The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 1/31/24

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

Troy and Joe are back in the GCN studio for another week of in-person Fod action! They'll get into some behind the scenes reveals about the Gatewalkers investigation as well as why Troy needed to change his GM approach at the start of this campaign. In Listener Mail, how do you write a backstory for a 10th level hero from scratch? Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/NCP6b1pnXDY For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com and for hundreds of hours of exclusive shows and benefits, make your membership official and join Glass Cannon Nation today by becoming a subscriber at jointhenaish.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 is Wednesday, January 31st, 2024. And I'm your old pal, Joe O'Brien. And I'm Troy. Back in the stude, LaValle.

Back in the stude, dude. We're back. back in the stude la valley back in the stude dude we're back back in the fucking stude it's a stude groove it's a stude groove we're back in the stude groove i mean hot hot opinions off the presses of us being in the studio people loved it and now we're gonna do it every single day day, live from the studio. No, we actually could. Yeah, I know. And this two in a row is kind of a bad idea because it was like, we don't want to set up that tease for you all, but we are

we had some business. We happen to have some business in town, in studio that we had to do today. As titans of industry. As titans of industry. It actually wasn't a gatewalker situation. It was something else, but we had to knock today. As titans of industry. As titans of industry. It actually wasn't a Gatewalker situation. It was something else, but we had to knock it out, and we were like, hey, let's do Fod from the studio again. So it'll be great.

The sad part is, we'll spoil it right off the top. No other guests. It's just us. It's all empty. You're stuck with us. It's all empty in here. But on the upside, Francis doesn't have to do any camera switching. What is he even doing back there?

What are you doing back there, Francis? You eating a bagel? What? I think we woke him up. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to The FOD. I'm here with your good buddy, Troy, and we are going to knock out some news. We are going to talk a little bit about the GCP episode, and not much.

A little bit. And I'll explain why as we get there. And we're going to go a little heavy on listener mail this week. Let's get a few more questiones in from the niche. All right, top it off with the news. A reminder, we mentioned this last week when Skid was in studio.

Unfortunately, he's not here now, but we are doing a live show off a book, off the beaten path, off the normal PF2E, John. We are going to be playing an Everyday Heroes Rambo game at a comedy club in New York City on Friday, February 9th. In two weeks. And Troy is totally ready to run it. Ready to run it. I could run it right now.

You could run it right now. No, this is happening. That's what we'll say about that. It's happening. Maybe. Maybe it's happening. No. We're going to be live in New York. I mentioned last week on the FOD, as it is right now, it is our only planned live show in New York. And yet it is unlike any live show that we've done.

We've got two people who we've never met. Uh, the comedians, Khalees Hawkins and Natalie Cuomo. They're going to be playing with Skid Joe and myself. I mean, I've been to Stand Up New York. It's a tiny little club. It's like 100 seats in there. I know a lot of people are like, oh, you're going to release it afterwards on YouTube? We are mercenaries.

We are hired guns for this. Yeah, they've brought Troy in to host the show. And Troy was like, I'm not coming in without my buddy Joe O'Brien. And they were like, shit. All right, I guess we'll hire him. And so, yeah, we'll hire him. And so yeah, we're going in as we're just going in as guests. You know what, as we're going in as what we are, which is just kind of pounding the pavement comedians in New York City, right, just trying to make our way onto Comedy Central. Yep, I've been working on my half hour special. We'll see

we'll see how it goes. No, it should be a really fun and interesting and completely different experience. And for the nation, if you're in the New York area and can get in here Friday, February 9th, 8 p.m. show. I mean, that's going to be a really intimate hang. It's a very small room. We're just going to be sitting in that stage, chilling and making up a Rambo movie on the fly with lots of laughs. Let me ask you, are you getting a hotel in the city? Should we do that? So that we can because all I want to do is hang out after the show, and I can't do

too much and then drive an hour. Maybe we should just get a little Upper West Side hotel, Sitch? On the comp? On the comp? A little hotel on the comp? I don't know, man. That sounds pretty good. Maybe an Airbnb? It would be irresponsible of the company to allow us to drive home after that. You're not wrong. I think we've just decided, And they'll have to pay for overnight parking as well. Oh, man.

Put it in the budget. All right. So that is very exciting. We also have another live show this week that's coming to a close. And that would be Deadlands on Glass Cannon Labs. We're wrapping up Deadlands. I can't believe it is absolutely flown by. Troy, you are for Epson.

You've seen it. You're caught up. What are your thoughts on the story so far oh my god so many thoughts i uh i can't even express them because there's so many so many emotions or whatever just of course it's been a real tour de force that's all i'll say i'll tell you what jared really leans into the weird of the weird west and uh it has made for a really fantastic game and i and i And I choose that word carefully. There was so much incredibly fun, like, magical, technological stuff. There's an airship!

I don't want to spoil it, but there's an airship! Oh, dude. My world that I'm building has airships. It's a Mormon airship. I'm going to spoil it. It's a Mormon airship. It's a Mormon airship. Jared's a weird dude.

