The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 2/7/24

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

The people have spoken! You want more in-studio Fods, and Troy and Joe are here to deliver! The guys return to the studio for another dose of Fod Juice and to break some exciting news about the next GCN + Marvel collaboration. They also discuss Everyday Heroes, Abubakar Salim's new video game, and how character backstory scenes are developed and decided on for the GCP! Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/eq0lMunW5h0 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 Canon Network, the premier source for role-playing game entertainment. Welcome to Canon Fodder. welcome to cannon fodder a behind the scenes look at the glass cannon network Yo! What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to The Fod. It is Wednesday, February 7th, 2024. And I'm your old buddy, Joe O'Brien. And I'm Troy. I'm reading about the new Chaosium Arkham book, LaVallee.

Oh! We're doing a show. Can you please stop browsing around your exciting gaming news? It just came out. It's really really exciting. You're like Call of Cthulhu, as I do. This is really exciting. And if you go to Chaosium.com and use code TFC you get 10% off that

John! Do not jam your shameless ass into my show. Keep that garbage on time for chaos. No, what is this Arkham thing? It's a new source book. They used to have an old source book, H.P. Lovecraft's Arkham, and I think this is like a

fully updated version. I'm reading about it as I'm getting really excited about it, but it's just such a beautiful cover. Arkham is such a big part of the world of Lovecraft country. So, yeah, let's have another brand new source book. The Miskatonic University. Miskatonic.

And it's in Massachusetts, which is great. I want to run more Massachusetts based Call of Cthulhu adventures just so I can do the accent. You are also a known sucker for a good cover. Oh, that's a good cover. Put,

sign you up for $200. I eat with my eyes. Welcome back everybody. We have got a fantastic FOD lined up today. This is going to be a great FOD. I'll believe it when I see it. A spectacular FOD. I'm going to need your help. Need some heavy lifting. This is going to be packed with exciting news, packed with listener mail. And yeah, it's just, you know, we have another role play episode, so we don't really have, we are stupid. And it's going to be really fun to, you know, talk to the niche about what's going on with them and, you know, kind of talk it all out. And I'm going to start off, off the top here, even before the news, I'm going to start off by reading the comments below, which you know

can get very dangerous. Below what? Below any of the content that we do. Oh, wow. Particularly on YouTube, because it's a little less awful. No, it's wonderful. YouTube is fantastic. And last week, if you recall, on the FOD, I threw it out to you guys to write back your thoughts on diversifying damage versus high damage, you know, of one type. And people responded. So I just wanted to thank you to those of you that responded. But it was kind of split. There were like the people that liked the versatility, like

at Russell Charlton and at Lara Sur, were like, love damage diversification. And then there were people like UpsideLY who said, at level 16 currently, part of what makes recall knowledge in combat a bit underwhelming is that a lot of creatures simply don't have anything you can exploit. Have you seen a lot of this? Have you seen like, are fewer than you think of the monsters that you look at have weaknesses? No, but we're in still low level play. So they still do have some weaknesses.

16th level monsters, they're just like just like no we don't deal with that but like right now i feel like almost every enemy you face at low levels has some sort of resistance and or weakness all right that's good to know yeah and then thor and beta ends on a lot of aps just don't have the diversity of monster damage weakness built in and it's been their experience that as a GM, they have to create elements within the monsters to make character abilities shine. Like these character abilities that exploit weaknesses, they're finding that they're just not seeing it being used at all. And so they have to put it into the adventure. So that's what you get for caring about the characters. It's just extra work. This sounds like a Thorin Bane problem to me. No, that's awesome.

And also Upside had another note, studio FOD every single day, and then quote, can't wait for tomorrow's. And we're here, we're back. We are back in the studio for the audio audience. We are back in the studio. Man, three weeks in a row. We are really spoiling. Yeah. Yeah. We're setting them up for a real disappointing road FOD. how about next week we just do the fad from our telephones to each other we'll record that and put it up a tiktok fad uh just holding up our phones but this is great you know like we kind of decided without really talking about it too much like if we can pull this off make the drive in the city get some some other work done and make a day out of it. It really enhances the thought.

And I've noticed the view count is up. Well, they, they, you know, they can see in the thumbnail. We're in the studio. And I think that that's just like,

Hey, well I'll watch those. I'll watch those guys in the studio, especially because I don't know. I don't know. We might have some changes coming up at ZZ. Gondorf says, Mike for Francis,

please. Francis, Mike, should we get a hot Mike back there for you, buddy? What? As usual, Francis' response is, what? He's looking at porn. You're supposed to be on video production

here, Francis. He's picking my naked fight scene. He's picking his top nude fight scenes. No, but a big, serious thank you to Francis and to CJ for producing this, because when we do FOD at home, I'm just producing it. You know, I'm knocking it out. But when we come in studio, we need the help. And big thank you to CJ and Francis for producing the in-studio FOD.

All right, let's get to the news. And then, honestly, man, news and then listener mail. That's my list for today. But there is some big news. Some huge news. If you looked at our content schedule that went out, did this go out with the actual, with the question marks and all that stuff? Yeah, I put a real teaser, a little Valley teaser, top secret video, I said. A top secret video was releasing today. and we have that information for you now.

