The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 2/8/23

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

The guys found a recording space! (Maybe.) Troy and Joe discuss exciting news in their search for a new office before tackling an interesting topic in the world of RPG game design. For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com and for exclusive content and benefits, subscribe today at patreon.com/glasscannon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to Cannon Fodder, a behind-the-scenes look at the Glass Cannon Network. At the Glass Cannon Network. What is going on, Nish? Welcome back to Cannon Fodder. It's your good buddy, Joe O'Brien. And hello. My name is Troy LaValle. Troy is in the middle of writing an email, as is obvious.

He didn't even know the show started. All right, so I wasn't writing an email, but I put this card up on eBay, sports card. We're doing a show! Well, here's the thing. I put it up there, and I normally have a buy it now price, and I set the price based on what they call in the industry comps. What is it sold for lately? You put it up there as the comp. Well, this particular card, when I put it up a week ago,

it really wasn't worth enough for me to put the comp price up, so I'm like, you know what, I'll do an auction. I'll do a seven-day auction and let's see if I actually make a couple extra bucks on it. Well, there was a big trade in the NBA, and a known

piece of shit, Kyrie Irving, got traded from the Nets to the Mavericks. And the guy behind him has basically been elevated to a larger role and put up like, he broke a couple records in the past couple of days. So anyway, some guy offered me like a couple bucks for the card. I was like, why am I getting this offer right now?

And then I look at it and realize he's lighting it up. So now I'm like trying to revise the offer. I'm like, there's no longer an auction. Now it's a $30 card and I can't do it. So that's what I was doing while the music was playing. Thrilling start to this fodder from Wednesday, February 8th, 2023. A known massive NBA fan sports crossover to our audience. And so I'm sure everybody's really excited and knows the name of that player on the net,

whom I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Cam Thomas. Cam Thomas. Most people don't realize this, but Cannon Fodder started out as an NBA sports card podcast. Yes, it did. It evolved over time. It really has changed.

It really geared toward like our main hobby of gaming. But yeah, initially we wanted to do a podcast about NBA sports card trading. It's fun to get back to our roots, though. It is. It is fun. That's to our roots, though. It is fun. That's what this year's Potter is all about. Back to the roots. That's 2023 for the Glass Cannon Network. Getting back to our roots.

Getting back to the roots. Speaking of roots, have you ever seen the movie Roots? I never have. Neither have I. I hear good things. You know LeVar Burton? He's like the main character, I think.

I did not know that. Yeah. LeVar Burton is like the main character, I think. I did not know that. Yeah. LeVar Burton. It is an exciting time here at the Glass Cannon Network. You and I got this show started literally an hour late because for an hour we've been just gabbing like a couple old ladies about all the exciting shit that we have going on. This is, I mean, there is so much for this FOD to like, we could do that FOD thing where we cross over into territory of like things we should not have been talking about because we're so excited. We're going to talk mostly news and then we're going to talk some RPG stuff, but not really

we are stupid as we didn't really have much in this week's episode to break apart in terms of rules. A lot of role play again, but we'll get into some juicy role play stuff. Uh, but first kicking it off big news, uh, the glass kind of network. You remember a little game called dune,

something, the Imperium adventures in the Imperium ventures in the Imperium. I am familiar with that game. I played it. You played it. You ran it. In fact, you split a 10 episode series jamming with

jared he did five you did five you remember this little game little show called inherit the sand i homebrewed it you know what's funny is uh someone at modiphius reached out to me after the series ended and asked if i wanted to write uh up that module to have it published and i have been too busy to even like get back to that conversation. You didn't even respond to the email. Oh, no, I respond. I was like, yeah, sounds great. And then he was like, all right, well, here's what we could do.

And that was a year ago. And I was like, I'm just too fucking busy, man. Well, that's a shame. Those of you that missed Inherit the Sand the first time around, it's it is hit its own RSS feed for the first time. I'm not saying it's migrated off of Glass Cannon Network Presents. It's still there for a limited time, but it is now been released on its own RSS feed for the first time. I'm not saying it's migrated off of Glass Cannon Network Presents. It's still there for a limited time, but it has now been released on its own feed, similarly to as we've done with Get in the Trunk in Time for Chaos, Voyagers of the Jump, now Inherit the Sand has its own RSS feed.

