The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 6/19/24

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

It's Retreat Week! Troy and Joe geek out about the upcoming, first-ever GCN Retreat in Naishville before digging into the awesome encounter design in this week's GCP ep, what they've come to learn about Stunning flying creatures, and Readied Actions as interrupts. In Listener Mail, how do you reward XP for encounters that are bypassed without spilling blood? Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/e07-EDJJ0rw 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. Yeah! What is going on everybody?

Welcome back to Cannon Fodder. It is Wednesday, June 19th, 2024, and I'm your old pal Joe O'Brien. Did I get you, Troy? Did I get you?? Did I get you? What are you laughing at that I didn't have a discord audience? I could see I could see that you couldn't hear the music and I was just like oh man He is so going to like be shocked. So I did a little extra on the screaming today. I'm texting Rob Kyrkiewicz How many people are gonna be at his tables for the first ever GCN retreat,

which is happening in just a couple days. Just a couple days. Oh, so exciting. It is, it's a big week. It's a show, multi-show week, first ever Glass Cannon Network retreat week. It is, yeah, I mean, just, just, it's nerve wracking, but also extremely, extremely excited. I mean, I feel like we're getting to go to a game convention and actually play games, as opposed to just do shows.

And that is really fun and exciting for me because it's been a really long time since we've been able to do that. You know? Yeah. I mean, is it going to be work? Sure. Probably a lot of it, but like I never want the attendees to see the work. I want it to feel like, you know, I've said this now a couple of times behind the scenes. It's like everyone that's coming, you know, me, you, Joe, Skid, Sydney, Kate. I don't even know if the people

listening, if they're not coming to the retreat, know that like Jared Logan and Rob Kirkvich are coming out. Like all these people, I want you to think like you're, you're hosting a party at your house, but you also get to enjoy the party because the best hosts find a way to like not just be constantly mixing drinks and like cooking on the grill. Like you enjoy the party as well. Otherwise what's the point of having the party? Yeah. But we never get to do that.

And that's all about prep. That is all about prep. So is it fully prepared Troy Troy, and ready to go without a hitch? It's pretty good. It's pretty good. I feel good. I'm focusing on the excitement about what we're about to do.

It's a little wild, too, because we're flying into Denver Day of Show, which we never do. We always fly in the day before, but cock-a-baby schemes continue to abound here at the Glass Cannon Network. We're flying in day of going straight to the show. We won't even be in town for 24 hours, flying out the next morning to Nashville early so that we can get there to be a part of this two-and-a-half-day retreat. Yeah, I mean, I feel pretty good. Last night, as I'm watching the Celtics win the NBA championship during the commercials, I'm reading the rules to the board games that I'm running just to have them in my head.

Then I go back, watch the Celtics dominate, back to the rule book. Dominate, rule book. Confetti, rule book. Yeah. So, I'm excited, man. I think it's going to go by really, really fast. We have a special channel on our subscription Discord that is just for the members of the retreat and I'm hearing them talk about, oh, we're going to hit the bull.

We're going to go to the honky-tonks. I'm like, where are you finding this time? I would love to do any of those things. I don't see it in the schedule because we're also doing a show in Nashville. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, most of these folks, they sign, you know, they sign up for a game. They're playing a game and you don't know what they might be doing in that next slot, you know, maybe that's somewhere they could take in a honky tonk or something.

We're just the ones that are like game, game, game, game, game. Uh, but that is, yes, it's going to be work, but it's also just going to be so fun to just play, uh, and, and, and try some new stuff. Like, uh, I'm really psyched about the plague betrayal at the house on the hill Which is just a classic Board game that everybody knows that there it is there there she is a classic one everybody knows that I have just never played So I've only played once and I was paid to do it and I was on camera with Matthew It was a fun. Oh, yeah, did that ever air?

