The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 2/14/24

Episode Date: February 15, 2024

In the wake of the 2024 State of the Naish, Troy and Joe go live on this week's Fod to discuss the GCN's biggest plans for 2024 and answer questions directly from the Naish. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/K-vJttLAemE 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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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. Hello? Can you hear me? I can't hear you, Joe. Cannon fought alive, everything sucks. Well, I just want to let the niche know I wish them a happy Valentine's Day. Everybody on the audio podcast heard it, but the Twitch people didn't hear it. I'm sorry, Twitch people. I love you so much for coming out and hanging out with us live today.

It's a live fod, good buddy. Live fod. Yeah, and so it's going to have a few hiccups. I'm like, I'm in Discord, but I can't hear him. Let me quickly go in Discord. He's not in Discord. Oh, he's just muted, like the easiest fix. Just straight up muted to the audience.

But hey, this is what happens when you go live. We're here. But yeah, nobody noticed it in the podcast, so it doesn't matter. What's up, everybody? What's up, Jen with two Ns and wide-gestured six-gun Joe? Thank you for hanging out and watching live today. We had to do a very special live FOD. Troy hit me up last week. He's like, yo, post State of the Nation, we got to have a little fallout live FOD stream. And I was like, I'm in. And here we are. We're going to do it live. We're doing it live. We're doing it live.

We're doing it live. Because, you know, we want to go back over some of this State of the Nation stuff in case you missed it, audio listeners, and give you a chance to hear the news straight from Troy and I. And then also we'll take live feedback and questions from the chat. We're also going to just – we're going to talk about some other news that's going on. We're going to talk about Glass Cannon news that's going on. We're going to talk about a glass cannon podcast episode, whatever it is, 21, 21.

I think. Yeah. Yeah. Episode 21 of gate walkers. We got a chunky. We are stupid. Listener mail, I think is all going to be live.

This is going to be a really, really fun show. So thank you all for, for coming out and, and hanging out with us. Troy, you, you just got off streaming.

You were, you were just streaming with all uh troy you you just got off streaming you were you were just streaming uh with all these fine folks watching you dude this has been a weird week like it is just from 9 a.m monday until right now it's just been like i'm still wearing everything down to the my the same underwear that i was wearing during the state of the nation all i've done is change my background color it's just it is so non-stop now all I do is play video games the past two hours, but that was great. And then I just come straight into this. It's kind of crazy, but it's fun. Like it doesn't feel too stressful. I've been like front loading my weeks a lot

lately. So that Thursday and Friday, I used to like backload them. And then I would just dread the work all week. I've been front loading them. So. So then just Monday is horrible and Tuesday is kind of bad. But then I can kind of coast through the rest of the week. That's awesome, man. Well, how was the stream? How was the Baldur's Gate 3 stream? Dude, it's great. It was good times?

So, you know, I finished Act 1. And at a certain point in Act 1, you kind of have two options. This is kind of a little spoiler-y. To get to the next portion, you can either go through the Underdark or go through the Mountain Pass. And I uncovered two ways to go to the Mountain Pass, but I was like, I want to do the Underdark. So I did the entire Underdark, and I kept going to the Underdark, and then I just ended up in the next area. Well, I've been exploring that next area, the ruined battlefield, Act 2, for, I don't know, four or five hours now. And I found a way to the Mountain Pass. And I'm like, holy shit, I've't know, four or five hours now. And I found a way to the mountain pass.

And I'm like, holy shit, I got to go back to act one because it's basically back to act one. But there's kind of an important set point for one of the characters in my party, this Githyanki. And so I'd become close with her. We were having sex and then I broke it off. I finally broke it off with her. And so I was like, I got to at least do this.

And then maybe I can just leave her there and be like, see ya. On the other side of the mountain pass. I'm thinking it's going to be like super lame because i'm like at this point i'm so over leveled for this i my wizard just unlocked fourth level spells it's like mind-blowing how powerful these spells are now uh you know greater invisibility and shit and i'm like all right i guess i'll because the completionist in me is like i gotta do it all immediately run into a fight with ghouls ghasts and uh these i can't remember skeletal fart like dead farmers or whatever they're called and uh get like annihilated and i'm like well let's start that fight again because ghouls they only have 22 hit points that save but you get

paralyzed and then they just kill kill kill kill kill and i was like fuck we gotta play this and it brought me back to end of strange aeons mrs o lady fight against the ghouls every time that you guys fought ghouls how nasty that paralysis can be it really felt played uh perfectly like like a tabletop game in the way balder's gate did it so it's end up being a cool stream. That's awesome. That's great. Well, we got obviously tons and tons to talk about today. I'm going to slip in a couple news items before we dig back into the state of the nation.

Also, Paula Deming here in chat. What's up, Paula? PD! Getting her Baldur's Gate 3 stream spoiled by you. We are excited to share that the Marvel stream, or not stream, the Marvel video

has an audio-only element that released today. We said last week we thought it would be about a week and it's out, right? It's out. It's on the subscription service. I think it's out.

I think it's out. I think it's out. The subscription service we're going to talk about shortly just had like a massive dump of more content. Hundreds and hundreds of hours of more content. So it's out the subscription service we're going to talk about shortly just had like a massive dump of more content hundreds and hundreds of hours of more content so it's possible that marvel got thrown in there i know the plan was to release it today and it got held up because i had to like rewrite the description that was the only reason uh but i think that so keeping yeah keeping your out for it you could find it there if you want to listen to that that was

really fun and then we talked a lot about it in the weeks leading up. But last Friday night, we played Rambo at a comedy club in New York City. And it was hilarious. And it was fantastic. And I had an amazing time. And it was captured, as far as I know. They taped it. So word on the street is this is going to be out at some point.

You didn't watch some of the video? I did not watch any of the video. How was it? I mean, I started watching it. I was like, the you didn't watch some of the video i did not watch any of the video how was it i mean it i started watching and i was like i can't i just can't watch it like you had i feel like you had to be there um i just didn't want to sit through it's still so fresh but i mean the energy in that room you know everyone was on top of each other like we're sitting on a comedy stage that's meant for one single comic and it's like five of us up there with our laptops tables tables, shoulder.

And the audience is right here. There's a woman knitting in the front row. It's very strange crowd. But I mean, yeah, it was just an electric experience that I hope you'll be able to capture in video. I started watching.

It was like, I can't, I can't watch this. Well, we'll see if it, if it is available for you guys to check out, we'll let you know where to, to view it, to listen to it, to find it, etc.

All right. Let's get in to the state of the nation. First impressions after revealing all of this news. And we'll go back over it as we go through. But, you know, how did you feel? How did you feel about how it all went? How was it received? What were the reactions like? Good, bad, the ugly.