So for those of you that have been eagerly awaiting something we talked about on the FOD a long time ago, which was that we came here in studio and we taped a Marvel Multiverse RPG special where we sat down, we played for hours, hours and hours, and taped the whole thing, and it is now released today. It is releasing today. Sorry. If you haven't listened to this, it is releasing today, about noon maybe. You're going to want to check Marvel's YouTube channel, not ours.

Maybe you've heard of them. Marvel. Perhaps you've heard of them. Marvel. Perhaps you've heard of Marvel. Their YouTube channel, today, at some point in the afternoon, Eastern time, around 12 p.m. or later, you should see the video is up and able to be watched. So I hope you guys enjoy it. They have 20.3 million subscribers,

so hopefully a couple people will watch it. Hopefully you've heard of it. It would be nice if a couple people watched it. That would be awesome. Leave million subscribers. So hopefully a couple people will watch. Hopefully you've heard of it. It would be nice if a couple people watched it. That would be awesome. Leave some comments. Yes. Mention the Glass Cannon Network and how great we are and how much you love them and how much we've changed your life. Yeah.

Watch it for like three minutes and then write an extended comment about how you loved the entire two and a half hour or whatever it is. It's almost, yeah, it's almost three hours. We recorded this in December before Christmas. It's completely original idea that I had and I ran by them and we just did it and it was fucking great. It was so fun. So wonderful. And I really think that it was something special. So I hope you guys enjoy it. It's so funny. We recorded the whole thing. We were like, wow, that was really long and was like a lot longer than we expected. And we've been going back and forth with Marvel and they've been like, oh, we want to request some edits of this and

some edits of that. And the funniest thing is like, I look at the original file and I look at the edit after a ton of edits and a lot of back and forth and it's like eight minutes shorter. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like not a lot is cut at all. No. So it's, you get to see the whole experience. So can't wait for you guys to check that out. Now, I know there's some of you listening to this fodder right now, and that's why I'm

not even going to look at the camera. Yeah, don't. You're ashamed. I know you're just listening. You're not going to go to YouTube. You're not going to go to Marvel's site. You're not going to watch it because you don't have time. You don't have a TV.

You don't have a television. Computer or a phone. Right. So you couldn't possibly watch on YouTube. How are you listening to this? You want to listen to it while you are doing the dishes. I get it. I get it. And so that's why I'm happy to tell you right out of the

front, right out of the gate here, that we will be releasing an audio-only version to our subscribers. So there you go. So if you're a subscriber on the GCN subscription service, not Patreon. I don't think we're releasing on Patreon. No. You have to be moved over to the new subscription service.

If you haven't done that, by the way, get on it. Move over to the new subscription service. You'll be able to listen to it there as, I guess, its own podcast. That's probably what it's going to be. Yeah, I'll probably throw it under Friends of the Pod. Oh, it might be a Friends of the Pod. Yeah, it kind of is. It's probably what it's going to be. Yeah, I'll probably throw it under Friends of the Pod. Oh, it might be a Friends of the Pod. Yeah, it kind of is. It's its own thing.

But yeah, we'll get it up there right away. And if you want to enjoy just the audio version, it'll be there. However, if you want to take a dip into the video version, we do a lot of fun things with this. There's a lot more than what we do with Gatewalkers. There's a lot of fun visuals. And I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's definitely worth there's a lot of really fun stuff in it so i i would recommend checking out the youtube if you can but if not audio will be out in a week so around the next fodder episode that's when the audio will hit the subscription service so there you go word f y

i all right uh also fun stuff this week man tomorrow thursday do you know about this that i'm playing tales of kanzara with abu salim i sent you an email be like hey can you reach out to abu and see if you know about this so yeah i've heard i've heard about this yes uh our good buddy mcd had this idea came to me and was like you should tales of kanzara zau which is uh the game that Abu Salim is instrumental in the creation of, is a voice in that game released as a demo. And he's like, you should play that on stream and have Abu on. And I was like, all right, well, I'll reach out to him. When he said it to me, I'm like, Abu's got to be busy.

He's got a lot going on. I reached out to Abu and he was just like, hell yeah. So it was an awesome reaction. And I'm very excited excited and we're doing that tomorrow. So tune in to twitch.tv slash theglasscanon tomorrow, 11am Eastern, 8 o'clock on the West Coast in the morning, bright and early.

I'm going to try out the game and Abu's going to join me and probably watch me die a thousand times and make fun of me. I know! It's so amazing. I'm really looking forward to it. I was telling you right before we went live on five, just fingers crossed that the tech works, uh, man, but we'll see either way I'm playing that game and you're going to see me play that game. So that's going to be really, really fun. Uh, are you streaming today? Uh, I am Aldersgate. I mean, I have had some time as of late where I've just been like sneaking downstairs, putting a few hours in. I am way deeper into the game than I was from week to week. Now I'm like progressing. It is a massive fucking game. I mean, I keep waiting for like a you are now in act two and I'm either not an act two or act two happened and I didn't like they didn't make a big deal out of it, but I am shocked at the scope of this game.