So if you've never heard the show and you want to get a little Dune in your life, it was a great series. Like you said, homebrewed that even the Modiphius people were like, this should be a module. It was really fun. You know, when you look back, obviously the session zero, Jared and I are running everyone through character creation.

And then I do the first episode first, excuse me, the first five episodes. And then we flash forward in time, like a generation and how much has changed for that house. And then Jared runs the, the second half of the episodes. It was really,

really fun. Cool system too. It's a classic Dune tale. It really is. Classic Dune tale. Yeah. You guys did a great job of making it fresh and different, but like hitting on the tropes that make Dune great.

And so, yeah, it was, it was a great series. I actually produced a few of those episodes. So I was just like, I was behind the sticks for a few of those and I, and I thoroughly enjoyed them.

So friends of the pod, we mentioned last week, that one shot that we did with Paula Deming and Mary Lou, that was so fun. The two E one shot. And it, we said it was going to release on YouTube, but it had not.

And that was just due to copyright issues. A few things we had to get sorted out with YouTube, but it got squared away and now it's available, right? I think it's up and running on Paizo's channel. If you want to watch the video of that, we released the audio on this Glass Cannon Network or Glass Cannon Podcast feed. Yeah.

So you could hear it there. But if you wanted the video, it's on YouTube, but you got to go to Paizo's channel to find it. That's the only tricky part. Yeah, it's like, that's how Friends of the Pod has worked and it's one iteration before this is like, when we did it seth skorkowski seth put it on his channel we wanted to do the same thing with paizo but we forgot like we have all these licenses that we just can uh that we have and so when youtube is like wait a minute where that music come from we can be like

well we have this license this lesson so when paizo tried to upload it they got hit with all these dings and we were like uh give us a moment we have to try and figure this out because we really wanted to put it on their channel to try and figure this out because we really wanted to put it on their channel to try and bring in some new fans to the niche. And so that's why there was a little bit

of a delay, but it was cool. The way they did it, I don't know if you watched on Monday, but they like premiered it. And so there were people watching it

for the first time, probably all five hours just sitting there. Oh, cool. No, I didn't catch that. There was like 40, 50 people. But it was great. So yeah, if you want to see that really really fun sesh and uh it's available uh at least right now only on paizo's youtube channel uh we have a big update for gatewalkers and uh

very excited to talk about that but first glass cannon labs is back this week tomorrow tomorrow we're playing cyborg right are? Are you still doing it? Yeah, I'm still doing it. I'm still doing it. I'm going to start prepping tomorrow, an hour before the show. Well, that's how it should be.

I mean, Cyborg is built that way. You don't have to prep much. You just get in there and start playing. Labs 2, that's what it's built around. I'm not going to be on, man.

Don't make me feel like I got to be on. You don't got to be on. You don't got to prep anything. Rob Kirkovichich is coming back so excited to play with him again uh who else is in that one is it jason charles miller it's just all right and rob and skid and i so yeah it's gonna be a fun crew i'm trying to get rob out to gen con this year i think he's gonna do it he should and i know jcm will be there i can't fucking wait i mean we've been talking so much gen con stuff just in the past 48 hours and now I'm getting like legit excited for it even though it's six months away.

Yep. Jared will be out there. I was talking to Jared about logistics yesterday. Exciting stuff. It's so funny. Back in the day, we never thought about Gen Con until a couple months before Gen Con or the month before Gen Con. And that was just to buy air tickets and try to scramble around for an Airbnb 15 miles from the convention center.

Where you and I would share a king-size bed and Skid slept in the shower. Yep. Not even an exaggeration. Not even an exaggeration. But now, as we do the exhibitor space and all that kind of stuff and we do events and we do events and we try to get sponsorships and everything like that. It's the work for it. So it begins in December and most of it's ironed out by February and kind of done.

And then you just sit and wait for Gen Con to come. So a lot of those things are well underway. And you and I, that was part of our hour before this show recorded things we can't talk about are the things that we're planning show wise for Gen Con. And we're so excited. Oh, my God. It is going to be – if we pull off – if we pull this off, it's going to be awesome.

