The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 6/12/24

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

The Fod is in-studio today as Joe, Troy, Skid, and Matthew get a chance to hang after a recording of Gatewalkers! The guys will catch up with Matthew's thoughts on Talitha and the introduction of Barnes, the shocking ending for Hubert, and the burning question of whether or not Sydney can ever be trusted again. In Listener Mail, do you prefer Adventure Paths? Or Homebrew campaigns? Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/zdMWJDL-OWE 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

Your teen requested a ride, but this time not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today. You are listening to the Glass Cannon Network, the premier source for role-playing game entertainment. Welcome to Cannon Fodder, a behind-the-scenes look at the Glass Cannon Network. Yo! What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to Cannon Fodder. It is Wednesday, June 12, 2024. My name is Joel Bryan, and I'm here today with my co-host, Matthew Cabana-Caza!

And I'm Troy, sitting next to Skidmar LaValley. There he is, guys. He's right there. I got a pen. You're sitting next to Skidmar LaValley? Skidmar LaValley. You guys finally tied the knot. He decided to keep his name.

I'm gonna hyphenate it. Is that hyphenated or you just do like a middle name? I thought like he was adopted me, like a Roman emperor. I'm LaValley Mar me like a Roman Emperor. I'm the Valley Mar. The Valley Mar. Well, we are in, as you can see, an in-studio FOD today. We got the crew together and decided, hey, hey, why not hang out a little bit

after one of our episode recordings, pop a couple nooners and record a little cannon fodder. Talk about the last week of Glass Cannon Podcast Campaign 2 slash the last couple of weeks, because man has a lot gone on especially with my friend Matthew here. It's good to have you here Matthew. How are you feeling today buddy?

Oh great. How are you feeling? I feel fantastic. I've got a high noon in my hand. It's the summer. What's not to love? We've got a great show for you today. A little bit of news.

We're going to get right into the episode conversation. Tiny bit of We Are Stupid and then of course listener mail We're only a tiny bit stupid this time. We were all there's actually no corrections. There are no corrections and we are stupid It's more suggestions Wow or thoughts about you know, the game in general, which I love that professor Eric offers from time to time So let's talk about news The only thing that the only major thing that I have on my list today is the Continuing news that is coming out about Gen Con and the Glass Cannon Network at Gen Con, all the stuff we got going on there.

Troy has told you for several weeks now we got a lot of exciting shows coming. Well now, he has officially announced all of the casts for those shows. All of those posts have gone out. If you haven't seen it, because like me, you hate social media, Troy is here to tell you who the casts are. If you want to grab a ticket if you hate social media. Troy is here to tell you who the cast are, if you want to grab a ticket if you haven't already. Troy? I'm on my phone, which has 2% left.

And it's dead. Those are the casts. Wow. These are going to be hard to remember. I'm so mad. I don't think I can remember all of them. But we announced them on social. Yeah, because there's so many people.

I'm going to try to bring it up myself. Well, my goal with this is to put as, use as many people as possible. We've got a lot of people coming out. I wanted to bring it up myself. Well, you know, my goal with this is to like put as, use as many people as possible. We got a lot of people coming out. I wanted to do some pack casts because like Gen Con is expensive. And if we can like do a little extra to like give them some spending money to like defray the cost of their trip, I wanted to like pack as many people as possible. So we got Get in the Trunk Live on Thursday, day one at the con, already sold out.

One ticket became available last week. Snatched up right away. But that's going to be you running me, Skid, Sydney, Mary Lou, and Nora? And Nora. I believe, yeah. Through a Delta Green one shot. And then obviously that night is Glass Cannon Live.

It's going to be the old crew, the four of us, with Sydney and Kate. And then, oh, thank you, Live. It's going to be the old crew, the four of us with Cindy and Kate. And then, oh, thank you, Matthew. Look at that. How cute. I can't believe I just handed my Instagram to Troy LeVar. Oh my God. I had to download that onto my phone.

Now I'm done. I started liking some weird stuff. All right. So then the next day, Friday day, during, at the con, Call of Cthulhu Live, it's me running Ross Bryant, Paula Deming, Nora Ibrahim, Rob Kirkevich, Jared Logan, Skid Marr, and Seth Skorkowsky through an original adventure written by Scott Dorwin. Oh my God. I don't think I mentioned that.

What is the math? Is that seven players? Seven players, yeah. I'm just waiting for that combination of people on stage. I'm so excited about that. That is going to be so insane. It's just so cool seeing these people that you almost exclusively work with over a computer network.

Right. Seeing them in person, but seeing all those people together and getting to play with them in person is just, that is a dream come true. That's awesome. They gave us the biggest room for that one. It's a 700 seat room. So it was like, I need a person for every hundred people. Yeah.

Plenty of tickets left for that. I mean, if we sell that out, that would be phenomenal. But let's pack a lot of people in there. That would be groundbreaking, record breaking for the Glass Cannon. For the Glass Cannon, yeah. Never sold that many tickets. And for Gen Con.

