The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 11/1/23

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

Per Troy Lavallee, the GCN's Christmas Season begins NOW! We wish Happy Holidays to one and all as Troy and Joe discuss their thoughts on playing the new Assassin's Creed RPG, how much editing goes into the combat of an episode of Campaign Two, and a fun update for the GCN Subscription Service. Plus, Troy lays out the full Extra Life schedule for November 4th-5th, 2023! Personalities from all over the GCN will be playing and running games for 24 hours this weekend. Don't miss the fun! Join our Extra Life team at https://www.extra-life.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donordrive.team&teamID=65257 Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/inYtrNe-w64 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

Chauncey was going to take me on a trip to the place he's from. From the producer of Megan, Five Nights at Freddy's and The Black Phone. Alice! Alice! Alice! Get out! Now. Many kids have imaginary friends. Ready or not. Just because you stop believing in them doesn't mean they're gone. Here he comes.

And they're angry you left. Imaginary. Now playing only in theaters. You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network. The premier source for role-playing game entertainment. Welcome to Cannon Fodder. welcome to cannon fodder a behind the scenes look at the glass cannon network yeah what is going on, ladies and gentlemen? Welcome back to Cannon Fodder.

It is Wednesday, November 1st, 2023. I'm your old buddy, Joe O'Brien. And I'm Troy. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. We made it, buddy. How did you survive the last 10 months? Man, 25th of December comes around, 26th, I'm still milking it, still watching home. How did you survive the last 10 months? Man. It's been brutal. 25th of December comes around. 26th. I'm still milking it. Still watching Hallmark until Golden Girls hits.

It's fucking New Year's Eve or January 1st. It's the worst. And I just go through those depressive moments. And then I just remember, you know what? It'll be back. Give it time. And here we are. It's back. One of the greatest days

of the year. Christmas season has begun. One of the greatest days of the year, meaning November 1st, not December 25th. Oh, yeah. No, I think I like November 1st way more than December 21st. This is like, I have the most amount of Christmas to celebrate starting today. Yeah. You embody you embody this whole thing embodies the philosophy of the journey is more important than the destination. It really is. The journey starts today. It's all about making memories, man.

It's just like you take something great and then add 90 children like I have into it and it's just phenomenal. It only gets better. It only gets better. I see you've got your Christmas green behind you. Sure do. I forgot it was Christmas season because. It only gets better. I see you've got your Christmas green behind you. Sure do. I forgot it was Christmas season because I'm a normal person. I think you should give it a try, man.

I'm telling you. I was driving Archer to school. I'm like, let me tell you. You know there's some people out there that wait like a month to start celebrating? What was the look on his face? He just didn't understand it. Like broke his brain. I was like, why would they do that, Dad?

Well, some people are stupid. Well, some people are sad and stupid. Well, we've got a holiday celebration for all of you. It's a FOD, a fantastic FOD. It's going to be juicy. We've got some exciting news, Extra Life updates. Oh, yeah. Exciting subscription service updates, Friends of the Pod updates.

And then, of course, we're going to talk some Episode 7 of Campaign 2. Nice one with a little additions from our good friend Professor Eric in We Are Stupid, and then got a good listener mail. So let's get right into it. No hesitation here.

I want to talk about Friends of the Pod. Last week, if you missed it, last Friday, we kicked off an adventure in the new Assassin's Creed RPG, and I really liked it. I don't know. Your thoughts? Yeah, it really felt like Blades in the Dark. Like it's a different mechanic, but it, to me, felt – that was the most game it felt akin to was Blades in the Dark, which we love. And it also didn't feel like – I mean, I'm in the middle of Lies of P.

We've talked about this. It is clearly in every way a dark souls knockoff it is a clone of that style of game they call it souls like now yeah souls like but in this yeah but i mean this one is it's so blatant every little thing you find is is an there's an exact analog over to something in the other game that's not the case with this this it has a feel kind of like blades in the dark but it is not taking blades in the other game. That's not the case with this. It has a feel kind of like Blades in the Dark, but it is not taking Blades in the Dark mechanics, not by any stretch.

It feels very different. You roll the same amount of dice every time. Your dice pool never changes. I love the dice system. But the way that the dice come together, you feel really clear on what is risky and what you have a good chance to hit. And you just feel this nervousness when you're forced to make a roll that you know there's almost no chance you're going to make it.

But you could because it's just about the dice pool, not about the math. So it's a really fun aspect. So I'm thoroughly enjoying it. And we play part two this Friday night. So that's going to air this Friday night. Already in the can. A lot of fun. It's great playing with Abu because we've never played with night. Yeah. So that's going to air this Friday night. Already in the can. A lot of fun. It's great playing with Abu because we've never played with him.

