The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 5/15/24

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

We're going long this week as Troy and Joe reveal a bunch of upcoming shows and then turn their attention to a monster episode of the GCP where at least one character's life, if not more, hangs in the balance. In We Are Stupid, a major oversight on a Recovery Check, and in Listener Mail: tips for your first gaming convention! Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/qiur8t--8po For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com and for hundreds of hours of exclusive shows and benefits, make your membership official and join Glass Cannon Nation today by becoming a subscriber at jointhenaish.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. 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. ["The Glass Cannon Network Theme"] Yeah, what is going on everybody? Welcome back to Cannon Fodder. It is Wednesday, May 15th, 2024. And I'm your old pal, Joey O'Brien. And I'm Troy, ready for a hot FOD la valie. Oh I'm truly ready for a hot FOD LaValley.

Oh, is it going to be a hot FOD, good buddy? This is what I call a working FOD. Yeah. Working FOD, because there's FODs that are reminiscent of the days where we would just banter back and forth about the sesh. You know, where it's talking about what happened and breaking it down and going into rules and stuff like that.

We would do that all fair. It was fun. Yeah, then there are fads where you're just like Like the amount of work and thought that's gonna have to go into this is Is brutal. It's yeah And then by the way, this goes from the episode all the way to the news To the we are stupid. I mean it, there is so much to cover here today. There's so much going on in the network out of nowhere. And then there's so much that we have to talk about with this week's episode because holy shit, buddy.

That was an ep. Yeah, man. That was an ep. Dude, I'm psyched that we didn't even like have a pre-production meeting about this. Like I was gonna let you just drive the ship when we logged on today. I was, I didn't know if you were gonna be like, let's talk before we go live. I really just wanted to go live and we did.

We barely talked and I think that's better. You're going to get a real honest, immediate response to this because we haven't chatted at all since the app dropped. Yep. We haven't really chatted since the app recorded because it didn't record that long ago. Well, I'm saying in terms of, we haven't talked about the episode. It's crazy, we recorded it a week ago

because we're running up against calendar issues with vacations and just timing and whatnot. So we recorded that last Monday. It was mixed, edited and everything, debuted on Thursday. And we're back in the studio tomorrow, but we're doing fodder three days after it's been released and only a week after it's been recorded.

So it's crazy, it's crazy to even talk about this. It's crazy, we have not had a chance to talk about it. Yeah, no pre-production meetings here. All I do is sit here, kind of tweaking the tech a little bit while listening to Troy make weird, weird guttural sounds. Yeah, his body just makes terrible sounds right before he goes live. I do it just to get a laugh out of you.

I'll pretend I'm throwing up. I like to do that one. I always get you. I just like to make you, loosen you up a little bit with some body humor. Well, like I said, let's get into it because this is going to be a chonk-tacular FOD. We will get into a bunch of news, including a whole bunch of shows coming up that you can come to and see us at and stuff like that. We'll go into all those. Then we're going to devote most of this to Glass Can of Podcasts, Campaign 2, Episode 34. We're really going to dive into that

app, including a long extended We Are Stupid. There's lots to address there. And then we're going to make time for listener mail. Don't you worry. We're going to make time for listener mail, so we'll get to that as well. I wasn't worried. Let's kick it off with the news. So I wanna start to me, top of mind is these gauntlets you mentioned last week. Gauntlets that are coming to GenCon 2024 in the GCN booth

where people can come and take classic GCN characters up against a challenge of a one-hour-ish encounter with a glass cannon GM to run them through it. You teased it last week, but now people can buy these things, right? Record scratch. How ridiculous did that sound? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a first. This is a fodder pickup. A pickup Zony? A pickup Zony.

So weird. I'm in my house. Troy's in his house. I'm like. Not right now. No. Yes, not right now. I've remodeled my home.

No. It's been a long day. I'm in my house, and I'm like, all right, let's get into it. My favorite thing. I'm so excited to talk about the gauntlets. And then we go on and talk about some news that we prerecorded about the gauntlets, but things have changed. And so we need to do a quick FOD pickup with updated information, and then we're going

to get you right back to your regularly scheduled FOD with the rest of the news, because all of the rest still stands. The Gauntlets, which I'm so excited about, happening at the Gen Con booth this year in our own, in the GCN booth, where you can get a chance to make a reservation, come in, hang out, and play with a Glass Cannon Network GM for one hour to run through. You're calling them a gauntlet.

The Gauntlets. Because it's going to be pretty tough using class canon network classic iconic characters. These went on sale on our website on Monday, but then we hit a little snafu. So that's why we wanted to do a little pickup record here to get you up to speed on what you can do to join into this and how you got to follow the rest of the news.

Troy. It's funny, we recorded fodder early this week because we were in the studio all day today recording Glass Cannon. We just wrapped up an amazing day of recording and now we got to do this little pickup. Basically long story short, let's talk about the Gauntlet Sour. You mentioned it. You're going to play iconic Pathfinder characters from the Glass Cannon pantheon of characters. Converted to 2E.

Converted to 2E. We're just going to play it in 2E. But yeah, it's going to be characters all the way back to the OG through multiple different shows converted to 2E that you can put together in your own little weird parties to take on these encounters. Right. And if you purchase these slots, you get to pick your character when you sit down.

So I imagine there's going to be tables with Colonel Luther and Lorc and Gavrik's heart and Mrs. O'Lady taking on some encounter meant to really test the limits of these characters. There's going to be second level gauntlets, and there's going to be sixth level gauntlets. And it's going to be happening all Gen Con weekend long. Instead of doing the recording booth this year,

we're doing these experiential activations to get to connect with the fans a little bit more and also to help, you know, recoup the cost of the booth because it is expensive. I have a booth at Gen Con. And so we had everything set up on our website for sales and we just hit a little snag. Luckily, we're amazing friends with the people at Gen Con. We talked with them and they were like, just put it through our system instead of doing it on your website, just because if everybody did that, it becomes like the wild west.

It becomes the wild west. We totally understand. Yeah, totally understand. However, this is not like a Gen Con event typically is done. It's just going to, I mean, it's going to appear that way to you guys, but the way that they operate it, it's different because this is a contracted space, which is a, you know, we can get into the nitty gritty of the legal terms of it. But basically, we have this space. So it's not like a Gen Con space where we're doing a show. And, and you have to pay a fee to Gen Con to buy those tickets.

That's not the case. Like this is totally going to support us and to help us, you know, pay for this booth. But we're very excited at the idea of having you guys there. And we just, you know, we can't do it through our website directly. So if you're hearing this news and you bought through the website directly, you have nothing to worry about. We'll reach out to you. We'll reach out to you. We're going to take care of it.

But if you haven't yet purchased a ticket to one of these things, you can do so very soon through the Gen Con portal. This Sunday, everything goes on sale for Gen Con. So our Get in the Trunk live show, our Blades in the Dark, Starfinder 2E, the Call of Cthulhu show happening at the con, which I just finished casting. All those will go on sale along with every single one of these gauntlets. And still, Gen Con doesn't take a cut of the gauntlets that all goes to us and supporting this booth.

So everything worked out for the best. You can buy those. Like Joe said, if you already purchased them, we'll reach out to you and let you know how that works. But there's going to be tables happening every hour on the hour with some breaks in between run by me Joe Skid Matthew and Jared Logan so you can sign up for any of these tables like you know I'll do a little Joe on Saturday then come back and do skid on Sunday sprinkle a little Troy I mean you can really mix and match level one day sixth level the next day

You know it's not for everybody. This is like everything we do. This is a luxury item, but we think it's going to be really fun. We're going to be doing it at the Nationville Retreat all weekend long for the people that bought tickets to the retreat. And we want to bring them into the booth as well. Gauntlet preseason as we all warm up. Like, how do these encounters work?

Are they really hard enough? The retreat's going to be the tester. And then we're really going to take it out for a spin at Gen Con. And we hope that you can join us there and help us do it there. And a sweet little swag bag too. And a sweet little swag bag. We're going to get you back to our FOD now that we had pre-recorded and that has a lot

more info about all the shows, other shows that we're doing at Gen Con. So Troy teased them here but we're going to go into detail about them right now in a second. Back to your previously recorded coming up not on sale yet but coming be aware the Gen Con shows are about to go on sale like the in convention shows. This is the week. Is that it's Sunday, right? It's Sunday the 19th. I think it's noon Eastern.

We're going to put them up on our website as well. And then of course we'll have it all over social media. But the tickets to get the trunk live call of Cthulhu Live at the Con, the day show, the 1920s Call of Cthulhu, Starfinder Second Edition Live and Blades in the Dark, the Busted Buffalers, along with Jared Logan's doing another comedy show. All those tickets will go on sale this Sunday and I mean if it's anything like last year, they will sell quickly which makes me feel like I should lock down those casts this week and announce the cast before the

tickets go up. Maybe. Probably. We'll see. I got a lot to do this week. I mean yeah the shows are going up for sale but I mean you don't really need a cast in the building for four months. Dude the fucking Kala Cthulhu at the Athenium show,

I said it last week, we've already sold more tickets than we sold last year, which is amazing. We're still three months out. And I haven't announced the cast for that. And I know the cast for that, I just haven't announced it. And when I do, there will be no tickets left. So yet again, buy those. But I mean, the stuff that I'm brewing,

the combinations of network personalities that I'm putting together for these four shows at the con, it's gonna be unlike anything. I'm really together for these four shows of the con, it's going to be unlike anything. I'm really, I mean, you're going to hate it because it's a lot of players, but I really want to give everybody a chance to showcase and get out there. All I want is shows off. Do I get any shows off? I gave you some time off.