He's a weird dude, but, I mean, it makes for a good game. Yeah. It makes for a fun game. Right now, no plans for Glass Cannon Labs next week, so we'll be on a hiatus unless something changes in the next couple hours. Yeah. But we'll see. We could have something on deck, but

we're not sure on that yet. So we will see, and we will, of course, you all will be the first to know if and when that comes in. And then, obviously, live on Twitch, you've been rocking Baldur's Gate every week. That is happening again today at noon Eastern time. If you missed it, go back and check the VOD, and I will be live again on Friday.

Dude. Dude. Prince of Persia. Dude. Rocks. Was it good? It's phenomenal, and I know you're going to be like, I'm never going to play that.

Yep. I think you'd love it. Okay. Do you like platformers at all? I don't know what that means. This is like when we're trying to sell our podcast to extended family members or friends of friends. And you're like, so it's a fantasy role-playing podcast. And they just say, I don't know what that means.

Take it back. What's a platformer? I don't think you'll like it. A platformer is like Mario Brothers. It's like side-scrolling, jumping. Platformer is like Mario Brothers. It's like side-scrolling, jumping. Part of the game is not just fighting things, but also the skill required to jump from one thing to another, to time, jumps, walls. It's kind of like the original Prince of Persia, which I played.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It is a 2D side-scroller classic, but it's got gorgeous three-dimensional depth to every level. And enemies will come in from deep within, but then they come up to you. And then the fights are kind of Street Fighter-ish. Oh, that's cool. level and enemies will come in from like deep within, but then they come up to you and then the fights are kind of street fighter ish. That's cool. You know, in that like you actually, there are combatants where you are timing your blows

and your, your, you know, Sekiro, like you're parrying. No shit. You have to time, you get parries, you get bonuses. And then the game has an entire added level of time manipulation through the special abilities that you get that make it so much fun. And it's not all just for combat. A lot of it's for puzzle solving and stuff. How do I get up there? It's like, well, I got to jump here, and then I freeze myself in time there.

Oh, I love that. Then I move something over. Then I unfreeze that version of myself, which drops onto the thing that the new me put there. And then I can jump that extra 10 feet. It's really fun little puzzles like that. That's cool. You know, it makes me think of two things. One, we got Archer a Switch for his fifth birthday last year.

I didn't even know you had a Switch. I have a Switch. And so he's just been piling up on the games because Christmas time, we're like, get him a game, get him a game, get him a game. But I don't want to overwhelm him because then he doesn't get to enjoy each game. But we got him Super Mario Brothers Wonder for Christmas. Yeah, yeah. That game is great. I just haven't played an old-school Nintendo game in a while.

It's wonderful. So he's got a game going, and sometimes he'll go to sleep, and I'll just pop on Dad's game. And of course, I've got to get every single thing, so it takes a lot longer. That's what I did with Prince of Persia. It's on everything, but I got it on Switch. Oh, no shit!

Yeah, just because I was like, I want something that I could have mobile. If it's on everything, then I'll get it on Switch, and it's just because i was like i want something i could you know that i could have mobile uh if it's on everything then uh you know i'll get it on switch and it's it's been great it's been awesome the second thing i was thinking of is a couple years ago uh i have the ps5 like membership thing on the playstation membership where they just give you free games if you want them and so i was trying to find games that were like appropriate for archer because i don't want him watching me play elden ring or anything like that. And they had Crash Bandicoot 4. And it was like,

like graphics as good as PS5 graphics. Wow. All right, this is great. I'll do that. So we ended up playing it and beating it over like three months. And it is, it's a platformer.

Like what you're saying, where you've got a time jumps and you get these things that sometimes can slow down time or reverse so that you've got to fly on the ceiling. And like, it's fucking hard there were some levels like i had to try like 50 times in order to get uh the the timing down anyway so it's really the crash bandicoot 4 is like sneaky good tricky game that is that's good to know because i am i have not played a game like this in a really long time and i'm having a blast

so i'm going to stream that again on friday so let's hang out uh and uh and we'll we'll see how much further we can get. Speaking of your kids, so I have my kids watching me play this, right? And I know that this is kind of like entering dangerous territory because my wife does not want any sort of exposure to violence. She just barely likes them playing Mario because she doesn't like them jumping on Goomba's heads. I'm like, just relax. But this one is legitimately know it's sword fighting and stuff and there's undead monsters and stuff like that and so i'm like and so it was sunday morning

and the kids came down early and my wife was still sleeping and i was like let's play a little prince of purge john so i fire it up and they're like can we watch i'm like yeah so they start watching and i'm mainly fighting these like fantastical kind of creatures so it's not bothering me too much and it's very kind of cartoony in the way that it does it well without spoiling anything it gets to a point in the plot where somebody who you really trust straight up murders like an innocent person that you were like and i saw the sword like i saw kind of building in the dialogue and i was like wait a minute wait a minute and then they just shung and it like like kind of anime style like the sword came out it became the whole screen and it like shined and

it froze in time. And I just paused the game and I was like, anybody wants some eggs? Like right in the middle of it. And they were like, what, what, what's happening?

