The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 1/3/24

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

Happy New Year! Troy and Joe sit down with a few extra pounds and nog stains on their unwashed shirts to kickoff 2024 in true GCN style! New streams, a new game on Glass Cannon Labs, and a VERY special new city for the Glass Cannon Live! tour dominate the headlines. Looking back at the last two GCP eps of 2023, the guys reflect on an unforgettable moment and all that transpired to make it possible. In Listener Mail, has the increased production values of Campaign 2 taken away the casualness of the early days of the GCP? Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/fuCsm6mgVz4 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

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Welcome to Cannon Fodder. A behind-the-scenes look at the Glass Cannon Network. Hello and Happy New Year, Niche! Welcome back to the Fod. It is a whole new year. It is Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024, and I'm your old pal, Joe O'Brien. And I'm Troy, 2024 LaValle! The new edition, Troy Part 2. Troy 2.024.

2.024, yeah. Yeah, you've gone through several versions. As has Fodder. Troy, I'd like to welcome you to the one-year anniversary of the new, newest, new FOD. When we rebooted it last year. We've done a year. This is now a year. We started our first of the new FODs with you and me back at it one year ago, first week of January. the new FODs with you and me back at it one year ago, first week of January.

I'm too busy updating my headline because it still says Morning Nog from the last time we used StreamYard. Amazing. Are you still doing Morning Nog? No, no. I've dragged more Nog than any human being

on the globe this past year. I was putting Nog in my coffee towards the end of December. Oh, boy. Just got to finish this last gallon off. But yeah, I just changed that. What did you say? Yeah, one year.

I forgot. We started this a year ago, the sort of return of the original FOD. But it wasn't video yet. It was just audio, which I realized yesterday when I was updating some YouTube playlists. And we were talking about Strange Aeons, which used to be weekly.

Dude, a year ago, we were doing Strange Aeons weekly. It is crazy. How far we've come in a year. And this was audio only at that time, those FODs. We didn't start the video until Gatewalkers released. And so we've been getting into that video groove. But yeah, you and me back with the new old new FOD. It's been a year.

So happy anniversary. Hey, happy anniversary to you. Dude, we have not talked for one minute, really. We've exchanged some emails, but I haven't even talked to you since we got out on a break. So how was your holiday? How did it all go down? When's the last time I saw you? Was it my Christmas party? Yeah. Wow.

Well, was your Christmas party after the last time we were you was it my christmas party yeah well was your christmas party after like the last time we were in the office i guess it was yeah yeah um uh yeah that was that was a lot of fun uh yes that was a lot of fun a lot more kids but uh felt like the old days and a lot more kate and sydney than the old and Sidney. They were not there back in the day. They weren't old enough to drink. But it was nice seeing them. It was a really good time. Dude, my holidays were fantastic.

It's the best thing ever. And followed by this like, I'm okay. Everything's okay. I just miss it so much. I've gotten to the point now where I'll have one or two days where my wife just knows like, oh, he's really he's really feeling that post Christmas slump. Usually it's it's New Year's Day. Like what a fucking useless day. Like the week between Christmas and New Year's is that nothing week.

To me, January 1st is the nothing day because we don't start our like, you know, our reset until the second uh which is the time we're recording this you know so jeremy first is like all right i'm gonna drink all the rest of the vodka eat all the rest after my chinese food like we're like get all of our system we start tomorrow and i'm just sitting there in a haze i'll walk outside just stare at my christmas lights like i want to go back uh but the holidays were great man i'm i the thing is i love christmas i'm sad when it's over but i love a new year. I love a new year. Sign me up.

Me too, man. I love New Year's. New Year's Eve is fun, but it's also like I just love a new year. I love waking up, getting to work again. I really do because a break is nice. We are lucky enough to be in a business where we can get a good break, right? Good week, week and a half off. And it really is a good recharge.

And it's just like, all right, I'm ready to get back into the groove. I said to my kids this morning, I'm like, are you ready to get back into the groove, see your friends at school, blah, blah, blah. And they were both like, no. And I was like, that's fair. That is fair. A lot of people don't like getting back in the groove. But yeah, I'm a creature of habit. I like my routines. And this is – it's nice to get back. Back to the thought. Back to business. You know what?

I can tell that the first is kind of a nothing day for you because out of nowhere, I got like two or three work emails from you that were like legit, also kind of mundane work emails yesterday. I was just like, would you just enjoy the last day? Can we do this tomorrow? Does it have to be today? I sent out a few work emails yesterday, and some of them I preface being like, just ignore this, but it's in my brain. Ignore this till tomorrow. I don't like to schedule an email to show up at like 9am. I think that's much worse than starting an email being like, we just ignore this until tomorrow or later this week. But yeah, I was just kind of sitting around. But it was great.

I didn't open up Asana for like a week. I didn't even think about. I shouldn't say I didn't think about. I'm constantly thinking about like, what are we going to do in 2024? How are we going to do things different? How are we going to innovate? How are we going to be exciting? How are we going to kind of reset?

And so I was thinking about those things. But now it's time to like dive back in. I was so in it that you emailed me the fodder link this morning. I was like, what? Fodder. I totally forgot about fodder. I'm doing something else. Give me 20 times.

You're like, that's on Tuesday. Right. It is Tuesday. Oh, God. Yeah. So we are. We're recording fodder here on the second. Just getting back to the office, getting everything in the groove.

We've got a lot to talk about from a company standpoint. But you told me right before we went live, throw that script out the window. We're not talking about any of this until the state of the nation. What? There's a state of the nation coming? Dude, I've been teasing the state of the nation since August. Yeah, that's why I thought it really officially was not coming. Would you just let it go?

