The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 6/5/24

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

This week's Fod has it all! A brand new character, a surprising astronomy lesson, and—of course—mice. Plus, news about a new Twitch stream unlike any we've done before—and it's airing this week! Also, ever had a long compaign lose its luster? What do you do when players start losing interest in your game?  Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/KBAvk6tMRD0 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

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 out there in the nation? Welcome back to Cannon Fodder. It is Wednesday, July, June 5th. I'm trying to fast forward. June 5th, 2024 and I'm your old pal, Joe O'Brien. It's old Troy LaValley. You got nothing today. Nothing! Yeah, I didn't even do it right. We are recording late today, a little behind the scenes look, because Troy's had some technical

difficulties. What, you had no internet? You had to have an internet guy come out? Dude, I don't think I told you the full story, right? So we spent the night in the city Friday night, you and I, and we'll tell that story, I'm sure, throughout the show. But I get a text from my wife, and the second I leave the house for a trip, it's usually like, oh, the roof caved in, the house burned down.

All our children have been kidnapped. In this case, it was Saturday when I wake up, a little bit of a stupor, and she's like, the internet's out. Oh, fuck. We've had a lot of power outages in our neighborhood, but I was like, other fucker. It's Saturday morning and the kids can't watch a little bit of TV while I'm trying to juggle three kids. I'm like, I'm coming out. I come home, I unplug the router, I reset the ONT box, I'm online sleuthing how to do it, and I'm like, something's just fucked up.

I'm spending all this time doing it. I'm like, I don't want to lose all my Christmas shows if I reset my box. That's so ridiculous. Let me go outside. So I go outside and I open up the Verizon box and there's a bunch of shit in there, like little shavings of something. Fuck, did this get in there? It looked like something crawled in and chewed the wires.

It was like, damn it all. This was Saturday. I call Verizon and I'm like, yeah, I need somebody, a technician, after an hour and a half of them being like, have you tried this? Have you tried this? They're like, well, it seems like it's something that's totally our fault, so we'll send somebody out and charge you 100 bucks for it. I'm like, no, you won't.

No, you won't. But I'm sure if you can get somebody out today, we can talk. And they're like, yeah, no, earliest appointment is Tuesday. So that's today. And so meanwhile, I mean, this day and age, I consider that no different than it being like January 14th and your heater going down and you calling somebody and be like, we'll be there in three days. Like to me, three days without the internet is a,

I mean, that's just criminal, it's criminal. I mean, dude, it's lucky that all I had to record was fodder, because I would have thrown off so many people's schedules. Totally. Our scheduling, I mean, you open up our shared calendars, just a fucking disaster. If one person has to like reschedule, it's like, oh boy. So I really lucked out in that.

I mean yesterday I worked from a cafe. You and I had a two hour budget meeting. I'm like talking in a bar cafe. Anyways, fucking, so 24 hours later, so Sunday morning, or no, actually was it, yeah, so that was Saturday morning, Monday. My wife's like, hey, did you go, I was showing Archer the box, did you go check in there? There's like a bunch of shit in there. I'm like, no, no, I cleared that out.

She goes, you should go look. So I opened it up, more shit in there, like a brand new nest had been built in there. What the fuck is going on on so the guy shows up today Living we'll have a guy there between 10 and 12 so at 1158 he rolls up and You're like let's record fodder at 12 because the guys coming at 10 And I'm like a little bit later it comes out that he said 10 to 12 I'm like Troy that means he's going to get there at 1158. You're like, I don't know, maybe.

I'm like, no, no chance. I was being optimistic. The guy came and I'm like, he's pulling up and he comes to the house. I think I've diagnosed the problem. He's like, oh yeah, it's fucking mice. Mice just find a way in there. He's like, I'm going to take this whole thing off. I'm going to put one of our new boxes called a flat box because this happens everywhere.

Like fucking little critters crawl up in there and he's like, I'll climb a pole working on like a box on a telephone pole. We'll open it up like a hundred mice babies will fall out. How the hell did they get up there? Your job sounds terrible. But anyways, he installs a flat box like the whole house lights up Alexis like what's going on? We're back we got a FOD ready for you Troy's an operating order and we've got news today We've got an exciting look at episode 37 of campaign to an episode that had it all and then

Chunky we are stupid, including for one of the first times, truly ranging into areas that we are stupid about that have nothing to do with Pathfinder rules, which is very interesting. Just stupid about life. And then of course, listener mail will have a few good ones there. All right, let's get into the news. News today. Wow, what a weird stream coming this week. Today, weird stream today. If you're listening to this early,

before 11 a.m. Eastern time, I am gonna be live on our Twitch channel today, 11 a.m. Eastern, making miniature, digital miniatures on Heroforge of iconic GCN characters. What? This is all part of the ramp up to the gauntlets that we talked about. We've been talking about for a couple weeks. Gauntlets at Gen Con, gauntlets are going to be play iconic GCN characters in intense 45 minute to an hour encounters.

