The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 6/14/23

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

Side Quest Side Sesh is BACK!? Troy and Joe discuss the upcoming release of the long-awaited Season 2 of Side Quest Side Sesh. Why now? What should you expect? It's all here on this week's Fod! Plus, exciting news about release dates for Haunted City S2 and Get in the Trunk S5, a completely unexpected Labs Experiment, and praise (?) from Professor Eric! For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com and for exclusive content and benefits, subscribe today at patreon.com/glasscannon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At Enterprise, we know you're constantly on the move. Getting this. Thanks, Mom. Fixing that. You reach a destination. And then it's on to the next. And when life is moving at the speed of, well, life, Enterprise is right there with you,

around the corner and around the globe. We'll keep you moving forward. Enterprise, for lives and drive. Whether you want adventure or predictability, Super All-Wheel Control from Mitsubishi lets you drive like you want. It's like all-wheel drive, but smarter. Using real-time data, it integrates all the information and sends instructions to each wheel all the time.

It multitasks to deliver the perfect drive, smooth handling and control, exceptional comfort and superior traction. Super all-wheel control from Mitsubishi. It's the real definition of control. Visit Mitsubishi-Motors.ca to learn more. 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, friends and family? It is Cannon Fodder! I got all screwed up. I'm like looking at my notes and I fouled it up.

It is Wednesday, June 14th, 2023. It's a little show we call Cannon Fodder and I'm a human being named Joe O'Brien. Yep. And I'm Troy Applesauce LaValle. Oh, slippery as applesauce. What is applesauce? Slippery as applesauce. Would you get some on yourself this morning?

Do you not remember applesauce? Oh, wait. Applesauce! Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Applesauce oh wait oh yeah oh yeah oh there's gonna be so many inside jokes that i don't remember because i have a terrible terrible memory but what troy is talking about is the thrilling return out of nowhere of side quest side sesh we're gonna talk side quest side sesh today season two we're gonna talk about uh hyping some release dates for Haunted City and getting the trunk.

We got some fun labs coming up. We got some exciting news about 2E. I mean, well, not about 2E, but about us playing 2E. I mean, this is just, this is fun stuff today. A loaded episode that I think is going to be a little front heavy, to be honest, because, man, SideQuest Side Sesh returns tomorrow night on Twitch. And it's just like last week we didn't mention it on the FOD because we were keeping it under wraps. No, that's not true. It's because last week we didn't know we were going to be doing SideQuest Side Sesh this week.

It's wild. And what I love about it is it is exactly how the first side quest side yep so troy what is this how did this come to be well we've known for a while uh that there was going to be a gap between uh you know where i wanted to stop doing strange aeons and twitch and the release of gatewalkers and as uh you know as as things have changed and that gap has become slightly larger, we knew there was going to have to be some sort of content there because we like to produce content every week. And it's very important, especially for our flagship feed, to ensure that there's always a drop every week.

But we don't just put out anything. We want it to be good quality content. And so now that we're getting a better handle on when the release date for the new GCP is, we were like, okay, so we're looking at X amount of weeks here. What do we do? What do we do? What do we do? And you and I just kind of ignored the conversation because we didn't want to think about it. We'd start talking about it at the end of meetings. We're like, yeah, we got to talk about that. And then I text back and forth with you, which means I send a text and then three days later, Joe responds. But we were just kind of cycling through ideas that were not great ideas.

They were ideas that would be easiest for us. They were ideas that would allow us to still release Gatewalkers in a reasonable amount of time. Like when you keep adding things to the plate, it takes away from other stuff. Don't say that. People are going to believe you when you say that. I am absolutely right. It's just not the truth. They are mutually exclusive.

And so it was always circling around my brain. Can we do this? Can I do this? Can I fucking run something else right now? And it comes, it turns out that I can't. I was like, we gotta do it. We gotta bring back SideQuest, SideSesh. I think it's a perfect time to do it. The summer is heating up.

Why not bring back a show that is all about what we do best, which is just having fun. So what is the, what we do best, which is just having fun. So what is SideQuest SideSesh Season 2? Is that what we're calling it? Are we calling it Season 2? Yeah, I think we'll call it Season 2. If you listened to all 37 episodes of the previous SideQuest SideSesh, you'd know that we did.

