The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 4/19/23

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

For the first time this year, it's SHOW WEEK! Troy and Joe get some last-minute thoughts in before hopping on a plane to Boulder, CO, for the first Glass Cannon Live! show of 2023! They discuss their plans for the Boulder trip, ideas for how to improve your home game (courtesy of the Order of the Amber Die), and the officially approved GCN Events coming to Gen Con in 2023! In We Are Stupid, they discuss the Learn a Spell action, how much info to give a player before they choose to re-roll, and how Sydney snuck one by Troy (and he'll never make that mistake again)! 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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It's made with pH-balancing minerals and crafted with skin-conditioning oils. So whether you're going for a run or just running late, do what life throws your way and smell like you didn't. Find Secret at your nearest Walmart or Shoppers Drug Mart today. 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. Yo, what is going on, everybody?

Welcome back to Cannon Fodder. It is Wednesday, April 19th, 2023, and I'm your good buddy, Joe O'Brien. And hey, it's me, Troy. I'm definitely not watching the Red Sox game while recording this LaValle. You like to do a lot of extraneous sports watching while recording content for the Glass Cannon Network. Do you see the color bouncing off my face? Yes. That's the TV.

Oh, is that a single? No, that's enough. I think i saw a stolen base in the reflection of your eyeglasses could you see that uh what's going on everybody welcome back to the fad uh troy and i are uh really in the depths of show week it's a show week here on the fad our first show week of 2023, as tomorrow we head to the airport for Boulder, Colorado. It's happening. We're heading to Colorado. So excited. We're going to talk a little about that. We got a studio update for you, of course.

Some more labs updates. Some exciting Gen Con updates, which we're looking forward to. And then, of course, as always, plenty of We Are Stupid conversation to get into. But first, what are you most looking forward to doing in Boulder that isn't the show or Denver? Either place. What are you excited to do when you get out there? Are you going to have any fun or are you just going to be working the whole time? Yeah, no, I'm planning.

I'm trying to get as much work done as I can before I leave so that I can enjoy my time a little bit more. I'm always so stressed out. And then I it's like, ah, time to get on the plane home. I didn't didn't get to have enough fun. So I think what I'm really going to try and do is meet up with Rob Kirkavich. We have not hung out in person together in over 20 years. So I'm excited to find a brewery and have some sweet Denver beer and hang out with Kirkavich and inviting everybody to come. So hopefully you'll join us. And Kate, obviously, she's been playing with Rob now for 20 eps. It'll be fun. Denver's really – it's a real wasteland for beer, right? I hear it's just garbage beer out there.

Yeah, you know, I'll make do. You guys are meeting up for a couple Miller Lights. A couple Cordo Coors Lights. Oh, that's right, Coors Lights. Coors Field. Have you been to Coors Field? I have. I feel like I've been there twice, but I think I've only been once

because I've actually only been in Colorado once. No. Yes. Yes? No. No. Yeah, I've only been to well, I've only been in Denver once when I was shooting that tailgate show a hundred years ago. I think we got tickets to see the Rockies that night. It was a nice

little ballpark. Literally minutes ago, I got a selection of fine trails from Matthew Cabo da Casa for hiking suggestions while we're in Denver, Colorado. We're going to go out there and get a little hiking done, which I'm looking forward to. And then cool down our sweaty brows with an ice cold beer. Hopefully with Rob Kirkridge. With an ice cold weed cookie. With an ice cold weed brownie. A giant gummy.

Are you going to eat a lot of weed while we're out there? Are you looking forward to weed eating? That just doesn't seem like a great idea um no it does not so it always seems like a good idea before you eat it when did that 14 hours go right that's the big problem once you eat it is like there's no going back right like it's what's done is done and now you're hours in you're in the air and you won't be in hawaii for a while um yeah so uh no i don't i don't think so it's funny that we are arriving on like the weed holiday the uh 420 so i mean that's right it's just gonna be a a zoo in that crazy lawless town but uh i don't know i'll be content with a nice with a nice ice cold cause light yeah i'd

like to see rob as well that would be that would be awesome um but yeah i mean we're so we've been talking about it for weeks we're so excited to get back on the road so excited to get back to i mean playing in person again for one thing and then also to to reconnect with the niche i mean boulder sold out as as we we expected a few weeks back on FOD. We mentioned it, and it's officially sold out. And you guys supported us. They released more tickets, and we sold those out too. Yeah.

So thank you so, so, so much to the Denver, Arizona contingent. I'm not sure how far people – New Mexico. I'm not sure how far people traveled for this. I'm not sure how far people traveled for this, but we greatly, greatly appreciate you selling that out. And that just means we're going back to Denver. Like, that's what that means. I guess so. I mean, it sold out fast, too, which is nice. Yeah, it was

really nice. Dude, this is probably the longest drought that we've gone without shows since COVID. Yeah. We did Philly in December, and we internally knew it was going to be a few months before we got back on the road. But I am just chomping at the bit. I always say it's my favorite thing we do

and there's just nothing like doing it live. I think it reinvigorates not only the show but the whole network. You get in front of the people and you get to see how much people appreciate what we do. It really is a nice reminder that we're all a part of something special. Yep.

Couldn't agree more. Speaking of being a part of something special, this Gatewalkers as it's developing is just getting more and more special. I am getting more and more fired up about this thing. And you know what? I'm even more so now because of the, I mentioned it last week on fodder, but this weekend I went to PF2E summer camp, as I called it, for a first ever sit in at the Order of the Ember Dye. An official Order of the Ember Dye marathon. And I sat in and played with them for a 12-hour session while they played Abomination Vaults. And it was wild, LaValle. Wild.