And they are, you know, we are going to build custom minis for these, these iconic characters. And so this was McD's idea. McD was like, you know what, why don't you have to do it anyway? Why don't you do it with the niche and with some of the people that created these characters so they could like weigh in on it. So that's what we're doing today. 11 o'clock. If you're listening to this later and you missed it, go back and watch it on the Twitch

VOD. It'll be available there. I mean, I can only imagine it's going to be a really, really fun time. We are Skids coming by, Matthew's coming by, by Kate's coming by should maybe see a little bit of Jared I mean, it's gonna be a really fun. That's great You hours of just people weighing in on what they want their character to look like so that'll be fun Yeah, and this is for the gauntlets at gencom We're gonna be running gauntlets at the Nashville retreat, but that's it's like you said that's spring training like that is just gonna be

It's not gonna have those minis yet. That's that's in like almost three. It's like you said, that's spring training. Like that is just going to be intense. It's not going to have those minis yet. That's that's in like almost three. It's like three weeks, dude. Yeah, that's we can talk about that, too. But at Gen Con, we've I've just approved the plans for the booth. I mean, we're still working out the ins and outs, but the booth is so fucking cool. It's so cool. If this looks anything like the mockup, I'm going to shit my pants when I see it. But we're for the gauntlets that we're running there. If this looks anything like the mock-up, I'm going to shit my pants when I see it.

For the gauntlets that were running there, we're working on getting terrain and we want to get these physical miniatures for people to be able to use when they play as Baron or Lorc or any of these characters. You're going to build them. This is a great idea by McD. Why don't you just make this into content? We got to do it anyways. All right?

Yeah, it's great. I made one trying it out. I actually made Atticus. There are a gajillion options. So it'll be really great to have not only the people that created the characters, but also the niche that in some cases knows the character better than the people that created them to kind of weigh in with ideas about what to what's the pose? What's the face look like? What are they wearing? What's in this hand? What's in that hand?

Just really fun stuff. So that's that's today, 11 a.m. Eastern on our Twitch channel, twitch.tv slash the glass cannon. And I think only six gauntlets are still available. Like six seats away or no, six tables still have seats? Yeah. I mean, those tables only have a couple seats each. I want to say, yeah, we just sold out of a Matthew one on Sunday.

So we're talking about roughly a dozen tickets. All the Sunday gauntlets are sold out. And then I think, yeah, I mean, they're going fast. I talked about last week maybe adding some extra players. I haven't added those people yet. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. But I think these gauntlets are going to be really, really fun. And we're trying to make it into just an experience, something that's unforgettable.

Awesome. Continuing on the streaming train, tomorrow, Thursday, I'm going to jump back on to continue my playthrough of Control. It has to happen. The last time I stopped playing Control, I think it was about three weeks ago, we've done two weeks of Helldivers, which has been really, really fun. But I remember when I logged off of that stream, somebody in chat said something that really stood out to me because I was in this really weird maze like part of the game and I'm getting close to the end. And I'm moving through this this like house it almost looks like but the walls

keep shifting. And I can't, and I kept walking in circles. I couldn't quite figure it out. And I was like, well, I'm just gonna go guys. I'm over time anyway, I gotta get out of here. And there was one comment that really jumped out at me. And it was like, definitely do not play this game anymore without streaming it from this moment on.

And I was like, okay. That really jumped out at me. And I was like, right, I promise, I won't turn it on. And I have not. And I'm going to continue from there. We're getting endgame now tomorrow on Thursday. Oh shit tomorrow Yeah on on twitch so that I got a twitchy eye right now unrelated to your control talk Yeah, yeah, it's so Vibrating I guess it's stressed, but I feel pretty cool

It's so weird. It's just the left eye and it keeps happening. I guess it's stress, but I feel pretty cool. You look cool. I feel cool. I can't see it, Twitch. And I'm like, it's just this like, eh. I have to leave fodder. I can't.

I can't do this anymore. So that's the streaming news. Also, we're gonna have a YouTube premiere tonight, eight o'clock Eastern. Yes. Glass Canada Live Vancouver. Vancouver! The Vancouver show a YouTube premiere tonight, 8 o'clock Eastern. Yes. Glass Canada Live Vancouver. Vancouver. The Vancouver show will be live tonight, 8 o'clock Eastern on YouTube.

That's tonight, Wednesday, June 5th. If you missed that, you can check that out on YouTube. And then, oh, last piece of news here before we get into the episode that I have, I'll kick it to you if you have something else. We're about to head to Denver and Nashville. Those are our next shows in a few weeks here. And McD told me right before I went live here that he has two open spots for merch team in Denver.

Nashville is full, but Denver, there's two people. If you want a free VIP ticket to the show and you want to volunteer for merch, hit us up. Email us. I think VIP is sold out, right? Isn't it? I'm not volunteer for merch, hit us up, email us. I think VIP is sold out, right? I'm not sure. Yeah, VIP I think is sold out. So if you want to freebie, if you want to get in, if you already bought GA and you just

want to get bumped up and hang out with us a little bit, please volunteer for merch. Help us out. That would be awesome. By the way, Denver, nice work. Started out slow, sold out VIP. Sold out VIP. It's a big theater and it's a Thursday night. We're really rethinking these Thursday nights.

They allow us to do two shows in a week, but they're tough sells. I'm giving you a pass Denver, because I assume that's the only reason we're not. These tickets didn't fly off the shelves. I mean, it's over 200 people. Be nice if we could get like another 100 in there. That's great. Over 200 people. We were there last year.

We sold out VIP. That's the biggest thing. Tennessee's close. When we have a packed VIP, it's awesome. It's great. Over 200 people. We were there last year. We got sold out VIP. That's the biggest thing. Tennessee is close. When we have a packed VIP, it's awesome. It's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be good. Anyway, two spots to bump up if you want them, if you want to come and help us out with merch. It's always a blast. It's going to be a fun time. Our production coordinator, Michael's going to be there. It's going to be awesome. He was just in St. Paul working with the merch team.

So anyway, it'll be great. Let's get into GCP episode 37. We've got more news. It's also Pride Month. Oh, yes. We want to give a shout out for this. Pride Month. We always celebrate it here at the Glass Cannon Network.