And I was like, he, it turns out is a very bad guy. And I think this is going to be kind of scary. So we're going to stop. It was like in the instant he pulled out the blade to assassinate somebody. I was like, okay, that's enough of that.

But yeah, it is not a children's game, I wouldn't say. But man, what a fun game. Well, then try Crash Bandicoot 4. Eight on GameSpot. Eight! So it's legit, dude. That's pretty legit. It's very kid-friendly, although you do have to, you kill a lot of things.

Yeah. It's not like there's blood. I mean, it's a video game. They usually just go flying. You gotta kill! They go flying. You assume, it's assumed death. Prince of, it's a video game. They usually just go flying. You gotta kill. They go flying. You assume. It's assumed death.

Prince of Persia's a nine. Not trying to. Baldur's Gate's a ten. Okay, you're right. So I guess by the time people are listening to this, I haven't streamed yet. And I haven't. But since last week's Baldur's Gate 3 stream,

I've put in like 10 hours. Wow. I was just like, I went off the deep end. And I was like, I need to complete every mission that I have open. And I just kind of, are you just full blown a wizard? I'm full blown wizard, but like I've got to do any deep. No,

because you've got a four person party. So I've got a wizard, a rogue, a cleric and a fighter. Yeah. Classic. Yeah. Classic.

And I'm fucking two of them. This is all I hear from people playing Baldur's Gate. It's just the nonstop romance. So much sex. So much sex. All right. Let's talk a little Glass Cannon podcast before we move on to listener mail. The pod.

We Are Stupid is going to be light this week. A heavy role playing episode. Lots of mystery solving. I say mystery solving. lots of mystery-solving. I say mystery-solving. Lots of mystery growing, lots of mystery not solving, though a really big kind of drop at the end of the episode with the cliffhanger, which was great. I got a note back from Professor Eric, and I'm going to be honest with you about a couple things here. One, I'm not a big fan of this episode. I know. And we talked we talked about and you're being ridiculed

on the internet as i should be yeah uh by all these super fans you like someone to come over with a a little can of baby food and a tiny little spoon and say oh here's the adventure do you like peas that's not a hundred percent true actually i kind of hate that part which is to me kind of hate that part. It is. Which is, to me, kind of what the end of the episode was like. Here comes the airplane. But, you know, it's not my favorite.

It's just not my favorite. However, Professor Eric writes in and says, now this is either a couple weeks in a row or it's two out of three weeks, writes in and says, I don't have any notes. You know, there wasn't much here for rules thing. But I'm really impressed with what Troy is doing with the investigation. His opinion is that obviously we can't really talk about it or go in depth because it's too early in the investigation. But he feels pretty strongly that at a certain point, you really need to share with the niche what you're here, once it's kind of revealed, because people could really benefit from how you're approaching this. I don't like getting complimentary emails for you from strangers. And I haven't read them, so it's nice to hear them in your voice. I'm considering no longer working with professionals. He's out. You're out. That's very kind of him. Yeah, no,

he really likes it, and he thinks that there could be real benefits to help people GM these kind of sections of books. So that will lead me to my first question, which is going to, you're probably going to be a non-answer, which is, you know, we kind of try to define like as players, sometimes we want to meta a little bit. Like, well, it gets me curious, right? That comment. It's like, what are you doing here? What is happening that is not in the book or is not laid out? And to me, what my guess is, is let's say Thin Lands Farms. My guess is it's a paragraph or it's half a page or it's barely anything.

It gives you a couple names and kind of says what happened there. And you're laying all of this over it. all of this over it. Is this entire kind of like Western town theme, just like something you've come up with for how to interpret this place? Or are they literally in the book being like, there's a saloon? Yeah, no, there's, yeah, I'm always hesitant to say too much on these things. But I do agree that there's, there's, there's like teachable moments here that I Yeah, yeah. Now, maybe we have to wait for that for a later thought but yeah maybe and maybe not you know yet again this is one that francis and i were working on uh together and i just while we were doing the audio edit i would

just like pause it and explain like so this is i just completely made this up and and we would just keep going back for them like see all this right. This is the moment when I was like, Oh, why don't we just go do this? And like, I didn't have anything planned. You know, I think that I was getting a little complacent as a GM in that period between the end of giant slayer and the beginning of, um, fucking gate walkers and strange aeons was a great stop gap for us. Cause it allowed us to delve deeper into that story, but the comp between the complications of converting mid adventure path and

like having it be a show that's live sometimes and then streamed other times. I just felt like between that and spreading ourselves too thin, I wasn't doing enough. And so I really wanted to make sure with gatewalkers that I, you know, I kind of like re slappedslapped my nuts on the table as as a so to speak as a gm to be reckoned with and i'd love to say that i'm doing a lot of work behind the scenes to like prepare for these episodes that pop like this but it's honestly

so much of it is done in the moment while we're recording. But I think that if there's any work that I'm doing in preparation for it, it's just I'm kind of deciding how to take – if Paizo gives me this, how to take that and just make it blossom a little bit more, add some more flavor to what they have there, and then just follow you guys' lead. If you guys are interested in certain things. And so I'm trying to think, I guess I can just be a little bit more literal. You know, how did you interpret this town? Is your interpretation of this town sort of something you brought to it? That is not really in the book.