I know we have not talked about this. I wanted to ask you, like, what was the top three things you learned in no specific order? And it could be anything like, did you know you take a minus two after, you know, to like top three things off the top of your head. Top three things off the top of my head. Okay. Well, I'll tell you what, there is not a lot of rule stuff that I didn't already know. Like I have a pretty, I have a pretty good grasp.

I corrected them on a few things, which was, which I was very proud of. Well, dude, we're putting in the work, dude. Yeah. proud of. We're putting in the work, dude. Yeah, putting in the work, putting in the work. But, you know, the other thing is, like, I was a little bit disappointed, if I'm honest, and this has – it's nothing to do with them. It's all to do with, like, realizing the situation that they're in and what I needed out of it, which was they are doing an amazing campaign. You can read about it over on the Paizo blog. They just completed their third marathon toward the Abomination Vaults Challenge where they are trying to do it all as gunslingers.

Every party member is a gunslinger, and they want to see if they can actually survive this module doing it that way. And the problem with that, though, is that one of the things I was looking for was trying to see how they utilize their actions compared to how we do. But when you have a class that needs a reload action, it just means that you're kind of always moving, reloading, and firing. And there wasn't a whole lot of demoralizing or aiding or hiding or any of those kind of third actions that are typical of, you know, that we're trying to look for how they would utilize them. It just wasn't a big part of that game, which is nobody's fault. It just, it wasn't the way that the encounters were set up. However, you know, what was fun is like one of the abilities that my gunslinger had is take cover and reload as one action. So I was using a lot more take cover. Like I would like look for a, uh,

an obstruction of some kind, or even in one case, like a, uh, a giant fungi, like a mushroom. And it was like, I'm going to get to that, get behind it and increase my AC by two, just for my positioning and like between rounds taking cover as the last action, it made me feel so much more confident when there were enemies all over the place to be like, well, at least I have this plus two AC buff. Like, that's huge. Yeah. So I guess one of the main things that jumped out at me is cover. Cover was huge.

They utilized it constantly, and the enemies got it constantly. I think that I know that our group is – they they they they needle nickel and dime you on cover and they really shouldn't like every one of those people around the oad table they just assume that the creature has plus one or plus two to ac unless it is a completely wide open crystal clear shot so anytime it's around slightly around a corner or they're seeing them through a doorway, an open doorway, like, or there's a creature in the way or a couple of creatures in the way.

Anytime the creature is always getting a buff to AC. And so part of the, it drives action to move into clear shooting range. It drives action to move around and reposition so that the enemy does not get that bonus to AC. And the enemies are also because Adam is such an awesome GM and tactically he's, he's really puts it, takes it to the players. He puts those enemies in the most advantageous position. So he could stand here

and melee attack you, or he could stand here and melee attack you and have covered it two more guys from that direction. So it's just a smarter way to uh to play and we also have to just always take into account cover and say that we're we're accepting it you know um yeah i mean if nothing else it's soft cover is constantly there um but yeah using those actions to find covers clutch is that the the mechanics are such that a difference of one and two in AC is monumental compared to first edition. Oh, but that's just moving there. If you move there, you can get plus two to AC. By the way, that plus two to AC is whenever you draw a line from the center of your square to the center of the target square and it is obstructed at all.

That is plus two. It's only plus one if it goes through a creature and a creature alone right now if a corner of the square can hit a corner of the square and and not be obstructed that still means you can even target it you have line of effect right but if it ever crosses in the middle even a tiniest little bit of it it's plus two to ac that's without even taking an action that's just standing there right if you take the action it's plus four to ac yeah That's without even taking an action. That's just standing there. Right. If you take the action, it's plus four to AC. Yeah. So, I mean, it's just a smart thing to think about.

We don't have, you know, a lot of our party is melee and stuff like that. Or maybe I'm thinking about, no, that's not true at all. Most of our party is not melee. So, yeah, they need to be taking cover more. Aldo could just throw a bomb, throw a bomb, take cover. Plus four to his AC if he's up against a wall or a fence or a rock. You know what I mean? Yeah.

It's definitely something to think about. The minute you see that I'm using casters that have ranged spells that have attack rolls, you should be asking me, is there anything I can hide behind here? Exactly. To which I'll reply, no. Right. Most of the time there won't be, but sometimes there will. But as a rat folk, there's also more opportunities to hide behind things.

Smaller things create greater obstruction, which is cool. And the guide also says that. The players or the core rule book is very clear that it's GM discretion because sometimes some creatures benefit from certain cover while other creatures don't based on their size. A half fence is something a rat could hide behind, but it is not something a giant could hide behind. It gives them no cover. We saw this all the time in Giant Slayer because I'd be like, well, that's soft cover. And one of you guys would be like, but it's fucking 12 feet tall. Yeah, all right.

That's fine. I can get it. Right, right. So they were very clear on that, that you can make that rule. Okay, number two. This is one I think you're going to like. I'm going to line up two real quick. One I think you're going to love and one I think you're going to hate. But I think that they're both great. The first one is the usage of hero points. Very interesting for Order of the Amber Dye and how they handle hero points. It is very straightforward. You get one hero point at the start of the day. And in this case, that's about 12 hours.

