The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 3/13/24
Episode Date: March 13, 2024It's the first Show Week of 2024, and the whole team is excited to get back into the Strange Aeons groove! Troy and Joe discuss their plans for Toronto, the release of the "Bird Shirt," and a whole ne...w subscriber experience on Discord where YOU will have your voice heard by the Naish! Plus, when is it too late to correct a rule? And how should GMs prepare for the vague and mysterious Recall Knowledge check in Pathfinder 2e? Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/WKfpHI36iHw 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
Transcript
Discussion (0)
This episode is brought to you by Peloton.
Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one.
Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide or App.
There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors ready to support you from the beginning.
Remember, doing something is everything.
Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals.
All access membership separate terms apply. Try Tim's new sweet chili chicken loaded wraps and
bowls today. Take your taste buds on an exciting new adventure for lunch or dinner with our delicious
new sweet chili sauce. It's time for sweet chili chicken. It's time for Tim's at participating
restaurants in Canada for a limited time
You are listening to the glass cannon network the premier source for role-playing game entertainment
Welcome to cannon fodder
A behind-the-scenes look at the Glass Cannon Network. Yeah!
What is going on everybody?
Welcome back to Cannon Fodder.
It is Wednesday, March 13th, 2024 and I'm your old pal, Joe O'Brien.
And I'm Troy returning to my homeland this week,
LaValley, returning to the homeland of Canada,
French Canada.
You know my people are from Canada.
I know that from your weird last name,
Lavalé, as I pronounce it when I first met you.
Also incorrect, it would be Lavalé.
Lavalé. Lavalé.
Off misspelled. Every honor roll. All the newspapers would spell it like every
time. It's like, oh, see capital V. Great. One E. One L.
But I remember it must have been like fifth grade. You had to do like your
dresses or like dresses your heritage, you know, or like whatever the fuck it
was. And everybody's like coming in looking like Chef Boyardy, all the Italians
are the Irish. And I remember feeling like, man, what the hell am I?
And I just came in dressed as a Mountie.
Got this like sick Mountie uniform.
But I always felt like French Canadian, it seems like such a lame heritage.
But now I embrace it.
I could have got citizenship,
you know, like five, six years ago they still allowed like people whose family came from there.
Mongrels that come over from the U.S. demand citizenship.
I think they used to allow it and now they don't do it anymore but I wish I had known.
I got way into it for like a hot second. My mother-in-law had us all do the like 23 and me
or fucking
ancestry.com. Ancestry.com, John.
And so she was way into that. And so I was like, let me take a peek at that. So I got
into it. And like my mother's side of the family, I can trace all the way back to like
the kings of England. There's like royal blood.
Yeah.
And then like my father's side, it goes into Canada and then it just like stops at like
my great-great grandfather.
And they always said that in the family, there was this like rumor that I must have been my great-great grandfather, like married a Penobscot Indian woman.
And those, the trees for those, for that nation or whatever, wasn't as, that tribe wasn't as robust as the, the Kuldubwaf,boire of French Canadians, but anyways, I'm excited to go.
Excited to go home.
Excited to go back.
It is show week this week, ladies and gentlemen.
For the first time in 2024, we hit the road
on Friday flying to Canada.
Hit the road, Jack.
And I mean, I say we're flying to Canada.
I don't know if we're flying to Canada.
I don't know if we'll actually get out of the airport.
We'll see what Customs does.
I mean, I'm not going to assume anything at this point.
This is definitely the first time that I've gone to a foreign country
and been like, um, I'm working here.
I'm doing some work.
Yeah.
And I'm just worried they're going to get jacked up against the wall.
Handcuffed.
I'm gone in your back.
Go under the back of my head, please.
Just a podcast. Just a podcast. Cut touffed, gone in your back of my head. Please, please.
Just a podcast.
Just a podcast.
Cut to the camera shot at the bottom of my pants
is the pee leak.
Dude, I hate going through customs.
Even when I have nothing to hide, I just assume,
nothing, I do have something to hide,
but like, I always assume the worst.
It's like getting pulled over.
It's like, oh, posture straightens up.
You're like, I wait, I know there's no heroin in this car.
I know there's no heroin in this car.
Why am I freaking out?
I remember just like driving cheese curds back
across the border and like, you're not
allowed to do that technically.
And please, please don't search underneath
my back seat. The cheese curds there
engraving. But yeah,
I hate going through it. I just, I'm assuming
the worst. I'm flying out a little later than usual, like 11 a.m.
I usually fly out at like sevens.
I like just fucking get there.
And then I'm flying back at like noon,
cause same thing, I just, I'm assuming the worst.
There'll be like, how much money did you make this week?
And I'll be like, I don't know.
I won't know for a couple of weeks.
So yeah, it's gonna be, besides that,
I'm excited to get to, I'm
excited to get to Toronto, I'm excited to get back on the road, been working on the
fucking sizzle that Harry put together, kind of redoing some stuff with that,
working on like the intro video. And man, it really brings me back to
everything that we did last year, because it all happened so fast, there's always
so much going on. And between that and just going through all my taxes
for the year, I kind of get to relive all these memories
of like 2023 and you just forget stuff.
And I even texted the group the other day,
like I'm so excited to get back on the road with you guys.
To get back on tour.
Because there were just so many fun things that we did
that probably none of you guys remember
until you see the sizzle.
Yeah.
It was also the first full year traveling with this cast, you know, like early last year, we had not regularly traveled on the road with Kate and Sydney.
And so it was just really fun doing what 13 shows, whatever we did with them.
It was great.
And now we've had a nice little break since the holidays.
And also, if you think about it, though, it was since late October that we've flown.
You know, we just went to Philly in December.
So I mean, it's been a long time since we've gotten
out there together, took a flight and went to do a show.
And also just flat out played strange aeons.
Which I'm so excited to play because I love that AP
and I love those characters.
So I'm really excited to get back to that.
Yeah, I would have loved to get a power session going,
like we had talked about before Toronto,
but it's just like we got slammed
with a bunch of exciting things
that just made it impossible.
But I'm still pretty dedicated to making sure
that we do some off-tour sessions of it,
because I just want to chunk through
this get to book five as soon as possible. It's gonna be great. I hope
that we can play some more off off tour as well. So real quick we're just gonna
hit a couple quick news items before getting to the episode which we'll talk
about for a little bit and then of course some we are stupid and a little
bit more listener mail just because this week's episode is
going to be a little bit light to dig into because it's because of that cliffy.
So we'll we'll talk about that as we get to it.
But first off, yes, heading to Toronto this weekend, very excited, sold out show, excited
to premiere this week's tour in front of our Canadian fans who have been so gracious for
so many years to travel down to so many shows.
I see Canadians obviously in New York and Boston, but I see Canadians in Chicago.
I see Canadians in St. Louis.