I thought there would be a very clear transition, like, oh, you're now in the second part of the game, and I'm not, but I'm four maps in now, and they're massive, massive maps. I explored the whole Underdark by myself, and then I just went to this other section of the Underdark. It's an amazing, amazing game. Amazing. Baldur's Gate 3's an amazing, amazing game. Amazing.

Baldur's Gate 3. I mean, everybody knows this isn't like a shock game of the year, and deservedly so. How long are you going to stream this? If you just had to guess, if you just had to throw a guess out there for how many consecutive weeks you're going to stream this. Well, I think because I'm mainlining it a lot in my free time

and streaming two hours a week, I think I could wrap this up by the end of March. Okay. Yeah, because I want to move on to a new game, but I do want to beat this. Okay. So you want to beat this on stream. This is going to be something you're not going to stop until you beat. I think so. I think so.

There's other games that I want to play. I want to play Liza P, and I know there's other cool stuff coming out, but I have to beat this. And I'm also doing every single quest as well. Not trying to platinum it, but I'm not leaving any stones unturned, so that's adding time to it. I think if I just mainline the main quest, I could finish in probably 20 hours, but you know me. Oh, I know you. I have to uncover every area of the map. I have to do every—I can't leave any dangling quests. But I'm having a great time with it. Good.

I'm glad. I'm glad. Alright, so let's... Well, actually I'm sorry. There's one more thing, which is... Big news! Also on Friday, we got our live show that we're... Not Glass Cannon Live. No. We're doing Let's Play Rambo! We're playing Everyday Heroes, Rambo...

We're not even playing THE Rambo cinematic adventure. We're playing kind of a prologue, John, that is just a one-shot at a comedy club in New York City on Friday night. We've talked about this on FOD for a couple weeks, but if you've missed it and you're in the New York area, you could still grab a ticket. It's Friday night, 8 o'clock at Stand Up New York. And it should be amazing. It's me and Ewan Skid and two wonderful comedians, Khalees Hawkins and what's her name? I forgot. Natalie. Natalie, yes. Cuomo. So it's going to be really, I mean, we have no idea what to expect. I do. Well, yeah, you do. What you're not expecting

is I have been diving into the sirenscape because sirenscape is like kind of part of this, too. And I've been like browsing through the sound sets and preparing multiple explosions. I mean, you better have tons of explosions in this thing. Gunfire. So much gunfire. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to it. I'm excited to go back to the Upper West Side. I lived on the Upper West Side for years.

When I moved to New York, I lived there. And so I would walk by. That's where fancy snooty people live. Constantly. I just can't wait to like hang out afterwards in those bars along Amsterdam. Yes. But this has been a lot of work because not only am I learning the everyday – learning like the Rambo game in this particular scenario. We've got to learn everyday heroes. Now, you've played a little bit of it and, uh, I, I haven't, but I've been

playing a lot of Baldur's Gate and I've obviously run some 5e. It's very, it's very close to 5e, but like you've got machine guns and stuff. So it's a, it's a lot different how armor works, how explosions and grenades work. So I'm like learning the system while learning the prologue. But what I will say is, can I just jump in for a second and just say how cool armor is in Everyday Heroes? It's really, really cool because, correct me if I'm wrong, but the basic concept, I'm going to nerd out on this for a second, the basic concept is that armor is there to kind of like in a moment of life and death, it can stop a bullet. That's kind of like in a moment of like life and death, it can like stop a bullet. Like that's kind of what it does.

And then once it does that, it's like broken and it doesn't work anymore. Like that's sort of the basic overall concept because they were like, we can't just have heroes clad in like Kevlar that have like DR to every attack because it doesn't really, like armor doesn't really work that way in the modern world. Anyway, it was something like that as I was to every attack. Because it doesn't really, like armor doesn't really work that way

in the modern world. Anyway, it was something like that as I was looking through it. And I was like, oh, this is just really cool. Basically, at a moment when you think, because it's meant to be cinematic. It's when you're about to be, I'm looking at my cheat sheet here.

When you're about to be put two or below zero HP. Yes, it saves your life. If the armor value is equal to or higher than the penetration value, the character can make an armor saving throw. And if you're proficient, you add your life. If the armor value is equal to or higher than the penetration value, the character can make an armor saving throw. And if you're proficient, you add your bonuses. If the armor is damaged, you get disadvantage on that save. On a successful saving throw, the character takes no damage.

But if the penetration value is higher than the armor value, the armor is of no benefit. So like a rocket launcher, it doesn't matter how good you're at. Right. And if you save against it, it's now damage. Yeah you could do it again but it's at disadvantage and it just it's great because those early hit points it doesn't factor into the early hit points yeah like the early points you just get chunked down get chunked down but then when you're at the end can your armor save your life it's really great as uh um i've been diving more into it and working with the creators of the game on this project.