Yeah, it did air. It aired on like Halloween or like the weeks leading up to Halloween last year. We recorded it at Gen Con and it was fun. I was like, man, this is a fun game. I wish I could like just people freaking rave about it. So like I'm definitely excited to try it out. Anyway, lots to go into on that. So let's talk, we'll talk a little bit about the shows, a little bit about the retreat. We'll talk about GCP episode 39. A nice layout of We Are Stupid from Professor Eric and of course Listener Mail. We got you. We got you. What are you looking forward to most about the trip to Denver? I know it's going to be a quick one, but we went there last year and you came right back. You seem to, you like these fans. You

like these fans out there. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's sold out really fast. So that's why I make it a good place to return to. It's not like I really want that Rocky Mountain there. No, it's sold out. No, I, I want that Rocky Mountain there. I love Colorado. Yeah, it's cool. Freaking love Colorado. I do. I guess in retrospect, I was like, man, I wish we had an extra day there because there are a couple of things that I like to see there, but it's just not in the cards. So I don't know.

I land pretty early and our call time to do like soundcheck is like a few hours after I land. I'm leaving. I'm flying out at 8 a.m. I arrive like 10, 30 a.m. So I don't know, might have time for a little Rocky Mountain IPA, somewhere. Oh, I thought you were gonna go on a hike, quick hike.

No, that's not what it's supposed to be. Ah, no. Uh, no, I, uh, I'm gonna, yeah, we'll do that show and then just fucking rock it. I mean, I'm pretty excited about this weekend's shows too, because we are, where we're at in Strange Aeons, the St. Paul show we just aired last week. Obviously, we did Vancouver the week before.

Vancouver's fine, but St. Paul, I was rewatching some of it during the premiere. We were out of control. The tour is just – it's out of control. It's so off the rails and crazy, but you guys did a lot of exploration. In the second floor of the Mysterium, going down is just a lot different already than the first one. There's so many different ways you can go.

You were attacked by a wraith coming through the walls. You were attacked by these proto-Shogoths. Then you set off two traps. Like, there's a couple different things that can happen. But it's all gonna happen over the next two shows. And that's what I'm excited about. Yeah, these are gonna be big ones. I'm definitely looking forward to it as well. Quick check in on Gen Con before we move on. The gauntlets. So these games that we're playing

in Nashville are in a lot of ways play tests for the gauntlets that are going to happen at Gen Con. We're trying to build this one hour, 45 minute to 60 minute experience that is intense, really fun and extremely difficult to win, but not a guaranteed loss. We're trying to hit this very specific target of what we want to try to, the kind of challenge we want to put in front of the Naish to see if folks can find a way to work together with these iconic characters to overcome these tough scenarios. And I'm looking forward to testing them out at Nashville. But the real, the big show is Gen Con. And there's only a couple of games open, right?

There's like five total. I mean, we have 22 gauntlet tables at Gen Con. Only five still have seats at them. Wow. 22 gauntlet tables at GenCon, only five still have seats at them. Wow. Jared Logan, 1130 on Thursday, Matthew at 1245 Thursday, Logan at 330 and 445 on Thursday. This is happening during Getting the Trunk Live, so these are tough sells. But that's sold out, so if you didn't get a ticket to that, what are you doing?

Get over at Logan's table and that's it. All the rest of them are sold out. All the Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays are sold out? I think so. There was one Friday and now it's gone. But anyways, even at these tables, there's only one or two seats left. So I think we've got 10 seats total left, which is just amazing, especially now that the cost of the booth just came in.

And it came in a little over budget, Joe. Yeah, no shit. It always does. So it'll be nice to sell out these remaining 10 and break even. But you know, we are going to be running four of these at the Nationville retreat. You, me, Skid, and Jared and Matthew, we're running two on Friday. We're each running four. Yeah. We're each running four. Yeah, were each running four.

Two on Friday, two on Saturday with second and sixth level characters. And last week or maybe it was the week before, I ran one of them. It was like the first non-recorded show I think I've done in seven or eight years. I ran it for you and Jared and Skid and Matthew and our buddy from Order of the Ember Die. We ran the first one and it was a barn burner. It was like you guys weren't going to win and then you won at the last second. Couple crits. Couple crits.