It's going to be – you have to come to Gen Con. We're going to be doing so much stuff. And if we're able to expand the booth size, we have some really fun plans in store for that as well. So, I mean, if you ever want to – Yeah, the booth – we have plans at the booth that should hopefully, that are not just shows but are interactive and stuff like that

with you guys, with the nation. And then we have plans for a show that if it comes to light will be unlike anything we've ever done. Yeah.

It's going to be multiple shows and then multiple things in the booth. If you ever wondered, like, should I go to Gen Con? Yes. And this is the year to do it.

This is the year to do it. What else? Simbarum is going to return next week? Yes. And this is the year to do it. This is the year to do it. What else? Simbarum is going to return next week. Yes. So part two, and it'll be the finale. It'll be – we'll finish that one shot next week. And Jared's returning, and Ross, and Josephine. So everybody's back.

They're available, and we're rocking next week. So tune in right on our twitch.tv slash The Glass Cannon. It's 2 p.m. Eastern on Thursdays. We're rocking The Glass Cannon Labs. All right. Let's get to Gatewalkers. This is an update. Last week, you and I were in – last Wednesday, when Cannon Fodder was airing, you and I were in New York City and Queens and Long Island City looking at spaces.

And why don't you give the folks an update? Well, we released a video yesterday on YouTube that gave you a little behind-the-scenes look at our journey. And we put an offer in. They countered. And we accepted. And so we are going to – We've got a space it seems unless we get – It seems.

Unless they look at our financials and be like, wait a minute. You can't afford this. You're playing Pathfinder for a business? We're not letting you in here. Yeah. So this is happening. It looks like we're going to be moving in sometime in March. And then like, my God, the amount of stuff that needs to be done.

I mean, this is what we're doing. It's like, okay, find the space. That was the huge first hurdle. And it's a raw space. It's very raw, which is what we wanted. We wanted a wide open raw space that we can do whatever the fuck we want with. Well, now it's like step one, go to the city and look for spaces. Step two, find a space.

Step three, sign the lease, all that shit. Now, step 99 is record the first episode of the new Glass Cannon podcast. Now we've got to work out steps four through 98 and start banging them out over the next 30 to 60 days. It's a lot. It's exciting. It's a little nerve wrackingacking but we've got such a great team in place right now um i'm really i i think like we can i just feel like right now with so much exciting stuff that we have going on i really feel like we can do anything so i'm excited to see this come together i am i am like almost ready to start fucking recording too so um yeah it's gonna it's gonna be an exciting You know, we're still aiming for spring of 2023. But I don't want to give any dates and get people excited or nervous. But I have a date in mind. Well, like you said, there's 98 steps. And I can guarantee you whatever date you have in mind, it's going to be later than that.

I guarantee it. It's possible. So feel free to say it on air and I'll tell everyone right now. I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it. I'll tell you It's possible. So feel free to say it on air, and I'll tell everyone right now. I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it. I'll tell you after the show. It will be, you know, like you said, there's 98 steps. Any one of those could be fouled up through no fault of our own.

And so it could delay things a little bit. But, yeah, there's a lot of things that have to happen in order. And we are creating that rundown over the next three weeks. And then we're going to, bam, just get in there and get to work. I'm very excited to be back in a space playing in person. I've never played in person with Kate. Really? Yeah, I guess none of us have.

Right? We've never played. No, you did. You played in fucking Glass Candle Affiliate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's just on a stage with a bunch of people. I don't know. It's a little different.

Yeah. Sitting around a table and just playing. What I was going to say is the first day of summer is June 21st. So as long as it releases between June 20th, we didn't lie. That is technically true. June 20th is spring 2023. Last time I checked.

It's like when a video game releases, like Q3 and it, yeah. And it releases on October, September 30th. Okay. all right. Yeah, it's so funny. Like you can release something summer 2023

and it can literally come out September 20th. And that is summer. I don't know if you're ready to jump in the other thing, but more news, Glass Cannon Live. We are like rounding, circling the wagons on finally locking in dates and cities. It's kind of all happening very, very quickly. So hopefully we'll have on sales happening maybe within the next couple of weeks because we do want to bring back the tour in April. Well, a lot of people were

asking why we're not on tour right now. And this studio space is a large reason for that. And so we got to take this, like you said, 30 to 60 days is really going to be zoned in on getting the studio space up and running, getting everything squared away so that we're ready to record a great first episode. And then right after that, April, we're planning on being back out on the road. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, because we want to be able to keep the Strange Aeons party going and get out on tour. So if we are doing a show in late April, I want those tickets to be on sale for at least two months. So hopefully the next couple of weeks, we're really, really close. I want to lock in all the way through Gen Con.