Talk to me about it. I feel like it was received really well. It's not like I was concerned about how it'd be received, because in the past, State of the Nation has been kind of, you know, very controversial, like everything that happens whenever I open my mouth. But, you know, I think the thing that I was most concerned about is that we didn't have, compared to like past State of the Nations, there weren't like huge announcements of like big new projects pertaining to content. In the past State of the Nations, we'd be like, and we're doing this and we're doing this and we're releasing this. And that's really – that wasn't what this was about. This was to kind of give a look back at the past year, kind of reminisce a little bit, and then talk about

this year's tour, the big changes to the subscription service, and then kind of like the other business as usual things that we're doing. And then other big things that we're excited about, the retreat that is like 90% going to happen, and also the changes to the Gen Con booth that we've been kicking around. So like, it's a lot of exciting stuff, but it's much different from like, and we're doing a 40 episode Star Wars show. You know, it didn't have that like appeal. But, you know, what's nice about it is like, these are things that we feel very, very confident about announcing now. And, you know, there's a lot of exciting stuff on the horizon. So I think people are excited. Nashville was pretty big news.

The Nashville tour stop is not your average. It's not your grandfather's tour stop. Why don't you talk about that for a second? Holy shit. We're already getting questions about it in chat, left and right. Yeah, you know, I don't want to kick it. So like this is something I've wanted to do for a while. You know, we obviously wanted to do the con, and the con is just such a massive project that we don't have – we'd be taking time away from content production to focus on that. So we've got to wait for the timing that is right on that.

And also we need strategic partners that can make sure that we don't sink the business trying to build this con idea. But we really like that idea of bringing the community together. And so I thought like maybe we can pull this off with smaller retreats. And so when we were kicking around what cities to do this year, you and I especially were like, man, I really want to go back to Nashville. But like Nashville, we did two years ago and we didn't sell it out, but it was on a Thursday night, still very close to COVID. And I was like, I think we could do Nashville again this year and we'd sell better. But like how do we make sure that we do a big city like that on a Saturday night and really bring it? What if we do a retreat and encourage people to travel out for the whole weekend and have one of the best fucking weekends of their life?

And so that's what we've been moving towards is like having a three--day two-night retreat in nashville at this amazing resort uh mcd like uh went out went out and like researched all the possible options for what we could do in nashville and and and presented like what he considered to be like a half a dozen of the best options and the one that we've settled on it's just it's just perfect so i'm flying out there next week to look at the site and it seems like we're going to be putting tickets on sale for this retreat next week.

It's happening. It's like, it's happening. We're going to sign the contracts, obviously. And if you don't come, we're going to have to, we're going to lose a lot of money. So please, please contact us. What are the dates?

Did you say that on this? I can't. It's Friday, June 21st through sunday june 23rd so you'll come in we fly in from where the fuck are we like two days vancouver or something i'm gonna say maybe in like vancouver coming from another show yeah we're coming from another show oh my god we'll fly into i think it's planned this it was me we'll fly into vancouver on like a wednesday do a show in Vancouver Thursday night. I think it's Vancouver.

I'll look in a second. And then the next day, we'll fly to Nashville in the morning. I don't think it's Vancouver. No, Vancouver goes to St. Paul. I can't. From Denver. Denver, thank you. All right, so we fly to Denver on a Wednesday, hang out with Rob Kirkavish and Skid's old buddies on Wednesday.

And then we do a show in Denver, sold out, I'm sure, Thursday night. And then Friday morning, we fly to Nashville and we start hanging with the nation. And Friday night is going to be like board games, living card games, cocktail party, pastoral hors d'oeuvres, the whole nine yards, meet and greet. And then the next morning is going to be probably more tabletop games with, I'm sure, more board games. We're going to be like bringing and aggregating a bunch of board games and Magic the Gathering and all that shit. We'll play that Saturday and then fucking Luxury Bus pulls up, brings everybody to the VIP meet and greet.

Because if you get the tickets to retreat, it comes with a VIP meet and greet ticket. You'll come to the meet and greet, which is now before the show for this year's tour. Then you watch the show. Bus comes comes back a little late night sip and then the next morning you have a bagel and you get the fuck out of there get a bagel and hit the road just a disaster of a human being but it was but it was all worth it uh paul is in by the way paula says invite me paul do you like board games by any chance we can give it to you at cost no well oh man uh this this is going to be a really fun weekend especially if we start just like randomly pulling in all these gc ed personalities well dude that's kind of like

the if this is a kickstarter that's the stretch goal right like if it's 60 if it goes really well we could try and get some more rooms you know because we want to make sure we get like the rooms that don't make us eat shit like here's our room block once we fill that up we can be like hey we get five more rooms hey can we get 10 more rooms hey oh you know what this is going really well think we can fly jared out think we can get paul demp they can get mary lou you know so like there's a there's a world where this gets big quicker than we're ready for but But ideally this is something that grows. And so when you come to a GCN retreat, like a ton of GCN personalities are there.

Who knows what's going to happen this year? I know that the Glass Cannon Live crew will be there because we have a show in Nashville Saturday night. Well, in case you were worried, Troy, Western Spaghetti and Chat got approval from the wife to go to Nashville. So that's one. That's one. That's one.

That's one. Well, it seems we put that's what, well, it seems that we got, we, we put up a poll or like a, not a poll, like a survey on a fucking discord a few weeks ago, kicking around this idea.

Cause it was like, if we're going to even move forward with this, we got to see if people would be willing to do this. Cause it's not cheap. It's going to be over $1,500, you know, to get to do this. And even more if you're single occupancy.

So make sure you buddy up with somebody. And so we wanted to get a feel if this would even work, and we got so many responses. I was like, let's press go. I think we can pull this off. So very, very exciting. Very, very, very exciting. We kind of glossed over it earlier. Those of you that don't know, if you are. So there's big news on the subscription service.

You teased it earlier. I'll sum it up because you've been talking for a while. Basically, everything, almost nearly everything that we've ever done that's ever been available, both out there in the world and behind the Patreon paywall, is now going to be available on Supercast in one way or another. It is going to be a one-stop shop for all the content GCN has ever made. And it's something that people have been asking a lot for, but it is an incredibly laborious, detailed thing to move all that content into one place.

And our team has been doing an amazing job, and it's underway, and most of it is already done. And things like ad-free Campaign One and Androids and Aliens and Voyagers of the Jump and all these shows that you could also get out on podcasts for free elsewhere. You will be able to all find it in one place under your membership on the GCN subscription service. If you go to jointhenation.com, you will find a quick and easy way to join up. If you're currently on Patreon, you can make that switch over, which I'd highly recommend. Can I share screen here? Does this work on Cannon Fodder? Yeah, it works on Fodder.

Go ahead. What are you sharing? Can you guys see this? It's coming in. Let's see. So that's what it looks like now. Like literally every show we've ever done is on there. Oh, look at all those logos.

Right? The Game Garage. Yeah. The Herod the Sand. No, not the Herod the Sand. I mean, so and on top of that, we also announced a 30-day free trial. So the basic and premium membership, anyone can try for free for 30 days. That's why it says free when you click there. And so like, if you're still, if you

haven't made the move from Patreon, I said this last night, you should use the free migration because you're going to lock in your prices from Patreon rather than go to the new prices. However, if you've never subscribed or if you subscribe to Patreon and you don't subscribe anymore, take advantage of the 30 day free trial, come back to us. And you'll see that like, this is honestly, I spend so much money on subscription services and cable.

I'm like, what am I doing? I don't need Netflix and Hulu and Amazon prime and fucking $300 a month of Verizon. This service, if you like what we do, I think it's better than all of them. We give you so much content and it's all great.

