The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 10/18/23

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Troy and Joe discuss the brand new Glass Cannon Network Subscription Service which went public at the end of last week! Listen to find out how to join at a discount if you're a current Patreon subscriber. In We Are Stupid, the guys cover Disabling, Pre-Buffing, Regripping your weapon, and the wild unicorn heard round the world. In Listener Mail, a question comes in hot from an angry Canadian. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/Hkyk1KtwxaE Patreon subscribers can receive a discount on the new subscription service by following this link: https://glasscannon.supercast.com/patreons For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com and for exclusive content and benefits, subscribe today at jointhenaish.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit the Tim's app for details. You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network, the premier source for role-playing game entertainment. Welcome to Cannon Fodder. A behind-the-scenes look at the Glass Cannon Network. Yo! What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to Cannon Fodder. It's me, your old pal, Joe O'Brien. And it is Wednesday, October 18th, 2023. And I'm Troy. I wasn't in the discord, so I didn't know the show was starting.

The valley. And I'm like 90% sure whatever tech situation we have going on here just pinged when you went in the discord and they heard it in the show. Like, I'm pretty sure it went in unless it was just on my end. But hey, guys, don't worry. Troy's in the Discord and they heard it in the show. Like, I'm pretty sure it went in, unless it was just on my end. But hey, guys, don't worry. Troy's in the Discord. Hey! Hey, he did it.

Welcome back, everybody. That must have sounded really funny to you. So if you're not in the Discord, you don't hear the intro music of the show. So you were just sitting in complete silence and then I just screamed in your ear, yeah! And I don't have it on our video,

so I'm not watching you. I was looking on Amazon for a Halloween costume. And then I just heard, yo, my God, stop. Oh, the show's starting. Cutting it awful close, buddy. Just now looking for a Halloween costume. Oh, this is classic LaValle. I know. We're going to Chicago and St. Louis next week. This is insane. It's insane. I mean, you were putting up Halloween decorations on September 1st. Why were you not ordering a Halloween costume at that time? Dude, I just put up a nine foot Stay Puft Marshmallow Man on my lawn yesterday. I was like, I know it's 165 bucks, but I really want this. Now I got,

it might be so much joy. I looked at it like six times yesterday. I'm like, look at that. So I'm still getting ready for it, but I'm like, holy shit, there's just so much going on, as always, that I forgot, like, oh, fuck, we're going to Chicago, and this is our Halloween show. We haven't even talked about this on the show. We're sold out in St. Louis. We're getting pretty close to it. It's not allowed in Chicago. Chicago finally came around.

If you're coming to those shows, put on a costume. It's Halloween. It's Halloween. Put on a costume. It's Halloween. It's Halloween. Put on a costume. I'm going to be costumed up. St. Louis sold out again. Yep. Because it's sold out.

They opened up a whole bunch of new tickets and it's sold out again. So St. Louis, hey, give yourselves a hand. St. Louis. Great work. St. Louis. And Chicago, yeah. Chicago turned it around. Just a few tickets left there if you want to pick those up.

In fact, what is funny is there is one singleip ticket left as of the taping of this episode for chicago is there is one vip ticket and it is essentially the last vip experience left for the year like all the other shows are sold out in vip so if you want that last john in Chicago, head to our website. Pick it up. GlassCannon.com slash tour. Man, this is going to be awesome. Oh, speaking of which. Yes.

Hey, how about this? You're talking to me? If you want a free ride. No, I'm talking to them. Okay. I'm talking to you. I'm talking to them. Back to the reviews on this costume.

If you're going to St. Louis or you're going to Chicago and you want a little free ride into the VIP, you can volunteer to help us out with merch. And I believe there's still a spot left for each show. So if you want to volunteer for that, where do they go, Troy? Is it volunteers at glasscanonnetwork.com? Yes, volunteers at glasscanonnetwork.com. Yes, volunteers at glasscanonnetwork.com. And who's heading up the St. Louis tables? Jen coming up? K-Rob.

K-Rob. Oh, that's right. Close to Cincinnati. Yep, exactly. So K-Rob is going to be the captain of the merch team there. And if you get in on that, you get a free ride into the VIP after party. So go ahead and email volunteers at glassconnetwork.com. If you want to be a part of it, just put in the subject line, St.

Louis volunteer or Chicago volunteer, and then it's easier for us to get you on the list and we'll, we'll reach out and talk more. So anyway, let's get into the other news network news. That is top, top of the line this week. First Voyagers of the jump is out baby season two. It aired. It started this week. We mentioned it last week. First, Voyagers of the Jump is out, baby. Season two, it aired. It started this week. We mentioned it last week. It was coming. It aired to resounding success,

which was not a surprise for me at all. People in chat were going nuts. It was awesome. So check it out. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen to Voyagers of the Jump season two. When I went into surgery last week, i was

uh concerned as the lights went out that i would never see season two voyages of the jump so i'm so glad i lived see it we're all happy you lived troy uh we we got through new york comic-con troy was post do you just call it post-surgery 72 hours from surgery 72 hours of surgeries in recovery no doctor alive would have cleared him to travel to comic-con walk the length of the javits center and then sit in a chair for two hours in front of an audience and uh laugh a lot that would that's bad for stitches you know i i pride myself on the hustle. I think nowadays, hustle is sort of like the younger generation doesn't like hustle. They're just like, give me money, help me pay my bills. But I've taken things too far. I should not have been at

New York Comic Con. I had a hernia and I had to get a hernia operation as my first operation. And it had to get done because I wanted to be recouped by the holidays. And so a week ago, I got it done. And I had that date on the calendar. And after I got home, I was like, how the hell am I going to do this? I should just email Joe and be like, here's what I've written. Can you just run this? And I'm like, well, let's wait it out. And then the next day came and I'm like, I should really email Joe and be like, here's what I've written. Can you just run this? And I'm like, well, let's wait it out.