Canadians in Seattle and Portland.
So it's great for us to be able to come to your turf and play in a way game.
And I'm really, really looking forward to that.
And yeah, so Canada this week, Troy mentioned
that we've got some exciting things in the works.
That's true, and we're not gonna talk about any of that
today because it's very early on a few of these things,
but there's some new stuff broiling in the background
in terms of content for us, stuff we've never done before,
and we're really looking forward to sharing that with you.
I think-
Broiling or brewing?
Brewing.
Yeah, if it was broiling, it would be like slowly- cooking it over a high heat. No, no. Yeah. We're just burning the shit
out of it before it ever ends out. We're just burning the shit out of some exciting content
behind the scenes. Yeah, so we're working on some stuff. I have a feeling that literally
by next week's FOD, we could have some news on this stuff, but if not, probably in about
two weeks. Yeah, one contract went out. Once we, I think it was signed, once that...
Sure, fucking clears, we could talk about that.
Yeah, I'm not talking about it until people are,
whatever, I'm not gonna say anything.
Let's keep it moving for now,
but we'll have some exciting stuff
to talk about in the next couple of weeks.
Looking forward to it.
Yeah, man.
We've been streaming weekend and week out, you and I,
and this week is no different.
You're gonna be playing today, right, Baldur's Gate at 2 o'clock today.
To PM Eastern.
If you're hearing this early on Wednesday, it is 2 o'clock Eastern today, Wednesday,
March 13th. Back into the Baldur's Gate. I love that you're streaming, like, just streaming
this campaign story of Stiff Dickerson.
I love it.
Old Stiff Dickerson is doing well. Last week we finished the stream pretty close to the end of Act 2 and I've been playing
off air.
I'm now in Act 3 and I don't like it so far, actually.
It's a lot of interactions with people and as someone who is like a completionist, I
just feel like I got to talk to every single fucking person to make sure that I'm unlocking
any quests. So so that I'm unlocking any quests
So so far. I'm not a huge fan of it, but I know I will be I've heard act three is amazing
But there's just a lot going on. I just I'm at the point now where I'm like, I'm ready
I'm ready to just let's get let's finish this game and move on Zach three the last act the final act
It's the last act
Yeah, okay, but it's from what I've under from what I've read. It's as large as act one
And so far I've read, it's as large as Act 1. And so far, I've done everything quest-wise that has come up. I think I've exhausted all my quests. I don't have any dangling
quests that are unfinished, but I want to try and do everything, and so that just takes a little
bit longer. Awesome. I am going to play some more Pacific Drive this week because I mean it was a wild
and really fun stream. You saw none of this, right?
No.
And you know it. I mean, the last time we talked about it, I didn't even know really what it was.
But it is basically like a supernatural, almost like Cthulian-esque, like exploration horror
survival game set in the Pacific Northwest where you
have to literally drive a car into these like these abandoned areas where this
supernatural event happened and all of the Pacific Northwest is like walled
off and you do these missions where you like drive in you try to get some shit
and find out what's going on and then you drive out before you die and it's so it's always so tense and what what ends up happening is like your car gets dinged up
And so when you come out you have to like fix up your car basically
Weird idea for it's a very very weird idea for a game, but it creates a
A play loop that is extremely entertaining where the first couple times that I got past like
the earliest tutorial stuff.
This was on stream and started really like understanding what was happening.
I started getting way more precious with my car because it's like the damage to your
car is very hard to fix and it takes a lot of resources and stuff.
So like you'll be like racing away from some sort of horrible
creature and like Nick the side of a tree and be like, God damn it, like there goes
my right headlight and you'll know you have to pay to fix that shit. Like it just creates
a vibe and a feeling unlike any game I've played before. And it's really fun and really
interesting and all of the mystery stuff.
It's interesting and it makes you want to go back in and find out what the hell happened
here because they don't tell you what happened.
They just say something happened and I'm sure you're going to find out that mystery.
I'm sure unfold as you go.
But anyway, I'm going to play that tomorrow, Thursday at one o'clock Eastern on Twitch.
If you want to come by and check out a strange but really fun and really like tense game.
I just thought that it made a great stream game because the tension is like, no, like
at all times you're just like cruising.
It's almost like a walking dead kind of thing where you like cruising down a road that's
abandoned, you know, but you never know if something's going to come out of nowhere
and you're like, what?
You got to like turn around and start speeding away.
I mean, it's just a while.
Are you playing on console or PC?
PS5, yeah.
PS5.
Nice, dude.
Nice.
All right, so.
Can't wait to play a new game.
One more piece of news here before, actually,
well, I forgot to mention.
Hot off the press news, St. Paul VIP sold out.
We love you, St. Paul.
Couple left in Nashville, handful left in Denver. Denver and Casey, I gave you shit last week. I also gave you, Saint Paul. Couple left in Nashville, handful left in Denver.
Denver and KC, I gave you shit last week.
I also gave you shit on Twitter.
You're doing a little better, KC,
doing better than Denver,
but Denver, bottom of the barrel right now.
Wow, come on Denver!
In terms of poor sales, yeah?
I guess they don't want us to ever come back.
Poor Skid, poor Skid.
Poor Skid. He loves going there.
Skid. And he'll never be allowed back.
Even like for personal visits?
Yep, can't do it.
Sorry, scared, can't do it.
Speaking of the tour real fast, there's new merch that's coming out for Toronto.
We already talked about this, but just letting everybody know, this should be as early as
next Monday or Tuesday.
If you're not going to be at the Toronto show, you should be able to see this stuff on the
web store.
The bird shirt!
The bird shirt. And bird shirt, OG GCP hat, the return, the reboot of the OG GCP hat are coming back.
So the bird shirt looks awesome. I can't wait to get one. I'm like, I am straight up stealing
one. I don't give a shit. Really, you know, what a conversation started like people put
the fuck is that? Well, you have an hour and a half I can explain.
There's this podcast, I listen to it, but it looks great.
It's really, we're gonna have you guys do more
like shitty drugs.
Well, you know what?
I mean, we'll see, but I feel like that was a one time thing.
It just like all the events came,
the stars aligned in that moment.
It's just too funny.
All right, so there is something weird I wanna talk about
and I'm very excited about
this.
This is for subscribers, particularly our Vorpal-level subscribers on our subscription
service.
Part of the reward for that is a Talk Nerdy Town Hall.
We've talked about this before.
We've done it where it's just kind of like one of the founders of the company goes on
Discord and just chats, just chats
with you guys and we have a little bit of a back and forth.
This time I want to get a little bit more aggressive with it and I want to try a little
bit of a new format.
So next week, next Wednesday, the day that the next fodder releases March 30th, right?
Is that right?
No, 20th, sorry.
March 20th, Wednesday, March 20th.
I'm going to do a talk nerdy town hall.