You get one hero point per day. And that's it. And you never get another one. No matter how good your role play, no matter what, you just get one hero point. And so I played for an entire 12-hour session with them, and no one used a hero point the entire time. You just took fumbles on the cheek, even bad fumbles. I don't want to spoil their game, but fumbles where it would put PC on fighting another PC because of a fumble. They'd just take it, and they'd laugh, and they'd start attacking their buddy.

And their buddy would be like, ah, and wouldn't get mad. That sounds so awesome. It was a dream. It was a dream. They're a great group. They're a great group. And then the last one I think is something you should really consider, but you'll never do it. Who knows?

Maybe you will. Maybe you will. I don't want to assume too much. A player handles initiative. Oh, interesting. I think it is essential to get that off the GM's plate because the GM, at least in my case, when I've run games, in Skid's case, I know with Legacy and the Ancients, and less so it happens to you. You're pretty good about it, but I'm pretty bad about it. And Skid has these hiccups all the time. You screw up. You make errors in initiative and

you skip people because you have so much going on well they have a player that that's one of their only jobs is just to handle initiative they ask all the players their initiative while the gm is getting the the encounter ready and rolling their initiative the enemy initiative and stuff like that and uh the reason i think you'll hate it is because you like to keep everything secret. You like no one to know when enemies are going. You like to put surprises in there. You can still put surprises in there. You can still have enemies that are not on the board at the start. And then all of a sudden they come into the fight whenever you want, doesn't matter. But one of the things i love about it is it speeds the game

up because everyone sees initiative so a player handles initiative but everyone is looking at it at all times and they say whose turn it is and who's on deck every turn so you know it's like you're so all right so next is aldo's turn and eris you're on deck so get ready you know we need to like if we're a little bit more diligent with that I think even if you're still handling initiative I think that we will see quicker reaction time to when you're called on yeah that's interesting

I'm certainly not against it you know I've seen there are some like GM screens where you can show people the initiative like on top of the screen you put little things in and I've always thought that was interesting I think one thing when i told you i played in a game offline that we only did like three or four sessions that david winters ran of agents events watch and we used foundry and one of the cool things that he did and i don't know if this is

just something that comes with foundry or if it was a mod that he put on was that uh you do initiative everybody sees initiative, but you don't see the monster's initiative until they go in the first round. So you just see, oh, it's my turn now, okay? And then all of a sudden, a monster appears in the initiative, and now it's revealed for the rest of the fight.

And then you keep going, and then another monster goes. So I think there's a happy medium in there that would work well. For me, I pre-roll all my initiatives. So I just have a link that I click on Donjon that I've already pre-rolled the initiative. And then I just take you guys' initiatives and hit sort and we rock and roll. But that's not to say, especially as

people start readying an action or delaying an action, that having someone help with that would be huge. Because what I end up doing is like okay you're delaying all right so now i've got to change this monster's initiative was a 28 i've got to just rewrite that as a 30 you have to fudge the number yeah you have to just change the number i've done the same thing on don john um you know just it's not ideal um and i talked to them about this and uh and they said that they had gone down the road of the classic Paizo initiative tracker. You know, they were just like, it's just not enough. Like the greatest move.

They say it's one of the greatest moves they made is the whiteboard initiative. So it's big. Everybody can see it from all around the table. And it just keeps everybody moving faster. Now, we're not necessarily going to have something like that, of course. But even if I just think if a player handles it, if you can find a way to make that work, even if it's on Donjon, then that's so much easier for

them to just deal with and not make mistakes because they have so much time. It's not their turn. They don't need to focus on that other stuff, especially when you get into readying and delaying. That is when it really will take a lot of weight off the GM's shoulders. Well, I'll tell you, especially as we're exploring all VTT opportunities for gatewalkers, I've been thinking a lot of weight off the GM's shoulders. Well, I'll tell you, especially as we're exploring all VTT opportunities for

gatewalkers, I've been thinking a lot about every single aspect of the game. How can we streamline the process, keep things clean, and keep things efficient for gameplay? And while I may not give this to a player, I could certainly give it to a producer that we have backstage. Do you know what I mean? True. That's something that- Almost like a producer that we have backstage. Do you know what I mean? That's something that – Almost like a co-GM, yeah.

Yeah, Order of the Amber Dye doesn't have it. They're all just sitting there playing the game. There might be people hanging out, but they don't want to do work. And so this is something that I could certainly give to a producer and still get the same effect where you guys all get to see it happen, but still do my thing where you don't see the monsters. Because sometimes, and this happens a lot, there's like a round where i know in round three another combatant is coming in or based on your actions it might be round five and so like i'll have that in my initiative tracker

and with just a little note do not count this initiative until it comes up in round five and that gets a little tricky too so having a producer producer that I can consult with. You have to remember that, yeah. It would get a little tricky. That happens – you'd be surprised. That happens a lot. Like if this fight gets really loud, it will alert the guards in room C10 who will arrive one D6 rounds later. And so I'm like, all right, does anyone cast silence?

All right, so I'll roll the D6 and I'm doing that live and I know when they come. So it's interesting. Yeah, yeah. And I think the larger lesson there is, like, outsource what you can. You know, the GM never moved anything on the maps. Like, the players took care of it, except when there was a big reveal. There was a big reveal the GM would have to get up, handle the maps.

But otherwise, players moved all the minis. Players would move the GM's monsters. He would just say, put them over there. No, that square. No, that square. No, that square, et cetera. And obviously, we have a little bit of a different mechanic for that. Initiative, note-taking, money. One person handled all the money.