You know how much crap is on Netflix? Anyways. But for real, for real. I mean, Netflix is now what? Like $16.99 some months? Some months it's like $21.99. It's crazy how expensive it is. And how many hours are you consuming of Netflix

in a month versus what you're consuming on gcn content you know what i mean yeah i mean i like love is blind as much as the next guy but it's no gcp uh so anyway that is a very exciting thing to have up and running as particularly the free trial if you are on the fence if you've been listening to the new campaign too and you're kind of like uh well i want to try out this content but i want to do it for free first which is completely reasonable we finally have that option up and running and uh yeah so it's it's been fantastic so far and a huge thank you like i said to our whole team that has been uh all hands on deck putting that all together including mcd who's uh producing today and in the chat and thank you

so much mcd for dealing with all of the, you know, little bugs and stuff that happened with a, such a huge announcement and so many new things that are coming in. Any, any kind of like hinky stuff you guys are running into. We're, we're working on it and we're going to fix it.

So don't, don't worry about it. Yeah. Huge shout out to Michael. Who's been the, the one laboring to put all this content up there. You know, it's,

it's, it's a shit ton of data entry. And so that's why Glass Cannon Podcast Campaign 1, there's only like 100 episodes or 80-something up there now. And we've been working on this since like November. But getting all this content up there, it is backbreaking. And we're going to have all the cannon fodders up there, all under the cannon fodder thing.

Glass Cannon Labs is there now as well. That was never available as a podcast. Oh, yeah, Labs was never available audio only, right? All the way fodder is up there, all under the cannon fodder thing. Glass Cannon Labs is there now as well. That was never available as a podcast. Oh, yeah. Labs was never available, audio only, right? All the way through Deadlands, like from Cyborg all the way to Deadlands. Everything is up there. And if it's not up there yet, we're still getting it up there. It's just a massive undertaking.

KaiGuy is enjoying the 50 million emails he's getting about new shows added to supercast and i think he's being facetious yeah we're very sorry it's weird basically because like if you're at the vorpal level you also get everything at 25 you get everything at the premium and basic so because those podcasts were released on all three you get that notification three times it's just it's dumb it's. It's a bug in the system. Yeah, but luckily, it's kind of a one-time thing, right? You're only going to have this massive dump of content one time, and then hopefully we'll be in the groove. So anything else? Any other takeaways? We're going to have, obviously, some questions here.

I don't know if I should take early questions that are specifically State of the Nation related. Now, I'll wait till the end. I'll wait till the end. Yeah, I mean if it's what we're talking about, feel free. Yeah, I'll wait till the end because honestly I want to get into the Glass Cannon podcast. I want to talk about the latest episode. And obviously as these new things come up and the tickets go on sale for the tour and everything you'll keep getting new reminders of the new things that are happening so just stay with us stay uh and we'll keep you posted uh i'm just like trying to follow the chat it's amazing so many people are chatting

you guys are the best all right let's talk glass cannon podcast i don't know if you know this troy but among am i on that show among the comments on youtube on the youtubes about the latest episode of uh campaign two a lot of love a lot of love for this particular episode the love has been coming in hot and heavy hot and heavy from b coy dog The banner was phenomenal. The new drop, phenomenal. The synergy, phenomenal. And by the way, phenomenal is in all caps every time. It was really exciting. People really seemed to respond to the banter. We got some great comments. I'm going to look at a few of them here. Ryan Bontrage is like, I really appreciate the amount of transparency that was expressed in the banter as it relates to the campaign. Looking inward, talking about what's working for you and what might not be in your own campaign, I think is an important exercise.

He says, or they say, very healthy to see displayed at a table. And I appreciated that comment. Snoop Hogg said, I really respect that you included a very frank discussion of is the mystery working? It's like seeing inside a working podcast. You know what I mean? The kind of things it's not normally aired. And so, yeah, I think a lot of people responded well to the banter. Uh, and I, and I appreciate that.

Um, I will shout out Scoobed who said, Joe, I totally agree with your analysis of the last few episodes of course you're gonna shut out that one person that agreed with your analysis there was literally only one person hundreds of comments one oh god there was one comment that i saw it was so funny it was like joe needs to stop navel gazing and just enjoy the ride it was something like that. Naval gazing? Yeah. Like you get so angry when like you're something doesn't immediately make sense. Well, yeah. Okay. Well, that is true. That's a personality flaw.

But I would also say a lot of this is motivated that I immediately have a short fuse and get very mad when I think the show stinks. You know what I mean? Like, it's more about like, I think the show is dragging and that's what I don't like. And trying to like rationalize and reason around that can be a little bit difficult. Also like, what am I trying to convince people that the show is not good? Like, no, that's not it. I just wanted to be honest about how I felt and get it out there in a way that, I don't know, made some sense. And I, you know, some people it made sense to, you know, even the people that disagreed were like, you know, some of them said it makes sense, but you know what? I'm going to

jump to Professor Eric for a quick second because- Wait, I'm not done breaking you down though. Because I think you have this very interesting personality trait where if it's not immediately graspable, you're just kind of – I don't know if you check out. You kind of check out a little bit or you get a little angry and I think it's because you worry about the pace. But then you just want to like get into combat. But if the combat is even mildly difficult, you're like, well, what am I supposed to do? What is this? Why did they write this? Well, we're only first level. How are we was supposed to fight this and then you always win that combat

like 99 times well i mean i think you're kind of liberally throwing around i think you're kind of liberally throwing around always but i don't know if i am i well i'll tell you what we'll come it'll come up and we are stupid today because there's a re i had like if for example i was complaining about this combat in this episode i was well within my right because as i knew as i knew you were getting it wrong you had to be because it was imbalanced clancy knock says balanced this is tough but fair this is tough but fair what did sydney say sydney's in here sydney back me up. Oh, she's just talking about her drop.

Yeah, your drop was awesome. Oh, no. Oh, no. Sidney's doing math. What's up, Sid? Thank you for coming by and hanging out. I want to jump to Professor Eric just for a second to kind of back you up. This isn't We Are Stupid.

This is Professor Eric wanted to weigh in on the banter. And I think Professor Eric said this really well. Smart guy, Professor Eric. Really, really intelligent human being. Yes, I agree. All right. So this is, once again, complimenting you. On the banter, I think the reason why myself and some other Gatewalkers GMs have been so impressed is how much Troy has brought to life the short vignettes from the AP.

All the critical clues were presented in ways that had layers of obscure reference, then telegraphing, then more in your face. And then here's where this sentence is really interesting. It feels like the puzzle will make sense at the end, and the players will feel that they could have figured it out earlier, but didn't. It will feel earned, in my opinion. But to feel earned, it has to feel confusing, hard, and meandering in the middle. Kind of like summing up, I think, what I was trying to get to with what was bothering me about these mystery role-playing games and how the hard, confusing, meandering parts are not fun for me. They're not my favorite. But hearing Skid talk about the importance of character and how we need to spend

more time focusing on each other and why that was skipped in this particular case, but then also thinking about how this feeling, this time, we will look back on and feel like we were working towards something. It just might not feel that way right now. You just got to hold on for the payoff kind of thing. But we release content in a world where we don't have time for the audience to wait for a payoff. They'll just leave. Yeah. Well, the tricky thing is like how do you make sure that the mystery is interesting all along, that it's not just so confusing that you can't figure it out. But like you also want to make sure that you don't give so many clues that like people start to figure it out too early. And that's really tricky. But for me, the reason that I'm really letting this stretch out more is that it forces everyone to role play.

