is Empty Bowl, which is a meditative podcast about cereal.
Speaker:Yeah, not cereal, the original OG podcast, but cereal, the crunchy breakfast food that you know and love.
Speaker:Crunchy and or soggy.
Speaker:It is very relaxing.
Speaker:They just talk about cereal.
Speaker:It's the two most knowledgeable people on cereal of all time, and there's good soft ocean sounds in the background.
Speaker:I listened to 20 episodes while flying over the Atlantic Ocean one time, and it was wonderful.
Speaker:So I don't even eat cereal very much, but I still find it incredibly interesting just because they're so knowledgeable about it.
Speaker:I find it very fun.
Speaker:So our podcast also has soft ocean sounds.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You have me gasping, and anytime I even slightly get stressed, I roll my dice and go...
Speaker:So what podcast do you guys like?
Speaker:That was my recommendation.
Speaker:We're allowed to give recommendations this episode because it's not on the official normal chain of episodes, so we don't need to get paid for it.
Speaker:I listen to many podcasts, but my favorite probably three.
Speaker:My original podcast, the podcast that got me the podcast, was The Weekly Planet.
Speaker:It's an Australian podcast about movies and comics, TV shows and video games.
Speaker:It's very good.
Speaker:It's very fun.
Speaker:That then introduced me to the Anti-Donna Podcast, which is a podcast by an Australian comedy sketch group who also has a YouTube channel and also has a Netflix show and also has a show on the Australian broadcasting channel.
Speaker:And their guest episode with Hello from Magic Tavern is one of my favorite Hello from Magic Tavern episodes.
Speaker:It's so funny.
Speaker:It's very funny.
Speaker:It doesn't make any sense, but it's very funny.
Speaker:And then my latest and probably favoritest podcast is Dungeons and Daddies, which is a better role playing game podcast than ours.
Speaker:I still need to listen to Dungeons and Daddies.
Speaker:I didn't know we were allowed to give three, so I'll give two more real quick, which is Hey Riddle Riddle is amazing.
Speaker:It's mostly improv comedy, but they also do some riddles.
Speaker:A third one, I will also listen to 20 Billion Podcasts, but for something D&D related that's way different, listen to Sitcom D&D, which is technically a D&D podcast, but they frame it all as sitcom episodes and kind of plan out the theme for the episode.
Speaker:So the actual mechanics of the game are by far the least important thing.
Speaker:It's almost entirely improv-ing a sitcom episode with various dice rolls, but it's very interesting in a super different way to play in an entertaining way.
Speaker:So I think it's a good thing to watch for people who get kind of mired down in mechanics and the importance of things like that.
Speaker:So role-playing game podcasts.
Speaker:My favorite is the original Glass Cannon podcast.
Speaker:It's a Pathfinder 1E podcast, and that's kind of was the first role-playing podcast I listened to.
Speaker:I liked that one because it felt very authentic to real D&D compared to something.
Speaker:People actually playing it, yeah.
Speaker:Yes, compared to something like Critical Role, which is very kind of staged.
Speaker:It's not staged.
Speaker:Critical Role is very much them really playing D&D, but the production value in Critical Role is so high.
Speaker:And yeah, and the skill of the players, they're very thematic.
Speaker:Yeah, because they're all trained voice actors.
Speaker:So the Glass Canine Podcast, the original one, they have a bunch out now.
Speaker:I haven't really listened to very many of them because they kind of get more and more produced as they go, kind of more like Critical Role.
Speaker:But the original one, it's just a bunch of guys, and they play D&D, they make the same dumb mistakes, they say the same dumb jokes that we all do.
Speaker:They all just randomly start talking about random things going on in their day.
Speaker:It just feels very authentic to actually playing D&D.
Speaker:And I liked it a lot.
Speaker:The first podcast that actually got me into podcasts was a podcast called the One Piece Podcast, which I loved One Piece back in the day.
Speaker:I was a huge, huge, huge One Piece fan.
Speaker:And I listened to that podcast all the damn time.
Speaker:If you really like One Piece, it's a great podcast.