We actually have new merch coming out soon for Pride Month, which is great. We've got a new t-shirt, a dad hat, and a pin, a really sick Pride pin. Yeah, loving the pin. A portion of those proceeds go to the Trevor Project. That's been sort of our charity du jour. When I was working for Getty Images, I'd never heard of the Trevor Project. I would get sent to events all over New York, and they'd be like celebrity events or whatnot. Oftentimes, I'd be working on site backstage and the producer would just be like running

cards to me and I'd be uploading footage, cutting together EPKs. And for that particular one, I had like a lot of downtime. So I was like sitting there listening to all these stories and like listening to the event. It really moved me. And so When we started selling this Pride merch, we chose the Trevor Project as our charity du jour and just sort of stuck with it. That'll be exciting. One thing I was thinking about, I always have this like, what do you want to call it? Not a crisis, a conundrum every June 1st because I like when we switch our logos over to the Pride logo. But it's also become sort of memeified at this point where people are like,

oh, here come all the corporations switching over to the Pride logo. The reason we always do it is for me, it's like we're planting a flag. It's like letting just a reminder, letting people know that like this is a safe place. This is a place where everyone is accepted, everyone is loved. It's important. I think it can sometimes be seen as like a hollow, toothless gesture, but it's important to let people know that everyone is welcome here in the nation. Everyone is loved. That's why we switch all those logos over. It's just a little reminder, just like a little flag of, hey, everything, you are well-loved here. It always bums me out. The conundrum I have is I have to shut off comments when we switch these over. In 2024, I still have to shut off comments because it just turns into a thing and I don't

want any of that shit. It kind of goes against the purpose of letting people know that like, hey, safe place here. If you are a member of the nation that isn't down with pride, you should listen to your pal Jesus. He's a cool dude. Love everyone means love everyone. You don't get to pick pal Jesus. He's a cool dude. Love everyone means love everyone. You'll get to pick and choose. Happy Pride Month to all our LGTBQ folks and allies.

Yes. Happy Pride Month. Very excited to see some of that new merch. My pride hat was one of my favorite hats for a very, very long time. I wore it until it's so stained because it was white. It was just like so... It succumbed to the sweat earlier. White hats are tough. White hats are tough.

Yeah, white hats are tough. And that was a great summer hat. And so I'm glad we got some more back in the dad hat version this time. So anyway, let's talk GCP episode 37 of campaign two. Love this app. Trying to think of a way to kind of sum it up quickly and at Jules Kindred Blair did it great for me on YouTube. Great for me.

I just copied it, pasted it, put it right in my show notes. All it simply says is character work, action, RPG mechanics, hilarity, bottle caps, perfect GCP episode. Beats Battlestar Galactica. Beats Battlestar Galactica. It was great. mechanics, hilarity, bottle caps, perfect GCP episode. Beats, Battlestar Galactica. Beats, Battlestar Galactica. It was great. It had everything.

It had all of those things. The whole first half exactly is the introduction of a new character, role play, and then we cross over into total mechanics, a really fun fight, and finally one where we feel a little bit better about our mechanics, about our strategies, about our execution tactics. Yes, that's the word I'm looking for. So yeah, anyway, in summary, I really enjoyed it.

I've just got a couple things here, nothing really major. I wanted to ask you about the introduction of Matthew's new character, your involvement in it, how much did you guys talk about it? And really the main thing I want to know that specific is the gatewalker element. Is this something that came up in a conversation at all between you two? Either the option of not being a gatewalker or did was it that he had to be a gatewalker? Was that discussed? Yeah.

I mean, I think I said in an early episode or maybe even during one of the character introduction videos that if someone dies, I really want them to come back as a gatewalker. I just think that the overall experience of the adventure path will be much richer if everyone is a Gatewalker. Also, the beauty of this path is that there are Gatewalkers all over the world. Some have joined the consortium of Epops and some are just wandering like Asta or in this case Barnes. To me, I just feel like, yes, it can be convenient to have a gatewalker just sort of roll in, but the fact that they exist, let's just get them in there.

One of the things about Strange Aeons that was so tough is that as people died, they weren't coming back as one of Lowell's workers. I was like, but Sir Julia, I was like, really would be better if she worked for Laos and Matthew was against it. So I told him, I was like, I really wanted to be a gatewalker, but he wanted that too, so it worked out well, but that's kind of my- Great. So neither of you was never really an option.

Neither of you wanted it at all to explore not being a gatewalker in this. Very cool. Did he talk to you about class or anything like that? We still haven't been revealed. I know what it is because mechanically I know, but he hasn't said it yet. Did he talk to you about it ahead of time? Did you guys strategize on tactics at all in terms of party comp? The day that we recorded, we were supposed to record more episodes, but when Talitha

died it sucked. We really needed those episodes because of summer vacations and shit. I could just see it on Matthew's face. He wasn't ready. Even though I tell everybody to always prepare their backups, it's just the thing I say and no one really does it. I could see him feeling like, I don't want to just make a hasty decision here. So we took it. I said, let's take five, take 10. And then we came back. I said, how you feeling?