I think that as written, there are people who run this is as, as simply as this, like, all right, so what do you guys do next? lands farms all right everybody roll your checks this is what you learn at thin lands thin lands farms and that's it so it could be eight minutes total and in the past i've definitely run things like that certainly in home games it's like i don't feel like fucking role-playing this whole thing um or like worse like having to prepare this role play that's

worse to me than like actually role playing, being to think like, all right, who are the people in this town? If I'm only given a couple names, like what are they going to do? And so honestly- What are their motivations? What are their accents?

What are their children's names? I know Abelina Choi. I know that I wanted there to be a saloon. And that was it. And so everything else was just kind of made up in the moment based around what, where I want to lead you guys based on what you're interested in. So when, you know, I kind of want to impress upon you an important thing that like, yeah, people are going missing. Okay. And then, you know, because meeting Malkior, you know, that

he's, he's looking for someone, you know, you don because meeting Malkior, you know, that he's, he's looking for someone, you know, you don't trust Malkior, but there's this theme, like people are going missing. So that's something that I want to impress upon you. And then you guys ask, well, who has gone missing in this town? And then I'm like, well, there's been two people. And so like, and now you're interested in following up on that. And so it's like, well, let's fly by the seat of my pants and see if I can get them back around to revealing things about the adventure path that aren't explicitly discovered by the players. You know, I think that just years and years of doing this has made that be a lot easier for me to do, but it's something that I'm still building confidence in, you know, take time for

chaos. For example, we're, we're. We're recording that now weekly. It's being released. And it's a much different beast because I haven't played with that group as long as I played with this group. So employing those same methods, I'm not always getting the same results. It doesn't mean the show is any worse or any better. It's just that I sometimes have to, what I'm realizing in doing this season- You have to GM differently. I have to GM differently, and I have to be a little bit more leading with it. Whereas with you guys, if there's something you're interested in, I can just make up a character, you'll follow up with it,

and there's a bit more like we're playing jazz together. We're not playing jazz together on Time for Chaos, and so I just have to kind of be on lead guitar a little bit more at times, or notice someone else is doing a solo and let them solo. It's just, it's really musical and feeling it out. But I don't know, it's always that joke, like what I'm doing in that moment. And when you hear me say this, what I was thinking there, because there are times while we're doing this episode where I'm sitting there while you guys are improvising and being like, how am I going to make this relevant? How am I going to make this relevant? How am I going to make this relevant? And then let's see it. Just for the listeners, if you're coming out of the book, what you're saying, I mean, what you're sort of implying here is that there's no there's no Maybelline in the book.

There's no birds. There's no maps. There's none of this is in the book. You're just finding a way to craft a way to get us to where we need to go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can tell you straight up if you're, you guys are like, well, I want to speak with the, the, the husband and the kids. Like none of that is in the book. Not only that, I didn't have anything in my notes

about it. So it's like all just being done. And that's what I could tell. And that's why I didn't like the episode. But at the same time, I, I said it last week, I'm like, I'm making it rain out there because I feel like once you were interested in that, my brain just starts thinking like, all right, how do I make this into a relevant story moment? And I know that I want to get you to the end where you've discovered the dead bird. Yeah. So halfway through that improv is like I realized, oh, birds, birds. They're interesting. The kids, the kids are drawing birds and the mother of the birds and then the map and then this and that. But it's really –

Yeah, and that's a perfect tie-in and it makes it so much creepier and so much more like impactful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. It's great and I'd love to get more details on that as we get closer to the end of the mystery insofar as this section of the mystery where you could talk even in more detail about the stuff you made up that blow by blow that director's cut idea. It's, it's kind of fun. It's very hard to do, but it goes back to what I said earlier in the year is like, I'm trying to prep less and play more because I hate, I hate prepping. It stresses me out. Um, it's less difficult for gatewalkers than it is time for chaos. Like time for chaos is so stressful. Oh yeah. And like, I mean,

getting the trunk is so stressful. Yeah. It's so stressful, but it gets to the point where it's stressful to the point of, I don't enjoy it. And that's what I'm trying to get away from because we've all gone through those periods where we just kind of like, whether it's the grind or anything like you don't enjoy it. And then like the audience feels that. And so I don't want to be stressed. I want to enjoy every facet of it. And it's hard. And one of the ways that I'm finding joy in it with gay walkers is just kind of letting loose and flying by the seat of my pants. And I've been very lucky that this episode and two episodes ago worked. But they could have very easily not worked.

I didn't think it worked. You didn't think it worked. As I've made clear multiple times. No. So, no, people are loving it. Obviously, Professor Eric is somebody whose opinion I hold in great value. And he's saying what he's doing with the investigation is great. This is coming from a GM who's running this AP.