So we could just release all those tickets all the way through August, but, uh, we're doing the best we can. I'm, I'm really excited to get back on the road. Um, I don't like going too long without getting in front of the nation.

I agree with you. One more thing before we move on to the RPG stuff, which we're about to dig into. There is one minor thing that I just want to mention, which is the employee lounge. I mentioned it before on fodder a couple weeks ago, letting people know if they didn't know you're actively streaming Dark Souls and Skyrim right now. I'm streaming Dead Space right now. Skid is streaming Xenonauts 2 right now. It's been really pumping in there, and we've been having a good time. If you haven't checked it out, head over to twitch.tv slash GCN Employee Lounge and follow

us there so you can make sure to get notifications when we go live. We were actually talking in a meeting on Monday about nailing down a schedule for that and trying to be a little bit more time sensitive. But right it's been fun because we could be like oh this lunch time i can just go i can go live or yeah this happy hour i could just go live i'll do it now it's been a lot of fun and like we've got a really good crowd in there uh you and i did some back-to-backs uh the last couple fridays yeah double header yeah double headers like if you've got the time to just chill or you're at work and you're allowed to watch Twitch, you really must make the rest of the day just fly by, listen to us goof off. So yeah, we are thinking about trying to find a way to schedule it so you can set your watch

to it. It's just a little tricky, but we're going to try out something. Yeah, right now, the fun part has been not being pressured to do it at a certain time when you have a lot of work obligations. Like if you can get those squared away, give yourself a little breathing room and you can stream for fun. That's what we've been doing. And it's been working out really well.

But we will try to get at least a few sessions scheduled each week. And we've been doing the Degenerate Dungeon there on Sunday mornings. That's obviously with football season coming to a close. The dungeon, we're going to figure out what happens with the dungeon now. We're going to do NCAA and baseball run lines. But we are going to do a Super Bowl special. It's this Saturday night, right? This Saturday night, yeah.

Live. And the last time we did a night dungeon, it went for four hours, and we all got a little tipseroony. Tipseroon. So this is going to be a fun one to watch me antagonize these Eagles fans the night before their prom. It's going to be great. All right. Let's get into what normally would be. We are stupid,

but let me read. I'll read Eric's email word for word. Didn't catch any rules issues this week, but I already have two guesses for things I'll find next week. So something's brewing. Something's brewing that he knows we're gonna screw up which is just great uh he's gonna let us make our own mistakes troy and learn from them that's great i wonder what i wonder what he can think does he have a copy of the the book is he looking at like the the

onee version of strange ions while he's doing this um maybe maybe not during the test phase of this i did a test phase with him where we were trying to get on the same page because there's actually a lot of different ways you could go about doing this. And one of the things I said was I'm not interested in you pointing out things Troy did wrong with a monster because I can't really say that on air if it was something Troy decided to do differently with a monster. So let's keep it to just general Pathfinder core rules and advanced rules but things that are not monster stat block dependent, right? Things are like, oh, he missed that they have this special ability. It's like, let Troy bring that up if he remembers it. And otherwise we'll just focus on the mechanics that players need to worry about.

So yeah, anyway, he said, I love that he didn't say, I already have guesses for things I'll find next week. He said two guesses. He has an exact number in mind, which means he's definitely zeroing in on something. So we'll see what happens next week. But I've got one question for you just out of that episode that I just have to ask. Feel free to say no. Feel free to say no comment.

But I'd like for you to be honest with the name. Oh, boy. Nestor Bin Lay. Nestor Bin Lay. Does he return in The Written Adventure? Or did you just bring him back so you could do that voice again? Be honest! He returns in The Written Adventure. Does he really?