Yeah, fan for Gen Con. Game for the world. But I mean, that's another reason I put so many people on there, just like get a lot of different fandoms in there. I mean, it would be wonderful. I don't know. A lot of people have been asking, oh, I hope the Glass Cannon tapes and releases these. We have no control over the Gen Con shows. Some of them are streamed to the Gen Con channel, but we will not be taping them. We will not be releasing audio. Because when you sign up to do that, correct me if I'm wrong, Trey, if you know anything else, but my understanding of it is like, what you do at Gen Con is owned by

Gen Con. Yep. You know, in terms of performance. And so they have the lockdown on all that media, but you know, it should be out there. Well, at least some of them will. Yeah, I would think a 700-seat room is probably going to be a streaming room, but don't hold me to it. I needed Matthew's face.

It didn't recognize mine. I'll do this quick. And then that night, and now, by the way, that's going to be 1920s Call of Cthulhu, original scenario written by Scott Dorn. I've been a fan of Scott since I ran my first ever Call of Cthulhu game. So I just reached out to him.

Matthew and I played in. Yeah, I just reached out to him and be like, hey, I'm a fan. He's like, I'm a fan of you guys. Was that the one we did with Becca and Nora? Yeah, that one was super. He also wrote, if he wasn't the only writer, he was certainly the head writer on the Peru chapter

of Mass of Neolithic. Oh, wow. And he's written some amazing stuff. And so he's gonna write an original, where do you hear the concept for this? I am so excited for that. I saw this, because we didn't hear until you posted it anyway. It was just like, this is so fucking good.

I'll sit you right next to it. I'm gonna have Seth Scorkowsky on one side and Jared Logan on the other side. And then that night, just like we did last year, this year we're gonna do Modern Call of Cthulhu live at the Athenaeum. This is a glass cannon show that will be recorded. We will release the video and audio later.

And it's all of us along with Kate, Nora, Ross and Rob Kirkevich. So the cast of Time for Chaos and the founders in a modern call of Cthulhu. Oh my god. Oh my god, amazing. And we are close to selling the most tickets we've ever sold to a live show.

That one? Yeah, there's only like 50 tickets left. And that theater is like ancient. It's very strange, weird. Oh, that's the one we did last year. Yeah, it feels like a theater. And I mean, that's going to be wild. I don't even know what the hell I'm going to run, but I have some ideas.

Two more very quickly. We've got Blades in the Dark Live. The Busted Mufflers are back on Saturday at the Con. Jared is going to be running Joe, Mary Lou, myself, Rob Kirkovich, Ross Bryant, and Sydney through some sort of crazy heist. And then we finish off our performances with Starfinder playtest, Starfinder 2E Live, where I'm going to run the Glass Cannon Live crew, along with Paula Deming, through something wild in space.

Wild in space. Also Glass Cannon Live. I think I said that. Yeah, it's that first night. It's Thursday night. It's sold out. It's already sold out. Sorry.

Yeah, so what's the point in even mentioning it? Yeah, you had your chance. Very excited, also very nervous. It's going to be. It's already sold out. It's all right. Yeah. So what's the point in even mentioning it? Yeah, you had your chance. Very excited. Also very nervous. It's going to be a really fun time, but we'll obviously have more to talk about that as we get closer. Let's get into this week's episode of the Glass Cannon podcast.

And actually the last couple of weeks, I'm going to kick it off with you, Matthew, because we have not heard from you or the Naish has not at least directly heard from you after the events that have unfolded with the snail encounter in the river and the impending waterfall. The way that it all came about was, at least for me, sitting in the chair right next to you, extremely unexpected and surprising where we really believe that Ramias could be the one who goes down and then all of a sudden it twists and turns. Talk to us about how you felt about it at the time and what you're feeling now weeks later

as you evolve into a new character. I mean, it was a bummer. It was crushing. Yeah. It's always crushing when it's one of those random encounter things too, right? Yeah, it doesn't feel like a milestone encounter. But at the same time, it feels more realistic. No, totally.

I made this point before like when the first time I watched the Hurt Locker, you know The first the thing I really took away from that is like at war, you know Anyone can die at any even moment and it won't necessarily be the heat of battle. You don't have to be killed by Saddam. Yeah Like you can't just kill by anything The boss battle I just right at the end, like, I was it. But it's like, that's the true Harvard, right? It's like, at any moment, like, you could just die.

Right. And I think that, so that's, that, that, that fell away. And that was a natural one. Like, what am I going to argue about? Yeah, yeah, I know. When the dice just tell you that, you know, they... Are you cheating? They, they write your face.

Can't really argue about that. No, that's happened. That's the dice putting their, like, hand on your shoulder. I mean, like, come on. It's time. I'm just walking toward the light. I was saying, with,. No, that's happened. That's a dice putting their hand on your shoulder and they're like, come on. It's time. I was saying the same thing with Sydney. It was the same kind of thing. Yeah, it was the exact same thing.