He's like, I said, all right, well, let's come back next week and do it, give you some time. And then I just, I left him alone. And then maybe four or five days later, email me and was like, thank you so much for giving me that time. I really got a chance to, because we were spitballing like ideas allowed and both like to the side after Talitha died like, well, you could be this, you could be that. And he's like, and then after he had some time to think about it, he sent me an email

is like, all right, so here's what I'm thinking. Was there a seed of his current character in any of those early ideas that he was thrown out or did this really originate once he left the studio and had time? It originated – I think it originated once he left. There might have been like some scant sort of like small little connections. But nothing you really recognized. Yeah. And even still like he had an idea that I was like, it's not going to work because of this, this and this. I said, you could try this or you could try this and then he

went a different way. But there was one thing in particular about the timing. In his mind he wanted, am I saying too much here? No, I don't think so. In his mind he wanted Barnes to have walked through the gate. The moment before. No, shortly after you guys walked through. So it's like you guys walked through and you're like, oh, let's walk that way. He wanted to walk through right after and then just kind of stumble upon you.

And I was like, the way it's intended is you would have walked through a couple months ago. And so you've been living here for a couple months and let's talk about that. And so I told him some things that you guys don't even know. And you know, well, now give me spoilers, you'll see that come to play in this week's episode. No, but he said it. He said it in this week's episode. He's very clear that like he knows about these golem me sounding sort of like guardians. Yeah. And He says that he approached it and that they shoot him away. It's cool when a GM can give one player some details to kind of transmit to the other players. Bring in a new character, it makes them seem knowledgeable and they've already scouted

the region and that's kind of a fun thing to do sometimes. I just finished watching tomorrow's episode and so he mentioned it again and so I want to make sure that he actually had mentioned that. Yeah. So there's stuff that we – I feel like we did back in the Jade region days and before that in our other campaign days that we – I might have done once or twice in Giant Slayer but then we stopped once we were all plugged in and hooked into like headphones and mics and we were all in the same room. And that was players leaving the room,

like while one player or a player in the GM leaving the room together to discuss something that the other players don't know about. That's something that I got to experience again, when I was playing with the Order of the Amber Die that this year again, like somebody will walk into Order of the Amber Died this year again. Somebody will walk into a room or decide to do something in town and the GM will take them out of the room and they'll be gone for 15 minutes.

We're all just hanging out. Then when they come back, what I love about that is you get the translation of whatever the narrative is or whatever the GM was intending. You don't really know because it's a game of telephone. It comes to you through a player. The GM is saying nothing. So like you're taking their word for whatever it is that they saw and from there you have to kind of plan and it leaves the GM out of it which feels much more organic. It's a really fun way to transmit information is tell one player and have them tell the other players. We'll use in the lighting the way we're using it in Foundry VTT.

That's started to happen already where it's like someone will open a door and be like, oh no, and you can't see it. Right. What do you say? Well, it's like arms. I see arms. I like it. It's a very cool aspect of a Foundry that I dig in our play style now.

Cause you come around that corner, you're just like, what is this? Speaking of horrifying looking creatures, what in the hell? Talk to me about the pacing in the episode as you saw it. So we're whatever, 45, 50 minutes in, roughly. And the role play seems to be winding down. That is the role play of the introduction of the new character that seems to wind down and you call for a break when we come back shortly after we've rested and we're on our way to head Did you know before that episode started that that encounter would be in the episode?

Did you think there was a possibility it was a full roleplay episode? How did it pace out in your mind? No, it's actually one of the reasons that I did what I did last week because I didn't want to go straight from the snail fight to this other fight. I also didn't want to cut the fight because I felt like it was a good chance to give the heroes a moment of like, yeah, all right, we still got this. It's a much easier encounter. I did want to leave that in there as a sort of confidence boost, but it would have felt

really hollow if it happened right after last week's episode. That was one of the main reasons that led me to doing last week that flashback and all that so that we could at least have a week between that and this. Now when it started, I didn't know if we'd make it through the episode or not. Like I kind of wanted to have the whole fight happen and as it started to rock and roll I was like, okay, it looks like they have this in hand. Great. You mentioned at the beginning, it's always a great episode when you got a little bit

of – you got the role play, you got the backstory, you got the this and a fight. In an ideal world, that would be every episode. But without really forcing it, you just have to take them as they come. Yeah. Tough encounters go long. They tend to go long. You know, they tend to go long. And so, but then you have some encounters that wrap up in a nice, neat little tie it in a bow fashion.

And a lot of times that comes down to how the dice roll. And that'll take me to junk bucket 50s comment on the episode, which was, are we sure Asta is a fox? Because this episode, she sure seemed like a goat. And it really was two crits from Asta, massive crits that had directly led to wiping out these two creatures. She was the MVP of the fight this week. But it's very interesting for me because like, all right, so the combat starts and you have this, talk me through what you're thinking when you have hidden

enemies approaching the PCs and you decided to go with a perception DC as opposed to us rolling perception. What makes you think that, talk us through the idea for how to start the encounter? Oh, goodness. Talk us through the the idea for how to start the encounter. Oh goodness So yeah, I mean that with 2e as opposed to 1e you don't get that surprise round You know as written and so the way that I was looking at it I'm trying to remember because we recorded this a little while ago, but like their whole jam Let's bring up their stat here. They stealthy. They're stealthy and the

adventure intends for them to approach from stealth and from cover. What I thought I would do is just have everybody roll the perception. Those who failed the perception would be flat-footed to them if they acted before them in the round because they were sneaking up. They didn't see them yet yet whereas the other people did. Whereas other people who succeeded on the perception, regardless of where they go in the initiative, they wouldn't be flat-footed. That was just like add a little extra wrinkle into the beginning of the fight.