And then the next day came and I'm like, I should really email him. Give him some time because I can't email him Friday morning. Day of show. Yeah. And then Friday came and I was like, all I got to do is take a lift there, get out of the car, slowly walk to the exhibition hall where I have to do this, the performance room, slowly walk back to a lift and go home. And it was exhausting.

Honestly, the lift rides were as bad as the walking because of all the fucking bumps in the car. I'm like, oh, I just tore it. Oh, I just tore the mesh. Oh, it's gone. And then I get there and it's such a long fucking walk. And I'm walking like Mr. Burns, burns just like it took me almost 40 minutes to get from the street to our all and then it ended and i just walked i tapped you in the back

and walked out and said goodbye to anybody slowly got back to the lift uh but i did it and i don't think i tore anything so here we are here we are you did it you did uh comic-con show was awesome uh hopefully we'll you'll see that down the line. Same thing with San Diego Comic-Con. We're still working to get that video out. A lot of legal and licensing stuff that has nothing to do with us going on behind the scenes on that. So hopefully, you guys will get a chance to see those shows. And if you will, Cannon Fodder is the place where you'll find out the answers you need on that.

We'll keep you posted on that. Canada fodder is the place where you'll find out the answers you need on that. We'll, we'll keep you posted on that. Um, also want to keep you posted on the biggest news of the week, which is the subscription service. Beta is over.

It's open. We're public. The new subscription service is open and active. If you've been listening to the show and kind of following the news on the beta, uh, be aware. It is now open for you to transition your Patreon over to the GCN subscription service where you can get all of our exclusive shows as separate

podcast feeds fed directly to whatever podcast player you prefer. And subscribe to the shows you want in the order you want and just as if it's its own podcast on each show, which is very exciting and fantastic. And that post went out last week. So, yeah. Now, to be clear, you're not paying for each individual show. You sign up for a plan and then you have all the shows available to you at that plan. And you can pick and choose and subscribe instead of one giant feed.

I know there are like four people that are going to miss that giant feed. But it's bad. It's not good for us. It's not good for anybody. We can't tell who it's bad. It's not good for us. It's not good for anybody. We can't tell who's downloading what. It's impossible to find anything. So the new service just gets rid of all of that. And I mean, so far, people have been loving it. Now, if you are a Patreon subscriber, you need to follow the exact link that was posted on the Patreon page to get the grandfathered in prices to the new plans. If you're not a Patreon subscriber or you were,

and you want to come back, just go to join the niche.com and join the new service. Yeah. Can we put that link just in the show notes of this episode of cannon fodder? Yeah. Can we just put that link in these show notes? That link is in all the other show notes.

It should be going into this one, but I don't know. Oh, you mean join the nation? I'm saying that Patreon link, like, can we put that in there? That goes in the link to all the other show notes. It should be going into this one, but I don't know. Oh, you mean join the nation? I'm saying that Patreon link. Like, can we put that in there? That goes in the link to all the YouTube descriptions, but I don't know. I don't know who's in charge of doing the cannon fodder YouTube description.

Yeah, that would be me. But, you know, I'm just making sure it would work. So if you click on that link. Yeah, you go to jointhenation.com right now, it takes you right to the new service. Okay, so you don't need to have a specific link if you're currently a Patreon subscriber. If you're currently a Patreon subscriber, yes. No, you need to go to Patreon. That's what I'm saying. Can we put that link in

the show notes for this episode? I'm sorry. Maybe. We'll try. If it's there, click on it. Here's the point. Here's why you can, because it's useless if you're not, you won't do anything if you're not a Patreon subscriber. You have to be logged in with your Patreon login credentials and not just like matching them, like actually linking your Patreon in the back end to the new subscription

service. That is the only way you're going to be able to get the discount on the move over. So please go ahead, do that and join the new subscription service. And man, after that smooth sound, it'll be like you just have all these episodes on your phone that are exclusive to you, but they look just like your other podcasts. It's amazing. So yeah, so check that out. And that's it in terms of the news. Do you have anything else newsworthy? Or can I move into talk about episode five of Campaign Deuce?

Newsworthy. No, we got Extra Life coming up soon. We'll be talking about that. That's something we really got to fucking get on. Really excited for the Midwest shows. And before you know it, we talk in the state of the niche. State of the niche.

Yeah. It's usually around this time of year. It usually is, but I haven't heard any shit about it. Well, there's some things to talk about. A lot of things, a lot of things to talk about.

Well, yes, if there is an air date for a State of the Nation, you'll hear it here first. So keep an ear on the FOD. All right, let's talk about some GCP. Particularly, we're just going to do this through the lens of We Are Stupid. stupid because this is another chunk episode of combat hazards uh healing saves terrible clerics it is a whole host of issues that come together in episode five where i think we really see i mean i know that we really see we get a first glimpse into how awful this campaign is going to be and how people are going to die. It's kind of ridiculous to think that they wouldn't. But let's go into We Are Stupid here and we'll dig in piece by piece to what I would say.

Maybe we don't call this section We Are Stupid. Maybe we call it Troy is mean and abuses his GM privileges. Let's just call it that section today. Wow. There are a couple rules issues here, but for the most part, I'm going to ask you about what decisions you made to put these encounters together. So first we have this awesome extra planar hazard that is just like a, such a cool idea. I called it like the planar bends, you know, when these other worlds kind of cross, it has this impact on your, on your system where it starts, you know, bubbling, boiling your blood or whatever you want to call it. It starts tearing microscopic holes in your body as the planes are crossing over. It's like radiation damage, right?