Because otherwise, all I'm doing is just speeding you to the next encounter. This book's got plenty of encounters, but plenty of stuff that could be easily glossed over as a bridge to the next encounter. And so by slowing it down and adding this level of mystery is just forcing people to put the dice away and play.

And it's going to help reveal character that wasn't immediately revealed in the first 10 episodes so that's really the purpose of it but it's also not objectively the right way to run the adventure it is all about your group yeah you have a group that loves role-playing you know and that is so happy to delve into things like, where are we going to have lunch? And loves dealing with the Malkior. Is that his name, Malkior? Loves dealing with, like, you know, not inviting him to lunch and stuff like that. Like, they just have so much fun doing that, so let them lean into it,

and it makes for a good game. Dude, the irony of all of this is if I was a player in this game, I would want to go straight from Bolan's Treehouse to Kniepo's Stub. So, yeah, don't give me shit. That's all I want to do. Exactly. I know that the game I want to play is not the game that's good for radio. Yeah.

Well, yeah, that's fair. All I would want to do is like, please just get me to that Aculi fight. Yeah, the second. Oh, my God. This is so funny. All right. That's all I would want to do is like, please just get me to that. How can I fight? Yeah. The second. Oh, my God. This is so funny. All right. I wanted to go through just a couple more comments here. Oh, yeah.

So just speaking to what I just said about, you know, the kind of table that you have. We had two people, BT Wizard and Iara Art, who Iara Art's been listening, watching for a long time. Just want to say as a listener of actual play RPG games, I love the role play aspect more than the fighting. It brings the AP to life and tells the story. The fighting parts are good too, but they're just that, fighting. It's fun to see the upgrades and what level ups do for a fight is definitely part of the story, but overall, love the role playing.

Just my opinion, love everything y'all are doing. Keep it up, Glass Cannon. So thank you for that well thought out response and the focus on how important role play is to uh to your experience um all right last thing i'll say is from this is great so this speaks to what skid was saying about the characters right about how we in this campaign we came in already knowing each other which can be a little bit of a tricky hurdle to get over. If the AP or campaign that you're playing gives the characters the way to meet and we see that happen on screen, so to speak, you – it's a really interesting way to start digging into characters. But if you feel like you've already had those conversations, then how do you broach deeper conversations if you never actually had the first ones with each other as players? So this funny comment stood out to me from Plague Clutch,

who said, one thing I know from the army about unit cohesion is the first week, no one talks. The fourth week, everyone's having conversations in the nude doing rat tail snaps. I read that. Like it doesn't take too, too long for people to start opening up to each other. And I think that's going to be an important thing for us to do as characters in the show is get a little bit more vulnerable with each other, open up a little bit more. And that's only going to raise all the stakes. That's only going to increase the quality of the content and the relationships that everybody has. relationships that everybody has yeah yeah because you got to think and i think i said this on the show whether they met a month before a month and a half two months before uh whether they some of

them met just really really met on the journey to get to seven arches it wasn't until uh the gorga attack i guess right was that the first combat that like you had to try and stay alive and try and keep the people around you alive? And that's what changes everything. You know what I mean? Like getting to know someone, it's great. But like that high stress situation is what really starts to galvanize the crew. So it is an interesting choice to have the AP start with them already kind of knowing each other.

But the way I pictured it is that you really didn't know each other. You were just at Dr. Riddleson's house researching with other gay walkers. Yeah, but that interpretation is not how I thought of it. It didn't really come out like you had that in your head. I'm sure everybody had slightly different degrees of what we knew about each other in their head like i remember thinking i should walk up to zephyr and be like uh you know uh hello zephyr so where are you from or whatever some benign conversation to get things started but i'm like but that flies in the face of the narrative right like we've already spoken we've already been traveling for weeks together to get this whatever it is an annoying stupid hang-up that i have but it's like other aps just give you the method to do that easily this one we kind of have

to work for and and it's fine we'll go back and work for it there were several comments that were just like do do flashback scenes of you meeting because like we'd love that you know and i think that that's great we've never done that before we've done every flashback scene we do seems to be very character centric on one character why not do a flashback of brother amy is first walking into a room and you know locking eyes with lucky or something like that and what was their conversation like bring more of lucky's backstory into it anyway uh interesting uh thoughts there to uh i don't know how to deal with an ap that starts in that kind of fashion yeah all right couple quick questions from me on this episode um so when we cross over into this new land, it is very, very railroad-y

in the sense that almost literally magically we are drawn to this stump. We are unable to walk off the path. Even when we walk off the path, we magically come back. And there's some very interesting elements there because there were similar elements in um what you would call it uh emerald spire that had to do with the fey where you would be walking on one path you would be thinking one thing was happened and the forest would change around you it's kind of interesting like fey themes that they've brought in here in really cool ways yeah i just wanted to confirm like is this something that is like word for word in the ap or is this something you're designing as a gm to like get to the action in this part is there more of a sandbox or are you thinking of clever ways to make the

characters feel like they have to go to this one place no it's it's in the ap it's it's meant to that's how they describe the world like anytime if they step too far off the path all of a sudden they're back on the path um it's no memory of how they got there so yeah it just makes sense and you know it was it's like one sentence but it was if you guys did it i was like oh cool i'll make them really feel disoriented and it kind of also foreshadows the the fight as well yeah so this oculi fight was awesome it was terrifying uh when you first we'll get into it in a second with we are stupid but because there were mistakes made but do you when you first read we'll get into it in a second with We Are Stupid, because there were mistakes made. But do you, when you first read this encounter, is this something that you felt was an easy-ish encounter?

A gatekeeping kind of encounter at the outside? Like nothing you were too worried about? Yeah, like when I first read an adventure, I don't dig too much when it comes to an encounter. I don't, I'm like maybe glance at the spells or something, but I really just go, okay it's a it's a four-on-one fight or whatever i'll move on and then sometimes i reroute him like oh shit he summons three creatures all right that makes a lot more sense yeah but when i read this now i'm like okay oh this is interesting oh okay so it's not until i'm like prepping for the episode that i realize how i'm gonna make a fight out of this and it's like all that disorientation is gonna slow them down I didn't realize how well it would work until we

started doing it. Like you just couldn't get close to it to attack it. That made all the difference. So it's one of those things that I read. I'm like, okay, I know I try to create what my tactics are going to be like, how do I make this, you know, more than a one round fight and just hope that it works out. But seeing it play out in real time, it was cool to see how the mechanics sort of led to a much more harrowing encounter. Do you have general feelings on, like general opinions on fey, fey adventures, fey encounters, fey areas as a player that's been doing this for decades like

uh you know there's there's undead campaigns there's uh dragon campaigns there's uh orc army campaigns like this is a fey campaign so far uh do you have feelings on it as a player i've always been interested in it what i'm not interested in is like the cute part of Faye. Like that's never, like, I don't want to do a cute adventure. But I'd never really knew what it was like. Cause even in like going back to like Pathfinder society scenarios that we played, we rarely, we rarely did a lot of Faye stuff.