Troy, if you love something, let it go. Set it free. if it comes back it'll be forever if not it was never meant to be i uh i've been teasing this since august because back in the day we would do it in the fall and i did the state of the pod right around the time before gatewalkers launched for campaign two of the gcp launched and i that kind of there was all gatewalkers focused all campaign two focused and all of the stuff that we're kind of working on it just it's more of a now time to talk about than last time and i'd love to just go into it on the fod but i think a proper state of the nation like our country does it in january let's start a new year together and talk about all the exciting

things that we've got going on. So that's going to happen, I'm going to say, in the next two weeks. I would love for the State of the Nation to happen next week, but I need to get a handle on about a million things before I lock it in. If it can't happen next week, it will happen the week after. I'm going to build that bridge and I'm going to burn that bridge, rather, and just lock myself into it because I want people to know what we have going on. We've got tour dates. We've got some updates to our subscription service. We've got so many exciting things. I want to get it all in one place and state of the nation up. It's a great time to bring the nation together, because we always get a good crowd for the state of the nation. Yeah. And then I think everybody should utilize the FOD for talkback and discussion after the State of the Niche, right?

So if you hear it or you listen to it after the fact, is it available to listen to? Is it going to drop anywhere audio-wise? Right now, my plan is to go live on YouTube with it and then have a post State state of the nash town hall exclusively on discord and then the week after you and I will kind of talk about it on the FOD yeah we'll do a little recap and breakdown

on FOD and if you want to get in listener mail questions before that FOD you know always remember to write us at contact at glasscannonetwork.com or go to the website and go to the listener mail link and you can submit your list. We'll have a question in today from the nation. So I guess the only thing then that is really – well, let me tell you about my Christmas because it was a little bit crazy. I was out in Oklahoma with the family on Christmas Day.

My wife fell down the stairs. Sure she did. Oh, right. How can a man no longer say a person fell down the stairs anymore? Have we lost the ability to trust and believe each other? On Christmas Day. She fell down the stairs

and fell onto a belt that whipped her back six times. It was so weird. Christmas Day. She fell down the stairs and fell onto a belt that whipped her back six times. It was so weird on Christmas Day. No, but she did. She did like two steps. That's all it took. About two steps. Oh, man. She came down on her wrist, broke her arm right at her wrist and it was pretty bad.

Oh, dude. It really sucks. She's going to be incapacitated for months. Months? Months? Well, you know, I mean going to be incapacitated for months. Months. Well, you know, I mean, armless basically for a couple months. And that is really brutal. So we're waiting to she's casted now. We're going to go back in for another evaluation in like eight days or so to see if the surgery is necessary or if we can get out without surgery. Come on.

Yeah. And then like, yeah. So it's just it was a crazy, crazy holiday, but it was just, it was wild. On Christmas day, we had like 30, 40 family members over big, big party and all of a sudden she just fell and everybody heard her fall. Like, are you all right? And she was just like, nope. And in very short amount of time, my mother-in-law was whisking her off to the emergency room.

So that sucked. But we found out after the fact that it was good we were in Oklahoma because it turns out there were like hundreds of people in the ER in our Jersey local hospital. And like we know somebody that was there like nine hours waiting to get seen on Christmas. So it's like, oh, well, thank God we were there. It only took her like a couple hours to get in and get out. But brutal. Yeah, pretty, pretty brutes magutes. But otherwise took her like a couple hours to get in and get out. Brutal. Yeah. Pretty brutes magoots.

But otherwise, we had a great holiday. Kids had a great holiday. And yeah, I like putting it behind me because at the end, it really is exhausting and you feel fat and slow and sweaty and too cheesed up. We were on the Blood of the Wild holiday party on Friday and last Friday and Mary Luke was like, I call it Cheese Week, the week between Christmas and New Year's. She's like, there's no other real name for it. So I just call it Cheese Week. She's like, it's where I eat more cheese than I eat the entire rest of the year combined.

And that's definitely how I felt. So it's time to turn it around. A little clean living. Get to the state of the nation. Get back to work here. Get back to recording. I haven't played an RPG in two and a half weeks this is ridiculous dude crazy you know i just realized is uh we have tickets going on sale next week for the first tour stop of the year it starts next week i'm looking at the calendar like uh i was like wait a minute let me just make

sure yeah in like five days so then you can't announce the biggest announcement of the tour like on the state of the nation because it will have already gone on sale it'll have already gone on i feel like i should talk about it now i think you should say it right now dude should i say that the first stop of the year is toronto canada we're coming to toronto international edition international we tried going into last year uh to make make Canada dates happen, and we just couldn't make it happen. So I was on our agent from the middle of the year last year. I'm like, please, if there's any way we can at least try. If we try a little harder and it doesn't happen, at least we tried.

And, I mean, he brought the full force of his agency behind it, and we are starting the year in Toronto. And tickets are going to go on sale next week. So stay tuned to social media to find out exactly when. I believe it'll be out before next fall. I think – I want to say it's the 8th. I'm still locking this in because I haven't even sent them the ad materials. This deal was like being closed right before Christmas. And they were like, hey, you want tickets to go on sale next week?

I'm like, I got to get new tour artwork. So I emailed Angeline and they started working on – you haven't even seen the new tour art for next year. It's phenomenal. I'm like, I need an idea. I just sent them an idea. Boom. Immediately started getting sketches later that night over Christmas. We're going back and forth.

And so, yeah, we are starting the year in Toronto at the Great Hall, I believe it's called. And that is going to be- That seems appropriate for a fantasy role-playing show. The Great Hall. We shall meet in the Great Hall. Meet in the Great Hall, Saturday, March 16th, 8 p.m. Toronto time. We are coming out there. And then celebrate.

It'll be my first St. Paddy's in Canada. Wait, does that say Paddy's week? Dude, that's St. Paddy's weekend, bro. We have to fly out on Thursday. I mean, dude, it's only going to be one show that week. We're just doing Toronto. So maybe we do like a little fan meetup on Friday.

So we have to fly out on Thursday and have a couple Toronto Guinnesses. And then... Toronto, famous for its skin eye. Oh my God, that's going to be so much fun. I've never been to Toronto. I've got to check my passport. I've never been to Toronto. Do you have a valid passport? I do.

I just got it at the end of last year because I had hopes of traveling internationally. I've been meaning to do this. I'm going to do this now on the FOD. I've been meaning to see if my passport's updated. Let me just... You can do that live. And I'll tell you what.

If it's not or if it's getting close, you're in real trouble. Look at this handsome devil. If you don't get this done right now, you are going to miss March 16th. It takes forever. It expires October 15th. 2025, baby. Oh, yeah, it did. Yeah, passports for everybody.