Like it's like as the planes are crossing over, your insides are being torn apart at a microscopic level. Very, very, very cool. So did you think about giving us chances to see this coming? Yeah. So, I mean, it has – to detect it, you need to be trained in perception, which all of you are. But when there's a – whatchamacallit – like trained expert master attached to it, the players have to ask to look for it. Otherwise, the hazard goes off is that an actual rule yeah yeah if if it has if it's at least trained or more than the you you

don't give them an automatic check whereas if it's just like stealth plus seven uh then you give them like a secret check yeah um so it got a little tricky because basically uh matthew did an arcana check like as it was like before it was happening to like know something i can't remember what he was doing but basically the arcana check is what is the is is what you need to disable it it's one of the options for disabling it and so i considered uh having that check just disable it. But the difference between what we do in a home game is like, I have to raise the stakes for the optics of the audience. And I just thought that would be incredibly lame. Because at the end of the day, I knew it was going to be just a tiny bit of damage. And to let you guys figure it out and get sort of into what was happening, it was more important for me to

have that hazard wash over you. So once it did, I think Talitha rolled a high enough initiative that even though some of you took some initial damage, she figured it out right away and was able to hold it back, as it says, to will the material planes hold on the area back into firmness and disable the effect for a certain amount of time. Dispel magic would have worked as well. So I considered having her initial check before the hazard was essentially triggered and the hazard, but that just seemed lame. Well, the only thing I'll say to that is it was not a little bit of damage.

Well, the only thing I'll say to that is it was not a little bit of damage. It was a horrifyingly massive amount of damage, which Brother Ramius didn't heal at all with his channel of one. I'm not a huge fan of the way the heal spell works. I guess I'll just give it more time. I guess it's really about leveling up. Like a level two heal spell is going to do 2d8 on a channel. That's good. That 1d8, three actions, it feels so like just impotent.

It feels like you're not doing anything. Whereas compared to the two action version, 1d8 plus eight to a single target, which is awesome, like you should just only use it for two action healing. You should never use it to channel unless there's a very specific situation where you're like, I don't know, defeating a haunt or you are trying to bring back, like stabilize three different people at the same time. But outside of that, it's just very like, I don't know. Why would you ever use the three action version? Professor Eric, tell me where I'm wrong. One note here on an actual rules thing, though, and this is interesting. I did not realize this.

Talitha essentially disables the hazard with the successful Arcana check. Yeah. And you say to Matthew, like, describe how you are mentally, like, saving everyone from this hazard. Little fun fact to keep in mind that that is essentially a disable check. It is not a recall knowledge check. So if Talitha is using disable or using Arcana to disable the hazard, it is a two action thing. Disabling always is two actions per attempt, not one action.

Okay. I didn't know that. That's so cool. I didn't either. It didn't have a major impact, but having not really played like a rogue yet, right, like a lockpicking rogue, I haven't really dug too much into disabling devices. And, yeah, it's two actions. So thank you, Professor Eric, for the news.

I really love the way it played out. It just felt like, you know, ending the episode with that coming over you, it felt a little early. It was a shorter ep last week, but it just felt like a good place to end it. If you guys had asked for a perception check to notice it and then rolled Arcana before it triggered,

I would have had you end it. But where you didn't perceive by the rules that it was happening, I like that it got to do a little damage and then she just used her mind to will it just it felt cinematic and cool and it was a complex hazard like you're really getting thrown a lot of difficult stuff right out the gate and that's so what is this what is this requested perception check look like you've never heard of this no i'm saying do you like do we need to say can i do a perception here to see what's going on or do we need to say i want to do a perception to see if this is a hazard i i would either one would give you the information that you want yeah because like you're not going to constantly be looking for hazards like we're

doing tomb of horrors but like i think just just say i want to what's going on here? I want to do a perception. Which I thought the Arcana check was for. Which is why. I was like, why do I need to add a perception check? Yeah, it's stealth plus seven. I'll try to err on the safe side and ask for perception more often. So for this one, it's stealth plus seven train to notice the air and plants wavering and shifting.

So it's a DC 17 perception check and you have to be at least trained in perception and you have to ask for that because it has the trained there. And if you get that, then you notice that. Then I would have allowed that arcana to subdue it. But where you hadn't noticed – technically noticed it by the rules of the game, you physically noticed it. It was washing over your feet. I was – I mean, it's easy for me to say, but I was fine with the way that I ruled. I bet you were.

It's easy for me to say, but I was fine with the way that I wrote. I bet you were. Post this, I do the treat wounds and I have a – I do the channel. Brother Amias does the channel. Very ineffective. So now I have to use bandages and stuff to just like treat wounds on Talitha and I get a crushing roll. And at that moment, I say, oh, man, I was thinking about upping the DC because we were so down on hit points because you up the DC of a medicine check to treat wounds. You can heal more hit points.

We talked about this last week when we talked about critting on the medicine check to treat wounds. So I mentioned, oh, man, I wish I would have upped it. And Professor Eric points out that I am stupid and I had missed this point that you can't choose to up the DC until you're an expert in medicine. And then you can't choose to up it to the next level until you are a master in medicine. Like, I believe it's like the way that it works. Maybe you only have to be an expert, but you definitely have to be a floor expert before you can start increasing the DC to 20 and then to 30. How interesting. So you just assumed you could do it. At any time, but that it would be foolish to do so because your bonus is so low.