Like you can see their vision a little bit better than when you're just reading the book. And their vision is to recreate movies. That's, you know, it's really what it is, is you're recreating cinematic moments in film using a kind of D25-ish system. So anyway, it's really great design and I can't wait to play. And this is what I was going to say. The prologue that we're going to be running is absolutely amazing. It is so wonderfully written and super immersive. My concern is always like, how do I get this into two hours? And how do we do this with people we've never played with who have never picked up a D20? But I mean, that's going to be the fun for the audience

is watching this all unfold. But if I can pull this off, this whole story in two hours, it's a phenomenal story. And it makes me want to really dive into more of their products because they do this for all these big, like Escape from New York, you guys did. They've got a bunch of other ones. Yeah, they have Total Recall and they have Kong, Skull Island and a whole bunch of other ones. And it's because they're, yes, they're crafting. I mean, this is why I think it works for us, right? Because what we do is so cinematic in nature. It feeds into that machine really well.

Oh, my God. It's so good. Like, I want to replay this another time. This could be like our warm-up. Now, a lot of people are asking, if you don't live in New York, you can't come see this, can you see it afterwards? We think, but we're not 100% sure. We think, yeah. The last meeting that I had, they have every intention of taping the show.

If it releases, you know, it's all going to depend on the quality and if all the equipment works and everything, and it's not a Glass Cannon production, so we have no control over any of that stuff, but their intention is to at least put it on YouTube, from what

I understand. So, we'll see. It's exciting, and it's YouTube, from what I understand. So we'll see. We'll see. It's exciting. And it's going to happen. Friday night. I mean, as much as I'm looking forward to it, I'm also looking forward to it being over, because it is a stressful thing. And it's going to be nice to have that off the plate so I can just focus on Tales of Kinsera.

Hey, Francis, you coming out to Rambo Friday night? You know it! Let's go! You know it! That's going to be great. CJ's going too. Sydney's supposed to be there unless she was just blowing smoke up her ass. Well, then I'm out.

Well, then I'm out. It's going to be awesome. All right. Let's talk about the Glass Cannon podcast. All right. Glass Cannon. Remember this guy? This is still here.

Be careful with that oh that's right that's the that's the not only the prototype it's the original there's the bird oh he's upside down there's the bird nine o'clock finch there's my nine o'clock finch so like seconds before this i'm talking to our merch purveyor because when i mentioned on the show we should make a t-shirt of that no seconds before this fodder tape this fodder yeah i'm i'm uh i'm talking to our our merch guy and i'm like can we take this drawing and put it on a t-shirt? Cause now that I've heard the fan response, it's, it's enough for me to be like, all right, let's go through with this idea. And long story short, it appears we can pull this up. That exact drawing on a t-shirt

is it going to have legal lines on it? No, we're going to have those removed in Photoshop. So I'm going to make a high res scan of it. His art team is going to take out the lines, reproduce on a shirt, and I'm hoping to have it for the Toronto show. Oh my God. Do you think his art team is going to be like, this is the dumbest project I have ever worked on in my history? Well, his first question was like, do you want to have our professionals take that horrible drawing and make something nice of it? And I said, no, no, no.

The shittiness is what makes it awesome. It is so shitty. Anyway, fun ep. Lots of role play as our mystery continues. It really – it reminded me of a Delta Green episode. And I say that with – what's the word I'm looking for? And I say that as a compliment because it's the kind of episode where if I'm handling it as in a Delta Green session and I look back, I think at the start of that episode, you had a bird map that told you exactly where to go and when to go to move the adventure forward. And an hour and

a half later, you just got there and that's all you did. Nothing else happened. But what happened is the players kind of dug into their characters a little bit. And that is fun to do. And that's what you guys did a lot in Delta Green. So I'd be sitting there, you know, leg shaking, running a Delta Green game, going like zephyr scene so important to uh understanding or beginning to understand the character actually that's not the right term beginning to understand how much you don't know deep in your understanding about the character right and then uh similarly with uh talitha speaking with asta about her her secret and her concerns that she might lose control of her own mind. Very, very cool stuff. So there were a lot of really fun role-playing elements.

Is there anything that jumped out to you in particular? I don't want to go too far into the scene because there's the Zephyr scene because there's actually some Listener Mail stuff about it that I want to bring up. But what jumps out to you in this episode where plot-wise, not much moved forward at all, but so much happened? So how do you kind of look at that as a GM? Yeah, you have to find that balance between letting the game breathe and moving things along. I think that your natural inclination sometimes is like, come on, you know, and I get that. And it's really, there really is a fine line. Sometimes you give the players too much rope and they don't know what to do with it.

They just start tying, they just start hanging themselves. Yeah. But like, you, you got to find that, that fine line. And, you know, I think just because we've worked together for so long and we've done the live show in front of a live audience, that makes a huge difference. Like you can't have lulls. You got, you got to make sure that like what you're doing is important. And I always say like, if you're about to speak and you think you're, you're leading a conversation somewhere, do you think it's interesting? If not, don't do it. And it just seems to be naturally happening

where the characters are opening up. Like I thought that was really smart of Matthew to like start digging into that. And I told you, I said, if you have secrets, you want to get out there, don't wait. Cause you'll end up like lucky and you don't get to get them out there. So start getting them out there. So seeing the players pick up on that and start doing it naturally, it just, it feels right. And it's kind of cool that he confided in Asta and not the people he's known for a couple months. Yeah. That, that reveals something about the character as well, but you know, don't, don't get lost in like even checking out old Henry Bucket's place. There's stuff there.