I'm going to do it with Jared Logan and we're going to utilize the new Discord stages functionality.
Try to use it.
And in doing so, it is our intention to, for the first time, instead of talking with you
while you guys chat, we're going to literally bring people on to the stage, so to speak,
and have conversations with anybody that wants to chat about the topic of conversation for
the day.
So we are going, it's going to be kind of like a talk radio show.
It's a little tester that we're doing, and I hope that it works out well.
But if you're a VORPL subscriber, come by next Wednesday, the 20th, 7.30 pm Eastern time.
It'll be in the evening
for an hour. We'll hang out and we'll test this functionality. And if you want to come
up on stage, let your voice be heard in front of the nation about whatever you want to talk
about. Great. We'll do it. And then whatchamacallit. If you are not at the Vorpal Tier, I want to
get there. That is $25 a month, right? So if you are interested in checking it out,
you wanna jump up to the Vorpal tier.
25, yep.
278 a year, get a discount if you do annual.
278 a year, you get a discount if you do annual.
So if you wanna come and check it out,
I think it's gonna be really fun
and if it goes well, we're gonna do more of these.
So definitely come by and check it out.
That's next Wednesday, the 20th, 730 Eastern time.
Talk Nerdy Town Hall with the voices of the NACH live
being heard.
And I'm going to work to record that all as well.
So it'll be released after.
And if I do it right, I've been testing it.
You should be able to hear the recordings of the people
that came on stage as well.
And so by kicking this off, we're
going to be doing the Town Hall every month.
It won't always be like this.
I can tell you that because like when I do it, I'm not going to do that version of it.
But Joe and Jared are into it and I think they should give it a try.
Hopefully no one will spout obscenities that we have to edit out afterwards
or try to sink the company.
I know we have to have like a what is the drop button kill button?
What are they called?
There's a name for it in radio.
Silent kill switch or. But we're going to this. Drop button, kill button, what do they call it? There's a name for it in radio.
Silent kill switcher.
Dump, dump.
Yeah, we're gonna, this should kick off.
So that every month, starting with this month from now on,
you'll get at least one town hall as part of that tier.
It took us a while to get it going, but now we're ready.
And I don't know, I just think the Discord community has grown so much.
It'll be fun to do more interactive stuff that That's just on there. Yes couldn't agree more
All right, let's talk about glass can of podcast campaign to episode 25
Opens in one of my favorite settings possible. This crosses over between a pathfinder starfinder
Cthulhu
Delta green
There's just something about a library, man.
You love a library.
Everybody loves a library.
I think the library-
You know what?
I don't care for it.
Well, all right, yes.
I could go either way.
Okay, here's the two ways, right?
There's two ways you can go to a library as a GM.
On one hand, it is the catch-all opportunity for you to disseminate anything you want to
in a very organic way.
And that takes a lot of pressure off your shoulders.
On the other hand, it's a library with thousands of books.
And if you have players that want to dig in and there really isn't much there, that can
be painful as a GM, trying to be like, well, there's really not much there.
What kinds of books are there?
I don't know. What kinds of books are there?
I don't know, what does it say in the freaking module?
Like just this space-
Be on the scope of this adventure.
It's been on the scope of this adventure.
It can be a point of stress.
So talk to me about this library, Troy.
Was this something you were looking forward to
or a point of stress for you?
You seemed totally unprepared for disseminating advice.
You were reading out of the book as you were saying,
it has this and this.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not joking when I say like,
I could care less about libraries.
Cause I'm like, I just don't like to learn
about the adventure that way.
I like to learn it through action and through like.
And dialogue and stuff.
And dialogue and stuff.
But yeah, no, there wasn't a lot of information there.
And I know that's disappointing for you guys cause you walk in and you're like, uh, yeah, no, I, I, there wasn't a lot of information there. And I know that's disappointing for you guys, because you walk in, you're like,
let's go.
Treasure Trove, dude.
And I gave you everything, you know, there really, there wasn't, there wasn't a
whole lot going on there. You know, I think it's interesting to see what kind
of books are in there. That's important because it adds to the, to the mystery.
It kind of, if, if you can think about it, it's revealing clues about what's
happening here. Why is Canepo and Canepo's associates interesting diseases,
diseases, ancient curses, Elvin medicine, Elvin medicine, Elvin anatomy.
But what there is, it is like a Canepo's feelings journal, which is yeah,
which is fine. I mean, I guess you can't really can't really expect that.
I mean, I remember this coming up in Delta Green season four and impossible
landscapes.
It may have been season five.
I can't remember.
It's got a little mix in my head now, but like going to the New York public
library as a group to research some of these figures or these NPCs that you
hear about that are that were supposedly traipsing around New York City a hundred years ago.
You know, how are they connected to this whole mystery?
And if you know, not all the answers, just because it's a library doesn't mean it has
all the answers you want, particularly when it comes to really specific kinds of evidence.
But a library makes such a great backdrop for any role-playing game.
It's a good set piece to have a fight in,
to have a mysterious part in,
or to have a horror part in.
Like there's something about libraries
that are very interesting and they draw out emotions
in the way that they look and feel.
But yeah, they can be a little bit of a point of stress.
You did not, what I'm gathering is
you didn't add
any information in here that wasn't already said
in the book in order to help us,
that's something we missed before
that you squeezed into the library.
No, I didn't think it was super interesting.
You know, I left out one piece that,
you know, do you guys should be able to figure out
on your own?
It seems like you guys were getting there.
But obviously you did find the spell book with two spells.
Yes.
And then the three books,
the Osirian Scroll on Magical Blights,
a rare unburned copy of Curses,
Foul and Fell, Bound and Eel Hide,
and a beautifully illuminated copy
of the Physicers' Guide to Elves.
The real importance of those three things
is that they're worth seven gold each if you
try to sell them later.
Yeah, that's it.
It's wild.
And it's wild to think of.
It's just so strange, right?
You have a library of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books and what comes out of
it that's interesting is three that you could sell.
You know, how do you know you can't sell the other ones?
Like, what makes them so worthless?
It's, you know, it's an interesting concept, but the those three books do tell
you something about this place and this adventure in an interesting way.
For sure.
I mean, he's been in here for a long time.
He's been like collecting these tomes over the ages from his victims.
Maybe like, who knows?
Probably the most interesting thing though in the library
is a small onyx figurine that was in the
next room dog that was in the next room
that was in the next room in the next
room there's that dusty old bed and then
the northern alcove the the most
impressive thing you find there is this
wondrous dog I assigned it differently in
my mind okay so then we'll move into this next room,
which is essentially an examination room,
operating room.
There's a lot going on in this room.
There's just a bed that looks like
this beautiful Noble's bed that has that,
you're forgetting the middle room.
You've already moved on to the operating room.
Yes, I'm sorry.
This library middle room is this like.