Yeah, it's right there. If you're an expert in medicine, you can instead attempt a DC 20 check to increase HP by 10. If you're a master, yeah, so it's right there. And it says if you're a master, right? Yeah. So I thought that I read that when I was going over this. So thank you to Eric. Okay, so this is a great one. Right? Yeah. So I thought that I read that when I was going over this. So thank you to Eric. Okay.

So this is a great one. We've had issues with this over the years. I absolutely love it. And I just want to get a sense from you. This shillelagh nonsense. You do the kind kind in my opinion uh you have a long history of doing the kind of pre-buffing of enemies that you don't allow pcs to do is that an accurate statement uh no i think that's a uh a biased statement okay uh i i tend to tend to like usually follow the suggestions in the book.

It's like if the enemy knows they're coming, they will precast this, this, and this. So if the writers have given me that leeway, I almost always take it. But I try to stay true to that. I'm like, do they know you were coming? If they didn't, then I wouldn't do that. That happens all the time. It's like if the enemy knows so-and-so is approaching, it precasts this, this, and this. But

if you guys are being particularly stealthy, then I don't allow myself that. Unless I think it's going to be better for the show. That's the difference. Especially where there's five PCs, part of my adjustments is I'm always going to lean towards giving myself a little bit extra because I'm not changing ACs. I'm not changing to hits. So like if I can swing something a tiny bit in the enemy's favor, I'm going to do that for balance purposes. But I'm not going to take that too, too far. So Shillelagh was an easy thing there. But then I balanced that by giving you guys a round

where I'm not using Shillelagh. I'm just throwing daggers at you. Yeah. It's like, okay, here's a chance. What do you want to do here? I'm giving you one round before I start laying you out. Before you are dead. The Shillelagh really is insane.

And I wonder if this is we are stupid or if this is a conscious choice on your behalf or if I think that it's just being stupid. I think. So Professor Eric points out that the staff can be tricky because it is a one-handed weapon that can be wielded two-handed. because it is a one-handed weapon that can be wielded two-handed. And it felt like when you annihilated Zephyr on that crit that you could have only possibly done it by using the two-handed base damage of what you do when it's two-handed. But he has no record of you ever saying you spend an action to grab it with the other hand, which takes an action.

Is that a mistake? Is that an oversight? You know, I don't know. It's a funny thing, right? Because it's a free action to remove your hand, but it's an action to put your hand back on. I really don't think I gave it too much thought. Yeah, I don't know.

He said it's a good thing to keep in mind going forward because staffs are a thing. They're going to be around, and they can easily be held in one hand or in two hands, but it is an action to hold it in. Regripping takes an action, and so that's a way that it kind of balances out because – I mean that's a huge difference. You're talking about a D4 of damage base versus a d8 and when you shillelagh it it's 2d4 versus 2d8 right and then if you crit 4d8 whatever 2d8 times two so it gets pretty brutal yeah i i would say it's probably an oversight um but um i'm not gonna beat myself up you know'm also like, uh, I'm also doing things to like, give you guys a chance by like moving further than I need to and whatnot. Whereas like I may be using extra actions that I didn't need to use that I could have used to re-grip, but no, I'll hold, I'll hold myself that, uh, hold myself to that more going forward. Um, you forward, I mean by episode 15 or so. Since we were recorded pretty far ahead. Because I would make you guys do it.

I get it. At first, it's kind of like, why is this an action? If it's free to take off, why does it cost? But it's not just gripping. It's like wielding it for a strike. It's a different set, right? Which is a really good way to transition into, let's see if we can bring this up here, something I like to call, where do we have it here?

The monastic archer stance. Oh, man. Let's go back to talking about this again. I emailed Kate with my ruling. So how do you want to talk? How do you want to talk about this well it came up in the episode well you emailed Kate about a ruling that you did not tell the audience

about because you made a different ruling based on what we were what Professor Eric was saying last week you said that you could just drop the stance you know I said you could that kicking and punching would violate the requirements.

Right, right, right. That would be enough. So that would automatically drop the stance. Right. And then after the show, I looked at it again and I saw that there are actual requirements, capital R, that we were thinking of it more in terms of interpreting the sentence. Like, well, if you kick and punch, you're violating the requirements. Well, not technically. The requirements, if you bring it back up, are pretty clear. You're unarmored and wielding a longbow, shortbow, or bow with the monk trade.

So let's take armor out of the equation. The way you violate the requirements is by dropping or stowing the bow. And the reason you would drop it instead of stow is that it's a free action to drop where it's an action to stow. But then again, it's an action to pick it back up. So like I told Kate, it's like once you go to massive archer stance, you're pretty pot committed to doing that and when you want to get out of it,

you drop the bow and move on with your life or drop the bow and use an action later to pick it up. Yeah. What happens in this episode is we have a discussion over if her moving drops the stance that she was holding. And Professor Eric writes in to say it does not drop the stance. You can move freely while in the stance. And so the new ruling that you're making and that we should be focused on going forward, and we might miss this in a couple episodes, but down the line, we'll obviously get it,

is the way Kate is going to break monastic archer stance is simply by stowing or dropping the bow. So, like, she does that, and then she's going to be out of the stance. Or quickly donning armor. Or quickly, it's from somewhere. Hastily donning armor. Okay, yeah, makes sense.

Very clean. I thought that the stance meant like your feet are planted. Once you're out of that zone, you've left the stance, but that is not the case. You can move freely and still be part of that stance. The only thing that's going to change it is getting that bow out of your hand.

Yeah. Okay, let's, oh man, there's just a, it's so funny. It's like the two-handed Shillelagh thing. It's just like on the crit on Zephyr. And then Professor Eric's next point is same on Talitha. Then his next point is same on Brother Ramius. Because those Oak stewards were just base T-balling us.