There's stuff that's being layered in there about what is going on that, again, may seem insignificant now but will seem a lot more significant later. Henry Bucket's place is complete nonsense. And I will not hear any argument to the contrary. You get so many. Literally, you said. Well, what's the pattern? There's a pattern. I said, what's the pattern? You said, yeah. Because the pattern itself isn't

important. What's important is that there was a method to the madness. Great. And we figured that out. Yeah. There's nothing more to add to that. There's nothing more to add to that. Exactly. But you get to role play with Abelina a little bit. You get to- No, no, no. I'm not saying this scene was bad. You just said like, oh man, there was a lot going on in henry bucket's place that you you know you're gonna look back on and see no there isn't well it's over is there why henry buckets why this like shut-in hoarder shut-in hoarder and something to do with his parents yeah something that was like generational why is that important like there's stuff going on there, man. Stuff going on. You know what's nice is like, what was I going to say?

Like, you can see that Abelina and her team, after Henry Buckets disappears, they go there and they're like, nothing. And you guys go. They're not investigators. They're not investigators. And you see something. They didn't roll a natural 20 like Kate did on their perception checks. School in the Alderwoman. I want to go back to Talitha's secret for a second.

I want to bring up a general game concept that groups, I think, we've talked about this loosely before, but I want to bring it up again. Bring it up! So Matthew has this little scene, right? And he has it in front of all of us as players. So now we all know this secret that he did not mention to us. all of us as players. So now we all know this secret that he did not mention to us. I mean, maybe he told other people, he didn't tell me, like that his character had this secret past, the secret history, the secret ancestry, all this stuff. And that as a character worried about losing control. Reveals this to another character, I think that that's a big deal for Matthew,

right? To like bring this into the show, put it out there and get that sort of ball rolling on that subplot. Right. That that narrative plot. Yeah. My question is, as another player in that game, is the ball in our court at all to bring it up again to help him flesh that story out? help him flesh that story out? Or since he didn't tell any of our characters, are we supposed to just sit here and ignore it until he brings it up until he chooses to bring it up again? The reason I ask is maybe he wants somebody to bring it up because he doesn't want to constantly be shoehorning it in himself about his own character. I don't know. What do you think? I think, no, it's not your place to do it. Like, you've got to kind of follow his cues. If he wanted somebody else to bring it up, I think he would role play more like, oh, you're having a conversation with Talitha, and you notice that she's kind of pulling back as you're asking those questions.

If he's having that scene with Brother Ramius, now he's prompting Brother Ramius to start prying. To ask. But like where you weren't a part of that conversation, there's really been no other indication that this is going on. There's no real reason for you to do that. You'd be metagaming that role play. Now, there was a point when you first met Abelina, when Abelina's like, and I see something in you too.

But I think you'd prefer that I didn't say. She stands there stone-faced. So I'm deciding to kind of maybe do what I want and go against Matthew, because I think it's going to be interesting, the story, because now everyone at the table is like, well, what's that all about? And you can decide if you want to question him or not. But the way Matthew's playing is like, wait until he gives you the cue. It's kind of like a little thing that Matthew and I can decide what we want to do with that, with like either discussing it with each other or not. Like when I had Abelina do that, I didn't ask want to do with that with like either discussing it with each other or not. Like when I had Abelina do that,

I didn't ask Matthew to do that, but that's why I kept it super open ended. It's like, I think you'd think I'd rather not say now, you know, there's a secret out there and it's up to you guys if you want to pry or if you want to. Great.

That's what I'll do. Uh, next episode. Go for it. That we get together. Remember when Abelina said this, something's been on my mind. Something's been on my mind ever since FOD. Uh, fun but then he could be like oh uh i don't know she's weird

fuck that fuck that lady we should kill her are you trying to say we should kill her you know what i think you're right uh yeah i don't know you know it's i think in due time the question is like uh are are people throwing out a bone to the other players to get interest in their character? I don't know. You got to kind of read it, I guess. Yeah. But I feel like, you know, it's something that needs to be explored. It can't just be mentioned once and then thrown in a drawer for 15 episodes.

Yeah. It's going to die as a subplot, you know? I agree. I agree. Might need a little flashback. Might need a little. Speaking. I need a little, speaking of flashback, let's get into listener mail.

Let's do it. Oh my God. Was that not the real song? That was your voice. Thank you, Nicholas of the Low Clan. All right, we're going to do a bunch of listener mail today. I'm excited. Let's start with Brian from Japan.