Excellent. More time off than you've ever had. You might even be able to go get yourself a taco. I'll tell you what I don't want off. Blades in the Dark. You cannot take me off of Busted Muffs, man. Alright, you're in for Blades in the Dark. You heard it here first, Joe O'Brien.

Dude, the one time a year I get to play Blades in the Dark. I love that game so much. Who's your character? I'll probably bring a new one. Yeah, I've got a couple that I rotate through, but they never last that long. No, wait. I have that spy slide. I have that slide guy.

I can't remember his name at the moment, but yeah, he's like Face from the A-Team. He can be anybody. He's good. Yeah, he's fun. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I'll be Genius, Locai, aka Blueprint. Blueprint, that's right. It's been so long. We only play them once a year.

It just seems so silly at this point. We had a burner last year. If you didn't get to see it, it's not recorded. I don't know if it will be this year, but that show we did last year was so absurd. I mean, Skid and Sydney were on the other end of the table playing a completely different game from us because we couldn't hear them because there were no monitors. The show was so absolutely insane and it had one of the best endings that we've ever had. It had lost a time.

It did. It had one of the best endings ever. That was a wild show. Anyway, got so much to get to. I'm going to find this character. I know I have this character on my computer. I'm going to find it now. While you tell everybody this is wild.

What am I telling them? We're going back to stand up New York and doing another show. This time it's Kong. It's Kong Skull Island. Tell the people what to expect. I haven't seen Kong Skull Island, but you just watched it recently. So I've got to like, I got to watch it to research and get in the zone. I think you've told me enough now that I'm like, oh, okay.

I know. I get it. I know I never run this adventure. Yeah, totally. Just a little side story. The other day, I don't know if this happens in your house, but the remotes are always missing because the children just like- Always.

They're gone. My wife's like, try, try, get out there. I'm like, what? She's like, there's something very inappropriate on the TV and I can't find the remote. I'm like, oh God. And it's just Dash is sitting there watching like violent. And I look and it's Kong Skull Island. Anyways, I'm like, oh God.

People get killed. That's amazing. I think it was on TVS. So I'm sure it was a little edited. But anyways, yeah, we're going to be at Stand Up New York. And if you saw us last time doing the Rambo one, that was at the old Stand Up New York on the Upper West Side, which has been there since well before I even moved to New York. If you saw us last time doing the Rambo one, that was at the old Stand Up New York on the Upper West Side, which has been there since well before I even moved to New York. I used to walk by that all the time when I was going to Columbia.

Anyways, this is going to be at the brand new Stand Up New York, which is in Midtown Times Square. It's on May 31st. I think it's going to be an 8.30 PM show. Yeah, 8 o'clock doors, 8.30, the show starts. It's in the bottom of the Edison Hotel on 46th Street, Manhattan, which is like an old school Manhattan hotel. It has the scene now where it's going to take place has a very, I want to say like a great Gatsby-ish kind of vibe. it's it's got that old-school restaurant New York restaurant feel

It is kind of somewhat Like like you just want to do a site visit. Yeah when I went to do a site visit Yeah, it's kind of like loosely maybe a little bit Caribbean themed kind of but not really, you know what I mean? It definitely has a band like yeah Copacabana kind of feel. It's going to be a really, really fun and different place to play for us. It's so intimate. It's really small. You're just kind of in this one room with these people.

Anybody that comes to see it, they're going to just be right there. It's great. It's going to be great. Yeah, different place and a different feel for a show and with a different cast. It's me, you and Skids. It's got that glass cannon heart and soul a different place and a different feel for a show and with a different cast. It's Miu and Skids. It's got that glass cannon heart and soul, but then you've got Khalees Hawkins and Natalie Cuomo who their first role playing game was when they played with us last time. This will be their second session.

They were fantastic as they bring such a new and different comedy energy to it, but it wasn't long. Like most people who play RPGs for the first time, where they were just leaning into it and having a blast. So I'm excited to see what they do with Kong Island. You guys did a character creation session. You were telling me some of their character concepts. It's going to be pretty wild. So if you're in New York in the Tri-State area, or you want to just take a trip to New

York, it's beautiful right now. Come on out and see this. It's going to be a trip. Yeah. That's a great time to visit New York. May 31st. It doesn't get better. Couple of weeks after that, it's a nightmare in the city.

Disgusting and so thick and wet and hot all the time. So yeah, May 31st, come and join. By the way, his name is Justice Lemieux. Justice Lemieux. Alias, Muse. Muse. That was your first muffler guy? No, my first was Wraith.

He was the fighter, the ghost fighter. This is muse, the spy basically. And he is based on my character sheet, stressed. It's very stressed. I'm not going to announce too much casting or any casting right now, but one thing I will say locked in and loaded for Gen Con this year, a guy by the name of Ross Bryant. What? I knew he was on the fence, but I was like, are the tickets actually being purchased?

He's locked and loaded? Yeah, Ross Bryant is about to get about six texts from me today. I'm going to keep old Ross busy. His trip is going to be painful. The amount of work I'm about keep old Ross busy. His trip is gonna be painful. The amount of work I'm about to give Ross. Oh, that's so funny. He's gonna be like, I thought I was going to see Gen Con, but instead I fell under the Troy LaValle thing

of working every second, so you don't enjoy a minute of the con. Oh, anyway, lots of shows coming up, really fun stuff. Speaking of really fun shows, did we just, am I crazy or, I didn't know this. I wasn't privy to this. Did we stream last night the Kansas City live show that sure did did that get streamed? We sure that's available now if you wanted to watch strange a on our Kansas City show Yeah, it's available on the twitch VOD and you could listen to it. I assume right on yeah

It'll be on your I'm sure by the time they're watching this, it's on YouTube. It's going to be streamed on YouTube. So it stays on YouTube. Yeah, like it's premieres on YouTube. So it's not on Twitch. It's a YouTube premiere, not Twitch. It's a YouTube premiere. I'm sorry.

Yeah, this is something we're doing this year with the live shows is like instead of just drop them on YouTube, watch whenever you want. We do that premiere watch party at 8 p.m. Eastern and then it just lives there as a video. So, Twitch is more focused now on live stuff like you and I playing video games, how I missed that and hopefully some more strange Aon's life. Is Austin going to go up on YouTube premiere next week? Austin is ready.

So, it's probably going to go up next Tuesday on YouTube premiere. The 21st. Yeah. We're just sending a couple more notes to Harry to clean up a couple things. Then yeah, I could have released them both this week honestly, but we've got so much going on. Dude, it's just wild. I want to get to this episode with a couple more items real quick.

First, next week after the FOD next week we are I mean Well the day the FOD drops we're on a flight to Canada back to Canada We're going to Vancouver this time very excited for that show I wanted to make you guys aware because it's a little different that our domestic shows have gotten into a rhythm where we have A great merch team. We have fantastic merch volunteers that are very consistent and join us from show to show that we love working with. They get a free bump up to VIP and they hang with everybody at the show and all that kind of stuff. I don't think that that same rhythm is not in Canada yet and nobody really knows about this.

If you're going to the Vancouver show and have GA tickets, we're still looking for volunteers for merch. Be aware. You could email us at contactatglasskennetwork.com and say that you want to volunteer to be on the merch team and you could get bumped up to VIP. Or if you're already VIP and you just want to hang out with the merch team and come early to the show and everything, you can do that. There's a couple of spots available. McDermott just hit me up with that right before we went live. He was like, yo, let people know we got a couple spots for merch team if they want to join. So, yeah.

And there's like 20 VIPs left at the time of this recording. The Canadian, things got filed up with the prices. I won't blame anybody, but it wasn't you or I. The prices are more expensive because of the Canadian conversion. And so the VIP prices went up. So there's like 20 more sitting there. But the prices are more expensive because of the Canadian conversion. So the VIP prices went up. So there's like 20 more sitting there. It's now a luxury item.

But if you want to come out, the VIP this year, now that it's happening before the show, it's been really, really wonderful. You get a lot more, everybody's a lot fresher, including us to talk to. It ends up, I don't know about you, I feel like, not that I need this, but I feel like even more inspired after talking to everybody and hearing about. Oh yeah, you feel like you get to know the people you're playing for in the moment. Yeah, we're calling them out during the show.

And you have these stories that you can call out during the show. It's just so much better, in my opinion. It's really, really wonderful, and we carry that energy into the show. So if you can afford it, or if you've got a birthday coming up, ask your loved ones to hook you up

with a VIP ticket for this. There's only like 30 something tickets total left to the show. 20 of those are VIPs. We would love to sell this out. It'll help us be able to plan for Canada next year or the year after. If you're around Thursday night, come on. Canadiens don't work. You can take Friday off. From your job at Tim Hortons. Yeah, come out and play with us. It's going to be awesome. And then let's just talk about live streams real quick. Today, I'm going to continue my little run of Control.

That's been really fun. Made a lot of progress last week. We had so much fun on the stream. And then, oh, and also, oh, well, I'll get to that in a second. I'm gonna do another stream because I managed to book Paula, Mary Lou and Sydney again for another Helldivers to run this Friday.