Nestor Bin Lay is hanging out with the elves in the woods? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I took a little creative liberties because they don't really give you i think the reasoning in the book was just kind of like he's there and uh i was like oh let's let's make it a little more juicy but yeah he is in there and he's not as ridiculous in the book he just kind of has certainly happened at the indie show um but you know he's important he's important to the narrative you know um so it was fun to have completely belied by his voice the whole time what was fun is because like when we did the indie show and he turned into such a ridiculous character i was like

they're gonna have so much fun when he returns and later they must have been like thank god we're done with this guy and then it was just an amazing moment to me i loved it because you were like an out of the bring the traveler and like out of the woods walks Nestor Binlay. And it's silence from all the players. Who you originally met in the enchanted forest on a limb. Or something like that. And right when you get to a certain point and you can tell it dawns on Matthew and he goes, oh, no. Hello, my friend.

Hello, my friend. Don't you find Travis Alamada, the hunter we were looking for? Oh, no. Hello, my friends. Hello, my friends. 95, Travis Alamada, the hunter we were looking for. Oh, my God. You guys don't know. Like, if I'm like, I can't just be like, and it's Nestor Bindley and expect you to know who that is. No, we're not those kind of players. We're not those kind of players. But, like, I knew the description would get you.

It's fun having him back. Take this wand and this ring. The ring of kill this bitch. It's such a preposterous voice. Well, I wanted to bring up something to chat about since we don't have rules to dig into today. And this is a general RPG topic that I feel like we could have a good solid debate on. I love a good debate. And this comes in to game design, the game design area.

And it's actually based on a tweet that I saw go out from Owen Casey Stevens a few days ago. Actually, based on a tweet that I saw go out from Owen Casey Stevens a few days ago, he put out a tweet that said, if a typical TTRPG PC makes a typical attack against a typical foe, how often do you think that attack should hit? 50% of the time? 75% of the time, 75% of the time. And then the follow-up question is, how many attacks do you think a typical PC should make on average to defeat a typical foe? So it's a really interesting game design question. I know this is something you've been thinking a lot about, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it.

I didn't see you respond or anything like that, and I'd like to know where you stand on that topic. Yeah, I mean, I've been thinking a lot about this because I'm kind of like one of my many little side projects respond or anything like that and i i'd like to know where you stand on that topic yeah i mean i've been thinking a lot about this because i'm kind of like one of my many little side projects is is trying to fucking write a game uh for us to play and uh so when i when when when i saw that question i'm like oh man that is such an interesting question my my gut reaction before i really thought about it was 50 of the time i was I was like, I think a typical person, I guess a typical monster, you can throw a 50-50 shot. But that seems a little averse to fun.

You know, you think about baseball. Like if you have four at-bats in a game and you get one hit per game you're you know you're you're you're an above even you're hitting for average but you're that means you're an above average player in major league if you get two hits a game like you can't sustain that for the entire season no one has ever hit 500 and if you got two hits per game you would nearly double the greatest hitters of all time like in terms of average yeah people that are getting uh you know to going two for four three for four four for four every once in a while i mean these are your elite hitters um but they're still even they go oh for four for like

four games in a row right right so but i try and like adapt that to this model as well because if that was the case then it should only be 25 percent of the time. But then you're like – I feel like you're never hitting. Yeah, that's what I feel like. 50 percent felt good to me. It felt like the – trying to translate that baseball statistic into hitting. I was like 50 percent seems a little more fair. But I think I've settled on 65 percent.

Yeah. To me, that feels – and really it's just a little better than half. A little better than half. Because even at 65%, you're still going to be missing a ton. And for enemies that have a ton of hit points, you're going to have to hit a lot. And if you're only hitting 65% of the time, you better hope your teammates are hitting when you're missing. So 65 just felt good to me.

Your teammates are hitting when you're missing. So 65 just felt good to me. How many hits should an average typical foe take before going down? Oh, man. Average typical. So what does that mean? Because like what is an average typical player? There's an average typical third level character and then there's an average typical 12th level character. And the monsters they're going to be facing.

It all balances out. I guess it all balances out, right? From a game design standpoint, it should in a certain way. I mean you want it to – you don't want it to feel like there's no difference between third level and 12th level in terms of probability. That might not be as fun. But the point of the question is should an average foe take three hits and go down? Should they take eight hits before going down? Should PCs have to combine for six hits on them before they go down?

I feel like an average fight, let's say – and these are all just arbitrary things we're picking. But it also is years of doing this and knowing what feels right. To me, a five-round fight is your typical good fight. It's not a boss fight that goes 12 rounds. It's not a squash encounter that goes two or three. So let's take a five-round fight as an average encounter. If you've got four players that are hitting 65% of the time, then that means – I mean, I could do the actual math, but you're probably getting one and a half hits per round times five.