I am picturing the library connected to that,
to the operating room, yes, correct. Yeah, it looks like a noble's bedroom, this pastel fabric hanging, a dusty four-poster bed,
and it looks like it's either never been used or hasn't been used in a long, long time. And then
in the north end of the room, there's candles, crystals, other occult accoutrements suggesting a
spell or magical project in process. And then there's like this half finished door.
And then among those magical things is where you find this Onyx dog.
Onyx dog.
All right, we're going to get to that in a second, but let's go into this operating room with a bloody table.
These diagrams of people being vivisected and also like being like, oh my gosh, what's the word I'm looking for?
Like being added onto, like mutated, augmented, augmented is the word, right?
In very strange ways, it's like, why is this happening? Why is Canepo doing this? What is the
purpose? And then a creature appears. A creature that seems
to be made of shadow stuff but with a mask on and says they are mine. They are mine.
And then immediately attacks us. And yeah, pretty wild encounter. We'll talk a little
bit more about it and we are stupid and such,
but let me ask you about the Onyx Dog
because this is how we finish up the episode
is the Onyx Dog, the cool icon pulling out
and activating the Onyx Dog.
Do you expect at the moment that this Onyx Dog
is either seen when you're prepping
or when Skid picks it up in the bedroom
that it's gonna be used this quickly.
No, you know, I'm the king of like,
I barely look at treasure, like I'll read it
on my first couple of read-throughs.
I'll copy and paste it to my document.
And then like day of prep, I'll be like, oh, interesting.
But I very rarely will then look and see what that does.
I wait till like the moment when you guys like
are rolling our can of choco.
Yeah, let's see what it does.
And I'm like, oh, all right.
Fine.
And then you guys use it and let it, okay.
Let me see how I can make this interesting.
So yeah, we'll see how it becomes interesting because that's the cliffhanger of the episode,
is this dog coming out.
And I'm sure that it's just kind of a familiar type thing.
I can't imagine being that powerful, but it's a fun way to end the episode and we'll see
we'll see where it goes. I don't want to talk too much. I can't really get too much
into the the enemy or the encounter and such like that because it's a mid-combat
cliffy. I don't think we've had many of these. It's been a while. Too many of these in Gatewalkers.
It hasn't seemed to be your MO.
You kind of like to finish out an encounter
before you end the episode.
Is there anything that jumped out at you in this case?
Was it purely like you were running up against the clock?
Like why end the episode where you did?
I just get the sense there's a lot more to this combat
than meets the eye and I didn't want to go another hour.
I think it could easily
take that long depending on certain things. I loved that Kay triggered the trap. I was hoping
someone would trigger it. It was one of those traps where I don't even want to roll the check to
see if you see it. I just want you to trigger it. I rolled a secret check. I rolled a secret check.
She failed and that was great. We've talked about Adnazim at this point,
like there's nothing better than having a player
trigger a trap and it's a nasty one.
And so she fell down there.
Obviously it was Katz Grace and
she didn't take the falling damage,
but she did land on those spikes,
there's bodies down there.
You also are seeing images
of these missing people, Varna and Maybelline
and Henry Bucket.
So like you're finding at least, if not closure,
some sort of continuation of that story.
Yeah, it's just, it had a little bit of everything
and I felt like, okay, we're bringing out the dog.
That's a great place to end it and we'll pick up here
next week. I liked it. I liked it. Let's talk about the trap for a second. This
creates some chatter on the old, I don't know, where else, probably everywhere. But
what I saw on YouTube, because I monitor the YouTube comments for the purposes of
Cannon fodder, I like to talk and bring up good comments and discussable
comments that people make.
And so there were a few like this, but I'm just going to highlight at Pretty God on YouTube
who commented, Joe needs to stop chiming in out of the blue to enforce rules on other
players, especially for things that are already around past.
Just takes the steam out of the moment and made what would have been a very solid round for Kate deflated. Love the show, but the rules lawyering tied with
the overbearing injection is jarring. It is an opinion, it's a valid opinion, I
might take some umbrage with the word overbearing injection, but outside
interjection, but outside of that... I wrote that comment. This is your screen name,
your secret screen name is pretty god. Yep. Outside of that I wrote that comment this is that's your screen name your secret scheme is pretty God yep.
Outside of that there were multiple comments like this and it does bring up a question that bears conversation which is.
Is there always a definable statute of limitations on rule corrections.
statute of limitations on rule corrections? No, I don't think so.
And this was a perfect example why they're,
you know, even though around it passed,
that was important, like you shouldn't have the bow.
You fell, the bow fell out of your hands.
If you want to climb, we're talking about the bow, right?
Talking about the bow?
Yeah, we're talking about the bow.
I could have said when you fall that you dropped the bow,
you know, but like if you want to
climb, you need to hand so there's an action there.
The thing, well, you talk and then I have a thing that I think is really important.
It's about the action economy and Pathfinder.
Okay.
Well, the only thing that I'll say in terms of the statute of limitations is I think that
that's always a GM call.
I think that if there is, if a player knows something is wrong
If at least for me
I I would have a really hard time keeping it to myself
And I think that bringing it up at least for discussion is important unless you know look
There are times when you know that the other player that you're talking about at the table can't handle it, right?
Like they will have a breakdown if you call
them on this rule. And you may know that now is not the time and that is completely up
to you as to when to make those moments. I certainly did not think that that was a moment.
This was a moment like that for Kate in particular. But I felt like bringing it up and addressing
it was important. And the one reason that I felt that the only thing I'm talking about
right now is the statute of limitations.
The reason I didn't feel that that had passed by any stretch is because we had not established
that the bow was used and then later we discovered you couldn't use it, you should have never
had it.
Undo that damage, put the bow back down there.
She had just gotten up and had not done anything else yet and we caught it.
So I felt like it was within the statute of limitations.
That's all I'll say about that.
But go ahead.
You're going about the action economy in that fight.
Well, I was going to say, for one thing, I appreciate it.
There's sometimes I feel it, and it happens during the live show too, where as much as
I appreciate you chime in and I'm like, ooh, that killed the momentum, even though I'm
really glad we got that right.
It is a tough and almost impossible balance.
And no one is spending, not to shame anybody, but like no one is spending more time with the rules
than you, even more so than me.
And so I appreciate that.
I think you're in a very difficult position because I've made it so that I want you to do that.
How do you do that in a way that doesn't make, kill the momentum and make people feel like
you're just picking on them? It's an impossible position. I for one appreciate it because I got
a million things going on and I'm not thinking about the nitty-gritty rules all the time. I'm
just trying to, I'm thinking about pace. It's a fine line. I think you walk it really well
while I also understand people's complaints about it. But what I was going to say about the action economy, going from first edition to second
edition, I think that people like, three actions, let's fucking go.
You mean I could do two, three attacks as a first level character?
Amazing.