Spoiler alert, don't listen the next couple of minutes. We did three Pathfinder first edition modules. We did Feast of Ravenmoor, and then we did the Midnight Mirror, and then we did Carrion Hill, I believe. I can't believe I remembered those. I didn't even remember it was three until this moment. I thought it was two. It was three modules, and they haven't really released modules like that for 2E of that size. They have longer ones that take you from first to fourth level,

and then they have one-shots that are... I don't know why they call them one-shots. They take nine and a half hours to play. But they don't really have anything equivalent. Anyways, the point is, if you listen to SideQuest SideSesh, you know that it ended pretty fucking crazy. And I don't want to spoil that. Go back and listen. I still think it's some of the best stuff we've ever done. It's certainly a time capsule for not only a time in our lives, but a time in the world with the pandemic. in the world with the pandemic. But I want to kind of,

I don't want to give away too much because I want people to listen, but it's going to pick up after the events of the finale at some point. So there's going to be connections. Oh yeah. I want to ask you questions. Well, go ahead, ask me. Maybe I can't tell you.

Is Skid playing Carzor? I can't tell you that. What's the point in even asking that what's the point in even asking what's the point even asking i will say there's there's going to be some really fun connective tissue i would say for people that have never listened to side quest side sesh you would be totally fine just listening to this like like watching this because it is years and years have passed and stuff like that a lot of the characters are not going to be the same however that question is skid gonna play carazor is such a loaded question because it's

a very complicated situation which is it's amazing over 37 episodes if you listen back to it you'll see why that question it carries a lot of weight because it really is like i have no idea i don't even like have a suspicion like it could completely be one way or another. It's right down the middle there, 50-50. So anyway. Yeah. And just, you know, once we settled on this, and I felt good about it, then it was like the creative wheel started turning. And I just feel like reinvigorated by the entire process. Because I'm like, oh my God, how cool is it? Like, imagine you finish something, and then years later, a season two comes out. We'd always talked about doing it, but had never really thought about it.

And I had a very cool idea of what that would look like, but it wasn't something that was a priority for us. But now that we're playing again, I'm able to kind of tap back into that. And I just love that story that we told. So I'm excited to get back into it in a very, very different way. And Jared Logan's going to be joining us for this round as well, which is awesome. It is. It's awesome. I'm very excited to have Jared be a part of it. Yeah, we weren't, we were trying to figure out, you know, how to put this together very, very quickly, because this idea literally came through in the weekend, over weekend we kind of put this thing together and we needed somebody that was going to be available immediately like during the day you know to record which is

that's a tough ask with our uh cast with our normal cast because not everybody does this full time so like it's uh that can be a little bit of a tough thing but jared what happened to be available i didn't know if it would work and he was and so we were just like, it's, that can be a little bit of a tough thing. But Jared happened to be available. I didn't know if it would work. And he was and so we were just like, yes, let's just go and and start playing. So how long is it going to last exactly? What is the exact number of weeks? I'm just asking what the audience is asking. I'm not going to say that I'm going to say it's gonna be the show of the summer. And i will say that it is pathfinder second edition uh i will say you know it's funny yesterday i saw so many comments or two days ago when we dropped this uh is there gonna be a podcast version like you mean like every single one of our shows that

we've ever done yes there's gonna be a podcast version except one time with labs and everyone is so paranoid now i hope it's gonna be twitch exclusive i'm like are you kidding me we've done one fucking experimental show that's been twitch exclusive and now first coach this is twitch exclusive i've done dude every for eight years 98.5 i mean that that number is low of our content. Has that a video and audio component? Yes. And you just mentioned something that I don't know if you had already put it together or not, but the release of SideQuest SideSense Season 2 is the eighth birthday of the Glass Cannon Network. You know what?