So, you know, somebody who's looking in the book, seeing what's in the book, and is really impressed with what's happening. So that's high praise as far as I'm concerned. And that's fantastic to really truly let your players lead like that and kind of just fill in the gaps as you go, tying it back to something that you know is coming by dropping those little hints. I mean, it's fantastic. And I think that I could be pretty obvious here to say that, like, it's surprising to me that, like, what's her – I keep forgetting her name. Maybelline. I keep thinking Margaret. That's her mother.

That's Abilene's mother is Margaret, right? Maggie Mae. Maggie Mae and Margaret and Rick. Ronald.. Ronald. Rick Ronald. No, that he, you know, that Maybelline, her children, Jimmy, the birds, the bird drawings, you know, like all of this is made up. But right out of the book has to be the hay silos, right? The hay silos are in the book.

Straight out of the book. I mean, I can tell. I can tell. What are you still doing? Hey. You know what? I'm trying to. We keep grain in boxes.

The, fuck, what was I just going to say? So you got like, well, I just think in a lot of these PISO APs, there are sections like this where they're very, they're underdeveloped and they're underdeveloped on purpose because they want you to do as much. Or as little as you want. As you want. And if you're interested in expanding upon these things, I think it's always more interesting to just kind of throw the players into a social situation. You almost

find yourself always in a saloon and just like see what they're interested in. And they might just be interested in like rolling diplomacy to gather information and let them do that. But if like in... You see, that's, I'm not saying that that's what I would always do, but that's definitely kind of where I was at. But when you play with Matthew and Kate and Sidney in particular, and sometimes skits, skits a lot of times just kind of quiet until he'll latch onto something. But Matthew and Sidney in particular are just ready to just like drive into nonsense at the first opportunity.

I mean, you mentioned the Hay Silo. We all laugh about it. Matthew's immediately like, we got to go check out this silo. And he's like, not even kidding. And I'm like, stop. There's no silo in this story. 600 Cal. 600 Cal.

You know, also for a show like this, any opportunity I have to role play I think is best for the show. The stakes are always great in combat, but combat can sometimes drag. Any opportunity you have to role play, let it happen. And also what I'm really interested in is creating stuff that is wholly our own and not just relying on Paizo's intellectual property. That's why Brander became such an important part of Giant Sl slayer because it was ours are you looking for brander i'm not i think what going before we ever recorded brander we're always chasing brander i think going into the early prep before we ever recorded an episode there was a part of me that was like i wonder i wonder if and what there'll be a brander type situation here but what i wasn't interested in having it be,

if it ever occurred, I certainly didn't want to pre-plan it. And I didn't want it to be another villain to combat with the BBG, if there was one. I wanted it to just organically come out of what we do because that's what happened the first time. So I think I was more curious than sort of like looking, intentionally looking for it. Like,

I wonder if we'll have something like that. And Brander's just one example, you know, Brander took on a life of his own, but like there were so many other moments that just came out of our collaborative. Well, I mean,

sir, Will's whole family and all that stuff. Highbury, you know, one thing I, we did is like right out of his whole family, like right out of the gate, I told everyone like,

this is happening in Galarian, but I want your backstory to take place in a, in a area that is wholly your own. That is not something from the world that Paizo has created. And you see that in your, your backstory very early on and Matthew's backstory in particular, even skids, I think even though like,

I think skids takes place in Arcadia or something like that, but he renamed it and re-skinned this particular town, and that to me is interesting. And maybe that is a little bit of Chase and Highbury, but I don't know. I like that, because you never know what stories are going to come out of that. Yeah. All right. Well,

we'll continue to talk more as this mystery unfolds, and I think that that's a good place to start, listener mail here, because we're going to start off right with a direct question about this mystery and looking ahead into it. You mean you're done heaping praise? It's time to listen to me. I'm done reading your love letter to you. You gotta get your throat out on it. Time to listen to me.

You gotta cue that fucker. Niccolo, you are a king among men. Thank you for that. All right, let's get into listener mail. This one's going to be from Sean from Ireland. Oh, tip of the penis to you, Sean. Jeepers. Oh, Sean, thank you so much for writing in. He says, hey, Joe and Troy, I really enjoyed the live FOD from the studio.

That's why we're back. Happy you enjoyed it. One thing that struck me as odd was Joe asking Sid if she had any predictions for Malchior's true motives, given how far in advance you record and FOD's being recorded right after an episode releases. I found it strange to be speculating about something that must surely be partially revealed in the episodes but not released. My question is, how do you limit yourself to the knowledge you had when recording the episodes you're discussing and not information revealed in subsequent episodes? Do you ever need to edit or re-record parts of the FOD because of accidental spoilers? It's a great question, great behind-the-scenes

questions. We don't really do that much anymore. This is not edited because you just heard Troy's hello to Sean, and that'll stay in. No, it is something that I remember happening back in the original days of the FOD when we were doing Glass Cannon Podcast in your apartment. Because a lot of times what we did then was we would do two or three FODs in were doing a glass kind of podcast in your apartment, because a lot of times what we did then was we would do two or three FODs in a day. Yeah. Like in a sitting, we would bang out two or three FODs and they would be like, this is what happened in this episode, this episode. And that got confusing sometimes. And we would end up saying something like, wait a minute, did that happen in the next week? God damn it. And we would go back and edit. Dude, I almost just said

something when I was talking about about creating our own hometowns. And then as I'm talking, I'm thinking, I'm like, no, we haven't released that episode yet. So you and I have gotten pretty good at it. But we have had times where we'll say something and then we'll be like, hold on. Did I already have an episode? And then we'll look and be like, fuck.