Show us back on. You get a passport. Here's my son's passport. It has a checkbook. Yeah. Oh, amazing. I am so excited about this. We wanted it so bad last year.

I feel like, look, I don't want to put, I like to just say what other people think in their minds. Matthew loves when I do that. And I think that there must have been people that felt like we didn't really want to go to Canada. But we did. We did. We really wanted to go, not only to do a live show for those fans, who, by the way, have been amazing,

have traveled to the U.S. over and over and over again. Over and over, yeah. They were in Philly. They were Canada folks in Philly that made the trip down for that show at the end of the last year. So we love you guys. We definitely wanted to get there, and I'm so glad it's happening. I'm pumped.

Yeah. And stay tuned because we're working on at least one other Canadian stop. I mean, right now, we are pretty close to having the entire year booked, which we never do. We're always working hand to mouth because our agent was kind of moonlighting with us. He's a buddy of ours, but now we're working with his agency directly. And it's just so much more clean and efficient. I mean, we're booked straight through to September. We're just working out a couple of final things because some cities we have to fly in between. So trying to find the good pair on the good weekend and whatnot. It's a lot of things, but we're pretty close.

And I would love to do that because then we can have the tour shirt available in fucking March. I believe they call that routing in the business oh routing so it is it's a complicated thing especially if you're like a real band and you tour for three straight months and you're touring you know like you're completely on the road how do you attach certain cities at certain times in the right logistics to make sure that you're selling the right amount of tickets but also that you're you know when you need to fly when you need to drive when you do whatever like it's a whole uh, that these agents or these agencies have to deal with.

And so, yeah, we're, we're easier than that, obviously, cause we just do like once a month, but we do like to connect cities when we travel. So yeah, that's routing. So you gotta, you know, make sure you're, when you're doing the two cities, you're, you're doing it right. And getting them, both of those venues have to be available at the right time. They have to, you know what I mean? So there's a lot of stars have to align but yeah i'm psyched i'm pumped so excited

what else streaming this week there's live streams this week uh that are a little uh a little out of the out of the ordinary um you had done a couple labs as uh just playing balder's gate three yeah you're gonna stream some Baldur's Gate 3. Or you already did yesterday. At a time people are listening to this, I'll have already streamed it. He would have already streamed it. So go back and check it out on the VOD. But I'm going to stream tonight, Wednesday night, the 3rd.

I'm going to stream 8 o'clock Eastern. Just going to play a video game. And then we're playing a new labs. There's going to be a new labs this week on Friday. That's not a new day for labs. That was just because of scheduling. We had to bump to a Friday. So we're going to be doing,

but it will be at 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific live, live Jared, myself, Matthew cabinet, a key easy.

And Mary Lou are playing deadlands. And I'm so pumped. Yeah. I've been, I'll talk about this on Labs, but I've been like consuming Western content, which like I've just kind of eschewed for many years and getting back into it and watching old stuff. It's been great.

It's been a real fun thing to do over the holidays. Yeah. And people have been, you know, asking us to play Savage Worlds games for a while. So this will be a fun one to jump into. I think for a lot of people, they, they,

this Deadlands might've been one of the first one or two games they played. So it should be pretty exciting. I'm excited to watch. Yeah, I'm pumped. I'm pumped to hop in there. All right. I think that that is enough in terms of news and updates.

Why don't we get back into the GCP? Because I mean, for cheese sake, for cheese sake, of all the appsps to leave town and have a holiday during on the FOD, get the fuck out of here. Back to backers, yeah.

Back to backers that we didn't really cover. And unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to cover blow by blow every episode. But what I will say in general, let's try to do things somewhat in chronological order because there is a huge drop in episode 15. And if you're not caught up, I do not want to spoil that for you. So we will start rolling through episode 14 before we get to 15.

Episode 14, wow, what an encounter. What a combat. What a cool – I don't know if amalgamation is the right word, but what a cool confluence to the middle and having already shot that, not just Druid. Oak Stewart. Oak Stewart, that Oak Stewart from really far away. The hand crossbow assassination. Yeah, Talitha, the one shot hand crossbow assassination, sniped from across the other buildings. from across the other buildings.

It all comes together in this crazy encounter where Lucky, being bold as always, follows Bolan down a zip line into another building, separating from the party. And then Kate, in attempting to follow Zephyr, in an attempt to follow, the zip line gets cut by the boss. She falls. And I mean, it's hurt so bad what an amazing yeah amazing encounter anyway i'm just i'm going blow by blow through like what happened you tell me what your kind of takeaways were from that whole uh that whole episode you know and this happens all the time uh as a gm when you're reading these pre-written adventures you read

this and you're like wow if if what we do is anything as cool as what they've set up here, that would be amazing. But what often happens is everyone gets pushed into a corner and you're just kind of stabbing each other and die. Full attack action, full attack action, full attack action. And I think it's a testament to 2E, the three action economy really opens things up,

less attacks of opportunity, more chances to double move without spending your whole turn to still get an attack off. That action economy allows you to really explore the space. And we were feeling this like back in the play test. We're like, wow, you get so much more room for tactical combat. in 1E. Once it's five PCs, four PCs against one enemy, usually it's like, well, all right, set your watch, set your stopwatch. This is about to be over. Not so with Tui. That jump between a second level character fighting a bunch of first level, that guy can hang. He's got some stuff he can do. And he really showed it. Obviously, the environment helped out a lot, having the trap go off for Talitha, having the rope get cut and Zephyr to fall.