Swap, swap, swap. You know, I wouldn't have thrown the dagger. I wouldn't have thrown the dagger. I would have just started with it in two hands, except for the guy that was sawing off the unicorns. Yeah, and he also says, like, I don't – not a major change in how things probably would have played out, except it's something – he just says it's something to watch for staff combatants in the future who also cast. Yeah, for sure. That was definitely an oversight. But if I had thought about that, I still would have been able to do everything I did, just used a different action economy.

Okay. Two things left and then we're going to move on to listener mail. This is one of our blind spots. This is one of our – and I know this rule. We have a few. I know. I absolutely know the rule. And I still just get it wrong.

I'm going to try to bring it up here on Demi Plain. Here it is. So throw it to try to bring it up here on Demiplane. Here it is. So throw it right up there. Dying. When you're dying, you're bleeding or otherwise at death's door, blah, blah, blah, blah. You must make a recovery check. We're doing all this correctly. Your dying condition increases by one if you take damage while dying or by two if it's a critical hit if you lose the dying condition uh you blah blah blah blah any here it is anytime you lose the dying condition you gain

the wounded one condition or increase your wounded value condition by one if you already have that condition so the blind spot that i have or that we have is we always increase the wounded condition by the dying condition. So if they were dying too, and they come out of it, we're like, okay, you are stable, but wounded too. Dude, I do it all the time. And you're just like, yup. I think that, you know why? I think I gave two thumbs up.

Yeah, I was like, honestly, I think that's how it was in the play test. Unless I'm misremembering. I feel like that's how it was in the play test unless i'm misremembering i feel like that's how it was in the play test and they changed that and we played a lot of play tests and for some reason that's one of those things that stuck in if not i don't know i kind of like that but it is it's so much more dangerous right because now if you're wounded two and you get crit again you die so it's stupid and i bet you if it was the thing in the play test people were like people are dying too much because of this just make it wounded one and then if you die. So it's stupid. And I bet you if it was the thing in the playtest, people were like, people are dying too much because of this. Just make it Wounded 1. And then if you die again, you go to Wounded 2. So that makes sense. But yeah, that's going to probably happen again for

a few more episodes. Yeah, probably. But you know, I mean, knowing this campaign, it seems like we're going to be coming out of the dying condition an awful lot. So we do have to track that. And the way Professor Eric puts it, I think is nice and simple, a very simple sentence. The dying value does not affect the wounded value. Wounded only tracks the number of times you've come back from dying. So a wounded one for each time you went unconscious and then came back. That's pretty clear. We just got that wrong. It's just a blind spot for us. It's a funny little blind spot. It's great though. I mean, just realizing that it's going to save lives.

Because if we had played it the other way for all of book one, there would have been so many deaths. Totally. Because people go down so much. And if you're wounded too, and you think that if you get crit, you're going to die, it changes how you're going to play. Now you've got to play defensively, and you're not setting up your allies. Your allies are fucked because you have to work

synergistically. If you're just like, I got to stay alive because if I get crit one more time, I'm going to die just because of a rules mistake. There's a ripple effect of shit. I'm glad that we caught that one. This is something I don't want to get into today because I want to think a little bit more before I talk about it. But something happened in this episode to me in particular that brought up an interesting question in my mind, which is how do you prioritize who you heal? Like when you're the healer and everybody's down and not just down like unconscious, like somebody's dying. Somebody else is at one hit point, but still up somebody. You know, how do you prioritize?

Do you prioritize this like saving death, a character from death, you know, even a risk of death? Or do you, you know, keep up the one that's already up because they don't have to like get up from prone and pick up their weapons and all that stuff. Do you keep the damage dealer alive? Do you keep the damage dealer alive or do you keep the favorite character of the show alive you know it is uh that power is all in your hands exactly and i don't i it's it's interesting and it came up in this episode and i made a decision at the time and uh listening back to it i was like this is an interesting conversation i think for another day as we keep uh going through this adventure i want to keep analyzing like when you've got two targets that both clearly need healing and channeling seems like a waste. Because it also will heal a living enemy.

It's like how do you prioritize? It's fun strategy conversation. I love that kind of shit. Before listener mail, how great was the fucking unicorn? Well, this is the last point. Oh, this is the last point? Yeah. So this is the last point oh there's one more point yeah so this is the last

point i want you to talk about the unicorn because uh i believe that you could argue looking at the map uh that there were times when the unicorn would just clearly attack the the enemy because it was closer sure um then it then it would go after you know after the person that freed it. But obviously, option B, going after Lucky, is far more dramatic and far more entertaining as a show. Did that factor into your decision-making here at all, or were you just sort of going with your gut moment to moment. Yeah, I mean, like, sometimes when I read these adventures, I really care about what the author's intent is and taking into account that, like, the author and the game designers are thinking about balance when they give you certain

suggestions, you know, like, the unicorn attacks the nearest person, whether it's an oak steward or a PC. I think that's what it said in the thing. Other times, I don't give a shit what it says. And especially when I'm dealing with fire. Sorry, when you're talking about what you don't give a shit what it says and especially when i'm dealing with five when you're talking about what you don't give a shit what it says you're talking about tactics but they're when they list suggested tactics or or and this is this is everything

in the book is a suggestion right but like it says uh uh if a character unties or cuts the ropes binding the unicorn the terrified creature immediately attacks the nearest creature in the area making no distinction between oak stewards and player characters. So that's what their intent is. That's not a suggestion. That's their intent. I look at everything as a suggestion. And especially with five PCs, these are just little things I can do to balance things without