Said, oh, you know, who is – what are you buying? You know what I mean? And then would mark it down out of the party goal and everything, and that was efficient. It's like a monopoly banker. Yes, exactly. It's like a monopoly banker. You have to submit approval, a purchase order. That's something we definitely should have someone.

It's like you're in charge of party gold and inventory. Yeah, and so what they do is instead of like taking a big sum of gold and then deciding that that cash, if it comes in coin, is now going to be – is it ready to be divvied? Okay. So we'll divvy this out. And this is what you have on your sheet. You know what I mean?

It's just one number. And then when they do shopping, they just go around. How much did you spend? How much did you spend? And they just deduct it from the total. And it was clean. It was clean and fast. I dug it.

Last thing I'll say is they had this thing. They didn't use it. But they have this thing called Spire Mode, which comes from the Emerald Spire, their run of the Emerald Spire, where they were up against a really important deadline. And it's when the game, when they had to play fast, they had to play hot and fast, and they learned a lot in that time. They don't always play that way, but when they need to, they'll invoke what they call Spire Mode. And you basically get five seconds to begin your turn. Like, when it's your turn, you get five seconds. And if you don't act, you lose your action.

And it moves everybody really fast. You get on deck. And then the other thing they did was if the – oh, oh, I forgot one more thing. If the creature is not in danger of dying in the next, like, three hits, right? You know when a creature has so many hit points. In next three uh uh character attacks it's not going to die they would basically do simultaneous attacks for people that they're all they're all going to do the same thing they're going to shoot or they're going to slice or whatever it'd be like all right just roll your everybody roll your attacks boom boom boom boom and they would move through two or three people

in one clip because they could tell everyone knew based on the situation, everybody was going to stand and bang. So let's just see where the damage falls out. I'm not saying that that's relevant all the time, but it was good training for them to learn how to make their choices quicker and speed up. And then the thing that- I like that a lot. Yeah. Yeah. That one was really cool. And then that made me think, oh, shoot, it just went out of my head. Damn it.

I'll have to come back to it. There was one other thing that I was like, oh, this is awesome. We have to do this. You know, a side thing is like we should maybe have condition cards at the table. Even with a VTT, it's not a bad idea because they would just toss a card at you when you were frightened, when you were clumsy. They just tossed a card at you. toss a card at you when you have, when you were frightened,

when you were clumsy, they just tossed a card at you. And even if you didn't remember the numbers on your sheet or whatever it was like, when you had it there, it was so much easier to remember you were under that, you know, condition. So yeah,

that's really smart. That was a cool little thing that I think we could do. I feel like we did that for Starfinder for a while. Yeah, we did. We did a huge thank you to Adam and everybody at the order of the ember die. They were so welcoming and nice and awesome.

And I can't wait to play with them again, which I'm hopefully going to do this summer, which would be awesome, for a little marathon visit. Did you spend the night? I did. I was going to say, you must have enjoyed yourself. I slept for about two hours. I imagine by the end, everybody's just slurring like a mess. Yeah, and they were not.

I mean, I couldn't believe it. They were so, I mean, they had gamed for like 30, like 27, 29 session hours over three days. Wow. And they were in the 29th session hour and everybody was still, I mean, there was one fellow that was just like dozing at the table a little bit,

but everybody else was just like still on it, still on point. I mean, they were very impressive. That's great. So congrats to them. They're awesome. All right. That's fodder, everybody. Yeah, I know. I know. That took a lot of time, but it was really fun to talk. Damn, there was one really exciting thing I need to get to. So I need to, you know, I'm going to kick something to you and I'll start thinking. We had some news about GenCon events that we wanted to mention. GenCon events came through and we got some official approvals. Why don't you talk about that for a minute?

Yeah. So we've talked already about how this year we're going even bigger with Gen Con. We had the booth last year, which was a huge success. We're bringing back the booth and we're going to be doing content in the booth from the moment the exhibition floor opens to the moment it closes Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We're hoping we applied to get a larger booth so that we could create some more space for direct fan interaction, because that's one thing that was lacking last year. But it doesn't look like we're going to get that this year. We're still working out some other ways that we can make sure that we're able to be more present while also wheeling and dealing. You know, I know some people were disappointed that we weren't that like there to greet constantly, but we're working. The convention is a place for us to work and really build awareness of the brand. So we're still working on how that's all going to go down.

But we're going to have two shows outside of the con and then two shows at the con that have now been approved. I don't want to go into too many details and announce stuff before the catalog has been released. I don't know if Gen Con would be cool with that, but we're going to be doing a Blades in the Dark show live. The Busted Mufflers are back. Busted Mufflers are back! And then the second show we're going to be doing at the con

is a Modern Call of Cthulhu, uh, live show, uh, similar to what we did, uh, with, intimate encounters and Seth Skorkowski, you know, uh,

it's going to be different characters. Uh, Seth, unfortunately isn't coming to Gen Con, uh, but I'm sure we'll, we'll have some fun, uh,

special guests. And, uh, we're going to do, uh, another modern call of Cthulhu live show. I mean, I'm so excited for this.

And who's, and who's running that one. I'm going to be running the call of Cthulhu one. And of course you are. You are so excited about it. You've been dying ever since that one. You, you can't stop talking about modern call of Cthulhu.

You're like, I just want to do another one shot. I just want to do another one shot. I mean, arguably that was the best thing that we did last year in 2022. It was the most one of the most fun sessions that we ever had. We recorded that all in one. Was that last year?