Yeah. And, you know, he's been working with the network now for a couple years, and we never even – we only chat via email. And so him and I were chatting the last couple months when this came up. Before I even knew that he was the voice of Bayek, I was like, I'm hitting up Abu. This will be perfect. I know he's a big video game guy,

and he's been wanting to do some more stuff with the network. So I'm just so glad it worked out. I always assume people are gonna be like, nah, you know, cause everything, especially he's like busy, you know,

this is why I don't like bother Matthew Lillard. And he's like, dude, you can ask me to do anything. And I'm like, I just assume you're busy. But yeah. But if they happen to have the time,

it seems, and this is the, the vibe that I got from abu is like he just really enjoyed playing with us you know like we had a really good time because he like us thoroughly enjoys going all the way like just buying in fully whether he's playing a video game or an rpg he just dives in and does not like to half-ass it. And that is evident by what you'll see this Friday. So very excited for you guys to check that out. Let's go to Extra Life.

Extra Life updates. That's this Saturday now. This Saturday, we're going live 24 hours. Tons of video games. Some TTRPGs. Last week, we gave you a little tease of what was to come, but we hadn't locked in some things. Do you feel good enough at this point to lock in some things?

I'm going to give you a whole nine yards right fucking now. The whole John? The whole John. Okay, go. First thing you have to do, though, and a lot of people listened last week, but not everybody, because I know how many people downloaded the episode. You've got to go to our social media, find the link for our Extra Life page. If you don't want to start your own page, that's fine. Just go there, donate a dollar, two dollars, three dollars, three thousand dollars right now. Okay, I'll wait. Did you don't want to start your own page, that's fine. Just go there, donate a dollar, $2, $3, $3,000 right now. Okay. I'll wait. Did you do that?

3,000. Hold on. Done. I just downloaded 3,000 to your page. And then what you want to do, if you want to take it a step further, go to extra-life.org, start your own accounts free, and then set up a page to like collect donations for yourself. Put it on your Facebook, put it on your social media, set a goal of like $100, $50, whatever, and join our team. Every dollar that you earn for yourself goes to our $45,000 goal as well. So once you do those things, strap in for 24, possibly 25 hours, because I just was informed by my wife that it's Daylight Savings this weekend, which is, everybody thinks,

oh, yeah, I get an extra hour of sleep. Not if you have kids. It's much, much worse. But we're going to be starting off the day on Saturday, 11-4, 8 a.m. Eastern, three hours of Joe O'Brien playing Liza P. Yeah. Dude, you psyched? you haven't sat down and knocked

out three hours of this in one pop have you okay so no i have not and it's also i think it might end up going down as the hardest souls like game ever created possibly wow possibly i just it is like unbelievably hard and i've had now a couple sessions where the entire stream is one boss fight uh and i i have finished them in those sessions i've never gone a full session without beating it but like i mean i'm talking an hour hour and a half straight just over and over again the same boss wow and i read something online that i don't know if it was just a – what do you call it? A clickbait sort of thing. But it was like, why Lies of P is unfairly difficult or something like that. It just – it feels very, very hard.

But we'll see. We'll see. It's certainly challenging. And I don't know. After three hours, I might just have such a pounding headache of rage. But it will be entertaining at the very least. That's great man i can't wait to play that um and then 11 o'clock till 2 p.m eastern we're giving sydney and kate

the keys to the car and they're going to be doing something with the sims 4 doing donuts yeah i mean i don't know what the hell it is i i don't even know people still played the sims 4 but uh if you enjoyed their twitch takeover during Gen Con, I'm sure this is going to be three very watchable hours. And then your buddy Troy is going to be hopping on from 2 to 5 p.m. I'm going to be playing Baldur's Gate 3. I played three sessions of it on Glass Cannon Labs in September, like right when it came out for PS5. And that's it. I haven't played since.

So I'm picking up right where I left off for Glass Cannon Labs and diving into three hours of that. I'm kind of excited. I haven't played any video games in like two and a half weeks. Like right when I got my surgery, I played for a little bit, like laying down. And then I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I was playing Starfield. And I'm like, shit, do I want to play Starfield? No, that's kind of a personal game I'll do Baldur's Gate honestly if Call of Duty had come out I would have been just jumping right in that but it doesn't come out until the week after

and then 5 to 8pm we're going to have a little D&D 5E Paula Deming is going to be DMing for Cindy and Kate are back and Ross Bryant and Jason Charles Miller I mean come on this group has never been together. It's,

it's kind of amazing. Jason Charles Miller is like in the middle of a tour right now. He's going to be streaming from a hotel in the middle of nowhere, Washington state. And Ross was like, yup, I'm in. So really,

really excited for that. And then eight to 10 just announced yesterday. We're going to be playing modern call of Cthulhu yet again. Brian Holland from Chaosium is going to be running a two-hour one-shot with me, you, Skid, and Matthew. I mean, if anybody caught the cabin in the woods, the bachelor party in the cabin during Gen Con. Oh, the highlight of the con. Many. Oh, the highlight of the con. Many people consider it the highlight of the con. So we asked Brian Holland to come back.