breaking the game. And so for me, it was like, oh, God, of course I'm going to attack Sidney. That is like the cinematic choice here. You dummy, untie the game. And so for me, it was like, oh God, of course I'm going to attack Sidney. That is like the cinematic choice here. You dummy, untie the unicorn. That was great. And then later, I'll do it again. And then when you guys gave me grief, I was like, well, let's roll a percentile and let's see. To me, that's just so much more exciting than just following what it says in the book. And it's part of my balancing act for 5 pcs i think it's small little changes like that makes it more terrifying makes it more uh hardcore without in my opinion breaking the game i just don't honestly yeah honestly i think in general it's always tough to argue with the gm about the

actions of a wild animal it's kind of hard because you'd be like a wild animal. It's kind of hard because you'd be like, a wild animal wouldn't be so shrewd as to attack this person that would be the most optimal for it to attack to hurt us the most or whatever. But it's a difficult argument to make because you can easily be like, yeah, well, you don't know. It's a wild animal. It might have just randomly chosen that target, right? Like, it's a hard thing to argue. And so I think the safer bet generally if you're a player and you feel like your gm is unfairly kind of shifting random attacks toward you or your your allies in a way like just just don't complain like try not to because it really is like it's wild so you just kind of have to take it take it with a you know i don't know yeah and you know

it's just the gm always knows more than what the players do about the whole thing like the gm knows that like one of those oak stewards only has a couple hit points left or that this you know i'm looking at the time on the episode i've got so many things that i'm trying to balance around you gotta build to a great cliffy yeah me changing that this shit like there was a time when i would never do it when i didn't feel as confident in, you know, kind of straying from the authors and designers intent. But now, like, I derive joy from doing whatever the fuck I want while staying within the rules of the game. To me, I'm not like giving the unicorn an extra three actions. You know what I mean?

I'm just attacking this person. And then it went and like laid out one of the yoke stewards. So it all balances out. It certainly was amazing, you know, looking back and re-listening, you know, it reminded me how we felt at the table. It was a horrifying experience. Yeah, exactly. For that thing to then enter the fray and be hurting us, charging and goring Lucky with its horn. I mean, it was already bad enough that these shillelaghs were shellacking us. hurting us, charging and goring Lucky with its horn.

I mean, it was already bad enough that these Shillelaghs were shellacking us. It like to add the, you know, mystical creature into the mix that's attacking us as well. A completely unexpected combatant. It was just really, in retrospect, is awesome. At the time, it was terrifying. It's so great because, you know, like as written, I think that a lot of people will just like deal with the Oak Stewards and then like, let's help this unicorn. And now you've got a new encounter. The fact that Lucky did it during the thing. It's just like a GM, like when you set off a trap, like, yes, yes, this is going to be so fun.

And so now we end this week with like one of the Oak Stewards is like backing up. Is she surrendering? Is she going to run? And the unicorn's still like, you have to still deal with this. It's great. It's great. It's great. Yeah, I love the way it all shook out. Good job. Good ep. Thank you, Professor Eric, for

the detailed rundown. And now let's kick it over to you, Nation. See what you want to talk about with a little listener mail. Maybe I could get it started. I'm already doing the beatbox version of it. Yeah, how about you just sing it this week? I have some audio issues here. There we go.

Listener mail. That was pretty good, Troy. It's time for listener mail. That was pretty good, Troy. All right. Kicking us off today is going to be Melissa. Melissa has a question for you specifically, Troy. This is a chunky one, and I think that it's interesting. I want you to just keep it quick because obviously you could draw it on and on or say nothing but just give us a tight little uh answer here melissa's curious uh going back to

a an ep back in 2022 of the fad an old ep of the fad uh at the end of 2022 you were talking about gatewalkers and you were talking about reading the books and how into it you were. But at that point, you had a printer copy of book two, but book three had not been released. Melissa was wondering, did you know how the written story was meant to resolve for the Gatewalkers AP before you got the third book? And if not, when you saw it, were you surprised when you finally received book three in terms of like how it ended and what are your kind of impressions on it? I only bring it up now because this seems super, super intense. And you've been raving about this adventure, but you've also been saying how deadly it is. Have you completed reading the third book and seeing kind of how the finale goes? And does it surprise you? Does it seem super deadly? I don't know. What are some of your

early tease thoughts for looking forward to the end of this whole thing? Yeah, no, I've read the whole thing. And even when I only had copies of one and two, they summarize what happens in book three, a little bit in book one, and then a little bit more in book two, because you know what's happening next. And it's hard to talk about because you are still just scraping the surface of this story. And so where this goes, I mean, you could put 100 monkeys and 100 typewriters, you'd never come up with where this is about to go. So yeah, I don't know. Once I finally read it, I was definitely curious. I was like, I got to be careful how I say about this. But like, how I say this, like, I didn't know how

it was going to come to a climax, because there's just stuff that I'm like, I've never really dealt with this in Pathfinder before. So I'm not sure how they're going to do it. And I think they did it beautifully. I mean, I always talk about how it's just like they're three top writers. They wrote an amazing adventure. And even though it seems so far away, I also feel like we're kind of cooking through this book. We're ahead in our recording and I feel like we're moving. They're longer books, but I'm excited to get there in a couple of years. And are you – so, all right. I'm not going to keep pursuing this question line, but I appreciate it and I appreciate your attention to detail there, Melissa.

Bring it up. An old FOD episode. Melissa is a feral cat on Twitch. I'm sure you recognize that name. Oh, feral cat, sure. And Melissa is looking forward to hanging with Dinesh for her first official trip to Philly on December 1st. So, yes! Philly's almost sold out.

We'll see you at the City Winery! I'll tell you what, man. Pathfinder 2E is hard. This is a hard adventure and I'm the GM. So, you throw all those three things together, it's going to be hairy. But I'm fine with that.