Yeah, exact same thing. Like, yeah, so both of these deaths occur on, it wouldn't have to be a death row if it wasn't a natural one, and both on a natural one. Boom, sus. That's pretty wild. That's why all of my characters on the Glass Cannon Network going forward

will have the diehard feeling. Yeah, diehard, love that. Diehard, dying five. Without, not to put you on the Glass Cannon Network going forward will have the diehard fee. Yeah, diehard, love that dying font. Not to put you on the spot, without a stimulated bottle cap economy, you gotta take diehard. You gotta take diehard. Yeah, well, I was thinking about it recently

and the reason that diehard is so great, like I was like, oh, it's great. But now the reason it's so great is because it makes that one major, major, major, major, major, major difference which is you avoid death after you were completely fine and then you get crit and then natural one, which can totally happen. Yeah.

And it allows that to not happen. So I was like, you know, what is, what's one more of your dying condition going to do? Cause if you're going to die, like if you're that close, you're probably going to die. It prevents that. That can not happen to you're gonna die, like, if you're that close, you're probably gonna die. It prevents that. That cannot happen to you, which is essentially what happened to you. It guarantees you at least two rounds. At least two times your world recovery checks.

Also, it doesn't have to be a crit, because especially at low levels, in 2E, like, you go down and come up a lot. So if you're wounded one, you know. Totally. Yeah. Keep in mind, die hard is not a Christmas feat. What does that mean? You're making a joke, die hard is not a Christmas feat. What does that mean?

You said a good joke about a die hard is a Christmas feat. Yes, yes, yes. Very good. The next is skin. I got it. I think it is a Christmas feat. I think it is a Christmas feat as well. I also think it's a Christmas feat.

Most people disagree. Most people do disagree. Shane Black mostly does Christmas feats. Does Christmas feats. All right, well then, obviously, did you have any concept of what would become Barnes before Talitha went down? Did you have a backup character in mind? I had a backup character that I just couldn't use.

Really? Why? Well, because of where we were. It's a magical fantasy land. It didn't make any... He was connected to... Oh, was it him? Did you hear that?

Don't worry. You'll have time. Not if we continue to die where we are. Hit buck with that fella. Yeah, so it just didn't make any sense. And as soon as we went through that gate, I was like, oh, like... Yeah, in a completely unknown place. I said, I better start thinking about a backup character by the time...

And then it was like two episodes later, D'leth was dead. So, yeah, no, I had to... Troy was like, I think we even canceled another recording. Cause we were like, we were gonna do three that day. And I was, and I was like, I can't. Cause we've done, I mean, you were very kind about it. But like we've been in the situation before where it had

to like come up with a character on the spot. And sometimes it yields great results, like Atticus. Atticus was on the spot. I feel like you would have been wishing to play in Atticus when you came up with Atticus on stage. Yeah, there was, there was a ground. There was a base for Atticus before that show. But like that really kicked it into gear.

Yeah. And I was like, I don't want to live with this character. I don't want to rush into it. And Skip was like, no, take your time, take your time. So we canceled the recording so I could think about it. And then Barnes came. And so far, very interesting. I think you've been a little bit frustrated with the opening performance of Barnes in combat, which has been a little bit frustrated with the opening performance of Barnes in combat

Which is a little embarrassing I mean he went toe-to-toe with that monster while you all handled the other one. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true But it's always frustrating to bust out a new character for the first time and just like shit the bed on the rolls Well, you solve the problem in our Jade region campaign where you fit you managed to build a character that would probably never hit, but even Troy could never hit. Never hit him. Not even God himself. Fight defensively every single round. And your AC by the end was like 34.

Unhit him. I wish I could make that in two weeks. Natural 20s missed often. Yes. This guy. It's true. And I had what you were caught. And then it was just built in such a way

that I couldn't really hit unless I crit. But if you crit, you had that talking sword. Yeah. Which was awesome. So short of that, what are you going to do? Yeah, but it's very interesting so far. Where does this concept come from, the concept of the teacher?

I mean, I'm a teacher. You're drawing it. Obviously, I'm not venturing It was like, I was like, you're drawing, obviously I'm not venturing. So you're saying that Barnes reminds you of you, is what you're saying. No, actually, no, no. The original concept was like, well, we're in this land where we don't know where we are.

It's, I mean, I know. From moment one, I mean, Skid College, we're like, I think we're on Castroville. But it seemed that way. But I was like, OK, what if we had on Castroville. But it seemed that way. But, you know, I was like, okay, what if we had like an Indiana Jones type character? I mean, he's like sort of a Indiana Jones crossed with Van Helsing.

Yeah, exactly. I was like, the thaumaturges is a very Van Helsing. Very Van Helsing kind of concept. And I was like, well, what if we take that and make him Indiana Jones? And then I was thinking too about, I can't, it'll come to me, my mind is going blank right now.