I knew that day was coming up, and we had gone through a million different things that we were going to do to celebrate that. I forgot that that's going to be airing. I thought of it this morning. So I was like, you know, when we do that show, we got to mention like, happy birthday, Glass Cannon. We're celebrating it by doing SideQuest, SideSesh. Honestly, I couldn't think of a better way right now because, man, do we have fun doing that. It's just so much fun. Because, you know, it just has a different tone. Yeah. And going in, it's like there's like less weight on your shoulders because the tone is so relaxed and so much fun. So very much looking forward to it. And I want to get back to that.

You know, sometimes, and we've said this a lot, sometimes we get in the grind and it drags us down. It takes away our energy. And that's why these live shows that we do on tour, it kind of revitalizes us because you get that other element of the audience and you feel so good. But it's going to be nice to get back to this, get this in our body because with recording beginning soon for the new Glass Cannon podcast, I want to make sure that everybody's having fun. I don't want it to have necessarily the silly tone of Strange Aeons and SideQuest SideSesh. I want it to have the gravitas that we're known for as well as like dick jokes. But like, it's going to be good to kind of

take our foot off the gas pedal a little bit and just get back to doing what we did long before we had a podcast, which is just like playing games for fun. If you call Atticus Grimm silly again, I'm going to end this call and immediately stop the episode. He's the only non-silly character on the show. Why didn't anybody make anything not silly?

No, you just, you take it very seriously. It's good. That's what we need that. We need that. But we also- I love taking it seriously. I'm never going to do a neck mouth. We also need Harrison Evel. I think we all need Harrison.

Dude, I forgot how fucking funny that Asheville show was. I was watching. Yeah. I haven't listened back to it yet, but I remember it being really, really funny. I got to listen back to that.

That was, that was good stuff. I actually don't listen back to the live shows too often because they don't, they don't get any real touch-ups. You know what I mean? They're just live, live. And so you don't really kind of edit those.

And so it's kind of – they go. But, yeah, I got to listen back to that one. And watch the video. Like watch when you guys celebrate after the – Oh, that was amazing. After the second half goes through. Well, we'll talk about that and, well, really the roll into Episode 79 in a second here. But I want to talk about a few more things,

one of which is Haunted City season two and Get in the Trunk season five. Last week, we said we'd be honing in on some release dates. Do you have release dates in mind? Is there, behind the scenes, are there release dates? Yes, there are release dates for right now, for everything else we're going to do in 2023. Well, that's nonsense. There are. I shared that calendar with you the other day. So were there in January and they all changed.

They have changed. But now we're at the point of no return. We've signed several different deals in the past week and we've got to lock these things in. So, yes, I know the dates. Any further questions? And we've got to lock these things in. So, yes, I know the dates. Any further questions?

We spoke yesterday, you and I, of announcing these dates as part of the live stream for SideQuest SideSesh. Is that going to happen? I would say you should watch SideQuest SideSesh tomorrow night. Is that going to happen? I would say you should watch SideQuest Sidesesh tomorrow night. And if you miss it, then you better tune into the Discord. Because thankfully, Reddit has burned to the ground. But the Discord is – What happened to Reddit? I don't know.

I actually don't know about this. Nerds get mad about something. It's like the most – it sounds like the most tech – like weird tech explanation for it shutting down, but something to do with like third-party applications no longer being allowed. I've seen the letters API thrown around a lot. API is a – those three letters are thrown around a lot. People love throwing that around. Third-party and the letters API. I know they go together, but I don't know how – there are tech people listening to this that are like, I hate these two for how dumb they are as people.

People like using API just like they like making fun of NTFs. NTFs? How many NFTs do you own, Joe? Have I invested in you mean? Yeah. Have you invested in at least a dozen NFTs? If I had to, I mean, geez, top of my head, this wasn't on our rundown, so I can't. Top of my head, I'd say zero.

NTFs and PAIs, I don't have time for any of that. Get your KPI in my API. But yeah, watch Psycho Side Sesh. There should be an announcement for both the release date of Haunted City Season 2 and Get in the Trunk Season 5. Season 5 of Get in the Trunk is heating up behind the scenes. Oh, man. Yeah, for real. We recorded something after last Cannon Fodder last week.