I think it's a great thing.
And I don't know if I can verbalize this well.
A player should think about like everything everything they wanna do is an action.
Every single thing.
Everything you wanna do almost.
There are some free actions,
but for the most part,
everything you want to do is an action.
So when you say you wanna do shit,
even if it's cool,
think about how many actions it really takes.
Like, you would love to be able to stride up
and do it to a tax.
But if you've gotta grab a weapon,
if you're leaping on a table, if you're doing this,
you've got to pick up this, you've got to stow that,
redo it, pull something out.
Every little thing costs actions.
I think that I'm too...
Generous.
Generous with actions, you know?
When someone takes out a potion and drinks it,
isn't that two actions?
Yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of times I think I'm'm, because I don't want to make
anybody mad, I'm like, okay, what else? And then they go on to do two more actions. And I'm thinking
to myself, well, there's two actions. I want you to police yourself, you got to find that balance.
But ultimately, like, everything you want to do costs an action. And so you, you as a player,
should try to not hinder yourself, but really think about, I want to do this,
I want to do this, I want to do this. We've just said three things you want to do. And
you may think like, what, just doing this is an action? Yes, that's part of what the
way the game has changed. You have the world in front of you now with three actions. But
if you're going to do stuff, it costs an action.
Yeah. I think that we, well, you bring up a topic which is police yourself and that is, that's
a tough one, right?
Like you're trying to tell players at the table, the GM, it's not their job to police
you.
It is, and some people would say it's a GM's job to know all the rules, at least the most
at the table and to be able to address those rules.
That's fine if that's your opinion on how GMs should run games.
But even if that's the case, I still never think it's a GM's job to police the action
economy of the players.
If you're walking into an area where a player truly doesn't know the game, that's a different
thing.
But players that know the game and have been playing it for a long time, they should be
able to police themselves.
However, all of us at one time or another,
just forget things.
We, something, you know, you just forget things.
You're also caught up in the moment.
Is it another player's job to point that out?
Or, if the other player, myself in this case,
knows that something is wrong,
knows that this player honestly just didn't catch it,
and knows that the GM just honestly didn't catch it, nobody's cheating, an honest mistake is wrong, knows that this player honestly just didn't catch it and knows that
the GM just honestly didn't catch it, nobody's cheating an honest mistake is happening in
front of you.
Do you just say nothing?
It's hard.
I think you can argue yes, you just say nothing.
But I sit there and it eats me inside.
I can't explain it because what's going to happen is I feel that asterisk syndrome like we've talked about before. I hate an asterisk, right?
It's like you don't want to feel like at the end of the fight you realize you
never could have even had that weapon in your hand that you used to crit the boss
and finish the end of the book, right? Let's say it's an ultimate
encounter kind of thing. Now some people just don't care about that and I
respect that but we do this in front of an audience and there's an audience that polices us. And so when
there's people that are like, oh, you couldn't have done this, you couldn't have
done this, they'll point it out to that player eventually anyway. And I feel like
I would feel bad inside saying like, yeah, I knew that all along, but I just
didn't say it, right? It's weird. It's weird. I certainly understand the other issues, so there's multiple issues in this comment.
The other one is taking the steam out of the moment.
So like is getting the rule right more important than keeping the flow of the moment?
Which I would say probably not.
It depends on the rule.
It really is dependent on...
It is. It's so dependent on so many factors.
If you create with a scimitar that you technically shouldn't have in your hand, as cool as that is,
you can't do it, you know? Dude, I don't want to get ahead of ourselves,
but next week's FOD is going to be a must listen because this episode we've already recorded it
is so fucking wild and so like it's kind of old school GCP in a way. I've already said too much.
But, like, I think it'll be a really interesting discussion that revolves around what we're
talking about right now.
I'm mad you brought it up, but I do appreciate the hype.
Yes, next week's fad will be juicy, for sure, for many reasons.
There is this...
Anyway, I appreciate the comment.
I understand people's frustration with it.
I'm always trying to walk that line.
And yeah, it's just an interesting topic of conversation.
I think, comment here on this episode.
Let us know how you handle it at your tables.
Do you have a player that points things out
to other players?
Do you tell your players, don't correct other players?
You know, it's an interesting like relationship
that you have to have around the table
to correct somebody else's action during their turn.
And by the way, not only do I get rules wrong,
I mean, that happens to the best of us,
but like I correct people sometimes
and I'm just blatantly wrong, like they're doing it right
and I'm wrong and like wrong. Like they're doing it right and I'm wrong.
And like I can see that being frustrating,
but it's also coming from a place of like double checking.
Like are you above being double checked?
You know what I mean?
I just, if anybody ever does it to me,
just watch and watch and see how I react.
Because if I ever bitch at somebody about pointing out
something I did wrong, let me know.
Because I'd really like to see if I do that.
I would want to know for me personally.
Like if somebody's like, well, you already did this, I'd be like, oh my God, you're right.
Crap, I can't do it.
You know, I don't know.
But I'm also, I love the rules.
I love the rules.
I think that if more people at the table did it, it wouldn't you wouldn't be singled out so much.
It wouldn't be as glaring, but no one else does it. Matthew once in a blue moon will do it.
And I think it's a combination of like personalities different and also
lack of confidence with the rules that no one wants. Yeah, personalities actually you can't do
that because because no one feels confident enough with the rule to say that. That's why I think it's with the rules. No one wants to say. Yeah, it's the personalities. Actually, you can't do that because, because no one feels confident enough with the rule
to say that.
That's why I think it's totally fine.
And again, you got to do this within reason as well
to be like, wait a minute, are you sure you can do that?
Walk me through that.
And I'll do that sometimes, like, wait a minute.
Something seems fishy here.
Nobody wants to look stupid, right?
Nobody wants to be like, no, you can't do that.
And then you're like, yeah, I can.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah.
Walk me through what you did.
I just don't want to ever be, I don't want myself to, I don't want to ever think
of myself as being above a double check, you know, right?
Being, being questioned, like, do you have the ability, how does that ability
exactly work?
Can you read it to me and just being like like, why can't you just trust me?
Like it's not a matter of trust.
It is a very complicated system that bears another set of eyes.
You know, like not just in business,
but in, I was trained early on in my college years
when I was doing big event planning and stuff like that.
Like I had a guy who oversaw this stuff and his main thing was like two eyes on everything,
on everything because it's so easy for things to slip through by the most well-meaning,
most conscientious, most focused person can make mistakes that can easily be mitigated
by just one other person taking a look at it as well.
Oh my God, with a small company like what we have, we have to try to apply that to everything.
Two eyes and everything.
Yeah, I mean we have task assignments within our company that are laid out that somebody
does something and then somebody else just looks at it before it's said to be done.
Double checking is hugely important to high quality.