What is that? Six roughly. Yeah. That would be four. In four rounds, you'd have six hits. Seven and a half rounds. I mean seven and a half hits. And one and a half was. I mean seven and a half hits. So – and one and a half was high.

Right. So seven hits. But the idea is that a typical foe would not necessarily – maybe I'm thinking about this wrong. But a typical foe would not necessarily be one foe, that they're all hitting. A typical foe – Well, I guess you can interpret that anyway, right? Right, right. If we're just talking about four players versus one monster, every one of average party level, I think seven hits in five rounds sounds about right.

Okay. Because if that monster – because now if you think about this in terms of encounter design, that means that monster is hanging for five rounds. But it only has one opportunity every round to do something, whereas you guys have four opportunities. round to do something, whereas you guys have four opportunities. And if it can stand for five rounds and do something, to me, it's like, if you haven't done something cool in those five rounds, then it wasn't meant to be, and the monster goes down. That just feels right. It's very arbitrary, but again, this is coming from years of doing this. That just feels right to me. Do you feel differently? I do. My gut says that I would want to design a game where the timing is similar to what you're talking about, but where characters hit 75 to 80 percent of the time, maybe 80 percent of the time. The balance for that is not difficult. The balance for that really comes down to more hit points, right?

So like more hit points, you get the same amount of rounds, but it takes more hits, essentially, is what it comes down to, right? So a higher hit percentage and more hits to take down a creature. I like that in a heroic game. And I think when I say heroic game, I don't mean, you know, playing, for Christ's sake, what is the mythic?

I'm not playing, I'm talking about, I'm not talking about playing Pathfinder with Mythic Adventures. I'm talking about a classic D20 sword and sorcery, the character – the players play heroes kind of game. I like the idea of hitting a lot and then having that translate into tougher and tougher creatures that can take a similar amount of time. I think five rounds is a really good target. So I'm with you there. I just think that missing less makes you feel, not only is it more fun, but it makes you feel like a more competent character. Missing half of the time kind of makes it feel like, why is this person a hero? However, I think that there is an interesting alternate side to this, which is we also talk a lot about playing games that are not heroes, where people are regular people, right? The Call of Cthulhu, Games of the World, Blades of the Dark, that kind of stuff. Like you're not necessarily – you can't really transcend the amount of damage you're taking or the amount of hits you can even take.

Delta Green, for example, one good shot and you're dead, right? Like those kinds of games are fun too. They, they have their, they have their place. I think a game where you are a regular person and you're not supposed to be heroic.

I think a 40% hit chance is good. And I think that it should take less to bring something down because you feel how much a blow with a sword or a shot with a gun really damages something that's living and really gives them very limited time to live after that. Yeah, Master Neothotep, if you've listened to Time for Chaos, I don't want to spoil anything, but like there was one fight where someone had a shotgun and just like annihilated someone very quickly that like i wish was around longer but like then you think about it point blank range a shotgun would annihilate right right even if you're talking about a creature i don't know the situation you're talking about but even if you're talking about i actually do i'm lying but even if you're talking about a creature if it's a living creature that eats and breathes and has blood flowing through it, a point blank shotgun is going to do significant damage.

Like a Rottweiler. Those are nasty ass dogs. But if you hit it with a shotgun, it would explode. Totally. Oh, dude, so I'm reading this book right now called Endurance, which is a famous book. It's been around for 50 plus years. It's a nonfiction about an Antarctic expedition that went wrong and this crazy adventure story. I feel like you've read nine books with the same exact description.

I have. I have. This is the most famous one and I've never gotten to it. Are you afraid of like getting stranded? Because I feel like that's 99% of the books you read. No, I just find stories of people pushed to their limit fascinating. I don't know why. I just find it fascinating. But it was a gift. I got it for Christmas. And so I've been reading it and chipping away at it here and there. And he gets attacked by a sea lion, which is like no joke. Like an 1100 pound sea lion comes up out of the ice and attacks this guy. And he's just running for his life on skis.

And another guy comes with a rifle. And that thing takes like eight or nine bullets before it even slows down. You know what I mean? So like there is all different kinds of levels of monsters where like one bullet's going to take a human being down, but a sea lion can take a bunch of a bear, right? Think of it like a bear. Like you just shoot a bear with a handgun.