Oh, man. Yeah, for real. We recorded something after last Cannon Fodder last week. We recorded something between that episode and this episode of the Fod that shit got crazy. My God, we got so much going on. I forgot about our conversation after that recording, too. Get ready. It's going to be a wild summer, Nash.

It is. It's going to be a wild, wild summer. Speaking of which, let's talk about Labs this week. So last week was Alien Part 3. It was absolutely wonderful. Huge, huge, huge thank you, as always, to Alicia Marie and Mary Lou for joining us. Skid and Matthew crushed it. We had an amazing time. I just I love that game. And I like I love our game in that in that game. I love that story. It was really, really fun. But we knew that we couldn't jump right back into it June 15th tomorrow. And so we were kind of up in the air. And then similar to side quest side sesh, something came out of the woodwork yesterday. And we were like, let's just do it. Tell the people what we're doing for a labs experiment tomorrow. Well, this also goes back to the weekend because we're getting to the point now where I'm like, I don't think we can do labs anymore. We just got too much going on. And while that's a nice release, it actually is a lot of planning and coordination. And so I went into the weekend being like, fuck, I don't think we're going to do labs for the rest of the month. We'll revisit it. Well, we asked some people their availability on the 15th and the 22nd to do games,

and we just got a lot of no's, which is like, it's the summer. I mean, it's the summer. People are busy. Yeah, I was like, well, maybe we'll look at this in the fall or after Gen Con because I can't really think about this too much. But then I saw an ad on Facebook, and I didn't read it all the way through. You didn't read to the last line of the spell? I didn't read to the last line of the spell that made it look like Frosthaven was coming to Steam.

And so I emailed and texted you and Mick D. I was like, yo, let's play Frosthaven for these next two weeks on Labs. And then I didn't get any response. And then finally I got a response. And then I started to look into it more. And it looks like Frosth just started like shipping from the kickstarter and there's a steam like companion digital companion to help you manage the game digitally but it's not like the digital version of gloomhaven that we play you know i used that when i played real gloomhaven

like right before the pandemic we used the digital tool set i had a monitor set up by the table and it just it made everything so much faster and easier to play i don't think there's any other way to play um but i was kind of bummed about that and then i was like well fuck it why don't we just play gloomhaven like we love playing gloomhaven uh it's easy for us to do and we it's not going to take a lot of uh effort time. And then throughout the meeting yesterday, Diablo 4 came up and we were like, should we just fucking play Diablo 4?

So this could be me, you, McD and Rob Kirkovich playing Diablo 4. Possibly. There's a chance we can't get this fucking figured out because I guess you have to play through the prologue in order to unlock crossplayplay or like multi-play. And it takes like three or four hours.

So tune into Labs and find out. Dude, I have no idea how long it takes. I think people are – I guarantee you that if you say it takes three or four hours to complete the prologue, there are going to be people screaming at you like, you're an idiot. It takes 30 minutes to complete the prologue. But like I just don't really understand those people and how they play you know they just play on another level that i think we play also there's just the simple fact and this is probably going to sound complainy but it's not we don't even have any time to like run the prologue of Diablo this week. Yeah. Like day and night recordings every day this week for me. Every single day this week.

Day recordings all day, night recordings all night. So I'm just like, when am I even going to play this? But I did start last night late and I got an hour in and I was like, oh, this prologue is not even close to over. I don't think. So we'll see. Maybe I'm just misreading it or whatever, but I haven't seen any indication

of being able to multiplayer yet or anything. But so far, the game looks amazing. I mean, it looks unbelievable. Dude, so we have to talk about classes because if you're going to play the prologue with that class, that's the class you have to be. I know. That's why I didn't want to get too far into it

because I want to talk to you guys. We got to discuss this. We got to get a chat going because if we're going to start prologuing, I know Rob said he made a druid based on Cyndi Lauper, and I don't want him to change that. So I guess he's the druid. I guess he's the druid.

But we should get a thread going. But yeah, tune in to the labs. You never know what you're going to get. Let's talk about this week's episode of Strange Aeons. Episode 79, which by the way. You know why you're all nah? Because we crushed you. We crushed your boss fight.