I think if we had done more Emerald Spire, I imagine that's a big part of that, but it's just never been a part of something I've prepped or played it. So because of that, I was interested in it. And now that I do it, I'm like, oh, okay. This is just – they're annoying and horrifying. So I think that's kind of like it's annoying. Where's the screen?

Like anywhere between annoying and horrifying and everything in between. But it tends to tip one of those two ways. And you started out with like Chibi and Bowfoot with more annoying and pestering and the little bees. I'll eat your cake. And now it's horrifying. Yeah. And so that's really what you're going to delve into here. Yeah.

There's a big spectrum in the Fae landscape between like cutesy Fae, funny Fae, a tricksy Fae, like horrifying mind altering Faye. Like it contains a bit of all of that. Uh, and I'm curious, you know what your thoughts are. Let us know in the comments and stuff. And obviously live in chat if you want to too, because I've heard of the Faye wild for years.

I never really adventured in, uh, is it Faye rune? I don't know. That's what it is in BG three. I don't know if that's like the typical world that D&D 5e players adventure in. But like I'm curious because I hear about it all the time. Like do you guys love adventuring, doing fae adventures?

Are you kind of like, I'm over fae adventures? Are you like, I've never liked them? I'm kind of curious to see where people stand because they can be super frustrating. And I'm not sure. Fae Central says Tempe the Arcane. No, I never played the king maker video game uh oh that's fey central is it interesting didn't know that i i would have never guessed that yeah uh very interesting well i guess it's not that surprising since it i believe at least where it starts a lot of it is set near the area where Emerald Spire happens, and there's a lot of fey stuff near and around that – the Echo Wood, the Echo Wood, the forest.

It's plagued with fey, all kinds of fey creatures. All right. With that, let's go on to We Are Stupid because I want to dig into this fight. Like you said, it was a really tough one, and we're going to find out why. I think there were mistakes made on both sides of the gm screen that may have led to the situation uh that we found ourselves in uh first of all i'm just gonna say that zephyr forgot about stunning fist this was mentioned by professor eric uh just you know basically i'm gonna put it up here uh because i want to just show off our demi-plane tools um the oh geez that's not the right one oscillating wave

there i skipped ahead i skipped ahead there we go uh all right stunning fist there i had it uh stunning fist we have to remember that she has access to this if she uh targets the same creature twice and hits once and does damage on either of them, like, bam, you get to roll that save. You get a save, a fortitude save to see if you get stunned. She forgot about this against the oculi. Now, as we've mentioned multiple times, it is an incapacitation effect, which means it would be very difficult to get that hit on a creature that's higher level than you. And in this case, the oculi, at least Professor Eric says, is a higher level encounter creature or whatever.

So would have to critically fail to even just have the regular failure of stunned one. So it wouldn't have made a big deal. Probably wouldn't have affected the fight that much. But he just brought it up because he was like i want to make sure kate's remembering don't forget about stunning fist because it's on automatically every time you do your flurry of blows that's a good thing to remember um all right so let's go back to the light this is an area where uh he's pointing out that he believes you have misunderstood or got turned around in your mind how the light works. I know

this and I just wanted to do it differently. Oh, really? Yeah. Go ahead. Say what you want to say. The rules on the thin lands by the book are that artificial light and light spells function as usual

for the purposes of shedding light. They shed light as they do. Now, spells with the light descriptor also have other issues or things that may come up that I don't know anything about. He says that that would be spoilery. But you even said, like, does it have the light descriptor when I cast Divine Lance? There are certain light things that may come up in the Thin Lance. But we were led to believe that only artificial light would cut through this magically dim plane of – dim light plane of existence. But that's not what it says in the book. Well, it just – it doesn't really have any effect.

It didn't have any effect on anything, right? Well, apparently the light level affects the saves to walk into the brambles like the saves to like where you're walking is my understanding but that didn't affect any of the people that got trapped in the thorns they all had uh at least low light vision so they could see fine right but i believe you only take damage when you critically fail. Was that not the case? I'm trying to, like, look here. Yeah, anyway, it just seemed like there were some little tiny mistakes like that made that created, I think, stress on our side. No, you take damage no matter what.

You take damage no matter what? Yeah. Okay, interesting. So yeah. Yeah, basically, I realized that I, like, about a round in that I had flipped a specific thing about how light functions. And I was like, well, this has no effect on the combat. So I'm just going to let it go. But I'm trying to just to be fair to what you're explaining. So light effects are weaker. That's spells with a light.

But the entire thin lands are dimly lit. They're perpetually shrouded in dim light. Artificial light, such as that from lanterns and spells like light, function as usual. But then there was another sentence that doesn't contradict that per se. It's just… Confusing. Yeah, because the oculi gives off an aura right and the aura that is given off affects only non-magical light non-magical bright light within the aura becomes dim light and non-magical dim light with the with

the with the aura becomes darkness. Right. So if I would have had my light spell out, it would have had no effect, which would be nice. Like you said, I don't think it really affected the combat that much. Magical light anywhere within the oculi's aura increases the light level as normal and reduces the will save. So that would have helped. Yes. That's what he was saying. Sorry. I was trying to translate Professor would have yes that that's what he was sorry i was trying to translate professor eric's notes that's what it was it reduces the will save uh that you know

everybody would have to make magical light yeah i'm not doing a good job of explaining this but when i was reading about it i i i just missed that the light spell functioned as normal yeah because the way it's written i I can see it right here. It's like, if I was reading it even remotely quickly, I would do the same thing. It's like artificial light, such as that from lanterns function as usual. Like the little N spells like light.

It's so like small and in the middle of that sentence. And what happened was I made such a big deal about you not being able to do it and then using a torch and that worked. When I realized it a couple seconds later, I didn't want want to be like i didn't want to retcon it yeah i just didn't think it would make that much of a difference and uh you know but obviously you should have got a bonus to your will save and i think that did affect you with the uh well no you didn't get lost in it but no i didn't because i stopped moving like immediately i just like

stopped moving it changed the combat a little bit for sure. It did change the combat a little bit. And the well, and also like it's it'll change it going forward. You know what I mean? Like there's we're in the thin lands. I mean, like for who knows how long. Within the within the stump, things might work differently. In fact, they do.

So it's just yeah. Light is one of those things that I just get really annoyed about. And so whenever things get into the nitty gritty of light with dim light and darkness, I just check out. Yeah. It's like not even a blind spot. It's like I hate this. I hate this. So it doesn't help that like when things are actually really important to the combat, if I'm just like, I'll deal with it later.

And then you fail yet another save. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of, you know, we would give you shit for how you would say that, like, moon does not cast dim light. You go outside at night. It's just darkness. It's darkness. Come on.

There's a moon. Like, it would be dim light. You can kind of see the – no, you can't. And it's just because you don't want to deal with the mechanics. Yeah, I do. I really, really don't. I really, really don't. I really, really don't. I really don't.