But the, oh, I was A.E. Hausman, do you remember the poet A.E. Hausman? He flunked out of Oxford. Oh yeah, yeah. But then he just was writing, and was writing both poetry and scholarly articles, and he became such an eminent scholar outside of the academy,

they eventually had to like offer him a position at Oxford, even though he had no degree. So it was like that, like that was the idea of Barnes, that he had such, such kind of wide-ranging. So accomplished in the field. Yeah. Like practical experience. He'd been accomplished in the field, like practical experience. He'd been out in the field so much, he knew so much, it would be embarrassing if they didn't have him

on the anthropology staff. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it's a very cool concept. I look forward to getting to know him better. But let's get into this week's episode where. I was gonna say, and according to Hubert, he's got a pretty solid piece. Yeah, I mean, let's not,

Brother Tripod here. Hubert being the arbiter of all things. Yeah, he does no experience with anything big damn. Yeah Why I liked the idea that Hubert uses it always as just like a cheap method to win friends and influence Hey, that's a great penis In the context of humor hey, that's a great penis. Who's not going to like a guy? Who's not going to like a guy? I don't know. In the context of Hubert does it, it's a little off. It's a little off.

Let's talk about Hubert. So we are looking at this potential encounter that Barnes gives us a little bit of heads up on about these construct- the creatures that are protecting the vinicular. We were not sure we get up there and Zephyr's suggestion is we do a little surveilling, right? And like, yes, excellent. So we just sit there for like hours and watch and watch. And then we see the flow of this thing and then start coming up with a plan to avoid the encounter. Troy, talk me through like what's going through your head, as we're all

talking our way around an encounter that you have prepared. What were your thoughts as the GM in that situation? My thoughts were like, wow, this map sucks. This is not the goal of the map. But I couldn't fudge the map at that point. I'm like, well, no, no. Actually, that gap is 15 feet.

So everybody's going to roll. I'm like, fuck, that's the map. I wish I had just noticed it. I didn't even pick it up. But at the same time, like, I think that certainly in the past, like I can, I tend to be a stickler for what's written because it's just easier to follow that and not have to worry about it and then improvise from there. So I'm trying to over the years be a little more loose with like, you know, if you've got a cool idea why stymie or creativity, let's see what we can do with it.

And I could tell this is what you guys wanted to do. You desperately needed a W. So, all right, well, let's see what happens. And there was still good risk there. And that's what I wanted. I didn't want it to be automatic. I just wanted there to be us all to understand that like, all right, well, there's a little bit of risk here. And the risk is pretty bad.

If one of them falls, they're going to fall down, then everyone's going to jump down and it's a fight. Like, There's no way around that. So there was enough risk that I was happy with the fact that you guys succeeded. And the AP is written in such a way where it takes into account you skipping encounters. Yeah, that's interesting. Well, we'll get to that in a second, too.

I want to talk about APs in Lister Mail. But this concept of getting around some of them and having that worked in, how do you know that? Is it writing in the prewritten AP? Is it saying, here's a way around this encounter if the PCs figure it out? I don't want to say too, too much, but I will say that there's a whole, how do I want to word this without giving too much weight? There's basically a whole paragraph before you get to this after you, I'm trying to

make sure because we've recorded ahead. Basically, once you arrive through the gate, they describe like the next X amount of encounters and they give you some sort of freedom in how you can, they suggest taking some creative liberties with here's what we think is the suggested pattern, but you do whatever you want and sort of contingency plans for if the PCs do this instead of this, this instead of this. And so I just kind of worked out in advance what I was thinking, and then listening to you guys,

we are where we are. We are where we are, which is a leap onto this vinicular, onto this cargo, John. And we start going, and now we're in hey cool moment right was there a cool moment no was there it's just no no no no no no this is the one where I like now or have a situation do they have a situation okay I couldn't remember an hour into this thing we are attacked by these creatures and of course where it comes out yeah yeah, exactly.

And I was like, this is preposterous. Right after, you're like, so an hour later, this is just so funny to me. You look down, you notice that the ridges around this thing are about one foot high. I was like, no, no. And you hear these screeching in the distance. And I'm just thinking

this is a joke. Like it can't be. There's no way. Like there's no protection. There's no way. And then sure enough, a flying creature encounter swoops down on us. And I think just one of the most amazing endings of an episode we've had lately. I mean, the highs and the lows because when Kate is like, I think it's Kate, it's like

put Hubert on that list of one, two, three, it's Kate, it's like put Hubert on that list of one, two, three, four, five, it's like, all right, and six, and then you roll the natural six, gonna attack Hubert, wham, hits him, and then you're like, and now you have to roll an athletics check. This is a free action? It's an athletics check against Hubert's four to two DC.

It is a free action that I can do. If you hit? If I hit, yeah, on a hit, I can do this as a free action that I can do. If you hit. If I hit, yeah. On a hit, I can do this as a free action. That's the trigger. And then you roll a natural 20. And that results in Hubert being flung off the thing. I mean, it's just I've never wanted to fudge dice.