Then we ran the second one and it was kind of lame. It wasn't right. We went back to the drawing board. So I'm excited to rock these out. Not excited to prep them all for Gen Con. Now that I'm thinking about the amount of work that's already gone into this. Yeah, it's going to be a lot. But a sample size of 20 games, we're going to learn a lot as we debrief with each other about how it all went down. I think that that is gonna make the Gen Con picture come in a lot clearer and it'll probably be a lot easier.

All right, great. Let's move on to Glass Kind of Podcast, campaign two, episode 39. News flash folks, Hubert's fine. Okay, calm down. He's fine. He'll live forever. He'll live forever. That son of a bitch. That was spectacular. It is I'm trying to think back. My mind is a little muddied

right now. Got a lot going design. It is it is a it is a it's instilling this intense fear of how easily you could die but all of that is an illusion. That death is an illusion. It's a smoke and mirrors effect. It's so much fun. I think the way that it happened with Hubert is great. Particularly you need the build-up ofbert, the way that that built in order for that to work out great. But you know the average game that's designed to happen to a PC. Holy shit how amazing is that.

It's just you're thrown off the thing and for a second your players must be having an absolute heart attack. And then you get to see this complete not Deus Ex Machina like thing that makes perfect rational sense in this situation for why you would not fall to your death. I just thought it was great design. What were your thoughts the first time you read through it? Well, I mean, I never know what the ending of the episodes are going to be until like, you know, we're at least halfway through or so. And so when I saw it coming, I was like, oh, we got to start this combat and I've got to

just fling somebody and that'll be the Cliffy because I know they're not going to die, but the players won't know that. So the fact that I ended up on Hubert was just hilarious because it had so many other layers of instilling fear and then sadness and elation because you hate them. It was a really cool combat because it's still pretty devastating, right? You get slammed, you lose 10 hit points and you're sick and won. If that keeps happening, you guys don't have a lot of hit points.

If it happens to you twice, now you're down 10 hit points and you're sick and two. Not only are you like- Which is near, it's already near death. Right. You've got to play defensively and now you've got to use everything to heal, but you're also much less effective at hitting. You know, you're sick and two, you're going to be minus two to all your attacks. It's going to, it just gets progressively harder. But beyond Hubert, nobody else took any damage. I don't think, right? Maybe one other. No, I don't think I succeeded on the athletics check. Buggles took a crit. You crit Buggles, which was a tough one.

But I mean from that effect, from the gravitational effect. Right, right, right. And then you rolled like a natural two or so. You didn't want to tell us what you rolled, but you missed against his athletics DC or whatever it was. Which was so slow, yeah. Yeah. So like you must have rolled a natural two. So yeah, it was just, I don't know, it didn't work out for a PC to get flung off, but I was really, really happy with the way that it worked out. I thought that it was really, really awesome. But yeah, other than that, the combat was, it went long, but it was pretty tight in terms of how the players played it.

Nobody took any big hits. Players readied, delayed, all that. We'll get to that for a second in We Are Stupid. But we get to see Barnes lay out a nice crit, you know, like he's been struggling to get that damage going. But yeah, overall really fun. And then that combat, so go ahead. I was gonna say, I also liked it as a theater of the mind combat.

You know, when we first started the Glass Cannon podcast, you and I especially had a long discussion about like, do we use tactical maps or do we go theater of the mind? And we were just like, man, theater of the mind is going to be so much better for a podcast. But we think we can make it work as long as we're overly descriptive about what we're doing on the map and we create an empire out of that. But that said, I do love bringing theater of the mind back into it, even in Pathfinder, where tactical movement, Pathfinder 2E, especially where tactical movement is so important. I like being able to dabble in that from time to time because it is, I think it's

a better listen. Yeah, I agree. I love theater of the mind. I do it a lot in Delta Green. You know what I mean? Because it's not based. I mean, there are movement rules in Delta Green and there is initiative and all that kind of stuff. And we have done it on maps, but I do enjoy the theater of the mind stuff every now and then just to, because it also forces people to be more descriptive. A lot of times people see a map and they just get lazy with narrative description. Yeah. And I'll move two spaces this way, one space this way, and it just starts to lose its narrative

feel and feels more like a board game. So every once in a while injecting that in is a nice and fun change. But anyway, we defeat one of these creatures and then the other one flies off and Zephyr and Asta have a little moment. I think it's worth noting Zephyr and Asta after a little blowout, a little blow up that had kind of been building after the death of Lucky, followed by the death of Talitha. It sort of builds into this tension between the two of them. And they kind of seem to resolve it. It was a nice little moment, little role play moment to have two characters solidify why they're allies, why they're going to adventure together.