I have to get over that. I've got to figure out a way to do it. But it ended up making for a more harrowing encounter. Yeah, it sure did. It sure did. But obviously one that didn't really debilitate us in a huge way. So I don't feel like we're at a huge disadvantage moving forward or anything like that. But it was scary to have this one little monkey bird think the first thing we see in the Thin

Lens to almost control our mind and really put us in a bad way, unable to move toward it. I mean, it was just, you know, by synergizing those aid checks along with Sydney's will save that got her the ability to dash up there, which is which is what I'll bring it to now. Let's turn to let's go to Asta. Why not go to Asta? We got Sydney here. I hope it is still here because we're going to we're going to put her on blast.

Let's talk about Arcade Cascade Stance for a moment. Arcade Cascade Stance, which is one of the dopest thing that when Sydney first did. Oh, here she is okay so sit when you first did arcane cascade stance i thought it was the coolest thing ever like she described the likes like slowly moving her foot around to the back planting it in and that like almost almost like a dance extremely extremely cool uh but professor eric just pointed out and i sent this to sit earlier this week remember Remember while you're in the stance, your melee strikes deal one extra force damage. You never know when that's going to come into play. So it seems like we forgot to deal that extra damage. And also this increases

if you, uh, to two, if you have weapon specialization and three, if you have greater weapon specialization. So force damage usually cuts through just about everything. So that's really cool. Uh, particularly if you're trying to get through some sort of difficult resistance. And also, I mean, it's too weak. You never know when that one extra point can be the difference between life and death. So just something to keep in mind there. Also, as Sid charged up, and this was phenomenal i love this scene there was a comment on youtube as well that was like loved the um whatchamacallit the the kind of hero mo the hero moment from asta that asta got to come in with this katana so here here we are looking at the katana uh that she comes in charges in does

the spell strike and kind of puts down this really harrowing enemy in this really tough encounter here's an interesting mechanic i had no idea about and i sent this to sydney as well kind of puts down this really harrowing enemy in this really tough encounter. Here's an interesting mechanic I had no idea about, and I sent this to Sydney as well. There's a trait on this weapon. Two-hand D10. I have not seen this yet in 2E. That's awesome. It's something that I just, I don't know. I guess I haven't played a character that has a weapon that is versatile from one hand to two hands.

That's awesome. And it changes the damage die, Sydney. So, like, instead of rolling a D6 even on that attack, you should have been rolling a D10, which is so freaking cool. And it makes me want to build a character that uses a weapon that vacillates between one-handed and two-handed. Well, think about, like, the synergy if you had another spellcaster that could do something that's like double your damage die or go up one damage die. Right.

If you use that sort of cannonball special technique where you cast that on the person with the katana, now instead of doing a D10, it does a D12 or two D10. There's so many more things you could do with with a little more like uh teamwork that's really really cool d10 that shit 2d10 yep yep and so sid uh explains here in chat that she thought that because of the arcane cascane stance she could not have a she needed a free hand and that's why she wasn't doing it. But professor Eric pointed out that, um, uh,

sorry, he said, he said something about the free hand. She never had to drop a hand for anything in the interim. Uh, and then you get the strength bonus as usual. So it should have been the detents. So yeah.

Anyway, thank you professor for pointing that out. And, uh, hopefully, uh, we remember that going forward. Okay.

One more big one, a conversation that we had was, and this is the one that I spoiled earlier, the oscillating wave. This was a fun conversation if you remember this, Troy. This was when Skid was discussing the remaster and the changes. It's not really the remaster. rata to the dark archive that were made to the psychic class and his particular ability this oscillating wave in which you have to vary your he uh the kinds of energy that you use to make a balance so we really come in here with the conservation of energy which is what got brought up and the discussion was uh when you uh do the first time in an encounter that you cast a granted spell from your conscious

right or a psychantrip, decide whether you're adding energy or removing it. Once you add energy, you must remove energy the next time you cast one of these spells. So Skid was confused if this meant he just would have to cast like, you know, produce flame, which is now ignition, followed by frost bite, which used to be, oh my God, ray of frost. deals is cold damage and any resistance it's grant is it grants is to fire damage means that you literally are still casting ignition but you're pulling the fire out of that spell and infusing it with cold which uh it's a very cool concept and it's a cool idea and it just goes to show you how much the psychic can manipulate with their mind the energies around them so you're not forced to cast a different spell and the reason skid didn't want to cast frostbite was because it has a different range uh you know or didn't want

to cast ignition was because it has a shorter range or whatever the case was so you can cast frostbite but infuse it with fire damage which i think is so cool and you can cast uh ignition alternatively and infuse it with like cold fire, which is just a cool concept. So we just got confirmation on that. So appreciate Professor Eric writing in on that. That's great. I'm glad when we like make a call and it's right. Yes, agreed.

All right. Let's take it to the nature. Let's get some listener mail in before we get out of here. Where's my listener mail? There it is. McD on the ones and twos. It's time to listen to mail. You gotta get

your brain out of the phone in time and listen to mail. You gotta cue that fucking video. Hey. All right. So uh all right so there is some discussion about this um two-handing the katana thing which i want to address uh sydney seems to think like no i definitely think i need the free hand to get the extra damage which is why i was you know didn't think i should i should do it but uh professor eric says

uh it's it's a bonus on all melee strikes uh even two-handed i don't know maybe maybe we got a mistake wrong here but we'll look back into it due to laughing shadow which is a hybrid study of the magus laughing shadow magus gets time jump Magic is free While in Arcane Cascade stance You gain a plus 5 status bonus to your speeds Or a 10 plus foot bonus if you're unarmored If you have a free hand while in the stance And are attacking a flat footed creature

You increase the extra damage to 3 To 5 if you have weapon specialization Or to 7 if you have greater weapon specialization. You must have your other hand completely free. The extra damage doesn't apply if you have a free hand weapon or other item in that hand, even if you would normally be able to use that hand

for other things. Interesting. Sidney was right, essentially. So does it seem here? Yeah, Professor Eric, you got to get back to us. I mean, obviously he would not know about this laughing shadow shadow thing i don't think he has the character sheets per se but um interesting you get a five foot status bonus to your speed 10 foot if you're unarmored uh if you have a free hand while you're in the stance or an attacking five-footed creature you

increase the extra damage to three blah blah blah uh, blah. All right. So, yeah. I guess, you know, does that beg the question? Is it better to have the higher damage die or to have the plus three to damage? What's the damage die? It goes from D6 to D10. To D10. Yeah, no, it's better to have the D10. That's what I would think.

Unless you have greater weapon specialization, a flat seven is, like, better than the average D10. That's what I would think. Unless you have greater weapon specialization, a flat seven is better than the average D10. Yeah. That's what I would think. Well, I guess it's the difference between six and ten, right? Your average for six is three, your average for ten is five. So it's kind of a plus two. But it's crazy. I guess it assumes that Amagus

never uses a katana because the D detents better. What other reason would you need to have a free hand if you can use your sword to cast as the somatic cast somatically? I mean, that's cool and all. But yeah, this is this is so interesting. Like this is only helpful if you don't have a katana. I think so. And I also think that like-

And it has to be against a flat-footed creature. It does? Yeah, which she wasn't attacking. So Sydney is wrong. Oh, okay. So we go back to Sydney being completely wrong. I was ready to possibly offer up a cannonball- It's so funny how-

But now seeing that it has to be against a flat footed creature and are attacking a flat footed creature. So it's almost like a sneak attack damage. She's arcade cascade

for the speed. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, it makes sense. But like, but this says if you have a free hand, you get

this bonus damage. You don't have to have a free hand. You just don't get the bonus damage, but you still bump to a detent. Right. hand, you get this bonus damage. You don't have to have a free hand. You just don't get the bonus damage. But you still bump to a D10. Right? Troy, are you and I saying this the same way?