Cool. Then they come out and – I mean, is there anything you want to say about them before we move into We Are Stupid in terms of they were kind of weird and kind of cool. They had like an AOE, wait, was a targeted fire blast ability or what? No, it was like anything adjacent to them, wasn't it? Yeah, they released a burst of explosive gases in all directions dealing 3D6 fire to all creatures in a five-foot emanation. It resets every 1D4 round. It's something that could, with good rolling, happen a lot, but I don't remember getting it off a ton. The real big thing about them is these

poisonous pustules on them. Yeah. Of which barn which Barnes succumbs. And this is a big part of the end of the episode that it's going to carry into next week. It's like, let's not forget, we're very excited that Asta critted that second one down, but Barnes is poisoned. This is an issue. Barnes who, and this was funny, Matthew experienced something that I've experienced multiple times. I think all of us have been in that situation one time or another. You bring in your new, cool, scarred, warrior, badass character and then just fail, fail, fail every roll out of the gate. And so their first impression to the rest of the PCs is just like, this guy's incompetent. I promise you he's not. He's really cool. He's really strong. I found that what I was looking for here.

As written, it says, when the characters first arrive, one hides, capital H, in the vines at the base of a tree near the top of the hill. The other hides, capital H, in the bushes down near the bottom. In order to rectify that, I was like, let's roll a perception against their- No, no, no. They rolled stealth against our perception DC. I rolled stealth against your perception DC because I knew that we were about to get into a fight. So like,

how does the benefit of the how is the benefit or of the hide actually going to matter in this because we don't really use exploration. And so that was the way I rectified it. And I actually I think I've done this before on strange aeons. And I like it because it's kind of reminiscent of the surprise round in one. Yeah, yeah, it gives you that little benefit. All right, let's take it into We Are Stupid. Professor Eric wrote a treatise this week. Oh, wow.

And I loved it. It was a good one. Let's get into it. We are stupid. Thank you, Nicholas, for reminding us via song. All right, so I'm going to start off with early on before we got into the encounter kind of around the campfire during this whole role play situation. Sydney brought up was actually kind of after that when we were waking up,

Sydney brought up that she had another spell book. And we discussed, is she able to just prepare those spells as if there is she just add them to her list? And I said, Well, you need to learn a spell, which is like you need to copy it from a source, it costs money, materials, whatever, and you have to make a roll. And so Professor Eric says that's absolutely right. However, there's this other thing that she can do. And I never heard of this before. And this, it's called Borrow a Spell, capital B, capital S, Borrow a Spell action. I missed this.

I don't know how I missed this, but it is specifically this. The ability allows you to prepare, to attempt to prepare a spell from someone else's spell book. That is specifically what it's for. And basically what it is, is it works mechanically like learning a spell,

except you have to roll just to prepare it. And if you fail, you can't prepare it that day. But you don't lose the slot or anything. You can still prepare one of your spells you already know. So it's really not that detrimental to attempt. It's kind of risk free. And Professor Eric's take on it is that it's an interesting idea. However, it seems very tedious. Like to do if you had to do this day in and day out, be like, Oh, I'm going to prepare three spells from the spell book. And every day in your session, you're rolling a check against a certain DC

against the rank of the spell to see if you got it into your prepared spells or not. Just seems kind of tedious. But you know, he doesn't have any added ideas. But he's like, he would love to streamline it in some way, because it seems a little bit, like I said, tedious, but I didn't know that that existed. So anyway, that's an interesting rule that Sydney can take advantage of if she would like. Let's Oh, let's get into the non rules. We are stupid. This fantastic professor Eric, I mean, this is why I love professor Eric last week, sits down listens to an entire episode of us just doing dramatic improv together, doing nothing about the game of Pathfinder, and he works his way through the whole thing.

This time, he's taking time to add into our concepts of constellations and viewing stars, as it would be, perhaps, on another planet. Now this is what's tricky. He says, this is awesome. Now first of all, I'm just gonna say this upfront. He has a plan. He had a planetary sciences double major when he was in school, planetary sciences, double major. So this is where this comes from. credible source. He says not really a rules thing. But the constellations would not look different. If you were on Castrovel versus Galerion,

basically anywhere within the solar system would see the exact same constellation shapes. Yes, there will be seasonal aspects for which constellations are visible and when they're behind the sun. Yes, the southern and northern hemispheres have a similar change in constellation, in when constellations are visible, but the shapes of the constellations don't change. As long as you're within the solar system, the planetary distances are practically nothing compared to the interstellar distances involved in all points and all points in the solar system are practically identical.

So that's a very interesting thing. You could say like the stars do not look different. You would have to travel to another part of the galaxy basically in order to see different constellations. That's cool Yeah, never really realized that but it makes perfect sense to me that planetary distances are infinitesimal Relative to interstellar distances. So it makes a lot of sense. He's like they would look exactly the same So in other words, we still don't know where the hell we are Know what I mean? It gives us no goddamn information.

Troy's been all tight-lipped about it. It has been a struggle. So anyway, we'll figure out more as we go. But thank you for that, Professor Eric. I love science. OK, so this goes back to what you said about the hide action. Professor Eric just wants to remind the casual viewer, initiative order does not control

flat-footed slash off guard, unless there is a class feature in play or a monster feature in play, like the rogue's surprise attack. However, characters are off guard against creatures that are hidden from them. Like you said, they had used the hide action. He said, it just sounded a little bit in the episode, like those two concepts were getting a little conflated. But just so everybody's clear, it does not work like it did in money. If you haven't acted yet, you are not off guard. However, if you want to make it because they failed a perception roll in the first round, they're off guard. That makes perfect sense to me as a situational circumstance penalty you would find yourself in. Yeah. I mean, I just feel feel like otherwise there's no point for them to hide.