And so anyway, I just don't want people to call me on rules always and ask me
about my abilities always so that I make sure
I'm getting it right.
I get wording wrong all the time.
We make fun of Matthew for doing it.
I do it as well.
Miss a sentence in the middle.
I'm reading fast and I skip one little part.
You know, a great example is dimensional assault.
We talked about a dimensional assault last week.
Like when Sydney did it, I just kind of like read through it.
I didn't see the part where it's like, and make a strike.
That's a huge difference.
I just assumed it was a movement ability, you know?
And you have to make that strike.
The ruling's out.
So thank you to everybody who responded last week.
I think probably the, I just pulled one out and that was Dana Mursky.
Dana Mursky says, dimensional assault does force one to make that strike. There is a 10th level
feat called dimensional disappearance that allows you to forego that strike.
So thank you all for pointing that out in the comments.
Did you let said they know?
Yes, I will let. No, I'm gonna, no, I wanted to look stupid on air.
No, of course I will let her know.
Let's go into We Are Stupid, just a couple things this week
and then we're on to Listener Mail.
We are student!
Thank you, Nicholas.
All right, really light one this week.
First of all, going right off of our conversation
about the rule correcting, Professor Eric,
clean bill of health on the whole climb out of the pit
situation and where we are on it.
And the falling damage too,
because I saw some people take Umbridge with the way we did.
Yes, I was, I ran out of time before this FOD
to question him on the damage where some
people said she took no damage and some people said she did take damage.
I am curious to see this week where that irons out, he'll get back to us on that.
And we'll talk about it in next week's FOD.
But there was a little back and forth.
Professor Eric doesn't mention it at all.
So I believe usually when he doesn't mention it means we did So I believe, usually when he doesn't mention it, means we did something right.
So the fact that she-
20 foot fall, first 10, you don't take damage
and the second 10 was covered by her cat's fall
or whatever it is.
So the question is, does the only question is
if those things don't stack, then would she take damage?
And we ruled that they do.
And then there's also the question, yeah.
And then there's also the question, no, and then there's also the question,
no, no, we ruled that they don't,
but that they were prone, right?
And so the question is if you don't,
with Catfall, if you don't take damage, you don't go prone,
but we had her go prone and take damage from the spikes
because there wasn't a flat floor to land on,
it really is like a little bit tricky,
but Eric didn't address it on this one,
write us back, Eric, and let us know know and we'll talk about it next week.
Let's talk about the phase bolt cantrip, which Sydney mentioned.
This is just a remaster mentioned the phase bolt that she had to do because
this creature like leapt away from her.
Like she was moving to the creature, got to it, and then it just like zipped away from her
on the other side of the room. So she could no longer do a melee attack, so Sydney casts this
cool spell, Phase Bolt, cantrip out of her katana. Bam! Very cool little cantrip that seems to like
ignore some cover, which I thought was really cool. Anyway, it has been updated to be 3D4 piercing damage as opposed to 1D4 plus your spellcasting
modifier.
So it had a higher floor before, but now it has a higher ceiling.
So there is a potential for up to 12 damage from that cantrip, which is nice.
But I'll make sure that Sid is aware of that.
All right.
The only thing that we're going to talk about this week and we are stupid is leaping.
Leaping, which I brought up and then the table, etc.
And so Professor Eric lays out and says,
I feel you will very commonly see a couple of options in how this is done at the table.
One of the easiest, and this is his number one at the top, is just call those squares difficult terrain.
This is probably the most common approach I see for furniture in rooms, especially
if it's just for traversal.
If people are wanting to fight on top of the table, like if they want to jump on
the table and fight from there, I think you'll see the leap action required more
often, but generally if they're trying to move across the room and there's a chair
in the way or there's a table in the way, most GMs are saying just do that as difficult terrain.
It's the easy way for sure.
Yeah. Now, there is another rule set, which is the combined movement rules from the Game
Master's Guide, which basically says as a two-action activity, you can combine two forms
of movement that lets you split the stride around non-stride
movement actions. So moving and climbing, for example, it's like you could do one-two action
thing that allows you to split this movement among different kinds of speed types.
He thinks that depending on Asta's speed, she could have in one leap action literally leaped
the table and landed on the other side without having to move at all
Interesting because of the horizontal leap rules
now she doesn't think she had the room for a long jump but
Yes, he says in summary a strict ruling of three actions to traverse the table is possible and might
incentivize learning the leap or long jump rules or investing in quick jump, which is a feat that allows you,
I believe to, sorry I didn't have it up,
but I believe it allows you to leap without the running time.
I got it right here.
You can use high jump and long jump as a single action
instead of two actions.
If you do, you don't perform the initial stride,
nor do you fail if you don't stride 10 feet.
Yes, you don't need to do the run up to the jump.
Anyway, like penalizing that movement
by making it really difficult with extra actions,
it rewards that feet greater
than if you just call things difficult terrain.
He says, however, I think basically table ruling a two action activity if people don't
have a quick alternative in mind is probably the most in the spirit of the rules and the
available options that keeps the game rolling.
So you just say, yes, you can just get over the table, but it takes you an extra action
to do it.
Or depending on how far they want to go or how big the thing is, you could just make
it difficult terrain. Yeah. Anyway. So they laid it out. A lot of options. Thank you, Eric, for
digging into the leap action and how it can be used. All right, let's go in a listener mail here
before we wrap up. Thank you to the nays for reaching out and sending us your questionis! Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch Thank you, Nikolai! All right, so, what was I just gonna say?
Oh, remember, Listener Mail.
If you wanna get your Listener Mail in here, you can email us at contactaclassicannonetwork.com
with your question.
Put Listener Mail on the subject line, or you can go to our website, and there's a form
on there for Listener Mail where you can submit right through the web.
All right, let's kick it off with Roman Rush from Toronto.
You guys wanna be in the Toronto St. Patrick's Day parade.
It's on Sunday at noon.
I might have some connections.
Could be a laugh.
Dude, do you imagine us in the parade?
Do you know that Comic-Con is happening in Toronto this weekend?
Like Toronto Comic-Con?
No, I didn't know that.
I keep forgetting to like...
That's a coincidence?
Mention that. Yeah, I would love to say it was part of our strategy. But no, it's happening, I didn't know that. Yeah, I keep forgetting to like... That's a coincidence? Mention that, yeah.
I would love to say it was part of our strategy.
But no, it's happening and I don't know, maybe you want to go.
Maybe.
I kind of want to go to Raptors Magic.
Anybody have Raptors Magic tickets for Friday night?
Oh, there's a Raptors Magic game Friday night?
It's the only professional sports game happening that weekend.
It's Friday night, so. Well, it's probably not sold sports game happening that weekend. It's Friday night.
Well, it's probably not sold out, right?
No, but the two fun teams.
It's just got a couple floor side ticks, bro.
There's a couple court sides on the cup.