So on Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern time, live on Twitch, the squad's getting back together and we're Helldiving in for some more Helldivers. We have so much fun with that game. And so yeah, come by and check us out on Friday, 3 p.m. Eastern, 12 o'clock Pacific. It's gonna be a little happy hour, John, for Lee Sidney and I. It should be really fun. So come by and check that out. I asked my wife what she wanted for Mother's Day. What do you want for Mother's Day? And she's like, there's one thing that I really, really want,

and it's not gonna cost you anything, but time. I'm like, whatever, anything for you. She's like, we need to clean out the attic. And I was like, god damn it. You're right, I know this has to happen. And you know what? You're correct, that's it. That's your wish, your wish is my command. So

all day yesterday, just cleaning out the attic and I found so much shit that this I'm doing two streams this week, I'm going to give away a ton of shit. I found so much real like old modules and shit and like Pathfinder books and starfinder maps and stuff. I'm like, guys, you should you should benefit from this. This is not doing any good in my attic. So yeah, we're going to have some fun giveaways this week too. So keep an eye out for that. All right. Nice. Nice. Let's get into Glass Kind of Podcasts episode 34. I don't want to say I've been dreading it. It's a lot. It's a lot to wrap your head around because there's a lot of moving parts here. I don't really have don't really have a way in here except I just wanted to talk about, well,

the first thing I was going to do, I'll let you know. Yeah, what do you want to talk about? Let's talk about what I consider to be the major problems that are going on that in hindsight, you can kind of see how they developed. I could start there or I could let you do the opening statement of this episode. I don't know how you want to approach it. Yeah, it's complicated. In terms of engagement after the episode, it's through the roof and that's always wonderful to see people on both sides of the aisle debating

what they liked and what they didn't like about it. That's all really good. You see it on YouTube, you see it on the Discord, you see it on the subreddit. I imagine there are other places that talk about these episodes that engagement people would kill for that type of engagement. You got to worry about or be concerned about it even. It's an interesting thing to be aware of is there's a lot of people that are just like, they're not into it. You know what I mean? They're not into sort of a combination of things.

The brutality of these encounters, the sort of – I want to phrase this carefully, the sort of level of the collective level of ability at the table, both for not just knowledge of the game because I think our knowledge of the game has deepened, but the understanding of how this game is different from Pathfinder first edition, D&D and any other RPGs. It's something that we've had to learn over time. You cannot play this the way you play other games. That sort of collective understanding of that is still, it's some timey. And also I think that the Gatewalkers story, some people it's just not resonating with. And you know, it's a different story than Giant Slayer for example, in which these people

are going on to, they like very clearly were on a mission to save the world. This in the same way, there's something happened and like they very well may be stopping a threat that can destroy the world, but with 35 episodes in, you still don't really know what those things are. While that was still true in Giant Slayer, there were immediate enemies that had like a... There was a point like you were going... There was a clear goal. Right.

First you find out about Screed, you go to Daycare or Screed. Then after Screed, you're like, Grentsledec? We got to go deal with Grentsledec. You don't know what's going on with Stormtyne or anything like that, but you had a clear goal. Infiltrate the fort and take out this Grentsledec, find out what she's up to. Once that happens, then you find out about the Stormtimer and then the story really unfolds. You got to get to Minderhall's Valley.

You got to do that. With this, it's very, very different. G Grinseldeck is at 70 episodes in. Oh yeah. Married to the sob. Right. 69 and 70. So it has nothing to do with like, oh, you needed to know the larger threat earlier. Like that's not it.

It's yeah, there's a lack of clarity of kind of what, you know, who are the immediate people that caused our problem, the character's problem in the plot. We don't, we still don't know at all. You know, and the inciting event happened off screen with the missing moment. And because of that, you know, you guys, the problem is very insular. You know what I mean? Like for these characters, their need to know, I think is clear. They want to know what happened to them. If that happened to anybody, you'd want to figure out. They've joined a cause, this consortium of epops to try and figure this out.

How that's affecting the rest of the world isn't super clear yet because you just keep – it all kind of happened before and now you're in seven arches and they talk – people talk about the missing moment. I mean, even Kniepo, you know, it seems like their interest in you is because you possessed something that happened to you from going through that gate. So it's obviously important, but now you've been transported to a jungle and you're fighting these creatures. So it's still like when you add up all these things, I can see why this is not resonating

with a lot of people. But where to begin to address all that is really, really tricky. What I will say is I'm not adjusting these encounters at all as of late. I think that if I were to play, I think there's this conception or misconception really that like I'm out to kill the characters or making these encounters so much harder. And it's really not the truth. I couldn't be softer. I'm coming out of the gate and I just, I roll the dice, I add up the numbers and I tell you those numbers.

As of late, that means I'm always going first and I'm always hitting and I'm almost always critic. If I was trying to maybe tell a better story, I would lie about those numbers. Oh, the snail missed. Oh, I rolled a natural one on the end of the ship. That's just not how I play the game. I like to just roll the dice. So much going on, like just doing the, having the math take care of itself for me makes

it just more fun to play. That's why I play for the, for the random chance of things. I like the number to be exact. You know, I remember you back in the day would like roll day would like, I know that that 11 is not a hit. I'm not going to miss. I will sit there and be like, 11 minus 2 for that. I have to know the exact number. That's my personality.

Because of that, it makes the game a lot easier for me because I don't have to fudge. I just do that. I could fudge, but I don't want to. I could also give out bottle caps, but I don't want to. Since the beginning of playing this game with the play test when Mona and Bullman came to New York and ran a session for us in our old studio to give us the first look at the play test. I was like, I love this. I hate the bottle caps. To me, there is nothing more anti-climactic than just being able to take away death with a bottle cap. While the bottle cap has other functions, that's kind of how it functions.

That's just one thing that I really – I didn't like about the game. I understand that their importance especially the more we've played it. I understand how it's not just an accessory to the game, how it's really important because of how deadly this is and how people go up and down. I just don't like it and it's just so funny because it feels like a Deus Ex Machina. I know I understand these are heroes. They're hero points. But to me, it seems so Deus Ex Machina, which is something that people rebel against.

Everyone else in this space, they've just five, six, seven years, characters never die. It's because people have plot armor and they're fudging dice and they're lying. That's not the way we play and I think that that's a hallmark of how we do things. Like I rolled the dice, I tell you, someone dies. Tough shit. We're playing the real game. I can give you a different game. There's plenty of that out there.

Go listen. But people die. Well let me bring up Edward Sanchez's comment on the YouTube video. I love the GCN. I don't love how under-equipped or under-leveled and OP this campaign is. It's starting to not be enjoyable because I'm finding myself avoiding getting attached to anyone in the event that they die, which has already happened once. And I feel like it could happen in just any random encounter.

I'm not putting the entire blame on Troy or just bad roles. I'm finding 2E to be unbalanced and frustrating. Not sure what can be done, but entertainment value has been replaced by bitching and complaining about all the things they couldn't do, didn't do, weren't allowed to do, or weren't ready or equipped for. That's a really good analysis, I think, in general, and a good opinion. Thanks for laying it out there like that. But yeah, it's the problem, the system. No, I don't think so. But like I also don't feel comfortable just blaming us or just blaming you guys.

You know what I mean? Like I don't think the problem is the system. Well let me lay out a couple of my problems, okay? So, everything you've talked about so far has very little to do with this encounter. You're talking about the campaign as a whole. You're talking about the feel of everything as a whole and the game as a whole. Because I think they all contribute to sort of the zeitgeist of how people feel about campaign two, which is both positive and negative Yeah, I think

Look admittedly I have a limited understanding of everyone's opinions on this matter Sure gatewalkers is gonna have a lot more back and forth than something like blood of the wild but blood of the wild seems People love blood of the wild and if they don't like blood of the wild seems people love Blood of the Wild. And if they don't like Blood of the Wild, it's because they don't like us that much. You know what I mean? Like they don't like the party that much or whatever. It's certainly not because they don't like the game or the way the game is played, you know, in my opinion. So and that is tooie and hero points abound in that game. Bottle caps abound in that game and they are used Constantly to keep people alive and to adjust

certain roles or whatever and It makes everyone happy because they we all love these characters and you want them to endure However, there have been death rolls with no bottle caps left It's it's happened like you have felt on the precipice, but it hasn't come through yet. My question, I guess, is just this encounter, this particular session has been a catalyst to bring all this shit out, to clean out the shed, right, to talk about all this stuff.

But I think it's reasonable to look at this as a perfect storm of events that if each thing does not line up in a certain way, you don't have anywhere near as deadly of an encounter as you have right now. Now, some of those things are mistakes. Some of them are small mistakes that we can talk about and we are stupid.

But some of them are things such as Brotheramious leading the way out, you know, like I don't make that decision. Maybe that doesn't happen Also, it could be every single character just sort of like dooba dooba dooba dooba do hustling across those rocks Before without really looking at anything obsessively looking at the water for creatures obsessively asking for perception checks because if this creature emerges with just Asta on the first rock and the rest of us back on shore totally different It's an entirely different encounter nowhere near as deadly

I wonder how much of that is you guys not metagaming to think about the performance for doing a show. That's 100% what it is. That's what I was thinking is brother-amous. I wonder what the percentage is because I don't know if it's 100%. I think it's a certain percentage, maybe the larger percentage that and the other percentage just being like, la, la, la, that's how we play. I think there's an element of performance. Most people around that table, most of the time,

they're thinking about doing a show and they wanna keep it moving. And if they're gonna like dilly dally or go off and have a lunch with that annoying guy in Thinlands Farms, you know. That's because they think it's gonna lead to some comedy or something. I'm not saying they always stay on plot because it's a show.