I really like the adjustments that I've made to the bottle cap system. I think it's going to be, like I said at the start, a grittier adventure that we'll be all the richer for. All right, moving along. This one from Eric. Greetings, Joe and Troy. When are you cowards coming to Canada? Here's why I asked this question.

Because we know we're not coming to Canada anytime soon. We had a real problem trying to get there in the first place. The question I want to pose to you, it's a serious question. Me? Yeah. Like, are we not going to Canada because we're cowards? We're just not willing to do the work to power through immigration law? Or is it really that we tried our best and we just can't because of the law?

No, neither is true. We just don't want to lose a ton of money. Because like the cost of doing business in Canada to just do like two shows, we're doing like a long Canadian tour. It becomes a little bit more palatable because of the taxes that we have to pay. To which I think Eric responds, fucking A. Let's go. Let's go. 15 show tour, coast to coast. Manitoba, Tuesday night. I think that's not right. I didn't think that's the city. Anyways, I mean, I'd love to do multiple Canadian cities, but I think at most to start out with, we can do two. And so we have to make sure that the cost – I don't care if we break even.

We can't like lose tens of thousands of dollars on this. Yeah, because there's just a lot of financial – and it's not that we're worried about selling tickets. It's that there's a lot of like financial – you have to pay for the privilege to go to another country and make money off of their people. You have to pay a lot for that privilege. There are some fucking states that we have to do that with. Like, we're not going back there again because, like, there's certain laws in each state. Dude, if we didn't have to go to LA on business to do a show, we would never do a single show in California.

Because the state of California is just like, hey, hey, we want to let you know, we don't want you here and we never want you back. Like, that's what their laws are. Their tax laws basically say to any business. So it is brutal. And yes, maybe we are a little bit cowardly, but what we're afraid of is going out of business. Yeah, I'd like to, you know, but I'll tell you, I have a meeting with our touring manager. I was supposed to have it last week, but I was still recovering. So possibly this week where we're going to look at the 2024 dates. And I have those dates back on the conversation to talk about, or the cities rather, in Canada. So we'll see. I mean, last year, it was also kind

of like he could not find us a venue that fit our needs. I'm like, well, let's get on a little bit earlier and see if there's a way we could pull it off because I would just, I would love to do it. But it's not cowardly. I guess it is. We're afraid of losing money. Exactly. We're afraid of going out of business. I don't care if it's a marketing expense though.

We don't make bank. We don't need to make bank. No, no. It'd be a great marketing expense to like touch down with our- Oh, we want to go. I want to go so bad. I want to go so bad. So we just had problems with the last year.

We just ran into issues and we had to cancel. So we are going to, we're going to do our best, Eric. One more question. Let's get in one more before we get out of here today from Jeremy. Jeremy writes in with one of those questions. You just you just have to ask because it's just so kind. Sometimes you need a little. Well, you don't need any more of an ego boost, but sometimes old Joe O'Brien could use one.

Jeremy says, hey, guys, as someone who would love to start an actual play podcast, I was wondering if there are any skills you think contributed to the initial success of the Glass Cannon. We know you're all great at improv and writing, but are there any behind the scenes skills that really helped you out? It's a good question. Jeremy from Chesapeake, Virginia. question. Jeremy from Chesapeake, Virginia. I would say we both had podcasts that didn't go anywhere. So we had already racked up a little experience with recording, taping, editing, uploading. And we were not doing that professionally for our jobs. We were only doing it as a hobby, hobbyists. but we did put a little time in on that before this became successful in terms of production on the production end. And then we also, I think we learned a very valuable lesson with those projects, which is it's really hard

to imagine how much work it is until you really settle in and do it. And so one of the things, and the other things we did with Glass Cannon of Podcasts is tried to streamline our work and make sure that it was something we were going to enjoy doing week in and week out. That was a really big part of it too, because we had to make it something that was sustainable. Podcasts are very difficult to sustain. So yeah, I would say those are a couple of things that come to mind immediately. What about for you, Troy? Any? Yeah, I mean, just have to be willing to like do more than the next guy. Like be willing to be uncomfortable and like really make sure that you're putting out a product every single week.

And yeah, I mean, that consistency. It's a lot easier said than done. Putting on a show every single week is really, really challenging when you have a full-time job. It's really, really challenging, especially if you're going to be like – one of the natural, I think, things to think is, well, what's going to make me different, right? Before I go into this, what's going to make my show different? How is my show going to be different? And you will put a lot of expectation on yourself to nine times out of 10, the different things, quote unquote, that you're going to do to differentiate yourself are going to be more work. So the more you keep

adding those things to the list, and then our show is going to have this, and it's going to have this that nobody else has. Make sure whatever ideas you have, you can do every single week for years. And if you can't, don't even start because it's like, you have, you can do every single week for years. And if you can't, don't even start because it's like you have to have that kind of consistency in order to grow an audience. And you got to work on your craft. You know, like there's a lot of people I see, you know, I'm on social media a lot. They just like complain like, well, I can't. Why can't I get on a show?

Why can't I do this? Or they're just like this one person in particular I'm thinking about. They're just sitting there shitting on everybody. It's like, why don't you instead of doing that, why don't you do this? Or they're just like, there's one person in particular I'm thinking about. They're just sitting there shitting on everybody. It's like, why don't you, instead of doing that, why don't you go work on your fucking craft? You know, instead of asking, you know, begging for money to pay your bills, go work on your craft.

