The Glass Cannon Podcast - Cannon Fodder 8/7/24

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Another Gen Con is in the books! Troy and Joe go blow by blow through a fantastic weekend spent gaming with the Naish before turning their attention to the Get in the Trunk Season 6 Premiere, the Gen Con show recordings, and updates for Boston and Philly. In Listener Mail, what are the very first steps a Game Master should take when thinking about starting a new campaign? Cannon Fodder will be dark next week and will return on Wednesday, August 20th. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/T2yufuefYjc For more podcasts and livestreams, visit glasscannonnetwork.com and for hundreds of hours of exclusive shows and benefits, make your membership official and join Glass Cannon Nation today by becoming a subscriber at jointhenaish.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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the premier source for role-playing game entertainment. scenes look at the Glass Cannon Network. Yeah! What is going on everybody? Welcome back to Cat and Fodder. It is Wednesday, August 7th, 2024 and I'm your old buddy Joe O'Brien. And hey, I'm Drew, sleepy sleepy time, Dee LaValley. Oh buddy, I hear it in my voice. I kind of hear it in your voice, but it is a post-Gen Con fought. It's a Gen Con debrief as we try to catch up on sleep, try to return our voices to some

semblance of normal. It was a hectic and wild five days for us really. And what an incredible trip. What an incredible trip. Did you get some sleep last night? Did you catch up at all? I did get some last night because Sunday in the hotel going into Monday between like, you know, eating and drinking and stress mounting like I just like I had horrible insomnia going into Monday. So to the point where I like I started to get like panic attacks and I couldn't like

and I haven't had a panic attack in a while but it was just like the stress of the weekend I and this always happens whenever Gen Con comes around. It's like we just do so much and it's just like and then there's like this stop and my body is like, all right, buddy, I did my job. Now I'll see you in a while. And it just gives up and I'm just, and I mean, I slept about 15 minutes and then on the plane I was still like all twitchy and so it was so bad Sunday. That's wild that you say that because I experienced the exact same thing. It's kind of counterintuitive.

You would think like, oh, so hectic, so hectic, so hectic. And then Sunday night, we had some dinner together and then we were done by 1030 or something like that. And you would think you could just calm down. I mean, I didn't sleep a wink before about 1.15 AM. And and even then it was like scattered and I got up and left early for the airport and I had a 6 30 alarm set and I was just up at five couldn't sleep. It was just wild. My body was so. You're replaying the weekend in your head and you're like you can't I couldn't stop my brain around like 2 45 in the morning.

I just was like I'm just going to watch TV. I watched the end of Han Solo. I'd never seen Han Solo. And then I watched an entire episode of NCIS New Orleans just to see Rob Kirkovich. Now it's like five and I'm like, I just like splashing water to try and like get my body temperature down. And I was like, well, this is a loss. I'll try again tomorrow.

But I did sleep last night. I'm still like, still have no voice, but. I slept fantastically last night. It was like once I was home in my bed, I went to bed at 830 last night and I slept straight through to 630 in the morning. It was just amazing. And I still felt tired when I woke up. But wow, what an incredible weekend.

We're going to talk a little bit about it. We'll just give you a little insight into what we did and how much fun we had. We'll talk about the shows that came out of it, both prerecorded and there. We'll let you know where you can see some of those and which ones you cannot see. We'll also talk, dip in on the tour real quick, let you know about Boston and Philly.

And no, obviously we'll talk about the GCP, fantastic up this week. No, we are stupid, cause it's an all role playing app, and then a nice chunky listener mail. I actually wanna get to this listener mail, cause it's a good one. We're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on

the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going to be on the show, and we're going from and I said to my wife yesterday, I'm like, I wish I could fully explain to you every moment of the week because there was just so much that went on. We were hanging out with Nora Ibrahim at the end there, like Nora and Sydney and you and I were playing a board game like Sunday as everyone's breaking down the booth. Nora was like, I really enjoy this, Jen Kong, because I felt like I had the most time to do other things. I was like, we changed up everything we did and it was the busiest that I've ever been

probably in my entire life. I just felt like I was just nonstop. If I wasn't doing something, I was preparing to do something. Even the social obligations of which there were plenty, those are taxing as well, especially for people like you and I because we have to hobnob, we have to talk, we have to talk business, we have to, you know, be on at those things as well. Yeah, it's not that it's miserable. And it's certainly fun, but it is taxing mentally and physically like it just uses up a, you know, a reserve of fuel of which you only have so

much. Yeah. I did six live shows. You did five. You ran a bunch of gauntlets. I ran a bunch of gauntlets. We had to be on all weekend. Even when you're not being on, there's still a point where you're on.