Laughing Shadow gives you the status bonus to speed regardless of your hands. If you have a free hand and you're attacking a flat-footed creature on the third Tuesday of the month, then you get the damage bonus. Neratu says, Sidney, you're right in my heart. You're wrong for all the wrong reasons. Sydney says, I'll see myself out. Dude,

this is so awesome having Sid here live. All right, so let's, let's go on and list your mail. Let's take a few questions and then,

and then we'll let you get on your merry. Let's go to Western Spaghetti, who is so in for Nashville. I think Western Spaghetti might have asked like five Nashville questions. Wow. I guess Western Spaghetti.

Okay, so here's an overall question. What games can we expect to be ran at Nashville? Like, are there RPGs being run? Or is this a board game convention with RPG actual play shows at night? Well, I mean if we did what you and I want to do, it would be all board games. But some people want to play RPGs, so we're going to have that. I think that Friday night is definitely going to be – the focus is going to be on board games and living card games because it's just – it's a smaller footprint, a lot easier to just like sit down and grab people, it encourages more you know socialization where it's like now you sit with these people for four hours

now we'll see my plan is like just play a character right just play with this with whatever you do don't be yourself that would be ridiculous even then like I want to see if we can make these like a faster turnover on Saturday so people get to like experience more you know more people at the con because as much as

it's about hanging out with us, it's about hanging out with each other. I said this last night. It's like so many like-minded people. You walk into that room, you know you immediately have about eight things in common. That doesn't happen all the time. And so what I'd like to do is once all the tickets are sold,

I want to reach out to everybody in the group. And with surveys, it's like, what do you want to see? Because I have an idea of what is going to make a great weekend, but I want to hear from the people, kind of crowdsource what you want to see. We may find out that nobody wants to play RPGs, or people might be like, I don't have any interest in board games.

I just want RPG. If 40 out of the 50 people that respond do that, we can really tailor the event. 12 PS5s and 12 70-inch TV screens. We could do that. We could actually do that. McD? Maybe not 12, but we could, you know,

if people were like, man, I would love to display original Dark Souls with Joe and Troy. 10 people say that, maybe we'll get a fucking TV. I mean, the space is going to be pretty big. You know, that's one of the reasons I'm doing the site visit to see if we want to get a larger space or a smaller space. But yeah, I mean, I really want to crowdsource it and be so on top of what people want as much as what we want to offer so that the weekend is really tailored to the specifics of the niche.

And as this grows, we're armed with that feedback to keep making it better and better and better. Like I want people to walk away and be like that weekend was phenomenal. I can't wait to do that again. Yeah. Travis green says the Marvel stream was great and shows y'all keeping it family friendly. Any thought about a kid friendly RPG podcast? I said something keeping it family friendly. Any thought about a kid-friendly RPG podcast?

I said something about it last year. It's something that's always been on our mind. I think it'd be cool if parents could watch with their kids. But then we can't invite Sydney. There's a lot of people we can't invite. Yeah, and like Skid's jokes would go over all of their heads. Most of the parents' heads as well. So it kind of really limits what the cast can be. But with Marvel, if we continue to work with them, I think it's going to be a lot of PG type content. It's Disney. That's what it's going to be. And so I think, wouldn't you say that kids could watch the good enoughs? Yes.

Yeah. I would think so. There's an S-bomb in there. We say poop? We say poop? No, we say shit. We say shit? I thought we cut shit.

Yeah. Well, I think it snuck past the goalie, but it was a real quick one. But the, yeah, F-bombs, none of that and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's very PG, I think, PG to PG-13. But, yeah, it's very PG, I think, PG to PG-13. But, yeah, it's definitely something we've talked about and we want to do. So, yeah, it's – you know, we talked about it many years ago and it just never came together. And we've talked about it again more recently. So, yeah, it's definitely on our minds.

I'd love to make something that I could watch with the kids. Exactly. I think that would be so cool. It's been on my wife's mind for a long time too. You know, she's been like, why don't you do this? It's just so, it's easy. It's low hanging fruit. It's harder than you think though. It's like, we really, we're not children's show hosts. You know, we can make a show where we don't swear and we don't make too many anachronistic jokes that would fly over everyone's head. But you know, it's different like doing something that is really geared towards children.

It's a whole different beast. But it's something we have. It's like on the top of our to-do list of something we'd like to do. It's just finding the right partner and project and team. Sid Hoffman says, the customer-facing updates have been great, but I'd like to know more about what goes on inside of the business as well. How many FT folks are at GCN right now? Oh, full-time folks.

What does that mean? Has Matthew given up being a playwright yet to come on full-time? I'd love to know more about how the business has grown and what it looks like today. That's a great question. I mean, I think you can sort of divine by listening to our shows who's working on what. You know that we have McD working for us as a community manager and producer and in sales and marketing. You know that CJ is involved and Francis in every episode of Gatewalkers. And Troy mentioned Michael who's handling a lot of the uploading and stuff like that.

That's really the base of employees that we have right now, including the, the founders. No, Matthew is not giving up playwriting. He never will give up writing or playwriting. So that's me, you and skit or like, that's it. That rounds it up.

Yeah. Yeah. Me, you and skit. So then we have other con, you know, we've got like Jared is basically a full-time employee and we have contractors.

We have contractors that we use so regularly. Our videographer on tour is the same videographer. Every show, our videographer on our cinematographer on the glassographer on tour is the same videographer every show. Our videographer on – our cinematographer on the Glass Cannon podcast is the same every episode. So those kind of contractors are not full-time per se. Contractor sales and marketing. Yes. Kristen, you've met at Gen Con.

He's with us 90 hours a week. Yeah. So, yeah, that's about the size of it. Eight to nine people that are working regularly every day to put all this content out there. And then, of course, all the performer contractors that we have out there that help help make our shows great. You know, I want to just bring up for a second because Paula is still here and she mentioned something earlier about she liked the idea of having a flashback scene of two characters meeting. They kind of already know each other, but we didn't see the meeting. back scene of two characters meeting. They kind of already know each other, but we didn't see the meeting. I hadn't thought about it before, but that's also how Blood of the Wild started.

Like in Blood of the Wild, we grew up together because you're in the same clan, prehistoric clan. You don't like meet in a tavern. You know what I mean? And it's so funny. It just occurred to me that that never seemed to be a hurdle to getting to where we wanted to be. And there is a great mystery in this whole campaign. So I think I need to go back and examine Blood of the Wild. See like what happened there? What

happened there organically? What did we do there to kind of grow those character relationships over time, even though they quote unquote grew up together? We still were learning about each other as we go. So anyway, it's an interesting conversation to bring up. And obviously, people like Paula and Mary Lou and Ross and Kate and Sid, these are the people that are – they're not employees per se, but we work with each other every single week all year long. All right. Western Spaghetti again. Oh, this is a good question. Can we volunteer to run games at Nashville? Is there personally would love to just play in a game rather than like prep something. But you want to make sure that you have the right crew of GMs. There might be people who are like, yeah, I'll GM.