I mean, there's so many different ways you guys could have attacked this combat. There's a world where you don't go to that water tower room first, right? Bolan slides down there and he knows what not to step on. On the pipes. Yeah. So then Lucky goes down there and then Lucky could get lit up by that trap, which her and Zephyr got lit up by earlier. But now Zephyr is like, excuse me, Lucky would be unconscious in that room from all the damage or whatnot. And maybe then Bolan has a hostage situation. I mean, there's so many different ways that could work. And then obviously you guys left the Fox out there and we saw what happened with that i mean just just wild i'm so glad the way it worked out and i'm glad we didn't get hung up too much on the little things like uh buggles and brother ramius's climb checks like the momentum of the moment everything just felt right um you know we may have not pitched a

perfect game uh but it felt right for our group and And it was the kind of thing where everyone was just on board with everything that was happening, which was really cool. It was a real game changer. It's kind of a turning point moment for the series too, because I think there's a sentiment amongst a lot of people that thinks that maybe this is starting a little slower. Go back and listen to Giant Slayer. That one started slow too. The difference is maybe you're expecting out of the gate, something big. Well,

it's kind of all building to this. And then we have a turning point that happens in episode 15 that just kind of is going to set off for the rest of the series. And we've already recorded 16, 17, 18, 19. You know,

what's coming up, you know, how vastly different this is and how things have now changed. Yeah. Yeah. It's geez. I don't know what to go into next, but I'm just going to say, we will talk about, you know, we did not pitch a perfect game. We do have notes from Professor Eric, but it's nothing too crazy. Like it's nothing that made me go, oh God, this really, this really took away the legitimacy of the encounter, the way it was played,

the way lucky was handled, nothing like that. It's all things that did not really have that much of an impact, but we will go through a few of those in, in our, we are stupid segment, but let's get to the start of episode 15 where the shit really goes down. So spoiler warning here,

we, at the start of the ep, know that Lucky has to make a rather routine recovery check in order to stay alive. But we also know that the way that the battlefield ended up shaking out, the zipline being cut, Talitha breaking the bridge accidentally between the other two buildings. Your primary healers are Brother Ramius and Buggles. Buggles is at the bottom of a rope, you know, hanging over the ground really far away. And Brother Ramius is in a building that is completely unattached, disattached from the buildings and areas where Lucky is. So it looks like healing is going to be really difficult. Maybe can't get there in a full round. Well, let's see what happens. First, she has to pass that first recovery check anyway. Boom. Natural one. I'm going to quote Mr. Desticato from YouTube, who wrote in the comments,

during 25 plus years of gaming. I was thinking the same quote. I didn't know who wrote it, but that's what I thought of. During 25 plus years of gaming, I was thinking the same quote. I didn't know who wrote it, but that's what I thought of. During 25 plus years of gaming, it's become evident to me that sometimes it's just faded for some characters to die. You can feel it coming as a player when all the roles just turn ice cold

and nothing works. Looking forward to see what Sid comes up with next. But yeah, that summed up for me what is a series of unfortunate events that lead to this death. Now, like you just said, the way this encounter is set up, the way that the area is set up, there could be a million different ways any one of us could die. Zephyr could have easily died on that fall. And so it wasn't necessarily that it was only lucky, but there are these events that add up.

But the first thing that I want to point out is the real culprit here, right? You could put a lot of different culprits out there, but who scored the winning goal? That would be that bullshit fox. The GWG. Talk to me about this fox. When this fox first comes up, I'm seriously at the table like, like oh like i kind of feel bad because it comes up and it sniffs it's well i considered it to be an animal companion to this other druid we also suspected it may be a druid that's wild shaped we don't really know well it comes out and kills

lucky essentially yeah what's the story with this fuck fox? Well, dude, when you one-shot the Oak Steward, and I had that role-playing moment with the fox coming out, my goal in that moment was to make you go, aw. Little did I know that it would land the killing blow, but I knew that its story was not finished. Do you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Now, maybe there's a world where you defeat Bolan and you never come over there and then i just don't worry about the fox but the way it's set up the whole time i'm thinking like that fox knows that its master's killer it's a companion's killer is out there and then sees it all go down i mean it's just the story it's. It's so beautiful in how random and tragic it is.

You have this whole crazy battle. You finally defeat the boss. He gives up, surrenders, and then you die like that. It's really, really cool. And it's a tough, tough creature. It is a level two creature, just as strong as Bolan in many ways. Yeah, brutal. Just a brutal way to go. At Wopa on YouTube says, why is everyone complaining about the fox attack? It was clearly fair and balanced. That's fun. We're having a good time. We're having a good time. It was heartbreaking. It's so weird and strange that it comes down to an animal companion. But when you think about, about there's a couple things you have to think about here one we killed its master right so i mean in one and

there's a world in which you're like you had it coming also when we look back i i'm going through these episodes to to run rundowns for fodder and i'm trying to get, you know, all these details. And by the time I'm re-listening to episode nine of campaign two, I'm already past recording episode 15. I know what happens to Lucky. And to go to episode nine, not be able to talk about it on the FOD, but be able to talk about it here. I actually put this in my notes for this episode two months ago when we were recording the FOD. And it's basically in episode nine, you talked about death coming for us. We all kind of did, that we could feel how dangerous this place was. And you specifically highlight Lucky because of some of her bad roles and say, quote, maybe you were meant to die.

Maybe you are meant to die. And he just like, it sticks out at you when you have that hindsight. And then in the very next episode, so you said, what if they didn't send off those traps? Well, here's what happened. They set off those traps. And then I, as Brother Ramius, wanted to go back up because I felt like they weren't going to rearm. I felt like now we could explore up there. So Lucky and Brother Ramius, she's like, I got to protect you because you're a weakling. We go up together and the two of us find the zip line. It might have been Zephyr found the zip line, but I don't think so. The two of us find the zip line and she starts talking about climbing up there.

And I'm like, well, I mean, that seems crazy to me. Like it's an inclined rope going into a building nobody knows about with none of your party. So we beg off of that. We walk around the other side and there is the doorway, the doorway where she fought Bolan, where he cast that spell like all around the door, all the plants and thorns and stuff like that. She opens up that door or Brother Amos actually finds the door. We open up that door and she looks across at the path out into the open plaza. And it is Sydney.

Cause I'm like, we should go out there and then we can circle back and meet up with them that way. And she says, no, you should not go out there. Let's turn back and closes the door. If Sydney at that point said you should go out there,

we would have been in an encounter with the Oak Stewart and the Fox. And most likely we would have been in an encounter with the Oak Stewart and the Fox. And most likely, we would have survived that encounter. And the Fox would not be there when we go around to fight Bolan, you know, so all these little decisions. So I think back to that decision she made, I'm like, it's all this, you know, these series of events, the butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo, right? Like all these little things that come together to make what happened happen. All those misses. I mean, she was standing toe to toe with Bolan and just could not hit him.