And now maybe that bond is a little bit tighter, which to me always just leads to higher stakes, better story. It's always better to kind of have that moment where you know why you're allying with these people or adventuring with someone else. So yeah. It's just nice to have that role play too because like Giant Slayer, while it had plenty of great role playing moments, it never had any of that. It's just a bunch of dudes. You know what I mean? Like even with the female characters, it's not that their interaction was particularly

feminine, but it was just they bring so much, such a different fun energy to the show that, you know, they play things that we just don't think to play. Yeah, especially. Yeah, especially because like also in Giant Slayer, a very, very long campaign, yes, we had characters come and go. But there was also, there were times when the same four characters that were all dudes, played by dudes at least, would be together for like 80 episodes, you know what I mean? And it would just be like, what else are we going to talk about around the campfire? Like, yeah, let's just move on to the next encounter. And that, that can lose its luster a little bit. So it was great to have that dynamic take another developmental turn and grow.. So it was great to have that dynamic, take another

developmental turn and grow. So that was really cool. And then of course, riding up to the final moment at the whatever this is, commune, I don't know, it's kind of weird, but a whole bunch of elves watching us approach. It's such a cool image and very excited to see where that goes next week. Any parting thoughts on this episode as a whole before we get into We Are Stupid? No, no. I'm excited to get into this next part. You're kind of stampeding through the adventure at this point. I feel like it's kind of picked up speed and you'd be shocked at how far you are into this book. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, okay. I mean, so here's the way I look at it, just comparatively, right? So, Giant Slayer, I don't know off the top of my head, but it's something like 32 or 31 episodes was the first book. Obviously, we moved faster back then, but there were only one hour episodes.

Yeah. These books are longer. The three bookers, I think they add five or 10 pages, so they're a little more juicy. Okay, great. Then let's compare it to Blow to the Wild, which meanders wherever it may please was 52 episodes for book one. We're coming up on 40 this week. Right? So like, it's right in that range. It's between the two. And I'm curious to see where where we land there.

Yeah, I'm thinking I'm like, man, I guess I guess that's probably that might be right. But I have no idea. There's a couple of couple of twists and turns coming up that could take longer or shorter. But you guys are playing a lot tighter now. I think the scare of the snail fight has tightened up the tactics a little bit. And so it's actually making the combats move a little bit. So I don't know, it'd be interesting because when you level up, the difficulty is going to level up as well. So it'll be interesting to see how that either LinkedIn's or Shorten's episodes. Yes, but I also would say a lot of the draggyness that you could use that term for the campaign earlier on, I think is less to do with combat draggyness and more to

do with just like we said before, the frustrations with like, what the hell are we doing? You know what I mean? Whereas this, while we might not know the overarching thing It is very clear the last several episodes It's been like gotta get to that thing right there right now and figure out if there's a civilization Here that can help us get back, right? So like it's just it's a very clear goal and it helps to kind of move things into a linear direction And that's gonna of move things into a linear direction and that's going to help move things forward quickly.

So we'll see where it goes from here if it opens up into a new sandbox. But I think that's another reason why things are moving a little bit quicker at this point. All right. Let's look into, let's do a little We Are Stupid. Thank you to Professor Eric. We are stupid. I could have misread some of this. Professor Eric wrote quite a bit. It's actually not going to make it all on air today,

but he did... I don't think there's a lot of corrections here. It's more just like kind of fleshing things out again. So that's another good sign. It doesn't seem like we screwed up too much, but one of the first things he jumped into is the discussion of the stunned condition that we had with the Pterodon when it was stunned by Kate's stunning FIEST, which was really cool. And he believed that after our back and forth about it, that we got to the right decision after a bit of discussion.