He's all in for the charity. It's Sunday morning his time, but in Australia, and he's going to be running us live through a Modern Cthulhu campaign. Where the Gen Con show was Modern Cthulhu bachelor party, I have a feeling this one might be Modern cthulhu bachelor party i have a feeling this one might be modern cthulhu spring break oh really not not confirmed but i know we're playing college students i mean must watch a must watch that's going to be our prime time slot from 8 to 10 and then 10 p.m to 1 a.m me and you and mick d are going to be playing gloomhaven we do

it every year now this will be like our third year in a row playing Gloomhaven on Extra Life. Three hours of that and then 1am to 4 or ish somewhere in there. Skid's going to be playing Jagged Alliance 3 and a bunch of other stuff. And then McD finishes out with

we're calling it Mario Madness with McD. The overnight shift where he's going to start with Super Mario Brothers and just try to beat as many Mario games as he can. Yeah, I think he has Super Mario Brothers down to like 24 minutes or something. That's what he was saying in the green room last week. Yeah. Something like that. It's going to be a hell of a day.

And then we got the dungeon at 10 a.m. We'll switch over to the employee lounge. 24 hours, maybe more of gaming for a great cause we're trying to raise 45 000 we've already got a couple grand in which makes me i like having a nice little cushion i'd like an even better cushion but i'm always i always go in nervous and then i'm shocked at how quickly we're able to generous the nations get those goals yeah so let's and hopefully bringing in even bringing in even more new people that weren't a part of this last year. Brian Holland.

I don't believe Paula Deming. Paula played a little Gloomhaven with us, but I don't think – she certainly didn't run a session, right? Jason Charles Miller, Ross Bryant. Just bringing in these other folks to spread the reach a little bit and hopefully they'll reach out to their people and say like, hey, come on. Help us out here. Let's raise money for a great cause. So very excited to have them participate. We had other people we really wanted to participate, Rob Kirkavich, Jared Logan.

All these people had various commitments that made them unavailable. They were really disappointed to not be able to do it. But we're very, very thrilled with the cast that we have, and it should be a great day. Also, we're going to be doing some giveaways throughout the day. Chaosium I think is going to do some giveaways during that stream and I'm going to be, yet again, doing some personal giveaways to hit my personal

goal of $9,000. Dirty pool. Including a special edition massive Nyarlathotep box set. Like the special edition one that's going to give away. Because I need some help hitting that goal. Yeah, for real.

And you know what? Last year, I gave away dice from my original collection. Dice that I used on Giant Slayer, but I'm so fucking bad at going to the post office. People didn't get them until the spring. I'm giving these to McD to mail out immediately after the stream ends. Awesome.

One more piece of news before we get into I'm giving these to McD to mail out immediately after the stream ends. Awesome. Yeah. And then, okay, one more piece of news before we get into the episode here. The subscription service. So we launched the new subscription service. If you haven't joined yet, jump over there as soon as you can. You can find information for it on our website. You can join the niche.com. You can find information on it on Patreon. If you browse through those posts, you will see the post that gives you all the details for how to move over and carry your rate over to the new service and

everything like that. So just be reminded that you want to come over there as soon as possible because new and fun things are happening, including I don't think you even know about this, the launch, the official launch of the crit and fumble web app for the new subscription service it is ready to go and uh it launched yesterday i think as of this week it's ready to rock if you didn't get an email or you didn't see the post go to our subscription service and look through the uh the feed and you should see it there if you would like to submit something new for the new campaign the new gcp campaign 2 feel. It's out there for you. Even if you submitted one before, submit another one.

We'd love to refresh the list. I'm going to do a town hall in November. I'm going to do the first town hall for the new service, which is now available for everyone 25 and up now that the tiers and plans have changed. So, yeah, now's the time to change over by, you know, somewhere beginning of next year. Patreon is going to be done. So it's inevitable that you're going to have to make this switch. You might as well do it now because it'll really help us up for various reasons.