I'm saying they get to certain, we get to certain areas and you know, I do feel like if somebody felt threatened, they would have called for a check or whatever. But this encounter is so different if we do not put ourselves into such exposed danger, like right out of the gate, because it was because of the placement of everything that we just couldn't do anything.

There was nothing that we could do. And of course, in retrospect, you know, having one person, for example, go all the way across before anybody else went, would have been totally reasonable. You know, but it's just not something that we did. One person falls in the water, starts, you know, hurtling downstream. You've got three different people that could go over there, throw a rope, or do whatever,

pull them over to the other side while somebody else is dealing with the snail from range. There's a lot of ways in retrospect that it could have been handled. But that's why I don't necessarily want to throw Tooey under the bus right now. Because I don't know. I think that would be too easy. I really, like I said, I don't want to blame us, but I think there is a disconnect between how the game is intended to play, be played and how we're playing it. When you combine that with a perfect storm where the GM is rolling well and the players are eating shit, this is what happens.

Sure. Well, there's also, there's another layer to this, which is I'm happy to blame us. We do not play well together in terms of synergizing and always doing the best possible tactical move in every round. It's just not something that we do. And part of the reason for that is a lack of understanding of the game and the rules and doing the work to understand that, that's part of it.

But another part of it is in order to really excel in that area, you would have to play a game that would be, unless it was all intuitive, it would be a complete snore to listen to and very, very distracting because you would have to communicate in pure tactics with everyone at all times

and not just do what your character does in the narrative in the moment without thinking about military strategy, you know, and how many spaces you are from X, Y or Z. You have the freedom to do that kind of stuff when you're around a table with people that like that. But when you're around a table with people that really don't like it, when you say, you know, you could just use that action to move within 30 feet and then do this and then so and so can come over here and then you ready till you're flanking, then he steps up, now you're flanking, take that swing bubble. I mean, you'd spend the whole time just talking about it like it's a chess match and that

also gets a little bit boring. That's not as ideal either. I think it's a little bit, we're not good enough, but I think it's a little unreasonable to think that the five of us will work in tandem in every combat Without talking in pure mechanics to each other every round of everybody's turn It would get really boring like you can do that in Baldur's Gate 3 because you're controlling all the characters You can see what you're gonna do with everything right? Just it's just not like that here It's supposed to emulate

with everything. It's just not like that here. It's supposed to emulate the hecticness of actual combat, where you do not get that opportunity to just like, talk about each what person's ability has not been used up yet for the day that you didn't realize they have this ability or whatever. Yeah. So, you know, it's not quite that either. It's just that we got into a bad situation and could not get out of it once it started. At Chill commented and said, so this is where we want to separate out 2E from Gatewalkers. At Chill07 on YouTube said, this encounter is just stunningly crazy at this level. And then the die roll situation turned it into a disaster. I've experienced campaigns that just folded in situations this dire.

Yeah, for sure. Which I can hear that and I felt the exact same way. Like we don't feel that way in Blood of the Wild. Like even with hero points, stuff like that. Like there are encounters, there's some that you're like, wow, this is like, because I just look at it in numbers. I think of what is my to hit and what is there to hit.

If they're somewhat comparable, then there should be that amount of enemies ish, right? Comparable. If you're to hit is even one more than mine, that's like a whole level higher. If you're to hit is two more than mine, that is two levels higher. This snails to hit, I'm guessing, based on the numbers that you're rolling, is somewhere

between four to five points higher than my two hit, which by the way is as high as it can be in this party. It's the same height as the highest person in this party. So when your AC and your two hit is five above ours, and I'm not saying that's the case, I'm guessing right now, we haven't talked about it. That to me is insane. That is an insanely difficult encounter without even mentioning slippery rocks. Yeah, anyway.

What's your to hit? Plus eight. Plus eight. Which I don't think you could have higher at this level. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just looking. I don't want to say because we're still in the middle of the combat. What it is, but it's it's higher. But I'm also rolling 17 and up every single time. Right. But if but here's the problem is if we roll 17, we don't crit. And when you roll 17,

you crit. And when we're at the level that we're at, this is resulting in one shot kills. Like you can't even act and you're down already. That's my problem. If you're gonna say it's a system problem, it might just be a Gatewalkers design problem. It might just be like, they weren't, this creature needed to be two points lower because then that natural 17 isn't a crit.

It's just a hit, you know? When you crit, it's like having, you like having a keen weapon or something like that. I get that like, oh, there's only one of them and five of us, but it's not a boss fight either. It's just supposed to be a random encounter. Yeah, it's brutal. Then you add in all the environment stuff, which is funny because I read it beforehand and I prep it

and I'm like, okay, great. Acrobatics check if they take damage on there. Reflex save to grab an edge. You got two chances to get swept down the river. It didn't even dawn on me till we got in, like getting knocked unconscious on the rock. My thought initially was like, okay, well, you're acbat, now grab an edge, go in the water. But then thinking to myself, like if everybody either doesn't get that check or gets that check at a penalty, everyone's just – they're all just going to drown and die if they go

unconscious. Since this thing is meant to smash, that's not how it was intended. So we corrected it. I don't know why that would be interpreted as an argument. We were really trying to figure out like what is the best way to have this go down. And initially I'm reading it literally. It's like if you take damage, you roll an acrobatics check and then if you fail that, you roll a grab an edge.

What I didn't think about is just falling unconscious and hitting the rock. You don't have to worry about slipping off the rock. You just fall on the fucking rock. I think that was the right choice because then it would be a TPK last episode, easily. If everybody who went unconscious went in the water and started drowning, you die. I liked the way we got there. I never felt like an argument to me. It felt like we were trying to get to the root of what's going to make this.

It definitely felt like an argument to people. I think it's because you usually end up with these games, you end up in an area where you're not arguing about rules as written versus rules as interpreted as much as you're arguing about the collective and imagined environment. Sure. Like you're arguing about like, well, how big is this rock? How pointed is this rock? Right? Like if it's a sloped rock, it's just like this,

you fall in the water, but the same rock on the same map could just be flat. And then you just fall and you don't fall in the water. So that is always GM decision. Like GM- Sure, and you wanted me to just roll the flat check. And I was just like, well, the reason I don't wanna do that is yes, it keeps the game moving, but I just like, well, the reason I don't want to do that is yes, it keeps the game

moving but I'm like, I think it's a – I don't want to say the word lazy because it sounds like I'm calling you lazy. I think it's a lazy way of circumventing the fact that the real rule exists and we just can't find it right now. So sometimes in lieu – and I think Jared does this a lot more. He just makes the call and if it's wrong, you guys figure it out a few episodes later and it's really not a big deal. I'm just too OCD.

Like I have to, I'm like there's a ruling here that's correct and I just don't want to make, I just want to wait a second and see if we can figure it out. So let's have a discussion. And I initially ruled you fall in the water and then I realized, oh no, no, no. Okay. You fall on the rock and that's fine. What I didn't want to do is invent the rule of a flat check where it didn't, the situation didn't, I didn't feel like it called for that.

And I completely disagree. But I understand where you were coming from. Yeah. And I still stand by my call. This is what I would have done if I was Jimmy. I like the fall on the rock and not fall off. If you're going to do something else as opposed to automatically fall off like that is way too brutal. Yeah, yeah.

Because I think that there's a chance that you don't, you know, fall off the rock. My issue was, well, you know what, let's go into We Are Stupid because I think that we can we can bring up what Professor Eric had to say about this. We can get it all out there, talk about it all. And there he is. You're stupid! Good buddy, Nick. Coca-Cola and Marvel are releasing limited edition Coca-Cola products featuring your favorite Marvel characters.

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Let's talk about this because he did bring this up. He says regarding the crit that dropped us and the ensuing unconscious acrobatics check, I'll agree that the rules is written versus rules is interpreted is very complex here. However, Troy was saying that the acrobatics check is happening simultaneously as she's hit. She's not quite unconscious yet. Professor Eric seems to like this interpretation. There's nothing against the rules in that interpretation. We then decided that, you know, she was knocked out immediately could not make an acrobatics check. And overall, Professor Eric's takeaway from it, because there is no rule here to just point out specifically, but his takeaway from it is, it felt like everyone wanted to kill Asta and kept ignoring valid rule interpretations. It really felt like multiple to kill Asta and kept ignoring valid rule interpretations.

It really felt like multiple people decided Asta was dead and any interpretation that didn't support that was wrong, which really felt like a backwards way to approach the rules. I don't feel that way at all. I'm not sure, but that is an honest, like, audience member interpretation of what was seen. But that is not what I was thinking in the least. Like, I definitely was not out to get Asta.

I felt like we entered an area where the environment made the decision, not an ability of the character. Once her body became an unconscious object that just flopped to the ground, the flat check just simply represented how wet is the rock, how steep is the rock, right? Or you could not do a flat check. As a GM, you could say the rock is not very wet and not very steep, so you land perfectly. Yeah. As written, you're not supposed to roll those checks until you take damage. That's why when you're hopping across the rocks, it's pretty easy. You don't have to even roll leap checks.

As long as it's 10 feet, you just make that and you go across. I think maybe a perception check around there like, what's going on with these rocks? Are they safe? I would then have told you like, you know, they seem a little slippery. You certainly wouldn't want to get hit on that rock. But like that didn't happen and so I didn't proffer that Yeah, my the reason that I pitched the flat check is because I think it's a good representation of Something that your character does not control but that is dealt with by the environment But it also it represents that like if you get hit unconscious and you just fall and land on the rock

Why the hell did you need to roll acrobatics to just stay there when you get hit? Right? Like, why is it difficult? Why is it more, why is it easier to stay on the rock when you're unconscious versus when you're conscious? Right. You know, that is my problem. There's a problem there with that.