It's not going to do anything, you know? So there is a lot of variance in this. Let me ask you this in the world of variance. What we're talking about here is a typical PC and a typical foe uh so i'm i'm going to move it to atypical for a minute but just show you the two extremes within a pathfinder game to me the two extremes represented here are on one side you have an encounter with a magic user a caster of some kind, wizard, sorcerer, whomever, that is utilizing maybe invisibility and summons or mirror image. Okay.

Extremely difficult to hit, but low HP, low AC. When they get that hit, they go down quick, especially if it's from the jimmers of the world, right? Like a massive fighter with a massive sword. On the other side, you have an ooze encounter, a massive disgusting ooze with an AC of five and 590 hit points. And everybody is hitting every round, but it's just about chunking that HP down until you finish the thing off. And it's slowly grabbing people, paralyzing them, pulling them in. And it just feels like a death by a thousand cuts kind of idea.

What kind of encounter do you enjoy more? I know you, I know you don't enjoy playing as much anymore, but running maybe, or, or, you know what I mean? Like which one of those vibes, cause that tells you a lot about how you would veer in this, in this thing. Do you enjoy something that's hard to hit, but once you hit it, it's dead or something that you could hit over and over and over again. It just takes a long time to whittle it away you know i think it's more interesting to do the the magic user one um but it's more work to prep um but like i do it's so much easier to run the ooze um and so i kind of tend towards that because when i don't have to focus on all the other stuff it allows me to play a little bit more um but i think if all things being equal i prefer the caster

you prefer hitting less but when you do hit it means something yeah yeah because it just feels it's the it feels i don't know it feels like kind of why we play this game it's like you're if you're going up against this like regular joe who has all these powers and they're using those powers to keep themselves alive while trying to kill you, it's more exciting to me to finish that person off. But I don't know. It's a tough question to answer because so much of it is dependent on the circumstances. It's kind of hard to take these examples out. Well, sure. But the truth is this is a game design question.

Yeah. Well, sure. But the truth is this is a game design question. Because really, if you boil it down, the truth is that the ooze fight and the wizard fight are both you're playing the game, but you're still just using the one game system. So the one game system has to allow for that variance of encounters, feeling different percentages, feeling different, but you know, the middle line is all we're talking about right here. And how does the game balance around the middle? It's an interesting question.

And it's complicated. Game design is not easy. No, no, no. Do you prefer a D20 or a D100 system now that we've been playing more D100? I think I prefer D100 and not in terms of just purely from a game design standpoint, not in terms of the typical D100 games that we play and what those system settings are like that's not what i'm talking about i'm talking about i like looking at a skill or an ability or a stat and seeing a percentage and knowing my percentage ability to hit that it's just

straightforward anybody who is new to the game can pick it up and understand it very well um the typical d20 system where you're adding bonuses to get against the dc i feel like a lot of the time i mean it's just a more complicated way to get to the same result which is your percentage chance your percentage chance changes what a d20 system allows is a lot more variance of how that percentage changes versus certain different creatures however these games can boil in penalties of minus 20 percent penalties of minus 40 percent bonuses of plus 20 percent or uh what was the other thing um in in Cthulhu when you guys in time for chaos you would like roll the tens die twice and take the lower like it allows penalty die yeah penalty die like it allows for severe penalties or severe bonuses on certain situations so that you're not stuck in the scene.

You know that every time you shoot your gun, you're going to hit 60 percent of the time. Like it allows for that kind of variance, which I think is fun. Right now I think I enjoy those systems because I don't have to do that added math. You just roll the die and you know success or failure right there. But that the whole D6 system is very interesting to me too. When we talk about Blades or Star Wars, I like the degrees of success system, which I find interesting. So that's another layer that's like, it's not hit or miss, it's hit. I saw a comment about this. Somebody had a tweet that I thought was interesting, which was hit 100% of the time and then damages the variance. You go from anywhere from zero damage to significant damage. And that is sort of feels like Symbarum. When we were

playing Symbarum, there was a lot of hits for no damage because it's sort of armor as DR. To me, that also feels realistic. It feels like you can make contact with something, but not actually get it. In the Pathfinder terms, I think when we talk about armor, we talk about hitting something. And hitting, the term hitting actually means contacting flesh, right? Like digging into flesh and bone, as opposed to just making a hit, connecting at all, which is why the original Pathfinder Unchained came out with the armor as DR variant. They had a whole rule system for that, which I always thought was interesting, armor as DR. It means more hits, but then the damage is the variant. So you feel like you hit something, but you just didn't quite bite through or whatever.