Brian from Japan, good way to start a listener mail question. It grabs my attention because right out of the gate, first line, pee breaks? It's own line. Well, this grabs my attention. Now you have my attention. Now that the podcast is breaking for sponsors anyways, has there been any thought or discussion about adding an intermission to live shows? In some of the shows that go along, there have been comments about Troy having to turn his chair around, and it makes me worry for his health and hygiene. Also, having worked in a live house, the bartenders and waitstaff might appreciate the swell at the bar that comes during an intermission. Anyway, it's an interesting question. Have we ever discussed doing an

intermission of the live show? I don't think the show is long enough to merit an intermission. Two and a half hours? Yeah, I just feel like— You know that's longer than any act of any Broadway show besides maybe that one in Oklahoma. But how long is a Broadway show? August Osage County. Broadway show is close to three hours though, right? Yeah, so it's hour and a half break, hour and a half-ish. Nobody goes two and a half hours without an intermission. So I think we could only do it if we extend the show three hours but they don't want us to do that we get a lot more done um

yeah i feel like we're in that it used to be a two-hour show that would sometimes be two and a half you know sometimes we go long lately we off we went long a lot in 2023 i just feel like it would ruin the flow i think it would be great It's just because you have a tiny, tiny... No, but think about it. You get to have a mid-show cliffy. Everybody loves a mid-show cliffy. Dude, it's hard enough coming up at the end of the show cliffy. Think about how many people in that audience also

are dying to pee and are not paying attention to the show. They're like... Anyway, it's an interesting concept. I wouldn't toss it away without thinking about it I think everybody can use a fun break After we pee It's kind of a weird thing

But then yeah, you bring up the house music It's an intermission Bring up the house lights Everybody buys a drink And then you come back and do a half an hour of show An exciting half an hour of show Because the venues want us to fuck off the stage now then again i do think that they would go buy drinks people be like well let's go let's fill up get some drinks so you get

a little more start earlier yeah we could start it oh it's seven o'clock seven o'clock seven o'clock seven o'clock uh we start at seven but now that means we're showing up to the fucking we break in 8 30 come back at 8 45 shows over show's over at 10. An hour and 15 minutes, second half. I don't know. I'll take it into consideration. I'll tell you what, Brian from Japan. I love the idea. Thanks for writing in. Good friend of the show, Jen with two N's from

Boston. Oh, hold Jen. Oh, Jen. I love that we are kicking off the new year with more hours of video game streaming. It is a great time to interact with you all and the niche. I'm curious, though, at the switch from gaming in the employee lounge to the main Twitch channel. Can you shed any more light on that or any light at all, I guess?

Yeah. Well, one of the things we're doing this year is pushing a lot of our tabletop content, our pre-recorded tabletop content to YouTube. We've seen faster growth on that channel. And that's one of the main reasons or the main reason that Gatewalkers premiered there. And so this year, you can expect Get in the Trunk to be on YouTube as well. But we want to make sure that we maintain a strong Twitch presence and kind of get back to using Twitch for what it's meant for, which is live interaction. And so right out of the gate, before we're able to launch some other projects later this year on Twitch, we thought, like, let's just keep shit going by having you and I play video games. And then this week alone, already doing this experiment by having Abu come on, you know, I think you're going to see a lot more of that as well. And, you know, it kind of leaves

the employee lounge as a place for experimentation. It lets us kind of fuck around with games that might not be ready for prime time. It lets us do different things that are outside of our normal purview with Degenerate Dungeon. So that's still our kind of experimental space for stuff that can eventually come to Twitch. But I think you can expect a lot more fun live stuff on Twitch over the year. Yeah, I think... Besides just video games. Well, I don't think I know.

There was a time where a decision was made to move, to keep Twitch just tabletop. Yeah. So that it wasn't video gaming. Because video gaming is not the main thing that we do by a long shot. It's also not, we're not particularly good at it. Dude, that Twitch channel started with me playing Dark Souls and you coming over with just a microphone on the table uh no video besides dark souls for 11 people that was that the origin of our main twitch channel yep that's how it started uh and that's why we still get financial updates for that channel to a email

address that we basically can't use super frustrating but super frustrating. But it was open so, so long ago. But yeah, we decided to keep that to tabletop and keep it a focused tabletop channel. And then this employee lounge would be fuck around, and that includes video games. Well, the big transition, Jen, to answer your question is, let's focus on Twitch as a live experience, as opposed to Twitch as a pre-recorded area. And who cares if it's tabletop or not? Labs, great. Video games, great. Even some other ideas and concepts like Troy's talking about that we're hoping will come later this year. It's things where live interaction is key so that we can hang out with the chat. So that's really the main impetus behind putting

video games back on is just because we can interact with you guys live and we missed it. You know, I'd like to do is another strange aeons marathon. Yes. I want to do that very live. Yeah. Um, it's kind of checks a lot of boxes. One being like, we talked about this story and two, it's always been amazing. It's always wonderful. Yeah. Uh, and now you're adding Kate into the mix. So I don't, it's always been amazing. It's always been fun. Yeah. And now you're adding Kate into the mix, who I don't think has ever done a marathon, a Strange Hands Marathon live. So, I mean, and it would be great. It would be fantastic.

So keep an eye out for that coming down, coming up the horizon soon. Well, soon. Then I always get us in a jam with that word. And then they're like, soon? What is it, next week? Sorry. How does it come up the horizon, too? I don't know, man.

It's weird. This show is, is this show live? Jason from Seattle writes in. Not just any Jason from Seattle, Troy. Hi. Really enjoying the campaign so far, and I can't wait to see how the group reacts to some of the weird stuff I wrote in book two. What? Jason Keighley from Seattle writes in. Friend of the show?

To listener mail. Jason Keighley, what's up? Get out of here. I just watched the episode that introduces Asta, and I was wondering if there was any discussion of bringing Lucky back as a spirit using the ghost archetype in the Book of the Dead. I think it would fit themes in the adventure path, but I can also see how that kind of thing isn't for every group. Keep up the good work.