I'm pretty sure that was five years ago. It was last year. It was the first time we'd ever talked to Seth. And we just jumped in and started playing. And I mean, that was so much fun. So we're going to do some sort of new concept I'm already working on. And then Jared, obviously, will be running the Blades in the Dark.

But then we're going to have two shows outside of the con. On one night, we're going to do Glass Cannon Live. And that's going to be back at Helium Comedy Club. We'll be releasing tickets for that soon. But then on another night, we're going to do something completely different. We're going to be doing a show

just a little bit further away from the con, but you could walk there or grab an Uber at a big theater called the Athenium, and it is going to be a new live show experience. And to be completely honest, I don't know what it's going to be yet. I've been tossing around in my head several different options, but I want to try and do something different. I wanted to rather than do two Glass Cannon live shows, let's do another show that that we can sell. We won't have any like VIP after party or anything like that. Let's see if we can sell tickets that are much cheaper than our normal tickets and get a lot of people coming who maybe have never heard of Glass Cannon Network or maybe can't afford to buy our normal tickets and get a lot of people coming who maybe have never heard of the glass cannon network, or maybe can't afford to buy our normal tickets. And so we're going to do,

or even if they have heard of the glass network, a show that you don't have to be caught up on strange aeons, you know, at all to enjoy something that is going to be, you know, in that, I don't know, just,

just in that realm that you don't have to have any prior experience. You can come in and really enjoy yourself and leave feeling like you saw something started and completed in one shot. Yeah. Yeah, that's the plan. Unless we just start a whole new adventure path. I really don't know what it's going to be. Just probably what you'll do. Yeah, I mean, I've been toying around with several different ideas that if I started to tell you, they would all sound crazy.

But everything's on the table. I want to do something that best exemplifies who we are and what we do. I don't even know who's going to be on it yet. But I'm excited for this show. And I have to decide pretty soon what it is. So Colin, what kind of show would you like to see? Colin, what kind of show do you want to see? I'm leaning so many different ways. And it's real tricky, right? Because some people might be like, you should do Mork Borg live, right?

And okay, that sounds like- It would be great. It'd be great. We'd have so much fun with that if anything is proven by when we played a new game, Houdis. But there are limitations to a game that not a lot of people know, right? So then you'd be like, well, just play D&D. Everybody knows D&D. We could do that too, right?

But that's not really our main game. We could do Pathfinder. That probably makes the most sense. But is that the game we want to play? I don't know. But how much Pathfinder can you really do from scratch in 120 minutes? Right, I can't do do i'd have to really streamline

a pathfinder society scenario um and and and you know you know that for us those take four to six hours there's no way we can do that in two and i want a tight two-hour show uh i think it's hilarious that you said four to six we have never done one in four hours ever. Back in the day, I sat in on one at PaizoCon and it took a clean four hours. But there – Yeah. Well, that's when you weren't running it and I wasn't in it. There's less goofing off. But I don't know.

It's really tricky. There are so many different factors to consider because we want this to be something that all the nation are going to come to. But maybe new people will come to as well. And so, yeah, it's going to come to, but maybe new people will come to as well. And so, yeah, it's going to be a fucking busy ass weekend. But I'm so psyched that both of these events got approved. And so when you see the events catalog come out, we're trying to make sure that we have the tickets for these two live shows, Glass Cannon Live and the new Glass Cannon Live show, either released the same day as the Gen Con event catalog or before it

so that you can plan your whole weekend because people plan their Gen Con stuff way in advance. And so if you're buying tickets to Blades in the Dark, that means that you can't do something else. And if you're buying tickets to Modern Cthulhu, that means – and same thing. If you're getting a show on Thursday night, then you can't do that. So we want you to be able to plan this all out in advance and get your tickets to all four events. If you're a wild super fan. Yeah, that would be great. So we're excited to share that with you guys.

And hopefully, you know, it's very early, but we'll get into more details in the months ahead as we get closer to Gen Con. But, you know, we are, I mean, just deep into Gen Con planning right now. And so that's why it's kind of on the top of our mind. I know for a lot of you, you're probably not even thinking about Gen Con yet, but start thinking about it because it'll be here before you know it. You know, get ready when those events drop to pick up tickets, because I'm pretty sure that Modern Cthulhu show is going to sell out fast. And I'm not trying to be braggy. I just, it's a little bit small. So I just feel like we, you know, we're probably going to sell that out.

So if that comes up, like definitely try to get that event ticket as soon as possible. Yeah. And Blades, we sold it out last year too. I think that it looks like, I'm not sure.

It looks like the Blades one is going to be streamed, but maybe the modern Cthulhu one isn't. I really don't know. So just to be safe, just get tickets to both. Agreed. Real quick on labs before we head in. There is to be safe, just get tickets to both. Agreed. Real quick on Labs before we head in.

There is no Labs this week. That's because tomorrow we're traveling. We're in the air tomorrow heading to Denver, and then Labs is going to be off. Next Thursday, it returns with Matthew at the helm to complete the Trophy Dark story that we started, that one shot. Really cool system. Very Blades in the Dark-y, and I'm looking forward to jumping back into that. So just want to put that on everybody's radar.