Then go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Sick not, Hubert, because I just wasn't going to really include him until Kate said that. And then I rolled a and then nat 20 on that because it's not a given that I will just throw someone off. So it's pretty amazing and to see you guys go to go through that emotion swing of like yeah. That was too much. That was too much. Ruin him on space where he would never be found by other life. Here's my emotional journey since then, since that recording. I have been, I felt guilty for a little bit there because I definitely was vocal,

on Cannon Fodder included, about how desperately I wanted Hubert to die. Then it happened and I was like, ah, maybe like I overdid it a little bit. And so I felt guilt. And then I came around to like, there's, there's no way Troy lets this happen. Like, there's no way he's going to die. He will hit the canopy, fall through several layers of soft palms or something, land on a cushion of, cushion of fallen leaves. Of lichen, yeah.

And then, of lichen, exactly. And then we're gonna find him later in this adventure. He's just gonna show up anyway. That's my prediction. What I imagine is he's gonna bounce conveniently his way down, but disappear, and then will come to the court of the king, and then sitting beside him in a place of honor

will be Hubert Hedge. No, that's why I picture him as like C. Threepio. The next time we see him, he's like the god of like this tribe of jungle apes or something. That's amazing. Yeah, so I think we're all in the same headspace here, but we'll have to see how it goes. Other than that though, there is this, you know, this TPK fear which just like lies in front of you. Because like once again, falling damage, it's a killer. I don't really understand the encounter design that much, but we'll see what happens. I've been trying to work out in my head if I could use the mirror of Barnes's mirror

ability to like, he falls like every round I fall, I then go up 15 more feet and then fall and like, I can slowly kind of like work my way down to eventually teleport to the ground. You just like fall 50, yeah, do you have the same momentum when you reappear? Yeah, exactly, but if I go back up and then try to like swim up, I don't know. That's like the last like Futurama episode

before the new Hualu episodes was something like that, like Frye, he falls off a building, and he has a device that can send him back like 15 seconds through time, but that's a 15 second cool down. And so to save his life, he has to keep going back up to just after he fell. And so he's caught in this loop for eternity

where he just like keeps the exact same thing. All right, let's get into a little We Are Stupid before we do some Listener Mail. Ladies and gentlemen, Nick Lowe. Awesome having some skid drops on this FOD. We are, no major We Are Stupid here, except one thing that kind of goes back an episode. I think we talked about this last week, but the creatures poison that you started the episode with, you just missed a line in the Stap Locker or whatever.

And it said that that poison is counteracted by any magical healing, which we didn't know at the time. So we were going through all the poison stuff. And I mean, I don't regret it for a second. I don't regret it for a second. No, no, I'm so glad we didn't know. Yeah, me too. I'm so glad we didn't know.

I mean, is this, maybe this is just like convenient thinking, but like, I always feel like when I'm running monsters, if I miss a thing like that, I'm like, well, my monster doesn't have that. No, I mean, yeah, totally. That's how I think. They're not all identical. Yeah, it's like, because it's. I'm like, well, my monster doesn't have that. No, I mean, yeah, totally. That's how I think. They're not all identical.

Yeah, because it's silly to be like, oh, well, none of that happened. You can't go back and rewrite history. But I would like to catch that beforehand. But if I don't, it's like, well, my monster doesn't have that. Yeah, it's fine. I mean, I'll take that scene any day of the week over him just being fine.

Like the fact that we're all around him, like, doing CPR, shoving potions. It was a great bonding moment though, because he's the new guy, and he put himself bravely out there in front of one of these things, went down, and you're all trying to save his life. And so it attaches him to you, it attaches you to him, it was cool.

I think that's one of the bigger things that I try to think about in my games, is when you make a mistake as a GM or as a player, a rule mistake or you misread something and time has passed already, that rule does not counteract the reality. The reality wins. It wins out all the time. So like that's just what happened. The fact that it happened by mistake. Do you know how many things happen in life by mistake? How many inventions occur by pure accident? Like these things happen by accident, but they're real and they are

important and you should not just erase them. Absolutely. And they totally have value. Mistakes happen for a reason. But if I had died, would you feel the same way? Yes. If we didn't catch it at the time, I'd feel bad. I feel terrible, but like it's an honest mistake, right? Like if it's, if it's it's, I don't know. What if I had died and then Troy was like reading back, people's like, oh, did you heal him magically? Like then we probably would have read. Probably just because it's a character death.

I don't like asterisk thinking, because it's such a slippery slope when you start throwing in asterisks. I remember like, it's all my years of doing theater, they would say like, if you mess up on stage, if you mess up a line or you miss a curie, we said that, I was always taught like, that's a gift. When that happens, that's a gift.

It's an opportunity to be like, all right, well, I'm living in the moment now. What am I gonna do with this? And so that's what I think whenever we make mistakes, I know some people, the purists don't enjoy that part of the game, but I think of it as a gift. Like, obviously it would suck if you died from that. And then you feel like, come on, can we retcon it?