And obviously you can always point out problems in hindsight about the interpretation. It is easier to stay on the rock unconscious than conscious, which didn't make any sense to me. That's why I said a flat check would be in order. And the flat check could literally, as a GM, you can set this to whatever you want. Five is going to be a routine or 11, but you could be like, it's a DC2 flat check. Just don't roll a natural two or natural one. And you stay on the rock because you know how deadly it's going to be if you know, a routine or 11. But you could be like, it's a DC two flat check, just don't roll a natural two or natural one. And you stay on the rock because you know how deadly it's

going to be if you fall off the rock. You know, the reason that I pitch those kind of things is because there is no rule for what happens when you get knocked unconscious on a slippery rock in the middle of a red river. Like, there can't be, it's too specific. Right, so you revert to the actual rule. When you fall unconscious, you fall prone and drop what you're holding. Yeah.

So that's what I ended up reverting to. But then you're prone in a place that might not be able to physically be large enough to hold your body, or it is large enough to hold your body. You have to decide that, that's not a rule. That is the environment, the the imagineated space in which we're playing. The shared imagineated.

Yeah, I guess it's one of those things where. The shared space in which, you know, we're playing. Because you can say, you slip and fall on that rock and you just land just fine. And I'll take it, me out of it for a second. And Matthew could just as easily be like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I thought this rock was like 18 inches wide.

What do you mean I just fall? And you're like, no, no, no, it's like four feet wide. He's like, oh, okay, okay. We have to get on that same page and that doesn't happen. That's always a tricky thing. When the GM has one, imagine it. It doesn't matter if the players see things differently. They'll figure it out eventually.

But if the GM pictures something one way and the players pictured another, that disconnect can cause a lot of dangerous problems. I don't think that was really happening here, but I've seen that happen before where it's like, no, wait a minute. I'm thinking back to like Giant Slayer, EWIGA fight, like those mounds that were in that room. You could climb, I can't remember what it was, it was like they were climbable, but

they were still like stalagmites and we couldn't wrap our head around it. Because I pictured it one way, you guys pictured it's totally different and that can cause problems. Totally. And really it does cause problems and I think that the takeaway there, the main lesson is the GM's imagination of the scene is Oh dear. See ya. Good talking to you, Joe.

Man, I was just about to get him to I had talked him into a corner and now I could. Oh, boy. All right. Oh, there he is. He's back. He's a bitch. Sorry, we just had a video glitch there, audio audience. Anyway, the takeaway here is this happens all the time and there's nothing wrong with it. It happens all the time.

You're talking about collective imagination. How do you really know? The first thing you have to do as a player is ask questions. Ask if you're unsure. Be careful before you assume that a wall is exactly that high or that the door is already open or that, you know, don't make your actions based on assumptions. Think about, you know, what questions you might want to ask and then realize that ultimately, you know, the GM interpretation is what's right in this case. So here's the example of this exact situation.

I love hiking. I go hiking a lot in my regular life. I cross rocks over rivers all the time. And some are more dangerous than others, and they can get very, very slippery. You, on the other hand, not a big hiker. It's not your jam. You don't do a lot of this kind of outdoor kind of stuff.

I say mean things about it. Exactly. If there is a rounded, even somewhat rounded rounded boulder that has water running over it that now for a little while hasn't, but has algae or it has water on it or whatever, my immediate interpretation is it is so slippery that if you are not completely focused on keeping your footing, you will fall. So that's going to be my interpretation of these rocks across this river. But then you tell me if you fall unconscious and you land on the rock, you just land there

and that's fine. You don't fall off. I do not debate this as a player. You don't debate it. The GM said what their imagination of the scenario is. Even if you feel that your real life imagination of it could not possibly, it couldn't work that way, then okay, perhaps you can do one rebuttal right say like well look I mean, I think it would be really slippery and if the GM's like no, it's not

Gotta let it go because ultimately you're playing in the GM space just the GM space now players can Change it and the gym can agree to change it 100% But when there is a question of like, you know, how slippery, how high, how wide, how do you just have, GM says it just be like, okay, and then just go with that. And so yeah, once you said there would be no flat check, they can just land there. That's fine. The thing that bothered me the most was this idea of unconscious reflex saves and unconscious acrobatics checks. You know, that's where I know my head around it.

It bothers me too. But it's as rip that you do get it. And I'm sure there's a game balance reason for that. So we just have to, we have to emotionally get over it. But that wasn't, I just, you know, a lot of times you spend hours prepping and then once you get into the game, it's like all that preparation goes out the window because you see how the encounter actually plays out in real time. I wish that I had all the time in the world to run this encounter, run every encounter

twice, like do a pre-encounter prep and be like, oh man, I realized so much. I can't play test every encounter and run a business. But I think that sometimes this happens a lot in your playing. You're like, oh man, this is going icy now. We even changed it mid-think because first I said, yeah, you're dropping the water, sorry. Well, have you wedged between those rocks? That would have been fine too.

But then I realized, I don't think that was the intention of this thing. So yeah, I like the way we got there. A lot of times too, just to talk more about what you just said, sorry, I just got hit with like 17 texts and emails about you have to go with the GM's imagination. This has happened to me before where it's like I go in prepped and I have a vision of something and all the players at the table a couple of minutes in the encounter see it a totally different way and I'll look and I'll realize that you guys are right.

And so at that point, one of two things has to happen. I have to concede, which I've done. I can't think of off the top of my head times that I've done that. I'll be like, oh, you know what? I would like you to point me to the episode number where you said, I'm wrong. Yeah, I would never utter those words. That's a sign of weakness. But I would concede, oh, you know what?

You guys are right. I totally missed it. That's the wrong thing. Other times I'll just kind of lean into my thing. Well, I know you're right, but I've already planned this encounter a different way. So what you see on the map, that's actually a pole and not a climbable mountain. But it's tricky too, because you're one person prepping, right? And then you've got your vision of this. And sometimes you might miss something or you just, you have it in your head that this is the way it is. Then you display it

to five other people and they're like fuck You talking about that's a this like those not Yeah, man every game every game comes up against this but in this case it is very deadly to misinterpret So things got really out of hand here. Let's go into a couple more Small things one thing to remember when you devise a stratagem, this is a big thing for Talith, for Talith Master Flex. Hold on, I'm going to show this. I'm going to show this on screen here. Here we go. Show you guys this. When we go to devise a stratagem on Demiplane, we've been on this before. You assess a foe's weakness in combat and then use that to formulate a plan of attack.

of foes weakness in combat and then use that to formulate a plan of attack, choose a creature you can see and roll a d20. If you strike the chosen creature later this round, you must use the result of the roll you made to devise a stratagem for your strike's attack roll instead of rolling. This was a point where Professor Eric brought up that Talitha upon rolling say a natural three on a devised stratagem against the snail could have turned and attacked a minion without any penalty and not used the natural three. So can go and attack a different creature as that instead of just being like, oh, well, all I could do now is move or do knowledge checks or whatever. That's not necessarily the case. Remember, you can pivot to another creature and you just have to roll your regular attack. You

can't use your intelligence modifier as your attacker. You'd have to use Dex, I guess, in this case, if she's using a versatile weapon, whatever it's called, an agile weapon. So yeah, that was one good point. And then also there was some discussion online. This is from Professor Eric that Talitha should be using the Pursue a Lead more often in exploration mode to be able to trigger it, devise a strategy as a free action. I agree with this. I had to tell Matthew, like use,

you gotta be using it all the time. When I played an investigator for one- She's pursuing long-term leads, but that's not how it's intended. Yeah, like it can be both. You can have two, so you can have a long-term, but you can also keep... Now in this case, Professor Eric points out, the rule is, quote, you spend one minute examining the details of one potential clue. That's the only rule for devised stratagem. However, he said, even on a full investigation of the banks,

there is no sign or tracks of the snail to clue you in. In this particular encounter, it probably wouldn't have elevated to a free action, but it is definitely something to keep in mind for future reference for Talitha and all investigators out there. All right, so we did the dropping on the rocks rule. Okay, this is great. Now we're going to get into the fun stuff. God, I love this. God, I love this. This is why Professor Eric is a joy to have Professor Eric as part of the Glass Cannon Network. Get ready for this.

On the critical hit on Talitha with the lot. No, you know what? I got to go ahead one. I got to go ahead one. It is insane that Talitha should be permanently dead. Yeah. How do we miss that? How insane is that?

How do we – I don't know how – How did we miss that? I mean I saw people talking about it. I'm not as well-versed in the chat anymore, but like I saw people talking about it and then I saw it again. I was like, oh, I guess we must have missed it. And I don't know how. She rolled a nat2 on a DC 12 recovery We just said lucky son of a bitch. Wow. We just said like she said fail

Natural to and I'm sitting right next to him and my stupid face. It's looking right at him. I'm just like, oh man Brutal it's just getting worse and worse. Honestly, I want I'm glad you brought it up because I Thought maybe you knew and didn't say anything because that's classic O'Brien. You're just like I don't want to say I don't want to be the guy and I don't blame you. I might not in that case I might not actually say it but in that case I truly look at me on video. I look like this I'm just so you can tell I guess my mind is on something else or what but I'm not even like looking seriously or I'm just so, you can tell, I guess my mind is on something else or what, but I'm not even like looking seriously or I'm looking at Matthew. I still don't believe it.