All right, we've got to cut that. Yes. It's been a while, though. That has happened, but it is very rare. When we have guests on the FOD, which is obviously a more rare occurrence, I will go into detail with them pre-show about what the audience does and does not know. So we will go over the cliffy of this week's episode is this. Most people, when you tell them the cliffy, they'll know everything that happened beyond that is pretty memorable, and they'll know what not to talk about.

The reason I brought that question up, to be honest, in this specific case is because at the time of recording that, we still did not know. So, yeah, I mean, we just didn't know. Like there's things that we didn't know. And I would not put Sydney to a question where she would be like blatantly lying. Like we don't really do that so much. You know, occasionally we'll hype up like, are we going to live? Are we going to get through this fight? You know, and we'll know if a character went down or not, you know, ahead of time. Right.

But we generally, I don't put out questions to a guest where they know the answer ahead of time and they have to pretend they don't. So I hope that answers your question. The reason I asked that is because I, we still didn't know. I still didn't know. So I hope that answers your question. The reason I asked that is because we still didn't know, I still didn't know, and I was curious what she thought, and I had my own thoughts. So that's why I put that one out. All right, let's keep moving. This one is from James.

Sorry, I don't have a location, and I'm not going to reveal your last name. He's from hell. I'll give you a hint so you know that you're the right James. James, you have a last name. You would have the last name of a bastard in Westeros. Bam. See that?

James Sand? It's a deep cut. James Sand. Oh, yeah. He says, hi. Buggles has an ability which can do two very different types of damage, which seems really great. But how useful is damage versatility really, especially since you might trade higher damage for an extra type or two? How often does it really come in handy during your average AP? James is asking, I don't know if you've played a

lot of APs, you're just curious about the system and how it all works. But I think it's a great mechanical question that I would love to geek out on for a second here. Just give me your initial thoughts, Troy, between the value of having multiple different kinds of damage available to you at X level versus having one kind of damage to you for the whole AP at 2X level. I think the way 2E is built, versatility is way more important. I agree. Than maximizing damage because I see it all the time in monster stack boxes. I haven't played a lot of 2E, certainly not lately as a player. But as a GM, I'm seeing it all the time in stack boxes.

Resistances and weakness. Resistance to slashing, but weak to bludgeoning. You know, resistance to fire, weak to cold. It's in all of them. I think that's part of the sort of oomph behind 2e was like adding depth to the monsters by giving them these sort of things because now the way resistances and weaknesses work it's just like you get that flat extra 10 damage you know so they want you to use that system and so i think versatility is way more valuable whereas in 1e

you wanted to nuke the encounter as fast as possible so the monster wouldn't have a chance to go because if the monster got to go at a high level it was going to kill you most likely and so it didn't really you wanted maximum damage not so in 2e that's my opinion yeah and i and i agree with you i think that capitalizing on these weaknesses really makes up for that extra damage loss that you would be getting from focusing on kind of one type of damage. I feel like versatility is hugely rewarded. And while laying out a lot of damage of one kind can be fun for a while, it can also be really, really frustrating when you come up against the thing that is resistant to that particular form of damage. Particularly if you have a party, let's say, that is really built out for physical damage and can really mow through a lot of encounters and then comes up against something incorporeal or comes up against a swarm and doesn't have magic blastery type of versatility.

That can be really, really frustrating. So it's not just about damage type. It's also about having a good balance of ranged versus melee. It's about having a good balance of single target attacks versus AOE attacks among your party. Having ghost touch options and not ghost touch options are really vital to getting through an entire campaign the way that they build these. So I would say that if you go on forums and you look at character build ideas, character build If you go on forums and you look at character build ideas, character build guides, right?

Like you will see a lot of things get flagged and be less prioritized because they are, quote, situational. And I do believe that damage versatility of the kind that Buggles represents is situational in nature. How often is skid actually going to be up against an enemy that is very weak to fire or very weak to cold, or vice versa, in terms of the resistances? It doesn't happen that much. But when it does happen, man, you're glad you have it. It's kind of like that one tool in your box that you don't need it all the time, but, you know, better to have it and not need it, right? Than need it and not have it. So I would say I would, I would always, after playing for many, many years, I rely on versatility. If I was playing a fighter and I do want to play a fighter one of these days, I haven't played like a straight 2E fighter. One of the main things that I would focus on is I would be really excited to have three different weapons on me at all times.