Thank you, Jason. Jason Keeley, son of a gun. I had no idea. Really appreciate it. We actually had another question like this a couple weeks ago that wasn't directly about this situation, but asked in general about bringing characters back. And I think we even mentioned in passing.

I think I said, I think the Book of the Dead. That's a ghost archetype. Yeah, that's really cool. So yeah, that is really cool. I think it said, I think the Book of the Dead. That's a ghost archetype. Yeah, that's really cool. So yeah, that is really cool. I think it's a really interesting idea. I know Troy's not going to discuss it at all because it's a possible spoiler. I mean, listen, that

exists. It's cool to know. It's like anything else, like finding the right balance between like letting the gravitas of death happen and ruining that by being like next week they're back you know but maybe they could come back yeah and i feel like that that is an interesting i feel like it's a really interesting idea in this particular situation because of how early lucky went out yeah it really feels like a character where so

much is left undone and unsaid that it could, that the character could benefit from a reappearance at some point. I mean, we talk in this episode about the potential that it is lucky that left the bird, you know, and it's a really cool concept. Like, why not? Why couldn't it be? She's a cat. She loves mall and birds. And meanwhile, why not send this message that leads you to a place you could not get on your own because you couldn't decipher these other clues. So anyway, it's a neat concept. Jason, thank you for writing in. And we really appreciate it.

Never say never. Never say never. All right. Let's move on to Tristan from Topeka. And actually, I think i'm going to combine this yeah this is going to be it's topica is it topic i believe it's topica tristan from topica uh writes in uh after listening to the fad uh about troy getting back into the groove and slapping his nuts on the table after his break from giant slayer

i really love listening to the scenes that he would build and i have begun writing them for slapping his nuts on the table after his break from Giant Slayer. I really love listening to the scenes that he would build, and I have begun writing them for my home games to immerse players. What I am mainly curious of is how Troy picks the moments to present these character scenes and how he decides what to reveal from a character's backstory. So obviously we have, you know, this situation comes up in this episode. Also, Matt M. writes writes in same sort of question this week uh i he says i'm jamming a campaign that's been going on for a few years we actually have one session a month and then do some role playing uh i do vignettes individually with players over

discord in between so i've started asking the players but i want to bring this to the main group so i've started asking players to write vignettes that we can act out of the table a la Glass Cannon. So Troy, how do you get your players to write these and how do you find the right time to bring them in? And then for Joe, how do you go about writing them? And for both, what is the collaboration process like? Matt from DC. So yeah, Matt, thank you for writing in. And also what was the other one? Tristan from Topica. Thank you for writing in. Similar questions, but was the other one? Tristan from Topica. Thank you for writing in. Similar questions. But yeah, it comes up this week because we have a really juicy backstory scene this week.

Yeah, this is something that has really evolved over time that began with our pre-GCP, pre-GCN, J-Region campaign. As I started to feel more comfortable with GMing, because that was the first time I ever GMed, And as I started to feel more comfortable with GMing, because that was the first time I ever GMed, I, you know, right around book three or so, I started introducing these backstories where I really wouldn't, I wouldn't talk to you guys too much. I would just like write these scenes and play them out in a session. And that kind of carried over to Giant Slayer once I felt comfortable with where we were at bringing that in. And sometimes I would consult with you guys. Sometimes I wouldn't. I would just start writing these things and planting them in and then being like, all right, well, now you're going to deal with this fact about your character.

And that doesn't work for every table. I was very lucky to have players that just trust me to kind of run with it. But as we develop more products and more shows, it was important to me to get feedback from you guys as well, because I wanted you to really drive the narrative of your character and then allow me to put the roadblocks in and the obstacles that could change what your original concept was to make it more cinematic. So I would have you guys just either write out shit or just send ideas that I would write. And either way, I then reframe them. I reframe them based around my idea of the narrative and also where I want to take the story. And then I'll say it aloud to see like what's going to sound good on radio. And then when we do it, I try to not look at it too much so that we're really off the cuff. But we have an idea, kind of like a wrestling match. You have an

idea of what the outcome is. You know, we're not 100% sure how you're going to get there. And that's just the way it's developed over time. It's like you write something and then I'll rework it for the show. And speaking from my chair, I tend to – I kind of have to wait. And sometimes you ask for them, for the scenes. And sometimes you just ask for any scene. Sometimes you ask for a scene that does this. scene. Sometimes you ask for a scene that does this. And in either case, I generally can't,

like I have that writer's block thing where like, I can't write a scene unless like I have a very clear inspiration for what the scene is. Like if I'm just forced to write a scene, I can never really get it done. And so sometimes I'll go long periods without them. But when I do, when I have written them in the past, it's been my experience that you don't really change much at all. It's like, you know, small little things. You're a very good writer. But like, thank you. Other people. But it's mostly, I mean, let's take Kate's scene, for example. So talk me through how this developed.