I also know that some of our European listeners might be having some issues with payment processing with the new service. And that is something that it's not a glitch. That is something that is like inter-country legal payment stuff that is out of our control. However, we are making moves on the inside to open up more options through the payment service. And you should be seeing some surveys for that and stuff. We can figure that out over the next couple of months. So don't worry if you're in Europe and you feel like all of a sudden you're going to get cut off from new Patreon content and you won't be able to move over the new subscription service. Don't worry if you're in Europe and you feel like all of a sudden you're going to get cut off from new Patreon content and you won't be able to move over the new subscription service.

Don't worry about it. We're working on it. We'll have time to fix that before Patreon stops getting updated with new content. Okay, let's get into the dish. Very quickly, the Midwest was a lot of fun. Yeah, I know. Like, I wanted to just like chit chat and hang about it, but we're on a tight schedule. I know we're on tight schedule.

Those shows were awesome. Those shows were awesome. Did you see that? I changed my background to Christmas. I did, man. You're doing it. Merry Christmas.

I'm telling you, I'm going to tell your kids next time I see him, you know, Christmas starts on November 1st and your dad is just holding out. Oh man. I'd like to concentrate it into intense, intense celebration for like three weeks. you know, of which, geez, like it's so weird. It's so horrible.

Every holiday season, I'm shocked at how often I'm not with my kids. I'm like, because I end up having all these plans. I got to go like do things. And I'm like, I can't book every weekend in December going to do shit and see old friends and stuff and like not bring my kids along. This time is for them. But it's also like if you translate it over from my like twenties and even in when I, yeah, my twenties really, college and after was like, that was the time I would get together with old friends.

It was like holiday times, you know? So trying to combine both of those is, is kind of tricky. Anyway, no one gives a shit about that. Let's talk about episode seven. As long as you're at my Christmas party, because I've already sent the invoices. You already booked your date. The Tree Stooges. Episode seven of the GCP. Let's talk about a couple things here quickly. First,

leaving an NPC, granted, a prisoner, an enemy, leaving an NPC, granted, a prisoner, an enemy, leaving an NPC behind, bound, and blindfolded, and alone in the middle of the wilderness, which, you know, these kind of things have a tendency to happen at gaming tables, and they drive me fucking nuts because they don't make any sense. Ultimately, it ends up being a hand wave because that's the only way you could just keep the

thing moving without grinding the whole story to a halt. Tell me your thoughts on this stuff. My guess is you just don't care about these things at all. It's pretty close to it. You know, if I think it's relevant, then I'll care about it. Or, you know, maybe just have an animal come mollet while you guys leave yeah yeah i might do that just to punish you uh i don't know i haven't decided what i'm going to do but in general it's just like if it's not super important i just i don't care is that what you

want to do okay in general it's just annoying and i'm always that guy at the table that's like this doesn't make any sense like we have to do something with this person, whether it's bringing them with us to the fort or just killing them. Like, I'm not saying that we have to save their life. This isn't about moral issues. It's just about, like, what would these people really do? Like, would they really do that? No, they wouldn't. And to me, it's immersion breaking is the primary issue.

But you also just have to hand wave some things in fantasy gaming in order to just play the game and so i totally get that too but uh yeah i just wanted to throw it out there that i was like nails on a chalkboard to me when we do this kind of stuff yeah it doesn't bother me i also don't want to play her during the next portion of the adventure you know i don't want to like play even though i wouldn't have to roll to hit which is an even greater pain in the ass. I just don't like having to play that NPC. Yeah.

That's an enemy of the party. It's one thing if it's like a little – you know, a razzmatazz or something. But to have an enemy of the party just around constantly making mean comments isn't as much fun. Razzmatazz was a lot of fun. Special time in our life. Okay. So then we get to just a fantastic part. The old Wookiee prisoner trick part where we come to the front door of this thing with a plan to deceive our way into the front door to get an audience with Bolan by wearing the Oak stewards masks and get ups and pretending to be them.

I want to play a little game with you here. I'm going to ask you a series of yes or no questions. Okay. I want you to be as honest as you're willing to be. Don't blatantly lie. Don't be a coward. And my life long before this session was recorded, when you were reading the adventure,

did you presume that considering the ample defenses that are on the tree trunks and everything like that, that the group would most likely be walking through the front door? Yes. We talked about this briefly last week. That was a test because you already said that last week. There were two. When we were discussing our deception plan, did you think it was a good plan? No, neither yes nor no. You weren't listening.

Yeah, no, I was listening. I was just trying to plan what I would do to oppose the plan, you know what I mean? To oppose the plan. Or to play along with it. As you're talking, I'm like formulating my plan because I don't really have a plan. I can't have a plan until I know what you guys are going to do. But there was no point at which you were like, this is ridiculous. No, no.