But it's like complaining about the tuck rule game for Tom Brady. Right, right. It doesn't do anything. It's like, it doesn't, the game was over, the Patriots won and they went on to win 14 Super Bowls. It's just like, okay, maybe they should have said something different at the time, but they didn't and that's what happened. Yeah, it's an opportunity to do something new and learn at the same time. Anyway, I felt like it was Professor Eric's duty, I'm sure he did

as well, to point out that this was incorrect by the book, but yeah, we're kind of fine with how it all played out. He said as a tip, because of the argument we had with Sydney, which is just one of my favorite, we have had plenty of arguments with Sydney, this takes the cake for me lately, it's one of my absolute favorite where she's like, I want to use the healing potion. I'm like, that won't do anything, don't worry about it. And then we realized, wait a minute, every hit point matters because he could not go because he's wounded. So like, we got to keep them up above zero. So yeah, let's use healing potion. Use healing potion. Then we read it. And the bonus is plus one plus one. Is it one D six plus one? Then Troy

reads and he's like, all right, it says it's the the it gives you a plus one to saves fortitude saves against poison. Well, holy shit, amazing. Well, you know, that's just phenomenal. And then she rolls a d6. One. Oh, God, that potion sucked. And I rolled minimum healing on my heal spell. So you got a total of 10 points of healing out of my heal and and the potion. So now we're like, he still could go down and could still die anyway, even after using that you realize that that Buggles has a potion, an antidote. This gives a plus four bonus. Sydney's like, well, if that's a plus four bonus, you shouldn't use my potion. Right. And then Mike's like, we just used your potion. She's like, I never would have used my potion

if we knew that that didn't stack. So let's rewind a second. When she says that, I was like, I kind of felt bad. I'm like, yeah, if she knew about that. I'm like, all right. And you're like, no, you're not allowed to do that. I'm like, well, my hands are a little tipped for tide. But then she's like, no, the only reason I did it is because of the plus one. In that moment, I was like, she's a liar. And the way she said it with such caution. She knew what she was doing.

But in her face, I was like, oh my god, she's probably lied to all of us several times. If you watch that back, the way she's like, no, the us several times. We would know. Because she had no, like, if you watch that back, the way she's like, no, the only reason I did it was because, I'm like, well, a second ago, you had no idea what that plus one was. And the confidence with which she lied, I was like, I will never trust anything she said. She did, and then she was just like,

well, I read and I did my homework. I did good. Like, and she's so good at it. I lied well. I lied well. What, are you to complain to me for that? Anyway, that was so goddamn funny. That was so funny. So then it came up and I was just like, well, that's something else we needed. And so it's like, well, we could use this. Like, well, just use the potion.

Yeah. Yeah. She was like, you know, and I was like, all right, fine, fine, fine. Take it back. Yeah. Can you give him that potion? And then we sort of all saw how ridiculous it would be to undo that push yeah I'll do it if I just do yeah roll it again basically yeah using a bottle cap on a potion anyway that was so goddamn funny and professor Eric wanted to point out and this is good this just a tip for maybe newer players out there, like us. When you're interpreting any items, there's a lot of items out here, out there, that have minor, lesser, moderate, greater, whatever down the line.

For any item that has that, the best thing to do is immediately just go to the top group discussion of the item first before you read what the other ones do, because those are very abbreviated and don't give you details. Whereas the top one, as Professor Eric points it out here, says, upon drinking this elixir, you gain illicit number of hit points and gain an item bonus to saving throws against diseases and poisons for 10 minutes. It says that at the top, but it doesn't say what the bonus is. Then you look at the specific situation. So whenever I have to prep it like an alchemist, and this has happened in strange aeons, the deros that you fought, there was some dero alchemists, I've got to make a cheat sheet

for myself of all the different lesser alchemist fires, moderate, you know, blah, blah, blahs. And so I've got to look and each one will tell you like, and you probably know this even better than I do, like a moderate alchemist fire is like X amount of damage plus this and then they're burning two or whatever But at the top it tells you that like all alchemist fires do X amount of damage But that's not in each individual thing So I come across this all the time when I'm like prepping bombs and shit for my enemies Yeah, the thing that always kills me in the moment like not in the moment

I get it but the the order of lesser to minor, like what's the lowest? In the moment, I'm like in the white heat of trying to do the encounter, I'm like, what's the lowest one? What's the latter? It's like trying to order a latte at Starbucks while you're being shot at.

Yeah. Small. Oh, god. Oh, god. Shoot me. Shoot me. Shoot me. With sword.

Professor Irocalto wants to point out there's been a lot of commenting from the Naish about how this feels in general like a low loot campaign. And he wanted to point out that he believes that we have missed a lot of loot. Is that true? Yeah. Really? He's like, I wouldn't think too much about the writing of the campaign. He's like, they're missing stuff. that we have missed a lot of loot. Is that true? Yeah. Really. He's like, I wouldn't think too much about the writing of the campaign.