You know, a slashing, a bludgeoning, and a piercing weapon. I would just always have on me because I would love to be able to exploit those kind of weaknesses. Yeah. And maybe not even just fighter. I could even say, you know, I haven't made a backup character for Gatewalkers. I should really lay into a backup character for Gatewalkers. And I've been rethinking it and rethinking it. And I should really consider that Thaumaturge, because that's exactly what the Thaumaturge is. It is

a fighter who uses knowledge... Told you to play a Thaumaturge! I know, I know. But I'm really glad I'm playing a Cleric. Man, we need a Cleric. This is great playing the Cleric. I'm really enjoying it, but it is... The Thaumaturge uses knowledge checks to find out the weaknesses of damage types to certain monsters

and then can at will change their damage type to that thing. That's huge. It's amazing. It's really, really fun. That's what makes Aldo so important in Strange Aeons, the fact that he can, once you discover what the weakness is, change a bomb to do that type of damage. And that's something I think Skid discovered a little late into our conversion

that that's what made the Alchemist so valuable. Well, let us know in the comments here, I want to hear, go to the YouTube comments and let us know what you think of damage versatility. Do you prefer higher single types of damage in general, because it is more often effective? Or do you prefer lower damage and versatility spread? So that, you know, for obvious reasons, discussed, so that you can be more versatile. Which do you tend to lean on when you build a character? I wonder if people who maybe don't like 2E are people who favor being able to just nuke encounters because there's a lot of people like that's what they love about the game, doing as much damage as possible. and you build a character like that in 2e uh they're gonna have limited like longevity because the encounters are built to just present you with puzzles wherever encounter is a puzzle yeah it might be a lot of people like i don't like 2e because they miss being able to just do massive

damage yeah just go in and mash with your barbarian yeah it is tricky especially when you get into like how easily enemies can move away from you. That's what I'm finding in 2E is so like, ah, it's frustrating. But to me, I think it better mimics actual fantastic combat, you know, where people are flitting and flying all around the battlefield. You can't just get there, stand there, get your full attack, do 80 or 90 points of damage at fifth level you know in one round and just mow somebody down it's not really the option an easy option to eat so um all right let's do one more here and then we'll get going from timmy timmy timmy sorry i also don't have your location queued up i apologize but this one uh is a listener mail question about, and I love this question, it's about high-level character introduction.

Now, you know, this may come to bear in any of our current games right now. Gatewalkers is really the only one that really comes to mind where we're truly kind of lower level. So let's get it out here. For some of your longer-running shows, players have had to introduce high-level characters. From a backstory perspective, what has worked best for you? Oh, it's Timmy from the Dragon Punch Squad. Well, thank you, Timmy, for writing in. Appreciate you. Well, we all, I think, you know, those of you that listen to Giant Slayer

know my particular favorite, which was Dogwrath Deathbringer. That was my favorite that I came up with on a whim at the time, because I was sick and tired of making high level characters to bring into campaigns. And I said, you know what? Famous Monster Hunter. I think that that's a really easy one kind of elevator pitch line. We were actually talking about this earlier in a marketing meeting. It's like you have to be able to distill down what you want to say quickly in so many different areas of life. It's important to explain quickly who you are, what you do, that kind of thing. And in this case with Dogwrath, man, that is it. Famous monster hunter.

And it starts to just write itself. I barely wrote any backstory for him my whole idea for him was as we fought things i'd be like oh i fought that one when i was back working for the queen of whatever kingdom you know like these grand crazy tall tales that could come uh with this character because i like skid skid and i really appreciate the story of a 10th level character like we really appreciate that 10th level characters are extremely rare in the world. And if you were a 15th level character, I think Dogwrath was like 12 when he came in, maybe, you would probably be nationally famous, if not

globally famous, right? So writing every combat, every story they have, no, you don't have to do. But picking out sort of maybe what made them famous. One little hook, uh, is a great way to just get off and running. And then you still got to get in there and play the game to find out who they are. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's always fun for me. I, I'm never like, uh, I never couched the challenge of bringing in a new PC. Yeah. Like how, how can I do this in a way that makes, you know, story sense? And I mean, the craziest is Endgame Giant Slayer when you're like, on a floating castle in the sky! It's like, how am I going to do this? And I loved every single thing we came up with.

And so, I mean, yeah, I think there were a lot of people, there might be people that didn't even like the way Asta came in. But to me, it just made total sense that there were gatewalkers in the world that don't... Did people comment that they didn't like the way she came in? I've imagined some people did. I'm just always imagining there's... I didn't see any of that. ...contrarian opinions.

But to me, it just made total sense. There's some gatewalkers in the world that don't know there's a consortium of E-pops. Yeah. But I could very well, like, for the next death, and there will be one, like, have someone be a part of Professor Riddleson's group. And so that's something I want to explore as well, because what I really like what happened in episode 100 of Giant Slayer.