I mean, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Don't get ahead. Yeah. All right, I'll just move on. As we approach the first- I was hoping you would just fight them. I wanted you to come up and start yelling and them to realize and just start firing down from range. Because now you guys have to close on them from far away.

Let me finish. The game is yes or no questions. As we approach and make contact with the first two Oak stewards, did you believe this would quickly devolve into combat? I guess yes. I mean, because that's what I was hoping for. I wanted that. I wanted them. I just had it all planned out. I was like, I mean, because that's what I was hoping for. I wanted that. I wanted them. I just had it all planned out.

I was like, I can't wait. If they just fuck up one thing, I can just start firing from range. And now you've got to race to the top while they have every advantage. You're never going to hit them until you're on the platform. Brutal. Brutal. Horrible disadvantage. Yeah.

Did you roll deception checks secretly on behalf of the party? I did. Yeah. Clearly, at least one of those roles was a success. At that point, did you see a successful deception role and then employ cucumber to like go sniffing around in order to get another deception role to like try to trigger another failure. I'm just trying to trigger the failure. I'm trying to trigger the fight is what I'm trying to do. You know what I mean? Like when I brought cucumber into the end of the previous episode, that was just like in the moment improvisation. I was like, Oh my God, this is gonna be perfect. Uh,

cause then I'll have them smell them or whatnot. Um, so putting him out there was just a way to like, but then can we just fight please? But then we had like a reason that like you would smell them and they would have been down there and it was a pretty decent reason so you do another uh uh secret deception roll did that check's results surprise you yes yeah oh dude all i wanted was to fight you all i wanted was there to be a fight and then you guys can start

exploring and i just so then this is the last question. After this surprising check sort of turned everything around on you, you went to a commercial break. Did you go to that break because you did not know how to move forward just yet with this combat not happening? Yes. But like when we take breaks. I had a feeling when you were like, let's go to break. Like you didn't tell us in the break. You weren't like, I don't know what to do.

But you were just very quiet and you were looking down and you were like typing and like thinking and somebody went to the bathroom, et cetera. And like, you know, you came back and it was like you moved forward with them letting us in. And I had a feeling it was like you needed that break. Dude, you'd be you'd be so well, you wouldn't be surprised. But I think the audience would be surprised how little we cut out of episodes i'm i'm editing episode nine right now and i'm an hour in and i have two little cuts like we leave everything in and uh except for

the breaks right and so sometimes they'll be like we'll be right back after this break we pause and we're back everybody we that's that's the break but i remember for this one i was like we're right back with this it's like really yeah i had a feeling it was a little longer break than usual this is a great uh lesson though for gms not to get preachy it's like you may want to do something and you may think it's better and you can you can do whatever you want it's your it's your game but man how fun is it to let the PCs really drive the action and force yourself to react to the dice, force yourself to, like, not just steamroll them with your ideas? Because all I wanted was a combat.

And I just couldn't do it because of your role play and because of the deception checks. And then it led to what I think was a much more interesting scenario. Yeah, I agree with you. It is. It can be tricky. Sometimes you want to, like, go with what you think is going to be best and without going with what the dice say. And sometimes you are right there, but sometimes, like, take the risk and go with what the dice

say, because I'll tell you what, in listening back, knowing what I know now, a little further down the way, it is so interesting the way that you played it right after we were like allowed to go through it in retrospect. Like I didn't notice some of the things that you were saying that were very clearly pointed to, you know, things that were going to happen in the future. And it was just really, really awesome to listen back to that. And it's so much more interesting than a fight. So much more interesting, I felt like, in the re-listen. It's one of these things, like you say,

you're going to appreciate more in retrospect once you start to realize the Uber situation. I think I'm doing an okay job of really layering uh some stuff in there but it's only because i really know the adventure uh it's not like you did like at that moment you really knew it you you just casually spoke of things that are major things and uh it's really cool uh and i mean this kind of continues into the next part where again we're parlaying but now it's with these strange fake creatures and we're trying to lie to them and they're they're fine with it they don't think that we're lying they don't care they just want us to leave lucky so that they can torture it's like a whole

different problem it's a whole different problem really messed up i'm assuming this is off the top of your off the top of the dome they'll like leave one of us and we want to like mess with it yeah at this point i'm like all right you had your fun now we're gonna fight you're not gonna you're not gonna get past them because the oak stewards have made it clean clear that like they don't even want to go in there because they're weird so uh you know and by setting off the trap you know i'm just trying to raise the stakes as much as possible and so that also didn't feel forced at all. It didn't feel like you're forced us into a combat at that point.