I still don't believe it. It's just crazy. How do you feel? I had to go back and watch it because people were saying it and I was just like, no, they clearly misunderstood something like, I healed Talitha and da, da, da, da, whatever. And I go back and I watch it

and I watched it over and over again. And everybody around that table just like, yeah. I mean, talk about a rule that we know inside and out. Talk about a rule that every time that we have a DC-12 recovery check, we're like natural one or natural two, permadeath. Do we even say that before? No, that one role, we just didn't say it. That's crazy.

That's crazy. That I can remember. We didn't say it. That's crazy, that's crazy. That I can remember, we didn't say it. That makes me sick. It makes me sick. Now, I'm okay with it in this particular case because we got away with, I feel like we got away with a permadeath for a character, but we got away with it, in my opinion, for the most honest reasons ever.

Like truly, none of us caught, we just didn't catch it. And it wasn't because we didn't know the rule It was like somehow it just flew under the radar. I can't explain it. And so in that way, I think it's fate Dude, let's be nice. Just have a home game because this shit was happening all the time You don't have like 30,000 people being like yo They're dead. Yeah, you're everyone forgets about it. So Yeah, I mean, I guess you get the old asterisk. Perhaps she will be marked.

But yeah, it is. It's, it is brutal. And I can't believe it happened. But how about this? Let's make everybody feel a little bit better. Enter Professor Eric on the critical hit on Talitha with the lob symbiote ability the ability of this creature where it shot that shit out at us and then it stays next to us as a minion. Now he admits quote, this is a very, very corner case and it might possibly be an oversight

by the author of the snail. However, as written, that attack is not a strike. This is important because it does not suffer the map. Is that correct? Were you not taking the map whenever you did a launch symbiote? Well, it doesn't, the ability doesn't take the map, but it does say it's an attack. It just doesn't say strike. Why doesn't it take the map if it has to say it's an attack. It just doesn't say strike.

Why doesn't it take the map? That's just part of this ability. Part of the ability it doesn't. Yeah, it says, I don't want to read too much. This is a ranged attack that doesn't count toward the blah, blah, blah, multiple attack penalty. And its multiple attack penalty doesn't apply to this attack. So I think there's probably a case to be made that this isn't considered a strike,

but there's easily a case to be made that's pretty obviously a strike. It is not a strike. Hey, all you want to do is rules as written. But like it's pseudopod, it doesn't say strike. It just says pseudopod plus blah, blah. It's a melee attack. This is a ranged attack. it never says strike in the box of the enemy Well, does it say in the box of the enemy on its melee pseudopod thing? Does it have a critical effect? No No critical effect of any kind. Yeah. Yeah, I think any he knows this is a borderline case Sure. Sure, but this is the important rule to realize It's listed as an attain attack

It's listed as a ranged attack role And so it's similar to all spells that must explicitly state what happens on different degrees of success This one lists success fail and critical true So then he said he c Core, page 401, quote, some actions and abilities have stronger effects on a critical success or failure. For example, a strike, capital S, deals double damage on a critical hit.

If an effect doesn't list a critical success effect, the critical success effect is the same as the success effect and the same goes for critical failures. So the fact that it is outside of the map rule is one possible indication that the intentional design was the decision to not make it a strike to avoid double damage on a crit when it's lobbed. So that would have been 15 damage against Talitha Instead of 30 and she never would have been dying too Interesting interesting very interesting right so then I am thinking alright. Let's go to this by the way We'll talk about this in a hot set

Let's go to really cool. I mean that's cool. That's in the GM core That's in the player core player core page 401 alright now Let's go to brother Ramis's character sheet here. We know he's in a terrible situation. If we look under conditions that effects. I wonder if that was pre remaster too. Like if that's in the player core, is that little, uh, give John like still true in the uh, pre remaster in which gay walkers was written.

It'd be interesting to see. Yeah. I don't know if that's something they updated for the remaster or not. That's a good question to follow up on. But anyway, let's look at this brother. This is what I look at when I play. This is my Brother Ramius of Latria character sheet. These are semi-plane sheets, dude. I know, so gorgeous. So gorgeous. Dude, look at my like the candles in the books and shit. Ah, it's Brother Ramius to a T. I love it. Anyway, I just gave myself one hit point back by accident. So current hit, HP zero. Dying three, wounded one, looking bad.

So Professor Eric writes this and I'm like, yeah, but you know what? When I cast my Divine Lance, I don't like, I just assume if I roll a natural 20, it doubles the damage, but I never actually looked, right? Because it doesn't have degrees of success on here doesn't have a saving throw so I open up divine Lance it's two actions and 60 feet primary 2d4 plus eight to hit and then right under there it says it critical 2d4 times to spirit damage there it is so it did specifically say on the writing of the spell that it has a critical effect it does double damage on the writing of the spell that it has a critical effect.

It does double damage on it. So, this is very interesting. So, abilities that don't say they have a critical, it's the same thing as success. Yeah. So, I want to dig deeper and see if that's a pre-remaster as well. But I mean, I'd like to try and play it that way from now on. That's huge. That's huge.

Well, it certainly makes that, you know, final destination situation less hairy there. Totally, exactly. She shouldn't have died. I think there is a reason out there that despite by raw, Thelitha should be permanently dead. Also by raw, pure raw, maybe she never should have been dying in the first place.

So there we go. I made my point. I made my point. Or I should say Professor Eric made his point. I love you, Professor Eric. God, that is such a fun one. But no, that is good to know, like to make sure that you're not just assuming critical successes have extra added shit if they don't. Okay, real quick one on the site here. I'm not sure how many folks picked this up, but let's go into our psychic on demi-plane and look at the oscillating wave, which is what Buggles is. These are all the different abilities that he gets, the conservation of energy. We've talked about this before.

Oh, sorry. Every time I hover over something, it's going nuts. So this is what Professor Eric points out. Remember that when he uses ignition, you can drastically increase the heat against blah, blah, blah. When using ignition as a range attract, increase the range to 60 feet. So that means that Skid has to remember once it is no longer amped and you he his psyche is not unleashed The the range is not 60 feet anymore. I think skin knows this in fact

I think that you know in general this is something that he pointed out because he just you know with us putting foundry right up There that there were a couple times where it seemed like maybe it was five feet out of reach or something Technically if you pause the episode and look at it, maybe the thing was 65 feet away. But it is important to remember that the range on those spells change versus when he's unleashed versus not unleashed, which I think is a really cool aspect of that class because increasing spell ranges is awesome. Because how amazing would it be? Think about the situation that we were in with Brother Ramious right before the end

there where, you know, he can reach out and he can heal Asta. But like, he's too far away to heal much more of the group, you know, at this point, because that range is 30 feet. That can be pretty punishing. It can be the difference between life and death. What if there was a way that a cleric can quote, amp the range of their heel for an action or have something happen that allows them to do that? That's a really cool thing that the psychic has access to.

All right, let's do a couple quick ones here for Zephyr. Zephyr, she dropped her stance in order to shoot outside her first range increment. To me, this was a really big one. This is a really big one that she did. She used an action to do it. Professor Eric says, didn't have to. What were you thinking? What were you thinking, Kate?

How many times in fodder have we had monastic archer stand up? Look at this thing, it's two paragraphs. Really shouldn't be as tricky as it is. Right, right. But here's the thing. You enter a specialized stance blah blah blah. While in this stance, the only strikes you can make are using long bows, short bows,

or bows with the monk trait. We know this. You can use flurry of bows with these bows. We know this. You can use your other monk feats or monk abilities that normally require unarmed attacks with these bows when attacking within the first half range increment. This is what Kate took and read as you can only make attacks of this half the first range

increment when you're in monastic archer stance. That's not the case. It's only saying when you're using monk feats or monk abilities such as flurry of blows, you have to be that close. You can stay in this stance and just shoot a bow. Right. But you can't flurry of blows, for example, from that. But you can't flurry of blows.

Exactly. So it's a little thing, but it's also a big thing. Oh, it's huge. She wasted an action to go out of it and then had to go back into it. I don't know if she did yet or whatever, but like, you know, if you want to go back into it, that's two actions completely wasted on a misreading of this paragraph, which I can see where the misreading comes from. It's not that crazy to make that assumption.

But if you, if you legal read it a little bit, there's nothing that says you can't shoot it. You just can't use monk abilities with it. So that's going to be a huge upgrade for Zephyr. He pointed out something I think you might have done wrong with the creature. Let's see. Let's see. All right.

The snail can only have three chunks out at a time. It can't throw a fourth while three are out there. Yeah. That was one of the two things that I changed in this. Oh, so that was a GM change. Yeah. That was just a small change. It was like, I'm not going to take too, too much advantage of that. But yeah, I added that.

And I had something else that we can talk about next week. But again, not super relevant. Yeah. And again, there's more to talk about this creature, this whole combat. I'm deliberately not getting into more because we have recorded past this and we want to kind of like let the whole combat play out before we dive into the mechanics of the creature and What could go right and could go wrong?