We have our industry party that we host. We got there before everybody else obviously and I was just kind of sitting in a recliner with a whiskey and just there were people talking around me and I was like, I know in about 30 minutes I'm going to have to like start work in the room. For this moment, I'm just going to stare off into space for as long as humanly possible. In terms of highlights, the live shows for me were the highlights. The Gauntlets for Fable 2, the new booth, but the live shows, especially the Call of

Cthulhu live at the Athenaeum Friday night. I think that was kind of, as we've talked to everybody throughout the weekend, that was kind of the pinnacle of what we do and to bring in the Time for Chaos cast with the founders as well as just an automation of what everything we've been working on. And I hadn't realized it until we were on stage and you said it specifically that that's the first time the four of them had ever gamed together in person. Yeah, we had never.

Was on that stage. Like it just was wild to me. A show has been on air for three years that they've worked on together for three years and that's the first time they've ever all been together to play an RPG. This is so cool. Yeah, it's wild. I mean, you have 40 episodes and we've never been in person.

I mean, we've been in person together, but we never game together. But I mean, just walking through the weekend. So we arrive Tuesday, you arrive Tuesday, I arrive Wednesday, we check out the booth. The booth exceeded all expectations. It was beautiful. It was amazing. We get new terrain every day to run these gauntlets. We're playing on this sick 3D terrain.

Let me just take a second to shout out Dwarven Forge. Because we've talked to them a lot over the years. We always bat back and forth like a tennis match, like what can we work on together, what can we work on together. And we've never really landed on much of anything because we don't really use 3D terrain in our studio yet. We've talked about potentially doing something with it and we've been in a lot

of conversations and those guys are great. They're in Brooklyn. So they're like our neighbors, you know what I mean? So we've talked to them for years about how to do something together. And then when this came together, it was like, you could provide some terrain that we could borrow for this event. Man, did they deliver. Like the terrain was so fucking cool. I was just so blown away by how that elevated that experience. And I mean, there's battery powered stuff everywhere. There's sconces and flames and fire traps that are all lit. You know what I mean?

It's blinking and flickering. And it was just really, really neat. Oh my God, they had trapped tiles. Remember those little tiles you stood on it? And then the GM can just pull the tile off and there's a spiked trap underneath it in the 3D terrain. I had Colonel Luther fell into my pit trap. But I mean, just we had, obviously we had Order of the Amber Die provided some terrain

as well as some minis who were playing with these sick painted minis. McD painted the minis of all the iconic glass cannon characters. You and me and Matthew and Skid and Jared ran these encounters all weekend long. Every day was a different encounter. The way that we ran each encounter and what we added to it was totally different. Afterwards, we're all telling more stories with each other like, oh, you did that. I opened with this. I added environmental hazard to this.

I said there was like a treasure you had to take out. And so we were just like telling all these stories and there were people that played in like multiple gauntlets, hearing how much fun they had. I feel wildly different experiences from one to the other. There were TPKs. There were like whole party lives. There was like times when just one person died. I mean, I had one where they finished up and four of the five were at full hit points.

They didn't even create that much. I couldn't believe it that just the healing was so on point and their tactics were so good. I was just like, I'm so mad. I couldn't even hurt you guys. They're all laughing in my face. We had to go so weekend long. Then Thursday kicks off.

We kick off all of Gen Con TV with Get in the Trunk Live. Obviously, since it was Gen Con's first stream of the weekend, they completely botched it and the audio was a mess. Unfortunately, that's the only copy of it. Get in the Trunk Live, Blades in the Dark, The Busted Mufflers and Starfinder 2E Live and Call of Cthulhu 1920s, those only existed at the con. We have no power over that. Now you can watch Get in the Trunk Live, but the audio is a mess.

It cuts in and out. They went away from the stream. So unfortunately, you just kind of had to be there. But we started with that. Were you psyched about- Hold on. Let me just say real quick, if you want to check out the parts you can check out, you can see it.