If you want to come out and hang on Thursday the 27th, 2 o'clock Eastern time, we're going to go live with the completion of Trophy Dark, so look around for that. All right, let's kick it over to Episode 71. We are stupid the you know one of the things that jumped out to me on this was the the learning a spell mechanics now we never really dug into if we can learn a spell in the dreamlands and then maintain that spell when we awaken right like i just feel like it's complicated enough let's not yeah exactly so like that's but that's a pretty powerful uh thing i was thinking about it after the fact i was doubting it on air and then after the fact i was like well why the hell not it's a mental thing

right if you dreamed of you know the the text of a an accurate text of some sort of historical event you will come remembered it you would know it you know you might learn one could say you'd learn it even better exactly one would say you'd learn it even better now that one of the distinctions here was how a wizard learns a spell versus how a witch learns a spell uh i am enraged at this apparent mechanic that a wizard has to pay 70 gold pieces to learn a fifth level spell and a witch gets it for free. What? Why? Professor Eric writes in and says, and I quote, I think that's the case.

So this is what I want. I want the niche to come out and tell me that the witch really is totally free and that wizards really do have to pay full price for this stuff. The one thing that Eric brings up, which is very interesting, is the witch's familiar consumes the scroll. When a wizard learns a spell, the scroll is not consumed or destroyed. So you still have a scroll and you have the spell in your spell book. So that may account for the difference in cost. Well, that's interesting.

So then you could do two things. You could like pass it to your wizard buddies to learn and not be consumed. But then you could also in combat be like out of spells and just cast from the scroll. Right. So if that's the case, then I can see why, you know, but it's a pretty big, that's a big cost. 700 gold is no joke. I'm sorry, 70 gold, 700 silver is no joke to go from, you know, get for free to have to pay for it. But I'm curious if anybody has any more input on that rule. I'm still kind of not confused about it. I just think that that's a wild difference. And I hope we did it right in the show. I hope we did it right in the show. He wanted to point out something about the DC on the porculus. Was that written in the module?

Yeah. The DC to lift the porculus. And what was it? Do you remember? Give me a second. I can find it. But you're talking about the athletics check. Yeah, the athletics check. I believe he rolled a 35, I want to say.

And you said he lifted that thing up. Does that sound right to you that it was do you know what number it was i can find it in all of two seconds i've got uh ron lendeen's translation right here i could just look at my notes too because great i'm actually curious about it because i want to be curious yeah is it just because he didn't know what the dc was he wanted to see what it was just because uh as a as a uh teaching point for gms for like how you would set the dc for something like that which could be kind of unexpected if a player did not uh if it was not written in a module or if you were homebrewing it's like what

would you set a dc for something like that's a great idea interesting idea i never thought of it how would you set the dc so what do you have have it. Yeah. So this is information I can't tell you, but with brute strength, you can open it. Athletics DC 28. It could also be smashed open. Had a hardness of 15 with 200 hit points. Okay. So Eric said he was – and he's guessing. He says the DC for a ninth level challenge, the basec is 26 for a ninth level challenge so you said this

was 28 yeah yeah so he said dc 28 and he said i could see in this particular case it having the very hard modifier which is the largest modifier you can give which is a plus five so it was an interesting way to think about it he was like if the portcullis was very hard to lift at our level a good dc for that would be 31 so just to give people a sense if you're playing 2e and you're trying to wrap your head around a ninth level dc a dc 31 would make sense and he was like so you know he says i have no clue what the dc was but this felt great that when he rolled that 35 whatever he rolled that he should actually be able to do that because that was a hell of a challenge and he overcame it with his role so

um that was cool and so the the actual written overcame it with his role. So that was cool. And so the actual written one was 28, which means it wasn't a very hard modifier. It might have just been a difficult modifier. Yeah, I'm so glad that he did that because especially when stuff's written in there, you know, because I can make up the DC. Like, oh, you want to try something? Yes, go ahead. I'll make up the DC. But it was actually written in there.

So I was glad not only that he tried it, but that he got it. There's a great table that provides DCs for you, sort of sample DCs, and that's something I'm trying to really get into my head just so I can come up with stuff. Because if I don't really study that, I'm just going to think of how first edition was, and the DCs are so wildly different. So I'm really trying to learn that table. But it's also on the back of the GM screen as well. Yeah. Learning that tables, it's as important and not as important. It is, you would learn it the same way you'd learn multiplication tables. You know, you just have to kind of memorize the numbers next to each other. It's like, you look at nine, you look across, you see 26, you look at 10, you look across, you see 27 or 28,

whatever it is. And from there, you know, you can kind of get it down and do it quicker during a game, but it would take a certain level of memorization. All right, moving on. Counteract, our detect magic – I'm sorry, our dispel magic that came up. Professor Eric had a question about this. He thinks something was a little off. Basically, he tracked a spiritual weapon hit that did 20 points of damage don't know if you were just buffing your damage insanely for no reason or if it was a heightened uh john because he did it did 20 on a non-crit uh a typical

spiritual weapon is 1d8 plus 4 or plus 5 at second level as a second level spell. So he says 2d8 plus 4 could possibly 3d8 plus 5 is more likely

which means it would be the fifth, fourth level version. It was a wand of fourth level spiritual weapon. Right. A wand of fourth level

spiritual weapon so it should not have been dispelled by a second level dispel magic. Ah. That even a success, it would need to critically succeed to dispel a fourth level spell. Huh.

You know what's funny? It's like I think that on my sheet it says fourth level, and I was doing the damage of fourth level, 2d8 plus six, but I had the archives of Nethis screen up. Yep. And so when you were like, and I said, Oh, nope,

spell two or whatever. So you can do it. And I was, I forgot that it was heightened. Okay. So interesting. So how about that? Let's give it up.