Stunned is nasty, but it is, this is him, quote, stun is nasty, but it is not instant kill fall out of the sky nasty. You can't act until you pay off the stunned value, which happens at the beginning of your turn. So no reactions or free actions in the interim, which is why I was saying it can't fly. I was like making a show of it, right? Like it can't fly. How could it fly? And then you made the good point, you know, that's like, well, look, I mean, all of this is happening simultaneously in an instant, right?

So it's like, yeah, that makes sense. It can't just stop and plummet to the ground in that same couple seconds. A creature, and then this is back to Professor Eric, a flying creature falls if it doesn't spend an action on its turn to fly. So like in between turns when it's not acting, it doesn't always fall, right? It's frozen in time in those. So even though it was stunned, it caught it at a moment where it's frozen in time. The Pterodon spent an action flying on its turn, so it's good until the next turn.

It will lose one action, having two left, one of which must be used to fly and swoop contains a fly action. Then he says, stunned one, this is a cool way to break it down mathematically, stunned one is the equivalent of roughly two seconds of a freeze. And for a flying creature with momentum, that's probably not enough to plummet. The Discord had some house rule suggestions like having a drop five or 10 feet per stunned action, if that helps you wrap your head around it narratively. But it's extremely unlikely to make any effective difference given common fly speeds and low stun values. So I can see why it's simpler

to just use the official rules unless it's really causing narrative dissonance at a table. So really well laid out. You could do that house rule where you have a certain amount of feet per action stunned. But ultimately, yes, if you think about it that way, the creature's losing two seconds. One two. Anything that's flying could just glide for two seconds, you know, pretty easily. Even if it was losing the glide of its wings a little bit, two seconds it could recover

from so quickly and be back flying. So that's why I think the stun condition, that first sentence is misleading. Like it should be rewritten. You can't take any actions. That's really just flavor. You know what I mean? Like it should say like you can't take reactions. You can't grab a ledge.

You can't do the D to like you can't take reactions, you can't grab a ledge, you can't da-da-dee. To say you can't take actions, I think there's probably a lot of tables that take that literally just as you did when that's really just meant to be a flavor that you interpret. No, you're reading it wrong in terms of what's actually there but I think you're right in what you're saying. It should say you can't take actions, capital A, including reactions. That is what it should say. Instead, it says, you can't act, lowercase a. And so that could be a catch-off for whatever, for anything, and create these debates.

Meanwhile, if you just said, you can't act, capital A, you can't take actions, capital A, and you can't use reactions, then you would know that anything – and you can't take free actions. Just say that would know that anything and you can't take free actions. Just say that and that should cover it. You become senseless. You can't act. You lose it. You lose the thing the next turn.

Like who cares? I know what stunned means. I understand the Webster's dictionary definition of stunned. What's the mechanical thing? What's the direct mechanical effect? And you lose an action at the end, beginning or when you regain actions, you lose an amount of actions equal to your stunned value when you regain them. So yeah, there you go. All right. So, and then let's see, let's move along here. All right. So

let's talk about Barnes's readied action. We discussed this because he readied an action for when it flew in for its two action swoop, remember? Yeah. And then it attacked, but you were like, well, wait a minute, the swoop is two actions as one thing, one event, swoop in and attack. Does his come in between those, even though that's a one, two action thing? How do we work that out? I said it needs to interrupt the action because it's

usually when you ready something, the readied event happens before the event that triggered it, right? But I also said it could disrupt the action. I can't remember if I said this in the episode. I don't think I did, but I was wrong. I don't think I corrected myself. I was wrong because I was conflating in my head and Professor Eric points this out. I was conflating in my head a readied action versus an attack of opportunity. An attack of opportunity disrupts an action on a crit. A readied action does not disrupt the triggering action even on a crit. So you know, those are two totally different things. And so that's

an interesting point to realize. And the reason I wonder if I said it, and I don't think I did, is because I know I've said this before. So like, I'm not sure if I made this mistake in Gatewalkers before or in another game. But I once before have definitely made this mistake where it was like, I considered a readied action the same as an attack of opportunity. There are two different things. So that's an important distinction. But did I'm curious that Professor Eric weighed in on does that interrupt an action that, you know, is a two action john that included stride and the attack. Like I had to stride first.