He's like, they're missing stuff, including things he says that have been obviously telegraphed by Troy that players completely miss. So that's FYI. Keep at your heads, keep your eyes. You haven't missed a ton, but I mean, I do, I throw it out there. I'm like, well, I didn't.

Yeah, you are not trying to like, he's like Troy's basically telling you this stuff to look for this stuff. A time's gonna come when I can tell you one specifically and be like, how the fuck did we miss that? That'll be great. We just went through, we were a little bit ahead, but we just recorded, we went through loot we had and see just to see what the value of everything was.

It wasn't as terrible as it felt. Yeah, we lost a bunch with all the stuff with Tulitha getting washed away. That's brutal. Because she had some stuff on there that would have been- Brutal and really cool. No offense, but just extremely rare to have a PC death where you cannot recover the body or anything they had, narratively. Yeah.

That does not happen very often. If they have a legendary artifact, then you gotta go back. Yeah. Or you don't. Well, we said it. What if it was the key and she had the key? Yeah. You know, like you gotta go back.

Oh yeah. I wish I could say I was thinking about that when I saved Zephyr's life, but maybe I just saved her out of the goodness of my life. Save the key! Squack! You cannot die! That's one of the best possible loot drops you can have

is a dead PC. What? Yes. That's a good one. That's a good one. That's a good one. Let's get into a little listener mail before we call it a day. It's time for Listener Mail. You gotta get your brain on the phone in time

when Listener Mail. You gotta cue that fuck-deeded. Andres from Copenhagen. Andres. Copenhagen. Is that Denmark? That's Denmark. Denmark writes in with a very nice long message. The question at the end had to do with about catching up on everything and then listening

to the last week's FOD. It seems from the way of hard you talk about it on the FOD that you guys are always playing APs. What are the reasons that you guys always play APs? Is it to cut down on prep time or is it to cut down on prep time? Is there more time to run a business? Is it because of your relationship with Paizo? Is there any other reason why you tend to go this way instead of homebrews as the way

you run shows on the network? We've answered this before, but not in a long time. Yeah. I mean, we experimented with some short form content in the form of disorganized play because that sort of mimicked what we were doing back in the before times when the business was still like one or two podcasts and we were still playing like a game night where Skid would run us through some pathfinder societies and areas or you and I would run Matthew, I think we're in one.

And at the end of the day, we just found that you get more legs out of a longer story. Now when we decided to do Gatewalkers, we knew out the gate, we didn't want to do another six book AP for several reasons. One of which though being that we felt like somewhere between 100 and 200 episodes was going to be better than 300 something for what we're trying to build right now over the next five, 10 years. But at the end of the day, we just think that people attach themselves to the story and the characters more when it's a longer story.

I mean, that's the main reason that I turned the tour into an AP because I just felt in those early little live shows that we did, they were great. But the stakes weren't as high. If everybody died at the end, it's like, OK, cool. They died. Well, I think the spirit of the question is more why APs and not homebrew. Why APs and not homebrew?

That's, I think, the spirit of the question is, why do you run pre-written stuff so much? We always have. I just feel like- We just haven't been much of a home brew crew. The reason I think is like, there are professionals that do this and they do it really well.

It's not to say that that's not something we could do, but like, let's play to our strengths. Let's play to our skillsets. There are pros that are game developers and game writers. Let's let them do that work until we can hire staff to do that. And we do our work of running and being entertainers. for me it was just seemed like a better option but we all of us in you know put so much homebrew I mean traveler it's probably

the first pure homebrew show on the network long form series long form home brew series on the network so you know we're not we're not afraid to jump into that territory and obviously we have a professional writer doing that at the helm but we all- I've homebrewed Alien, all the Alien stuff I've run is homebrewed, but that, you know, large, I would run a pre-written if they had them in that way.

Like, their pre-written scenarios have pre-generated characters and existing plot lines that you play in. I'm sure it's very fun, but that is not our style. We love making our characters. I'm happy to put them into an adventure written by someone else where we bring the protagonists, but failing that, I'll just homebrew so that we can play our own characters. You know, I also feel like the we've had, I've talked to a lot of people on, when we're out on tour that,

that our GMs usually end like listening to our us run through an adventure. Yeah. And then even if they're ahead of us or they're behind, or they want, they're like, oh, I was thinking about running Strange Eye Islands, but then they listened to us do it. So either way, it can be another resource for that kind of. And then I think, then I've talked to people who were players.