Give it up for, pour one out for professor Eric. That is a good catch. Just by looking at the damage. Like my God, I mean, I say that I will never get there. I'm just not, oh, that damage, that doesn't sound right. You know, like, no way.

But that's crazy. Well, that's why he has a PhD. That's a great catch, Eric. Thank you so much. But, yeah, it's important to remember that the counteract check is based upon their heightened and prepared level as opposed to their base level. You'd have to crit on that. Also, something's wrong with Sidney's numbers again. We got to talk to Sidney because he says it was a plus 16 for the counteract check, but then a DC 25 for electric arc. If it was plus 16, her DC for electric arc should be 26. Those should be 10 apart. If the DC 25 is right,

then her counteract check should be plus 15. I'm sure that it's not wrong on her sheet. I'm sure it was just a mathematical or a typo error in the brain while talking, but I'll go over that with Sidney and double check. Ethel missed an action during

one turn. He was hasted and forgot about it. Did three actions, did not do the fourth action, so Eric caught that as well. And then this is an interesting one. Obviously, hero points are all up to GMs, et cetera, et cetera. But per the rules, per the raw, what Eric is saying here is you are supposed to know the degree of success before choosing a reroll with a hero point. of success before choosing a re-roll with a hero point. So you can know if you crit failed versus failed,

but you can't know the effect of that failure. So you don't get to know the effects of a crit fail versus a fail, but you do get to, typically the GM is supposed to let you know that would be a critical fail or that would be a fail before you choose to re-roll it. That is obviously GM discretion, but according to the book, that's what it says. Well, it's interesting. That doesn't take into account the fact that we use fumble cards for true fumbles, right? But a one is always – you only get that with a one. And we don't pull fumble cards for a fumble that isn't a natural one. Right. So I guess – For a fumble that isn't a natural one. Right.

For a critical miss that isn't a natural one. So a one you know is going to be a critical fail. It's really only on saving. It's on saving throws where you roll and you're like, you roll a natural three. And you're like, or no, even if you can roll like a natural six. Yeah. And if it's your lower save, you could be like 17. But you don't know that's right on the line of fail or critical fail

you know it failed but you don't know if it's a critical fail or not it's tough yeah i mean it's way less suspenseful to just i agree you know i agree i'd be inclined to kids games uh 100 i'd be i'd be inclined to make them spend the point you know you know you failed but you don't know if you critically failed yeah you know press your luck what know you failed, but you don't know if you critically failed. Press your luck. What do you do? I kind of like it, but I do see where it's coming from. It's to each their own. I'll tell you, in 2e, a 2

and a 3, it's almost always a critical fail. That's been coming up a lot. But yeah, you get those 4-5s early in the combat when you haven't really felt out the dc's of the enemy that's tricky as fuck it is tricky as fuck and and even those five sixes sevens even when you are when it's your worst save you know when you are a wizard and it's a fortitude save you know your will save or whatever is is or your reflex save for me for a dex wizard

is much higher you know what i mean but you if it's against your reflex save for me for a dex wizard is much higher, you know what I mean? But if it's against your worst save and you roll single digis, at this level, you're always in danger of a critical fail. So, especially against a higher level effect or caster. If you're facing an 11th level caster, 12th level caster, then yeah,

a natural 6 might be a critical fail. Well, what's nice is we won't have to worry about this in Gatewalkers, because there are no hero points. Oh, no. Only bottle caps. Oh, man. And those are never given out. Nope.

And they work differently. Oh, man. So, wait, have you come to a decision on this? Are we going to talk about this or is this something we should save for a later FUD? I mentioned it on Troy Made of Content. I'm not going to be using hero points in the traditional way for gay walkers. I'm going to use

bottle caps instead. And if anyone calls them a hero point, I get a bottle cap. Wait, did you say how they work? No, I did say in the Troy Madea content video that they're going to work similar to Hero Points. So I think they probably will. But I haven't really fully decided. You're not going to get any –

But you don't just get one for showing up. No, you definitely don't get – You don't get a participation award. Every single one has to be earned. And it's up to me whether or not you earn it. But it's one of the things that's or not you earn it um but i you know i'm it's it's one of the things that's actually going to help me mitigate having five pcs because i've been thinking a lot about like how to adapt the adventure path meant for four pcs to

five without getting into too much of the math because you can't it doesn't work like one a let me just change the ac you do that and you don't really know what you're doing like you can make a guy unhittable to some people. And so I don't really want to mess with that. So I'm looking at like playing around with hit points and making things more difficult by making the bottle cap economy precious and not just giving you hero points. And hearing that Order of the Amber Die, you get one for the day. I mean, it's just – I mean, that's one.

Amber die, you get one for the day. I mean, it's just... I mean, that's one... For me, I want to say it was... I want to say we did seven encounters. Like, seven full encounters in that day. So it was one hero point for seven encounters. And I get it. Like, I used to just hate it without fully understanding

it. Like, when we were playing the playtest, I was like, this is fucking lame. Just live and die by your roles. But as I played it more, I'm like, okay, I was like, this is fucking lame. Just live and die by your roles. But as I played it more, I'm like, okay, I understand why this mechanic is impossible and how it's built into the game. But even Bowman says

in the book, you don't have to use these. If you want to have a grittier, I don't know if he said it in the book or in a forum, it's like, if you want a grittier, more difficult, more challenging game, then don't use them. And so I think having them be bottle caps instead of hero points, having them be earned instead of just given away freely, it's going to make for a more dangerous game. And listen, I'm not just looking to kill characters, you know, without, you know, just

left and right. That doesn't interest me. But I do want the possibility of the death to be more real. Some of the best moments we had in giant slayers when our favorite character died. And when you take away that to me, there's nothing less anticlimactic when you guys say, I'm going to use my bottle cap.