You know what I mean? Like even if we're using exploration mode, them hiding is like, oh, oh, you see them. Like there's no benefit. The whole point of hiding is that you get to attack from hiding. Well they would get concealment. So if you have if you have brush and you successfully hide, people can still know where you are. But you would all of a sudden successfully get a DC 11 flat check against you, which I think is way better than like a point of cover, or two points of cover, right? So like, having that right hide work

turns you into a DC 11 flat check, which would be huge. But anyway, would love comments on that. I think that the hide action is great for that. But I see what you're saying at the start of combat. It makes it a real fun. Yeah, the concealment is cool too. I just like the idea of them coming out. And like if you saw them, then you don't take that penalty. That's interesting though. Yeah, it is interesting. All right. So let's talk about this fire blast ability. So Professor Eric points out this is points out that you ran the fire blast

correctly by the book. However, he believes pretty strongly and I'd be curious for anybody else to weigh in on this. He believes pretty strongly that it might be an error, like an editing error in the stat block, that there's no basic save associated with it. He was like, automatic, no save, no attack roll, damaging effects that don't require a setup such as rend or constrict are extremely rare. Even constrict you get a save to half for half damage. Oh, you do? Yeah. So yeah, he didn't say constrict are extremely rare. Even constrict you get a save to half for half damage.

Oh you do? Yeah, so yeah, he didn't say constrict, I added that. But yeah, like rend are extremely rare. And then he points out a place where it says, these in the rule book where it says, these abilities typically allow a basic saving throw. But anyway, it's neither here nor there. It's not in the book, but he thinks it might be an actual typo because like that seemed and it seemed insane to me

You know no roll no save damage in an AOE fashion seems kind of overpowered Well, maybe it's because they can only do it every 1d4 rounds. I'm just trying to say yeah Maybe but like think about but that's how a dragon's breath weapon works and that has a basic save right like yeah Anyway, maybe this creature is very special, but I felt like, yeah, I think that's doubtful. That's cool. He also pointed out that the way Barnes's new ability, the mirror ability was all done correctly.

So that's thumbs up for Matthew. And then let's move on to, oh, this is interesting. Probably doesn't matter. Oh yeah, so I didn't realize in Foundry, he's pointing out something in Foundry that I gotta look into. You can add bless in Foundry to your physical aura and you can see the aura and it will automatically

give a plus one to characters that tokens in that are when they're rolling now we don't roll digitally so does it matter as much but at least visually you would be able to see it and I should only have to like click that I have bless on so anyway I'm gonna look into that that's obviously a spell that I'm going to continue to use this one from YouTube solely Albert this was not from Professor Eric said, magical healing of any kind counteracts the venom. I don't know if you noticed that or saw that, but magical healing of any kind. So Barnes should have lost that venom when Buggles healed him.

I don't know. That was mental healing. I guess it's magical healing, but something that was pointed out from a listener. For this particular creature or for all diseases? Yeah, he said the Desa Desa's bubble venom, any kind of magical healing counteracts that venom. Do you see that written in there anywhere? Trying to bring it back up.

Take your time and I'm gonna move on to a- Yeah, I'm just gonna say that. Oh yeah. Look at that! Good catch. At Sully Albert, good bottle cap. Counteracts the... Good catch, good catch.

That's great. Asta missed, oh my gosh, do you remember Asta credit and on the first one was 48 points of damage. Does this linger in your head anywhere? Cause it was a massive hit. Don't dual wielding the Katana, double the damage, add the spell on top, double that damage, 48 points of damage.

And guess what? She undersold herself and multiple comments about this on the video as well. She forgot the deadly D8 die on the Katana. So obviously not a lot more damage. And obviously she killed the creature. So it had no impact on the story. But we got to remind her when she gets excited

about doubling her damage. She also- Dude, that damage is crazy. I will never let her get off a spell strike again. You said that after the episode. You were like, this is making me rethink the whole campaign. I'm going to start buffing up all these monsters. I'm going to never leave a character adjacent to her.

Yeah, that's really important. It's huge. It's crazy. OK. All right, so there was a moment where Austin near the end, Professor Eric pointed this out, and so did David Rutter in the live chat during the episode, mentioned that her two hits seemed too high.

She rolled a natty 19 and said she had a 31 to hit. There's no way she has a plus 12 bonus. And so this is the concern for Professor Eric and he really wants to pass this on to everybody is like she was flanking. And so she may have added plus two to her attack, which is a one thing. Who was that? What's Asta at the very end when she when she killed the second one, she rolled a natty 19. Asta at the very end when she, when she killed the second one, she rolled a natty 19 and that she said that's a 31 to hit that gives her a plus 12 to her attack, which she should have even with bless and runic weapon, a plus 10 at this level. And so professor Eric believes that she possibly added

two for flanking and that's a one thing and Sydney plays one a regularly with us on legacy. And so the danger is let's not conflate, let's not double count off guard so that she's adding two and you're taking two away from the creature. That would be very bad. So remember the creature takes the penalty, you get no bonus to hit when you're flanking. So anyway, that's for everybody else out there. And I'll of course share that that with Sydney And then last one is just a positive for professor Eric in general very satisfied Very satisfying to see more tactical play runic weapon bless Flanking and skirmishing from Zephyr, etc And of course finally having a non higher level opponent helped still it would be nice to see Stunning Fist land for once. It's such

a good always on ability that Troy has rolled amazingly against all the time. These creatures had a low fort save and were more likely to fail than succeed. So I think Professor Eric was hoping for Zephyr to get a good Stunning Fist off, but it just didn't happen. Dude, I have such low opinion of Stunning Fist because it's so useless in first edition. And so expensive. It was like once a day or something. It was like, yeah. And you know, I played a couple of months and I was like, what? This ability is so dumb. So now I kind of carrying that over. I'm like, just stop wasting your time with Stunning Fist. But it's definitely better.