Once we decided, like, all right, I've got an idea. Come up with some backup characters. I want to do something. I want to do something that sort of set in motion, an idea where we could build these stories of other characters who could seamlessly fit into the adventure because they were already a part of the if and when they're needed. Yeah. So that's something that I,

again, I don't want to, I don't want to chase brand or I don't want to chase Highbury. I don't want to try and just repeat these moments, but that's a technique that I really enjoy. That might be something spoiler alert that I kind of dabble with in a future episode of the game. Yeah. I love having that. I love the idea of just having two characters. Yeah. Even if one isn't your main, you got your alt who's ready to go.

Well, let me throw out some ideas to you. You know, what has worked best for you? I told you what worked best in my particular case was famous, famous hunter i think is a very fun one because then you're always kind of you have the motivation to to go go in there and fight any of these big monsters that are coming up against you uh just for the renown of it right but let's talk about a couple other quick ideas one is uh we've done this before in a home game kind of, and Strange Islands is based around it. A great one is Amnesia. Amnesia is a great one because these adventurers get themselves into horribly dangerous situations,

and let's say they come up against a monster that shreds your mind, right? This could be, you know, someone is knocked. Their memory, their backstory is a mystery to them, but they have so many powerful abilities. It's the Jason Bourne character intro, right? Where as you play, you begin to uncover what happened. We had a character like this in one of our home games who was high level, but we brought them in at first level.

There's a long story as to why this happened, and this was not played by one person. It was played by multiple people for this reason, because each person that kind of played the character filled in a little bit of their backstory but with these memories and flashes that would well they had multiple not multiple personalities yes did they yes they had multiple personalities because it was somebody that we would guests would play and stuff like that we only had three people to play it was like me and three players and but we wanted a four-person party so we just created this like swing character that you guys could take turns playing when we didn't have someone play it but then other people could step in and not just say all right here's who you're playing you're playing a very wise elf you're

playing someone with multiple personality disorder so who are they today right it was kind of fun we probably had a half a dozen people it was really fun and it was a very, very like – what's the word I'm looking for? Just a very powerful-seeming just – it was an elf that – it just seemed like a very powerful character, creature, right? And you didn't know what their past was. And occasionally, you as GM – this was really kind of the early forge where Gatewalkers was – or Giant Slayers started to get built. This was really kind of the early forge where Gatewalkers or Giant Slayers started to get built is you would occasionally like surprise us with like a vision or a backstory of some crazy shit happening to this guy. We'd be like, wait, what country is this even in or what monster is he even facing? And it was all these little cool tidbits you put in. So anyway, that is a fun way to do it. cool tidbits you put in. So anyway, that is a fun way to do it. Another one is, remember,

like high level does not necessarily mean long experience, right? Even though technically we say experience points. Look at Lork, right? Lork comes into Giant Slayer at first level, but he has a ton of experience. The conceit for that character is he was once seventh level, but has lost his mojo after years and years and years of working inside. Pembroke is the same thing. Once a great wizard, lost. Exactly. And then lost comes back down to wherever he came in at eighth level, ninth level, whatever that was. So that can work in reverse. You can spin that the other way. You can be a 10th level character who's like a superhero, right? Was imbued with their powers in one instant by some idol that they touched or some moment they came across. I mean, they have all these incredible powers and they can't really

explain it. That's a great background for a sorcerer, right? Or a cleric or a paladin even. Sometimes martial skill is a little harder to wrap your head around having just be, you know, just being endowed to you. But then, you know, we've also dabbled in Come From The Future. I mean, that's kind of a fun one too, right? Like you're sent back and you have all this stuff implanted in your mind, Matrix style. So you don't need to write a long backstory, but you can have all those abilities and you can fill in the character as you play. Because I think the worst possible thing is to sit down and write 10 pages of every level of this hero's adventure that they went through so far. To me, that sounds like a nightmare and not very fun. But if that's fun for

you, that's great. It's just not fun for me. I like to discover them as I play. Yeah. When I create a character, I want one sentence that describes them and figure out the rest and play. Yeah. Figure out the rest as you go. And sometimes that just makes the best, most memorable characters we find. All right, that's going to wrap it up for us today, guys. Thank you so much for writing in with the questions. Glad we got a little bit of a chunk.

Oh, man, wrong thing. Way to go. God, every single time. Amateur hour. I tried to set it up, but I was like, I got it this time. I'm not going to screw it up. There she goes. Hey!

You know, I think that was CJ that did that. CJ! Wow. God damn it. Blame it. Poor CJ. Thank you to CJ for producing today and thank you to Francis for producing today. We appreciate you guys so much. We are very, very excited for our upcoming shows

and our streams and our finale of Deadlands. Lots going on. So come hang out. Check us out on Twitch and on YouTube. Tomorrow night, Gatewalkers continues. We'll see you next week on The Five. Bye, guys. Toronto. Sold out! Oh, that's right. Big news.

Toronto. Sold out. We just got word right before the deadline. Oh, Canada, my home and nature. Thanks for listening to the Glass Cannon Network. For more podcasts and live streams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com. And for exclusive shows and content you can't find anywhere else, subscribe today at jointhenace.com.