Did you go to her and say, I'd like a scene? No, you went to all of us and said, hey, get me some stuff in the coming weeks. And I still didn't get it to you for more than a month because I just didn't have the idea. Kate got this scene to you when? Ballpark. Well, going back like pre-Gatewalkers, I was like, I want everybody to give me your,

a pre-show moment that is going to be like episode one. And same thing we did for androids and aliens and i reworked those to make them you know fit gatewalkers and whatnot um and we did that but then like right before the holidays i was like back on tour next year and gatewalkers were now like in the thick of it if you guys want to do that work write those scenes and i'll work them in and then i just kind of leave it out there and kate sent me this she's like i, I've got a, I've got an idea for a scene. So kind of reworked it a little bit with her. And where was it when she gave it to you? Where was it? Yeah. Like was, was she in my house? Is she, no, I'm saying like she had, where was it in terms of, uh, you know, what was built? Was it the scene was her and a boy that she liked and the interaction and him sort of displaying some sort of racist kind of ideology that's kind of passed on from his parents and this kind of breaking her heart.

It's a very heartbreaking scene. Was that framework all there when Kate sent it to you? I'm looking right now. So October 26th, I reached out to you guys. I was like, just wanted to throw this out there. Was it October 26th? October 26th, and reached out to you guys. I was like, just wanted to throw this out there. Was it October 26th? October 26th, and I've only received one. It is a rolling task. If you ever want to work with me on some flashbacks, let me know. We did an indie in episode one of Gatewalkers, but down to do more. Great way to get people's stories out there and introduce secrets and NPCs from your past. Sydney, we should get popping on something for your new character soon. And then a month to the day later, Kate sent me.

Oh, wow. So you've had that since November. Yeah, and we recorded that. Was that recorded in December? I guess we recorded it. Yeah, we recorded it. Oh, so you just had it for like a couple weeks before you. Yeah, and like I had it there

while we did like two recordings, I think, and I just didn't have the right place to introduce it. I thought it wanted to come at the beginning of an episode and it didn't work for the beginnings of the last few episodes. But this one, I was like, oh, this is perfect. You're in the room. She can notice something. I was like, maybe she'll notice something out the window. And we just kind of went into it. But I'd been sitting on that for a few weeks. She was like i might have cried while writing this so beware it's really sad it is so sad uh but that basic framework was all there when she sent it to you so this is like all from kate this idea of her character that's very cool yeah um and i did send you something by the way so you said she was the only one who said something you did i deleted it exactly without. Without reading it. Went to spam. I deleted it without reading it. My secretary said it wasn't important. Oh, man. Amazing.

Yeah, so that to me, and then that combination of Zephyr getting that scene out there, it definitely kicked me in the ass to get something out there, because I loved it so much. I was like, this is so great, and I feel like it's important for all of us. Yeah. It's hard because it's like, you're the character we probably need to know least about. We need to know about these other characters. You're,

you're, you're very good at like bringing out character discoveries in role play. Naturally. Not, not saying that other people aren't, but like, that's your bread and butter. You just,

you kind of see that. And that's probably from running a lot of Delta green. You're just doing it naturally. We need to hear from other people. So that's like when Zephyr, I was like, let's go, let's get a Zephyr story out there where we're aching for it. We need Nasta. It's good to see Matthew bring it up naturally. But I'd still love to see another Talitha scene. There's a lot of secrets there and then Buggles too. You know, I want to see that. That's not to say we don't need a Ramius, but we know Ramius right now. We feel pretty good about him. Oh, you don't know Ramius. The old stoner uncle.

Oh, there's a lot to learn there, buddy. You don't become a stoner uncle overnight. That's true. A lot of complications that go into it. Well, that's all I have for this one. I think that next week we're going to hopefully maybe, I believe we're going to talk a little bit about how important this character development stuff is. And hopefully everybody kind of gets more into the groove of getting it out there because it just raises the stakes for all the characters. And when you do that, it makes interactions between them more clear and makes the improv tighter. But then it also makes the combats more important. It gives them higher stakes when you care more about the characters and how you're going to care about them if you don't know anything about them.

So that's why these little elements are important. And, yeah, I agree. I'd love to hear more from Buggles and hear more from Asta. Like what strange and interesting characters. Like what is going on in their past. important and yeah i agree i'd love to hear more from buggles and hear more from asta like what's strange and interesting characters like what is going on in their past so hopefully we can uh get some of those scenes into let us know in the comments if you'd like to see more scenes from buggles and asta and uh we'll i mean we'll put skid down in front of the computer and make him read these comments look at these comments maybe that'll give him the kick in the ass he needs to

get you to you know he's going to write something phenomenal. So, yeah, I'd love to see that happen. That's going to wrap it up for me, buddy. That's it. I'm done. Good thoughts. I'm glad we're doing this. I'm glad we're doing it, too.

It's great being in studio. We're also getting other work done, too, which is great. It's very productive, and it's great to hang out with CJ and Francis. Once again, thank you, CJ and Francis, on the production end of things. And thank you all for watching and for listening and for leaving the comments on YouTube. Write your comments here. I'd love to bring more up next week.

Thank you guys so much for hanging out. Check out the Marvel show. Go over to Marvel's channel and check it out. And come see us live at Stand Up New York on Friday night. That's it. Later. We're out of here. Bye.

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