You're just going to, it's gaps, but you can see it. It's on Gen Con's Twitch channel, which is Gen Con TV. It's under a video called Gen Con Opening Ceremonies. It's like a 15-hour video. It's called Gen Con Opening Ceremonies. Go about three hours and 22 minutes in and our thing starts. You can catch what you can. I know at least one person that saw enough to know what happened and said that it was hilarious. It was. It was so funny.

So so I recommend checking it out even if it's a little frustrating. But sorry, there was nothing we could do about that. And then Thursday night, obviously sold out at Helium Comedy Club for Glass Cannon Live. We were talking at the end of the week. I'm like, I don't even remember that show. I don't even remember what happened because it was show two of six. And then Friday we did, that was my Cthulhu day. So we had the Scott Dorrids scenario that he wrote for us.

That was, I mean, it was so fucking awesome. I wish that we taped that. And Nora at the end of it was like, we didn't tape that? I'm like, we can't, it's Gen Con. But I want to run that scenario again with like a different cast because it was so, so wonderful. And then that night was the Athenaeum show, which I mean, right up there with top three things we've ever done. Saturday, busted mufflers, crazy as always into a Starfinder 2-E session where I modified it ever so slightly and we had three out of six characters per Medi Yeah, and yeah, I mean just just Gen Con is every year. We keep raising the stakes

You know we went in with very specific goals this year to make sure that it would be you know Not only profitable But that we would continue to raise awareness of the glass cannon brand and I mean you could not Throw a stone in Gen Con without seeing a Planet Die hat, a shirt, the joy on people's faces as they came to our shows or interacted with us in the floor or just around Indy. I mean, home run across the board went way too fast. I spoke to on Sunday morning, I walked the floor before it was open.

I actually had a chance to walk the floor, talk to some vendors, and I went over and talked to some of the Dwarven Forge guys, and they were like, they were getting the same exact vibe that I was getting or that we were getting, which was that Gen Con, the energy was just amazing. People were so excited to be there, and there were 85,000 of them, and they were just so positive and fun and upbeat. And I mean, it was just great. When I was at the booth and not running gauntlets,

I would just get stopped constantly. People were constantly walking up and just saying how much they loved the Glass Cannon and how excited they are that we're here. Some of them were like, you guys are here? We're like, you know, listen to the FOD. It was just really, really fun to meet. And then to have some people who were just like, oh my gosh, it's crazy to meet you in

person. I had never seen this before. Some of them that had one guy in particular had never seen a single stitch of video content. So like, was just an audio listener and was like, that's what Troy looks like. It was really all over the place, but really so much fun. So much fun. So let's talk for a second about the prerecorded content, which we couldn't go into great detail on ahead of time. We told you the titles and stuff, but man, we had a great time with that. And those are all slowly, they're all on YouTube now, but they're all slowly releasing as the, on audio on the, on our subscription service. So if you're at the niche premium tier, you're going to get one a day

this week of all those prerecorded one shots and character creations and stuff like that in all different game systems. Those were blasts. So I'll give you guys a week to digest those. And if you have any questions about those, write in and list them out. Let us know. I'd be happy to tell you about some of those games, what we thought about those games, but we won't go into great detail on that right now. Oh man.

Okay. One more stitch of real big news before we move on to the GCP. And it's so crazy that this passed us by and that it wasn't mentioned in last week's fodder, but there's a reason for that. Get in the Trunk Season Six premiered last night. Get in the Trunk Season Six premiered last night. So amazing. We've been waiting to get this to you guys for a while. For various reasons, it had to push for production reasons until after Gen Con. But now we're ready to rock and roll. And it landed last night. I'm not sure how many of you saw it last night, but it's available today on podcast for the first time. And I hope you guys can take it all in because man, what a fun premiere that was.

And we'll talk about it more on FOD again. If you have questions, write in, let us know. Contact at GlassCannotwork.com or you can go to listener mail on our website and we'll answer your questions. But I'm not going to say anything else because let's just let the season start to breathe and let you guys kind of figure out where it starts to head. Oh, and then Boston real quick, you wanted to mention that there's almost no tickets left. 17 tickets left for the Boston show, which is about six weeks away. Always one of the best shows of the year. That's our home club.

You got Boston, Portland, LA, and Philly. That's it. Four more shows for the year. Let's sell them all out. I mean, Portland is going to be pretty tough to sell out unless we get Joe Mangionello to guest star because that theater is huge. But yeah, Boston, 17 tickets left. That'll be fun.