And, you know, it's written for him to surrender at a certain point. I'm trying to stay true to that because there's certain information I want him to give. Obviously, Talitha took matters into her own hands, which made that difficult. A topic for another day. A topic for another day, but I'm trying to stay close to that, and I'm looking. I'm like, she's just got to land one hit, I think. One good lucky hit, and he puts his hands up.

But it just didn't work out, and it forced her to kind of fall back. He starts to catch Shillelagh, and now you think back like the first Shillelagh. How brutal that was. And you see Shillelagh come out again. You're like, no! We've had so many get shillelagh and now you think back like the first shillelagh how brutal that was and you see shillelagh come out again you're like no we've had so many different shillelaghs you think it's going to happen and then zephyr pow pow after you think zephyr is like out of the combat and then this fading fox it's a fading fox by the way it's a creature two which whereas the basic oak stewards were creature zeros. This is a, a creature to,

Oh, so this Fox is particularly tough. Yeah. And its whole thing is that it sneaks up on you and does sneak attack damage. And that was the sneak attack damage is what took her down. And because she was wounded, one went straight to dying to a one or a two kills her.

She rolls the one you can't, you can't write that you can't, you can't. Well, let me ask you. In that moment, whatever it is, it's 27, 28 minutes into the episode when we finally get to that roll because we're building it up. We're banting, whatever. Yeah.

What are you rooting for in that moment as Troy just sitting there? Were you like, oh, this would be a great time to set the campaign on a set of tone for this campaign with a character death? Or were you like, Lucky's a great character. I want to keep her around. I don't want her to die on here. Did you think either of those directions? I said on the episode, like I was driving in and I hadn't thought about it because we recorded 14 and then we were driving. And we seem like we were out of it.

You see what the encounter's over. And I just like hadn't thought about it. And that was just going over stuff in my head. And I was like, well, she's got to roll that recovery. She'll be fine. They're always fine. We've rolled that check a million times. You're always fine.

I'm going to roll a natural one. And then as we got closer to that moment and we built it up so much with the band and everything, I was like, I feel like we're just pushing fate in one direction. But I was very, very torn because it's very early in the campaign. Lucky's story kind of hasn't been fully fleshed out yet. And so part of me is thinking like, oh man, I don't want to do that. I think there might be other shows that would be like, ah, just let her live. But no,

I just was like, let the dice tell the story. And if she dies, how cool is this going to be? And not to kind of pile on Sydney, but the emotion she showed at the table. If you're not a video watcher, if you just listen to podcasts, that's fine. But you should just try to tune in for that. We had a social media clip that hasn't come out yet that shows that moment.

It's so raw. It's so emotional. And the sort of like producer director in me, it's like watching a reality show. You're just like, yes. Like watching The Bachelor. Like, oh, she's sobbing. I love it. But I mean, I'm not, I don't want her to feel pain, but I just thought like how cool to be able to capture that moment and everything after composing herself and dealing with, I mean, it was just, it's a really, really cool moment to

be able to see live happen at a table, you know, even though it's prerecorded, like we got it all from multiple angles, that moment of the die doing it. When Frances made the edit, the first cut of the video edit, I watched it and the camera stayed on Sydney and then cut to another Sydney shot. But I went in and tweaked it because I remember specifically sitting at the table and watching Skid reaction because skids sitting right next to her uh die box so i tweaked it ever so slightly so that you see like her roll it and then i maybe it's like before she reacts we see skid just like she well she goes huh and she just kind of moves her mic out of the way and she bends over like over the edge of the table and you see skid look and then from his

reaction you really know what happened immediately. It's Skid's reaction that really gives it away. It wasn't there. It wasn't there. And I was just like, I remember it happening. So I just like, I moved the video ever so slightly. It was just kind of pulling. When you see skid and then it goes into Sydney.

So what? I mean, it was just, you'd love that. The fact that this is all like live and improvised. It's so fucking cool because this is the kind of stuff you see on scripted television. It was just a really, really, really cool moment. I hate to like toot our own horn so too much, but it's just, it's beautiful when things like that can happen. Obviously tragic, but it shows you what emotions you can evoke with a role-playing game, with a game. Sure, sure. And I don't think it's tooting our own horns at all.

I think what we're talking about here is this goes to everybody. I mean, this goes to Paizo. This goes to the development of the rules. This goes to the crafting of the AP. You know what I mean? The crafting of this encounter. It all played out in such a way that it's so dramatic at the moment that that die has to be rolled.

And for it to go that way, I mean, we talked about last Friday on the Blood of the Wild stream that die has to be rolled and for it to go that way i mean we talked about last friday on the on the blood of the wild stream that we did friday night if you haven't checked that out check it out on twitch vod we're like ultimately when we look back at the entire year of blood of the wild the most memorable moments and the things that have us like just looking back and saying how awesome the game is are the failures it is always the failures that you end up talking about so you know just just think about that when you when you get frustrated with your own game i think every once in a while it's like the epic fails are the things you remember the most and and you'll look back on fondly you know uh one day uh but

that one is yeah particularly beautiful to be able to have captured on video. And what a great thing. I mean, obviously, it sucks for Sidney. It sucks for Lucky, that character. But I think the group needed that. You know what I mean? It's going to really bring this group together. Because, yes, they've known each other now for a couple months, two, three months. They've been working together.

They share this common thing where they walked through gates, have lost time, have no memory of this, have brands on their body and all these powers. Having one of their own perish, I think, is going to really change the trajectory of this group. If you were scripting this, this is what you'd do.

You know what I mean? The group really, I think, needed this to kind of tie them together in a new way. And, I mean, there's nothing better than bringing in a new character. Yeah, it's so exciting. So we will see what happens. Let's move on to We Are Stupid. And just go through a few things here.

Thank you so much to Professor Eric for reviewing Over the Holidays and writing this all out. We really appreciate it. for reviewing over the holidays and writing this all out. We really appreciate it. Let's lighten the mood a little bit and go back to Skid's complaints about the psychic. You probably don't remember the details of these, but we can sum it up very simply. Skid was talking about his oscillating wave psychic ability

and that when he amps his cantrips, they are statistically worse than when he doesn't amp them. He's like, something must be wrong here. One of them, right? Like the frost one was okay, but the fire one wasn't or vice versa. I think that they were both not great. But whatever. In either case, Professor Eric agrees and lays out exactly what happened here.