Etc could have gone right and run and wrong one more rule thing Zephyr we we asked this on air Professor Eric confirms Zephyr can trip shove Grapple etc all of it while in monastic archer stance. They are not strikes and they are not blocked by being in the stance. I was a bit a dick about trip. I think that you're... I should encourage that more. You guys need to do more than just attack and miss, but I just was trying to poo poo it because I knew that there was no chance in hell you're

going to trip this thing. Yeah, I know. I get it. Anything that's a size category larger than you with 50 legs, try something else. That wasn't the time to try. No, I agree. I agree. But I was trying to interpret outside of narrative and just on raw because if she rolled an athletics

check and rolled a natural 20, it would be tripped. And in that case, it might've been better than hitting it with damage, I don't know. Absolutely. Maybe not on natural 20, but for it to have to suffer an action penalty would've been huge for us. But yeah, it's more about like, is there anything else we can do

because just swinging away at it is not working? Yeah, I mean, you guys are realizing the hard way, like how important it is to try and get that AC down to debuff in any way possible. Yeah. I think that we've been- Do you have a lot of debuff spells? Any debuff spells that are like- No.

You're just healing focused and you've got a couple offensive spells. Well, remember we're second level. So third level is kind of a big jump because that's the first you get got a couple offensive spells. Well, remember we're second level. So third level is kind of a big jump because that's the first you get even a second level spell. We only have first level spells. Yeah. You know? And so, and so like here's a good debuff spell at first level fear.

That's not really brother Ramious. You know what I mean? Like against a creature that you don't know what the condition of its mind is. Yeah, yeah. So right. I mean the how deadly these have been. I prepare every slot is heal except I prepare a bless. That's pretty much where I'm at right now because I only have three spells a day plus my plus my healing font.

So I have a bunch of extra heels, but I do two more heels in those slots because of how deadly, you know, these encounters have been. I really can't do much outside of that right now. If Brother Ramius, if he can live next week and he can get stronger, I'm sure the Clare can have unbelievable spells. But, right now, it's the early level caster shit. I know we're still talking weird, our stupid, but what do you think about CAPS? I gave my opinion on it.

I'm curious where you think. It seems like you enjoy it in Blood of the Wild. I think you understand my position. I don't even think you disagree with my reasoning behind it, but I'm curious what you think. Because I understand like my – one of my goals, one of my roles as GM is to make sure everybody is having fun. Now, I think that like people have to at a certain point control their own enjoyment. You know, you can't be like, I'm not having fun because you're making it unfun.

Well, okay. I'll take some responsibility but you have to choose to have fun, especially when you get paid. But like I think that there is a – I think there's a problem in the like, it seems like right now the equation for fun is like lie about your rules and give out more bottle caps. That would be more fun. If I lied about my, oh shit, I wrote down to one of my initiatives. Oh, I missed, damn it.

And then just gave out a ton of caps. You guys would definitely be having a lot more fun. And it's not my fun versus your fun, because obviously that's not fun for me, but it's like, do you understand the problem here? I do, but you've brought up several different things in that one. There's a lot going on. Yeah. So I think that my opinion is that in an effort to raise the stakes and make things tougher, stronger, more interesting in an honest effort to do that, and the fact that you purely don't like these caps, you have created a situation that is not fun for the audience.

Not as fun. Now, there might be some more bloodthirsty fans out there that really love it, you know, like that's great. But you know, you're talking about overall feels of people having trouble connecting with this. I think one of those things is how hard it has been. As our earlier YouTube comment pointed out, it's starting to just be not fun, it's so hard. And it's not just, I think it would be more fun

if it was that hard and all of us as players were amazing about A, being happy with being miserable and being, you know, being happy, being kind of like cut off at the legs every encounter. So crazy, cause it's not, I'm playing so soft. Like I could. Well, that's not an attack on you. I'm saying this adventure, I'm saying this adventure seems to be.

This is as I'm playing it, maybe the adventure is just naturally hard, but I mean I'm playing it as loosely as possible. But the adventure is built for hero points to be used multiple times every session. That's how the adventure is written. And if you don't want to run that kind of adventure, because you want it to be grittier,

that's fine, but you have to accept that multiple characters are going to die consistently throughout the campaign. It's not going to have the feel of a 1E campaign, where characters can die, but they don't die every tenth episode. For sure, for sure. Yeah. I think that might be the primary- I disagree that it's built for hero points, you know, because the guide specifically says

you don't have to use it. It's as close to- The guide does, but that's not- It's as close to an optional rule as possible. And also, dude, I firmly believe that if you guys got a cap every session or a cap every few sessions and everyone started saving themselves from death The chorus would be right like constantly because that's what would happen The chorus would swing the other way is like god

Nobody ever dies is you always got a cap to save your ass and I think that like well, there's a middle ground there There is but it really takes you out of it, dude. It's like it's almost like just like I said, how everybody else does it. Nobody ever dies in other campaigns because they're just not, they don't want to do that. It's a little more scripted. Yeah, but like- I think that- But you also can't have a show- The swing of hero points is like, you just,, no one's ever gonna die, I think.

No, it's not that swing. But on top of that, everyone is constantly going to be saved by this magical cap, and that just takes out any sort of stakes. You're missing out on, so that's the way that we think about it in your game, because your game is so cap precious, so cap light. Cap light.

That like, I would almost never turn a cap in for almost any die roll except to live. Yeah. Whereas in games where they're more liberal, like Blood of the Wild, I'll turn a bottle cap in to get better on a diplomacy check I just did, because I think it's going to move the story in a way that I think is more interesting. And so I'll get a second role at it with that. Then I don't have my cap.

And it has happened where like you're about to die and you're like, I can't believe that earlier today I use the cap for that reason. Blah, blah, blah. Like it put there are still really fun decisions out there and people absolutely can die. And it there's a middle ground. There's absolutely no ground. I also think even for a caps light campaign, you definitely don't give enough caps. And I think that you know that I think that you forget to give caps sometimes. I do you look back, you're like, I could have given a cap for that. And then I think the play has been pretty uninspired. But now you can't go back. Yeah, no, I definitely could give them more caps.

What I don't want to be is like, oh, you all showed up to the session today? Here you go. Bare minimum. You know, it's a fine line. Yeah, that's fine. I just think though, I think there's moments. I hate them. I just hate them.

And if they are a necessary part of the system, then there might be a part of me that just really doesn't like the core of the system. That if it's built, that you have to have these in order to have a campaign where people don't die every 20 episodes. I just, at the end of the day, this might not be the best system for us to do this show. I mean, maybe I'm not going to necessarily debate against that, but what I am going to say is like, I think that you're just thinking of it incorrectly. Like the same mechanic exists in other games.

It just goes by a different, it doesn't feel maybe as much of a deus ex paus. What is it called in Pathfinder first edition? Does it exist? No it doesn't. Well because Dying was very different. Like the Dying mechanics were very different in Pathfinder first edition. You know it was pretty hard to go completely negative zero, you know, more than your con in that game system. And oh, god, there's so many other things that interact with each other in

money. But I'm talking about like, like a blades in the dark, for example, like in a blades in the dark, like people will die, like it's extremely rare for people to actually die because you can just undo any harm that comes your way with by spending stress, but it is a limited resource at a certain point. You run out of it, you will die. It's the same thing with this. It's a limited resource. You use it, you use it again, you use it to come back up and in a combat like this, like you can go back down again and be dead,

and you still had that hero point. So it's not that people will never die, it's just that they won't die in a random encounter, like, all the time, you know what I mean? Yeah, those are cool, those are cool too. But I also think that, like, I don't disagree that, like, getting one for showing up is the way to play.

Like, that's not what I'm saying either. I like the idea, but I just like the idea of giving people body caps to incentivize any time they're putting any extra effort into the narrative, their character or thinking about somebody else's character or whatever, just incentivizing fun play around the table I think is, shoot, more caps should go out and more caps should be spent.

Yeah, well, it's that those go hand in hand, right? If I'm giving out more caps, people spend them more. If I'm not giving them up, people are a lot more precious with them. I think that, you know, I don't think anything about what you're saying is wrong. And I realize that I'm being pretty close-minded about it, but I just know how I feel. I feel like whenever someone does that to save themselves from death, it's lame. That just doesn't go away. Even though I get it and I don't want people dying constantly, I'm having trouble marrying those two problems in my mind. I don't think the solution is just more caps, but I don't know what the solution is yet.

We'll figure it out. Right, but here's the other question. What kind of story do you want to write? Do you want to write a story where death matters and where characters, when they die, it's a big deal? Or do you want to write a story where a main character dies every eight weeks? I mean, that is not good either.

Yeah, no it's not. And that's the story you, feels like you're writing right now. It's not, yeah. I mean, that's why. And so you, you don't want to take your foot off the gas. You don't want to fudge the creature's AC down two points. And I am, I mean, I, I'm taking my foot off the gas big time.