They're like, oh, I played Rise of the River Lords, and I'm enjoying listening to you on Legacy because you're doing something completely different. Or you fell for that trap that we avoided. Or it's just kind of a fun alternate history. I think that's a fun other layer for an audience. I know you've been frustrated by it at times though because you know I wish we had homebrews so that people didn't couldn't like kind of know what's coming or right on the board like oh they don't do it that way blah we shouldn't

do it that way blah blah blah like the thing with the spell and the counteracting poison. It's like there's there's almost like a double check on you out there because you're running something pre-written. Yeah, that's one of the main reasons why I wanted to move away from it for the flagship show, just because I don't. I want people to be fully surprised. I don't mind so much being like, oh, that's not right. It's more of like the surprise.

The fact that anyone can just read all of Gatewalkers right now is kind of a bummer to me. You can't do that with traditional media that isn't based on a pre-written work. So yeah, I don't know how much longer I'll tread in that territory. But it also plays to like Paizo's strengths. They've always been great at writing these things. Even before Pathfinder came along, and especially contrasted with Dungeons and Dragons, which

doesn't have a great reputation for like some of these longer form campaigns You know in modern the you know recently They've always been graded like this is a thing that they're that they're really good at and so it's nice to be able to take Advantage of that. Yeah, you know, did you see the thing that D&D just released or is about to release? It's called something the blah blah blah staircase or something. It's a rerelease of a bunch of original D&D adventures converted to 5e. Yes. The one that really jumped out at me was Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.

Oh, no way. Yeah, and they did this a while back with some other ones. Like I know they've updated the- Strong. Yeah, I know they did. What's the temple we did? Tomb of Horrors they've done. But Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is gonna be like,

it just came out, It's brand new. And then a couple other ones that I wasn't as familiar with. Okay. Well, I definitely, we were talking to, I think that that was also, I mean, look, there has a lot of nostalgia for us, but I've also heard a lot of grumbling from that in the community that the people that are into D&D feel like they're just rehashing old stuff. Like can't you write new stuff? I mean, it feels like Paizo is constantly generating original content that is mind-blowingly detailed and long.

And it contributes to the greater story of the world. Yeah. Of their world. If that's something you're into, you can dip into, oh, there's all of this lore. And if you're not, you can just run your RPG. And I love those old modules, but the style of adventures, written adventures,

has changed a lot since the 80s when those came out. It really was just sort of like encounter, encounter, encounter, encounter. And a lot of times like the, the, even the adventure itself didn't form, feel like it felt formed a cohesive whole. So like very little narration, like very little sort of, you know, pros in it or whatever. Is it our lighting designer at Kansas City was running like six games he told us after the show. And one of them was cursor straw. And we mentioned that we like, oh yeah.

I was like, oh, and he was like, he was like, you'd be surprised you wouldn't feel as exciting to you as you'd think, right? Cause it feels so old fashioned now. Right. He's like, there's a lot of, I think he was like, there's a lot of fun to it. Austin, it was one of the shows.

I remember we were like waiting for our hoovers and And we were chatting them up. Yeah. it was one of the shows. Yeah, I remember. We were like waiting for our Ubers. And we were chatting them up. Yeah, it was cool. Yeah, it's cool what you say, Skid. I think you hit the nail on the head there. And Troy, you said earlier, there are professional writers that do this. We love the performance aspect and just rolling dice

playing the game. So why don't we let them focus on that? We'll focus on this. It's also a good point, Skid, as you added to that. Is that, I don't know if many people know this, but this is the way I was introduced to it, and this is the way I've seen it develop over the years, is that Paizo's strength is the APs and the world building.

You know, like, they based so much of their original system off of the OGL, and they just kind of, like, had that going for a while. So, yes, there were tons of game design elements, but really so much of their focus was on the story. That's what drew me to it initially. Yeah. Was that, it was just like, I heard that there was that the like Rise of the Rune Lords.

It's just like, this is incredible. And that was what drew me to Pathfinder at all, like the beginning. I remember listening to Eric Moan talk about the APs when they, because they weren't in every issue of the magazine back before they were before Pathfinder. And he like somebody wrote in and was like, I only buy the issues of the magazine that have APs. And he was like, well, they'll just put an AP in every issue. And it just began to grow out from there. And I was... It's so cool. So cool. Well, that's going to wrap it up for us this week, guys. Thank you so much to Matthew and Skid for hanging out in Stood for a little while, chilling with us. That's awesome. We've got what coming up?

We've got, oh my god, today. I'm streaming again. We're doing minis again today, Wednesday. We're doing minis at 2 o'clock Eastern. So if you happen to be listening to this early in the day, at 2 o'clock Eastern, Skid and Matthew and I, Troy might stop by. Well, Troy by we're gonna we're gonna make some more minutes try to finish it out we've only got a few left and some GCN iconic

characters we're gonna try to make so that would be really really awesome if you guys can make that St. Paul show Friday night on YouTube St. Paul show Friday night on YouTube glass cannon podcast continues on Thursday night on YouTube at 8 o'clock Eastern oh Oh, it's a good one too. Oh my god, it's so good! So anyway, fun stuff coming. Take it easy everybody, have a good one and we'll see you next time. Bye!

Sydney's mic smells like cheese. 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 Naish todayationationationationation.com