Like that felt right in line with those creatures. You know what I mean? It felt very much so what they would do because they were so creepy and weird and assholes, right? And assholes, right? Like known at like kind of the write-up of the monster, you know, basically says they just like they hate all civilization. They torture people. They just hate any kind of, you know, whatever. They just mess with people wherever they can.

Yeah, the Grimples. I thought you played that well. The little Grimples. Like that's all they want to do is so chaos. They don't like any accord whatsoever. All they want to do is so discord. And don't like any accord whatsoever. All they want to do is so discord. And the other thing was just like pure evil. But yeah, it worked out well because again, I don't

want to force you into a combat, but I also be like, I got to draw a line in the sand. So I'm going to just give you an impossible choice and see at what point do you guys break. And I don't know, at the time that whole episode, I remember being like, fuck, this is going to be an editing nightmare. I feel like

I'm not, because I'm really doing so much of this extemporaneously and trying to really just react to what you guys did. I was just worried that it was clunky or that I was sending mixed messages, but as I edited and watched it back, I was

happily surprised at how smooth it it and watched it back, I was, I was happily surprised at how, how smooth it seemed and how everything seemed more importantly, how everything seemed to make sense based on everyone's choices. So yeah, it was, it was a fun one, man. It was really fun.

Everything. Yeah. As we get into combat, we also see some of the first usage of the, the, oh my God, I'm blank. Deviant Johns.

Deviant Johns. Yeah. And that was really fun. And seeing Lucky's crazy Deviant John, like super scary. And Brother Ramius busts out his. And it was really fun. And the Backlashers, you know those are going to be fun. Yeah, you know those are going to be fun when they trigger.

All right, let's move it along to We Are Stupid, because now we're going to kick kind of into the Chunky Combat. And Professor Eric had a few thoughts. So let's get into We Are Stupid uh professor eric thank you for the write-up i apologize i'm going to cut some of these things because they're not rules related they're more just discussion topics um but i i really don't think we we need those right now i do want to talk about one kind of interesting topic where i believe there were some there was some feedback from the nation on this

uh people complaining about potentially talitha a complaint about having to load or cock the crossbow um you know at the start of the fight i don't know if you noticed this at all or saw this i don't know if it was i think it was a discord thing where people were mentioning it um the crossbows have been a thing for a very very long time in our games where it's like that first action in combat, you know, especially if it wasn't drawn is like, can you pull it off your back loaded? You know what I mean? Like, is it loaded on your back? A crossbow? And so she didn't take an action?

Yeah, I believe she did take an action. Never complained about it. Never said anything about it. But other people were about it. Never said anything about it. But other people were mentioning it. And I'm just curious your thoughts, how you like to run crossbows. Because I personally, it's like they are not loaded when you pull them off your back. I don't see how they could be loaded on your person. I like to run it where my enemies never need to load it. But you guys have to do as many actions as possible.

That's just my personal preference. I think we had some crossbow action at the Chicago show or the St. Louis show. I can't remember. And you guys called me out on it. I was like, Oh yeah. At the end of the day, we just have to be consistent about it. Like I have to make a ruling and that's it. And we both have to adhere to it and I'm going to forget all the time. I'm going to forget. But to me, I think it, you always have to load it.

You can't walk around with a loaded crossbow unless you're like opening a door, right? Crossbows out and you look preloaded and now it's loaded. But the idea of drawing a loaded crossbow just seems talking about immersion break. Right. Right.

Right. To have a loaded crossbow on your person and two free hands. Like, it doesn't make any sense to me. Having your crossbow out and loaded is fine. I don't think you even have to say it's loaded. If you say, I have my crossbow out as we're walking around, like, in my hands, then I would presume it's loaded.

Yeah. So, yeah. Anyway, just a minor thing there. Professor Eric brings up an interesting thing. This is extremely ticky tacky, and I don't really care about it. I don't think you care about it either, but it brings up an interesting thing that I want to discuss. But he had made a case about being actually bound, not fake bound, so that it looked as good as possible. Because he figured he's got – he can cast spells.

He doesn't really have to have his hands free in that way. Well, let me cut you over to Demiplane here, if I can get this. Here we go. So I brought up Demiplane because he mentioned in the spell components chapter of the core, the somatic section, where it explains what a somatic component is. It says specifically, you can use this component while holding something in your hand, but not if you are restrained or otherwise unable to gesture freely. It is an interesting thing, not necessarily in this case, I don't think, wow, we need to go retcon that. But I do feel like we have to remember that if you're restrained at all or if your gestures are impacted, that you can't just cast a spell with a somatic component. And that is raw, written right in the casting spells section there. Well, you know what's funny? It's restrained.