I know, but, and you don't want to, isn't that? Yeah. Doesn't that feel gross too? Like, if you just have the hero points out there, you don't have to do that. And you can just be like, you had used your hero point. You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, there might be, I think you might be onto something there. There might be a solution within there. You know, it's tough that we have to record these in advance because one thing I would do is like have the, create some more interaction between the fans, like have the fans vote on like player of the game And then you get a cap for next week's episode But it doesn't work because we have to record these in advance you wouldn't get that cap until like later Doesn't matter. That's fine. You know if we record it's like well, it just so happens that

Recording episode 45 is like episode 39 Kate was the star you're gonna cap You know, maybe I could do something like that But I don't know I mean I tell you what no one would be mad about it. Yeah, no, of course, of course Any reason to get caps? Well, the thing is we don't necessarily have to announce it Well, I Nick has started doing something on legacy that I really like Nick Lowe Nick Lowe. Yeah, he has started We don't have physical caps Obviously cuz that's a virtual game, and that's one-e, and those just get handed out for great role play,

or Nick write the song, or whatever it is. Nick has started, instead of having the physical things, he just has a spreadsheet of those caps, and what they were for. And then he checks them off when they're used. So that way, when you say, I'm gonna use this cap, you know exactly what you got it for. It might be interesting to have a list that's like, all right,

I'm going to turn this cap in. You're like, oh, this is your episode 24 player of the game cap, as noted by the nation. So we don't have to announce it before the show. But you can announce it at whatever time it ends up getting used, which means you don't really know when they got it, when it's recorded. You have an ongoing ongoing sheet and it's just like it's self populates. Yeah, McD just updates it once a week And then you just check it off when it's used. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. No, I mean I I get it

I get it. It's it's a real calm fan caps like there are Troy caps They're very stingy very hard to get fans could just give out caps, you know What willy-nilly and we just have to have a structure. And they're not as powerful. They can't say this is good. They're not as powerful. They're really just decorative. I like that.

I think that I get it. I get it. It rubs me the wrong way. There's got to be a solution in there. I'm excited to find it. Let's get in a quick listener mail before we get out here. We ran super long, but I got to kick it to the nays for at least a second. It's a big FOD.

It's a big FOD. It's a big FOD. It's a monster FOD. Monster FOD, dude. It's time for Listen to Me. You gotta get your brain off on it. Time for Listen to Me. You gotta cue that booty head.

No, we didn't even mention that episode one of season six of Get in the Trunk is in the Yeah, baby, baby, baby. She got a cue that's for cheating. No, we didn't even mention that episode one of season six of Get in the Trunk is in the Can, that we recorded it. It's done. That's wild, man. Printed. Get excited, Nate. Season six is underway in the background.

We'll let you know when we have more info on that. All right, let's go to Henry in Lancashire in England. Lancashire, England, another international edition. Wow, I don't know why I got burpy all of a sudden. What's up, Henry? Thanks so much for writing in. Hey, Joe and Troy, I've been a fan of you guys since the Pathfinder 2e playtest session

you released with Jason and Eric. Funny enough, you mentioned that earlier in this episode. When you played through Quest of the Everflame, which got me back into tabletop RPGs and now I'm running two weekly games, Pathfinder and Call of Cthulhu. That's awesome. Awesome. A couple of quick questions. So I'll go to the other one first, which is, have you guys in Blood of the Wild figured

out that you're nerfing Paula's Dispel Magic ability? Yes. For everybody that cares about Blood of the Wild, we have figured that out, by the way. I can try to tell you about that off air. But basically, we're considering hazard levels to be the same as spell rank, and that's just not the case. Hazards get halved before you apply dispel magic to them. So we've learned that. We know that now. We're way ahead in terms of recording on Blood of the Wild. So fear not. You might hear that mistake a few more times, but we we know that now. We're way ahead in terms of recording on Blood of the Wild, so fear not. You might hear that mistake a few more times, but we know about it now.

It must be nice to be ahead. Oh man, it's so nice. I'm recording Blood of the Wild right after this. So yeah, that train just does not stop. We play every week. All right, let's get to the main question here. This is a good one. After getting back into this, courtesy of the Pathfinder 2e playtest session with Jason

and Eric, I'm attending my first ever gaming convention next month. Any tips for a newb? So what would you say to somebody that's going to their, we don't even know what the gaming convention is, probably something in England, but what are some things that you think about when you go to your first gaming convention? Yeah, I mean, it's exciting and it's nerve-inducing. If you're going alone, that's even trickier. As I did that, my first Pyzocon, I was alone.

I didn't know anyone really to speak of, except Mona, and we weren't as close as we are now. I think it's good to just sign up for some things, because you'll find that if it has the ability to pre-sign up for things, you'll find that if it has the ability to like pre-sign up for things, you'll find that if you go there and just start wandering around, your wish you signed up for things. You're like, ah, I'll find something to do there.

And then you get there and you're just being overwhelmed. You don't even know where to start. You'll also be locked out of a lot of stuff. Yeah. So if they do pre-sign ups, you know, especially like with GenCon coming up, like we always say like pre-sign up for things because they sell out and then you get there and you got nothing to do. Sign up for things. Don't block out your day so you're going from one thing to the other to the other to

the other. It's too much. Make sure you have lots of time in between. Walk around and do demos. If it's the type of con that offers demos, you and I, back in the day, we used to love doing that. We still try to squeeze a demo into a con here and there when we're not rushing around like idiots. But yeah, and get some time away from the con. That's just as important because you walk away,

leave there to go get lunch. Don't eat the garbage food at the con. Yeah, don't eat garbage food at the con. Have a couple pops. Yeah, I think that's another thing is stamina is really important. Don't eat junk. Don't bring water and bring like, I used to pack like granola bars and shit in my backpack, like an apple. You have something that you can eat on the move if you need to.

Because sometimes you're going to sit down, you're going to find yourself, maybe it's not something you signed up for. You might find yourself sitting down in a two hour demo, and you might be like, I'm starving. That could take you out of a game. It could make you not enjoy yourself as much much have some food on you as if you're like hiking or something where you want to have you know be able to have a quick

snack stay hydrated stay clean make sure that your ties wash your hands use plenty of deodorant it gets sweaty in there so those are all kind of big things it can be very very overwhelming You can't do everything. It's like going to a museum. You can't like see it all on the first time you go. And if you expect to, you're going to probably have a worse time of it. Pick a couple things, really focus on those things. Game demos, you know, and, you know, I don't know about panels.

I don't know if you're interested in panels, but like, those can eat up a lot of your time too. I would say pick one, pick two for the whole weekend or day. If it's a day, just do one. Don't do more than one. Panels can be good. Panels can be great, but then you can get lost in them too and be like, I never got a game demo.

I didn't actually play any games. I just saw people talking about games. Game demos are the best. I always go for like, try to find the most indie ish sort of section where there are People that are developing their own things and the people that made it themselves are there like yeah It's great to just talk to people about a game. They made you can really see the passion Rather than you know waiting in an hour and a half line for the next Pokemon thing or the next You know, I don't know whether it's you know, collectible cards or if it's a video game convention, you know, the next big Sony PlayStation, whatever, like

you're gonna wait two hours for this VR experience or whatever. Like, don't do that. Don't wait in long lines for that crap because like, it just ends up not being worth it. Talk to game designers, take that opportunity, which is really, really fun. And then yeah, sign up for some, up for some RPGs if you want. You can play some D&D or Pathfinder or board games. If you can sign up for board games, it's anything like Gen Con.

That's really fun to sign up just for a two-hour slot. But yeah, make sure you bake in time to get out of the con as well. I'll never forget our first Gen Con, just being like, it was such a fucking whirlwind. I felt like I'd just moved to New York. Like, everything up was down, it was such a fucking whirlwind. I felt like we just, like I've just moved to New York. Like every up was down, down was up, just so overwhelmed. And we did so much stuff.

But you always have that feeling, I want to do more. And at one point, you, a very, never really a voice of reason, you turned to me and you were like, dude, it's just our first GenCon. I was like, so true. Never thought that we would come back every single year since. So I told you I cleaned out my attic. We got giveaways coming on the streams this week.

Look what I found in my attic. Just, I have this right in my drawer because I just found this yesterday. My GenCon 50, Joe O'Brien. The Glass Cannon Podcast press badge. That's so funny. I take pride in throwing that stuff out. Found it in a box upstairs.

I love keeping it. It's my first jet con. I know. It was awesome. I keep so much stuff. It is a relief to be like, goodbye. You don't bring me joy. That's great.

Your children will thank you when they clean out your house when you die. I'll say that much. Why did he buy so many baseball cards during COVID? Oh, man. You got into that. All right. Thank you again, Henry. And thank you everybody for listening to this like chunk-tacular FOD. I hope some of that news sunk in. I hope you guys appreciate some of our honest feedback and analysis of Gatewalkers thus far. And you know, as we continue deeper into this campaign, this fight's not over. It continues next week.

We'll see what happens and we'll talk about it more on next week's VOD. Until then, lots of streams to watch, lots of YouTube premieres to watch. Keep following the socials and look out for those schedules and stuff, all right? Take it easy. And enter the gauntlet.

Enter the glass cannon gauntlet. We'll see you next time everybody. Take it easy. Bye. Glass Cannon Gauntlet. We'll see you next time everybody, take it easy. Bye. It's time to make your membership official. Become an official member of the Naish today

at jointhenaish.com. That's jointhenaish.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 nation today at jointhenation.com Welcome to a journey into the heart of the Texas Renaissance Festival, the nation's largest and rowdiest celebration of medieval fantasy. But what lurks beneath the facade of tights and turkey legs? Well, we dove deep into the empire to uncover a history marred by mystery and misconduct, murders, assaults, and other

crimes that tarnish its legacy. This isn't just a fairy tale, it's a cautionary tale of power, fantasy, and the consequences that follow when they all collide. Search for Crime Waves Renaissance Texas on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. On a summer night, Douglas Wagg Jr. lay motionless across a strip of railroad tracks before being struck by an oncoming train. I'm investigative journalist Delia D'Ambra, and my investigation into

exactly how Doug died took me into the depths of a bizarre mystery. It was really hard to understand what was back and what wasn't. A mystery that has led me from one suspicious death to another. Listen to Counter Clock now wherever you listen to podcasts.