Yeah, it's definitely better because it's always on every single attack that you hit with the, with the, um, the flurry of blows blows you get the chance for it and so that's awesome. All right, let's kick it to the niche little listener, ma'am. All right, first off, we're going to go not with a question, but with a statement from at Jedi Roshi on YouTube who said it's finally happened for me. I started my GCP journey almost two years ago. Since then, I have been listening to the series when I get a chance. It took me two years to get through Giant Slayer, Strange Aeons, and now Gatewalkers, and is caught up for the first time with week-to-week episodes of the GCP.

So, welcome, Jedi Roshi. We've had lots of people comment on being there. People will come to live shows and be like, I used to be able to just binge one after another and after another, and now I've caught up, and and I have to wait a week and it is excruciating every week. But welcome Jedi Roshi to the fold. Yeah, that's awesome. Two years it took to get caught up on eight years of that of the glass kind of podcast.

Pretty wild. Dude, I said we'd talk about Friday night. We never did talk about it. I just realized we burned through the news. Yeah. Oh yeah through the news. Yeah Oh, yeah the the show. Yeah, let's take a quick break during listener mouth. We can do it. We just go for it We did the Kong show. It's the Kong show at the new stand-up, New York Kong Skull Island. Yeah, it was so much fucking fun I Went I went long. I imagine that well, they'll never have us back because I went super long

I went long. I imagine that they'll never have us back because I went super long. But the staff was just like great crowd, really cool new space right in, I mean, the heart of Times Square. I didn't realize it because I didn't Google the map until I was coming in. I was like, oh shit, this is like, I used to work a block away, bartended for years and we were right in it. Right in the heart of Times Square. And then they had this after party that we went to and it's a bunch of just great nation

members there, most of which I'd never met before. A couple of people we've seen at some of the New York shows. Just a fucking great, great time. Yeah, it was a great hang. I was so burnt and exhausted after the show. You were so exhausted right before the show. You were like, I don't know how I'm going to get through this. I've been up since five in the morning. I'm exhausted. I'm so tired. Obviously, the adrenaline kicks in. We do the show, go to the after party, and I'm just like, all right, I'll have a

drink. I'll say hi to a few people, and then I'm going to bed because I am so burnt out. Everyone left before we did. We closed down the after party. I don't know what happens to us. How do we get that extra level of energy at the end of the night? the after party. I don't know what happens to us. How do we get that extra level of energy at the end of the night? It's crazy. I don't know where it comes from. But that was a really, really fun time. I said we'd talk about it. We never talked about it. I hope we get to do it again because also, I love playing that game. I just love- Oh my gosh. I feel like we're going to see more of this at some time or another. We got

to just get an app on here of like, I think I had so many properties and it's just so fun. You're just like creating a movie, basically from scratch in two hours. It was awesome. Okay, let's get back to listening. Now, just a couple of quick ones here and we'll get on your way. Andrew you from Roseville, Minnesota. Yeah. And then the letter soda, right? Yeah, we just left there. Yeah. Andrew Yu from Roseville, Minnesota? Yeah, and then it's Minnesota, right? Yeah, we just left there. Yeah, Andrew Yu from Roseville, Minnesota, writes in and says,

what's the difference between John Jansky and John Jamsky? Please use examples. I'll help out, there's no difference. Andrew Yu, there is no difference between the three of them. In fact, I would be curious if over time any listeners, any vigilant or insightful listeners could potentially draw out any consistency of like, particularly John Jamsky if I use it in specific situations Unlike John, I think John and John ski are completely

Transferable or interchangeable rather John Jamsky. Perhaps I reserve for Make me like no, I don't I can't think of anything that narrows it down. I really think they are always Anything and they're all interchangeable. So anyway, go out there and go nuts with the John Jamsky whenever you want. Have fun with it. All right. So Troy from British Columbia, Victoria, British Columbia, where a lot of people from Victoria came to the Vancouver show and we're like, yo, thank you. Victoria is way better. This one from Troy, do you ever find yourself experiencing exhaustion from long-term campaigns? I absolutely love long-term campaigns, but I keep finding interest from my players, keep

finding, keeping interest from all my players quite challenging. Troy, have you experienced this yourself at all? Kind of a midpoint where you're like, I don't even want to play this story anymore. I feel like we talked about this recently on Cannon Fodder and maybe just a different phrase. Maybe it was in a different way or maybe I'm repeating the same question. I don't think so, but I hope I'm not. But I mean, it's worth revisiting. I think we talked about, dude, like less than

a month ago about like campaign fatigue. Is it the same question that you're recycling? I'm not sure. Yeah. I don't see this guy's name in the second one. Maybe it just came up in a different way, but yeah. We definitely talked about this, but I'm happy to re-talk about it because what I was going to say was trying to find that sweet spot for what we do now is I'm still not sure what is the right amount of episodes. There's something so epic about what we did with Giant Slayer that it would be intriguing to do it again and

see like, man, can we do it again like another 300 something episodes? Because you take COVID away, it would have been probably, you know, 50, what is that? Like six, I guess six-ish years. this year's, but I'm also excited to see what's probably going to be somewhere around 160, 170 episodes for the three book AP. I don't know. I don't know. But that's not really answering the question. But again, I think we already answered it.