It's a fun variant. Then there's RuneQuest, which takes it to a whole new level. You're like, actually, where did you hit? Well, I hit the left shin. Right, targeting limbs. Only has so much armor. And once you you get there you take that leg out and if you take that leg out now we roll on a table to see if that person can still walk it's very interesting um i i enjoyed that was my favorite part of that system um because once you get it into your brain it's very very cool and very very different from

any of the games that we played um but like i prefer the d100 just because the more i play cthulhu the more i just love it same with delta green um but i'm the system i'm writing is d20 because i think it's more marketable the um the d100 system also i should say this because i i implied that it doesn't't – the D-100 systems that we play do have a spectrum of success. I forgot about that because you do have extreme success. What's the middle one? Hard success. Hard success and regular success.

Yeah. So you do have degrees of success, which 2E brought in, right? brought in, right? The critical hit, critical fumble, the degrees of success of hits, saves, et cetera, throughout the system, I think offers a lot of fun. Anyway, man, we could talk about this all day, but that was a great topic brought up by Owen Casey Stevens. So thanks for putting that tweet out. It had me, definitely had me thinking. I'm going to do one more question to you out of left field. Oh boy. Because I saw something just cross my screen online and I thought, whatever happened to Shadow of the Demon Lord? You were so high on that. Are you like looking at Owen Casey Stevens?

Yeah. Is that what it was from? Yeah. I mean, he was posted about that the other day. Oh, I saw an image and I didn't realize it was from his thing. But I remembered you were pitching it to me. And I was like, this sounds awesome. And you were so juiced up about it.

And it was like definitely going to be on New Game Hoodists. And then it just vanished. You never talked about it again. Out of all the books that I bought when we first were doing New Game Hoodists, the only two I didn't play were Dungeon World, I think, and Shadow of the Demon Lord. Shadow of the Demon Lord was the one I was going to come out of the gate with, but then I pivoted into Cyberpunk and Cthulhu. And then at the end of the year when I was going to do one more, I almost did Shadow of the Demon Lord, but then I did Something is Wrong Here instead just to try something totally different and weird. But it's still sitting there on my shelf, and I feel like it's having a resurgence.

And when we were at PAX Unplx unplugged i walked by a booth like of all the new books that they've printed i think they've like expanded it's still very very cool i just got my copy of the dark souls rpg which i think uses the 5e um system i had bought it ordered it like a year ago and the hard copy i got the pdf i don't know months ago i never really spent any time with it then i and the hard copy i got the pdf i don't know months ago i never really spent any time with it then i got the hard copy i was like this looks amazing where i've been playing dark souls i'm way into it i haven't heard a lot of great things about the dark souls rpg i don't want to judge it because i haven't played it yet because it looks really fucking cool but you never hear anybody talking about it whereas shadow of the demon lord to me always felt like

a dark souls type rpg but with a system that people who are into it really love. There's a lot of buzz about it. Yeah. I love hearing that people are way into it. So don't give me an excuse to play it because that's what Class Cannon Labs is all about. Yeah. Who knows? And there's little adventures you can buy online like for four bucks.

So I don't have to homebrew anything. That would be fun. I remember I read the whole book because I was in the zone just reading RPG books. It was also like the height of COVID. Like you couldn't even leave your home, basically. It was easy to read a compendium. Totally. All right.

That is going to wrap it up for us today, guys. Thank you so much for hanging with us on the FOD. Love a good FOD. It's always good to catch up and to keep you guys abreast of what's happening with the studio space labs games and everything and and we're looking forward to Eric's comments professor Eric's

comments on episode 62 I'll see if he's right we'll see if there were two or more things that were wrong until next time take it easy everybody have a great week and we'll see you there were two or more things that were wrong. Until next time, take it easy, everybody. Have a great week, and we'll see you next week. Bye. Great time to be in the niche. Niche. Thanks for listening to the Glass Cannon Network.

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