It's not that it's an error. It's just that the lowest level, at first level, the average of the un-amped version is better than the average of the amped version. The amped version has more ability to get higher, but the average still is in the favor of the lower level version or the AMP version. You have to get to level three and to get it heightened before the AMP starts to outpace the regular. And so that just doesn't make any sense. Well, that's all pre remaster in the remaster. It is all shifted and been changed. for the Dark Archive specifically about this ability that Skid pointed out that has rebalanced it so that the amped version is definitively better than the regular. They have removed the

ability bonus to damage from all cantrips across all casting classes. Now it's just sort of 2D for all this stuff. It's 2D4 instead of 1D4 plus your casting ability. So instead of 1D4 plus 4, it's 2D4. That isn't as good, but you're talking about cantrips here. These are things you're supposed to be able to spam. What the Amped does is gives you another die, and it increases its range.

I think it doubles the range of the spell. So that's pretty cool. So you could utilize your, it's now called Ignition instead of Produce Flame, and Frostbite instead of Ray of Frost. And you will get 120 feet range on that. You'll bump up the die a great deal. And so, yeah, there's a – he sent a link along too and I sent that all to Skid.

So hopefully that pans out, which would be nice to see that upgrade. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, because I know he was feeling that for a while and he talked about it and we waited so long to bring it back up. But, you know, hopefully that gives him some clarity. Yeah. Do you – let's see. Oh, so this one's interesting.

Casting while climbing. This is a corner case, he says, that every table will have their own ruling most likely but climb by the book requires both hands to be free unless you have combat climber or some ancestry feat somatic requires both hands to be free okay somatic requires the ability to gesture freely but does not require a free hand personally he's saying his ruling would say you can't gesture freely while climbing. You ruled the other way, but he could see it going both ways. But just one thing he wanted to point out is like climbing does by the book require two hands. And so I don't know if you can cast while climbing, but I thought it made for a great moment reaching down Brother Ramius casting heel on Zephyr.

That was big for my own personal reasons that unfortunately haven't come out yet because I haven't written my backstory stuff. But it was – that was in a moment that he felt like he had to climb down that rope and had to heal an injured ally even if it was really risky and stupid and dangerous. He had to. And I'm glad that you had to um and i'm glad that you let it happen and i'm totally happy with the way it all played out so as written you could interpret that as also like you can't climb with a weapon in your hand correct you'd have to like put it in your team either way you're gonna stow it either way you gotta sheath quote unquote and then another action to read to draw the weapon after that's why there's a feat called

combat climber it means you only need one hand to climb and you can hold a weapon in your other hand And then another action to draw the weapon after. That's why there's a feat called Combat Climber. It means you only need one hand to climb and you can hold a weapon in your other hand. Is there something like that for casting? Not that I've seen. Yeah, I'm in the camp usually like if there's a feat that you can take that is supposed to do what we're just giving for free, then I don't like doing it. But it's interesting that there's one for fighters and maybe not one for casters. It'd be something to look into. If there was one for casting that's like

climbing caster, then I'd be more apt to not do that anymore. Make you take that feat. But it certainly wasn't game-breaking. I love that you're holding on. You could also up the DC. I want to climb with my sword in my hand.

Okay. Well, now I'm going to make a roll climb check, and the DC is going to be five higher. Yep. There's a lot of different ways you can play around with it. Or you could leave the DC the same and be like, if you fail, you fall, as opposed to critically fail. And if you succeed, you can do it. Like you could pitch it that way, too. Drop the weapon mid-climb.

Or casting, 20% spell failure or something, because you don't have – Oh, that's like back to 1E. You don't even have percentage dice in 2E, which is wild. But everybody's got 2D10s. We have them in our box, right? We got them in the box. A little dusty at the table, but – I think what you would be looking for then is a DC5 flat check, right?

Yeah, that's – By 2E pylons. You'd be like, it's a DC5 flat check for you to not drop the or to uh have the spell fail yeah it's kind of like being um what is it called uh not clumsy the uh when you're stupid stupefied stupefied yeah like a little bit like stupefied rules you got to pass a flat check or you lose the spell. Stupid climber. You dumbass climber. That would be a funny feat. Genius climber. Right.

What is this? What? All right. Let's – a couple more little ones here. Apparently, I may have skated by doing four actions in a round. I climbed 10 feet. I think what we did is I climbed 10 feet and we called that one action. But you can only climb 5 feet unless you crit. So I climbed 10 feet, got up

and then cast a two action spell. However, he says within the rule of cool, trying to keep players engaged to the game I'd overlook that. It's not a really big deal at all. Yeah, I was already being pretty lax with the climbing because I didn't want to bog the game down in climbing. Totally. Mainly for the sense, for the reason that a natural one was the only thing that was going to make you fall.

And I don't know, it just seemed anticlimactic in that moment. Okay. There's too much else going on. I agree with you. All right. So this is another one. I got to send this off to Kate. He says the key strike ability would not apply to her second action, which was the non-Flurry of Blows action.

The key strike only applies on the single action used as part of key strike. He said in this case, it missed, so it didn't matter. But the key strike includes the Flurry of Blows because that's only one action. But she still has her third action. She can use another action after that to attack again. The key strike doesn't apply on that. So I'll just make sure she – You should always use key strike on Flurry of Blows because you get it on two attacks.

Exactly. Exactly. And then finishing up on episode 14, he said it was nice to see the correction on the monastic archer stance, that movement doesn't end it. And so he's like that that was great uh he's like perhaps the early fods have caught up to the recordings yeah we're getting there yeah we're finally getting there but uh similar for wounded death and dying uh that was all kind of handled he said by the book so that's great um oh and then the only other thing the only note he has on episode 15 which is obviously the epic like hope we didn't do this wrong nothing wrong there and he said he really think everybody covered everything well during the only note he has on episode 15, which is obviously the epic, like, hope we didn't do this wrong. Nothing wrong there.