Well, he said he said it's careful. He said I want to be careful. He said I want to be a little careful with the wording here. Yeah. The readied action triggers as soon as it's condition is met. So it likely happens in the middle of the triggering action, which is how we ruled. Right. But it doesn't disrupt the action. If both Barnes and the opponent have the same reach, which I believe they do, then yes,

Barnes's strike would go before the creature creatures strike. If both Barnes and the opponent have the same reach, which I believe they do, then yes, Barnes' strike would go before the creature's strike. If quote, interrupt is being used in the temporal sense, then you're fine and that's how you ruled it. But if you were thinking in the disrupt slash cancel sense, then that's not correct. Most readied actions wouldn't capital D disrupt the activity, unless say a reactive strike that does disrupt manipulate actions on a crit. Of course, if a readied action KOs a creature, the rest of that creature's actions and

activities would be disrupted as a result. Right. That makes sense. Makes sense. It's laid out nicely. All right, let's so there's more here and he goes really in depth on the Thaumaturge and I honestly don't understand it. So I want to talk to him about it before we talk about it again on air. This isn't something that mattered hugely in this episode at all. So I want to talk to him about it because man, there's some complicated stuff with Matthew's character. I think he's getting something, at least one thing wrong. Okay, well here's one thing he is getting wrong that I am going to mention and then

we'll move on to listener mail. For exploit vulnerability, there are two branches to that that work very differently. And this is what he lays out. This is what I believe Matthew got wrong in the episode. If the creature has a weakness, your strikes count as that weakness for the purposes of the encounter. And it applies to all creatures of that type until you exploit vulnerability again. Matthew mentioned this on air.

He's like, you know what else is cool? I could do this if another pterodon came two hours from now, like I could use this without having to spend the action for exploit weakness. The problem here is the creature must have a weakness. Because the other option is the creature doesn't have a weakness. If the creature does not have a weakness, Matthew is very excited about this. He said, you create your own small custom weakness against the creature.

Now the distinction here is that does work, but you don't, it does not work against all creatures of that type only against that one. So that's what I think Matthew got wrong. As he said, and if another Pterodon came, I could just use it on that. But the issue was they had no weakness. So even though he was exploiting a weakness that was just between him and that one creature, he would have to use an action on the next Pterodon over to exploit weakness again in

order to get that bonus. So yeah, just something to keep in mind is like, the creature must have a creature type weakness for you to be able to apply it to other creature types. If it doesn't and you're using that special single creature weakness, you have to reroll the exploit vulnerability each time on a different creature. It's called personal antithesis. That's the name of that ability that allows you to get bonus weak damage, which I think for him is three points right now. Does an extra three points of damage. He also, and then Professor Eric clarified, remember it is a weakness. It is not bonus damage. So it's not doubled on a crit, which I believe we got right in the episode. So look at us. Yeah. So again, I don't think there's any

major corrections here. That thing with Matthew, I'm going to send this all to him. But there's another thing that Professor Eric goes into detail on, on the diverse lore feat that he took and how that interacts with esoteric lore. So we're going to work on this off air because I still have some more questions about that. I don't want to speak to it until we're a little bit more clarified. Cool. Yeah. That was it.

Thanks for laying it out, Professor E. Let's move on to a little listener mail. Good question today. Good question. You're interrupting. All right, Derek from Austin. Thank you so much for writing in with a with a great question. I was I was thinking this exact question last week. And let's lay it out here. I am hopeful that for Gatewalkers, Troy is using milestone leveling. I don't know what you're doing. I don't know if you've said what you're doing. If you're just doing milestone, it seems like that's what you're doing. But then he says, but my question requires a trip in the imagination copter. Imagine you're using the regular XP system and your players bypass an encounter like they did versus the Golems guarding the gondola. Do you give your players full XP as though they defeated the encounter? I always