I don't want to say the first time. Because it's been ramping up for a few weeks. For a few weeks. It has really started to feel. Like something's clicking. We are getting better at this. Are we getting better at this what are we looking at with this moon beast can you talk about the moon beast yeah i can talk about like um this

was the moon beast did the moon beast from a stat block perspective i forget his name already uh uh yath cap no uh arc nar this one was right so did arc nar have the same stat block as Yathkev? Essentially, yes. You know, because he had spent some time with the Umbral Dragon, Orsifelius, I sort of envisioned him having access to some other magics that Yathkev did not have. That just made sense to me story-wise. but those did not come out in the encounter. It came out in the sort of lead-up to the encounter. And can I say, no one

was happier than I was that you guys succeeded, because it felt like a well-oiled machine, and I've also felt, for the past year, I've been having to keep my foot off the gas pedal, which is crazy when you think how close you guys have been to death in every single encounter. I just felt like maybe it's a problem

with the translation. Maybe it's a problem with us learning the system. But I felt like I couldn't play like myself for the past year. But I definitely threw everything at you, and you guys still beat him with ease. And so that makes me feel a lot more confident about the future because there's obviously going to be a big switch once we move to book four. It's a much whole different ballgame. But I like the fact that I didn't feel like I had to ease up. I could just lay it on you guys, and you were playing really smart. I think part of that is on me for sure. I think that I have been too, I think I've spent a little bit too much time now

focusing on, I think I talked about this in Fodder a week or two ago, but I've just spent too much time focusing on preparing supportive and distracting spells, illusion spells and debuff spells that are from my way of thinking the way that I like to play a wizard and the way that I would love to play Atticus. But at the end of the day, it's just not as practical as just prepping multiple copies of high damage spells in all

of your slots and then just like blasting. And so that's what I did over the last few weeks. I've just prepared all damaging spells and I've put, I've unprepared all of my illusion spells and just put only the bonus. I get a free bonus one at every level. And so that's all I've been. Those are all illusion. Everything else is damaging spells. And I'm just sort of like preparing,

like I'm heightening magic missile, which I never really did before. You know what I mean? Heightening lightning bolt now that I can, you know, I wasn't like getting into those finer details. So I'm really glad that I think that's making a difference too, that I can spend my actions instead of being like, ooh, I tried this distracting thing. I can just like burn out some damage. So it's good to have that flexibility though. And it's also neat to know going into book four, when things change, maybe I can go back to spells that are interesting in a social encounter or you know spells that are

going to be helpful with uh solving a mystery or whatever for sure yeah uh love a wizard we get we get a good grade from professor eric uh this week he i mean that was a that was an intense combat that we iced in in like 80 minutes flat, maybe even less. It was like 75 minutes. And we... I was waiting for the list of things that we did wrong. Because it was like we must have done something wrong to make it this easy.

Professor Eric's like, no, not so much. The one thing that he says is that Aldo cast Guidance twice on himself in the encounter, which it's just like our version of a typo. Like Skid knows that rule. He has said that rule. I think I forgot that he had cast it already in that encounter, but he did cast it twice in the combat.

Professor Eric also points out a little cheat from old Troy LaValle. Oh, how dare he? Attack, attack, rend, attack. You know what? I think I caught it. I thought I caught it on stream that I said like, oh, fuck, rend is an action. And I don't have an action left to do it. But maybe the first time I did it, I didn't catch that.

Maybe you did attack, attack, rend, attack. Because I remember saying that aloud. I was like, oh, I can't rend because I moved to claw, claw. So the first time I did it, just uh i missed that but i caught it i don't need professor eric to tell me don't get defensive try uh he also said that you missed on that fourth action so it had no impact in the fight at all yeah uh but he said just something to look out for for sure that uh that rend is an action which is amazing it's like if you move attack attack that's a huge

difference. That is a huge advantage to the players. I think it's a cool part of the balance of the game. And if you're a player who knows you're going up a grade to creature with rend, you want to draw it away from you to know that it has to move and it can't rent. Yeah, that's a really good point and a good

thing to keep in mind. Overall, a good grade from Professor Eric. He says, it seems that fights are getting a lot more streamlined for y'all. And then this little backhanded compliment, which I love. You guys still take about double the time of what I'm used to. He's like, my encounters usually last about 30 minutes. He says, but you guys have much more in-character role play during combat than I'm used to. So that's probably about right.