Although I never want to play another game again. I want to have as long as possible before I play another game. Yeah, yeah. Just need a break. Just need a break. Even doing fodder. And that's why there's no fodder next week. Joe and I are going to the beach.

Yes, there actually is no fodder next week, which I'm actually happy about, just because I want to give an entire, there's a lot to process this week as all these new shows are released. And I would like to give you guys some time to process them, catch up, listen. And in two weeks, we'll be back with the fireworks, taking one week off here post-GenCon, and then we'll be back on August 20th, I believe it is. So I wanted to mention one thing when you mentioned Boston, 17 tickets left, because obviously, we love that venue.

It's a great space. Little Easter egg. So the Athenaeum show, which was recorded, you will see that eventually. No spoilers, but there is a small moment where I mentioned something that has to do with Billy Joel in that show. And everybody's like cracking up. And during the process of like coming up with that idea of how I wanted to use that, I was just on Spotify, like, look at a Billy Joel stuff. And I saw the picture of the first album that I ever had when I was a kid, a first CD that I ever got when I was a kid. And it was Billy Joel's Greatest

Hits, volume one and two. Now that was like after, like my first CD, after I got a stereo, like my first stereo. It's like black with, in black and white. Yeah. And he's like leaning on the piano. I played that until it fell up, until it disintegrated in my CD player. Right? Did you know?

I didn't. That on those greatest hits, volume one and two, the She's Got Away on disc two is live from the paradise in Boston. I did not know that. And I listened to it no less than 3000 times. Right, and I always thought that it was like studio recorded. I just never looked at it, you know, but it's a live performance of She's Got Away and

it's live at the Paradise in Boston says it right on Spotify. I was like, Holy shit, that's so cool. Dude, I think I got that from Columbia House. Remember Columbia House where you'd like get not 10 CDs for a penny and then they just send you into collection agencies when you never bought six over the next year. I think I had that double CD and I would listen to it while I was doing homework, like doing math homework. I just listened to that particular double constantly.

You can play any track on any of those two albums and I could sing every word of it right now and I haven't listened to it in 15 years you could play any of those songs. I'd sing it top to bottom. All right. Yes. Yes All right. Let's talk about GCP. Holy crap, dude Like we have so much to talk about and then it's like you turn to this GCP episode back to bed and it's like an Absolute monster like what an app not Not only do you have the Luke Skywalker situation with Sydney at the top, but then you also have this incredible, you know, dramatic episode that is also a huge plot turning point and a huge reveal of a lot of the things we've been looking for in Gatewalkers since the beginning. Man, it's just got so much. And

I think you knew about it ahead of time. Talk to me about going into that session. You even said like in the pre-show, in the band, you were like, I think this is going to be a turning point episode. How long have you known about or thought of this moment? The moment where we get to the Grove and get a chance to speak with the Elvin leader, the former Elvin leader. Yeah, I mean, I think over the past few months as I was prepping ahead, I was like, all right, this is going to be a good info dump on sort of the background here, kind of connecting it to the gates a little bit and you know, what happened to you, even though you still don't know what the

fuck's going on. How does this whale have to do with anything? It's the first time you start to realize that your part in this seems to be much larger and that everything is kind of interconnected. What I wanted to do was balance that info dump with some cool on the spot role playing because I don't know if I mentioned in this episode, I might even say next week, there would be a time when I'd be like, all right, I want you guys to start thinking about like a moment from your past that you wanna give away.

Cause this was that, right? This was the whole memory episode. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you had to give up a memory as part of the, almost like an entry fee in order to gain this knowledge from this person. And so as I've been doing a lot less like pre-writing and trying to really just live in the moment, I wanted to have you guys do the same thing.

So I didn't say anything to you guys, just had you come in and I mean, holy shit, every single one of you just knocked it out of the park. And I don't know, I like that. I like, I love when we do like little scenes that we think about and prepare in advance, but I'm trying to get back to the sort of the old way of doing it where it's just like come up with it in a moment and see what happens. I think all of that training of writing those scenes and writing those thoughts over time is that we can sort of extemporaneously come up with just gold. My God, I don't want to point out anyone at the risk of like making others seem

less than, but I can't stop thinking of Skids. Like Skids was just, you know, because you kind of knew all this, but now you get to see those moments. You already knew it all. Yeah. But the way that it was portrayed dramatically, where you actually go to that scene instead of it just being a memory that was discussed. When you actually see the memory, it's a lot different and a lot more intense. And obviously, Skitt as a performer is

so wonderful that I mean, he just seemed to embody the evilness of this woman, like this pure evil. You felt like you were sitting across from her. I was like cringing away, like just at the tone of her voice. Not even when it got bad, like when she was like, oh, hello. I was just like, ah! Like it just freaked me out. Yeah. So good, so good.