Oh, what's your experience? I mean, I've never done it, but I'll do it. I listen to your show. Yeah, no. Wait, wait, wait. You only listen to Troy GM? Please, no. Do you remember when we did,

it was like the last live show that we did before Glass Cannon Live happened. It was at the Beer Garden at Bohemian Hall in Queens. And the first part of the day was six hours of role-playing games. And we had to have, I think, like 12 – we had 12 tables with GMs. And all the GMs, people had to basically apply. They had to like reach out and be like, I'll GM. And at the time, we had like hung out with those people enough at cons or like knew them to be like, I think we can trust so-and- I'll GM. And at the time, we had hung out with those people enough at cons or knew them to

be like, I think we can trust so-and-so to GM. I think they were all people that we knew in some way that we felt comfortable letting them run a table. I think it would be kind of the same vibe. I'd have to make sure that we found a proper way to vet people. I'm sure everybody in the niche is wonderful, but making sure that the people that are running those games, it's the right thing. Maybe it just has to be like me, you, Skid, and Matthew,

and it's going to be a Kate Run Games Center. Well, look, a big part of this event, and you said it, and it's something that's been discussed internally, is it's so vital that everybody that comes has the greatest time ever, ever. That's the goal. So our goal is the greatest time of your life.

So if that's the goal that we're setting, a bad GM will ruin a weekend. It'll ruin a weekend for you. You cannot sit at a table for four hours with somebody that just makes you miserable. So that's why vetting of that kind of stuff is going to be important. So Western Spaghetti, are you an asshole? If not, you might be able to GM in Nashville. Call in. Call in.

All right. So a couple more. J.S. Rose says, Troy mentioned an emphasis on new shows coming where the developers are at least key partners. emphasis on new shows coming where the developers are at least key partners. Does that mean that any games where that's not the case would be routed to Glass Cannon Labs at best? That's a good question. I think I talked about this more in the Ask Me Anything Q&A that I did on Discord after the show.

Basically, like for a long time, we've just produced shows with our own dime. And they, you know, to help kind of like build our repertory, build our name and build the sort of library of content that we have. You know, as we started to grow, we just realized we couldn't afford to keep producing these shows because they don't bring in enough revenue to like the expenses are way more than the revenue that the shows bring in. Initially, that's just part of it. Like you're trying to build a body of work. You're trying to get your name out there. You got to do what you got to do. So then we started to bring on sponsors for shows, but we're still, you know, funding the shows as well for the most part, not all the shows, but some of them, and they still don't, the juice isn't worth the squeeze, the return on investment for the amount of money and time they were putting into the shows.

It just doesn't work. So now we really have to move forward and ensure that the shows that we're producing are fully sponsored by other entities, whether that be publishers, you know, third party developers, people in the industry, fucking right guard,

sports stick, you know, whatever it could be, because then, you know, we can, we're able to build content and not hemorrhage money because the shows in and of themselves don't bring in enough revenue,

whether it's on Twitch, whether it's on YouTube. And so we have to make sure that we're partnered with people who can put together teams to be able to sponsor these shows. And even Glass Cannon Labs, like we're just at a point right now where we can't really produce too much content beyond what we're already producing unless we're with the right partners. And so, you know, Glass Cannon Podcast, we have some great partners that help us, you know, defray a lot of the cost. But like, we're still paying into shows like that. But that's the flagship show. We have to do that.

Get in the trunk, Legacy of the Ancients, Blood of the Wild. These are the cornerstones of our subscription service. It is certainly worth doing those shows without any type of sponsorship, but like, we can't just be like, man, I want to fucking play Star Wars. Let's do a 40-episode Star Wars, and we'll

bankroll it. Like, as much as we'd like to do that, it's just not a sound business decision for us, as much as we'd really like to play more Star Wars and we'll bankroll it. Like as much as we'd like to do that, it's just not a sound business decision for us as much as we'd really like to play more Star Wars. Yeah, yeah. Oh my God. That'd be so fun. Cambion asked earlier, I just want to point this out. So you're saying you're just not ready yet

to announce the 40 episode Star Wars show? We're waiting to hear from LucasArts. Star Wars. We're waiting to hear from uh star wars we're waiting to hear from star wars uh all right one more and uh this is an interesting one in fact i don't even know the answer to this one uh sieb harris uh says what's up sean uh what are the gen con booth gaming tables going to look like this is something you mentioned at the State of the Niche, I presume? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I even said, I was like, this is in such early development. I shouldn't be talking about it, but let's talk about it.

Yeah, you know, for the past two years we had our booth at Gen Con, we did the Fishbowl, we broadcast more than a dozen shows, and then did a bunch of shows outside the con, and it was great. And we love, like, we have so many publishers that we work with now and game developers that have products that like we wait they wait for gen con

to really drop these things and so we just started thinking we were like we think there's a way that we can achieve that like let's record all of these shows in advance they have advanced copies of the stuff let's put a little more production value into it debut those during gen con for all the people that can't come to the con, they can still see all those shows. They can then immediately buy those shows because they'll be available. Buy those products, rather, because they usually drop at Gen Con. But then spend our time at the con using that as an opportunity to connect with the nation more, to connect with people.

It's nice for people to come up and watch a show being recorded in action, but we're like animals in the zoo. Now, come and sit and play with us. And all those personalities that were on these shows with us, they'll be at a seat in the table too. So it's like, Oh, from 12 to four this day, Troy is going to be at that table and Nora is going to be playing. And then over there,

Joe's going to be running a game and Kate's going to always be a play. You know, we want to try and we're, we're still trying to figure out what it's going to look like. Um, but you know, there'll be merch. There'll be, you know, shows will be on a TV, hopefully, so you can see those shows happening. Put your Bluetooth on. You can listen to it on Twitch. And then focus on doing more shows at the con in many shows can we do at the con if we don't do that if our time is spent really doing that that uh you know get your hands dirty kissing babies and shaking hands nice to meet you where you're from nice to meet you that'll cost extra oh man all, man. All right. Well, listen, we're going to get back to regular listener mail next week. Thank you guys for chatting in live. I hope

we answered some of your questions about State of the Nation and other things, particularly Nashville, which is very exciting. When you want to do listener mail or you want to write in and you have any questions, you think of something after this stream, write in and contact at glasscannonnetwork.com and you can get your question in that way.

You can also go to our website and follow the link through to the listener mail submission form, and we get questions in that way as well. So don't forget to get your questions in. Keep commenting on YouTube. I want to bring those up on the show as well. Thank you guys so much for hanging out. That's going to wrap it up, buddy. That's it. Dude, this was fantastic.

I'm glad we did this. It's going to be it up, buddy. That's it. Dude, this was fantastic. I'm glad we did this. It's going to be a hell of a year. Very, very exciting year. It's going to be another hell of a year at the Glass Cannon Network. Thanks to everybody for hanging out and watching live. I wish I could say every one of your names, but I'm running out of time. Thanks, everybody. Have a good one.

Take it easy. Glass Cannon tomorrow. I'm streaming tomorrow. We've got stuff coming next week. It's going to be amazing. We'll see you soon. Bye. It's time to make your membership official.

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