Speaker:I love the hosts.
Speaker:I still listen to it every once in a while, even though I don't actually really keep up with it very much these days, just because I liked their banter.
Speaker:But I'm not going to really count that one in my three because that's such a specific and niche podcast that you have to be into a very specific and niche thing to do it.
Speaker:So to like stretchy people.
Speaker:Exactly, which I very much do.
Speaker:But the two podcasts I think I would recommend actually for people to listen to, unless you like One Piece and then watch that one because it's good, is the podcast called Bits and Bricks, which is a Lego podcast.
Speaker:It's kind of like a mini series.
Speaker:It wasn't really like it's I think it's already over.
Speaker:But it was some it was like some big Lego folks that were behind several of the Lego original Lego games.
Speaker:And it's a podcast about them talking about the production of those games and how they're made and behind the scenes stuff.
Speaker:And it's really interesting if you like Legos and you like the Lego games like Lego Racers, Lego Rock Raiders, that kind of stuff that it was like a Star Wars.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, it was it was that's a good one.
Speaker:And another thing I'm going to reveal about myself here is I'm a big fan of the SCP Foundation.
Speaker:Ever since I was in middle school, I've been reading those little articles.
Speaker:Oh, I do know about this is the spooky one.
Speaker:It's spooky Wikipedia.
Speaker:It's fake spooky.
Speaker:Yeah, fake spooky Wikipedia.
Speaker:It's like the X-Files on crack.
Speaker:I would love that.
Speaker:I would love there's a podcast that I like called SCP real to real, which is an easy listening one because each episode is only like between five to ten minutes because it's basically just him going through and reading and talking about one SCP article.
Speaker:Some of them can be really long.
Speaker:Some of them are really short.
Speaker:So it's just a really bite sized digestible one to to listen to just while you're going.
Speaker:And it's produced pretty regularly.
Speaker:And it's less the pop.
Speaker:There's like a ton of SCPs that are super popular that everybody knows about.
Speaker:And a lot of these are just he just picks ones that sound cool and interesting.
Speaker:So nice.
Speaker:That's how I read them.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Just random random roll it.
Speaker:Sometimes you get some real stinkers if you do that, though.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Are there any final questions, comments, ideas, theories?
Speaker:Let's see.
Speaker:I wrote down some.
Speaker:Let's pull out my phone here.
Speaker:I'm going to hate editing this so much.
Speaker:I'm going to love listening.
Speaker:Did you find your list, Jacob?
Speaker:I didn't.
Speaker:I don't know where the fuck my questions went.
Speaker:Well, they'll have to wait till next 20 episodes.
Speaker:I had a note that was called Questions for Stu.
Speaker:Where the fuck did they go?
Speaker:Well, I guess I have no more questions because my questions have deleted themselves from existence.
Speaker:Well, then this will be the last time anyone hears the actual Stu talking for 20 more episodes, and I will go back to the character playing as Stu for all of our recording.
Speaker:The artist formerly known as Stu.
Speaker:That made sense.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That was good.
Speaker:I'm going to have to cut out a bunch anyway.
Speaker:I might as well cut them.
Speaker:But we'll see you all in the actual episodes.
Speaker:Hopefully this was not absolutely terrible, and I'm able to edit into something listenable in a reasonable amount of time.
Speaker:I'm excited to take a listen to it because I bet it's going to be great.
Speaker:I can't wait to see what we said last week because I don't remember.
Speaker:I don't remember either.
Speaker:I remember there's a lot of us shitting on D&D.
Speaker:Yeah, we take back all of that.
Speaker:We all love D&D.
Speaker:Wizards of the Coast, please send us money.
Speaker:We'll sponsor, sponsor us, please.
Speaker:No, we're going to have to send them money.
Speaker:Oh, fuck, that's right.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So who has a dramatic way to end this episode?
Speaker:You're one of them.
Speaker:We can't use the same cliffhanger two episodes over and over.
Speaker:Stu is one of them.
Speaker:Love you.
Speaker:Bye.