So yeah, that really jumped out to me and you know, among the scenes, but everybody made interesting choices. I really liked the strategy behind Zephyr's choice to kind of take away ever liking this person and remember hating them always. You know what I mean? It's kind of cool and dark and kind of twisted.

You know, you would think, you know, your first instinct would be like, oh, take away the bad stuff so that I only remember the good stuff. It's like, no, she's like, I'm gonna take away the good stuff so that the bad stuff doesn't seem so hurtful. stuff. It's like, no, she's like, I'm gonna take away the good stuff so that the bad stuff doesn't seem so hurtful.

It's just so bad. Very interesting choice. Very, very interesting choice. And so is that something that, I mean, basically is that in the adventure as the mechanics of this place really, that you have to lose memories, or is that something you came up with

that they have to be gone? Because I was like, why can't you just copy a memory? But it's much more dramatic to have to lose memories or is that something you came up with that they have to be gone because I was like why can't you just copy a memory but it's much more dramatic to have to lose the memory for sure is this something that was you know the idea of the the writer of this book yeah yeah I think I sort of dramatized it like you know like many groups I thought I think there'd be plenty people be like all right I give a memory and the guys like all right come on it you know I mean like totally don't take it to right, I give a memory and the guy's like, all right, come on in. You know what I mean? Totally, totally. We take it up to the nth degree. But I was just wondering if the memory cache really does absorb the memory from you for

good in the way that you portrayed it because that was really good. That was really cool. Yeah. The exact form of their trade with the Calborne is partially up to the party to decide as the Caldorne's preferences for memories recollections of experiences that once harvested are permanently erased from the characters minds. Yeah. So cool.

Yeah. There are ways you can like work around it, but I was like, I'm not even going to offer that as a solution. I'm like, this is, this is, this is the show. This is the show. Just wonderful. And then we move on from that to actually getting an amazing info dump. So you're the Black Frost Whale. Yeah. This disturbing revelation that those who get into the presence of this whale and it's an actual whale like a legendary creature of myth, mythological

creature that predates our known civilization is that the effect of going there is that you gain supernatural powers and lose your mind and your memories and become a thrall to this. It emits this breath that gives people powers but then turns them into thralls. Right. And so we have this disturbing sort of, but wait, we have powers. We don't remember what happened. Are we thralls though?

We certainly don't feel like thralls. It feels like it's a different thing. And then, I'm sorry, keep forgetting your name. What's the name of the elf? Iscariot. Iscariot. Iscariot is then like that mark that you carry. That's the mark of a soil.

That's just like, oh. So yeah. At least that's what she thinks she's like, or maybe like you've been marked by a soil. Or maybe you've been marked by a soil. Yeah, it's kind of unclear. Yeah, because the marks are all a little bit different, but basically, you know,

she mentions that those people did return marked. She doesn't know what the mark exactly looked like, but so, you know, Maybe it's not a Soyo per se but an adjacent sort of creature or something that could do this is a very interesting idea or concept. How do you tie into all of this? What does this have to do with the gates? That's not clear but it does seem to be linked. The idea that like the energy coming off the key, it was like Osoyo's energy was repelling it.

Right. You know, it's not tied up in it. And so what is that all about? So it's very, very interesting, very complicated, but very cool for us all at the table, particularly Skid and I and Matthew to find out that the legend says that the elder elves trapped a Soyo beneath the polar crown of the world on Galarian. We were just like, we've been there. You feel like you've been there when you've been there adventuring.

We were there in another module. It's exciting to be like, are we going to go back there? It's really kind of a fun. Man, that was such a fun session. After that session, we literally – you and I, if you recall, and Francis, everybody was gone from the studio. After that session, we were just so into that episode, particularly the beginning, that we rewatched the raw footage of Sydney's skywalkers screw up. We just didn't change cameras in that.