supported the idea of full XP, whether the encounter is overcome with diplomacy, deception, combat, or some other method that I didn't predict. I always worry that not giving full XP leads to gamey XP hunting, where the players just look for excuses to always have combat curious on your thoughts, but especially choice thoughts. I guess my go to on that is I do not award full XP partial I usually do partial. My system is always and it's changed over the years has has always been a combination of adding up individual XP, dividing it by the party members, and then seeing how close it is to the milestones. In Giant Slayer, because you had so many different characters and they were coming in at different

times and then you... I can't remember how I dealt with Umlo, but I would have fucking spreadsheets of just adding up the XP. I would have you level up at different times, especially in Minderhalls Valley. The encounters were so all over the place, you could stumble into encounters that you weren't really ready for yet. If you won them, you'd get a lot more XP than you would against just a couple of guys that you were kind of meant to fight earlier.

So I really needed it then because the milestones were very suggestion-y. It's like, by the time they reach the cathedral, they should be this. I'm thinking to myself like, you could be lined at the cathedral. But also a lot of the adventure paths are written like, if the heroes have not made it to fifth level yet, throw in some encounters. And that's not what we do either. So I like to do a combination of – I like to really look at like what are the numbers say, how close is it to what the book suggests and then like the things that I change are

not like let's throw in some random encounters. It just kind of takes into – I like to take in account role play for XP and certain other things and if it's close enough, I like to take into account role play for XP and certain other things. And if it's close enough, I'll get you there. But also like, how are we doing in terms of the show? Like is this a good moment to say you level up? Is it not? And taking that timing, there are times like you guys, I can tell you this, on all of the

shows that I've run, you guys have been like, you've met both the milestone and the XP thing, but it wasn't a good moment in the show to level you up, so I've had to wait. And then there was one live show where I just forgot. I was like, that was my Cliffy, and then I had a better Cliffy, and then it wasn't like two more episodes of you guys leveled up.

You son of a bitch. Yeah, I'm all over the place. Well, that is very upsetting to hear. You forgot to level us up. Yeah, no, I, I, I so I mean, I agree with you, Derek. That's, that's how I run my games. I haven't run Pathfinder in a long time, but like, I want to run XP, a true XP system. Milestone is great. And it's easy. and easy is great. Easy is fun. I get that. I just something to me about tracking XP and giving individual characters XP has something

I've always just really, really enjoyed. I like characters leveling up at different times. I like them feeling like they earned their level and somebody else being jealous that they need to get their level. I love using experience as bottle caps or as a reward for something well done. You don't always have to give them a hero point. You could always just say like, you get an extra 20 experience for coming up with this idea. I really enjoy that, but that's a lot more work.

I get it. And so what I would say in this situation is I would absolutely award full XP for the encounter. I award full XP for however you overcome an encounter, even if it's the easy way. And then I don't reward any XP for encounters that you did not know you missed or that you missed by being lucky or foolish and didn't realize it was an encounter. In those cases, no, I'm not giving you XP for stuff you missed so that you stay on the milestone. If you go into a combat underleveled because you did not explore enough to encounter the other encounters, that's part of it. And so now the difference is, yes, it's

going to be harder, but also you're going to get more XP for that. It's going to be like an extreme level encounter. Yeah, no, I appreciate it, Derek. I think it's a good layout of why you don't want people to think that they're rewarded more for fighting than for not fighting. I always love to see people come up with clever ways to not fight, but, cause nine times out of 10, you fight, you almost always fight. So it's like, uh, any, any clever way to get around it is, uh, is fun and cool. Uh, so yeah, I, I like to reward players for that. But yeah, that's it.

That's going to do it for us. Do it for this show today. Thank you guys so much for hanging out. For the FOD, we got a FOD next week, and then we're going to be off the week after that. We're going to talk about that a little bit next week. But 4th of July week, we're going to be off. And so is the GCP.

It's going to be off the 4th of July week hoping everybody enjoys that holiday but we'll talk more about that next week but until then enjoy episode 40 I hope everybody has a fantastic time in Denver and in Nashville I can't wait to meet you I can't wait for the retreat it's gonna be amazing and we'll have a lot of debriefing to do next week on the plot we'll see you then take it easy everybody bye it's time to make your membership official. Become an official member of the Naish today at JoinTheNaish.com.

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