I don't know. I mean, I feel like we never got tired of it. We just play for show. I feel like we never got tired of. We just play for show. I feel like we never got tired of Jade Regent. I feel like we got tired of Giant Slayer in book five at a certain point, but then it got reinvigorated. There were some events that really triggered a reinvigoration in that campaign. I don't think that there was anything you particularly did to recapture interest. I think it was just the organic flow of the

story. You know, there were changes that happened, character death, that kind of thing that just shoot some life into a story. And I think that that just kind of happened organically. Yeah, I don't really, I don't, I haven't experienced too much campaign fatigue. I feel like I also love long-term campaigns. I think keeping players interested is, it's just about changing the goals and the encounters that they're facing, you know, at a relatively even clip should keep, you know, at a relatively even clip should should keep, you know, the interest going. I think that was where some of the lag and drag happened with Giant Slayer was there

was a repetitiveness to encounters, particularly that really highlighted how this was all kind of the same and we were still doing the same thing. But you know, if you think about the first three books, I mean, they're so wildly different. You have a siege on a village into a boat adventure, into a swamp adventure, into another plane and then into – then we're sieging a fort. You know what I mean? It's interesting kind of flow. Oh, and then I guess – oh, and then book four is on top of the mountain. So that was like the –

Aaron Ross Powell Scare guard. Jason Kuznicki Yeah, the surveilling and then the – what's the word? It was like an insurgency, right? Like we were trying to destroy their morale by being unseen, but like slowly setting pitting the giants against each other. So there was a lot of variety in that. I think that that's why Pathfinder Adventure Paths are so awesome that they have, I mean,

Adventure Path is a copyrighted name that is just Paizo Adventures that is now being used as a word that just means campaign, you know? But that's not what they are. The way they've paced them out so that a long campaign is six different books by different authors, it's going to generate that kind of complete change of scenery and goals and tone that I think it's hard for a homebrew GM to do over a five or six year period because you're writing everything. How do you make it change?

How do you make it different so that your players don't start falling into a routine? I'll tell you what we don't have to deal with and that's masks of Nihilo. I mean, they want me to start recording season three like this week. I need a break. Troy needs a break. But not because I'm – well, actually I am fatigued but it's a different kind of fatigue. It's like the prep fatigue. I'm certainly not fatigued with the adventure.

But if you feel like you're fatigued, that's when you need to change it up. Insert a little bit of yourself. Go off the beaten path if you're playing something pre-written, or just take things in a wild new direction if it's something your own brew. Yeah, yeah. It's hard to keep interest from all players, but if it's just one player in particular that is a consistent problem, that might be more that that's the players problem right now like don't change your stuff too too much if most

of your players seem to be engaged and enjoying it but yeah it is it happens to the best of us and I think it is way more likely to happen when you're writing your own campaign so look to other sources look to other modules as inspiration yeah even in the middle of your homebrew, go ahead and take a six level one shot and run it as like kind of a side adventure just to reignite the spark or something like that, you know, guys it in the in the the facade of your world, but just use those mechanics or that story or whatever. I mean, remember in Jade Regent, we had so much fun eschewing the caravan mechanic in favor of a fan generated like mystery at some village along the way.

It was the third party adventure that was written to slot in to part two of book one of Jade Regent. And I was just, and I was very, very new to GMing. And I was like this caravan mechanics, but I want to do an adventure here. And they had written it and you just had to change the names. Like it was very clear who they were talking about, about the characters that were in it. And it was a great little, you know, side quest that, you know, we played over like maybe three sessions. Yeah. Like you ended up really caring about these people this village whatever and then you finished and you were like

I'm glad we could help but now we must continue our journey, you know and it was it was very cool and we were back on the path of Jade region and And we did away with one of the more boring parts in terms of the reviews of that book of the more boring parts in terms of the reviews of that book. So yeah, you know, staying flexible like that is important and is definitely going to keep interest in your game. That's all I got for today, good buddy. Do you have anything? Yeah, we're keeping it short. Actually, we're not sure. Jesus, these FODs. Fly by. There was a lot of we are stupid this week. We're real dumb,'re real dumb. We're real dumb, but it was definitely some good analysis. Thank you everybody for hanging out. Thanks for chilling with us.

Remember, lots of streams this week. If you're listening to this early or at midnight or 9pm Pacific time on Tuesday, come and check out the iconic characters mini creation stream, 11am today today Wednesday June 5th on our Twitch channel then tonight 8 p.m. premiere of Vancouver show and then tomorrow Thursday 12 p.m. I'm streaming live on the Twitch channel the control adventure continues supposed to be one of the best levels ever in any video game supposed to be amazing and then yeah obviously glass cannons back Thursday night 8 o'clock more to talk about next week on fodder.

It's gonna be awesome. Until then, take it easy everybody, have a good one, and we'll see you next time. Have a good weekend. Bye. I just peed my pants. Gross. Philman! See this?

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 today jointhenation.com. Welcome to a journey into the heart of the Texas Renaissance Festival, the nation's largest and rowdiest celebration of medieval fantasy.

But what lurks beneath the facade of tights and turkey legs? Well, we dove deep into the empire to uncover a history marred by mystery and misconduct. Murders, assaults, and other crimes that tarnish its legacy. This isn't just a fairy tale, it's a cautionary tale of power, fantasy, and the consequences that follow when they all collide. Search for Crime Waves Renaissance Texas on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now.