And same thing. It's like, you want to get better at something, work on your craft. Run games outside of this. Play in games. Play with other GMs. See how they do things. Like, that kind of stuff is going to set you apart

because there might be someone that's better at improv than you. There might be somebody that's funnier than you. But if you can know the game better than the next guy or you can find out what you do best and then do it better than anybody else. I remember Skid was taking improv classes early on. Remember? He was like, I'm doing this.

I'm going to go take some improv classes just because we're doing this. I want to be better at that. Find any opportunity you can to like improve different elements of your game. That'll really help. Yeah, I can't imagine what it'd be started out right now. There's so many more people doing this than there were than we did it. And trying to stand out is really tough. is really tough. Yeah, I think that one mistake that could be easy to fall into is to say, okay, I'm going to start recording this campaign with my friends. And this show is going to be successful on the first try, you know, and it's just you have to be willing to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes. And one thing that would be a really, really great idea is taking the time to record, edit, make things that you're not intending to release. You know what I mean? Just dry runs, dry run after dry run after dry run to make sure that, like Troy said, you're working your craft because the craft isn't just the performance. That's part of it. But additionally, it's the recording quality.

It's the room noise. It's the echoing. It's the microphones. It's the buzz in the lines, the choices you make when you edit. And then having people listen to those that you trust that are close to you and say, like, what do you think? What do you like? What don't you like?

Because once you go in whole hog and you're putting it out there on, uh, on podcast apps and you're getting graphics and all this stuff, it's like, you better make sure that you're putting out the best thing you've ever done. Otherwise it's never going to rise to the top. You have to, if like, if your goal is to just like do this and like, see what happens, then yeah, do, do the amount of work that you're able to do. Um, but if you want to really break it, you have to become obsessed with this. You have to become obsessed. Um, it brings two things to mind. I remember before we released episodes one, two, and three, we had spent all this time, got it all together. It was edited. It was this. I mean, those episodes still sound like shit compared to what we put out today.

But we were ready to upload it. And there was a little tick. Yeah. It's something. And I couldn't figure it out. And it was because the, an audio track on the beginning of each episode wasn't faded in. And there was just for some reason, no matter what I did, it was literally only that it was like that.

And it was something you wouldn't even notice. And it was like taking that out at our skill level at the time was going to be a lot of work when it was like ready to go. We're ready to upload the episodes. Yeah. It was a whole thing. And it was like, well,

we have to do it. You know, I remember, I remember you and I have that conversation. It's like, we got to do it. So we did it. And it also comes brings to mind,

um, John Cassavetes. I don't know if you know Cassavetes. He's like the godfather of independent film. I became obsessed with his name. Um, when I was working at Kim's Video and just learning more about American cinema. And so John Casavay is a really interesting guy

where he would do these big – he got so disillusioned with Hollywood. He was like, I just want to – I want to get together with people I want to work with and I want to make movies. And at the time, no one was doing that because you couldn't fund movies. Movies were expensive. So he would just be a nuisance on set to work with because he hated working in the Hollywood system. He was the husband in Rosemary's Baby. So him and the directors, Roman Polanski, would constantly be at odds

because Cassavetes could be a real asshole. And he was just doing it so he could take that money and spend it all on making independent films. Then between times, he would take all the money he'd make for films and the first thing he would do is take out the cast for a way expensive dinner and spend all this money building those relationships.

Then they would go and make films together. He would also do theater. At one point, he's doing a play off off off off broadway just because like all he wanted to do was create he just wanted to do work and they had rehearsed for like 16 hours this was like all non union shit 16 hours and people were like you know just really in the trenches creating this show or whatnot and i think peter falk we'll say Peter Falk, who was like one of his main collaborators, was in the show and he left and he went home after a long day.

They had been there for 16 hours and he was like, fuck, I left my keys or my wallet at the theater. So he goes back to the theater, downtown New York, goes in there and goes to grab his keys and he hears a sound coming from like backstage. He's like, what the fuck is that so he goes back there he's like hey who's back there he's back there he goes all the way backstage into the men's room of the dressing room of the theater and uh cassavetes is on his back five hours after they had been

there for 16 hours like uh just fixing a toilet in the men's dressing room. And it's like, that's the level of obsession you need to be if you want to be great. That's one example. It's like, everything matters. That's a good little story. That's my answer. It is a good little story. And I guess you could call it a skill. I don't really know, but we are obsessive. We're obsessive. And I think that that call it a skill. I don't really know, but we are obsessive. We're obsessive. And I think that that's going to be important for your project too. If you take everything too lightly with the quality of your product, people are going to notice it, even if they can't really define it and say like, oh, it was because there was this little – at the start of the audio track.

Like that's why I don't like that podcast. No, nobody would ever say that. But they might in the back of their head, subconsciously even be like, oh, it's not really pro sounding show. So I'm just going to like move on to something else. You know, and again, that's a subconscious thought. It's not even a conscious thought.

So being aware of your audience's conscious and subconscious reactions to everything that you put out there is super important. All right, let's, let's wrap it up there. That's, that's a good one. That's,

that's, that was fun times. Uh, thank you guys as always for hanging out with us, uh, play some tunage here on the way out. Uh, Oh boy,

that's going to be way, way too loud. Uh, man, self-producing this stuff is for the birds. You're doing great, buddy. Uh,

thank you guys as always for, for coming and hanging out with us every week we love getting a chance to connect with you on the FOD hey who's going to get that last VIP ticket to Chicago that's what I want to know are you? is it going to be you? thanks Nish have a fantastic week and weekend we'll see you next week for episode 6

lots to discuss it's going to be a good one take it easy everybody see you next week for episode six lots to discuss it's going to be a good one uh take it easy everybody see you next week bye bye thanks for listening to the glass cannon network for more podcasts and live streams visit glasscannonnthenace.com.