We're sold out.
Couple court sides on the cup.
Dude, it is...
We'll pay for our own drinks.
We'll consider it advertising.
Just seeing us court side on the broadcast is huge for the network
Let's see who's in the audience tonight. Oh the glass cannon live team
Kiss cam
Amazing thank you Robin look forward to seeing you at the show you better be at the show
All right Dan Connolly from Warwick, UK
from Warwick, UK. In a national edition.
No question here, just a comment.
Hi, folks, I am loving Time for Chaos.
Every single one of those characters is my favorite.
And the group dynamics bring me such joy.
In the most recent ep, the entertainment
and the laughing horse also turned out
to be a surprise nugget of joy.
My grandmother grew up in rural Ireland
and as a young girl loved listening to some
of the Whistlers of the day. One of the last times I saw her, we put on a recording of
Fred Lowry whistling the William Tell Overture from the 1930s. It's an impressive piece of
whistling and is on YouTube for the curious. But for me, it was lovely to find that memory
in an unexpected place. Thanks to everyone at the GCN for all your amazing work.
I just thought I had to mention that is wild.
Well, you know, it's funny.
It's like where where they are right now is like this.
It's all real.
It's all historically, relatively historically accurate.
Um, and they're in this like village just to the north of London.
And I've seen a bunch of comments of people have been like, I've been to that hill.
I've been to that.
I've been to that town. Uh've been to that. I've been to that town.
It's really, really interesting.
It's such a different show than anything we produce.
The vibe is so wildly different with that cast, but the people who love...
Because you don't have any assholes correcting people's rules around after.
Dude, nobody knows the rules.
But we...
It's such a different vibe.
And the people who love Time for Chaos,
just they love Time for Chaos.
They really, really love it.
I see it in the comments every week.
It has its own, like definitely niche audience,
but the people who love it, love it.
And it like inspires me to keep pushing along with it.
Cause it is such a mountain of work,
but the players are having so much fun.
And it's been a hell of a season so far.
That's great.
We had a couple big laughs on last week's.
I have just some classic NPC, and it was a drunk NPC,
which is always my forte.
But man, we had Nora and Kate look like they like,
at one point Nora's laughing so hard, she says,
my soul has left my body.
That's amazing. Yeah, that's a good one. one point nor is laughing so hard, she says. My soul has left my body.
That's amazing. Yeah, that's a good one.
All right, last question here. Seth from St. Louis. This is something we've talked about.
St. Louis, Seth.
Hold St. Louis, Seth. This is something we've talked about a little bit, but I love the way
this has been narrowed into a very specific question, and I think that it bears discussing.
Hello, Joe and Troy. I am the GM for a group that is new to the Pathfinder scene making the switch from 5e
I really like the recall knowledge skill check
I think it's a really cool ability and I want the players at my table to incorporate it more into their play
The thing I really struggle with is knowing what skill they should use
I don't really see anything listed in the monster stat block about it, and I'm always just like
Nature should work. Any advice. I think it's a great question, Seth. It is certainly something
I struggled with at the start of playing 2E. It's not that I'm done struggling with it,
but it is intentionally nebulous, I feel like, intentionally vague. And that can be difficult
for a GM, especially a GM that is used to a system where there are 700 pages of rules so that you don't have to have questions
about what the rules are or how something should be interpreted, especially something
as common as a knowledge check.
Troy, do you have any initial comments on this?
Otherwise, I can keep talking about it.
Yeah, I don't like it.
I like strict. I don't like it. I like strict.
I don't like nebulous.
You know what I mean?
It's like, why, it bothers me,
and this isn't like a dig at Pathfinder,
but it bothers me that like,
there's so many strict rules for everything else.
Why have any nebulous rules?
I just, I don't like it.
But the way that I've sort of rectified it,
and we still like stumble through it on the show is like
Every monster if you look it'll say like DC 17 occult
DC 15 nature for a recall knowledge
DC 13 Arcana those are the DCs if you use those skills
And so if you want to use any other skill
I'm perfectly fine with you using it
But the DC is going to go up in my head based on how close it is to the thing.
So if it's a cult and you roll religion, the DC is probably not going to be that much higher.
It's going to be a little higher because that's not the correct skill.
But a cult and religion are so closely related, I'm keeping that DC in the ballpark.
If it's a cult and you want to use nature, I got to look and be like, is this,
is it, was nature really something for this particular monster that is going to make sense?
Nine times out of 10, if it's a cult, probably not. So now the DC is going to be up even higher.
Same thing with like Arcana and nature, religion. Religion is so specific. Like if it's not religion,
and you, all you have is religion, your DC is probably going to be
a lot higher unless you're dealing with a monster that you could argue has some connections
there. But that's just how I've been playing it. I'm very fortunate with Foundry VTT. I
look the monster, the recall knowledge is right there. It tells me what it is. And I
just go by that.
Yeah. I think overall that is a good system.
If you feel like, go with your gut,
you know what, okay, hold on.
Let me back up to the first thing you said,
which was why is there this vague part
when it's such a rules heavy system?
No, I just don't like that.
Yeah, that you just don't like it.
I respect that.
And I've never liked that.
I do like it, and I like it because I feel like
this is where Pathfinder makes an effort to
acknowledge that every situation is so wildly different at every table and in every moment that you
It's very hard to write clear rules for every situation and recall knowledge
I guess they feel is vague enough that you should leave it up to the GM to take care of I
Really think that overall there's a mentality
that has to happen here that's really important, which is you as the GM interpret the rules
and then you execute those rules. If you have done your research and recall knowledge and
you see that there is just not the clear indication on what you should do, then you pick and you
just have to pick it and not worry about whether you're right or wrong. You're right because you're the GM. You know? Now Troy's interpretation of
it is these are the skills that I think are most directly related to the thing.
In this case there's a module where it says what they are. If people want to
roll something else I will bump up the DC. That's the exact interpretation I
would take that is exactly how I would run it at my table. To give you just a very brief overview of how I would think about it in my head, splitting
these monsters in particular when it comes to monster ID among the knowledge checks
and which ones should be the lowest DCs of all, I take this from 1E.
And so perhaps as a 5E player, you never played 1e. 1e had a little bit more
clear definition of what monsters come under what skills but some of those skills don't
really exist anymore so you have to do a little bit of tweaking but here's the way that I
think about it.
Religion's single largest area of concern is going to be deities and their respective
organizations and undead. Undead is where you're going to get the most
out of your religion because undead is a very large and frequent monster in these style
fantasy, high fantasy games. Nature for me is anything about the natural world. No matter
how strange or weird, as long as it's not magical, as long as it's not magical in nature,
it's natural nature. And so obviously that's a huge subject that could cover a lot of different creatures,
but mainly animals, right?
Animals.