We just stayed on her and just looking at her face, looking at us, realizing that she's made a mistake. The realization in her face that she's just like, oh God, they're going to eat me alive. She just kept making it worse. It was awesome. Oh, it was so funny. We mentioned that we came out of break and sit, you know, we had said that she continued to go down this road. She said, wait, so was it Luke that killed all the kids? And I saw so that was all that was all recorded like during that break. So we were

rewatching that. I mean, it was just so funny. I was like, I cannot wait for the nays to see this. I just can't wait. So fun so fun. But yeah, anyway, spectacular episode. Episode 45 goes down in the books for me as one of my favorites of all of Gatewalkers so far. It was just, it had everything. It was one of those apps that just had everything. All right, we're going to skip We Are Stupid this week because it was all role play. Professor Eric wrote in. He didn't have any particular comments about my role playing, so I guess I didn't impress him very much. Just kidding, Eric, thank you so much.

But yeah, he wrote in with, said, no, no rules this week, so we're going to check in on that next time. All right, let's go to a little listener mail here, because great question, Yone, on deck. I always wonder how stupid I probably look trying to lip sync something that is just not going to be exactly synced to me because of internet protocols. It's going to look like I'm an idiot. I was like, trust me. That's when I heard it in my head.

All right. Let's go to Gary from Washington DC who writes in with a really nice message here and a great question. I've been listening to the glass cannon since 2017 and you encouraged me to get back into gaming after way too long. Gary! Gary! I picked up Starfinder when that published and found a local group of guys, and we had

a blast playing it every month in the DM's basement before COVID put a kibosh on that. I stepped up and offered to run the group remotely through an adventure path for Pathfinder 1E, Tyrants Grasp. We started that in October of 2020, and we had our last session this week, July 31st, 2024. So four years, completed the AP, great job. It was an incredible experience, kept the group together despite moves, lifestyle changes, and a pandemic.

And when it all wrapped up, my players said that they loved the effort I put into the setting, the backstories, and the NPCs and being light with the rules, all things I learned from the GCP. I'd like to send a personal thank you to everyone on the network, but especially Grant, Matthew, Skid, Joe and double especially Troy. And a shout out to Jared from Stream of Blood. I'm looking forward to running a new adventure. So here's the question. Did Troy or Skid seek input from the players before selecting an adventure path? And any advice you can give on how best to start up

a new campaign? So this is a big question. Obviously, it's chunky. Well, we'll tackle what we can. But let's start with, do you poll players before you begin a new long-term campaign, Troy? No. I mean, we talked pre-Giant Slayer, but it was mainly just you and Skid and I, because this is before Matthew and Grant were even part of the equation.

And so I wanted to make sure that I was playing something you guys were excited about. With Androids and Aliens, Dead Sons was all that was available. So it was like, you guys want to do this or not? And then with Gatewalkers, I just was like, we're going to do this. Yeah, you didn't pull us at all. But I do think that for a home group or for a podcast, you absolutely should. And you know, I think, I mean, who knows what the future is going to hold. But I think that's a really

good idea outside of this very specific situation that we have here. Totally. And with all of the options that are out there, I think, so I do poll my players. I've done this a couple of times. Obviously, we don't have a lot of time to run multiple different campaigns, but like I have a few times started up a new campaign, long form campaign. And when I do, I generally will whittle it down to about three. You don't want to give people too many choices, but I whittle it down to about

three and I'll send an email to everybody with the name and like my little logline for that, that adventure, just giving us a basic sense of setting, uh, and, and what the characters kind of might be like in, in this adventure, um, or what the characters might be like in this adventure or what the challenge may be like in this adventure. I don't send players to the website to shop or to read those synopses because I feel those are too much. That's just spoilery. Yeah.

I like to just get a – I remember when Curse of the Crimson Throne was on the table. All I said was gritty urban adventure. That was the only thing that I said was it was going to be urban, meaning you're just going to be in a city for this one. There was a same thing with Council of Thieves. It was like, this is an urban adventure, this is a city adventure. Or we could do this one, lots of overland travel and fighting hobgoblins or whatever. Um, so I feel like giving them, you know, a choice is great, but too many choices can, can lead you down the wrong path and you can just end up not narrowing down to anything.

Uh, all right. So then what are the other initial steps that you do when you're preparing to run a first session of, of a campaign? God. Uh, well, there's the player's campaign. God. Well, there's the player's guide. Yeah, if you're using a Paizo thing, there's usually a player's guide. Send them off the player's guide once they've decided.