It's capital R, restrained. You know, it's not, you can do it when you're grappled, but restrained is a condition in Pathfinder, and I assume they're using that. Even though they don't have a capital R, I assume that's what they're using. It didn't have a capital R, which made me think that there was some interpretation allowed there, you know, because like, what does that really mean? In our case, I don't think Skid knew that. And at the end of the day, he imposed a role playing thing on himself that had a solution that didn't break the game.

No, 100%. In fact, I don't want to even talk about it anymore. What I do want to say is like, what if we bound a prisoner that was a spellcaster and walked them around? Wouldn't we say that they shouldn't be able to cast spells? Like, wouldn't we bind them in such a way so that they couldn't. Yeah. Right. You'd restrain them time up and then they can't.

Yeah. We just have to make sure we're defining like when you are capital R restrained versus not. So anyway, Eric has no problem with how it all went down. He, he says rule of cool. This is definitely the way to go.

However, it's something to keep in mind. So thank you for that. Also, on that critical produce flame, there's persistent damage that goes along with it. Another thing to keep in mind is that, and this is something that like, I know, but I think we have, other people have a tendency to forget from time to time. But when you're taking persistent damage and it's 1d4, you roll the d4 every time you take the persistent damage. You don't roll it once and say, that is the damage you take each round, right? Yeah, I think this is a Skid and Matthew thing. I think they have it in their heads that you roll 1d6.

It's a 4, and now you take 4 persistent every round. You just say you take 1d4 persistent damage, and then every turn, you roll it. It's the D4 every turn. Yeah. So for people that are new to Pathfinder, I just wanted to mention that, explain that rule, because there does seem to be some confusion within our own table. I don't call people on it because it's like – there's a lot else going on, and I don't feel like correcting people. But we want to make sure we correct people between sessions on that because it is a little annoying, like especially if you roll a four out the gate, then you're getting max damage every time when that's not what it's supposed to be. And sometimes I just let it slide. But other times, you know, it'd just be good to make sure people know that. Last one.

This is a good one. Oh, man. Lucky having to use two actions to pick up two weapons. In this case, she used one action. I think you let it happen. You're like, just pick it up. This is an interesting discussion point because this is where you're choosing to go against the raw. Correct.

Like you're choosing to house rule. I didn't know the raw. Okay. So the raw again, let's see if I can. I mean, I didn't know the raw. Okay. So the raw, again, let's see if I can share this. I mean, I didn't invoke the raw. I just. No, no, I get it. Again, these are not like we are stupids as much as like we need to have decisions on this so that we stay consistent going forward. There's a whole section on wielding items, how it all works.

But basically, there's a table here. Changing equipment. There's a table here. Changing equipment, the first line is draw, put away a worn item, or pick up an item, which is what a lot of people consider to be the primary thing here. It is an interact action to do so. So in some games, including in Blood of the Wild, Jared rules that if you are a two-weapon fighter or two-weapon ranger fighter, you use one interact action to draw both weapons. He just thinks that that's how fast you'd be trained to do that. A lot of

home games do this. According to Professor Eric, it's very routine for fighters to pick up a sword and shield as one interact action. Having each one be an action and then you have to get up means after you're unconscious, you lose an entire round, essentially just getting back to fighting form. Some people think that that's too punishing. Other people think that that's what the rules intend. What do you think? How would you like to try to do this going forward? Is it each thing is an interact action or can you just get yourself together with one interact action?

What is the little cliff note there? Not cliff note, but the cliff note is if this is a tough one. If you retrieve a two handed item with only one hand, you still need to change your grip before you can wield or use it. Meaning if you drop a great sword, they're saying it's two interact actions to pick it up, then put the other hand on it to be able to fight again with it. Yeah. So even if you're picking up one item that's two handed, you still need two interacts to get it fight ready again. Yeah. I mean, to me, it seems like the intention of the rule is two actions.

I think you and I agree on that. Other people may disagree. I think so. Yeah. I don't know. It's one of those things that in the moment, I probably wouldn't hold someone over the coals for it, but ideally, if there's a rule, I'd like

you to play the rule. I'd like you to know the rule, and then I'd like you to play the rule. And in that case, yeah, your options are like, be out of the fight for another round, because I'm going to do this. Or just pick up one weapon and start banging. And the next round, use an action to grab the other one. I'd

prefer to do it that way, but like, if it's going to ruin someone's time, and sometimes we're in the heat of the moment, I'm not going to be too crazy about it. But ideally, I'd like people to police themselves a little bit on those things. Especially in the moments like, I grabbed my weapons. I do this and I hit it.