And he said he really think everybody covered everything well during the level up. He's really excited about everybody's choices. He think everybody did a great job and everybody described their abilities correctly. He did say that I mentioned that I got another spell slot, but it doesn't really matter to talk about it because I have access to all spells. You know, he was just like, I think you might have, I think you know, he says to me, I think you know this as a rule, but you might have glazed over it to people that are like learning the game. That doesn't mean that you can cast any spell.

You still have to pick one each day to prepare from that list in that slot. You know, you can't just cast the spell you need at the time you need it. And we do, we do know that. So just to be clear, even though you have access to the whole divine spell list for clerics of your level, you do have to prepare a spell each day. So thank you,

professor Eric. Let's get on to a little listener mail. Let's talk about what the niche wants to talk about. What? The who? It's time to listen to mail. You gotta get your phone out the phone in time. Listen to mail.

You gotta cue that fucking mail. I cannot wait to end this episode because I'm out of my routine and I forgot my water and I'm dying up here. I've been talking for 45 minutes. I'd have water and do like I threw this shirt on. I've got like you tell I have nine kids. I've got like baby spit here. Might be dad spit. It might be dad spit.

I literally sat down to record with you and I had a white T-shirt on underneath here and it was covered in AG1 juice because I drank my AG1 this morning. And this is a plug. I'm actually using it and I spilt it like a fucking pig. And it was all just green juice. I'm like, God, I look like a hobo. And now I've still got some spittle here or something. We're a mess. We're unprepared.

We're a mess. We're unprepared. We're just ramping back up. Next week, we'll be so smooth and polished, man. There's that fog next week. All right, let's take it to the niche and to our buddy Sean Cochran from Naples, New York. What's up, Sean? Writes in, long-time listener, love the show.

With Campaign 2 and the major push for higher production quality, were there any concerns about losing that friends playing around the table vibe and now that you're a good number of episodes in have you felt any loss of casualness any loss of the casualness that made giant slayer so great it's interesting i've seen this comment pop up um on on our various communities that like it so some people are like, it doesn't have that Friends at the Table vibe. And other people are like, what are you talking about? Of course it does.

And I'm trying to really get to the root of that critique because for me, it feels very Friends at the Table. I mean, we've really grown close. One of the reasons I wanted this cast to be the tour cast is because that time we spend together traveling helps sort of galvanize our our friendships the the the stories that we share we share together and we bring that to the table we never had that with giant slay we're just very lucky that like it was a group of

five dudes that just got along and enjoyed playing games in similar ways um now we're like legit friends i think that there's because it looks so polished i think that might uh the visual aspects of it might sort of uh what's the word i'm looking for combat the uh the feeling of friends at the table but wouldn't you agree that like it it feels very loose at the table yes yes i would 100 agree i think i mean you're also talking about there's a lot of different ways to approach this but what i will say is i agree with everything you've said so far and uh you know people forget that about giant slayer we've mentioned it before but like when we started giants we became friends during giant slayer like not when giant slayer

started you know skid had never really played with Matthew, you know, before that time. I had never really played with Grant. You had never played with Grant. So there was an evolution that took place over years with that show to build those friendships. Similarly, we've taken the same amount of time with at least Sydney, who, you know, we've been working with for almost five years now playing games with. It's crazy. Similarly, Kate, you know, at least three years playing games regularly with Kate. And that's why they were brought in to, you know, to do this with us. You know, what's funny is if you think about it, you know, you and I have had this conversation over and over again. The high production quality, the return to the studio, all of that, everything that we did, the handcrafted table we had built, it was all to get us back around the table.

Like the whole effort that we put into that was because we felt we were losing some of the casualness when we were remote that that was being alone in a room with a camera pointed at you and lights in your face kind of felt detached and uh it it was something we wanted to get back around the table and the high production quality has no impact on it the game whatsoever no, it would if we decided we wanted to make a show that was like scripted, right? Like we wanted to make a show that was like, oh, well, we want to put on a show that has a great story that's kind of like manipulated a little bit. It's inspired by the game, but it's really more us kind of like putting out a story we want to put out. Then yeah, that would lose what Giant Slayer had. To me, this really has all of it

because the way that it's set up, the cameras are hidden, the lights are so mild. You don't feel like you're on a stage when you're around that table at all. This was the concept from the beginning is I really wanted it to feel like it was just cameras watching people play a game.

Like we're natural performers, so everything's going to be a little bit heightened for the cameras, sure. But ultimately, I wanted the cameras to be far away so that it was just kind of like a documentary, a fly on the wall viewing of people playing a game. It looks great, but really all of that is in service to being around a table together and the energy that you have around a table.

That's why we didn't record any episodes of Giant Slayer remotely during COVID. I was like, I don't want to do Giant Slayer until we can be in the room together, because that changes everything. That's not to say remote shows can't be great and that you can't have great chemistry. We've proven that that's possible, but there's something different about being in a room together and being around a table. And that's what this is about. And I just want to give people the perspective of what it looks like for me sitting around that table.

You don't see the cameras. There is one moving camera. There is a person in the room, one person in the room that's shooting who dresses in all black and is basically invisible to us during the taping of the show. And everybody else is kind of offset. You know what I mean? Like, you don't see people and you're putting cameras in your face. It just doesn't happen. And that was all to kind of maintain that vibe. If anything, everybody is so much more excited. We have the best gaming situation we have ever had. You know, like I know people appreciate the rawness of, of giant Slayer in a lot of ways, but like, let's not

forget these mic, the mics that we're using around that table, they're the same mics we were using a giant Slayer, literally the exact, not the same make and model, the same microphones. Like it was just a podcast that didn't have a video component. Now it's a podcast that has a video component. And if you're going to do the video component, you want to do it right, you want to have the right lighting, otherwise, it just looks bad. And so yeah, there's a couple extra, quote, unquote, high production things that go into it. But it does not, in my mind, take away from the rawness of it. Nothing is scripted. Nothing is prepared, because we want to make it look better on TV. You know, I mean, obviously, look what Sidney wears to set. It's ridiculous. Most, you know, most shows like ours, I think they use boom mics or shotgun mics so that you

don't even see the microphones on camera. And we talked about doing that. But at the end of the day, and Joe is a big catalyst for this, it's like, let's go back to using the mics that we use, even though it doesn't look as sexy, because then we're making sure the podcast is always of the highest quality. For people that don't watch the video, the podcast will always be of the highest quality. You're not going to get that with overhead mics. It will look better, but ultimately, this is kind of like a documentary of people filming a podcast. Yes. That's what it's meant to be.