Send them off a player's guide. That is a great tool that Paizo has to allow the players to get really to understand what kind of characters would be relevant in this story. You want to build characters that are story relevant. If we're just talking Pathfinder or Starfinder, and I'm sure D&D has something similar, it's like if you're going to be playing in a certain section of the world, you could also recommend the world guides for that area.

Now it's probably like the Lost Omen guide covers pretty much everything. But in 10 years, there'll be a lot more setting guides that come out. But you know, for people, but I would also recommend that they could dig into that. Yep. That's a good idea. I think the world guides is a great example where I would hesitate is the gazetteers of like a city. So like if you're're gonna run an adventure

that's all in Absalom, I would hesitate being like, just read through the Absalom book that they put out for 2E. You should vet that before you send those things because those ones tend to get really specific with locations and NPCs and adventure hooks and stuff. So they could be telling you like, oh, you know, they could read that and be like,

oh, the bartender at this one tavern is a spy from another country that is doing whatever, whatever. And that might be part of the AP, you know what I mean? So like you wanna just- Yeah, if you're playing an older AP, sometimes they'll spoil the AP in the description. It's like the the whispering tyrant rose from the dead and wiped out this city.

Right, exactly. It's very like, make sure you vet that stuff before you send it. But the world guide, those are just like general overviews of nations. When you're talking about the cities in there, they give you a sense of population, how long the city's been around, what its leadership looks like, period. You're not going to go into a strain level of the stories that are happening there. So those world guides are generally a good idea.

But yeah, otherwise, and then you have to love it too. So that's why I say give three choices, because I mean, are you really going to love to run five, six, seven different options? You must have some you want to whittle it down to, because you have to make sure you're going to want to love it, because you're doing the most work. So like you have to be the most excited about it.

You just want to make sure it's something that your players either a haven't played before aren't playing with someone else you didn't know about it, but that they also are you know, excited to do it. Yeah, it's funny like with with Jared and running blood of the Wild, we really just asked Jared like, here are the adventure paths that are out there right now. Which one speaks to you the most? And he was like, that one. And then we kind of built the cast around that.

So there's a right or wrong way to do it. But I do think it's always best to get players input and their buy-in, you know, because it could be if it's a fucking all undead campaign or and they're not into like that. All evil, right? Right. Or like a pie, like I give a shit less about pirates. So like, I don't want to play skull and shackles. Whereas other people be like, I love pirates.

And so that's, that's important. Yeah. And like, so I guess I'm saying throw three ideas out there, but you'd have to be excited about running all of them. The other one is like, if you're really excited about one, just pitch that. But I would suggest if you got two people saying they're not into it, then move on from it. So it's something you have to give them choices to vote on.

You can just go with one option, but you want to make sure you do listen to them because if they're like, ah, I'm not so into it, like don't force it down their throat because you're going to be starting two steps back, you know, and you're going to have to get their attention and have them enjoy it. Like they should come in already excited. But yeah, otherwise you've already been through a first session, Gary. You've done a first session before. First sessions can be tough. You can over-prepare. You can can try to make this big splash. The one thing I would caution against, and I think it's pretty simple. It's not easy to do, but it's a simple concept, which is don't talk too much. It's very easy as the GM in the very

first session to be like, there is so much that needs to be explained in divulged here. I've made this mistake as well. Let the characters get the floor very early and start crafting their story and you'll find you're doing less work, they're having more fun and things will feel like they're developing more organically to them as you just start to cater things to what they're doing. Then even if there's little tidbits about the setting that you're like, oh, well, your character would know that those people don't do this or that or your people would know that the money here is different or whatever. You don't have to list that all out in a lecture ahead of time. Let them start playing and as those things come up, just kind of point them out and

put them in the right direction. So anyway, good luck with the new campaign. Keep us posted, Gary. Let us know how it starts off off what you end up deciding to do I'm curious. I'd love to hear but that'll do it for father this week. Thanks everybody for hanging out it went quick because man, I'll tell you that Gen Con breakdown can just I mean we could go on for an hour But it was so much fun Thank you to all of our all of our friends that were out there and performed with us at so many different venues, so many different stages. It was an amazing time.

Troy mentioned it earlier, no fodder next week. We are traveling next week, a little post-Gen Con travel, but then we'll be back the week after that. We're skipping one. We'll be back August 20th. So until then, take it easy everybody. Have a good couple weeks and we'll see you then. Later! 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 N.A.C.E. today at JoinTheN.A.C.E. dot com!