When, especially when it comes to death saves and stuff, it sucks. I think it really sucks for what we do. And I understand it for the game, but for what we do, you're roll the for the game, but for what we do, you're roll the dice. That's what the dice is for.

I understand the mechanic, but I don't, I don't like it. I think it takes away from the drama. So we'll, we'll see how it's going to be used. I thought of the thing that I had forgotten. And this might be a good time for this is,

is when PCs choose bolder actions, what might make you choose a bolder action? Here's something I don't think that you would think of, or I would even think of right offhand. But this is a very simple thing that Adam over at The Order of the Ember Dye does as a matter of course in every encounter with every enemy.

And I think it's a really interesting small little thing that he did that jumped out at me. And I was like, I'm going to do this in the rest of my games from now on that i that i play in pathfinder and it is simply this for every enemy they have three statuses state high of uh injury health hit points whatever uh they are healthy they are wounded and that is if they've taken a single point of damage. So if a player asks if someone is wounded, you can say they're wounded, they've been hit.

And bloodied? No, and then the third thing is near death. Okay. And he just uses that if he, and he says when he uses near death, that just means that enemy is reasonably within one hit, one solid hit among the average hit level of this party of being defeated. And there were multiple times that an enemy was near death and somebody hit it

and it still did not go down. And then maybe the next person hit it and then it did go down. We've had that situation happen. But it forced at times bolder actions on the PC's end when they knew the enemy was near death and they would risk a little bit more and they would miss more because they might attack with that map penalty at a situation where they'd normally move away because they think they could finish it off. Yeah. And it created great drama on both sides.

In some cases, you hit it and kill it and it was a cheer around the table. In some cases, you missed it and left yourself exposed now to its like-action thing and the grab the next round if you didn't kill it. So I like that, and I think that – we talked a great deal during Giant Slayer about that horrible ability that you hated so much. Was it Blood Reader? Blood Reader. The exact hit points. You hated that, and I get that. But I believe strongly that the characters in the scene can see when an enemy is on their last leg.

For sure. And you say that a lot, you know what I mean? But this is sort of like a very technical term that's very simple, and he uses it like a mechanic. He's like, and he is near death. And everybody knows. Okay, now, knowing our party right now, that means he's probably somewhere between one and 20 hit points, something like that. So it's not an exact measure, but it's close enough to drive the action in interesting ways. Yeah, I really like that.

When we use roll 20, you have the health bars over top. I don't know if you guys track your hit points via the pawns or if you just do it on your character creation. I do it on my character sheet. Yeah, I used to do both. But like, I do all my enemies' hit points on the Roll20. Now, Foundry has an interesting mod that does exactly what you're talking about. It's possible you can do that

with Roll20, where I can show you not the bars of the enemy, so you know exactly. You see, oh, that bar is really, really low or that, oh, he's wounded, but look at how full the bar is. But it just, it changes the status by like a color system. I think they use bloodied, but I'm sure it's probably adaptable or editable. But that's interesting.

I think it adds to the drama without saying like it has four hit points left. Right, Exactly. This guy's on one hit and he's down. Like not necessarily, but maybe one good hit and he's down. You know, you get into that range. You get to know a little bit better, you know, what's possible. I like that a lot. Yeah.

Yeah. That was a cool one. So, yeah, again, thank you. Thank you to the order. I think that wraps it up. I think that's it. This is a long thought. And it flew by.

I think because I kept talking about how excited I was about the Order of the Amber Diagate. We got a lot going on, man. Yeah, we do have a lot going on. We got a shit ton going on. And we got to pack for a flight. We got to pack for a flight. We got some cool stuff happening with the website soon. I mean, you said we're talking about Gen Con early.

Oh, yeah. There's going to be big news on that. My God, we're working on Gen Con left and right. There's going to be so many announcements between now and August. Dude, we got announcements about shows, about other shows that need to happen. So that's exciting, too.

Dude, have I told you about October yet? I don't even think I've told you. Oh, no. We got so much exciting stuff going on here. You've been out of town, bro. Well, no, I'm not talking about live shows. I'm just letting the niche know. News is coming down the pipeline.

I know what you're talking about. About season two. And some other seasons of some other things. Look, the mics are getting fired up. That's all I'm saying. And it's not just Strange Hands and Gatewalkers. Cut the mic. All right, everybody.

That's going to wrap it up for us this week on the FOD. Thank you, as always, for coming. Chilling, hanging with Troy and I. We appreciate you so much. Cut the mic! New Mexico. Well, I once drove from Colorado to New Mexico. And Skid's dad's coming. So he's New Mexico. He's from New Mexico. All right. I drove there once. It's not a bad drive. Well, welcome, New Mexicans, to our show. All right. We will see everybody in Boulder this week.

And that show will air right on the Glass Cannon podcast if you would like to view it the next week. So the next part of Strange Aeons. All right. Thanks, everybody. Have a good one. And we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to the Glass Cannon Network. For more podcasts and live streams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com.

And for exclusive shows and content you can't find anywhere else, subscribe today at patreon.com slash glasscannon. you