And I think there are a lot of people that maybe are discouraged that we're not doing more things with the visual. We're not showing more dice rolling or more stuff with the map. And that's all intentional, really trying to focus on six friends playing a game together and six friends learning a game together as well. We don't stop a lot. Or not learning it. Or not learning it. You know, one of the reasons I don't stop a lot to like look up a rule is because I

want it to really reflect what a home game is like, where it's like, all right, let's look this up real quick. And we're talking and it's like, oh, I got it right here. You know, I want that to be a part of the show because I want it to feel authentic. We could easily cut that all out and have a heavily edited thing. And I think people are discouraged sometimes that it isn't that. But this is only what, episode 15? This show is going to evolve.

We're going to start incorporating new techniques and always looking to innovate and do cool new things. But everything that we've done so far has been in service to creating a situation where it's a bunch of friends sitting around a table playing a game for an hour and a half. And don't forget how much Giant Slayer evolved, not just in our friendships, but also we used maps and minis for a long time and then converted to using virtual tabletops. We were in apartments, then we were in a studio. We were taping a podcast that we didn't know if anyone would listen to ever. And then, in not that long of a time, we knew a lot of people we didn't know were listening to it.

So, you know, it's not really as if, now, could you say, are we losing some of the casualness that we had in the first 10 episodes of giant of giant slayer sure maybe because like we didn't have anything then but by the time we were six months in we knew that there was a large audience listening to this and that we were everything that we would do would get scrutinized like that hasn't changed for many many many years so if you like the whole last 280 episodes of Giant Slayer, then we're kind of in that same zone. And I know that I'm having more fun and more relaxed with this group around this table in one room than I have been since we went remote, and it's been so fun. So I'm really, really happy. So Sean, thanks for asking the question. I do. I picked it because I do think it's on a lot of people's minds. Yeah. And I do think again, to just project thoughts into other people's minds.

I think it's very easy to a, be a little jaded, right. To, I've been, oh my God, I can never remember this word. I forgot it on fodder last time too.

When you, when you live in New York too long and you are too cynical, you can be very cynical about once these friends are doing kind of a high production thing that's put on YouTube and gets 10,000 views when it goes up. Oh, well, they must not be their real selves. And there must be so much fake stuff happening behind the scenes. and things must not be what they appear. And I can appreciate that. I mean, I'm a cynic myself. Believe me, I don't trust that things are as nice and as easy as they seem.

I can tell you for a fact that like that's just not the case. This is just a very I feel more like our old game now than than I have since COVID. So it's great to be back in there and doing it this way. have since COVID. So it's, it's great to be back in there and doing it this way. Yeah. I mean, a couple of weeks ago, Sydney and Kate were at my house in a bounce house that we rented jumping around with a couple of cocktails with Joe's children. Yeah. Like don't, don't spill that box of soda on my child. We're all friends. You know, you can, you can be a business and be focused on growth and expansion, Well, friends, you can be a business and be focused on growth and expansion and all that without losing your soul of wanting to make a good show around authenticity.

Those two things need not be mutually exclusive. And it's something that we're constantly aware of and trying to fight against because it would be very easy to lose that as you grow. And maybe for a time we did as we were expanding very rapidly. to fight against because it would be very easy to lose that as you grow. And maybe for a time we did as we were expanding very rapidly. But I think that this show, as it continues to grow and evolve, you're going to see so much of a return to its roots while also growing into new and exciting areas. Agreed. The last thing I'll say, just to put a button on it, talking about episode 15, what we're doing, the high, again, quote unquote, high production values. I don't mean to keep putting that in quotes, but when we look at other productions, I see way higher production values on other things. Like what we're doing is what we're able to do. We could do way, way more in terms of production value. Yeah. is what we're able to do. We could do way, way more in terms of production value. The high production value that you see from this show is to make it look good for you

because we want you to be able to see what we see and to be in there with us while we do our podcast. Over the years of Giant Slayer, it was great and we shared the story of that campaign. But the one thing we couldn't share was what it looked like when I leapt out of my chair and stormed out of a room because of a fail. Or when I threw a die against a wall. You could imagine it, but we couldn't share it. The ability to share what happened to Sydney in episode 15 of the show and have that be for everyone to be a part of is so meaningful.

And like you said during the earlier segment, so real and authentic and emotional and to capture that was great. And what I've learned in my short time here is that to capture good video and to have it be good, you have to have really good lighting and you have to have real. And if you don't, you're just not going to capture it. And so that's why there's so much that goes into this just so that it looks normal to you. And that's what we want to capture is, is you guys, if you want to, you can listen to the show all you want and, and never look at the video and then get a chance if you want, pop over to YouTube just to watch Sydney's reaction. Cause you heard it first and now you want to see what it looked like. We love to get it. We love being able to give you that option so that's thank you sean for the question and i hope that uh

yeah you continue to uh be a fan and enjoy the uh the the gaming around the table which we were always shooting for right uh i'm gonna wrap it up dude i think that's it oh man i can talk for another hour and a half but uh we actually do we have to meet in like two hours and talk business for an hour it's true but uh it was great uh great to just you know reconnect get everybody back together and uh oh yeah this is gonna come in so loud sorry um yeah uh it's great getting back to the fought two weeks off was nice but now it's great to be back to connect to talk about the apps big one coming up new character what is going to happen can't wait to uh hang out with you guys next week and talk about it until then watch troy's vod if you missed it which you probably did watch me live tonight 8

p.m eastern on uh at the glass cannon and then friday live 2 p.m eastern glass cannon labs deadlands lots going on on twitch check it it out. And of course, YouTube premiere, episode 16, tomorrow night, 8 p.m. Eastern. All right, guys. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. Bye. Keep waving. Thanks for listening to the Glass Cannon Network network for more podcasts and live streams visit glasscannonnetwork.com and for exclusive shows and content you can't find anywhere else Thank you.