It's like, all right, actually you only have one. Right. And we have to tell them not to do it. And if, uh, yeah, yeah,

it's, I, it's a fine fucking line. It is a fine fucking line. And if you're at a home game, it's totally different than what we do. Um, let me point out,

uh, last line of professor Eric's, uh, comment on this. Cause he, because he sounds like he likes to go with the raw. And his comment is, in my opinion, playing it by the raw is a large part of the incentive towards healing people before they get knocked out, or for that person to switch to defensive play, if they're getting low, rather than just being like, Oh, yeah, I mean, I'm low, but doesn't matter if I get knocked out, I'll just get healed and then I'll be right back in the

fight. Especially if you're a two weapon fighter or a two handed. You want to be incentivized to think about how challenging this is going to be if you go unconscious. And I'm incentivized as the healer to not let you go down first and then start healing, you know, so. Yeah. People are going to learn some hard lessons, I think, as the game continues.

I think so. I think so. I think so. All right. Let's cut it to a quick listener mail. Nick will sing us in here. And then we're going to call it a day. It's time for. It's time for listener mail.

You've got to get your broke up on it. Time for listener mail. You've got to queue that up. All right, a real quick one here, and it's so funny, Troy, because you just kind of brought it up naturally during the show. Our buddy Casual Tuna from Twitch wrote in with a question. Hey, it's your old pal Casual Tuna here. Love the new Glass Cannon podcast campaign, too. It's been great so far. I love how smooth the first combat with the Gorgas went. Everyone

knows what to do. Even Joe helps with light and heals. And then, of course, CasualTuna has to remind me, minimum healing. Is there a lot of edits involved in these combats or is everyone just doing their homework and studying their character sheet a little bit more thoroughly

this time around? Troy, you were the one editing these episodes. Are you cutting a lot of combat stuff to make combat seem smoother? No, no, I'm really not cutting out a lot. And it's because we're really, really good at this. We're getting good at this and we're first level. I read something recently. I don't want to blow anybody up.

It's this dumb website. And they were talking about actual plays. And it's like, they record, talking about some actual play that records, you know, hours and hours and cuts, you know,

hours and hours. And I'm like, Ooh, well that is, that's one way to make a show. What we're trying to do here. And what I've always tried to do is like, keep the experience as true to the

experience of a home game as possible. Part of that is keeping in so much more than you would from like a regular TV show. I think that's what makes this a different art form than serialized television or even a Saturday Night Live where there are scripts is that like you're keeping that breath in there. You know, you and i've had other people try their hand at editing episodes and it's just they they take all the air out and you need some of that that air in there you know it's different when someone is like struggling with math and it's bad radio and nobody nobody else is doing anything yeah maybe i'll pull that out but we've learned over time as we become a bit of a troop to, oh, someone is struggling, let me come in with something, whether it be like that air, you fill that air with something,

not just fluff, but would like, it could be a zinger, it could be like, hey, let me ask you a question about that, you know, we just we become so good at that, you know, feeling each other around the table, that it makes these edits a hell of a lot easier. You know, I'm watching every episode twice at this point because I'm doing the audio edit and then Francis goes and does the video and I watch the video. And every time I've watched the video,

I've never made another cut. I might change a camera angle here. I'm like, oh, let's go to this camera instead of this one or like start that cut a little bit earlier. But I feel very good with the flow of that. And that's just letting things breathe. You feel like you're really a fly on the wall watching people play the game. Yeah.

I mean, that was our intention from the beginning. That's how we wanted it to feel, like a real game, like you were there at the table. And I hope we're succeeding in that. And yes, it does feel to me like things are smoother. Level one helps. Also, people had a lot more time with these characters before we began recording that helps and uh like you said we're getting better and better as a group in chemistry to put on a show so yeah that's all coming together so yeah very very light editing as troy said in the beginning even some of the breaks we don't even take real breaks we

just say we'll be right back after this break and then just start talking again so uh we're keeping it pretty tight because we also have to keep things moving while we're recording. Speaking of keeping things moving, that's going to do it for today. I want to say a quick one, but we actually got into it there in We Are Stupid, which is fun to kind of dig into those rules. I love it. Thank you, Professor Eric. Thank you to Casual Tuna for the questione. Big week this week.

Watch Assassin's Creed on Friday night. We've got Glass Cannon Podcast Episode 8 tomorrow. And Extra Life all day Saturday and into Sunday. Hang out with us there, please. Can't wait to hang out more. Lots of live stuff this weekend. We'll see you there, guys. Bye.

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