He said, but I'm hearing a lot less second-guessing, rewinding, or rules confusion as before. And I think that you're getting a lot better. And I hope it's feeling better on the performer side too. So thank you, Eric. Appreciate the analysis there. And I think we's feeling better on the performer side, too. So thank you, Eric. Appreciate the analysis there. And I think we all feel that. I mean, even when we talked about Strange Aeons not being weekly anymore as we go into the summer, now it's going to get filled with psychotic side sips. But at the time, we just let everybody know Strange Aeons was just going to be on tour.

And I think Kate even said it in the episode. going to be on tour and i think kate even said it in the episode like the first thing that she says is like well i i'm finally just like getting in the zone with eris and with the combat and with like knowing what to do and now i'm going to forget it all again because we won't play for a month between every session um but hopefully that's not really the case but it's a it's a you could tell even that kate is just in the zone which is yeah for sure uh that's all i have for this week buddy did. Did you have anything else you wanted to throw out at the niche before we peace on out?

Wow, this is shorty today. I mean, originally when we thought about bringing Potter back, we were like, it's going to be like a 15, 30-minute show, tops. And they've always been an hour because we got a lot of mistakes and lots of stuff to talk about. What do I want to talk about? Well, I've alluded to this already, but holy shit, our LA and Seattle going to be fucking

shows to see live. Yeah, I think that's a really good, that's another reason that for, for those that are like wondering if you really like strange aeons, like why are we just not continuing to play strange aeons up until the release of gatewalkers? It's like, that's part of the reason is we got to a point where it's like, we wanted to, you got to stop when you have this perfect moment for a live show. And so these paying audiences can really have an amazing time. And if we continued, then those shows would just kind of go on Twitch. And then you'd be in a weird kind of time in the story when you're at a venue. So I think that, you know, we kind of had to stop and I'm glad

we're filling it with SideQuest SideSesh. But that's one of the reasons why is to make L.A. such an amazing show. Yeah, I mean, my God. L.A., Seattle, and Indianapolis are all going to be must-see shows.

It's going to be the end of the book, right? Isn't Indy probably going to be the end, like the climax of the entire book? Dude, if everything goes the way I planned, and it won't, they're going to be... And also, when I think about Boulder, St. Paul, and Asheville, the energy of those shows. I can't remember the last time we had a streak like that, where I felt good about every one. Even Asheville, I was kind of like, that was a good show. It

wasn't as good as the others. And then I watched it. I was like, I'm so in it. I can't see it. That show was fucking fire. I cannot wait for these three shows. So yeah, man, I was like, I'm just, I'm so in it. I can't see it. That show was fucking fire. I cannot wait for these three shows. So, yeah, man, I don't want to say too much, but the things you're about to, business is about to pick up. That's all I'll say. Good to know. Good to know.

Alright, thanks everybody. We appreciate you hanging out for this slightly shorter FOD this week, but we gotta get to work. We gotta make some new characters and start playing SideQuest, Side to get to work. We got to make some new characters and start playing SideQuest SideSesh right now. We got a game tomorrow. Yeah. Thanks, everybody, for watching.

A reminder, if you didn't hear earlier, of course you did, but SideQuest SideSesh returns tomorrow night. We're going live. Well, not live live, but it'll be prerecorded, but it's live on Twitch. Premiere 8 p.m. Eastern time

at twitch.tv slash The Glass Cannon, Thursday, June 15th, the eighth birthday of The Glass Cannon podcast. Exciting times, everybody. We hope to see you there. And otherwise, we'll have so much more to talk about next week. Haunted City release date's already announced. Get in the trunk already announced. SideQuest side session underway. Next week's spot's going to be juicy.

Yep. All right, we'll see you then, everybody. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Glass Cannon Network. For more podcasts and live streams,

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