Even if they're like a little jacked up in a weird way or infected by something that
makes them super, super naturally large, something like that, like nature.
Occultism is obviously a little bit of a tricky one.
Occultism to me, and I spoke with Eric Mona about this, I remember years ago, and asking
him like, how do you differentiate Arcana from occultism and religion from occultism?
Where does it separate out?
And the primary thing that he said to me at the time was that it has to do largely with
mystical, supernatural, mythical. So basically things that even in this magical world are unknown
to large amounts of people, including people that are trained in Arkana. So like magic
is not strange just because it's magic. A lot of magic is mundanely taught and learned
in schools, right, in this world for wizards. The occult is about the secret things, the things that most people don't know
about and even trained people don't learn about because they are actively kept secret.
Supernatural things.
You, and this is Gatewalkers.
You see a lot of occultism in Gatewalkers because super, I also said, how do you
define supernatural in a world where everything is supernatural? It's freaking its fantasy
You know and Eric is actually the one that just disabused me of this notion. He's like no no no no
And all of that stuff that you know magical schools are cane spell casting primal spells
You know all of that kind of magical fantastic dragons all that stuff is
Natural in this world.
It is the natural state of this world.
So when we talk about the occult, we talk about the things that even in this
world are supernatural, which is so you're getting to a whole other degree.
And it's the things that nobody talks about, the things that nobody wants to
know about, things that make people in a, you know, the average family in a home
uncomfortable to hear about. Like, you know, the average family in a home uncomfortable to hear about.
Like, you know, they might, yeah, they know there's dragons out there that doesn't make them
uncomfortable. They might be uncomfortable if there's a dragon flying over the village,
but knowing the existence of dragons might not bother them, but knowing the existence of a great
old one might bother them, right? Like, these are things that are outside of the normal realm of the natural in this world.
So, and then obviously are kind of magical beasts,
creatures of pure magic, magical creatures, whatever.
And then the whole point is,
any one of them can sort of like,
cross over into the other wherever you see fit.
So it is the GM's not only job, but right.
It is your right to decide
what somebody can and can't roll on
those.
And if you don't want to say no to your players, I think Troy's idea is a great one, which
is just bump up the DCs.
Make the DC harder if you feel like the area of expertise is too fringe to really reach
over and grab the information you need from this particular area.
But it's a great question and one that we all, at one point or another, have struggled with.
Yeah, it's one of those things that we just kind of like,
I don't know, at least in my learning of the system,
I've just constantly overlooked, because I've not,
I don't know, it's just one of those things like,
I'm just not interested.
And then it comes up in a game in my life.
Man, I really need to take a peek at this.
But I'm just looking right now at your actual skills.
You've got our can, things that will be relevant for,
because you could, I guess you could-
You mean me personally, like Brother Ramius?
Or other party?
No, I'm just looking at like the skills.
So there's arcana, nature, occultism, religion.
Those are really the primary knowledge skills.
Now you can recall knowledge with anything, right?
And lore, lore is, nobody burns on lore,
but I guess you could recall knowledge on medicine,
but that's to recall about diseases, injuries, poisons and other elements, not really for monsters,
per se. But like if you were going up against some like crazy doctor, you could be like,
can I do medicine? I really, all right, you know, I know that's not what it's going to say in the
stat block, but if you nail a medicine check, you'd be like, well, all right,
so you don't really know what this monster is.
It didn't ever show up in any medical textbooks
that you read, but you do see some accoutrements
on his person.
It kinda looks like he has some toxins.
Maybe he's got a poison weapon,
maybe he has the ability to throw those.
So there's always ways that you can gain the system.
It's just how much you-
Society too, we forgot society.
Society, yeah, society's for like-
Yeah, so society is a general Society is like no it's local.
Yeah.
It's a general catch all for like humans, humanoids and then and then society in general.
But like Bolan was society, but he was so specific.
It was a harder check because you would have had to have read something in your study about
Bolan specifically to really know nail society check.
Oh, you know what? When you were at the Quaking Stacks, you saw a little tidbit about you
found Bologna's bio.
Bologna's bio.
Bologna's e-harmony profile.
Amazing.
Carries a plus one staff.
You can also use checks outside of those for recall knowledge. You can. As
long as you can justify it. And that's one of the things I like about that system. To me, it's
reminiscent of Blades in the Dark where, you know, the GM is saying to you, what do you want to roll
for this? And if you can justify why, right? You know, just like if you're fighting a circus acrobat,
and you don't want to use society, you're not trained in it like if you're fighting a circus acrobat and you don't want
to use society, you're not trained in it, but you're highly trained, you're an expert
in acrobatics, why couldn't you roll acrobatics to know what they might be capable of or what
you can see? Or if you're trying to, if it's a more of a sneaky mission, right? And you're
like, I want to roll knowledge acrobatics on this circus performer to see like, how
do they probably do their training? And like, where would it happen? And and I could corner them somewhere. Something like getting creative with those things is really fun
and as a GM I think letting people express that creativity is great. You just need to like, if
you think that it's a long shot, just say absolutely go for it and then in your head just tick up that
DC a few points and make it harder. They have to get a high roll on the check to make it worthwhile,
you know? So anyway.
Dude, I do that shit all the time like, yeah, roll it. And I just like, I don't care
what you roll unless you roll a 20. I'm not telling you shit. It's the same thing when
someone like goes to do an attack that I totally disagree with. And like, I don't feel like
getting into a fight. I'm like, all right, roll. Oh, how much damage? Great.
No damage. No damage.
And now you're not going to fight anymore. and I don't have to deal with your bullshit.
That's why they have a GM screen.
That's why they have a GM screen.
What happens behind the screen stays behind the screen.
Oh man, that'll be a good one for one day.
We should talk more about secretly not taking any damage like after you said you took damage.
It's better than picking a fight.
Like you know you're right or even if you don't know you're right.
You're the GM.
You're like, all right, dude, sick hit don't, no, you're right. You're the GM.
All right, dude, sick hit.
What was that?
30, you said 30 points?
Yeah, that was totally shit.
He's in rough shape.
Listen back.
It's all over the glass.
Get the fuck out.
All right, everybody.
That's going to do it for the FOD.
Thanks for hanging out with us this week.
Like we said, Juicy FOD coming next week.
Join us and save the day.
And if you're a VoIPL subscriber or become one, Wednesday, March 20th, 7.30 Eastern, a talk show with Jared and I where your voice
is heard. Come up to the stage, talk to us. It's going to be great. Until then, have a
great one everybody. Have a great weekend and we'll talk to you next week. We'll see
you in Toronto. Bye!
It's time to make your membership official. Become an official member of The Niche Today at JoinTheNiche.com.
That's joined the Naish.com where you'll get access to exclusive podcasts and live streams
you can't find anywhere else. See what everybody's talking about and Join The Niche Today at JoinTheNiche.com.